the Commonwealth be named wherever the Multitude or so much as the major part of it consented either by Voice or Procuration to the Election of a Prince not observing that if an Answer could not be given he did overthrow the Rights of all the Princes that are or ever have bin in the world for if the Liberty of one man cannot be limited or diminished by one or any number of men and none can give away the Right of another 't is plain that the Ambition of one man or of many a faction of Citizens or the mutiny of an Army cannot give a Right to any over the Liberties of a whole Nation Those who are so set up have their root in Violence or Fraud and are rather to be accounted Robbers and Pirats than Magistrates Leo Africanus observing in his History that since the extinction of Mahomet's Race to whom his Countrymen thought God had given the Empire of the World their Princes did not come in by the consent of those Nations which they governed says that they are esteemed Thieves and that on this account the most honourable Men among the Arabians and Moors scorn to eat drink or make Alliances with them and if the case were as general as that Author makes it no better Rule could be any where followed by honourable and worthy Men. But a good Cause must not be lost by the fault of an ill Advocate the Rights of Kings must not perish because Filmer knows not how to defend or dos maliciously betray them I have already proved that David and divers of the Judges were chosen by all Israel Jeroboam by ten Tribes all the Kings of Rome except Tarquin the Proud by the whole City I may add many Examples of the Saxons in our own Country Ina and Offa were made Kings omnium consensu These All are expressed plainly by the words Archiepiscopis Episcopis Abbatibus Senatoribus Ducibus Populo terrae Egbert and Ethelward came to the Crown by the same Authority Omnium consensu Rex creatur Ethelwolf the Monk Necessitate cogente factus est Rex consensus publicus in regem dari petiit Ethelstan tho a Bastard Electus est magno consensu Optimatum a Populo consalutatus In the like manner Edwin's Government being disliked they chose Edgar Vnanimi omnium conspiratione Edwino dejecto eligerunt Deo dictante Edgarum in Regem annuente Populo And in another place Edgarus ab omni Anglorum Populo electus est Ironside being deâ—d Canutus was received by the general consent of all Juraverunt illi quod eum regem sibi eligere vellent foedus etiam cum principibus omni populo ipse illi cum ipso percusserunt Whereupon Omnium consensu super totam Angliam Canutus coronatur Hardicanutus gaudenter ab omnibus suscipitur electus est The same Author says that Edward the Confessor Electus est in regem ab omni populo And another Omnium Electione in Edwardum concordatur Tho the name of Conqueror be odiously given to William the Norman he had the same Title to the Crown with his Predecessors In magna exultatione a Clero Populo susceptus ab omnibus Rex acclamatus I cannot recite all the Examples of this kind that the History of almost all Nations furnishes unless I should make a Volume in bulk not inferior to the Book of Martyrs But those which I have mentioned out of the Sacred Roman and English History being more than sufficient to answer our Author's Challenge I take liberty to add that tho there could not be one Example produced of a Prince or any other Magistrate chosen by the general consent of the People or by the major part of them it could be of no advantage to the Cause he has undertaken to maintain For when a People hath either indefinitely or under certain Conditions and Limitations resigned their Power into the hands of a certain number of men or agreed upon Rules according to which persons should from time to time be deputed for the management of their Affairs the Acts of those persons if their Power be without restrictions are of the same value as the Acts of the whole Nation and the assent of every individual man is comprehended in them If the Power be limited whatsoever is done according to that limitation has the same Authority If it do therefore appear as is testified by the Laws and Histories of all our Northern Nations that the power of every People is either wholly or to such a degree as is necessary for creating Kings granted to their several Gemotes Diets Cortez Assemblies of Estates Parliaments and the like all the Kings that they have any where or at any time chosen do reign by the same authority and have the same right as if every individual man of those Nations had assented to their Election But that these Gemotes Diets and other Assemblies of State have every where had such Powers and executed them by rejecting or setting up Kings and that the Kings now in being among us have received their beginning from such Acts has bin fully proved and is so plain in it self that none but those who are grosly stupid or impudent can deny it which is enough to shew that all Kings are not set up by violence deceit faction of a sew powerful men or the mutinies of Armies but from the consent of such multitudes as joining together frame Civil Societies and either in their own persons at general Assemblies or by their Delegates confer a just and legal Power upon them which our Author rejecting he dos as far as in him lies prove them all to be Usurpers and Tyrants SECT VI. They who have a right of chusing a King have the right of making a King THO the Right of Magistrates do essentially depend upon the consent of those they govern it is hardly worth our pains to examin Whether the silent acceptation of a Governor by part of the People be an argument of their concurring in the election of him or by the same reason the tacit consent of the whole Commonwealth may be maintained for when the question is concerning Right fraudulent surmises are of no value much less will it from thence follow that a Prince commanding by Succession Conquest or Usurpation may be said to be elected by the People for evident marks of dissent are often given Some declare their hatred other murmur more privately many oppose the Governour or Government and succeed according to the measure of their Strength Virtue or Furtune Many would resist but cannot and it were ridiculous to say that the Inhabitants of Greece the Kingdom of Naples or Dutchy of Tuscany do tacitly assent to the Government of the Great Turk King of Spain or Duke of Florence when nothing is more certain than that those miserable Nations abhor the Tyrannies they are under and if they were not mastered by a Power that
