had a power like to that of the Sanhedrin and by them Kings were condemned to fines imprisonment banishment and death as appears by the examples of Pausanias Clonymus Leonidas Agis and others The Hebrew Discipline was the same Reges Davidicae stirpis says Maimonides judicabant judicabantur They gave testimony in judgment when they were called and testimony was given against them Whereas the Kings of Israel as the same Author says were superbi corde elati spretores legis nec judicabant nec judicabantur proud insolent and contemners of the Law who would neither judg nor submit to judgment as the Law commanded The Fruits they gathered were sutable to the Seed they had sown their Crimes were not left unpunish'd they who despised the Law were destroy'd without Law and when no ordinary course could be taken against them for their excesses they were overthrown by force and the Crown within the space of sew years transported into nine several Families with the utter extirpation of those that had possess'd it On the other hand there never was any Sedition against the Spartan Kings and after the moderate Discipline according to which they liv'd was established none of them died by the hands of their Subjects except only two who were put to death in a way of Justice the Kingdom continued in the same races till Cleomenes was defeated by Antigonus and the Government overthrown by the insolence of the Macedonians This gave occasion to those bestial Tyrants Nabis and Machanidas to set up such a Government as our Author recommends to the World which immediately brought destruction upon themselves and the whole City The Germans who pretended to be descended from the Spartans had the like Government Their Princes according to their merit had the credit of perswading not the power of commanding and the question was not what part of the Government their Kings would allow to the Nobility and People but what they would give to their Kings and 't is not much material to our present dispute whether they learnt this from some obscure knowledg of the Law which God gave to his People or whether led by the light of reason which is also from God they discovered what was altogether conformable to that Law Whoever understands the affairs of Germany knows that the present Emperors notwithstanding their haughty Title have a power limited as in the days of Tacitus If they are good and wise they may perswade but they can command no farther than the Law allows They do not admit the Princes Noblemen and Cities to the power which they all exercise in their general Diets and each of them within their own Precincts but they exercise that which has bin by publick consent bestow'd upon them All the Kingdoms peopled from the North observed the same rules In all of them the powers were divided between the Kings the Nobility Clergy and Commons and by the Decrees of Councils Diets Parliaments Cortez and Assemblies of Estates Authority and Liberty were so balanced that such Princes as assumed to themselves more than the Law did permit were severely punished and those who did by force or fraud invade Thrones were by force thrown down from them This was equally beneficial to Kings and People The Powers as Theopompus King of Sparta said were most safe when they were least envied and hated Lewis the 11th of France was one of the first that broke this Golden Chain and by more subtil Arts than had bin formerly known subverted the Laws by which the fury of those Kings had bin restrain'd and taught others to do the like tho all of them have not so well saved themselves from punishment James the third of Scotland was one of his most apt Scholars and Buchanan in his life says That he was precipitated into all manner of Infamy by men of the most abject condition that the corruption of those times and the ill Example of neighbouring Princes were considerable motives to pervert him for Edward the fourth of England Charles of Burgundy Lewis the 11th of France and John the second of Portugal had already laid the Foundations of Tyranny in those Countries and Richard the third was then most cruelly exercising the same in the Kingdom of England This could not have bin if all the Power had always bin in Kings and neither the People nor the Nobility had ever had any For no man can be said to gain that which he and his Predecessors always possessed or to take from others that which they never had nor to set up any sort of Government if it had bin always the same But the foresaid Lewis the 11th did assume to himself a Power above that of his Predecessors and Philip de Commines shews the ways by which he acquir'd it with the miserable effects of his Acquisition both to himself and to his people Modern Authors observe that the change was made by him and for that reason he is said by Mezeray and others to have brought those Kings out of Guardianship they were not therefore so till he did emancipate them Nevertheless this Emancipation had no resemblance to the unlimited Power of which our Author dreams The General Assemblies of Estates were often held long after his death and continued in the exercise of the Sovereign Power of the Nation Davila speaking of the General Assembly held at Orleans in the time of Francis the second asserts the whole Power of the Nation to have bin in them Monsieur de Thou says the same thing and adds that the King dying suddenly the Assembly continued even at the desire of the Council in the exercise of that Power till they had setled the Regency and other Affairs of the highest importance according to their own judgment Hottoman a Lawyer of that Time and Nation famous