and People came to be Master of so much of the Country as procured him the name of King of France killed his eldest Son on suspicion that he was excited against him by Brunehaud and his Second lest he should revenge the death of his Brother he married Fredegonde and was soon after kill'd by her Adulterer Landry The Kingdom continued in the same misery through the rage of the surviving Princes and found no relief tho most of them fell by the Sword and that Brunehaud who had bin a principal cause of those Tragedies was tied to the tails of four wild Horses and suffer'd a death as foul as her life These were Lions and Leopards They involved the Kingdom in desperate troubles but being men of valour and industry they kept up in some measure the Reputation and Power of the Nation and he who attain'd to the Crown defended it But they being fallen by the hands of each other the poisonous Root put forth another Plague more mortal than their Fury The vigour was spent and the Succession becoming more settled ten base and slothful Kings by the French called Les Roys faineans succeeded Some may say They who do nothing do no hurt but the rule is false in relation to Kings He that takes upon him the government of a People can do no greater evil than by doing nothing nor be guilty of a more unpardonable Crime than by Negligence Cowardice Voluptuousness and Sloth to desert his charge Virtue and Manhood perish under him good Discipline is forgotten Justice slighted the Laws perverted or rendred useless the People corrupted the publick Treasures exhausted and the Power of the Government always falling into the hands of Flatterers Whores Favorites Bawds and such base wretches as render it contemptible a way is laid open for all manner of disorders The greatest cruelty that has bin known in the world if accompanied with wit and courage never did so much hurt as this slothful bestiality or rather these slothful Beasts have ever bin most cruel The Reigns of Septimius Severus Mahomet the second or Selim the second were cruel and bloody but their fury was turned against Foreigners and some of their near Relations or against such as fell under the suspicion of making attempts against them The condition of the people was tolerable those who would be quiet might be safe the Laws kept their right course the Reputation of the Empire was maintained the Limits defended and the publick Peace preserved But when the Sword passed into the hands of lewd slothful foolish and cowardly Princes it was of no power against foreign Enemies or the disturbers of domestic Peace tho always sharp against the best of their own Subjects No man knew how to secure himself against them unless by raising civil Wars which will always be frequent when a Crown defended by a weak hand is proposed as a Prize to any that dare invade it This is a perpetual Spring of disorders and no Nation was ever quiet when the most eminent men found less danger in the most violent Attempts than in submitting patiently to the Will of a Prince that suffers his Power to be managed by vile Persons who get credit by flattering him in his Vices But this is not all such Princes naturally hate and fear those who excel them in Virtue and Reputation as much as they are inferior to them in Fortune and think their Persons cannot be secured nor their Authority enlarged except by their destruction 'T is ordinary for them inter scorta ganeas principibus viris perniciem machinare and to make Cruelty a cover to Ignorance and Cowardice Besides the Mischiefs brought upon the Publick by the loss of eminent Men who are the Pillars of every State such Reigns are always accompanied with Tumults and Civil Wars the great Men striving with no less violence who shall get the weak Prince into his power when such regard is had to succession that they think it not fit to devest him of the Title than when with less respect they contend for the Soveraignty it self And whilst this sort of Princes reigned France was not less afflicted with the Contests between Grimbauld Ebroin Grimoald and others for the Mayoralty of the Palace than they had bin before by the rage of those Princes who had contested for the Crown The Issue also was the same After many Revolutions Charles Martel gained the Power of the Kingdom which he had so bravely defended against the Saracens and having transmitted it to his Son Pepin the General Assembly of Estates with the approbation of Mankind conferred the Title also upon him This gave the Nation ease for the present but the deep-rooted Evil could not be so cured and the Kingdom that by the Wisdom Valour and Reputation of Pepin had bin preserved from civil Troubles during his life fell as deeply as ever into them so soon as he was dead His Sons Carloman and Charles divided the Dominions but in a little time each of them would have all Carloman fill'd the Kingdom with Tumult raised the Lombards and marched with a great Army against his Brother till his course was interrupted by death caused as is supposed by such helps as Princes liberally afford to their aspiring Relations Charles deprived his two Sons of their Inheritance put them in Prison and we hear no more of them His third Brother Griffon was not more quiet nor more successful and there could be no Peace in Gascony Italy or Germany till he was kill'd But all the Advantages which Charles by an extraordinary Virtue and Fortune had purchased for his Country ended with his life He left his Son Lewis the Gentle in possession of the Empire and Kingdom of France and his Grandson Bernard King of Italy But these two could not agree and Bernard falling into the hands of Lewis was deprived of his Eyes and some time after kill'd This was not enough to preserve the Peace Lothair Lewis and Pepin all three Sons to Lewis rebelled against him called a Council at Lions deposed him and divided the Empire amongst themselves After five years he escaped from the Monastery where he had bin kept renew'd the War and was again taken Prisoner by Lothair When he was dead the War broke out more fiercely than ever between his Children Lothair the Emperor assaulted Lewis King of Bavaria and Charles King of Rhetia was defeated by them and confined to a Monastery where he died New Quarrels arose between the two Brothers upon the division of the Countries taken from him and Lorrain only was left to his Son Lewis died soon after and Charles getting possession of the Empire and Kingdom ended an inglorious Reign in an unprosperous attempt to deprive Hermingrade Daughter to his Brother Lewis of the Kingdom of Arles and other places left to her by her Father Lewis his Son call'd the Stutterer reigned two years in much trouble and his only legitimate Son Charles the Simple came not to the
Crown till after the death of his two Bastards Lewis and Carloman Charles le Gros and Eudes Duke of Anjou Charles le Gros was deposed from the Empire and Kingdom strip'd of his goods and left to perish through poverty in an obscure Village Charles the Simple and the Nations under him thrived no better Robert Duke of Anjou raised War against him and was crown'd at Rheims but was himself slain soon after in a bloody battel near Soissons His Son-in-law Hebert Earl of Vermandois gathered up the remains of his scatter'd party got Charles into his power and called a General Assembly of Estates who deposed him and gave the Crown to Raoul Duke of Burgundy tho he was no otherwise related to the Royal Blood than by his Mother which in France is nothing at all He being dead Lewis Son to the deposed Charles was made King but his Reign was as inglorious to him as miserable to his Subjects This is the Peace which the French enjoy'd for the space of five or six Ages under their Monarchy and 't is hard to determine whether they suffer'd most by the Violence of those who possessed or the Ambition of others who aspired to the Crown and whether the fury of active or the baseness of slothful Princes was most pernicious to them But upon the whole matter through the defects of those of the latter sort they lost all that they had gained by sweat and blood under the conduct of the former Henry and Otho of Saxony by a Virtue like that of Charlemagne deprived them of the Empire and settled it in Germany leaving France only to Lewis sirnamed Outremer and his Son Lothair These seemed to be equally composed of Treachery Cruelty Ambition and Baseness They were always mutinous and always beaten Their frantick Passions put them always upon unjust Designs and were such plagues to their Subjects and Neighbours that they became equally detested and despised These things extinguished the veneration due to