retain it in themselves But whether that were observed or not by Bellarmin makes nothing to our Cause which we defend and not him The next Point is subtile and he thinks thereby to have brought Bellarmin and such as agree with his Principle to a Nonplus He doubts who shall judg of the lawful Cause of changing the Government and says It is a pestilent Conclusion to place that Power in the Multitude But why should this be esteemed pestilent or to whom If the allowance of such a Power to the Senate was pestilent to Nero it was beneficial to Mankind and the denial of it which would have given to Nero an opportunity of continuing in his Villanies would have been pestilent to the best Men whom he endeavoured to destroy and to all others that received benefit from them But this Question depends upon another for if Governments are constituted for the Pleasure Greatness or Profit of one Man he must not be interrupted for the opposing of his Will is to overthrow the Institution On the other side if the Good of the governed be sought care must be taken that the End be accomplished tho it be with the prejudice of the Governor If the Power be originally in the Multitude and one or more Men to whom the exercise of it or a part of it was committed had no more than their Brethren till it was conferred on him or them it cannot be believed that rational Creatures would advance one or a few of their Equals above themselves unless in consideration of their own Good and then I find no inconvenience in leaving to them a right of judging whether this be duly performed or not We say in general He that institutes may also abrogate most especially when the Institution is not only by but for himself If the Multitude therefore do institute the Multitude may abrogate and they themselves or those who succeed in the same Right can only be fit Judges of the performance of the Ends of the Institution Our Author may perhaps say The publick Peace may be hereby disturbed but he ought to know There can be no Peace where there is no Justice nor any Justice if the Government instituted for the good of a Nation be turned to its ruin But in plain English the Inconvenience with which such as he endeavour to afright us is no more than that He or They to whom the Power is given may be restrained or chastised if they betray their Trust which I presume will displease none but such as would rather submit Rome with the best part of the World depending upon it to the Will of Caligula or Nero than Caligula or Nero to the Judgment of the Senate and People that is rather to expose many great and brave Nations to be destroyed by the rage of a savage Beast than subject that Beast to the Judgment of all or the choicest Men of them who can have no interest to pervert them or other reason to be severe to him than to prevent the Mischiefs he would commit and to save the People from ruin In the next place he recites an Argument of Bellarmin That 't is evident in Scripture God hath ordained Powers but God hath given them to no particular Person because by Nature all Men are equal therefore he hath given Power to the People or Multitude I leave him to untie that Knot if he can but as 't is usual with Impostors he goes about by Surmises to elude the Force of his Argument pretending that in some other place he had contradicted himself and acknowledged that every Man was Prince of his Posterity because that if many Men had bin created together they ought all to have bin Princes of their Posterity But 't is not necessary to argue upon Passages cited from Authors when he that cites them may be justly suspected of Fraud and neither indicates the Place nor Treatise lest it should be detected most especially when we are no way concerned in the Author's Credit I take Bellarmin's first Argument to be strong and if he in some place did contradict it the hurt is only to himself but in this Particular I should not think he did it tho I were sure our Author had faithfully repeated his words for in allowing every Man to be Prince of his Posterity he only says every Man should be chief in his own Family and have a Power over his Children which no man denies But he dos not understand Latin who thinks that the word Princeps doth in any degree signify an absolute Power or a right of transmitting it to his Heirs and Successors upon which the Doctrine of our Author wholly depends On the contrary The same Law that gave to my Father a Power over me gives me the like over my Children and if I had a thousand Brothers each of them would have the same over their Children Bellarmin's first Argument therefore being no way enervated by the alledged Passage I may justly insist upon it and add That God hath not only declared in Scripture but written on the Heart of every Man that as it is better to be clothed than to go naked to live in a House than to lie in the Fields to be defended by the united Force of a Multitude than to place the hopes of his Security solely in his own strength and to prefer the Benefits of Society before a savage and barbarous