for his Learning Judgment and Integrity having diligently examin'd the antient Laws and Histories of that Kingdom distinctly proves that the French Nation never had any Kings but of their own chusing that their Kings had no Power except what was conferr'd upon them and that they had bin removed when they excessively abused or readred themselves unworthy of that Trust. This is sufficiently clear by the forecited examples of Pharamond's Grandchildren and the degenerated Races of Meroveus and Pepin of which many were deposed some of the nearest in Blood excluded and when their Vices seemed to be incorrigible they were wholly rejected All this was done by virtue of that Rule which they call the Salique Law And tho some of our Princes pretending to the Inheritance of that Crown by marrying the Heirs General denied that there was any such thing no man can say that for the space of above twelve hundred years Females or their Descendents who are by that Law excluded have ever bin thought to have any right to the Crown And no Law unless it be explicitly given by God can be of greater Authority than one which
it Some being incensed against their Kings as the Romans exasperated by the Villanies of Tarquin and the Tuscans by the Cruelties of Mezentius abolished the name of King Others as Athens Sicion Argos Corinth Thebes and the Latins did not stay for such extremities but set up other Governments when they thought it best for themselves and by this conduct prevented the evils that usually fall upon Nations when their Kings degenerate into Tyrants and a Nation is brought to enter into a War by which all may be lost and nothing can be gained which was not their own before The Romans took not this salutary Course the mischief was grown up before they perceived or set themselves against it and when the effects of Pride Avarice Cruelty and Lust were grown to such a height that they could no longer be endured they could not free themselves without a War and whereas upon other occasions their Victories had brought them increase of Strength Territory and Glory the only reward of their Virtue in this was to be delivered from a Plague they had unadvisedly suffered to grow up among them I confess this was most of all to be esteemed for if they had bin overthrown their condition under Tarquin would have bin more intolerable than if they had fallen under the power of Pirrhus or Hannibal and all their following Prosperity was the fruit of their recover'd Liberty But it had bin much better to have reformed the State after the death of one of their good Kings than to be brought to fight for their Lives against that abominable Tyrant Our Author in pursuance of his aversion to all that is good disapproves this and wanting reasons to justify his dislike according to the custom of Impostors and Cheats hath recourse to the ugly terms of a back-door Sedition and Faction as if it were not as just for a People to lay aside their Kings when they receive nothing but evil and can rationally hope for no benefit by them as for others to set them up in expectation of good from them But if the truth be examin'd nothing will be found more orderly than the changes of Government or of the Persons and Races of those that governed which have bin made by many Nations When Pharamond's Grandson seemed not to deserve the Crown he had worn the French gave it to Meroveus who more resembled him in Virtue In process of time when this Race also degenerated they were rejected and Pepin advanced to the Throne and the most remote in blood of his Descendents having often bin preferred before the nearest and Bastards before the legitimate Issue they were at last all laid aside and the Crown remains to this day in the Family of Hugh Capet on whom it was bestow'd upon the rejection of Charles of Lorrain In like manner the Castilians took Don Sancho sirnamed the Brave second Son to Alphonso the Wise before Alphonso el Desheredado Son of the elder Brother Ferdinand The States of Arragon preferred Martin Brother to John the first before Mary his Daughter married to the Count de Foix tho Females were not excluded from the Succession and the House of Austria now enjoys that Crown from Joan Daughter to Ferdinand In that and many other Kingdoms Bastards have bin advanced before their legitimate Brothers Henry Count of Trastamara Bastard to Alphonso the II King of Castile received the Crown as a reward of the good Service he had done to his Country against his Brother Peter the Cruel without any regard had to the House of La Cerda descended from Alphonso el Desheredado which to this day never enjoy'd any greater honour than that of Duke de Medina Celi Not long after the Portuguese conceiving a dislike of their King Ferdinand and his Daughter married to John King of Castile rejected her and her Uncle by the Father's side and gave the Crown to John a Knight of Calatrava and Bastard to an Uncle of Ferdinand their King About the beginning of this age the Swedes deposed their King Sigismund for being a Papist and made Charles his Uncle King Divers Examples of the like nature in England have bin already mentioned All these transportations of Crowns were Acts performed by Assemblies of the three Estates in the several Kingdoms and these Crowns are to this day enjoy'd under Titles derived from such as were thus brought in by the deposition or rejection of those who according ing to descent of blood had better Titles than the present Possessors The Acts therefore were lawful and good or they can have no Title at all and they who made them had a just power so to do If our Author can draw any advantage