the memory of Pepin and Charles and obliged the whole Nation rather to seek relief from a Stranger than to be ruin'd by their worthless Descendents They had tried all ways that were in their power deposed four crowned Kings within the space of a hundred and fifty years crowned five who had no other Title than the People conferred upon them and restored the Descendents of those they had rejected but all was in vain Their Vices were incorrigible the Mischiefs produc'd by them intolerable they never ceased from murdering one another in battel or by treachery and bringing the Nation into Civil Wars upon their wicked or foolish quarrels till the whole Race was rejected and the Crown placed upon the head of Hugh Capet These mischiefs raged not in the same extremity under him and his Descendents but the abatement proceeded from a cause no way advantagious to Absolute Monarchy The French were by their Calamities taught more strictly to limit the Regal Power and by turning the Dukedoms and Earldoms into Patrimonies which had bin Offices gave an Authority to the chief of the Nobility by which that of Kings was curbed and tho by this means the Commonalty was exposed to some Pressures yet they were small in comparison of what they had suffer'd in former times When many great men had Estates of their own that did not depend upon the Will of Kings they grew to love their Country and tho they chearfully served the Crown in all cases of publick concernment they were not easily engaged in the personal quarrels of those who possessed it or had a mind to gain it To preserve themselves in this condition they were obliged to use their Vassals gently and this continuing in some measure till within the last fifty years the Monarchy was less tumultuous than when the King 's Will had bin less restrained Nevertheless they had not much reason to boast there was a Root still remaining that from time to time produced poisonous Fruit Civil Wars were frequent among them tho not carried on with such desperate madness as formerly and many of them upon the account of disputes between Competitors for the Crown All the Wars with England since Edward II. married Isabella Daughter and as he pretended Heir of Philip Le Bel were of this nature The defeats of Crecy Poitiers and Agincourt with the slaughters and devastations suffer'd from Edward III. the black Prince and Henry V. were merely upon Contests for the Crown and for want of an Interpreter of the Law of Succession who might determine the question between the Heir Male and the Heir General The Factions of Orleans and Burgundy Orleans and Armignac proceeded from the same Spring and the Murders that seem to have bin the immediate causes of those Quarrels were only the effects of the hatred growing from their competition The more odious tho less bloody Contests between Lewis the 11 th and his Father Charles the 7 th with the jealousy of the former against his Son Charles the 8 th arose from the same Principle Charles of Bourbon prepared to fill France with Fire and Blood upon the like quarrel when his designs were overthrown by his death in the assault of Rome If the Dukes of Guise had bin more fortunate they had soon turned the cause of Religion into a claim to the Crown and repair'd the Injury done as they pretended to Pepin's Race by destroying that of Capet And Henry the third thinking to prevent this by the slaughter of Henry le Balafré and his Brother the Cardinal de Guise brought ruin upon himself and cast the Kingdom into a most horrid confusion Our own Age furnishes us with more than one attempt of the same kind attended with the like success The Duke of Orleans was several times in arms against Lewis the 13 th his Brother the Queen-mother drew the Spaniards to favour him Montmorency perished in his Quarrel Fontrailles reviv'd it by a Treaty with Spain which struck at the King's head as well as the Cardinal 's and was suppress'd by the death of Cinq Mars and de Thou Those who understand the Affairs of that Kingdom make no doubt that the Count de Soissons would have set up for himself and bin follow'd by the best part of France if he had not bin kill'd in the pursuit of his Victory at the Battel of Sedan Since that time the Kingdom has suffer'd such Disturbances as show that more was intended than the removal of Mazarin And the Marechal de Turenne was often told that the check he gave to the Prince of Condé at Gien after he had defeated Hocquincourt had preserved the Crown upon the King's head And to testify the Stability good Order and domestick Peace that accompanies Absolute Monarchy we have in our own days seen the House of Bourbon often divided within it self the Duke of Orleans the Count de Soissons the Princes of Condé and Conti in war against the King the Dukes of Angoulesme Vendome Longueville the Count
the Moors than an old Astrologer or a Child Alphonso and Sancho being dead Alphonso El Desheredado laid claim to the Crown but it was given to Ferdinand the Fourth and Alphonso with his descendents the Dukes de Medina Celi remain excluded to this day Peter sirnamed the Cruel was twice driven out of the Kingdom and at last killed by Bertrand to Guesclin Constable of France or Henry Count of Trastamara his bastard-Bastard-Brother who was made King without any regard to the Daughters of Peter or to the House of La Cerda Henry the Fourth lest a Daughter called Joan whom he declared his Heir but the Estates gave the Kingdom to Isabel his Sister and crowned her with Ferdinand of Arragon her Husband Joan Daughter to this Ferdinand and Isabel salling mad the Estates committed the care of the Government to her Father Ferdinand and after his death to Charles her Son But the French have taught us that when a King dies his next Heir is really King before he take his Oath or be crowned From them we learn that Le mort saisit le vif And yet I know no History that proves more plainly than theirs that there neither is nor can be in any man a right to the Government of a People which dos not receive its being manner and measure from the Law of that Country which I hope to justify by four Reasons 1. When a King of Pharamond's Race died the Kingdom was divided into as many parcels as he had Sons which could not have bin if one certain Heir had bin assigned by nature for he ought to have had the whole and if the Kingdom might be divided they who inhabited the several parcels could not know to whom they owed obedience till the division was made unless he who was to be King of Paris Metz Soissons or Orleans had worn the Name of his Kingdom upon his forehead But in truth if there might be a division the Doctrine is false and there was no Lord of the whole This wound will not be healed by saying The Father appointed the division and that by the Law of nature every man may dispose of his own as he thinks fit for we shall soon prove that the Kingdom of France neither was nor is disposeable as a Patrimony or Chattel Besides if that Act of Kings had bin then grounded upon the Law of nature they might do the like at this day But the Law by which such Divisions were made having bin abrogated by the Assembly of Estates in the time of Hugh Capet and never practised since it follows that they were grounded upon a temporary Law and not upon the Law of Nature which is eternal If this were not so the pretended certainty could not be for no man could know to whom the last King had bequeathed the whole Kingdom or parcels of it till the Will were opened and that must be done before such Witnesses as may deserve credit in a matter of this importance and are able to judg whether the Bequest be rightly made for otherwise no man could know whether the Kingdom was to have one Lord or many nor who he or they were to be which intermission must necessarily subvert their Polity and this Doctrine But the truth is the most Monarchical men among them are so far from acknowledging any such right to be in the King of alienating bequeathing or dividing the Kingdom that they do not allow him the right of making a Will and that of the last King Lewis the 13th touching the Regency during the minority of his Son was of no effect 2. This matter was made more clear under the second race If a Lord had bin assigned to them by nature he must have bin of the Royal Family But Pepin had no other Title to the Crown except the merits of his Father and his own approved by the Nobility and People who made him King He had three sons the eldest was made King of Italy and dying before him lest a Son called Bernard Heir of that Kingdom The Estates of France divided what remained between Charles the Great and Carloman The last of