Solitude He also taught them to frame such Societies and to establish such Laws as were necessary to preserve them And we may as reasonably affirm that Mankind is for ever obliged to use no other Clothes than leather Breeches like Adam to live in hollow Trees and eat Acorns or to seek after the Model of his House for a Habitation and to use no Arms except such as were known to the Patriarchs as to think all Nations for ever obliged to be governed as they governed their Families This I take to be the genuine sense of the Scripture and the most respectful way of interpreting the Places relating to our purpose 'T is hard to imagine that God who hath left all things to our choice that are not evil in themselves should tie us up in this and utterly incredible that he should impose upon us a necessity of following his Will without declaring it to us Instead of constituting a Government over his People consisting of many Parts which we take to be a Model fit to be imitated by others he might have declared in a word That the eldest Man of the eldest Line should be King and that his Will ought to be their Law This had bin more sutable to the Goodness and Mercy of God than to leave us in a dark Labyrinth full of Precipices or rather to make the Government given to his own People a false Light to lead us to destruction This could not be avoided if there were such a thing as our Author calls a Lord Paramount over his Childrens Children to all
from the ardency of a paternal Affection When Nero by the death of Helvidius Priscus and Thraseas endeavoured to cut up Vertue by the roots ipsam exscindere virtutem he did it because he knew it was good for the World that there should be no vertuous man in it When he fired the City and when Caligula wished the People had but one Neck that he might strike it off at one blow they did it through a prudent care of their Childrens good knowing that it would be for their advantage to be destroyed and that the empty desolated World would be no more troubled with popular Seditions By the same rule Pharaoh Eglon Nabuchodonosor Antiochus Herod and the like were Fathers of the Hebrews And without looking far backward or depending upon the Faith of History we may enumerate many Princes who in a paternal care of their People have not yielded to Nero or Caligula If our Author say true all those Actions of theirs which we have ever attributed to the utmost excess of Pride Cruelty Avarice and Perfidiousness proceeded from their princely Wisdom and fatherly Kindness to the Nations under them and we are beholden to him for the discovery of so great a Mystery which hath bin hid from mankind from the beginning of the World to this day if not we may still look upon them as Children of the Devil and continue to believe that Princes as well as other Magistrates were set up by the People for the publick Good that the Praises given to such as are Wise Just and Good are purely personal and can belong only to those who by a due exercise of their Power do deserve it and to no others CHAP. II. SECT I. That 't is natural for Nations to govern or to chuse Governors and that Vertue only gives a natural preference of one man above another or reason why one should be chosen rather than another IN this Chapter our Author fights valiantly against Bellarmin and Suarez seeming to think himself victorious if he can shew that either of them hath contradicted the other or himself but being no way concerned in them I shall leave their followers to defend their Quarrel My work is to seek after Truth and tho they may have said some things in matters not concerning their beloved Cause of Popery that are agreeable to Reason Law or Scripture I have little hope of finding it among those who apply themselves chiefly to School-Sophistry as the best means to support Idolatry That which I maintain is the Cause of Mankind which ought not to suffer tho Champions of corrupt Principles have weakly defended or maliciously betraid it and therefore not at all relying on their Authority I intend to reject whatsoever they say that agrees not with Reason Scripture or the approved Examples of the best polished Nations He also attacks Plato and Aristotle upon whose Opinions I set a far greater value in as much as they seem to have penetrated more deeply into the secrets of human Nature and not only to have judged more rightly of the Interests of Mankind but also to have comprehended in their Writings the Wisdom of the Grecians with all that they had learnt from the Phaenicians Egyptians and Hebrews which may lead us to the discovery of the Truth we seek If this be our work the question is not whether it be a Paradox or a received Opinion That People naturally govern or chuse Governors but whether it be true or not for many Paradoxes are true and the most gross Errors have often bin most common Tho I hope to prove that what he calls a Paradox is not only true but a Truth planted in the hearts of men and acknowledged so to be by all that have hearkned to the voice of Nature and disapproved by none but such as through wickedness stupidity or baseness of Spirit seem to have degenerated into the worst of beasts and to have retained nothing of men but the outward shape or the ability of doing those mischiefs which they have learnt from their Master the Devil We have already seen that the Patriarchical Power resembles not the Regal in principle or practice that the beginning and continuance of Regal Power was contrary to and inconsistent with the Patriarchical that the first Fathers of mankind left all their Children independent on each other and in an equal liberty of providing for themselves that every man continued in this liberty till the number so increased that they became troublesom and dangerous to each other and