If any man be so far of another opinion, as to believe that Brutus, Camillus, Scipio, Fabius, Hannibal, Pericles, Aristides, Agesilaus, Epaminondas or Pelopidas, were as easily corrupted as Sejanus, Tigellinus, Vinius or Laco: That the senate and people of Rome, Carthage, Athens, Sparta or Thebes, were to be bought at as easy rates as one profligate villain, a slave, an eunuch or a whore; or tho it was not in former ages, yet it is so now: he may be pleased to consider by what means men now rise to places of judicature, church-preferment, or any offices of trust, honour or profit under those monarchies which we know, that either are or would be absolute. Let him examine how all the offices of justice are now disposed in France; how Mazarin came to be advanced; what traffick he made of abbies and bishopricks, and what treasures he gained by that means: Whether the like has not continued since his death, and as a laudable example been transmitted to us since his majesty’s happy restoration: Whether bawds, whores, thieves, buffoons, parasites, and such vile wretches as are naturally mercenary, have not more power at Whitehall, Versailles, the Vatican, and the Escurial, than in Venice, Amsterdam, and Switzerland: Whether H-de, Arl-ng-t-n, D-nby, their Graces of Cleveland and Portsmouth, S-nd-rl-nd, Jenkins or Chiffinch, 7 could probably have attained such power as they have had amongst us, if it had been disposed by the suffrages of the parliament and people: Or lastly, whether such as know only how to work upon the personal vices of a man, have more influence upon one who happens to be born in a reigning family, or upon a senate consisting of men chosen for their virtues and quality, of the whole body of a nation.
But if he who possesses or affects an absolute power be by his interest led to introduce that corruption which the people, senate, and magistrates who uphold popular governments abhor, as that which threatens them with destruction: if the example, arts, and means used by him and his dependents be of wonderful efficacy towards the introduction of it: if nothing but an admirable virtue, which can hardly be in one that enjoys or desires such a power, can divert him from that design; and if such virtue never did, nor probably ever will continue long in any one family, we cannot rationally believe there ever was a race of men invested with, or possessing such a power, or that there will ever be any who have not, and will not endeavour to introduce that corruption, which is so necessary for the defence of their persons, and most important concernments, and certainly accomplish their great design, unless they are opposed or removed.
But skin for skin, says our author, and all that a man hath will he give for his life. 1 And since it was necessary to grace his book with some Scripture phrases, none could be fitter for that purpose than those that were spoken by the Devil; but they will be of little use to him: For tho I should so far recede from truth, as to avow those words to be true, I might safely deny the conclusions he draws from them, that those are the worst governments under which most men are slain; or, that more are slain in popular governments than in absolute monarchies. 2 For having proved that all the wars and tumults that have happen’d in commonwealths, have never produced such slaughters as were brought upon the empires of Macedon and Rome, or the kingdoms of Israel, Judah, France, Spain, Scotland or England, by contests between several competitors for those crowns; if tumult, war, and slaughter, be the point in question, those are the worst of all governments where they have been most frequent and cruel. But tho these are terrible scourges, I deny that government to be simply the worst that has most of them. ’Tis ill that men should kill one another in seditions, tumults and wars; but ’tis worse to bring nations to such misery, weakness and baseness, as to have neither strength nor courage to contend for anything; to have nothing left worth defending, and to give the name of peace to desolation. I take Greece to have been happy and glorious, when it was full of populous cities, flourishing in all the arts that deserve praise among men: When they were courted and feared by the greatest kings, and never assaulted by any but to his own loss and confusion: When Babylon and Susa trembled at the motion of their arms; and their valour exercised in these wars and tumults, which our author looks upon as the greatest evils, was raised to such a power that nothing upon earth was found able to resist them: and I think it now miserable, when peace reigns within their empty walls, and the poor remains of those exhausted nations sheltering themselves under the ruins of the desolated cities, have neither anything that deserves to be disputed amongst them, nor spirit or force to repel the injuries they daily suffer from a proud and insupportable master.
The like may be said of Italy: Whilst it was inhabited by nations governing themselves by their own will, they fell sometimes into domestick seditions, and had frequent wars with their neighbours. When they were free, they loved their country, and were always ready to fight in its defence. Such as succeeded well, increased in vigor and power; and even those that were the most unfortunate in one age, found means to repair their greatest losses if their government continued. Whilst they had a propriety in their goods, they would not suffer the country to be invaded, since they knew they could have none if it were lost. This gave occasion to wars and tumults; but it sharpened their courage, kept up a good discipline, and the nations that were most exercised by them, always increased in power and number; so that no country seems ever to have been of greater strength than Italy was when Hannibal invaded it: and after his defeat, the rest of the world was not able to resist their valour and power. They sometimes killed one another; but their enemies never got anything but burying-places within their territories. All things are now brought into a very different method by the blessed governments they are under. The fatherly care of the king of Spain, the pope, and other princes, has established peace amongst them. We have not in many ages heard of any sedition among the Latins, Sabines, Volsci, Aequi, Samnites, or others. The thin, half-starv’d inhabitants of walls supported by ivy, fear neither popular tumults, nor foreign alarms; and their sleep is only interrupted by hunger, the cries of their children, or the howling of wolves. Instead of many turbulent, contentious cities, they have a few scatter’d silent cottages; and the fierceness of those nations is so temper’d, that every rascally collector of taxes extorts without fear from every man, that which should be the nourishment of his family. And if any of those countries are free from that pernicious vermin, ’tis through the extremity of their poverty. Even in Rome a man may be circumvented by the fraud of a priest, or poison’d by one who would have his estate, wife, whore, or child; but nothing is done that looks like tumult or violence. The governors do as little fear Gracchus as Hannibal; and instead of wearying their subjects in wars, they only seek, by perverted laws, corrupt judges, false witnesses, and vexatious suits, to cheat them of their money and inheritance. This is the best part of their condition. Where these arts are used, there are men, and they have something to lose; but for the most part the lands lie waste, and they who were formerly troubled with the disorders incident to populous cities, now enjoy the quiet and peaceable estate of a wilderness.
Again, there is a way of killing worse than that of the sword: for as Tertullian says upon a different occasion, prohibere nasci est occidere; 3 those governments are in the highest degree guilty of blood, which by taking from men the means of living, bring some to perish through want, drive others out of the country, and generally dissuade men from marriage, by taking from them all ways of subsisting their families. Notwithstanding all the seditions of Florence, and other cities of Tuscany, the horrid factions of Guelphs and Ghibellines, Neri and Bianchi, nobles and commons, they continued populous, strong, and exceeding rich; but in the space of less than a hundred and fifty years, the peaceable reign of the Medicis is thought to have destroyed nine parts in ten of the people of that province. Amongst other things ’tis remarkable, that when Philip the second of Spain gave Siena to the duke of Florence, his ambassador then at Rome sent him word, that he had given away more than six hundred and fifty thousand subjects; and ’tis not believ’d there are now twenty thousand souls inhabiting that city and territory. Pisa, Pistoia, Arezzo, Cortona, and other towns that were then good and populous, are in the like proportion diminished, and Florence more than any. When that city had been long troubled with seditions, tumults, and wars, for the most part unprosperous, they still retain’d such strength, that when Charles the eighth of France being admitted as a friend with his whole army, which soon after conquer’d the kingdom of Naples, thought to master them, the people taking arms, struck such a terror into him, that he was glad to depart upon such conditions as they thought fit to impose. 4 Machiavelli reports, that in that time Florence alone, with the Val d’Arno, a small territory belonging to that city, could, in a few hours, by the sound of a bell, bring together a hundred and thirty five thousand well arm’d men; 5 whereas now that city, with all the others in that province, are brought to such despicable weakness, emptiness, poverty and baseness, that they can neither resist the oppressions of their own prince, nor defend him or themselves if they were assaulted by a foreign enemy. The people are dispers’d or destroy’d, and the best families sent to seek habitations in Venice, Genoa, Rome, Naples, and Lucca. This is not the effect of war or pestilence; they enjoy a perfect peace, and suffer no other plague than the government they are under. But he who has thus cured them of disorders and tumults, does, in my opinion, deserve no greater praise than a physician, who should boast there was not a sick person in a house committed to his care, when he had poison’d all that were in it. The Spaniards have established the like peace in the kingdoms of Naples and Sicily, the West-Indies, and other places. The Turks by the same means prevent tumults in their dominions. And they are of such efficacy in all places, that Mario Chigi brother to Pope Alexander the seventh, by one sordid cheat upon the sale of corn, is said within eight years to have destroy’d above a third part of the people in the Ecclesiastical State; and that country which was the strength of the Romans in the time of the Carthaginian Wars, suffer’d more by the covetousness and fraud of that villain, than by all the defeats receiv’d from Hannibal.
’Twere an endless work to mention all the places where this peaceable solitude has been introduc’d by absolute monarchy; but popular and regular governments have always applied themselves to increase the number, strength, power, riches, and courage of their people, by providing comfortable ways of subsistence for their own citizens, inviting strangers, and filling them all with such a love to their country, that every man might look upon the publick cause as his own, and be always ready to defend it. This may sometimes give occasion to tumults and wars, as the most vigorous bodies may fall into distempers: When everyone is solicitous for the publick, there may be difference of opinion, and some by mistaking the way may bring prejudice when they intend profit: But unless a tyrant do arise, and destroy the government which is the root of their felicity; or they be overwhelm’d by the irresistible power of a virtue or fortune greater than their own, they soon recover, and for the most part rise up in greater glory and prosperity than before. This was seen in the commonwealths of Greece and Italy, which for this reason were justly called nurseries of virtue, and their magistrates preservers of men; whereas our author’s peace-making monarchs can deserve no better title than that of enemies and destroyers of mankind.
I cannot think him in earnest when he exaggerates Sulla’s cruelties as a proof that the mischiefs suffer’d under free states are more universal than under kings and tyrants: 6 For there never was a tyrant in the world if he was not one, tho through weariness, infirmity of body, fear, or perhaps the horror of his own wickedness, he at length resigned his power; but the evil had taken root so deep, that it could not be removed: There was nothing of liberty remaining in Rome: The laws were overthrown by the violence of the sword: the remaining contest was who should be lord; and there is no reason to believe that if Pompey had gained the battle of Pharsalia, he would have made a more modest use of his victory than Caesar did; or that Rome would have been more happy under him than under the other. His cause was more plausible because the senate follow’d him, and Caesar was the invader; but he was no better in his person, and his designs seem to have been the same. He had been long before suarum legum auctor eversor. 7 He gave the beginning to the first triumvirate; and ’twere folly to think that he who had been insolent when he was not come to the highest pitch of fortune, would have proved moderate if success had put all into his hands. The proceedings of Marius, Cinna, Catiline, Octavius, and Antonius were all of the same nature. No laws were observ’d: No publick good intended; the ambition of private persons reigned; and whatsoever was done by them, or for their interests, can no more be applied to popular, aristocratical or mix’d governments, than the furies of Caligula and Nero.
’Tis now time to examine the reasons of our author’s general maxims. The cruelties, says he, of a tyrant extend ordinarily no farther than some particular men that offend him, and not to the whole kingdom. It is truly said of his late majesty King James, a king can never be so notoriously vicious, but he will generally favour justice, and maintain some order. Even cruel Domitian, Dionysius the tyrant, and many others are commended in histories as great observers of justice, except in particular cases, wherein his inordinate lusts may carry him away. 1 This may be said of popular governments; for tho a people through error do sometimes hurt a private person, and that may possibly result to the publick damage, because the man that is offended or destroy’d, might have been useful to the society, they never do it otherwise than by error: For having the government in themselves, whatever is prejudicial to it, is so to them; and if they ruin it, they ruin themselves, which no man ever did willingly and knowingly. In absolute monarchies the matter is quite otherwise. A prince that sets up an interest in himself, becomes an enemy to the publick: in following his own lusts he offends all, except a few of his corrupt creatures, by whose help he oppresses others with a yoke they are unwilling to bear, and thereby incurs the universal hatred. This hatred is always proportionable to the injuries received, which being extreme, that must be so too; and every people being powerful in comparison to the prince that governs, he will always fear those that hate him, and always hate those he fears. When Luigi Farnese first duke of Parma had by his tyranny incensed the people of that small city, their hatred was not less mortal to him than that of the whole empire had been to Nero; and as the one burn’d Rome, the other would have destroy’d Parma, if he had not been prevented. The like has been, and will be everywhere, in as much as every man endeavours to destroy those he hates and fears; and the greatness of the danger often drives this fear to rage and madness. 2 For this reason Caligula wish’d but one neck to all the people; and Nero triumphed over the burning city, thinking by that ruin he had prevented his own danger. I know not who the good authors are that commend Domitian for his justice; but Tacitus calls him principem virtutibus infestum; 3 and ’tis hard to find out how such a man can be observer of justice, unless it be just, that whoever dares to be virtuous under a vicious and base prince should be destroy’d. Another author of the same time speaking of him, does not say he was unjust but gives us reason to think he was so, 4 unless it were just for him, who had a power over the best part of the world, to destroy it; and that he who by his cruelty had brought it to the last gasp, would have finish’d the work, if his rage had not been extinguished.
Many princes not having in themselves power to destroy their people, have stirred up foreign nations against them, and placed the only hopes of their safety in the publick calamity; and lawful kings when they have fallen into the first degree of madness, so as to assume a power above that which was allowed by the law, have in fury proved equal to the worst usurpers. Cleonymus of Sparta was of this sort: He became, says Plutarch, an enemy to the city, because they would not allow him the absolute power he affected; and brought Pyrrhus, the fiercest of their enemies, with a mighty and excellently well disciplin’d army to destroy them. 5 Vortigern the Britain call’d in the Saxons with the ruin of his own people, who were incensed against him for his lewdness, cruelty, and baseness. 6 King John for the like reasons offer’d the kingdom of England to the Moors, and to the pope. Peter the Cruel, and other kings of Castile brought vast armies of Moors into Spain to the ruin of their own people, who detested their vices, and would not part with their privileges. Many other examples of the like nature might be alleged; and I wish our own experience did not too well prove that such designs are common. Let him that doubts this, examine the causes of the wars with Scotland in the years 1639, 1640; the slaughters of the Protestants in Ireland 1641; the whole course of alliances and treaties for the space of fourscore years; the friendship contracted with the French; frequent quarrels with the Dutch, together with other circumstances that are already made too publick: if he be not convinced by this, he may soon see a man in the throne, 7 who had rather be a tributary to France than a lawful king of England, whilst either parliament or people shall dare to dispute his commands, insist upon their own rights, or defend a religion inconsistent with that which he has espoused; and then the truth will be so evident as to require no proof.
Grotius was never accused of dealing hardly with kings, or laying too much weight upon imaginary cases; nevertheless amongst other reasons that in his opinion justify subjects in taking arms against their princes, he alleges this, propter immanem saevitiam, and quando rex in populi exitium fertur; in as much as it is contrary to, and inconsistent with the ends for which governments are instituted; 8 which were most impertinent, if no such thing could be; for that which is not, can have no effect. There are therefore princes who seek the destruction of their people, or none could be justly opposed on that account.
If King James 9 was of another opinion, I could wish the course of his government had been suited to it. When he said that whilst he had the power of making judges and bishops, he would make that to be law and gospel which best pleased him, and filled those places with such as turned both according to his will and interests, I must think that by overthrowing justice, which is the rule of civil and moral actions, and perverting the Gospel which is the light of the spiritual man, he left nothing unattempted that he durst attempt, by which he might bring the most extensive and universal evils upon our nation that any can suffer. This would stand good, tho princes never erred, unless they were transported with some inordinate lusts; 10 for ’tis hard to find one that does not live in the perpetual power of them. They are naturally subject to the impulse of such appetites as well as others, and whatever evil reigns in their nature is fomented by education. ’Tis the handle by which their flatterers lead them; and he that discovers to what vice a prince is most inclin’d, is sure to govern him by rendering himself subservient. In this consists the chief art of a courtier, and by this means it comes to pass that such lusts as in private men are curbed by fear, do not only rage as in a wild beast, but are perpetually inflamed by the malice of their own servants: their hatred to the laws of God or men that might restrain them, increases in proportion with their vices, or their fears of being punished for them. And when they are come to this, they can set no limits to their fury, and there is no extravagance into which they do not frequently fall. But many of them do not expect these violent motives: the perversity of their own nature carries them to the extremities of evil. They hate virtue for its own sake, and virtuous men for being most unlike to themselves. This virtue is the dictate of reason, or the remains of divine light, by which men are made beneficent and beneficial to each other. Religion proceeds from the same spring, and tends to the same end; and the good of mankind so entirely depends upon these two, that no people ever enjoyed anything worth desiring that was not the product of them; and whatsoever any have suffer’d that deserves to be abhorr’d and feared, has proceeded either from the defect of these, or the wrath of God against them. If any prince therefore has been an enemy to virtue and religion, he must also have been an enemy to mankind, and most especially to the people under him. Whatsoever he does against those that excel in virtue and religion, tends to the destruction of the people who subsist by them. I will not take upon me to define who they are, or to tell the number of those that do this: but ’tis certain there have been such; and I wish I could say they were few in number, or that they had liv’d only in past ages. Tacitus does not fix this upon one prince, but upon all that he writes of; and to give his readers a taste of what he was to write, he says, that nobility and honours were dangerous, but that virtue brought most certain destruction; and in another place, that after the slaughter of many excellent men, Nero resolved to cut down virtue itself, and therefore kill’d Thrasea Paetus and Barea Soranus. 11 And whosoever examines the Christian or ecclesiastical histories, will find those princes to have been no less enemies to virtue and religion than their predecessors, and consequently enemies to the nations under them, unless religion and virtue be things prejudicial or indifferent to mankind.