from the resemblance of Regality that he finds in the Roman Consuls and Athenian Archons I shall without envy leave him the enjoyment of it but I am much mistaken if that do not prove my assertion that those Governments were composed of the three simple species for if the Monarchical part was in them it cannot be denied that the Aristocratical was in the Senate or Areopagi and the Democratical in the People But he ought to have remembred that if there was something of Monarchical in those Governments when they are said to have bin Popular there was something of Aristocratical and Democratical in those that were called Regal which justifies my proposition on both sides and shews that the denomination was taken from the part that prevail'd and if this were not so the Governments of France Spain and Germany might be called Democracies and those of Rome and Athens Monarchies because the People have a part in the one and an image of Monarchy was preserved in the other If our Author will not allow the cases to be altogether equal I think he will find no other difference than that the Consuls and Archons were regularly made by the Votes of the consenting People and orderly resign'd their Power when the time was expir'd for which it was given whereas Tarquin Dionysius Agathocles Nabis Phalaris Cesar and almost all his Successors whom he takes for compleat Monarchs came in by violence fraud and corruption by the help of the worst men by the slaughter of the best and most commonly when the method was once establish'd by that of his Predecessor who if our Author say true was the Father of his Country and his also This was the root and foundation of the only Government that deserves praise this is that which stampt the divine character upon Agathocles Dionysius and Cesar and that had bestow'd the same upon Manlius Marius or Catiline if they had gain'd the Monarchies they affected But I suppose that such as God has bless'd with better judgment and a due regard to Justice and Truth will say that all those who have attained to such greatness as destroys all manner of good in the places where they have set up themselves by the most detestable Villanies came in by a backdoor and that such Magistrates as were
against them and placed the only hopes of their safety in the publick Calamity and lawful Kings when they have fallen into the first degree of madness so as to assume a power above that which was allowed by the Law have in fury proved equal to the worst Usurpers Clonymus of Sparta was of this sort He became says Plutarch an Enemy to the City because they would not allow him the absolute Power he affected and brought Pyrrhus the fiercest of their Enemies with a mighty and excellently well disciplin'd Army to destroy them Vortigern the Britan call'd in the Saxons with the ruin of his own People who were incensed against him for his Lewdness Cruelty and Baseness King John for the like reasons offer'd the Kingdom of England to the Moors and to the Pope Peter the Cruel and other Kings of Castille brought vast Armies of Moors into Spain to the ruin of their own People who detested their Vices and would not part with their Privileges Many other examples of the like nature might be alledged and I wish our own experience did not too well prove that such designs are common Let him that doubts this examin the Causes of the Wars with Scotland in the Years 1639 1640 the slaughters of the Protestants in Ireland 1641 the whole course of Alliances and Treaties for the space of fourscore Years the friendship contracted with the French frequent Quarrels with the Dutch together with other circumstances that are already made too publick if he be not convinced by this he may soon see a man in the Throne who had rather be a Tributary to France than a lawful King of England whilst either Parliament or People shall dare to dispute his Commands insist upon their own Rights or defend a Religion inconsistent with that which he has espoused and then the truth will be so evident as to require no proof Grotius was never accused of dealing hardly with Kings or laying too much weight upon imaginary cases nevertheless amongst other reasons that in his opinion justify Subjects in taking arms against their Princes he alledges this propter immanem saevitiam and quando Rex in Populi exitium fertur in as much as it is contrary to and inconsistent with the ends for which Governments are instituted which were most impertinent if no such thing could be for that which is not can have no effect There are therefore Princes who seek the destruction of their People or none could be justly opposed on that account If King James was of another opinion I could wish the course of his Government had bin suted to it When he said that whilst he had the power of making Judges and Bishops he would make that to be Law and Gospel which best pleased him and filled those places with such as turned both according to his Will and Interests I must think that by overthrowing Justice which is the rule of civil and moral Actions and perverting the Gospel which is the light of the spiritual man he left nothing unattempted that he durst attempt by which he might bring the most extensive and universal evils upon our Nation that any can suffer This would stand good tho Princes never erred unless they were transported with some inordinate Lusts for 't is hard to find one that dos not live in the perpetual power of them They are naturally subject to the impulse of such appetites as well as others and whatever evil reigns in their nature is fomented by education 'T is the handle by which their Flatterers