finding no other remedy to the disorders growing or like to grow among them joined many Families into one civil Body that they might the better provide for the conveniency safety and defence of themselves and their Children This was a collation of every man's private Right into a publick Stock and no one having any other right than what was common to all except it were that of Fathers over their Children they were all equally free when their Fathers were dead and nothing could induce them to join and lessen that natural liberty by joining in Societies but the hopes of a publick Advantage Such as were wise and valiant procured it by setting up regular Governments and placing the best Men in the administration whilst the weakest and basest fell under the power of the most boisterous and violent of their Neighbours Those of the first sort had their root in Wisdom and Justice and are called lawful Kingdoms or Commonwealths and the Rules by which they are governed are known by the name of Laws These Governments have ever bin the Nurses of Vertue The Nations living under them have flourished in Peace and Happiness or made Wars with Glory and Advantage whereas the other sort springing from Violence and Wrong have ever gone under the odious title of Tyrannies and by fomenting Vices like to those from whence they grew have brought shame and misery upon those who were subject to them This appears so plainly in Scripture that the assertors of Liberty want no other Patron than God himself and his Word so fully justifies what we contend for that it were not necessary to make use of human Authority if our Adversaries did not oblige us to examine such as are cited by them This in our present case would be an easy work if our Author had rightly marked the passages he would make use of or had bin faithful in his Interpretation or Explication of such as he truly cites but failing grosly in both 't is hard to trace him He cites the 16th Chapter of the third Book of Aristotle's Politicks and I do not find there is more than twelve or tho that Wound might be cured by saying the Words are in the twelfth his Fraud in perverting the Sense were unpardonable tho the other mistake be passed over 'T is true that Aristotle doth there seem to doubt whether there be any such thing as one man naturally a Lord over many Citizens since a City consists of Equals but
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 Atchievements is improved to the general advantage They undertake hazards and labours for the Government when 't is justly administred 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 were killed in one day the City did lament the loss but was not so weakned to give any advantage to their Enemies and when every one of those who had bin 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 Souldiers 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 Fidlers Jesters Chariot-drivers Players Bawds Flatterers Ministers of the most impure Lusts or idle babling hypocritical Philosophers not much better than they The Emperors Courts were always crouded 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 'T is 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 advantagious 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 't is 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 Imployments 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 Cesars began to reign He who dos not believe this may see whether the like did not happen in all the other Commonwealths of Italy and Grecce or if modern examples are thought to be of more value let him examin 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 befals 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 knowledg of any thing 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 alledg 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 subtil powerful and bold King of Spain had by the League of Cambray combin'd against the Venetians gained the Battel of La Ghirad'adda taken Alviano their General prisoner deprived them of all
sense of the words as they are understood in our Language by those who give them and conducing to the ends for which they are given which can be no other than to defend us from all manner of arbitrary Power and to fix a rule to which we are to conform our Actions and from which according to our deserts we may expect reward or punishment And those who by prevarications cavils or equivocations endeavour to dissolve these Obligations do either maliciously betray the cause of Kings by representing them to the world as men who prefer the Satisfaction of their irregular Appetites before the performance of their duty and trample under foot the most sacred bonds of human Society or from the grossest ignorance do not see that by teaching Nations how little they can rely upon the Oaths of their Princes they instruct them as little to observe their own and that not only because men are generally inclined to follow the examples of those in power but from a most certain conclusion that he who breaks his part of a Contract cannot without the utmost impudence and folly expect the performance of the other nothing being more known amongst men than that all Contracts are of such mutual obligation that he who fails of his part discharges the other If this be so between man and man it must needs be so between one and many millions of men If he were free because he says he is every man must be free also when he pleases if a private man who receives no benefit or perhaps prejudice from a Contract be obliged to perform the conditions much more are Kings who receive the greatest advantages the world can give As they are not by themselves nor for themselves so they are not different in specie from other men they are born live and die