these dying in few years left many Sons but the Nobility made Charles King of all France and he dispossessed Bernard of the Kingdom of Italy inherited from his Father so that he also was not King of the whole before the expulsion of Bernard the Son of his elder Brother nor of Aquitain which by inheritance should have belonged to the Children of his younger Brother any otherwise than by the will of the Estates Lewis the Debonair succeeded upon the same title was deposed and put into a Monastery by his three Sons Lothair Pepin and Lewis whom he had by his first Wife But tho these lest many Sons the Kingdom came to Charles the Bald. The Nobility and People disliking the eldest Son of Charles gave the Kingdom to Lewis le Begue who had a legitimate Son called Charles le Simple and two Bastards Lewis and Carloman who were made Kings Carloman had a Son called Lewis le faineant he was made King but afterwards deposed for his vicious Lise Charles le Gros succeeded him but for his ill Government was also deposed and Odo who was a stranger to the Royal Blood was made King The same Nobility that had made five Kings since Lewis le Begue now made Charles le Simple King who according to his name was entrapped at Peronne by Ralph Duke of Burgundy and forced to resign his Crown leaving only a Son called Lewis who fled into England Ralph being dead they took Lewis sirnamed Outremer and placed him in the Throne he had two Sons Lothair and Charles Lothair succeeded him and died without Issue Charles had as fair a title as could be by Birth and the Estates confessed it but their Ambassadors told him that he having by an unworthy Life render'd himself unworthy of the Crown they whose principal care was to have a good Prince at the head of them had chosen Hugh Capet and the Crown continues in his race to this day tho not altogether without interruption Robert Son to Hugh Capet succeeded him He left two Sons Robert and Henry but Henry the younger Son appearing to the Estates of the Kingdom to be more fit to reign than his elder Brother they made him King Robert and his descendents continuing Dukes of Burgundy only for about ten Generations at which time his Issue Male failing that Dutchy returned to the Crown during the Life of King John who gave it to his second Son Philip for an Apannage still depending upon the Crown The same Province of Burgundy was by the Treaty of Madrid granted to the Emperor Charles the fifth by Francis the first but the People resused to be alienated and the Estates of the Kingdom approved their refusal By the same Authority Charles the 6th was removed from the Government when he appeared to be mad and other examples of a like nature
Life and the Equality properly belonging to Brethren 'T is not easy to determine whether Shem or Japhet were the Elder but Ham is declared to be the younger and Noah's Blessing to Shem seems to be purely Prophetical and Spiritual of what should be accomplished in his Posterity with which Japhet should be perswaded to join If it had bin worldly the whole Earth must have bin brought under him and have for ever continued in his Race which never was accomplished otherwise than in the Spiritual Kingdom of Christ which relates not to our Author's Lord Paramount As to earthly Kings the first of them was Nimrod the sixth Son of Chush the Son of Ham Noah's younger and accursed Son This Kingdom was set up about a hundred and thirty Years after the Flood whilst Chush Ham Shem and Noah were yet living whereas if there were any thing of Truth in our Author's Proposition all Mankind must have continued under the Government of Noah whilst he lived and that Power must have bin transmitted to Shem who lived about three hundred and seventy Years after the erection of Nimrod's Kingdom and must have come to Japhet if he was the Elder but could never come to Cham who is declared to have bin certainly the Younger and condemned to be a Servant to them both much less to the younger Son of his Son whilst he and those to whom he and his Posterity were to be Subjects were still living This Rule therefore which the Partizans of Absolute Monarchy fancy to be universal and perpetual falling out in its first beginning directly contrary to what they assert and being never known to have bin recovered were enough to silence them if they had any thing of modesty or regard to Truth But the Matter may be carried farther For the Scripture doth not only testify that this Kingdom of Nimrod was an Usurpation void of all Right proceeding from the most violent and mischievous Vices but exercised with the utmost fury that the most wicked Man of the accursed Race who set himself up against God and all that is good could be capable of The progress of this Kingdom was sutable to its Institution that which was begun in wickedness was carried on with madness and produced Confusion The mighty Hunter whom the best Interpreters call a cruel Tyrant receding from the simplicity and innocence of the Patriarchs who were Husbandmen or Shepherds arrogating to himself a Dominion over Shem to whom he and his Fathers were to be Servants did thereby so peculiarly become the Heir of God's Curse that whatsoever hath bin said to this day of the Power that did most directly set it self against God and his People hath related literally to the Babel that he built or figuratively to that which resembles it in Pride Cruelty Injustice and Madness But the shameless rage of some of these Writers is such that they rather chuse to ascribe the beginning of their Idol to this odious Violence than to own it from the consent of a willing People as if they thought that as all Action must be sutable to its Principle so that which is unjust in its practice ought to scorn to be derived from that which is not detestable in its principle 'T is hardly worth our pains to examin whether the Nations that went from Babel after the confusion of Languages were more or less than seventy two for they seem not to have gone according to Families but every one to have associated himself to those that understood his Speech and the chief of the Fathers as Noah and his Sons were not there or wore subject to Nimrod each of which Points doth destroy even in the Root all pretence to Paternal Government Besides 't is evident in Scripture that Noah lived three hundred and fifty Years after the Flood Shem five hundred Abraham was born about two hundred and ninety Years after the Flood and lived one hundred seventy five Years He was therefore born under the Government of Noah and died under that of Shem He could not therefore exercise a Regal Power whilst he lived for that was in Shem So that in leaving his Country and setting up a Family for himself that never acknowledged any Superior and never pretending to reign over any other he fully shewed he thought himself free and to owe subjection to none And being as far from arrogating to himself any Power upon the Title of Paternity as from acknowledging it in any other left every one to the same liberty The punctual enumeration of the Years that the Fathers of the holy Seed lived gives us ground of making a more than probable conjecture that they of the collateral Lines were in number of days not unequal to them and if that be true Ham and Chush were alive when Nimrod set himself up to be King He must therefore have usurped this Power over his Father Grandfather and great Grandfather or which is more probable he turned into violence and oppression the Power given to him by a multitude which like a Flock without a Shepherd not knowing whom to obey set him up to be their Chief I leave to our Author the liberty of chusing which of these two doth best sute with his Paternal Monarchy but as far as I can understand the first is directly against it as well as against the Laws of God and Man the other being from the consent of the Multitude cannot be extended farther than they would have it nor turned to their prejudice without the most abominable ingratitude and treachery from whence no Right can be derived nor any justifiable Example taken Nevertheless if our Author resolve that Abraham was also a King he must presume that Shem did emancipate him before he went to seek his Fortune This was not a Kingly posture but I will not contradict him if 1 may know over whom he reigned Paternal Monarchy is exercised by the Father of the Family over his Descendants or such as had bin under the dominion of him whose Heir he is But Abraham had neither of these Those of his nearest Kindred continued in Mesopotamia as appears by what is said of Bethuel and Laban He had only Lot with him over whom he pretended no right He had no Children till he was a hundred years old that is to say he was a King without a Subject and then he had but one I have heard that Soveraigns do impatiently bear Competitors but now I find Subjection also doth admit of none Abraham's Kingdom was too great when he had two Children and to disburthen it Ishmael must be expelled soon after the birth of Isaac He observed the same method after the death of Sarah He had Children by Keturah but he gave them Gifts and sent them away leaving Isaac like a Stoical King reigning in and over himself without any other Subject till the birth of Jacob and Esau. But his Kingdom was not to be of a larger extent than that of his Father