But our author may say, these were particular cases; and so was the slaughter of the prophets and apostles, the crucifixion of Christ, and all the villainies that have ever been committed; yet they proceeded from a universal principle of hatred to all that is good, exerting itself as far as it could, to the ruin of mankind: And nothing but the over-ruling power of God, who resolved to preserve to himself a people, could set bounds to their rage, which in other respects had as full success as our author, or the Devil could have wished.
Dionysius (his other example of justice) deserves observation: More falsehood, lewdness, treachery, ingratitude, cruelty, baseness, avarice, impudence and hatred to all manner of good, was hardly ever known in a mortal creature. For this reason, Diogenes seeing him at Corinth, tho in a poor and contemptible condition, said, he rather deserved to have continued in the misery, fears and villainies of his tyranny, than to be suffer’d peaceably to converse with honest men. 12 And if such as these are to be called observers of justice, it must be concluded that the laws of God and of men, are either of no value, or contrary to it; and that the destruction of nations is a better work than their preservation. No faith is to be observed: temples may be justly sack’d; the best men slain for daring to be better than their masters; and the whole world, if it were in the power of one man, rightly torn in pieces and destroy’d.
His reasons for this are as good as his doctrine: It is, saith he, the multitude of people and abundance of riches, that are the glory and strength of every prince: the bodies of his subjects do him service in war, and their goods supply his wants. Therefore if not out of affection to his people, yet out of natural love unto himself, every tyrant desires to preserve the lives and goods of his subjects. 13 I should have thought that princes, tho tyrants, being God’s vicegerents, and fathers of their people, would have sought their good, tho no advantage had thereby redounded to themselves, but it seems no such thing is to be expected from them. They consider nations, as grazers do their herds and flocks, according to the profit that can be made of them: and if this be so, a people has no more security under a prince, than a herd or flock under their master. Tho he desire to be a good husband, yet they must be delivered up to the slaughter when he finds a good market, or a better way of improving his land; but they are often foolish, riotous, prodigal, and wantonly destroy their stock, tho to their own prejudice. We thought that all princes and magistrates had been set up, that under them we might live quietly and peaceably, in all godliness and honesty: but our author teaches us, that they only seek what they can make of our bodies and goods, and that they do not live and reign for us, but for themselves. If this be true, they look upon us not as children, but as beasts, nor do us any good for our own sakes, or because it is their duty, but only that we may be useful to them, as oxen are put into plentiful pastures that they may be strong for labour, or fit for slaughter. This is the divine model of government that he offers to the world. The just magistrate is the minister of God for our good: but this absolute monarch has no other care of us, than as our riches and multitude may increase his own glory and strength. We might easily judge what would be the issue of such a principle, when the being of nations depending upon his will, must also depend upon his opinion, whether the strength, multitude and riches of a people do conduce to the increase of glory and power, or not, tho histories were silent in the case; for these things speak of themselves. The judgment of a single man is not to be relied upon; the best and wisest do often err, the foolish and perverse always; and our discourse is not of what Moses or Samuel would do, but what may come into the fancy of a furious or wicked man who may usurp the supreme power, or a child, a woman, or a fool, that may inherit it. Besides, the proposition upon which he builds his conclusion, proves often false: for as the riches, power, number and courage of our friends is for our advantage, and that of our enemies threatens us with ruin; those princes only can reasonably believe the strength of their subjects beneficial to them, who govern so as to be assured of their affection, and that their strength will be employ’d for them: But those who know they are, or deserve to be hated, cannot but think it will be employ’d against them, and always seek to diminish that which creates their danger. This must certainly befall as many as are lewd, foolish, negligent, imprudent, cowardly, wicked, vicious, or any way unworthy the places they obtain; for their reign is a perpetual exercise of the most extreme and ruinous injustice: Every man that follows an honest interest, is prejudic’d: Everyone who finds the power that was ordained for his good, to be turned to his hurt, will be angry and hate him that does it: If the people be of uncorrupted manners, this hatred will be universal, because every one of them desires that which is just; if composed of good and evil, the first will always be averse to the evil government, and the others endeavouring to uphold it, the safety of the prince must depend upon the prevalence of either party. If the best prove to be the strongest, he must perish: and knowing himself to be supported only by the worst, he will always destroy as many of his enemies as he can; weaken those that remain; enrich his creatures with their spoils and confiscations; by fraud and rapine accumulate treasures to increase the number of his party, and advance them into all places of power and trust, that by their assistance he may crush his adversaries; and every man is accounted his adversary, who has either estate, honor, virtue or reputation. This naturally casts all the power into the hands of those who have no such dangerous qualities, nor anything to recommend them, but an absolute resignation of themselves to do whatever they are commanded. These men having neither will nor knowledge to do good, as soon as they come to be in power, justice is perverted, military discipline neglected, the publick treasures exhausted, new projects invented to raise more; and the prince’s wants daily increasing, through their ignorance, negligence, or deceit, there is no end of their devices and tricks to gain supplies. To this end swarms of spies, informers and false witnesses are sent out to circumvent the richest and most eminent men: The tribunals are fill’d with court-parasites of profligate consciences, fortunes and reputation, that no man may escape who is brought before them. If crimes are wanting, the diligence of well-chosen officers and prosecutors, with the favour of the judges, supply all defects; the law is made a snare; virtue suppress’d, vice fomented, and in a short time honesty and knavery, sobriety and lewdness, virtue and vice, become badges of the several factions; and every man’s conversation and manners shewing to what party he is addicted, the prince who makes himself head of the worst, must favour them to the overthrow of the best, which is so straight a way to an universal ruin, that no state can prevent it, unless that course be interrupted.
These things consider’d, no general judgment can be made of a magistrate’s counsels, from his name or duty. He that is just, and become grateful to the people by doing good, will find his own honour and security in increasing their number, riches, virtue, and power: If on the other side, by doing evil, he has drawn upon himself the publick hatred, he will always endeavour to take from them the power of doing him any hurt, by bringing them into the utmost weakness, poverty, and baseness. And whoever would know whether any particular prince desires to increase or destroy the bodies and goods of his subjects, must examine whether his government be such as renders him grateful or odious to them; and whether he do pursue the publick interest, or for the advancement of his own authority set up one in himself contrary to that of his people; which can never befall a popular government, and consequently no mischief equal to it can be produced by any such, unless something can be imagined worse than corruption and destruction.
Our author delighting in strange things, does in the next place, with an admirable sagacity, discover two faults in popular governments, that were never found by any man before him; and these are no less than ignorance and negligence. Speaking of the care of princes to preserve their subjects, he adds, On the contrary in a popular state, every man knows the publick good doth not wholly depend upon his care, but the commonwealth may be well enough governed by others, tho he only tend his private business. And a little below, Nor are they much to be blamed for their negligence, since it is an even wager their ignorance may be as great. The magistrates amongst the people being for the most part annual, do always lay down their office before they understand it; so as a prince of a duller understanding must needs excel them. 1 This is bravely determin’d, and the world is beholden to Filmer for the discovery of the errors that have hitherto been epidemical. Most men had believed, that such as live in free states, are usually pleas’d with their condition, desire to maintain it; and every man finding his own good comprehended in the publick, as those that sail in the same ship, employs the talent he has in endeavouring to preserve it, knowing that he must perish if that miscarry. This was an encouragement to industry; and the continual labours and dangers to which the Romans and other free nations exposed themselves, have been taken for testimonies that they thought themselves concerned in the businesses that passed among them, and that everyone did not neglect them through an opinion that they would be done well enough by others. It was also thought that free cities, by frequent elections of magistrates, became nurseries of great and able men, every man endeavouring to excel others, that he might be advanced to the honor he had no other title to than what might arise from his merit or reputation; in which they succeeded so well, that one of them may be justly said to have produced more eminent men, than all the absolute monarchies that have been in the world. But these were mistakes. Perhaps Brutus, Valerius, and other Roman senators or magistrates, for the space of three hundred years, might have taken some care of the commonwealth, if they had thought it wholly depended upon one of them. But believing it would be well enough governed by others, they neglected it. Camillus, Cincinnatus, Papirius, Fabius, Rullus and Maximus, Scipio Africanus, Hamilcar, Hannibal, Pericles, Themistocles, Alcibiades, Epaminondas, Philopoemen, and others, might have proved able men in affairs of war or government; but they were removed from their offices before they understood them, and must needs be excelled in both by princes, tho of duller understanding. This may be enough to excuse them for performing their duty so slackly and meanly: But ’tis strange that Tacitus, and others, should so far overlook the reason, and so grossly mistake the matter of fact, as not only to say, that great and excellent spirits failed when liberty was lost, and all preferments given to those who were most propense to slavery; but that there wanted men even to write the history, inscitia reipublicae ut alienae. 2 They never applied themselves to understand affairs depending upon the will of one man, in whom they were no otherwise concern’d, than to avoid the effects of his rage; and that was chiefly to be done, by not falling under the suspicion of being virtuous. This was the study then in request; and the most cunning in this art were called scientes temporum: 3 No other wisdom was esteemed in that and the ensuing ages, and no more was requir’d, since the paternal care, deep wisdom, and profound judgment of the princes provided for all; and tho they were of duller understandings, they must needs excel other magistrates, who having been created only for a year, left their offices before they could understand the duties of them. This was evidenced by that tenderness and sincerity of heart, as well as the great purity of manners observed in Tiberius; the clemency, justice, solid judgment and frugality of Caligula; the industry, courage and sobriety of Claudius; the good nature and prudent government of Nero; the temperance, vivacity and diligence of Vitellius; the liberality of Galba and Vespasian; together with the encouragement given by Domitian, Commodus, Heliogabalus, and many others, to all manner of virtues and favours conferred upon those that excelled in them. Our author giving such infallible proof of his integrity and understanding, by teaching us these things that would never have come into our heads, ought to be credited, tho that which he proposes seem to be most absurd. But if we believe such as lived in those times, or those who in later ages have perused their writings, we cannot but think the princes beforementioned, and the greatest part of those who possessed the same place, not only to have been void of all virtue, and to have suffer’d none to grow up under them but in baseness, sottishness and malice, to have been equal to the worst of all beasts. Whilst one prince polluted with lust and blood, sat in his grotto at Capri, 4 surrounded with an infamous troop of astrologers, and others were govern’d by whores, bardashes, manumised slaves, and other villains, the empire was ruin’d through their negligence, incapacity and wickedness; and the city that had flourish’d in all manner of virtue, as much or more than any that has been yet known in the world, produced no more; the discipline was dissolved that nourish’d it; no man could hope to advance a publick good, or obviate an evil by his diligence and valour; and he who acquired reputation by either, could expect no other reward than a cruel death. If Germanicus and Corbulo, who were born when liberty was expiring, be brought for examples against the first part of my assertion, their ends will justify the latter; and no eminent Roman family is known to have brought forth a man that deserved to be named in history since their time. This is as probable in reason, as true in fact. Men are valiant and industrious, when they fight for themselves and their country; they prove excellent in all the arts of war and peace, when they are bred up in virtuous exercises, and taught by their fathers and masters to rejoice in the honors gained by them: they love their country, when the good of every particular man is comprehended in the publick prosperity, and the success of their achievements is improved to the general advantage: They undertake hazards and labours for the government, when ’tis justly administered; when innocence is safe, and virtue honour’d; when no man is distinguish’d from the vulgar, but such as have distinguish’d themselves by the bravery of their actions; when no honor is thought too great for those who do it eminently, unless it be such as cannot be communicated to others of equal merit: They do not spare their persons, purses, or friends, when the publick powers are employ’d for the publick benefit, and imprint the like affections in their children from their infancy. The discipline of obedience in which the Romans were bred, taught them to command: and few were admitted to the magistracies of inferior rank, till they had given such proof of their virtue as might deserve the supreme. Cincinnatus, Camillus, Papirius, Mamercus, Fabius Maximus, were not made dictators, that they might learn the duties of the office; but because they were judged to be of such wisdom, valour, integrity and experience, that they might be safely trusted with the highest powers; and whilst the law reigned, not one was advanced to that honour, who did not fully answer what was expected from him. By this means the city was so replenished with men fit for the greatest employments, that even in its infancy, when three hundred and six of the Fabii, Quorum neminem, says Livy, ducem sperneret quibuslibet temporibus senatus, 5 were killed in one day, the city did lament the loss, but was not so weakened to give any advantage to their enemies: and when every one of those who had been eminent before the second Punic War, Fabius Maximus only excepted had perished in it, others arose in their places, who surpassed them in number, and were equal to them in virtue. The city was a perpetual spring of such men as long as liberty lasted; but that was no sooner overthrown, than virtue was torn up by the roots, the people became base and sordid, the small remains of the nobility slothful and effeminate, and their Italian associates becoming like to them, the empire whilst it stood, was only sustained by the strength of foreigners.
The Grecian virtue had the same fate, and expired with liberty: instead of such soldiers as in their time had no equals, and such generals of armies and fleets, legislators and governors, as all succeeding ages have justly admired, they sent out swarms of fiddlers, jesters, chariot-drivers, players, bawds, flatterers, ministers of the most impure lusts; or idle, babbling, hypocritical philosophers not much better than they. The emperors’ courts were always crowded with this vermin; and notwithstanding the necessity our author imagines that princes must needs understand matters of government better than magistrates annually chosen, they did for the most part prove so brutish as to give themselves and the world to be governed by such as these, and that without any great prejudice, since none could be found more ignorant, lewd, and base than themselves.
’Tis absurd to impute this to the change of times; for time changes nothing; and nothing was changed in those times but the government, and that changed all things. This is not accidental, but according to the rules given to nature by God, imposing upon all things a necessity of perpetually following their causes. Fruits are always of the same nature with the seeds and roots from which they come, and trees are known by the fruits they bear: As a man begets a man, and a beast a beast, that society of men which constitutes a government upon the foundation of justice, virtue, and the common good, will always have men to promote those ends; and that which intends the advancement of one man’s desires and vanity, will abound in those that will foment them. All men follow that which seems advantageous to themselves. Such as are bred under a good discipline, and see that all benefits procured to their country by virtuous actions, redound to the honour and advantage of themselves, their children, friends, and relations, contract from their infancy a love to the publick, and look upon the common concernments as their own. When they have learnt to be virtuous, and see that virtue is in esteem, they seek no other preferments than such as may be obtained that way; and no country ever wanted great numbers of excellent men, where this method was established. On the other side, when ’tis evident that the best are despised, hated, or mark’d out for destruction; all things calculated to the humour or advantage of one man, who is often the worst, or govern’d by the worst; honours, riches, commands, and dignities disposed by his will, and his favour gained only by a most obsequious respect, or a pretended affection to his person, together with a servile obedience to his commands, all application to virtuous actions will cease; and no man caring to render himself or his children worthy of great employments, such as desire to have them will by little intrigues, corruption, scurrility and flattery endeavour to make way to them; by which means true merit in a short time comes to be abolish’d, as fell out in Rome as soon as the Caesars began to reign.
He who does not believe this, may see whether the like did not happen in all the other commonwealths of Italy and Greece; or if modern examples are thought to be of more value, let him examine whether the noblemen of Venice, who are born and bred in families that never knew a master, who act for themselves, and have a part in all the good or evil that befalls the commonwealth, and know that if it be destroy’d, they must perish, or at least that all changes are to their prejudice, do neglect the publick interests, as thinking that the whole not depending upon any one of them, things will be well enough governed, tho they attend only their private benefit. Let it be observed whether they do better understand the common concernments, than the great men of France or Spain, who never come to the knowledge of anything, unless they happen to be favour’d by the king or his ministers, and know themselves never to be more miserable than when their master is most prosperous. For my own part, I cannot think it necessary to allege any other proof of this point than that when Maximilian the emperor, Lewis the twelfth of France, the fierce Pope Julius the second, and Ferdinand the subtle, powerful, and bold king of Spain, had by the league of Cambray combin’d against the Venetians, gained the battle of La Ghirad’adda, taken Alviano their general prisoner, deprived them of all their dominion on the terra firma, and prepared to assault the city, it was, under God, solely preserved by the vigour and wisdom of their nobility, who tho no way educated to war, unless by sea, sparing neither persons nor purses, did with admirable industry and courage first recover Padua, and then many other cities, so as at the end of that terrible war they came off without any diminution of their territories. 6 Whereas Portugal having in our age revolted from the house of Austria, no one doubts that it had been immediately reduced, if the great men of Spain had not been pleased with such a lessening of their master’s power, and resolved not to repair it by the recovery of that kingdom, or to deprive themselves of an easy retreat when they should be oppressed by him or his favourites. The like thought was more plainly express’d by the mareschal de Bassompierre, who seeing how hardly Rochelle was pressed by Lewis the 13th, said, he thought they should be such fools to take it: 7 but ’tis believ’d they would never have been such fools; and the treachery only of our countrymen did enable the Cardinal Richelieu to do it (as for his own glory, and the advancement of the popish cause he really intended) and nothing is to this day more common in the mouth of their wisest and best men, tho papists, than the acknowledgment of their own folly in suffering that place to fall, the king having by that means gotten power to proceed against them at his pleasure. The brave Monsieur de Turenne is said to have carried this to a greater height in his last discourse to the present king of France: “You think, said he, you have armies, but you have none; the one half of the officers are the bawdy-house companions of Monsieur de xxx, or the creatures of his whore Madam de xxx: the other half may be men of experience, and fit for their employments; but they are such as would be pleased with nothing more than to see you lose two or three battles, that coming to stand in need of them, you might cause them to be better used by your ministers than of late they have been.” It may easily be imagin’d how men in such sentiments do serve their master; and nothing is more evident than that the French in this age have had so great advantages, that they might have brought Europe, and perhaps Asia, under their power, if the interest of the nation had been united to that of the government, and the strength, vigour, and bravery of the nobility employ’d that way. But since it has pleased God to suffer us to fall into a condition of being little able to help ourselves, and that they are in so good terms with the Turk as not to attack him, ’tis our happiness that they do not know their own strength, or cannot without ruin to themselves turn it to our prejudice.