as we all do The same Law of Truth and Justice is given to all by God and Nature and perhaps I may say the performance of it is most rigorously exacted from the greatest of men The liberty of Perjury cannot be a privilege annexed to Crowns and 't is absurd to think that the most venerable Authority that can be conferred upon a man is increased by a liberty-to commit or impunity in committing such crimes as are the greatest aggravations of infamy to the basest villains in the world SECT XVIII The next in blood to deceased Kings cannot generally be said to be Kings till they are crowned 'T IS hereupon usually objected that Kings do not come in by Contract nor by Oath but are Kings by or according to proximity of Blood before they are crowned Tho this be a bold Proposition I will not say 't is universally false 'T is possible that in some places the rule of Succession may be set down so precisely that in some cases every man may be able to see and know the sense as well as the Person designed to be the Successor but before I acknowledg it to be universally true I must desire to know what this rule of Succession is and from whence it draws its original I think I may be excused if I make these scruples because I find the thing in dispute to be variously adjudged in several places and have observed five different manners of disposing Crowns esteemed Hereditary besides an infinite number of collateral Controversies arising from them of which we have divers examples and if there be one universal rule appointed one of these only can be right and all the others must be vicious The first gives the inheritance to the eldest Male of the eldest legitimate Line as in France according to that which they call the Salique Law The second to the eldest legitimate Male of the reigning Family as antiently in Spain according to which the Brother of the deceased King has bin often if not always preferr'd before the Son if he were elder as may appear by the dispute between Corbis and Orsua cited before from Titus Livius and in the same Country during the reign of the Goths the eldest Male succeeded whether Legitimate or Illegitimate The fourth receives Females or their Descendents without any other condition distinguishing them from Males except that the younger Brother is preferr'd before the elder Sister but the daughter of the elder Brother is preferr'd before the Son of the younger The fifth gives the Inheritance to Females under a condition as in Sweden where they inherit unless they marry out of the Country without the consent of the Estates according to which rule Charles Gustavus was chosen as any Stranger might have bin tho Son to a Sister of Gustavus Adolphus who by marrying a German Prince had forfeited her right And by the same act of Estates by which her eldest Son was chosen and the Crown entailed upon the Heirs of his Body her second Son the Prince Adolphus was wholly excluded Till these questions are decided by a Judg of such an undoubted Authority that all men may safely submit 't is hard for any man who really seeks the satisfaction of his Conscience to know whether the Law of God and Nature tho he should believe there is one general Law do justify the Customs of the antient Medes and Sabeans mentioned by the Poet who admitted Females or those of France which totally exclude them as unfit to reign over men and utterly unable to perform the duty of a supreme Magistrate as we see they are every where excluded from the exercise of all other Offices in the Commonwealth If it be said that we ought to follow the Customs of our own Country I answer that those of our own Country deserve to be observed because they are of our own Country But they are no more to be called the Laws of God and Nature than those of France or Germany and tho I do not believe that any general Law is appointed I wish I were sure that our Customs in this point were not more repugnant to the light of Nature and prejudicial to our selves than those of some other Nations But if I should be so much an Englishman to think the will of God to have bin more particularly revealed to our Ancestors than to any other Nation and that all of them ought to learn from us yet it would be difficult to decide many questions that may arise For tho the Parliament in the 36th of Henry the sixth made an Act in favour of Richard Duke of York descended from a Daughter of Mortimer who married the Daughter of the Duke of Clarence elder Brother to John of Gaunt they rather asserted their own power of giving the Crown to whom they pleased than determined the question For if they had believed that the Crown had belonged to him by a general and eternal Law they must immediately have rejected Henry as a Usurper and put Richard into the possession of his Right which they did not And tho they did something like to this in the cases of Maud the Empress in relation
beyond or contrary to the true meaning of it private men who swear obedience ad legem swear no obedience extra or contra Legem whatsoever they promise or swear can detract nothing from the publick Liberty which the Law principally intends to preserve Tho many of them may be obliged in their several Stations and Capacities to render peculiar services to a Prince the People continue as free as the internal thoughts of a man and cannot but have a right to preserve their Liberty or avenge the violation If matters are well examined perhaps not many Magistrates can pretend to much upon the title of merit most especially if they or their progenitors have continued long in Office The conveniences annexed to the exercise of the Sovereign power may be thought sufficient to pay such scores as they grow due even to the best and as things of that nature are handled I think it will hardly be found that all