should attribute Order and Stability to it whereas Order doth principally consist in appointing to every one his right Place Office or Work and this lays the whole weight of the Government upon one Person who very often dos neither deserve nor is able to bear the least part of it Plato Aristotle Hooker and I may say in short all wise men have held that Order required that the wisest best and most valiant Men should be placed in the Offices where Wisdom Vertue and Valour are requisite If common sense did not teach us this we might learn it from the Scripture When God gave the conduct of his People to Moses Joshua Samuel and others he endowed them with all the Vertues and Graces that were required for the right performance of their Duty When the Israelites were oppressed by the Midianites Philistins and Ammonites they expected help from the most wise and valiant When Hannibal was at the Gates of Rome and had filled Italy with Fire and Blood or when the Gauls overwhelmed that Country with their multitudes and fury the Senate and People of Rome put themselves under the conduct of Camillus Manlius Fabius Scipio and the like and when they failed to chuse such as were fit for the work to be done they received such defeats as convinced them of their Error But if our Author say true Order did require that the Power of defending the Country should have bin annexed as an Inheritance to one Family or lest to him that could get it and the exercise of all Authority committed to the next in Blood tho the weakest of Women or the basest of Men. The like may be said of judging or doing of Justice and 't is absurd to pretend that either is expected from the Power not the Person of the Monarch for experience doth too well shew how much all things halt in relation to Justice or Defence when there is a defect in him that ought to judg us and to fight our Battels But of all things this ought least to be alledged by the Advocates for absolute Monarchy who deny that the Authority can be separated from the Person and lay it as a fundamental Principle that whosoever hath it may do what he pleases and be accountable to no man Our Author's next work is to shew that Stability is the effect of this good Order but he ought to have known that Stability is then only worthy of praise when it is in that which is good No man delights in sickness or pain because it is long or incurable nor in slavery and misery because it is perpetual much less will any man in his senses commend a permanency in vice and wickedness He must therefore prove that the Stability he boasts of is in things that are good or all that he says of it signifies nothing I might leave him here with as little fear that any man who shall espouse his Quarrel shall ever be able to remove this Obstacle as that he himself should rise out of his Grave and do it But I hope to prove that of all things under the Sun there is none more mutable or unstable than Absolute Monarchy which is all that I dispute against professing much veneration for that which is mixed regulated by Law and directed to the Publick Good This might be proved by many Arguments but I shall confine my self to two the one drawn from Reason the other from matters of Fact Nothing can be called stable that is not so in Principle and Practice in which respect human Nature is not well capable of Stability but the utmost deviation from it that can be imagined is when such an Error is laid for a Foundation as can never be corrected All will confess that if there be any Stability in man it must be in Wisdom and Vertue and in those Actions that are thereby directed for in weakness solly and madness there can be none The Stability therefore that we seek in relation to the exercise of Civil and Military Powers can never be found unless care be taken that such as shall exercise those Powers be endowed with the Qualities that should make them stable This is utterly repugnant to our Author's Doctrine He lays for a Foundation That the Succession goes to the next in Blood without distinction of Age Sex or personal Qualities whereas even he himself could not have the impudence to say that Children and Women where they are admitted or Fools Madmen and such as are full of all wickedness do not come to be the Heirs of reigning Families as well as of the meanest The Stability therefore that can be expected from such a Government either depends upon those who have none in themselves or is referred wholly to Chance which is directly opposite to Stability This would be the case tho it were as we say an even Wager whether the Person would be fit or unfit and that there were as many men in the world able as unable to perform the Duty of a King but Experience shewing that among many millions of men there is hardly one that possesses the Qualities required in a King 't is so many to one that he upon whom the Lot shall fall will not be the man we seek in whose Person and Government there can be such a stability as is asserted And that failing all must necessarily fail for there can be no stability in his Will Laws or Actions who has none in his Person That we may see whether this be verified by Experience we need not search into the dark relations of the Babylonian and Assyrian Monarchies Those rude Ages afford us little instruction and tho the fragments of History remaining do sufficiently show that all things there were in perpetual fluctuation by reason of the madness of their Kings and the violence of those who transported the Empire from one Place or Family to another I will not much rely upon them but slightly touching some of their Stories pass to those that are better known to us The Kings of those Ages seem to have lived rather like Beasts in a Forest than Men joined in Civil Society they followed the Example of Nimrod the mighty Hunter Force was the only Law that prevailed the stronger devoured the weaker and continued in Power till he was ejected by one of more strength or better fortune By this means the race of Ninus was destroy'd by Belochus Arbaces rent the Kingdom asunder and took Media to himself Morodach extinguished the Race of Belochus and was made King Nabuchodonosor like a Flood overwhelmed all sor a time destroy'd the Kingdoms of Jerusalem and Egypt with many others and found no obstacle till his rage and pride turned to a most bestial madness And the Assyrian Empire was wholly abolish'd at the death of his Grandchild Belshazzar and no Stability can be found in the reigns of those great Kings unless that name be given to the Pride Idolatry Cruelty and Wickedness in which they remained constant If
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
orderly chosen by a willing People were the true Shepherds who came in by the gate of the Sheepfold and might justly be called the Ministers of God so long as they performed their duty in providing for the good of the Nations committed to their charge SECT XVII Good Governments admit of Changes in the Superstructures whilst the Foundations remain unchangeable IF I go a step farther and confess the Romans made some changes in the outward Form of their Government I may safely say they did well in it and prosper'd by it After the Expulsion of the Kings the Power was chiefly in the Nobility who had bin Leaders of the People but it was necessary to humble them when they began to presume too much upon the advantages of their Birth and the City could never have been great unless the Plebeians who were the Body of it and the main strength of their Armies had bin admitted to a participation of Honours This could not be done at the first They who had bin so vilely opprest by Tarquin and harass'd with making or cleansing Sinks were not then fit for Magistracies or the Command of Armies but they could not justly be excluded from them when they had men who in courage and conduct were equal to the best of the Patricians and it had bin absurd for any man to think it a disparagement to him to marry the Daughter of one