I could give yet more pregnant testimonies of the difference between men fighting for their own interests in the offices to which they had been advanced by the votes of numerous assemblies, and such as serve for pay, and get preferments by corruption or favour, if I were not unwilling to stir the spleen of some men by obliging them to reflect upon what has passed in our own age and country; to compare the justice of our tribunals within the time of our memory, and the integrity of those who for a while manag’d the publick treasure; the discipline, valour, and strength of our armies and fleets; the increase of our riches and trade; the success of our wars in Scotland, Ireland, and at sea, the glory and reputation not long since gained, with that condition into which we are of late fallen. But I think I shall offend no wise or good man, if I say, that as neither the Romans nor Grecians in the time of their liberty ever performed any actions more glorious than freeing the country from a civil war that had raged in every part, the conquest of two such kingdoms as Scotland and Ireland, and crushing the formidable power of the Hollanders by sea; nor ever produced more examples of valor, industry, integrity, and in all respects compleat, disinterested, unmoveable and incorruptible virtue, than were at that time seen in our nation: So neither of them upon the change of their affairs did exceed us in weakness, cowardice, baseness, venality, lewdness, and all manner of corruption. We have reason therefore not only to believe that all princes do not necessarily understand the affairs of their people, or provide better for them than those who are otherwise chosen; but that, as there is nothing of greatness, power, riches, strength, and happiness, which we might not reasonably have hoped for, if we had rightly improved the advantages we had, so there is nothing of shame and misery which we may not justly fear, since we have neglected them.
If any man think that this evil of advancing officers for personal respects, favour or corruption, is not of great extent, I desire him to consider, that the officers of state, courts of justice, church, armies, fleets and corporations, are of such number and power as wholly to corrupt a nation when they themselves are corrupted; and will ever be corrupt, when they attain to their offices by corruption. The good management of all affairs, civil, military, and ecclesiastical, necessarily depends upon good order and discipline; and ’tis not in the power of common men to reform abuses patronized by those in authority, nor to prevent the mischiefs thereupon ensuing; and not having power to direct publick actions to the publick good, they must consequently want the industry and affection that is required to bring them to a good issue. The Romans were easily beaten under the decemviri, tho immediately before the erection, and after the extinction of that power, none of their neighbours were able to resist them. The Goths who with much glory had reigned in Spain for about three hundred years, had neither strength nor courage under their lewd and odious King Rodrigo, and were in one day subdued with little loss of blood by the Saracens, and could not in less than eight hundred years free their country from them. That brave nation having of late fallen under as base a conduct, has now as little heart or power to defend itself: Court-parasites have rendered valour ridiculous; and they who have ever shew’d themselves as much inclin’d to arms as any people of the world, do now abhor them, and are sent to the wars by force, laid in carts, and bound like calves brought to the shambles, and left to starve in Flanders as soon as they arrive. It may easily be judged what service can be expected from such men, tho they should happen to be well commanded: but the great officers, by the corruption of the court, think only of enriching themselves; and increasing the misery of the soldiers by their frauds, both become equally useless to the state.
Notwithstanding the seeming prosperity of France, matters there are not much better managed. The warlike temper of that people is so worn out by the frauds and cruelties of corrupt officers, that few men list themselves willingly to be soldiers; and when they are engaged or forced, they are so little able to endure the miseries to which they are exposed, that they daily run away from their colours, tho they know not whither to go, and expect no mercy if they are taken. The king has in vain attempted to correct this humour by the severity of martial law; but mens’ minds will not be forced, and tho his troops are perfectly well arm’d, cloth’d, and exercised, they have given many testimonies of little worth. When the prince of Condé had by his own valour, and the strength of the king’s guards, broken the first line of the prince of Orange’s army at the battle of Seneffe, and put the rest into disorder, he could not make the second and third line of his own army to advance and reinforce the first, by which means he lost all the fair hopes he had conceived of an entire victory. 8 Not long after, the marechal de Crequi was abandoned by his whole army near Trier, who ran away, hardly striking a stroke, and left him with sixteen horse to shift for himself. When Monsieur de Turenne, by the excellency of his conduct and valour, had gain’d such a reputation amongst the soldiers, that they thought themselves secure under him, he did not suffer such disgraces; but he being kill’d, they return’d to the usual temper of forced and ill-used soldiers: half the army was lost in a retreat, little differing from a flight; and the rest, as they themselves confess, saved by the bravery of two English regiments. The prince of Condé was soon after sent to command; but he could not with all his courage, skill and reputation, raise their fallen spirits, nor preserve his army any other way, than by lodging them in a camp near Schlestadt, so fortified by art and nature that it could not be forc’d.
To these we may add some examples of our own. In our late war the Scots foot, whether friends or enemies, were much inferior to those of the parliament, and their horse esteemed as nothing. Yet in the year 1639 and 1640, the king’s army, tho very numerous, excellently armed and mounted, and in appearance able to conquer many such kingdoms as Scotland, being under the conduct of courtiers, and affected as men usually are towards those that use them ill, and seek to destroy them, they could never resist a wretched army commanded by Leven; but were shamefully beaten at Newborn, and left the northern counties to be ravaged by them. 9
When Van Tromp set upon Blake in Foleston-Bay, 10 the parliament had not above thirteen ships against threescore, and not a man that had ever seen any other fight at sea, than between a merchant ship and a pirate, to oppose the best captain in the world, attended with many others in valour and experience not much inferior to him. Many other difficulties were observ’d in the unsettled state: Few ships, want of money, several factions, and some who to advance particular interests betray’d the publick. But such was the power of wisdom and integrity in those that sat at the helm, and their diligence in chusing men only for their merit was blessed with such success, that in two years our fleets grew to be as famous as our land armies; the reputation and power of our nation rose to a greater height, than when we possessed the better half of France, and the kings of France and Scotland were our prisoners. All the states, kings and potentates of Europe, most respectfully, not to say submissively, sought our friendship; and Rome was more afraid of Blake and his fleet, than they had been of the great king of Sweden, when he was ready to invade Italy with a hundred thousand men. This was the work of those, who, if our author say true, thought basely of the publick concernments; 11 and believing things might be well enough managed by others, minded only their private affairs. These were the effects of the negligence and ignorance of those, who being suddenly advanced to offices, were removed before they understood the duties of them. These diseases which proceed from popular corruption and irregularity, were certainly cured by the restitution of that integrity, good order and stability that accompany divine monarchy. The justice of the war made against Holland in the year 1665; the probity of the gentleman, who without partiality or bribery, chose the most part of the officers that carried it on; the wisdom, diligence and valour manifested in the conduct, and the glory with which it was ended, justifies all that our author can say in its commendation. If any doubt remains, the subtlety of making the king of France desire that the Netherlands might be an accession to his crown; the ingenious ways taken by us to facilitate the conquest of them; the industry of our ambassadors in diverting the Spaniards from entering into the war till it was too late to recover the losses sustain’d; 12 the honourable design upon the Smyrna fleet, and our frankness in taking the quarrel upon ourselves; together with the important figure we now make in Europe, may wholly remove it; and in confirmation of our author’s doctrine, shew, that princes do better perform the offices that require wisdom, industry and valour, than annual magistrates; and do more seldom err in the choice of officers, than senates and popular assemblies.
But, says our author, the virtue and wisdom of a prince supplies all. Tho he were of a duller understanding, by use and experience he must needs excel all: 1 Nature, age, or sex, are, as it seems, nothing to the case. A child as soon as he comes to be a king, has experience; the head of a fool is filled with wisdom, as soon as a crown is set upon it, and the most vicious do in a moment become virtuous. This is more strange than that an ass being train’d to a course, should outrun the best Arabian horse; or a hare bred up in an army, become more strong and fierce than a lion; for fortune does not only supply all natural defects in princes, and correct their vices, but gives them the benefit of use and experience, when they have none. Some reasons and examples might have been expected to prove this extraordinary proposition: But according to his laudable custom, he is pleased to trouble himself with neither; and thinks that the impudence of an assertion is sufficient to make that to pass, which is repugnant to experience and common sense, as may appear by the following discourse.
I will not insist upon terms; for tho duller understanding signifies nothing, in as much as no understanding is dull, and a man is said to be dull only because he wants it; but presuming he means little understanding, I shall so take it. This defect may possibly be repair’d in time; but to conclude it must be so, is absurd, for no one has this use and experience when he begins to reign. At that time many errors may be committed to the ruin of himself or people, and many have perish’d even in their beginning. Edward the fifth and sixth of England, Francis the second of France, and divers other kings have died in the beginning of their youth: Charles the ninth lived only to add the furies of youth to the follies of his childhood; and our Henry the second, Edward the second, Richard the second, and Henry the sixth, seem to have been little wiser in the last, than in the first year of their reign or life. The present kings of Spain, France, and Sweden, came to the crowns they wear before the sixth year of their age; and if they did then surpass all annual magistrates in wisdom and valour, it was by a peculiar gift of God, which, for anything we know, is not given to every king, and it was not use and experience that made them to excel. If it be pretended that this experience, with the wisdom that it gives, comes in time and by degrees; I may modestly ask, what time is requir’d to render a prince excellent in wisdom who is a child or a fool? and who will give security that he shall live to that time, or that the kingdom shall not be ruin’d in the time of his folly? I may also doubt how our author, who concludes that every king in time must needs become excellent in wisdom, can be reconciled to Solomon, who in preferring a wise child before an old and foolish king that will not be advised, shews that an old king may be a fool, and he that will not be advised is one. Some are so naturally brutish and stupid, that neither education nor time will mend them. ’Tis probable that Solomon took what care he could to instruct his only son Rehoboam; but he was certainly a fool at forty years of age, and we have no reason to believe that he deserved a better name. He seems to have been the very fool his father intended, who tho brayed in a mortar would never leave his folly: He would not be advised, tho the hand of God was against him; ten tribes revolted from him, and the city and temple was pillaged by the Egyptians. Neither experience nor afflictions could mend him, and he is called to this day by his own countrymen stultitia gentium. 2 I might offend tender ears, if I should allege all the examples of princes mentioned in history, or known in our own age, who have lived and died as foolish and incorrigible as he: but no man, I presume, will be scandalized, that the ten last kings of Meroveus his race, whom the French historians call les roys faineants, were so far from excelling other men in understanding, that they liv’d and died more like to beasts than men. Nay, the wisdom and valour of Charles Martel expired in his grandchild Charles the Great; and his posterity grew to be so sottish, that the French nation must have perished under their conduct, if the nobility and people had not rejected them, and placed the crown upon a more deserving head.
This is as much as is necessary to be said to the general proposition; for it is false, if it be not always true; and no conclusion can be made upon it. But I need not be so strict with our author, there being no one sound part in his assertion. Many children come to be kings when they have no experience, and die, or are depos’d before they can gain any. Many are by nature so sottish that they can learn nothing: Others falling under the power of women, or corrupt favorites and ministers, are persuaded and seduced from the good ways to which their own natural understanding or experience might lead them; the evils drawn upon themselves or their subjects, by the errors committed in the time of their ignorance, are often grievous, and sometimes irreparable, tho they should be made wise by time and experience. A person of royal birth and excellent wit, was so sensible of this as to tell me, “That the condition of kings was most miserable, in as much as they never heard truth till they were ruin’d by lies, and then everyone was ready to tell it to them, not by way of advice, but reproach, and rather to vent their own spite, than to seek a remedy to the evils brought upon them and the people.” Others attain to crowns when they are of full age, and have experience as men, tho none as kings; and therefore are apt to commit as great mistakes as children: And upon the whole matter all the histories of the world shew, that instead of this profound judgment and incomparable wisdom which our author generally attributes to all kings, there is no sort of men that do more frequently and entirely want it.
But tho kings were always wise by nature, or made to be so by experience, it would be of little advantage to nations under them, unless their wisdom were pure, perfect, and accompanied with clemency, magnanimity, justice, valour and piety. Our author durst hardly have said, that these virtues or graces are gained by experience, or annexed by God to any rank of men or families. He gives them where he pleases without distinction. We sometimes see those upon thrones, who by God and nature seem to have been designed for the most sordid offices; and those have been known to pass their lives in meanness and poverty, who had all the qualities that could be desir’d in princes. There is likewise a kind of ability to dispatch some sort of affairs, that princes who continue long in a throne may to a degree acquire or increase. Some men take this for wisdom, but K. James more rightly called it by the name of kingcraft; and as it principally consists in dissimulation, and the arts of working upon mens’ passions, vanities, private interests or vices, to make them for the most part instruments of mischief, it has the advancement or security of their own persons for object, is frequently exercised with all the excesses of pride, avarice, treachery and cruelty; and no men have been ever found more notoriously to deflect from all that deserves praise in a prince, or a gentleman, than those that have most excelled in it. Pharasmenes king of Iberia, is recorded by Tacitus to have been well vers’d in this science. His brother Mithridates king of Armenia had married his daughter, and given his own daughter to Rhadamistus son of Pharasmenes. He had some contests with Mithridates, but by the help of these mutual alliances, nearness of blood, the diligence of Rhadamistus, and an oath, strengthen’d with all the ceremonies that amongst those nations were esteemed most sacred, not to use arms or poison against him, all was compos’d; and by this means getting him into his power, he stifled him with a great weight of clothes thrown upon him, kill’d his children, and not long after his own son Rhadamistus also. 3 Louis the eleventh of France, James the third of Scotland, Henry the seventh of England, were great masters of these arts; and those who are acquainted with history, will easily judge how happy nations would be if all kings did in time certainly learn them.
Our author, as a farther testimony of his judgment, having said that kings must needs excel others in understanding, and grounded his doctrine upon their profound wisdom, imputes to them those base and panick fears which are inconsistent with it, or any royal virtue: and to carry the point higher, tells us, There is no tyrant so barbarously wicked, but his own reason and sense will tell him, that tho he be a god, yet he must die like a man; and that there is not the meanest of his subjects, but may find a means to revenge himself of the injuries offer’d him; and from thence concludes, that there is no such tyranny as that of a multitude which is subject to no such fears. 4 But if there be such a thing in the world, as a barbarous and wicked tyrant, he is something different from a king, or the same; and his wisdom is consistent or inconsistent with barbarity, wickedness, and tyranny. If there be no difference, the praises he gives, and the rights he ascribes to the one belong also to the other: and the excellency of wisdom may consist with barbarity, wickedness, tyranny, and the panick fears that accompany them; which hitherto have been thought to comprehend the utmost excesses of folly and madness: and I know no better testimony of the truth of that opinion, than that wisdom always distinguishing good from evil, and being seen only in the rectitude of that distinction, in following and adhering to the good, rejecting that which is evil, preferring safety before danger, happiness before misery, and in knowing rightly how to use the means of attaining or preserving the one, and preventing or avoiding the other, there cannot be a more extravagant deviation from reason, than for a man, who in a private condition might live safely and happily, to invade a principality: or if he be a prince, who by governing with justice and clemency might obtain the inward satisfaction of his own mind, hope for the blessing of God upon his just and virtuous actions, acquire the love and praises of men, and live in safety and happiness amongst his safe and happy subjects, to fall into that barbarity, wickedness, and tyranny, which brings upon him the displeasure of God, and detestation of men, and which is always attended with those base and panick fears, that comprehend all that is shameful and miserable. This being perceiv’d by Machiavelli, he could not think that any man in his senses would not rather be a Scipio than a Caesar; or if he came to be a prince, would not rather chuse to imitate Agesilaus, Timoleon, or Dion, than Nabis, Phalaris, or Dionysius; and imputes the contrary choice to madness. 5 Nevertheless ’tis too well known that many of our author’s profound wise men in the depth of their judgment, made perfect by use and experience, have fallen into it.
If there be a difference between this barbarous wicked tyrant, and a king, we are to examine who is the tyrant, and who the king; for the name conferred or assumed cannot make a king, unless he be one. He who is not a king, can have no title to the rights belonging to him who is truly a king: so that a people who find themselves wickedly and barbarously oppressed by a tyrant, may destroy him and his tyranny without giving offence to any king.