Princes can pretend to an irresistible power upon the account of beneficence to their People When the family of Medices came to be masters of Tuscany that Country was without dispute in men mony and arms one of the most flourishing Provinces in the World as appears by Macchiavel's account and the relation of what happened between Charles the eighth and the Magistrates of Florence which I have mentioned already from Guicciardin Now whoever shall consider the strength of that Country in those days together with what it might have bin in the space of a hundred and forty years in which they have had no war nor any other plague than the extortion fraud rapin and cruelty of their Princes and compare it with their present desolate wretched and contemptible condition may if he please think that much veneration is due to the Princes that govern them but will never make any man believe that their Title can be grounded upon beneficence The like may be said of the Duke of Savoy who pretending upon I know not what account that every Peasant in the Dutchy ought to pay him two Crowns every half year did in 1662 subtilly find our that in every year there were thirteen halves so that a poor man who had nothing but what he gained by hard labour was through his fatherly Care and Beneficence forced to pay six and twenty Crowns to his Royal Highness to be employ'd in his discreet and virtuous pleasures at Turin The condition of the Seventeen Provinces of the Netherlands and even of Spain it self when they fell to the house of Austria was of the same nature and I will confess as much as can be required if any other marks of their Government do remain than such as are manifest evidences of their Pride Avarice Luxury and Cruelty France in outward appearance makes a better show but nothing in this world is more miserable than that people under the fatherly care of their triumphant Monarch The best of their condition is like Asses and Mastiff-dogs to work and fight to be oppressed and kill'd for him and those among them who have any understanding well know that their industry courage and good success is not only unprofitable but destructive to them and that by increasing the power of their Master they add weight to their own Chains And if any Prince or succession of Princes have made a more modest use of their Power or more faithfully discharged the trust reposed in them it must be imputed peculiarly to them as a testimony of their personal Virtue and can have no effect upon others The Rights therefore of Kings are not grounded upon Conquest the Liberties of Nations do not arise from the Grants of their Princes the Oath of Allegiance binds no privat man to more than the Law directs and has no influence upon the whole Body of every Nation Many Princes are known to their Subjects only by the injuries losses and mischiefs brought upon them such as are good and just ought to be rewarded for their personal Virtue but can confer no right upon those who no way resemble them and whoever pretends to that merit must prove it by his Actions Rebellion being nothing but a renewed War can never be against a Government that was not established by War and of it self is neither good nor evil more than any other War but is just or unjust according to the cause or manner of it Besides that Rebellion which by Samuel is compar'd to Witchcraft is not of private men or a People against the Prince but of the Prince against God The Israelites are often said to have rebelled against the Law Word or Command of God but tho they frequently opposed their Kings I do not find Rebellion imputed to them on that account nor any ill character put upon such actions We are told also of some Kings who had bin subdued and afterwards rebelled against Chedorlaomer and other Kings but their cause is not blamed and we have some reason to believe it good because Abraham took part with those who had rebelled However it can be of no prejudice to the cause I defend for tho it were true that those subdued Kings could not justly rise against the person who had subdued them or that generally no King being once vanquished could have a right of Rebellion against his Conqueror it could have no relation to the actions of a people vindicating their own Laws and Liberties against a Prince who violates them for that War which never was can never be renewed And if it be true in any case that hands and swords are given to men that they only may be Slaves who have no courage it must be when Liberty is overthrown by those who of all men ought with the utmost industry and vigour to have defended it That this should be known is not only necessary for the safety of Nations but advantagious to such Kings as are wise and good They who know the frailty of human Nature will always distrust their own and desiring only to do what they ought will be glad to be restrain'd from that which they ought not to do Being taught by reason and experience that Nations delight in the Peace and Justice of a good Government they will never fear a general Insurrection whilst they take care it be rightly administred and finding themselves by this means to be safe will never be unwilling that their Children or Successors should be obliged to tread in the same steps If it be said that this may sometimes cause disorders I acknowledg it but no human condition being perfect such a one is to be chosen which carries with it the most tolerable inconveniences And it being much better that the irregularities and excesses of a Prince should be restrained or suppressed than that whole Nations should perish by them those Constitutions that make the best provision against the greatest evils are most to be commended If Governments were instituted to gratify the lusts of one man those could not be good that