whom he had obey'd as Dictator or Consul and perhaps follow'd in his Triumph Rome that was constituted for War and sought its Grandeur by that means could never have arriv'd to any considerable height if the People had not bin exercised in Arms and their Spirits raised to delight in Conquests and willing to expose themselves to the greatest fatigues and dangers to accomplish them Such men as these were not to be used like Slaves or opprest by the unmerciful hand of Usurers They who by their sweat and blood were to defend and enlarge the Territories of the State were to be convinced they fought for themselves and they had reason to demand a Magistracy of their own vested with a Power that none might offend to maintain their Rights and to protect their Families whilst they were abroad in the Armies These were the Tribunes of the People made as they called it Sacrosancti or inviolable and the creation of them was the most considerable Change that happened till the time of Marius who brought all into disorder The creation or abolition of Military Tribunes with Consular Power ought to be accounted as nothing for it imported little whether that Authority were exercised by two or by five That of the Decemviri was as little to be regarded they were intended only for a Year and tho new ones were created for another on pretence that the Laws they were to frame could not be brought to perfection in so short a time yet they were soon thrown down from the Power they usurped and endeavoured to retain contrary to Law The creation of Dictators was no novelty they were made occasionally from the beginning and never otherwise than occasionally till Julius Cesar subverted all order and invading that supreme Magistracy by force usurped the Right which belong'd to all This indeed was a mortal Change even in root and principle All other Magistrates had bin created by the People for the publick good and always were within the power of those that had created them But Cesar coming in by force sought only the satisfaction of his own raging Ambition or that of the Soldiers whom he had corrupted to destroy their Country and his Successors governing for themselves by the help of the like Raskals perpetually exposed the Empire to be ravaged by them But whatever opinion any man may have of the other Changes I dare affirm there are few or no Monarchies whose Histories are so well known to us as that of Rome which have not suffer'd Changes incomparably greater and more mischievous than those of Rome whilst it was free The Macedonian Monarchy fell into pieces immediately after the death of Alexander 'T is thought he perished by Poison His Wives Children and Mother were destroyed by his own Captains The best of those who had escaped his fury fell by the Sword of each other When the famous Argyraspides might have expected some reward of their labours and a little rest in old age they were maliciously sent into the East by Antigonus to perish by hunger and misery after he had corrupted them to betray Eumenes No better fate attended the rest all was in confusion every one follow'd whom he pleased and all of them seemed to be filled with such a rage that they never ceased from mutual slaughters till they were consumed and their Kingdoms continued in perpetual Wars against each other till they all fell under the Roman Power The fortune of Rome was the same after it became a Monarchy Treachery Murder and Fury reigned in every part there was no Law but Force he that could corrupt an Army thought he had a sufficient Title to the Empire by this means there were frequently three or four and at one time thirty several Pretenders who called themselves Emperors of which number he only reigned that had the happiness to destroy all his Competitors and he himself continued no longer than till another durst attempt the destruction of him and his Posterity In this state they remained till the wasted and bloodless Provinces were possess'd by a multitude of barbarous Nations The Kingdoms established by them enjoy'd as little Peace or Justice that of France was frequently divided into as many parts as the Kings of Meroveus or Pepin's Race had Children under the names of the Kingdoms of Paris Orleans Soissons Arles Burgundy Austrasia and others These were perpetually vexed by the unnatural fury of Brothers or nearest Relations whilst the miserable Nobility and People were obliged to fight upon their foolish Quarrels till all fell under the power of the strongest This mischief was in some measure cured by a Law made in the time of Hugh Capet that the Kingdom should no more be divided But the Appannages as they call them granted to the King's Brothers with the several Dukedoms and Earldoms erected to please them and other great Lords produced frequently almost as bad effects This is testified by the desperate and mortal Factions that went under the names of Burgundy and Orleans Armagnac and Orleans Montmorency and Guise These were followed by those of the League and the Wars of the Huguenots They were no sooner finish'd by the taking of Rochel but new ones began by the Intrigues of the Duke of Orleans Brother to Lewis the 13th and his Mother and pursued with that animosity by them that they put themselves under the protection of Spain To which may be added that the Houses of Condé Soissons Montmorency Guise Vendosme Angouleme Bouillon Rohan Longueville Rochfocault Epernon and I think I may say every one that is of great
eminency in that Kingdom with the Cities of Paris Bourdeaux and many others in the space of these last fifty years have sided with the perpetual Enemies of their own Country Again other great Alterations have happened within the same Kingdom The Races of Kings four times wholly changed Five Kings deposed in less than 150 Years after the death of Charles the Great The Offices of Maire du Palais and Constable erected and laid aside The great Dukedoms and Earldoms little inferior to Soveraign Principalities establish'd and suppress'd The decision of all Causes and the execution of the Laws placed absolutely in the hands of the Nobility their Deputies Seneschals or Vice-Seneschals and taken from them again Parliaments set up to receive Appeals from the other Courts and to judg soveraignly in all cases expresly to curb them The Power of these Parliaments after they had crushed the Nobility brought so low that within the last twenty years they are made to register and give the Power of Laws to Edicts of which the Titles only are read to them and the General Assemblies of Estates that from the time of Pepin had the Power of the Nation in their hands are now brought to nothing and almost forgotten Tho I mention these things 't is not with a design of blaming them for some of them deserve it not and it ought to be consider'd that the Wisdom of man is imperfect and unable to foresee the Effects that may proceed from an infinite variety of Accidents which according to Emergencies necessarily require new Constitutions to prevent or cure the mischiefs arising from them or to advance a good that at the first was not thought on And as the noblest work in which the Wit of man can be exercised were if it could be done to constitute a Government that should last for ever the next to that is to sute Laws to present Exigencies and so much as is in the power of man to foresee And he that should resolve to persist obstinately in the way he first entered upon or to blame those who go out of that in which their Fathers had walked when they find it necessary dos as far as in him lies render the worst of Errors perpetual Changes therefore are unavoidable and the Wit of man can go no farther than to institute such as in relation to the Forces Manners Nature Religion or Interests of a People and their Neighbours are sutable and adequate to what is seen or apprehended to be seen And he who would oblige all Nations at all times to take the same course would prove as foolish as a Physician who should apply the same Medicine to all Distempers or an Architect that would build the same kind of House for all Persons without considering their Estates Dignities the number of their Children or Servants the Time or Climate in which they live and many other Circumstances or which is if possible more sottish a General who should obstinately resolve always to make War in the same way and to draw up his Army in the same form without examining the nature number and strength of his own and his Enemies Forces or the advantages and disadvantages of the Ground But as there may be some universal Rules in Physick Architecture and Military Discipline from which men ought never