But ’tis strange that Filmer should speak of the barbarity and wickedness of a tyrant, who looks upon the world to be the patrimony of one man; and for the foundation of his doctrine, asserts such a power in everyone that makes himself master of any part, as cannot be limited by any law. His title is not to be questioned; usurpation and violence confer an incontestable right: the exercise of his power is no more to be disputed than the acquisition: his will is a law to his subjects; and no law can be imposed by them upon his conduct. For if these things be true, I know not how any man could ever be called a tyrant, that name having never been given to any unless for usurping a power that did not belong to him, or an unjust exercise of that which had been conferred upon him, and violating the laws which ought to be a rule to him. ’Tis also hard to imagine how any man can be called barbarous and wicked, if he be obliged by no law but that of his own pleasure; for we have no other notion of wrong, than that it is a breach of the law which determines what is right. If the lives and goods of subjects depend upon the will of the prince, and he in his profound wisdom preserve them only to be beneficial to himself, they can have no other right than what he gives, and without injustice may retain when he thinks fit: If there be no wrong, there can be no just revenge; and he that pretends to seek it, is not a free man vindicating his right, but a perverse slave rising up against his master. But if there be such a thing as a barbarous and wicked tyrant, there must be a rule relating to the acquisition and exercise of the power, by which he may be distinguish’d from a just king; and a law superior to his will, by the violation of which he becomes barbarous and wicked.
Tho our author so far forgets himself, to confess this to be true, he seeks to destroy the fruits of it by such flattery as comprehends all that is most detestable in profaneness and blasphemy, and gives the name of gods to the most execrable of men. He may by such language deserve the name of Heylyn’s disciple; but will find few among the heathens so basely servile, or so boldly impious. Tho Claudius Caesar was a drunken sot, and transported with the extravagance of his fortune, he detested the impudence of his predecessor Caligula (who affected that title), and in his rescript to the procurator of Judea, gives it no better name than turpem Caii insaniam. 6 For this reason it was rejected by all his pagan successors, who were not as furiously wicked as he: yet Filmer has thought fit to renew it, for the benefit of mankind, and the glory of the Christian religion.
I know not whether these extreme and barbarous errors of our author are to be imputed to wickedness or madness; or whether, to save the pains of a distinction, they may not rightly be said to be the same thing; but nothing less than the excess of both could induce him to attribute anything of good to the fears of a tyrant, since they are the chief causes of all the mischiefs he does. Tertullian says they are metu quam furore saeviores; 7 and Tacitus, speaking of a most wicked king, says, that he did saevitiam ignaviae obtendere; 8 and we do not more certainly find that cowards are the cruelest of men, than that wickedness makes them cowards; that every man’s fears bear a proportion with his guilt, and with the number, virtue, and strength of those he has offended. He who usurps a power over all, or abuses a trust reposed in him by all, in the highest measure offends all; he fears and hates those he has offended, and to secure himself, aggravates the former injuries: When these are publick, they beget a universal hatred, and every man desires to extinguish a mischief that threatens ruin to all. This will always be terrible to one that knows he has deserved it; and when those he dreads are the body of the people, nothing but a publick destruction can satisfy his rage, and appease his fears.
I wish I could agree with Filmer, in exempting multitudes from fears; for they having seldom committed any injustice, unless through fear, would, as far as human fragility permits, be free from it. Tho the Attick ostracism was not an extreme punishment, I know nothing usually practised in any commonwealth, that did so much favour of injustice: but it proceeded solely from a fear that one man, tho in appearance virtuous, when he came to be raised too much above his fellow citizens, might be tempted to invade the publick liberty. We do not find that the Athenians, or any other free cities, ever injur’d any man, unless through such a jealousy, or the perjury of witnesses, by which the best tribunals that ever were, or can be establish’d in the world, may be misled; and no injustice could be apprehended from any, if they did not fall into such fears.
But tho multitudes may have fears as well as tyrants, the causes and effects of them are very different. A people, in relation to domestick affairs, can desire nothing but liberty, and neither hate or fear any but such as do, or would, as they suspect, deprive them of that happiness: Their endeavours to secure that seldom hurt any except such as invade their rights; and if they err, the mistake is for the most part discovered before it produce any mischief; and the greatest that ever came that way, was the death of one or a few men. Their hatred and desire of revenge can go no farther than the sense of the injury received or feared, and is extinguished by the death or banishment of the persons; as may be gathered from the examples of the Tarquins, decemviri, Cassius, Maelius, and Manlius Capitolinus. He therefore that would know whether the hatred and fear of a tyrant, or of a people, produces the greater mischiefs, needs only to consider, whether it be better that the tyrant destroy the people, or that the people destroy the tyrant: or at the worst, whether one that is suspected of affecting the tyranny should perish, or a whole people, amongst whom very many are certainly innocent; and experience shows that such are always first sought out to be destroy’d for being so: Popular furies or fears, how irregular or unjust soever they may be, can extend no farther; general calamities can only be brought upon a people by those who are enemies to the whole body, which can never be the multitude, for they are that body. In all other respects, the fears that render a tyrant cruel, render a people gentle and cautious; for every single man knowing himself to be of little power, not only fears to do injustice because it may be revenged upon his person, by him, or his friends, kindred and relations that suffers it; but because it tends to the overthrow of the government, which comprehends all publick and private concernments, and which every man knows cannot subsist unless it be so easy and gentle, as to be pleasing to those who are the best, and have the greatest power: and as the publick considerations divert them from doing those injuries that may bring immediate prejudice to the publick, so there are strict laws to restrain all such as would do private injuries. If neither the people nor the magistrates of Venice, Switzerland, and Holland, commit such extravagances as are usual in other places, it does not perhaps proceed from the temper of those nations different from others, but from a knowledge, that whosoever offers an injury to a private person, or attempts a publick mischief, is exposed to the impartial and inexorable power of the law; whereas the chief work of an absolute monarch is to place himself above the law, and thereby rendering himself the author of all the evils that the people suffer, ’tis absurd to expect that he should remove them.
Our author’s next step is not only to reject popular governments, but all such monarchies as are not absolute: for if the king, says he, admits the people to be his companions, he leaves to be a king. 1 This is the language of French lackeys, valet de chambres, tailors, and others like them in wisdom, learning and policy, who when they fly to England for fear of a well-deserved galley, gibbet, or wheel, are ready to say, Il faut que le roy soit absolu, autrement il n’est point roy. 2 And finding no better men to agree with Filmer in this sublime philosophy, I may be pardoned if I do not follow them, till I am convinced in these ensuing points.
1. It seems absurd to speak of kings admitting the nobility or people to part of the government: for tho there may be, and are nations without kings, yet no man can conceive a king without a people. These must necessarily have all the power originally in themselves; and tho kings may and often have a power of granting honors, immunities, and privileges to private men or corporations, he does it only out of the publick stock, which he is entrusted to distribute; but can give nothing to the people, who give to him all that he can rightly have.
2. ’Tis strange that he who frequently cites Aristotle and Plato, should unluckily acknowledge such only to be kings as they call tyrants, and deny the name of king to those, who in their opinion are the only kings.
3. I cannot understand why the Scripture should call those kings whose powers were limited, if they only are kings who are absolute; or why Moses did appoint that the power of kings in Israel should be limited (if they resolved to have them) if that limitation destroy’d the being of a king. 3
4. And lastly, how he knows that in the kingdoms which have a shew of popularity, the power is wholly in the king.
The first point was proved when we examined the beginning of monarchies, and found it impossible that there could be anything of justice in them, unless they were established by the common consent of those who were to live under them; or that they could make any such establishment, unless the right and power were in them.
Secondly, neither Plato nor Aristotle acknowledge either reason or justice in the power of a monarch, unless he has more of the virtues conducing to the good of the civil society than all those who compose it; and employ them for the publick advantage, and not to his own pleasure and profit, as being set up by those who seek their own good, for no other reason than that he should procure it. To this end a law is set as a rule to him, and the best men, that is such as are most like to himself, made to be his assistants, because, say they, Lex est mens sine affectu, quasi Deus; 4 whereas the best of men have their affections and passions and are subject to be misled by them: Which shews, that as the monarch is not for himself nor by himself, he does not give, but receive power, nor admit others to the participation of it, but is by them admitted to what he has. Whereupon they conclude, that to prefer the absolute power of a man, as in those governments which they call barbarorum regna, 5 before the regular government of kings justly exercising a power instituted by law, and directed to the publick good, is to chuse rather to be subject to the lust of a beast than to be governed by a god. And because such a choice can only be made by a beast, I leave our author to find a description of himself in their books which he so often cites.
But if Aristotle deserve credit, the princes who reign for themselves and not for the people, preferring their own pleasure or profit before the publick, become tyrants; which in his language is enemies to God and man. On this account Boccalini introduces the princes of Europe raising a mutiny against him in Parnassus, for giving such definitions of tyrants as they said comprehended them all; and forcing the poor philosopher to declare by a new definition, that Tyrants were certain men of ancient times whose race is now extinguished. 6 But with all his wit and learning he could not give a reason why those who do the same things that rendered the ancient tyrants detestable, should not be so also in our days.
In the third place, the Scriptures declare the necessity of setting bounds to those who are placed in the highest dignities. Moses seems to have had as great abilities as any man that ever lived in the world; but he alone was not able to bear the weight of the government, and therefore God appointed seventy chosen men to be his assistants. This was a perpetual law to Israel; and as no king was to have more power than Moses, or more abilities to perform the duties of his office, none could be exempted from the necessity of wanting the like helps. Our author therefore must confess that they are kings who have them, or that kingly government is contrary to the Scriptures. When God by Moses gave liberty to his people to make a king, he did it under these conditions. He must be one of their brethren: They must chuse him: he must not multiply gold, silver, wives, or horses: he must not lift up his heart above his brethren. 7 And Josephus paraphrasing upon the place, says, He shall do nothing without the advice of the Sanhedrin; or if he do, they shall oppose him . 8 This agrees with the confession of Zedekiah to the princes (which was the Sanhedrin) The king can do nothing without you; 9 and seems to have been in pursuance of the law of the kingdom, which was written in a book, and laid up before the Lord; and could not but agree with that of Moses, unless they spake by different spirits, or that the spirit by which they did speak was subject to error or change: and the whole series of God’s law shews, that the pride, magnificence, pomp and glory usurped by their kings was utterly contrary to the will of God. They did lift up their hearts above their brethren, which was forbidden by the law. All the kings of Israel, and most of the kings of Judah utterly rejected it, and every one of them did very much depart from the observation of it. I will not deny that the people in their institution of a king intended they should do so: they had done it themselves, and would have a king that might uphold them in their disobedience; they were addicted to the idolatry of their accursed neighbours, and desired that government by which it was maintained amongst them. In doing this they did not reject Samuel; but they rejected God that he should not reign over them. They might perhaps believe that unless their king were such as the law did not permit, he would not perform what they intended; or that the name of king did not belong to him, unless he had a power that the law denied. But since God and his prophets give the name of king to the chief magistrate, endow’d with a power that was restrain’d within very narrow limits, whom they might without offence set up, we also may safely give the same to those of the same nature, whether it please Filmer or not.
4. The practice of most nations, and (I may truly say) of all that deserve imitation, has been as directly contrary to the absolute power of one man as their constitutions: or if the original of many governments lie hid in the impenetrable darkness of antiquity, their progress may serve to shew the intention of the founders. Aristotle seems to think that the first monarchs having been chosen for their virtue, were little restrain’d in the exercise of their power; but that they or their children falling into corruption and pride, grew odious; and that nations did on that account either abolish their authority, or create senates and other magistrates, who having part of the power might keep them in order. 10 The Spartan kings were certainly of this nature; and the Persian, till they conquer’d Babylon. Nay, I may safely say, that neither the kings which the frantick people set up in opposition to the law of God, nor those of the bordering nations, whose example they chose to follow, had that absolute power which our author attributes to all kings as inseparable from the name. Achish the Philistine lov’d and admir’d David; he look’d upon him as an angel of God, and promised that he should be the keeper of his head forever; but when the princes suspected him, and said he shall not go down with us to battle, he was obliged to dismiss him. 11 This was not the language of slaves, but of those who had a great part in the government; and the king’s submission to their will, shows that he was more like to the kings of Sparta, than to an absolute monarch who does whatever pleases him. I know not whether the Spartans were descended from the Hebrews, as some think; but their kings were under a regulation much like that of the 17 of Deut. tho they had two: Their senate of twenty eight, and the ephori, had a power like to that of the Sanhedrin; and by them kings were condemned to fines, imprisonment, banishment, and death, as appears by the examples of Pausanias, Cleonymus, Leonidas, Agis, and others. The Hebrew discipline was the same; Reges Davidicae stirpis, says Maimonides, judicabant judicabantur. 12 They gave testimony in judgment when they were called, and testimony was given against them: Whereas the kings of Israel, as the same author says, were superbi, corde elati, spretores legis, nec judicabant, nec judicabantur; 13 proud, insolent, and contemners of the law, who would neither judge, nor submit to judgment as the law commanded. The fruits they gathered were suitable to the seed they had sown: their crimes were not left unpunish’d: they who despised the law were destroy’d without law; and when no ordinary course could be taken against them for their excesses, they were overthrown by force, and the crown within the space of few years transported into nine several families, with the utter extirpation of those that had possess’d it. On the other hand, there never was any sedition against the Spartan kings; and after the moderate discipline according to which they liv’d, was established, none of them died by the hands of their subjects, except only two, who were put to death in a way of justice: the kingdom continued in the same races, till Cleomenes was defeated by Antigonus, and the government overthrown by the insolence of the Macedonians. This gave occasion to those bestial tyrants Nabis and Machanidas to set up such a government as our author recommends to the world, which immediately brought destruction upon themselves, and the whole city. The Germans who pretended to be descended from the Spartans, had the like government. Their princes according to their merit had the credit of persuading, not the power of commanding; and the question was not what part of the government their kings would allow to the nobility and people, but what they would give to their kings; 14 and ’tis not much material to our present dispute, whether they learnt this from some obscure knowledge of the law which God gave to his people, or whether led by the light of reason which is also from God, they discovered what was altogether conformable to that law. Whoever understands the affairs of Germany, knows that the present emperors, notwithstanding their haughty title, have a power limited as in the days of Tacitus. If they are good and wise, they may persuade; but they can command no farther than the law allows. They do not admit the princes, noblemen, and cities to the power which they all exercise in their general diets, and each of them within their own precincts; but they exercise that which has been by publick consent bestow’d upon them. All the kingdoms peopled from the north observed the same rules. In all of them the powers were divided between the kings, the nobility, clergy, and commons; and by the decrees of councils, diets, parliaments, cortes, and assemblies of estates, authority and liberty were so balanced, that such princes as assumed to themselves more than the law did permit, were severely punished; and those who did by force or fraud invade thrones, were by force thrown down from them.
This was equally beneficial to kings and people. The powers, as Theopompus king of Sparta said, were most safe when they were least envied and hated. 15 Lewis the 11th of France was one of the first that broke this golden chain; and by more subtle arts than had been formerly known, subverted the laws, by which the fury of those kings had been restrain’d, and taught others to do the like; tho all of them have not so well saved themselves from punishment. James the third of Scotland was one of his most apt scholars; and Buchanan in his life says, That he was precipitated into all manner of infamy by men of the most abject condition; that the corruption of those times, and the ill example of neighbouring princes, were considerable motives to pervert him: for Edward the fourth of England, Charles of Burgundy, Lewis the 11th of France, and John the second of Portugal, had already laid the foundations of tyranny in those countries; and Richard the third was then most cruelly exercising the same in the kingdom of England. 16
This could not have been, if all the power had always been in kings, and neither the people nor the nobility had ever had any: For no man can be said to gain that which he and his predecessors always possessed, or to take from others that which they never had; nor to set up any sort of government, if it had been always the same. But the foresaid Lewis the 11th did assume to himself a power above that of his predecessors; and Philippe de Comines shews the ways by which he acquir’d it, with the miserable effects of his acquisition both to himself and to his people: Modern authors observe that the change was made by him, and for that reason he is said by Mezeray, and others, to have brought those kings out of guardianship: 17 they were not therefore so till he did emancipate them. Nevertheless this emancipation had no resemblance to the unlimited power of which our author dreams. The general assemblies of estates were often held long after his death, and continued in the exercise of the sovereign power of the nation. Davila, speaking of the general assembly held at Orleans in the time of Francis the second, asserts the whole power of the nation to have been in them. 18 Monsieur de Thou says the same thing, and adds, that the king dying suddenly, the assembly continued, even at the desire of the council, in the exercise of that power, till they had settled the regency, and other affairs of the highest importance, according to their own judgment. 19 Hotman a lawyer of that time and nation, famous for his learning, judgment and integrity, having diligently examin’d the ancient laws and histories of that kingdom, distinctly proves that the French nation never had any kings but of their own chusing; that their kings had no power except what was conferr’d upon them; and that they had been removed, when they excessively abused, or rendered themselves unworthy of that trust. 20 This is sufficiently clear by the forecited examples of Pharamond’s grandchildren, and the degenerated races of Meroveus and Pepin; of which many were deposed, some of the nearest in blood excluded; and when their vices seemed to be incorrigible, they were wholly rejected. All this was done by virtue of that rule which they call the Salic Law: And tho some of our princes pretending to the inheritance of that crown by marrying the heirs general, denied that there was any such thing, no man can say that for the space of above twelve hundred years, females, or their descendants, who are by that law excluded, have ever been thought to have any right to the crown: And no law, unless it be explicitly given by God, can be of greater authority than one which has been in force for so many ages. What the beginning of it was is not known: But Charles the sixth receding from this law, and thinking to dispose of the succession otherwise than was ordained by it, was esteemed mad, and all his acts rescinded. And tho the reputation, strength and valour of the English, commanded by Henry the fifth, one of the bravest princes that have ever been in the world, was terrible to the French nation; yet they opposed him to the utmost of their power, rather than suffer that law to be broken. And tho our success under his conduct was great and admirable; yet soon after his death, with the expence of much blood and treasure, we lost all that we had on that side, and suffer’d the penalty of having unadvisedly entered into that quarrel. 21 By virtue of the same law, the agreement made by King John when he was prisoner at London, by which he had alienated part of that dominion, as well as that of Francis the first, concluded when he was under the same circumstances at Madrid, were reputed null; and upon all occasions that nation has given sufficient testimony, that the laws by which they live are their own, made by themselves, and not imposed upon them. And ’tis as impossible for them who made and deposed kings, exalted or depressed reigning families, and prescribed rules to the succession, to have received from their own creatures the power, or part of the government they had, as for a man to be begotten by his own son. Nay, tho their constitutions were much changed by Lewis the 11th, yet they retained so much of their ancient liberty, that in the last age, when the house of Valois was as much depraved as those of Meroveus and Pepin had been, and Henry the third by his own lewdness, hypocrisy, cruelty and impurity, together with the baseness of his minions and favorites, had rendered himself odious and contemptible to the nobility and people; the great cities, parliaments, the greater and (in political matters) the sounder part of the nation declared him to be fallen from the crown, and pursued him to the death, tho the blow was given by the hand of a base and half-distracted monk.