lead them and he that discovers to what Vice a Prince is most inclin'd is sure to govern him by rendring himself subservient In this consists the chief art of a Courtier and by this means it comes to pass that such Lusts as in private men are curbed by fear do not only rage as in a wild Beast but are perpetually inflamed by the malice of their own Servants their hatred to the Laws of God or Men that might restrain them increases in proportion with their Vices or their fears of being punished for them And when they are come to this they can set no limits to their fury and there is no extravagance into which they do not frequently fall But many of them do not expect these violent motives the perversity of their own nature carries them to the extremities of evil They hate Virtue for its own sake and virtuous men for being most unlike to themselves This Virtue is the dictate of Reason or the remains of Divine Light by which men are made beneficent and beneficial to each other Religion proceeds from the same spring and tends to the same end and the good of Mankind so intirely depends upon these two that no people ever enjoyed any thing worth desiring that was not the product of them and whatsoever any have suffer'd that deserves to be abhorr'd and feared has proceeded either from the defect of these or the wrath of God against them If any Prince therefore has bin an enemy to Virtue and Religion he must also have bin an enemy to Mankind and most especially to the People under him Whatsoever he dos against those that excel in Virtue and Religion tends to the destruction of the People who subsist by them I will not take upon me to define who they are or to tell the number of those that do this but 't is certain there have bin such and I wish I could say they were few in number or that they had liv'd only in past ages Tacitus dos not fix this upon one Prince but upon all that he writes of and to give his Readers a tast of what he was to write he says that Nobility and Honours were dangerous but that Virtue brought most certain destruction and in another place that after the slaughter of many excellent men Nero resolved to cut down Virtue it self and therefore kill'd Thraseas Patus and Bareas Soranus And whosoever examines the Christian or Ecclesiastical Histories will find those Princes to have bin no less enemies to Virtue and Religion than their Predecessors and consequently enemies to the Nations under them unless Religion and Virtue be things prejudicial or indifferent to Mankind But our Author may say these were particular cases and so was the slaughter of the Prophets and Apostles the crucifixion of Christ and all the Villanies that have ever bin committed yet they proceeded from a universal principle of hatred to all that is good exerting it self as far as it could to the ruin of mankind And nothing but the over-ruling Power of God who resolved to preserve to himself a People could set bounds to their Rage which in other respects had as full success as our Author or the Devil could have wished Dionysius his other example of Justice deserves observation More falshood lewdness treachery ingratitude cruelty baseness avarice impudence and hatred to all manner of Good was hardly ever known in a mortal Creature For this reason
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 bin 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 any thing 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 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 'T is 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 bin 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 I might offend tender ears if I should alledg 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 perswaded 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 every one 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 intirely 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 of Families He gives them where he pleases without distinction We sometimes see those upon Thrones who by God and Nature seem to have bin designed for the most sordid Offices and those have bin 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 King-craft 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 bin 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 bin well vers'd in this Science His Brother Mithradates King of Armenia had married his Daughter and given his own Daughter to Rhadamistus Son of Pharasmenes He had some Contests with Mithradates 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
Empire If the disputes between Durstus Evenus the third Dardannus and other Kings of Scotland with the Nobility and People might have bin determined by themselves they had escaped the punishments they suffer'd and ruined the Nation as they designed Other methods were taken they perished by their madness better Princes were brought into their plaees and their Successors were by their example admonished to avoid the ways that had proved fatal to them If Edward the second of England with Gaveston and the Spencers Richard the second with Tresilian and Vere had bin permitted to be the Judges of their own cases they who had murdered the best of the Nobility would have pursued their designs to the destruction of such as remained the enslaving of the Nation the subversion of the Constitution and the establishment of a mere Tyranny in the place of a mixed Monarchy But our Ancestors took better measures They who had felt the smart of the vices and follies of their Princes knew what remedies were most fit to be applied as well as the best time of applying them They found the effects