to depart so there are some in Politicks also which ought always to be observed and wise Legislators adhering to them only will be ready to change all others as occasion may require in order to the publick Good This we may learn from Moses who laying the Foundation of the Law given to the Israelites in that Justice Charity and Truth which having its root in God is subject to no change left them the liberty of having Judges or no Judges Kings or no Kings or to give the Soveraign Power to High Priests or Captains as best pleased themselves and the Mischiefs they afterwards suffer'd proceeded not simply from changing but changing for the worse The like judgment may be made of the Alterations that have happen'd in other places They who aim at the publick Good and wisely institute Means proportionable and adequate to the attainment of it deserve praise and those only are to be dislik'd who either foolishly or maliciously set up a corrupt private Interest in one or a few men Whosoever therefore would judg of the Roman Changes may see that in expelling the Tarquins creating Consuls abating the violence of Usurers admitting Plebeians to marry with the Patricians rendring them capable of Magistracies deducing Colonies dividing Lands gained from their Enemies erecting Tribunes to defend the Rights of the Commons appointing the Decemviri to regulate the Law and abrogating their Power when they abused it creating Dictators and Military Tribunes with a Consular Power as occasions requir'd they acted in the face of the Sun for the good of the Publick and such Acts having always produced Effects sutable to the rectitude of their Intentions they consequently deserve praise But when another Principle began to govern all things were changed in a very different manner Evil Designs tending only to the advancement of private Interests were carried on in the dark by means as wicked as the end If Tarquin when he had a mind to be King poison'd his first Wife and his Brother contracted an incestuous Marriage with his second by the death of her first Husband murder'd her Father and the best men in Rome yet Cesar did worse He favour'd Catiline and his villanous Associates brided and corrupted Magistrates conspir'd with Crassus and Pompey continued in the Command of an Army beyond the time prescribed by Law and turned the Arms with which he had bin entrusted for the service of the Commonwealth to the destruction of it which was rightly represented by his Dream that he had constuprated his Mother In the like manner when Octavius Antonius and Lepidus divided the Empire and then quarrelled among themselves and when Galba Otho Vitellius and Vespasian set up Parties in several Provinces all was managed with Treachery Fraud and Cruelty nothing was intended but the advancement of one Man and the Recompence of the Villains that served him And when the Empire had suffered infinite Calamities by pulling down or rejecting one and setting up another it was for the most part difficult to determine who was the worst of the two or whether the prevailing side had gained or lost by their Victory The question therefore upon which a Judgment may be made to the praise or dispraise of the Roman Government before or after the loss of their Liberty ought not to be Whether either were subject to changes for neither they nor any thing under the Sun was ever exempted from them but whether the Changes that happened after the establishment of Absolute Power in the Emperors did not solely proceed from Ambition and tend to the publick Ruin whereas those Alterations related by our Author concerning Consuls Dictators Decemviri Tribuns and Laws were
better or worse one than another cannot spring from any other root than the consent of the several Nations where they are in force and their opinions that such methods were best for them But if God have made a discrimination of people he that would thereupon ground a Title to the dominion of any one must prove that Nation to be under the curse of Slavery which for any thing I know was only denounced against Cham and 't is as hard to determine whether the sense of it be temporal spiritual or both as to tell preeisely what Nations by being only descended from him fall under the Penalties threatned If these therefore be either intirely false or impossible to be proved true there is no discrimination or not known to us and every People has a right of disposing of their Government as well as the Polanders Danes Swedes Germans and such as are or were under the Roman Empire And if any Nation has a natural Lord before he be admitted by their consent it must be by a peculiar act of their own as the Crown of France by an act of that Nation which they call the Salique Law is made hereditary to Males in a direct Line or the nearest to the direct and others in other places are otherwise disposed I might rest here with full assurance that no Disciple of Filmer can prove this of any people in the world nor give so much as the shadow of a reason to perswade us there is any such thing in any Nation or at least in those where we are concerned and presume little regard will be had to what he has said since he cannot prove of any that which he so boldly affirms of all But because good men ought to have no other object than Truth which in matters of this importance can never be made too evident I will venture to go farther and assert That as the various ways by which several Nations dispose of the succession to their respective Crowns shew they were subject to no other Law than their own which they might have made different by the same right they made it to be what it is even those who have the greatest veneration for the reigning Families and the highest regard for proximity of blood have always preferr'd the safety of the Commonwealth before the concernments of any Person or Family and have not only laid aside the nearest in blood when they were found to be notoriously vicious and wicked but when they have thought it more convenient to take others And to prove this I intend to make use of no other Examples than those I find in the Histories of Spain France and England Whilst the Goths governed Spain not above four persons in the space of three hundred years were the immediate successors of their Fathers but the Brother Cousin German or some other man of the Families of the Balthei or Amalthei was preferred before the Children of the deceased King and if it be said this was according to the Law of that Kingdom I answer that it was therefore in the power of that Nation to make Laws for themselves and consequently others have the same right One of their Kings called Wamba was deposed and made a Monk after he had reigned well many years but falling into a swound and his friends thinking him past recovery cut off his hair and put a Monk's Frock upon him that according to the superstition of those times he might die in it and the cutting off the hair being a most disgraceful thing amongst the Goths they would not restore him to his Authority Suintila another of their Kings being deprived of the Crown for his ill Government his Children and Brothers were excluded and Sisinandus crowned in his room This Kingdom being not long after overthrown by the Moors a new one arose from its ashes in the person of Don Pelayo first King of the Asturia's which increasing by degrees at last came to comprehend all Spain and so continues to this day But not troubling my self with all the deviations from the common rule in the collateral Lines of Navarr Arragon and Portugal I find that by fifteen several Instances in that one series of Kings in the Asturia's and Leon who afterwards came to be Kings of Castille it is fully proved that what respect soever they shew'd to the next in blood who by the Law were to succeed they preferred some other person as often as the supreme Law of taking care that the Nation might receive no detriment perswaded them to it Don Pelayo enjoy'd for his life the Kingdom conferred upon him by the Spaniards who with him retired into the Mountains to defend themselves against the Moors and was succeeded by his Son Favila But tho Favila left many Sons when he died Alphonso sirnamed the Chast was advanced to the Crown and they all laid aside Fruela Son to Alphonso the Catholick was for his cruelty deposed put to death and his Sons excluded Aurelio his Cousin German succeeded him and at his death Silo who married his Wives Sister was preferr'd before the Males of the Blood Royal. Alphonso sirnamed El Casto was first violently dispossess'd of the Crown by a Bastard of the Royal Family but he being dead the Nobility and People