Henry of Bourbon was without controversy the next heir; but neither the nobility nor the people, who thought themselves in the government, would admit him to the crown, till he had given them satisfaction that he would govern according to their laws, by abjuring his religion which they judged inconsistent with them. 22
The later commotions in Paris, Bordeaux, and other places, together with the wars for religion, shew, that tho the French do not complain of every grievance, and cannot always agree in the defence and vindication of their violated liberties, yet they very well understand their rights; and that, as they do not live by, or for the king, but he reigns by, and for them; so their privileges are not from him, but that his crown is from them; and that, according to the true rule of their government, he can do nothing against their laws, or if he do, they may oppose him.
The institution of a kingdom is the act of a free nation; and whoever denies them to be free, denies that there can be anything of right in what they set up. That which was true in the beginning is so, and must be so forever. This is so far acknowledged by the highest monarchs, that in a treatise published in the year 1667, by authority of the present king of France, to justify his pretensions to some part of the Low-Countries, notwithstanding all the acts of himself, and the king of Spain to extinguish them, it is said, That kings are under the happy inability to do anything against the laws of their country. 23 And tho perhaps he may do things contrary to law, yet he grounds his power upon the law; and the most able and most trusted of his ministers declare the same. About the year 1660, the Count d’ Aubijoux, a man of eminent quality in Languedoc, but averse to the court, and hated by Cardinal Mazarin, had been tried by the Parliament of Toulouse for a duel, in which a gentleman was kill’d; and it appearing to the court (then in that city) that he had been acquitted upon forged letters of grace, false witnesses, powerful friends, and other undue means, Mazarin desired to bring him to a new trial: but the chancellor Seguier told the Queen-Mother it could not be; for the law did not permit a man once acquitted to be again question’d for the same fact; and that if the course of the law were interrupted, neither the Salic Law, nor the succession of her children, or anything else could be secure in France.
This is farther proved by the histories of that nation. The kings of Meroveus and Pepin’s races, were suffer’d to divide the kingdom amongst their sons; or, as Hotman says, the estates made the division, and allotted to each such a part as they thought fit. 24 But when this way was found to be prejudicial to the publick, an act of state was made in the time of Hugh Capet, by which it was ordain’d, that for the future the kingdom should not be dismembered; which constitution continuing in force to this day, the sons or brothers of their kings receive such an apanage (they call it) as is bestow’d on them, remaining subject to the crown as well as other men. And there has been no king of France since that time (except only Charles the sixth) who has not acknowledged that he cannot alienate any part of their dominion.
Whoever imputes the acknowledgment of this to kingcraft, and says, that they who avow this, when ’tis for their advantage, will deny it on a different occasion, is of all men their most dangerous enemy. In laying such fraud to their charge, he destroys the veneration by which they subsist, and teaches subjects not to keep faith with those, who by the most malicious deceits show, that they are tied by none. Human societies are maintained by mutual contracts, which are of no value if they are not observ’d. Laws are made, and magistrates created to cause them to be performed in publick and private matters, and to punish those who violate them. But none will ever be observed, if he who receives the greatest benefit by them, and is set up to oversee others, give the example to those who of themselves are too much inclin’d to break them. The first step that Pompey made to his own ruin was, by violating the laws he himself had proposed. 25 But it would be much worse for kings to break those that are established by the authority of a whole people, and confirmed by the succession of many ages.
I am far from laying any such blemishes on them, or thinking that they deserve them. I must believe the French king speaks sincerely, when he says he can do nothing against the laws of his country: And that our King James did the like, when he acknowledged himself to be the servant of the commonwealth; and the rather, because ’tis true, and that he is placed in the throne to that end. Nothing is more essential and fundamental in the constitutions of kingdoms, than that diets, parliaments, and assemblies of estates should see this perform’d. ’Tis not the king that gives them a right to judge of matters of war or peace, to grant supplies of men and money, or to deny them; and to make or abrogate laws at their pleasure: All the powers rightly belonging to kings, or to them, proceed from the same root. The northern nations seeing what mischiefs were generally brought upon the eastern, by referring too much to the irregular will of a man; and what those who were more generous had suffer’d, when one man by the force of a corrupt mercenary soldiery had overthrown the laws by which they lived, feared they might fall into the same misery; and therefore retained the greater part of the power to be exercised by their general assemblies, or by delegates, when they grew so numerous that they could not meet. These are the kingdoms of which Grotius speaks, where the king has his part, and the senate or people their part of the supreme authority; 26 and where the law prescribes such limits, that if the king attempt to seize that part which is not his, he may justly be opposed: 27 Which is as much as to say, that the law upholds the power it gives, and turns against those who abuse it.
This doctrine may be displeasing to court-parasites; but no less profitable to such kings as follow better counsels, than to the nations that live under them: the wisdom and virtue of the best is always fortified by the concurrence of those who are placed in part of the power; they always do what they will, when they will nothing but that which is good; and ’tis a happy impotence in those, who through ignorance or malice desire to do evil, not to be able to effect it. The weakness of such as by defects of nature, sex, age or education, are not able of themselves to bear the weight of a kingdom, is thereby supported, and they together with the people under them preserved from ruin; the furious rashness of the insolent is restrained; the extravagance of those who are naturally lewd, is aw’d; and the bestial madness of the most violently wicked and outrageous, suppress’d. When the law provides for these matters, and prescribes ways by which they may be accomplished, every man who receives or fears an injury, seeks a remedy in a legal way, and vents his passions in such a manner as brings no prejudice to the commonwealth: If his complaints against a king may be heard, and redressed by courts of justice, parliaments, and diets, as well as against private men, he is satisfied, and looks no farther for a remedy. But if kings, like those of Israel, will neither judge nor be judged, and there be no power orderly to redress private or publick injuries, every man has recourse to force, as if he liv’d in a wood where there is no law; and that force is always mortal to those who provoke it: No guards can preserve a hated prince from the vengeance of one resolute hand; and they as often fall by the swords of their own guards as of others: Wrongs will be done, and when they that do them cannot or will not be judged publickly, the injur’d persons become judges in their own case, and executioners of their own sentence. If this be dangerous in matters of private concernment, ’tis much more so in those relating to the publick. The lewd extravagancies of Edward and Richard the second, whilst they acknowledged the power of the law, were gently reproved and restrained with the removal of some profligate favourites; but when they would admit of no other law than their own will, no relief could be had but by their deposition. The lawful Spartan kings, who were obedient to the laws of their country, liv’d in safety, and died with glory; whereas ’twas a strange thing to see a lawless tyrant die without such infamy and misery, as held a just proportion with the wickedness of his life: They did, as Plutarch says of Dionysius, many mischiefs, and suffer’d more. 28 This is confirmed by the examples of the kingdom of Israel, and of the empires of Rome and Greece; they who would submit to no law, were destroy’d without any. I know not whether they thought themselves to be gods, as our author says they were; but I am sure the most part of them died like dogs, and had the burial of asses rather than of men.
This is the happiness to which our author would promote them all. If a king admit a people to be his companions, he ceaseth to be a king, and the state becomes a democracy. And a little farther, If in such assemblies, the king, nobility, and people, have equal shares in the sovereignty, then the king hath but one voice, the nobility likewise one, and the people one; and then any two of these voices should have power to overrule the third: Thus the nobility and commons should have a power to make a law to bridle the king, which was never seen in any kingdom. 29 We have heard of nations that admitted a man to reign over them (that is, made him kiag) but of no man that made a people. The Hebrews made Saul, David, Jeroboam, and other kings: when they returned from captivity, they conferred the same title upon the Asmonean race, as a reward of their valour and virtue: the Romans chose Romulus, Numa, Hostilius, and others to be their kings; the Spartans instituted two, one of the Heraclidae, the other of the Aeacidae. Other nations set up one, a few, or more magistrates to govern them: and all the world agrees, that qui dat esse, dat modum esse; he that makes him to be, makes him to be what he is: and nothing can be more absurd than to say, that he who has nothing but what is given, can have more than is given to him. If Saul and Romulus had no other title to be kings, than what the people conferred upon them, they could be no otherwise kings than as pleased the people: They therefore did not admit the people to be partakers of the government; but the people who had all in themselves, and could not have made a king if they had not had it, bestow’d upon him what they thought fit, and retained the rest in themselves. If this were not so, then instead of saying to the multitude, Will ye have this man to reign? they ought to say to the man, Wilt thou have this multitude to be a people? And whereas the nobles of Aragon used to say to their new made king, We who are as good as you, make you our king, on condition you keep and maintain our rights and liberties, and if not, not; 30 he should have said to them, I who am better than you, make you to be a people, and will govern you as I please. But I doubt whether he would have succeeded, till that kingdom was joined to others of far greater strength, from whence a power might be drawn to force them out of their usual method.
That which has been said of the governments of England, France, and other countries, shows them to be of the same nature; and if they do not deserve the name of kingdoms, and that their princes will by our author’s arguments be persuaded to leave them, those nations perhaps will be so humble to content themselves without that magnificent title, rather than resign their own liberties to purchase it: and if this will not please him, he may seek his glorious sovereign monarchy among the wild Arabs, or in the island of Ceylon; for it will not be found among civiliz’d nations.
However more ignorance cannot be express’d, than by giving the name of democracy to those governments that are composed of the three simple species, as we have proved that all the good ones have ever been: for in a strict sense it can only suit with those, where the people retain to themselves the administration of the supreme power; and more largely, when the popular part, as in Athens, greatly overbalances the other two, and that the denomination is taken from the prevailing part. But our author, if I mistake not, is the first that ever took the ancient governments of Israel, Sparta and Rome, or those of England, France, Germany and Spain, to be democracies, only because every one of them had senates and assemblies of the people, who in their persons, or by their deputies, did join with their chief magistrates in the exercise of the supreme power. That of Israel, to the time of Saul, is called by Josephus an aristocracy. 31 The same name is given to that of Sparta by all the Greek authors; and the great contest in the Peloponnesian War was between the two kinds of government; the cities that were governed aristocratically, or desired to be so, following the Lacedaemonians; and such as delighted in democracy taking part with the Athenians. In like manner Rome, England, and France, were said to be under monarchies; not that their kings might do what they pleased, but because one man had a preeminence above any other. Yet if the Romans could take Romulus, the son of a man that was never known, Numa a Sabine, Hostilius and Ancus Marcius private men, and Tarquinius Priscus the son of a banished Corinthian, who had no title to a preference before others till it was bestowed upon them; ’tis ridiculous to think, that they who gave them what they had, could not set what limits they pleased to their own gift.
But, says our author, The nobility will then have one voice, and the people another, and they joining may overrule the third, which was never seen in any kingdom. 32 This may perhaps be a way of regulating the monarchical power, but it is not necessary, nor the only one: There may be a senate, tho the people be excluded; that senate may be composed of men chosen for their virtue, as well as for the nobility of their birth: The government may consist of king and people without a senate; or the senate may be composed only of the people’s delegates. But if I should grant his assertion to be true, the reasonableness of such a constitution cannot be destroy’d by the consequences he endeavours to draw from it; for he who would instruct the world in matters of state, must show what is, or ought to be, not what he fancies may thereupon ensue. Besides, it does not follow, that where there are three equal votes, laws should be always made by the plurality; for the consent of all the three is in many places required: and ’tis certain that in England, and other parts, the king and one of the estates cannot make a law without the concurrence of the other. But to please Filmer, I will avow, that where the nobles and commons have an equal vote, they may join and over-rule or limit the power of the king: and I leave any reasonable man to judge, whether it be more safe and fit, that those two estates comprehending the whole body of the nation in their persons, or by representation, should have a right to over-rule or limit the power of that man, woman, or child, who sits in the throne; or that he or she, young or old, wise or foolish, good or bad, should over-rule them, and by their vices, weakness, folly, impertinence, incapacity, or malice, put a stop to their proceedings; and whether the chief concernments of a nation may more safely and prudently be made to depend upon the votes of so many eminent persons, amongst whom many wise and good men will always be found if there be any in the nation, and who in all respects have the same interest with them, or upon the will of one, who may be, and often is as vile, ignorant, and wretched as the meanest slave; and either has, or is for the most part made to believe he has an interest so contrary to them, that their suppression is his advancement. Common sense so naturally leads us to the decision of this question, that I should not think it possible for mankind to have mistaken, tho we had no examples of it in history: and ’tis in vain to say, that all princes are not such as I represent; for if a right were annexed to the being of a prince, and that his single judgment should over-balance that of a whole nation, it must belong to him as a prince, and be enjoy’d by the worst and basest, as well as by the wisest and best, which would inevitably draw on the absurdities above-mention’d: But that many are, and have been such, no man can deny, or reasonably hope that they will not often prove to be such, as long as any preference is granted to those who have nothing to recommend them, but the families from whence they derive; a continual succession of those who excel in virtue, wisdom, and experience, being promised to none, nor reasonably to be expected from any. Such a right therefore cannot be claimed by all; and if not by all, then not by any, unless it proceed from a particular grant in consideration of personal virtue, ability, and integrity, which must be proved: and when anyone goes about to do it, I will either acknowledge him to be in the right, or give the reasons of my denial.
However this is nothing to the general proposition: nay, if a man were to be found, who had more of the qualities requir’d for making a right judgment in matters of the greatest importance, than a whole nation, or an assembly of the best men chosen out of it (which I have never heard to have been, unless in the persons of Moses, Joshua, or Samuel, who had the spirit of God for their guide) it would be nothing to our purpose; for even he might be biased by his personal interests, which governments are not established principally to promote.
I may go a step farther, and truly say, that as such vast powers cannot be generally granted to all who happen to succeed in any families, without evident danger of utter destruction, when they come to be executed by children, women, fools, vicious, incapable or wicked persons, they can be reasonably granted to none, because no man knows what anyone will prove till he be tried; and the importance of the affair requires such a trial as can be made of no man till he be dead. He that resists one temptation may fall under the power of another; and nothing is more common in the world, than to see those men fail grossly in the last actions of their lives, who had passed their former days without reproach: Wise and good men will with Moses say of themselves, I cannot bear the burden: and every man who is concern’d for the publick good, ought to let fools know they are not fit to undergo it, and by law to restrain the fury of such as will not be guided by reason. This could not be denied, tho governments were constituted for the good of the governor. ’Tis good for him that the law appoints helps for his infirmities, and restrains his vices: but all nations ought to do it tho it were not so, in as much as kingdoms are not established for the good of one man, but of the people; and that king who seeks his own good before that of the people, departs from the end of his institution.