of extreme corruption in Government to be so desperately pernicious that Nations must necessarily perish unless it be corrected and the State reduced to its first principle or altered Which being the case it was as easy for them to judg whether the Governor who had introduced that corruption should be brought to order removed if he would not be reclaimed or whether he should be suffer'd to ruin them and their posterity as it is for me to judg whether I should put away my Servant if I knew he intended to poison or murder me and had a certain facility of accomplishing his design or whether I should continue him in my service till he had performed it Nay the matter is so much the more plain on the side of the Nation as the disproportion of merit between a whole people and one or a few men entrusted with the power of governing them is greater than between a privat man and his servant This is so fully confirmed by the general consent of mankind that we know no Government that has not frequently either bin altered in form or reduced to its original purity by changing the families or persons who abused the power with which they had bin entrusted Those who have wanted wisdom and virtue rightly and seasonably to perform this have been soon destroy'd like the Goths in Spain who by omitting to curb the fury of Witza and Rodrigo in time became a prey to the Moors Their Kingdom by this means destroy'd was never restored and the remainder of that Nation joining with the Spaniards whom they had kept in subjection for three or four Ages could not in less than eight hundred years expel those enemies they might have kept out only by removing two base and vitious Kings Such Nations as have bin so corrupted that when they have applied themselves to seek remedies to the evils they suffered by wicked Magistrates could not fall upon such as were proportionable to the disease have only vented their Passions in destroying the immediate instruments of their oppression or for a while delay'd their utter ruin But the root still remaining it soon produced the same poisonous fruit and either quite destroy'd or made them languish in perpetual misery The Roman Empire was the most eminent example of the first many of the monsters that had tyrannized over them were killed but the greatest advantage gained by their death was a respit from ruin and the Government which ought to have bin established by good Laws depending only upon the virtue of one man his Life proved to be no more than a lucid interval and at his death they relapsed into the depth of Infamy and Misery and in this condition they continued till that Empire was totally subverted All the Kingdoms of the Arabians Medes Persians Moors and others of the East are of the other sort Common sense instructs them that barbarous pride cruelty and madness grown to extremity cannot be born but they have no other way than to kill the Tyrant and to do the like to his Successor if he fall into the same crimes Wanting that wisdom and valour which is requir'd for the institution of a good Government they languish in perpetual slavery and propose to themselves nothing better than to live under a gentle Master which is but a precarious lise and little to be valued by men of bravery and spirit But those Nations that are more generous who set a higher value upon Liberty and better understand the ways of preserving it think it a small matter to destroy a Tyrant unless they can also destroy the Tyranny They endeavour to do the work throughly either by changing the Government intirely or reforming it according to the first institution and making such good Laws as may preserve its integrity when reformed This has bin so frequent in all the Nations both antient and modern with whose actions we are best acquainted as appears by the foregoing examples and many others that might be alledged if the case were not clear that there is not one of them which will not furnish us with many instances and no one Magistracy now in being which dos not owe its original to some Judgment of this nature So that they must either derive their right from such actions or confess they have none at all and leave the Nations to their original liberty of setting up those Magistracies which best please themselves without any restriction or obligation to regard one person or family more than another SECT XLII The Person that wears the Crown cannot determine the Affairs which the Law refers to the King OUR Author with the rest of the vulgar seems to have bin led into gross errors by the form of Writs summoning persons to appear before the King The common stile used in the trial of Delinquents the name of the King's Witnesses given to those who accuse them the Verdicts brought in by Juries coram domino Rege and the prosecution made in the King's name seem to have caused this And they who understand not these Phrases render the Law a heap of the most gross absurdities and the King an Enemy to every one of his Subjects when he ought to be a Father to them all since without any particular consideration or examination of what any witness deposes in a Court of Justice tending to the death confiscation or other punishment of any man he is called the King's Witness whether he speak the truth or a lie and on that account favour'd 'T is not necessary to allege many instances in a case that is so plain but it may not be amiss to insert two or three of the most important reasons to prove my assertion 1. If the Law did intend that he or she who wears the Crown should in his or her person judg all causes and determine the most difficult questions it must like our