thinking Alphonso more fit to be a Monk than a King gave the Crown to Bermudo called El Diacono but Bermudo after several years resigning the Kingdom they conceived a better opinion of Alphonso and made him King Alphonso dying without issue Don Ramiro Son to Bermudo was preserred before the Nephews of Alphonso Don Ordonno fourth from Ramiro left four legitimate Sons but they being young the Estates laid them aside and made his Brother Fruela King Fruela had many Children but the same Estates gave the Crown to Alphonso the Fourth who was his Nephew Alphonso turning Monk recommended his Son Ordonno to the Estates of the Kingdom but they resused him and made his Brother Ramiro King Ordonno third Son to Ramiro dying left a Son called Bermudo but the Estates took his Brother Sancho and advanced him to the throne Henry the First being accidentally killed in his youth left only two Sisters Blanche married to Lewis Son to Philip August King of France and Berenguela married to Alphonso King of Leon. The Estates made Ferdinand Son of Berenguela the youngest Sister King excluding Blanche with her Husband and Children for being Strangers and Berenguela her self because they thought not fit that her Husband should have any part in the Government Alphonso El Savio seems to have bin a very good Prince but applying himself more to the study of Astrology than to affairs of Government his eldest Son Ferdinand de la Cerda dying and leaving his Sons Alphonso and Ferdinand very young the Nobility Clergy and People deposed him excluded his Grandchildren and gave the Crown to Don Sancho his younger Son sirnamed El Bravo thinking him more fit to command them against
may be alledged From which we may safely conclude that if the death of one King do really invest the next Heir with the Right and Power or that he who is so invested be subject to no Law but his own Will all matters relating to that Kingdom must have bin horribly confused during the reigns of 22 Kings of Pharamonds race they can have had no rightful King from the death of Chilperic to King John and the Succession since that time is very liable to be questioned if not utterly overthrown by the house of Austria and others who by the Counts of Hapsburg derive their Descent from Pharamond and by the house of Lorrain claiming from Charles who was excluded by Capet all which is most absurd and they who pretend it bring as much confusion into their own Laws and upon the Polity of their own Nation as shame and guilt upon the memory of their Ancestors who by the most extreme injustice have rejected their natural Lord or dispossessed those who had bin in the most solemn manner placed in the Government and to whom they had generally sworn Allegiance 3. If the next Heir be actually King seized of the power by the death of his Predecessor so that there is no intermission then all the Solemnities and religious Ceremonies used at the Coronations of their Kings with the Oaths given and taken are the most profane abuses of sacred things in contempt of God and Man that can be imagined most especially if the Act be as our Author calls it voluntary and the King receiving nothing by it be bound to keep it no longer than he pleases The Prince who is to be sworn might spare the pains of watching all night in the Church fasting praying confessing communicating and swearing that he will to the utmost of his power defend the Clergy maintain the union of the Church obviate all excess rapine extortion and iniquity take care that in all judgments Justice may be observed with Equity and Mercy c. or of invoking the assistance of the Holy Ghost for the better performance of his Oath and without ceremony tell the Nobility and People that he would do what he thought fit 'T were to as little purpose for the Archbishop of Rheims to take the trouble of saying Mass delivering to him the Crown Scepter and other ensigns of Royalty explaining what is signified by them anointing him with the Oil which they say was deliver'd by an Angel to St. Remigius blessing him and praying to God to bless him if he rightly performed his Oath to God and the People and denouncing the contrary in case of failure on his part if these things conferred nothing upon him but what he had before and were of no obligation to him Such ludifications of the most sacred things are too odious and impious to be imputed to Nations that have any virtue or profess Christianity This cannot fall upon the French and Spaniards who had certainly a great zeal to Religion whatever it was and were so eminent for moral Virtues as to be a reproach to us who live in an Age of more Knowledg But their meaning is so well declared by their most solemn Acts that none but those who are wilfully ignorant can mistake One of the Councils held at Toledo declared by the Clergy Nobility and others assisting That no man should be placed in the Royal Seat till he had sworn to preserve the Church c. Another held in the same place signified to Sisinandus who was then newly crown'd That if he or any of his Successors should contrary to their Oaths and the Laws of their Country proudly and cruelly presume to exercise Domination over them he should be excommunicated and separated from Christ and them to eternal judgment The French Laws and their best Writers asserting the same things are confirmed by perpetual practice Henry of Navarr tho certainly according to their Rules and in their esteem a most accomplish'd Prince was by two General Assemblies of the Estates held at Blois deprived of the Succession for being a Protestant and notwithstanding the greatness of his Reputation Valour Victories and Affability could never be admitted till he had made himself capable of the ceremonies of his Coronation by conforming to the Religion which by the Oath he was to defend Nay this present King tho haughty enough by nature and elevated by many successes has acknowledged as he says with joy that he can do nothing contrary to Law and calls it a happy impotence in pursuance of which he has annulled many Acts of his Father and Grandfather alienating the demeasnes of the Crown as things contrary to Law and not within their power These things being confirmed by all the good Authors of that Nation Filmer finds only the worst to be fit for his turn and neither minding Law nor History takes his Maxims from a vile flattering discourse of Bellay calculated for the personal interest of Henry the fourth then King of Navarr in which he says That the Heir apparent tho furious mad a fool vicious and in all respects abominably wicked must be admitted to the Crown But Bellay was so far from attaining the ends designed by his Book that by such Doctrines which filled all men with horror he brought great prejudice to his Master and procured little favour from Henry who desired rather to recommend himself to his People as the best man they could set up than to impose a necessity upon them of taking him if he had bin the worst But our Author not contented with what this Sycophant says in relation to such Princes as are placed in the Government by a Law establishing the Succession by inheritance with an impudence peculiar to himself asserts the same right to be in any man who by any means gets into Power and imposes the same necessity of obedience upon the Subject where there is no Law as Bellay dos by virtue of one that is established 4. In the last place As Bellay acknowledges that the right belongs to Princes only where 't is established by Law I deny that there is was or ever can be any such No People is known to have bin so mad or wicked as by their own consent for their own good and for the obtaining of Justice to give the power to Beasts under whom it could never be obtain'd or if we could believe that any had bin guilty of an act so full of folly turpitude and wickedness it could not have the force of a Law and could never be put in execution for tho the rules by which the proximity should be judged be never so precise it will still be doubted whose case sutes best with them Tho the Law in some places gives private Inheritances to the next Heir and in others makes allotments according to several proportions no one knows to whom or how far the benefit shall accrue to any man till it be adjudged by a Power to which the parties