This is so plain, that all nations who have acted freely, have some way or other endeavoured to supply the defects, or restrain the vices of their supreme magistrates; and those among them deserve most praise, who by appointing means adequate to so great a work, have taken care that it might be easily and safely accomplished: Such nations have always flourished in virtue, power, glory, and happiness, whilst those who wanted their wisdom, have suffer’d all manner of calamities by the weakness and injustice of their princes, or have had their hands perpetually in blood to preserve themselves from their fury. We need no better example of the first, than that of the Spartans, who by appointing such limits to the power of their kings as could hardly be transgress’d, continued many ages in great union with them, and were never troubled with civil tumults. The like may be said of the Romans from the expulsion of the Tarquins, till they overthrew their own orders, by continuing Marius for five years in the consulate, whereas the laws did not permit a man to hold the same office two years together; and when that rule was broken, their own magistrates grew too strong for them, and subverted the commonwealth. When this was done, and the power came to be in the hands of one man, all manner of evils and calamities broke in like a flood: ’Tis hard to judge, whether the mischiefs he did, or those he suffer’d were the greater: he who set up himself to be lord of the world, was like to a beast crowned for the slaughter, and his greatness was the forerunner of his ruin. By this means some of those who seem not to have been naturally prone to evil, were by their fears put upon such courses to preserve themselves, as being rightly estimated, were worse than the death they apprehended: and the so much celebrated Constantine the Great died no less polluted with the blood of his nearest relations and friends, than Nero himself. But no place can show a more lively picture of this, than the kingdoms of Granada, and others possessed by the Moors in Spain; where there being neither senate nor assemblies of the nobility and people, to restrain the violence and fury of their kings, they had no other way than to kill them when their vices became insupportable; which happening for the most part, they were almost all murder’d; and things were brought to such extremity, that no man would accept a crown, except he who had neither birth nor virtue to deserve it. 33
If it be said that kings have now found out more easy ways of doing what they please, and securing themselves; I answer, that they have not proved so to them all, and it is not yet time for such as tread in the same steps to boast of their success: many have fallen when they thought their designs accomplished; and no man, as long as he lives, can reasonably assure himself the like shall not befall him. But if in this corrupted age, the treachery and perjury of princes be more common than formerly; and the number of those who are brought to delight in the rewards of injustice, be so increased, that their parties are stronger than formerly: this rather shows that the balance of power is broken, or hard to be kept up, than that there ought to be none; and ’tis difficult for any man, without the spirit of prophesy, to tell what this will produce. Whilst the ancient constitutions of our Northern kingdoms remain’d entire, such as contested with their princes sought only to reform the governments, and by redressing what was amiss, to reduce them to their first principles; but they may not perhaps be so modest, when they see the very nature of their government chang’d, and the foundations overthrown. I am not sure that they who were well pleased with a moderate monarchy, will submit to one that is absolute; and ’tis not improbable, that when men see there is no medium between tyranny and popularity, they who would have been contented with the reformation of their government, may proceed farther, and have recourse to force, when there is no help in the law. This will be a hard work in those places where virtue is wholly abolished; but the difficulty will lie on the other side, if any sparks of that remain: if vice and corruption prevail, liberty cannot subsist; but if virtue have the advantage, arbitrary power cannot be established. Those who boast of their loyalty, and think they give testimonies of it, when they addict themselves to the will of one man, tho contrary to the law from whence that quality is derived, may consider, that by putting their masters upon illegal courses they certainly make them the worst of men, and bring them into danger of being also the most miserable. Few or no good princes have fallen into disasters, unless through an extremity of corruption introduced by the most wicked; and cannot properly be called unhappy, if they perished in their innocence; since the bitterness of death is assuaged by the tears of a loving people, the assurance of a glorious memory, and the quiet of a well satisfied mind. But of those who have abandoned themselves to all manner of vice, followed the impulse of their own fury, and set themselves to destroy the best men for opposing their pernicious designs, very few have died in peace. Their lives have been miserable, death infamous, and memory detestable.
They therefore who place kings within the power of the law, and the law to be a guide to kings, equally provide for the good of king and people. Whereas they who admit of no participants in power, and acknowledge no rule but their own will, set up an interest in themselves against that of their people, lose their affections, which is their most important treasure, and incur their hatred, from whence results their greatest danger.
Whatsoever is usually said in opposition to this, seems to proceed from a groundless conceit, that the liberties enjoy’d by nations arise from the concessions of princes. This point has been already treated: but being the foundation of the doctrine I oppose, it may not be amiss farther to examine how it can be possible for one man born under the same condition with the rest of mankind to have a right in himself that is not common to all others, till it be by them or a certain number of them conferred upon him; or how he can without the utmost absurdity be said to grant liberties and privileges to them who made him to be what he is.
If I had to do with a man that sought after truth, I should think he had been led into this extravagant opinion by the terms ordinarily used in patents and charters granted to particular men; and not distinguishing between the proprietor and the dispenser, might think kings had given, as their own, that which they only distribute out of the publick treasury, and could have had nothing to distribute by parcels, if it had not been given to them in gross by the publick. But I need not use our author so gently. The perversity of his judgment, and obstinate hatred to truth is sufficient to draw him into the most absurd errors without any other inducement; and it were not charity, but folly to think he could have attributed in general to all princes, without any regard to the ways by which they attain to their power, such an authority as never justly belonged to any.
This will be evident to all those who consider, that no man can confer upon others that which he has not in himself: If he be originally no more than they, he cannot grant to them or any of them more than they to him. In the 7th, 8th, 9th and subsequent sections of the first chapter, it has been proved that there is no resemblence between the paternal right, and the absolute power which he asserts in kings: that the right of a father, whatever it be, is only over his children; that this right is equally inherited by them all when he dies: that everyone cannot inherit dominion; for the right of one would be inconsistent with that of all others: that the right which is common to all is that which we call liberty, or exemption from dominion: that the first fathers of mankind after the Flood had not the exercise of regal power; and whatsoever they had was equally devolved to every one of their sons, as appears by the examples of Noah, Shem, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and their children: that the erection of Nimrod’s kingdom was directly contrary to, and inconsistent with the paternal right, if there was any regality in it: that the other kingdoms of that time were of the same nature: that Nimrod not exceeding the age of threescore years when he built Babel, could not be the father of those that assisted him in that attempt: that if the seventy two kings, who, as our author says, went from Babylon upon the confusion of languages, were not the sons of Nimrod, he could not govern them by the right of a father; if they were, they must have been very young, and could not have children of their own to people the kingdoms they set up: that whose children soever they were, who out of a part of mankind did within a hundred and thirty two years after the flood, divide into so many kingdoms, they shewed that others in process of time might subdivide into as many as they pleased; and kingdoms multiplying in the space of four thousand years since the 72, in the same proportion they did in one hundred and thirty two years into seventy two, there would now be as many kings in the world as there are men; that is, no man could be subject to another: that this equality of right and exemption from the domination of any other is called liberty: that he who enjoys it cannot be deprived of it, unless by his own consent, or by force: that no one man can force a multitude, or if he did, it could confer no right upon him: that a multitude consenting to be governed by one man, doth confer upon him the power of governing them; the powers therefore that he has, are from them, and they who have all in themselves can receive nothing from him, who has no more than every one of them, till they do invest him with it. This is proved by sacred and profane histories. The Hebrews in the creation of judges, kings, or other magistrates, had no regard to paternity, or to any who by extraction could in the least pretend to the right of fathers: God did never direct them to do it, nor reprove them for neglecting it: If they would chuse a king, he commanded them to take one of their brethren, not one who called himself their father: When they did resolve to have one, he commanded them to chuse him by lot, and caused the lot to fall upon a young man of the youngest tribe: David and the other kings of Israel or Judah had no more to say for themselves in that point than Saul: All the kings of that nation before and after the Captivity, ordinarily or extraordinarily set up, justly or unjustly, were raised without any regard to any prerogative they could claim or arrogate to themselves on that account. All that they had therefore was from their elevation, and their elevation from those that elevated them: ’Twas impossible for them to confer anything upon those from whom they received all they had; or for the people to give power to kings, if they had not had it in themselves; which power universally residing in everyone, is that which we call liberty. The method of other nations was much like to this. They placed those in the throne who seemed best to deserve so great an honour, and most able to bear so great a burden: The kingdoms of the heroes were nothing else but the government of those who were most beneficent to the nations amongst whom they lived, and whose virtues were thought fit to be raised above the ordinary level of the world. Tho perhaps there was not any one Athenian or Roman equal to Theseus or Romulus in courage and strength, yet they were not able to subdue many or if any man should be so vain to think that each of them did at first subdue one man, then two, and so proceeding by degrees conquered a whole people, he cannot without madness ascribe the same to Numa, who being sent for from a foreign country, was immediately made king of a fierce people, that had already conquer’d many of their neighbours, and was grown too boisterous even for Romulus himself. The like may be said of the first Tarquin, and of Servius; they were strangers: and tho Tullus Hostilius and Ancus Marcius were Romans, they had as little title to a dominion over their fellow-citizens, or means of attaining to it, as if they had come from the farthest parts of the earth. This must be in all places, unless one man could prove by a perfect and uninterrupted genealogy that he is the eldest son of the eldest line of Noah, and that line to have continued perpetually in the government of the world: for if the power has been divided, it may be subdivided into infinity; if interrupted, the chain is broken, and can never be made whole. But if our author can perform this for the service of any man, I willingly surrender my arms, and yield up the cause I defend. If he fail, ’tis ridiculous to pretend a right that belongs to no man, or to go about to retrieve a right which for the space of four thousand years has lain dormant; and much more to create that which never had a subsistence. This leads us necessarily to a conclusion, that all kingdoms are at the first erected by the consent of nations, and given to whom they please; or else all are set up by force, or some by force and some by consent: If any are set up by the consent of nations, those kings do not confer liberties upon those nations, but receive all from them, and the general proposition is false. If our author therefore, or his followers, would confute me, they must prove that all the kingdoms of the world have their beginning from force, and that force doth always create a right; or if they recede from the general proposition, and attribute a peculiar right to one or more princes, who are so absolute lords of their people, that those under them have neither liberty, privilege, property or part in the government, but by their concessions, they must prove that those princes did by force gain the power they have, and that their right is derived from it. This force also must have been perpetually continued; for if that force be the root of the right that is pretended, another force by the same rule may overturn, extinguish or transfer it to another hand. If contracts have interven’d, the force ceases; and the right that afterwards doth accrue to the persons, must proceed from, and be regulated according to those contracts.
This may be sufficient to my purpose: For as it has been already proved, that the kingdoms of Israel, Judah, Rome, Sparta, France, Spain, England, and all that we are concerned in, or that deserve to be examples to us, did arise from the consent of the respective nations, and were frequently reduced to their first principles, when the princes have endeavour’d to transgress the laws of their institution; it could be nothing to us, tho Attila or Tamerlane had by force gained the dominions they possess’d. But I dare go a step further, and boldly assert, that there never was or can be a man in the world that did, or can subdue a nation; and that the right of one grounded upon force is a mere whimsey. It was not Agathocles, Dionysius, Nabis, Marius, Sulla or Caesar, but the mercenary soldiers, and other villains that joined with them, who subdued the Syracusans, Spartans or Romans: And as the work was not performed by those tyrants alone, if a right had been gained by the violence they used, it must have been common to all those that gained it; and he that commanded them could have had no more than they thought fit to confer upon him. When Miltiades desired leave to wear an olive garland, in commemoration of the victory obtained at Marathon, an Athenian did in my opinion rightly say, “If you alone did fight against the Persians, it is just that you only should be crowned; but if others did participate in the victory, they ought also to have a part in the honour.” 1 And the principal difference that I have observ’d between the most regular proceedings of the wisest senates or assemblies of the people in their persons or delegates, and the fury of the most dissolute villains, has been, that the first seeking the publick good, do usually set up such a man, and invest him with such powers as seem most conducing to that good: whereas the others following the impulse of a bestial rage, and aiming at nothing but the satisfaction of their own lusts, always advance one from whom they expect the greatest advantages to themselves, and give him such powers as most conduce to the accomplishment of their own ends: but as to the person ’tis the same thing. Caesar and Nero did no more make themselves what they were, than Numa; and could no more confer any right, liberty or privilege upon the army, that gave them all they had, than the most regular magistrate can upon the senate or people that chose them.
This also is common to the worst as well as the best, that they who set up either, do, as into a publick treasury, confer upon the person they chuse, a power of distributing to particular men, or numbers of men, such honors, privileges and advantages, as they may seem, according to the principles of the government, to deserve. But there is this difference, that the ends of the one being good, and those of the other evil, the first do for the most part limit the powers, that something may remain to reward services done to the publick, in a manner proportion’d to the merit of everyone, placing other magistrates to see it really performed, so as they may not, by the weakness or vices of the governor, be turned to the publick detriment: the others think they never give enough, that the prince having all in his power, may be able to gratify their most exorbitant desires, if by any ways they can get his favour; and his infirmities and vices being most beneficial to them, they seldom allow to any other magistrate a power of opposing his will, or suffer those who for the publick good would assume it. The world affords many examples of both sorts, and every one of them have had their progress suitable to their constitution. The regular kingdoms of England, France, Spain, Poland, Bohemia, Denmark, Sweden, and others, whether elective or hereditary, have had high stewards, constables, mayors of the palace, reichshofmeisters, parliaments, diets, assemblies of estates, cortes, and the like, by which those have been admitted to succeed who seemed most fit for the publick service; the unworthy have been rejected; the infirmities of the weak supplied; the malice of the unjust restrained; and when necessity required, the crown transferr’d from one line or family to another. But in the furious tyrannies that have been set up by the violence of a corrupted soldiery, as in the ancient Roman empire, the kingdoms of the Moors and Arabians, the tyrannies of Ezzelino of Padua, those of the Visconti and Sforzeschi of Milan, Castruccio Castracani of Lucca, Cesare Borgia, and others, there was nothing of all this. The will of the prince was a law; all power was in him, and he kept it, till another stept up and took it from him, by the same means that he had gain’d it. This fell out so frequently, that tho all the Roman emperors endeavour’d to make their power hereditary, it hardly continued three generations in one line from Augustus to Augustulus, unless in that of Constantine, and that with extreme confusion and disorder. They who had madly set up a man to be their head, and exposed so much of the world as was under their power, to be destroy’d by him, did by the like fury throw him down, and never ceased till they had brought the empire to utter ruin.
But if this paternal sovereignty be a mere fiction that never had any effect; that no nation was ever commanded by God to make it their rule, nor any reproved for the neglect of it; none ever learnt it from the light of nature, nor were by wise men taught to regard it: The first fathers claimed no privilege from it when every man’s genealogy was known; and if there were such a thing in nature, it could be of no use at this day, when the several races of men are so confused, that not one in the world can prove his own original; and that the first kingdoms, whether well or ill constituted, according to the command of God, or the inventions of men, were contrary to, and incompatible with it; There can have been no justice in any, if such a rule was to have been observed; the continuance of an unjust usurpation can never have created a right, but aggravated the injustice of overthrowing it: No man could ever by his own strength and courage subdue a multitude, nor gain any other right over them if he did, than they might have to tear it from him; whoever denies kingdoms or other magistracies to have been set up by men, according to their own will, and from an opinion of receiving benefit by them, accuses all the governments that are, or ever have been in the world, of that outrageous injustice in their foundation which can never be repair’d. If there be therefore, or ever was, any just government amongst men, it was constituted by them; and whether their proceedings were regular or violent, just or unjust, the powers annexed to it were their donation: The magistracies erected by them, whether in one or more men, temporary or perpetual, elective or hereditary, were their creatures; and receiving all from them, could confer nothing upon them.
Our author having with big words and little sense inveigh’d against popular and mix’d governments, proceeds as if he had proved they could not, or ought not to be. If it be, says he, unnatural for the multitude to chuse their governors, or to govern, or to partake in the government; what can be thought of that damnable conclusion which is made by too many, that the multitude may correct or depose their princes if need be? Surely the unnaturalness and injustice of this position cannot sufficiently be expressed. For admit that a king make a contract or paction with his people originally in his ancestors, or personally at his coronation (for both these pactions some dream of, but cannot offer any proof of either) yet by no law of any nation can a contract be thought broken, except first a lawful trial be had by the ordinary judge of the breakers thereof; or else every man may be both party and judge in his own case, which is absurd once to be thought; for then it will lie in the hands of the headless multitude, when they please, to cast off the yoke of government that God hath laid upon them, and to judge and punish him, by whom they should be judged and punished themselves. 1 To this I first answer briefly, that if it be natural for the multitude to chuse their governors, or to govern, or to participate of the government as best pleases themselves; or that there never was a government in the world that was not so set up by them, in pursuance of the power naturally inherent in themselves; what can be thought of that damnable conclusion, which has been made by fools or knaves, that the multitude may not, if need be, correct or depose their own magistrates? Surely the unnaturalness and injustice of such a position cannot be sufficiently expressed. If that were admitted, all the most solemn pacts and contracts made between nations and their magistrates, originally or personally, and confirmed by laws and mutual oaths, would be of no value. He that would break the most sacred bonds that can be amongst men, should by perjury and wickedness become judge of his own case, and by the worst of crimes procure impunity for all. It would be in his power by folly, wickedness and madness, to destroy the multitude which he was created and sworn to preserve, tho wise, virtuous and just, and headed by the wisest and justest of men; or to lay a yoke upon those who by the laws of God and nature ought to be free: He might in his own case judge that body by which he ought to be judged; and who in consideration of themselves and their own good, made him to be whatsoever he is more than every one of them: The governments instituted for the preservation of nations, would turn to their destruction: It would be impossible to check the fury of a corrupt and perfidious magistrate: The worst of men would be raised to a height that was never deserved by the best; and the assurance of indemnity would, by increasing their insolence, turn their other vices into madness, as has been too often seen in those who have had more power than they deserved, and were more hardly brought to account for their actions than ought to have been; tho I never heard of any who had so much as our author asserts to be in all, nor that any was absolutely assured he should not be question’d for the abuse of what he had.
Besides, if every people may govern, or constitute and chuse one or more governors, they may divide the powers between several men, or ranks of men, allotting to every one so much as they please, or retaining so much as they think fit. This has been practised in all the governments, which under several forms have flourished in Palestine, Greece, Italy, Germany, France, England, and the rest of the world. The laws of every place show what the power of the respective magistrate is, and by declaring how much is allowed to him, declare what is denied; for he has not that which he has not, and is to be accounted a magistrate whilst he exercises that which he has.
If any doubts do hereupon arise, I hope to remove them, proving in the first place, that several nations have plainly and explicitly made contracts with their magistrates.
2. That they are implicit, and to be understood, where they are not plainly expressed.
3. That they are not dreams, but real things, and perpetually obliging.
4. That judges are in many places appointed to decide the contests arising from the breach of these contracts; and where they are not, or the party offending is of such force or pride that he will not submit, nations have been obliged to take the extremest courses.
To the first: I suppose it will not be denied, that the annual magistrates of divers commonwealths are under some compact, and that there is a power of constraining them to perform the contents, or to punish them for the violation. The modest behaviour of the Roman consuls and dictators (as long as their laws were in force) might not probably proceed from their good nature. Tho the people had not been, as our author says, mad, foolish, and always desirous to chuse the worst men for being most like to themselves, 2 but admirably wise and virtuous, ’tis not to be imagined that in the space of three or four hundred years they should never have fallen upon one who would have transgressed, if he could have done it safely, tho they had used the utmost caution in their choice. But the power of the consuls being only for a year, that of the dictator for six months at most, and the commission that he should take care the commonwealth might suffer no damage, 3 show the end and condition upon which they were chosen; and tho their power is by some thought to have been absolute, yet the consuls were frequently opposed and brought into order by the senate, tribunes, or people, and sometimes the dictator himself. Camillus in his fourth dictatorship was threatened by the tribunes with a great fine, and by that means obliged to abdicate his magistracy. 4 I have already mention’d Marcus Fabius Maximus, who in the behalf of his son Quintus condemned to die by Papirius the dictator, appealed to the people: 5 And when the conduct of Fabius in the war against Hannibal was not approved, Naenius the tribune thought he made a very modest proposition, in that he did not desire his magistracy should be abrogated; but that the master of the horse should be made equal to him in power, which was done accordingly. ’Tis agreed by all, that the consuls were in the place of kings, and that the power of the dictator was at the least equal to what theirs had been. If they therefore were under such a rule, which they could not transgress, or might be reduced to order if they did, and forced to submit to the people as the kings had done, the kings were also made upon the same conditions, and equally obliged to perform them.
The Scripture is more clear in the case. The judges are said to have been in power equal to kings; and I may perhaps acknowledge it, with relation to the Deuteronomical king, or such as the people might have chosen without offending God. The Gileadites made a covenant with Jephthah, that he should be their head and captain: He would not return to his country till they had done it. This was performed solemnly before the lord in Mizpeh, and all Israel followed them. They might therefore make a covenant with their kings, for the difference of name does not increase or diminish the right. Nay, they were in duty obliged to do it: The words of the 17th of Deuter. He shall not multiply wives, c. that his heart be not lifted up above his brethren, can have no other signification, than that they should take care he did it not, or, as Josephus says, hinder him if he attempt it; for the law was not given to the king who was not, but to those who might make him if they thought fit. 6 In pursuance of this law—
[The rest of this chapter is wanting in the original manuscript.] 7
2dly. There was no absurdity in this, tho it was their own case; but to the contrary, because it was their own case: that is, concerning themselves only, and they had no superiour. 8 They only were the competent judges, they decided their controversies, as every man in his own family doth, such as arise between him and his children, and his servants. This power hath no other restriction, than what is put upon it by the municipal law of the country, where any man [lives], and that hath no other force, than as he is understood to have consented unto it. Thus in England every man (in a degree) hath a right of chastising them; and in many places (even by the law of God) the master hath a power of life and death over his servant: It were a most absurd folly, to say, that a man might not put away, or in some places kill an adulterous wife, a disobedient son, or an unlawful servant, because he is party and judge; for the case doth admit of no other, unless he hath abridged his own right by entering into a society, where other rules are agreed upon, and a superiour-judge constituted, there being none such between king and people: That people must needs be the judge of things happening between them and him whom they did not constitute that [he] might be great, glorious, and rich; but that [he] might judge them, and fight their battles; or otherwise do good unto them as they should direct. In this sense, he that is singulis major, 9 ought to be [obeyed] by every man, in his just and lawful commands tending to the publick good: And must be suffered to do nothing against it, nor in any respect more than the law doth allow.
For this reason Bracton saith, “that the king hath three superiours, to wit, Deum legem, parliament ”; 10 that is, the power originally in the people of England, is delegated unto the parliament. He is subject unto the law of God as he is a man; to the people that makes him a king, in as much as he is a king: the law sets a measure unto that subjection, and the parliament judges of the particular cases thereupon arising: He must be content to submit his interest unto theirs, since he is no more than any one of them, in any other respect than that he is by the consent of all, raised above any other.
If he doth not like this condition, he may renounce the crown; but if he receive it upon that condition (as all magistrates do the power they receive), and swear to perform it, he must expect that the performance will be exacted, or revenge taken by those that he hath betrayed.
If this be not so, I desire to know of our author, how one or more men can come to be guilty of treason against the king, as lex facit ut sit rex. 11 No man can owe more unto him than unto any other, or he unto every other man by any rule but the law; and if he must not be judge in his own case, neither he nor any other by power received from him, would ever try any man for an offence against him, or the law.
If the king, or such as he appoints, cannot judge him, he cannot be judged by the ways ordinarily known amongst us. If he or other by authority from him may judge, he is judge in his own case, and we fall under that which he accounts the utmost of all absurdities: if a remedy be found for this, he must say that the king in his own case may judge the people, but the people must not judge the king, because it is theirs; that is to say, the servant entertained by the master may judge him, but the master must not judge the servant whom he took only for his own use. The magistrate is bound by no oath or contract to the people that created him, but the people is bound to its own creature, the magistrate.
This seems to be the ground of all our author’s follies; he cannot comprehend that magistrates are for or by the people, but makes this conclusion, as if nations were created by or for the glory or pleasure of magistrates; and after such a piece of nonsense, it ought not to be thought strange if he 12 represent, as an absurd thing, that the headless multitude may shake off the yoke when they please. But I would know how the multitude comes under the yoke; it is a badge of slavery. He says that the power of kings is for the preservation of liberty and property. We may therefore change or take away kings without breaking any yoke, or that [is] made a yoke, which ought not to be one; the injury is therefore in making or imposing, and there can be none in breaking it.
That if there be not an injury, there may perhaps be an inconvenience; if the headless multitude may shake off the yoke. 13 I know not why the multitude should be concluded to be headless; it is not always so. Moses was head of the multitude that went out of Egypt; Othniel led them against the king of Mesopotamia; under the conduct of Phoebidas; 14 they obtain’d a victory against the Moabites; they had the like success under Shamgar, Barak, Gideon, Jephthah, Samuel, Samson, and others against Canaanites, Midianites, Philistines and others; the multitude that opposed Saul and Ishbosheth had David for its head: and the ten tribes that rejected Rehoboam chose unto themselves [Jeroboam]; the Athenians rising against the thirty tyrants had Thrasybulus; those that drave [Archias] from Thebes were conducted by Pelopidas: when the Romans drave out the Tarquins, they chose Brutus and Publicola, and they destroyed the decemviri under Horatius and Valerius. All the multitudes that afterwards revolted from them under Mauritius, Telerius, Spartanus, and others, were not headless; and we know of none that were, but all either found heads, or made them. The Germans set up Arminius; the Britains, and others in latter times; the Castilians, that rose against Peter the Cruel, had the Lord de Trastamara.
The French, when they grew weary of the corrupted races of Pharamond and Pepin, [had] the same Pepin and Hugh Capet: The Scots when they slew James the Third, had his son to be their head; and when they deposed and imprisoned Queen Mary, the earl of Murray and others supplied the want of age that was in her son: And in all the revolutions we have had in England, the people have been headed by the parliament, or the nobility and gentry that composed it; and when the kings failed of their duties, by their own authority called it. The multitude therefore is not ever headless, but doth either find or create heads unto itself, as occasion doth require; and whether it be one man, or a few, or more, for a short or a longer time, we see nothing more regular than its motions. But they may, saith our author, shake off the yoke; 15 and why may they not, if it prove uneasy or hurtful unto them? Why should not the Israelites shake off the yoke of Pharaoh, Jabin, Sisera, and others that oppressed them?
When pride had changed Nebuchadnezzar into a beast, what should persuade the Assyrians not to drive him out amongst beasts, until God had restored unto him the heart of a man? When Tarquin had turned the legal monarchy of Rome into a most abominable tyranny, why should they not abolish it? And when the Protestants of the Low-Countries were so grievously oppressed by the power of Spain, under the proud, cruel and savage conduct of the duke of Alva, why should they not make use of all the means that God had put into their hands for their deliverance? Let any man who sees the present state of the provinces that then united themselves, judge whether it is better for them to be as they are, or in the condition unto which his fury would have reduced them, unless they had, to please him, renounced God and their religion: Our author may say, they ought to have suffered: The king of Spain by their resistance lost those countries; and that they ought not to have been judges in their own case. To which I answer, That by resisting they laid the foundation of many churches, that have produced multitudes of men, eminent in gifts and graces; and established a most glorious and happy commonwealth, that hath been since its first beginning, the strongest pillar of the Protestant cause, now in the world, and a place of refuge unto those who in all parts of Europe have been oppressed for the name of Christ: Whereas they had slavishly, and, I think I may say, wickedly as well as foolishly, suffered themselves to be butchered, if they had left those empty provinces under the power of Antichrist, where the name of God is no otherwise known than to be blasphemed.
If the king of Spain desired to keep his subjects, he should have governed them with more justice and mercy; when contrary unto all laws both human and divine, he seeks to destroy those he ought to have preserved, he can blame none but himself, if they deliver themselves from his tyranny: and when the matter is brought to that, that he must not reign, or they over whom he would reign, must perish; the matter is easily decided, as if the question had been asked in the time of Nero or Domitian, Whether they should be left at liberty to destroy the best part of the world, as they endeavoured to do, or it should be rescued by their destruction? And as for the peoples being judges in their own case, it is plain, they ought to be the only judges, because it is their own, and only concerns themselves.
Having proved that the right of fathers is from nature, and incommunicable, it must follow, that every man doth perpetually owe all love, respect, service, and obedience to him that did beget, nourish, and educate him, and to no other under that name. No man therefore can claim the right of a father over any, except one that is so; no man can serve two masters; the extent and perpetuity of the duty which every man owes to his father, renders it impossible for him to owe the same to any other: This right of father cannot be devolved to the heir of the father, otherwise than as every son by the law of nature is heir to his father, and has the same right of commanding his children, as his father had of commanding him when he was a child: no man can owe to his brother that which he owed to his father, because he cannot receive that from him which he had from his father; but the utmost of all absurdities that can enter into the heart of man is, for one to exact the rights due to a father, who has no other title than force and usurpation, it being no less than to say, that I owe as much to one who has done me the greatest of all injuries, as to him who has conferred upon me the greatest benefits: or, which is yet worse, if possible, that as these usurpations cannot be made but by robbing, spoiling, imprisoning, or killing the person in possession; that duty, which by the eternal law of nature I owe to my father, should oblige me to pay the same veneration, obedience, and service to the man that has spoiled, imprison’d, or kill’d my father, as I owed to him; or that the same law, which obliged me to obey and defend my father, because he was so, should oblige me to obey and defend his enemy, because he has imprison’d or kill’d him; and not only to pass over the law of God, which makes me the avenger of my father’s blood, but to reward his murderer with the rights that comprehend all that is most tender and sacred in nature, and to look upon one that has done me the greatest of all injustices and injuries, as upon him to whom I owe my birth and education. This being evident to all those who have any measure of common sense, I suppose it may be safely concluded, that what right soever a father may have over his family, it cannot relate to that which a king has over his people; unless he, like the man in the Island of Pines, mention’d before, be also the father of them all. That which is absolutely unlike in manner and substance, institution and exercise, must be unlike in all respects: and the conclusions, which have their strength from similitude and parity, can have none when there is not the least similitude of either. And tho it were true, that fathers are held by no contracts (which generally ’tis not; for when the son is of age, and does something for the father to which he is not obliged, or gives him that which he is not bound to give, suppose an inheritance received from a friend, goods of his own acquisition, or that he be emancipated, all good laws look upon those things as a valuable consideration, and give the same force to contracts thereupon made, as to those that pass between strangers), it could have no relation to our question concerning kings. One principal reason that renders it very little necessary by the laws of nations, to restrain the power of parents over their children is, because ’tis presumed they cannot abuse it: they are thought to have a law in their bowels, obliging them more strictly to seek their good, than all those that can be laid upon them by another power; and yet if they depart from it, so as inhumanly to abuse or kill their children, they are punished with as much rigour, and accounted more unpardonable than other men. Ignorance or wilful malice persuading our author to pass over all this, he boldly affirms, That the father of a family governs it by no other law than his own will; and from thence infers, that the condition of kings is the same. He would seem to soften the harshness of this proposition by saying, That a king is always tied by the same law of nature to keep this general ground, that the safety of the kingdom is his chief law. 1 But he spoils it in the next page, by asserting, That it is not right for kings to do injury, but it is right that they go unpunished by the people if they do; so that in this point it is all one, whether Samuel describe a king or a tyrant, for patient obedience is due unto both; no remedy in the text against tyrants, but crying and praying unto God in that day. 2 In this our author, according to the custom of theaters, runs round in a circle, pretends to grant that which is true, and then by a lie endeavours to destroy all again. Kings by the law of nature are obliged to seek chiefly the good of the kingdom; but there is no remedy if they do it not; which is no less than to put all upon the conscience of those who manifestly have none. But if God has appointed that all other transgressions of the laws of nature, by which a private man receives damage, should be punished in this world, notwithstanding the right reserved to himself of a future punishment; I desire to know, why this alone, by which whole nations may be, and often are destroy’d, should escape the hands of justice? If he presume no law to be necessary in this case, because it cannot be thought that kings will transgress, as there was no law in Sparta against adultery, because it was not thought possible for men educated under that discipline to be guilty of such a crime; and as divers nations left a liberty to fathers to dispose of their children as they thought fit, because it could not be imagined that anyone would abuse that power, he ought to remember that the Spartans were mistaken, and for want of that law which they esteemed useless, adulteries became as common there as in any part of the world: and the other error being almost everywhere discovered, the laws of all civilized nations make it capital for a man to kill his children; and give redress to children if they suffer any other extreme injuries from their parents, as well as other persons. But tho this were not so, it would be nothing to our question, unless it could be supposed, that whoever gets the power of a nation into his hands, must be immediately filled with the same tenderness of affection to the people under him, as a father naturally has towards the children he hath begotten. He that is of this opinion, may examine the lives of Herod, Tiberius, Caligula, and some later princes of like inclinations, and conclude it to be true, if he find that the whole course of their actions, in relation to the people under them, do well suit with the tender and sacred name of father; and altogether false, if he find the contrary. But as every man that considers what has been, or sees what is every day done in the world, must confess, that princes, or those who govern them, do most frequently so utterly reject all thoughts of tenderness and piety towards the nations under them, as rather to seek what can be drawn from them, than what should be done for them, and sometimes become their most bitter and publick enemies; ’tis ridiculous to make the safety of nations to depend upon a supposition, which by daily experience we find to be false; and impious, to prefer the lusts of a man who violates the most sacred laws of nature, by destroying those he is obliged to preserve, before the welfare of that people for whose good he is made to be what he is, if there be anything of justice in the power he exercises.
Our author foolishly thinks to cover the enormity of this nonsense, by turning salutem populi into salutem regni : 3 for tho regnum may be taken for the power of commanding, in which sense the preservation of it is the usual object of the care of princes; yet it does more rightly signify the body of that nation which is governed by a king. And therefore if the maxim be true, as he acknowledges it to be, then salus populi est lex suprema; and the first thing we are to inquire is, whether the government of this or that man do conduce to the accomplishment of that supreme law, or not; for otherwise it ought to have been said, salus regis est lex suprema, 4 which certainly never entered into the head of a wiser or better man than Filmer.
His reasons are as good as his doctrine: No law, says he, can be imposed on kings, because there were kings before any laws were made. 5 This would not follow, tho the proposition were true; for they, who imposed no laws upon the kings they at first made, from an opinion of their virtue, as in those called by the ancients heroum regna, might lay restrictions upon them, when they were found not to answer the expectation conceived of them, or that their successors degenerated from their virtue. Other nations also being instructed by the ill effects of an unlimited power given to some kings (if there was any such) might wisely avoid the rock upon which their neighbours had split, and justly moderate that power which had been pernicious to others. However a proposition of so great importance ought to be proved; but that being hard, and perhaps impossible, because the original of nations is almost wholly unknown to us, and their practice seems to have been so various, that what is true in one, is not so in another; he is pleased only to affirm it, without giving the least shadow of a reason to persuade us to believe him. This might justify me, if I should reject his assertion as a thing said gratis: but I may safely go a step farther, and affirm, that men lived under laws before there were any kings; which cannot be denied, if such a power necessarily belongs to kings as he ascribes to them. For Nimrod, who established his kingdom in Babel, is the first who by the Scripture is said to have been a mighty one in the earth. He was therefore the first king, or kings were not mighty; and he being the first king, mankind must have lived till his time without laws, or else laws were made before kings. To say that there was then no law, is in many respects most absurd; for the nature of man cannot be without it, and the violences committed by ill men before the Flood, could not have been blamed if there had been no law; for that which is not, cannot be transgressed. Cain could not have feared that every man who met him would slay him, if there had not been a law to slay him that had slain another. But in this case the Scripture is clear, at least from the time that Noah went out of the Ark, for God then gave him a law sufficient for the state of things at that time, if all violence was prohibited under the name of shedding blood, tho not under the same penalty as murder. But penal laws being in vain, if there be none to execute them, such as know God does nothing in vain, may conclude that he who gave this law, did appoint some way for its execution, tho unknown to us. There is therefore a law not given by kings, but laid upon such as should be kings, as well as on any other persons, by one who is above them; and perhaps I may say, that this law presseth most upon them, because they who have most power, do most frequently break out into acts of violence, and most of all disdain to have their will restrained: and he that will exempt kings from this law, must either find that they are excepted in the text, or that God who gave it has not a power over them.
Moreover, it has been proved at the beginning of this treatise, that the first kings were of the accursed race, and reigned over the accursed nations, whilst the holy seed had none. If therefore there was no law where there was no king, the accursed posterity of Ham had laws, when the blessed descendants of Shem had none, which is most absurd; the word outlaw, or lawless, being often given to the wicked, but never to the just and righteous.
The impious folly of such assertions goes farther than our author perhaps suspected: for if there be no law where there is no king, the Israelites had no law till Saul was made king, and then the law they had was from him. They had no king before, for they asked one. They could not have asked one of Samuel, if he had been a king. He had not been offended, and God had not imputed to them the sin of rejecting him, if they had asked that only which he had set over them. If Samuel were not king, Moses, Joshua, and the other judges were not kings; for they were no more than he. They had therefore no king, and consequently, if our author say true, no law. If they had no law till Saul was king, they never had any; for he gave them none; and the prophets were to blame for denouncing judgments against them for receding from, or breaking their law, if they had none. He cannot say that Samuel gave them a law; for that which he wrote in a book, and laid up before the Lord, was not a law to the people, but to the king. 6 If it had been a law to the people, it must have been made publick; but as it was only to the king, he laid it up before God, to testify against him if he should adventure to break it. Or if it was a law to the people, the matter is not mended; for it was given in the time of a king by one who was not king. But in truth it was the law of the kingdom by which he was king, and had been wholly impertinent, if it was not to bind him; for it was given to no other person, and to no other end.
Our author’s assertion upon which all his doctrine is grounded, That there is no nation that allows children any action or remedy for being unjustly governed, 7 is as impudently false as any other proposed by him: for tho a child will not be heard that complains of the rod; yet our own law gives relief to children against their fathers, as well as against other persons that do them injuries, upon which we see many ill effects, and I do rather relate than commend the practice. In other places the law gives relief against the extravagancies of which fathers may be guilty in relation to their children, tho not to that excess as to bring them so near to an equality as in England: They cannot imprison, sell, or kill their children, without exposing themselves to the same punishments with other men; and if they take their estates from them, the law is open and gives relief against them: but on the other side, children are punished with death, if they strike or outrageously abuse their parents; which is not so with us.
Now, if the laws of nations take such care to preserve private men from being too hardly used by their true and natural fathers, who have such a love and tenderness for them in their own blood, that the most wicked and barbarous do much more frequently commit crimes for them than against them; how much more necessary is it to restrain the fury that kings, who at the best are but phantastical fathers, may exercise to the destruction of the whole people? ’Tis a folly to say that David and some other kings have had, or that all should have a tenderness of affection towards their people as towards their children; for besides that even the first proposition is not acknowledged, and will be hardly verified in any one instance, there is a vast distance between what men ought to be, and what they are. Every man ought to be just, true, and charitable; and if they were so, laws would be of no use: but it were a madness to abolish them upon a supposition that they are so; or to leave them to a future punishment, which many do not believe, or not regard. I am not obliged to believe that David loved every Israelite as well as his son Absalom; but tho he had, I could not from thence infer that all kings do so, unless I were sure that all of them were as wise and virtuous as he.
But to come more close to the matter: Do we not know of many kings who have come to their power by the most wicked means that can enter into the heart of man, even by the most outrageous injuries done to the people, sometimes by a foreign aid? as kings were by the power of the Romans imposed upon the Britains, that they might waste the forces, and break the spirits of that fierce people. This Tacitus acknowledges, and says, That amongst other instruments of enslaving nations, they imposed kings upon them. 8 The Medicis were made masters of Florence by the force of Charles the Fifth’s army. Sometimes by a corrupt party in their own country they have destroy’d the best men, and subdued the rest; as Agathocles, Dionysius, and Caesar did at Rome and Syracuse. Others taking upon them to defend a people, have turned the arms with which they were entrusted against their own masters; as Francesco Sforza, who being chosen by those of Milan to be their general against the Venetians, made peace with them, and by their assistance made himself prince, or, in our author’s phrase, father of that great city. If these be acts of tenderness, love, justice, and charity, those who commit them may well think they have gained the affections of their people, and grow to love those from whom they fear nothing, and by whom they think they are loved. But if on the other hand they know they have attained to their greatness by the worst of all villainies, and that they are on that account become the object of the publick hatred, they can do no less than hate and fear those by whom they know themselves to be hated. The Italians ordinarily say that he who does an injury never pardons, because he thinks he is never pardoned: 9 But he that enslaves and oppresses a people does an injury which can never be pardoned, and therefore fears it will be revenged.
Other princes who come to their thrones by better ways, and are not contented with the power that the law allows, draw the same hatred upon themselves when they endeavour by force or fraud to enlarge it; and must necessarily fear and hate their own people as much as he who by the ways beforemention’d has betray’d or subdued them. Our author makes nothing of this; but taking it for granted that it was all one whether Samuel spoke of a king or a tyrant, declares that the same patient obedience is due to both; but not being pleased to give any reason why we should believe him, I intend to offer some why we should not.
First, there is nothing in the nature or institution of monarchy that obliges nations to bear the exorbitances of it when it degenerates into tyranny.
In the second place, we have no precept for it.
Thirdly, we have many approved examples, and occasional particular commands to the contrary.
1. To the first: The point of paternity being explain’d; the duty of children to parents proved to proceed from the benefits received from them, and that the power over them, which at the first seems to have been left at large, because it was thought they would never abuse it, has long since been much restrain’d in all civilized nations, and particularly in our own; We may conclude that men are all made of the same paste, and that one owes no more to another than another to him, unless for some benefit received, or by virtue of some promise made. The duty arising from a benefit received must be proportionable to it: that which grows from a promise is determined by the promise or contract made, according to the true sense and meaning of it. He therefore that would know what the Babylonians, Hebrews, Athenians, or Romans did owe to Nimrod, Saul, Theseus or Romulus, must inquire what benefits were received from them, or what was promised to them. It cannot be said that anything was due to them for the sake of their parents; they could have no prerogative by birth: Nimrod was the sixth son of Cush the son of Ham, who was the youngest son of Noah: his kingdom was erected whilst Noah and his elder sons Shem and Japheth, as well as Ham, Cush, and his elder sons were still living. Saul was the son of Kish, a man of Benjamin, who was the youngest son of Jacob; and he was chosen in the most democratical way by lot amongst the whole people. Theseus according to the custom of the times pretended to be the son of Neptune; and Rhea was so well pleased with the soldier that had gotten her with child, that she resolved to think or say that Mars was the father of the children, that is to say they were bastards; and therefore whatever was due to them was upon their own personal account, without any regard to their progenitors. This must be measured according to what they did for those nations before they were kings, or by the manner of their advancement. Nothing can be pretended before they were kings: Nimrod rose up after the confusion of languages, and the people that understood the tongue he spoke, follow’d him; Saul was a young man unknown in Israel; Theseus and Romulus had nothing to recommend them before other Athenians and Romans, except the reputation of their valour; and the honours conferred upon them for that reason, must proceed from expectation or hope, and not from gratitude or obligation. It must therefore proceed from the manner by which they came to be kings. He that neither is nor has any title to be a king, can come to be so only by force or by consent. If by force, he does not confer a benefit upon the people, but injures them in the most outrageous manner. If it be possible therefore or reasonable to imagine that one man did ever subdue a multitude, he can no otherwise resemble a father than the worst of all enemies who does the greatest mischiefs, resembles the best of all friends who confers the most inestimable benefits, and consequently does as justly deserve the utmost effects of hatred, as the other does of love, respect, and service. If by consent, he who is raised from amongst the people, and placed above his brethren, receives great honours and advantages, but confers none. The obligations of gratitude are on his side, and whatsoever he does in acknowledgment to his benefactors for their love to him, is no more than his duty; and he can demand no more from them than what they think fit to add to the favours already received. If more be pretended, it must be by virtue of that contract, and can no otherwise be proved than by producing it to be examined, that the true sense, meaning, and intention of it may be known.
This contract must be in form and substance according to a general rule given to all mankind, or such as is left to the will of every nation. If a general one be pretended, it ought to be shown, that by enquiring into the contents, we may understand the force and extent of it. If this cannot be done, it may justly pass for a fiction, no conclusion can be drawn from it; and we may be sure, that what contracts soever have been made between nations and their kings, have been framed according to the will of those nations; and consequently how many soever they are, and whatsoever the sense of any or all of them may be, they can oblige no man, except those, or at the most the descendants of those that made them. Whoever therefore would persuade us, that one or more nations are, by virtue of those contracts, bound to bear all the insolences of tyrants, is obliged to show, that by those contracts they did forever indefinitely bind themselves so to do, how great soever they might be.
I may justly go a step farther, and affirm, that if any such should appear in the world, the folly and turpitude of the thing would be a sufficient evidence of the madness of those that made it, and utterly destroy the contents of it: but no such having been as yet produced, nor any reason given to persuade a wise man that there has ever been any such, at least among civilized nations (for whom only we are concerned), it may be concluded there never was any; or if there were, they do not at all relate to our subject; and consequently that nations still continue in their native liberty, and are no otherwise obliged to endure the insolence of tyrants, than they, or each of them may esteem them tolerable.
2. To the second: Tho the words of Samuel had implied a necessity incumbent upon the Hebrews to bear all the injuries that their kings should do to them, it could no way relate to us; for he does not speak of all kings, but of such as they had asked, even such as reigned over the slavish Asiaticks their neighbours, who are no less infamous in the world for their baseness and cowardice, than detestable for their idolatry and vices. It was not a plot or trick of Samuel to keep the government in himself and family: Such scurrilous expressions or thoughts are fit only for Filmer, Heylyn, and their disciples: but the prophet being troubled at the folly and wickedness of the people, who chose rather to subject themselves to the irregular will of a man, than to be governed by God and his law, did, by the immediate command of God, declare to them what would be the event of their fury; that since they would be like to their neighbours in sin and folly, he told them they should be like to them in shame and misery; since they desired to cast off the thing that was good, they should suffer evil as the product of their own counsels; and that when they should cry to the Lord from a sense of their miseries, he does not tell them, as our author falsely says, they should have no other remedy against tyrants but crying and praying, but that their cries and prayers should not be heard. It was just that when they had rejected God, he should reject them, and leave them under the weight of the calamities they had brought upon themselves. In all other cases God had ever said, that when his people returned to him, he would hear and save them. When they cried by reason of the oppressions they suffered under the Egyptians, Canaanites, Midianites, Philistines, and others, tho their crimes had deserved them all, yet God heard and relieved them. But when they meditated this final defection from his law, and rejection of his government, God seemed to change his nature, and forget to be gracious; When ye shall cry to me by reason of your king, I win not hear you. This was the strongest dehortation from their wicked intention that can be imagined; but being not enough to reclaim them, they answered, Nay, but we will have a king. 10 They were like to their neighbours in folly and vice, and would be like to them in government; which brought all the calamities upon them that the others suffer’d. But I know not what conclusion can be drawn from hence in favour of our author’s doctrine, unless all nations are obliged furiously to run into the same crimes with the Israelites, or to take upon themselves the same punishment, tho they do not commit the same crimes.
If this was not a precept to the Israelites, instructing them what they should do, but a denunciation of what they should suffer for the evil which they had committed, the Old Testament will afford none; and I hope in due time to answer such as he alleges from the New. Nay, we may conclude there can be none there, because being dictated by the same spirit, which is always uniform and constant to itself, it could not agree with the 17th of Deuteron. which so extremely restrains such a king as God allowed, as not to suffer him in any manner to raise his heart above his brethren; and was said in vain, if at the same time it gave him a power which might not be resisted, or forbade others to resist him if he would not obey the law.
3. To the third: Whatsoever was done by the command of God against Pharaoh king of Egypt, and against the kings of the Canaanites, Midianites, Moabites, Edomites, Amorites or Philistines, by Moses, Joshua, Ehud, Barak, Gideon, Samson, Jephthah, Samuel, and the rest of the judges, comes expressly under the particular precepts and examples promised by me, to show, that God had occasionally commanded, and his servants executed his commands in resisting and destroying the persons of kings, who were their own kings also, if possession was only to be regarded. And tho this be sufficient to overthrow our author’s doctrine; That we are not to examine the titles of kings, whether they be from usurpation, or any other means; but only to look upon the power: 11 Yet they who seek truth, ought not to content themselves merely with victory; or to esteem that a victory, which is obtained by what the schools call argumentum ad hominem, 12 grounded upon a false proposition, and is of no force except against those who are so ill advised to advance it. Therefore laying aside the advantages that may be justly taken against Filmer, for the folly of asserting the same right to be in a usurper, as in a lawful prince; and confessing that tho such as have no title, may and ought to be suppressed as enemies and robbers, when respect and obedience is due to those who are rightly instituted; I say, that none can be claimed by a prince lawfully instituted, if he assume to himself a power which is not granted to him by the law of his institution, because, as Grotius says, his legal power does not extend so far; 13 or turn the power that is given him, to ends contrary to those for which it was given, because he thereby destroys it, and puts himself into the same condition as if it had never been. This is proved by the example of Saul; tho the people sinned grievously in asking a king, yet God assenting to their demand, no prince was ever more solemnly instituted than he. The people chose him by lot from amongst all the tribes, and he was placed in the throne by the general consent of the whole nation: But he turning his lawful power into tyranny, disobeying the word of the prophet, slaying the priests, sparing the Amalekites, and oppressing the innocent, overthrew his own right; and God declared the kingdom, which had been given him under a conditional promise of perpetuity, to be entirely abrogated. This did not only give a right to the whole people of opposing him, but to every particular man; and upon this account David did not only fly from his fury, but resisted it. He made himself head of all the discontented persons that would follow him: he had at first four, and afterwards six hundred men; he kept these in arms against Saul, and lived upon the country; and resolved to destroy Nabal with all his house, only for refusing to send provisions for his men. Finding himself weak and unsafe, he went to Achish the Philistine, and offer’d his service even against Israel. This was never reputed a sin in David, or in those that follow’d him, by any except the wicked court-flatterer Doeg the Edomite, and the drunken fool Nabal, who is said to have been a man of Belial.
If it be objected, that this was rather a flight than a war, in as much as he neither killed Saul nor his men, or that he made war as a king anointed by Samuel; I answer, that he who had six hundred men, and entertain’d as many as came to him, sufficiently shewed his intention rather to resist than to fly: And no other reason can be given why he did not farther pursue that intention, than that he had no greater power: and he who arms six hundred men against his prince, when he can have no more, can no more be said to obey patiently, than if he had so many hundreds of thousands. This holds, tho he kill no man, for that is not the war, but the manner of making it: and ’twere as absurd to say David made no war, because he killed no men, as that Charles the eighth made no war in Italy, because Guicciardini says, he conquer’d Naples without breaking a lance. But as David’s strength increased, he grew to be less sparing of blood. Those who say kings never die, but that the right is immediately transferr’d to the next heirs, cannot deny that Ishbosheth inherited the right of Saul, and that David had no other right of making war against him, than against Saul, unless it were conferred upon him by the tribe of Judah that made him king. If this be true, it must be confessed that not only a whole people, but a part of them, may at their own pleasure abrogate a kingdom, tho never so well established by common consent; for none was ever more solemnly instituted than that of Saul; and few subjects have more strongly obliged themselves to be obedient. If it be not true, the example of Nabal is to be follow’d; and David, tho guided by the Spirit of God, deserves to be condemned as a fellow that rose up against his master.
If to elude this it be said, that God instituted and abrogated Saul’s kingdom, and that David to whom the right was transmitted, might therefore proceed against him and his heirs as private men: I answer, that if the obedience due to Saul proceeded from God’s institution, it can extend to none but those who are so peculiarly instituted and anointed by his command, and the hand of his prophet, which will be of little advantage to the kings that can give no testimony of such an institution or unction; and an indisputable right will remain to every nation of abrogating the kingdoms which are instituted by and for themselves. But as David did resist the authority of Saul and Ishbosheth, without assuming the power of a king, tho designed by God, and anointed by the prophet, till he was made king of Judah by that tribe; or arrogating to himself a power over the other tribes till he was made king by them, and had enter’d into a covenant with them; ’tis much more certain that the persons and authority of ill kings, who have no title to the privileges due to Saul by virtue of his institution, may be justly resisted; which is as much as is necessary to my purpose.