than what is suffer'd or must in a short time fall upon those who are in this condition They who are already fallen into all that is odious shameful and miserable cannot justly fear When things are brought to such a pass the boldest counsels are the most safe and if they must perish who lie still and they can but perish who are most active the choice is easily made Let the danger be never so great there is a possibility of safety whilst men have life hands arms and courage to use them but that people must certainly perish who tamely suffer themselves to be oppress'd either by the injustice cruelty and malice of an ill Magistrate or by those who prevail upon the vices and infirmities of weak Princes 'T is in vain to say that this may give occasion to men of raising tumults or civil war for tho these are evils yet they are not the greatest of evils Civil War in Macchiavels account is a Disease but Tyranny is the death of a State Gentle ways are first to be used and 't is best if the work can be done by them but it must not be left undone if they fail 'T is good to use supplications advices and remonstrances but those who have no regard to justice and will not hearken to counsel must be constrained 'T is folly to deal otherwise with a man who will not be guided by reason and a Magistrate who despises the Law or rather to think him a man who rejects the essential principle of a man or to account him a Magistrate who overthrows the Law by which he is a Magistrate This is the last result but those Nations must come to it which cannot otherwise be preserved Nero's madness was not to be cured nor the mischievous effects of it any otherwise to be suppressed than by his death He who had spared such a Monster when it was in his power to remove him had brought destruction upon the whole Empire and by a foolish clemency made himself the Author of his future villanics This would have bin yet more clear if the world had then bin in such a temper as to be capable of an intire liberty But the antient foundations had bin overthrown and nothing better could be built upon the new than something that might in part resist that torrent of iniquity which had overflow'd the best part of the world and give mankind a little time to breath under a less barbarous Master Yet all the best men did join in the work that was then to be done tho they knew it would prove but imperfect The sacred History is not without examples of this kind When Ahab had subverted the Law set up false Witnesses and corrupt Judges to destroy the innocent killed the Prophets and established Idolatry his house must then be cut off and his blood be lickt up by dogs When matters are brought to this pass the decision is easy The question is only whether the punishment of crimes shall fall upon one or a few persons who are guilty of them or upon a whole Nation that is innocent If the Father may not die for the Son nor the Son for the Father but every one must bear the penalty of his own crimes it would be most absurd to punish the people for the guilt of Princes When the Earl of Morton was sent Ambassador to Queen Elizabeth by the Estates of Scotland to justify their proceedings against Mary their Queen whom they had obliged to renounce the Government he alledged amongst other things the murder of her Husband plainly proved against her asserted the antient right and custom of that Kingdom of examining the actions of their Kings by which means he said many had bin punished with death imprisonment and exile confirmed their actions by the examples of other Nations and upon the whole matter concluded that if she was still permitted to live it was not on account of her innocence or any exemption from the penalties of the Law but from the mercy and clemency of the people who contenting themselves with a resignation of her right and power to her Son had spared her This discourse which is set down at large by the Historian cited on the margin being of such strength in it self as never to have bin any otherwise answered than by railing and no way disapproved by Queen Elizabeth or her Council to whom it was made either upon a general account of the pretensions of Princes to be exempted from the penalties of the Law or any pretext that they had particularly misapplied them in relation to their Queen I may justly say that when Nations fall under such Princes as are either utterly uncapable of making a right use of their power or do maliciously abuse that Authority with which they are entrusted those Nations stand obliged by the duty they owe to themselves and their posterity to use the best of their endeavours to remove the evil whatever danger or difficulties they may meet with in the performance Pontius the Samnite said as truly as bravely to his Countrymen That those Arms were just and pious that were necessary and necessary when there was no hope of safety by any other way This is the voice of mankind and is dislik'd only by those Princes who fear the deserved punishments may fall upon them or by their Servants and Flatterers who being for the most part the Authors of their crimes think they shall be involved in their ruin SECT XLI The People for whom and by whom the Magistrate is created can only judg whether he rightly perform his Office or not T IS commonly said that no man ought to be the Judg of his own case and our Author lays much weight upon it as a fundamental maxim tho according to his ordinary inconstancy he overthrows it in the case of Kings where it ought to take place if in any for it often falls out that no men are less capable of forming a right judgment than they Their passions and interests are most powerful to disturb or pervert them No men are so liable to be diverted from justice by the flatteries of corrupt Servants They never act as Kings except for those by whom and for whom they are created and acting for others the account of their actions cannot depend upon their own will Nevertheless I am not afraid to say that naturally and properly a man is the judg of his own concernments No one is or can be deprived of this privilege unless by his own consent and for the good of that Society into which he enters This Right therefore must necessarily belong to every man in all cases except only such as relate to the good of the Community for whose sake he has devested himself of it If I find my self afflicted with hunger thirst weariness cold heat or sickness 't is a folly to tell me I ought not to seek meat drink rest shelter refreshment or physick because I must
that accompany it whilst we live alone nor can enter into a Society without resigning it for the choice of that Society and the liberty of framing it according to our own Wills for our own good is all we seek This remains to us whilst we form Governments that we our selves are Judges how far 't is good for us to recede from our natural Liberty which is of so great importance that from thence only we can know whether we are Freemen or Slaves and the difference between the best Government and the worst doth wholly depend upon a right or wrong exercise of that Power If Men are naturally free such as have Wisdom and Understanding will always frame good Governments But if they are born under the necessity of a perpetual Slavery no Wisdom can be of use to them but all must for ever depend on the Will of their Lords how cruel mad proud or wicked soever they be SECT XI No Man comes to command many unless by Consent or by Force BUT because I cannot believe God hath created Man in such a state of Misery and Slavery as I just now mentioned by discovering the vanity of our Author 's whimsical Patriarchical Kingdom I am led to a certain conclusion That every Father of a Family is free and exempt from the domination of any other as the seventy two that went from Babel were 'T is hard to comprehend how one Man can come to be master of many equal to himself in Right unless it be by Consent or by Force If by Consent we are at an end of our Controversies Governments and the Magistrates that execute them are created by Man They who give a being to them cannot but have a right of regulating limiting and directing them as best pleaseth themselves and all our Author's Assertions concerning the absolute Power of one Man fall to the ground If by Force we are to examine how it can be possible or justifiable This subduing by Force we call Conquest but as he that forceth must be stronger than those that are forced to talk of one Man who in strength exceeds many millions of Men is to go beyond the extravagance of Fables and Romances This Wound is not cured by saying that he first conquers one and then more and with their help others for as to matter of fact the first news we hear of Nimrod is that he reigned over a great multitude and built vast Cities and we know of no Kingdom in the World that did not begin with a greater number than any one Man could possibly subdue If they who chuse one to be their Head did under his conduct subdue others they were Fellow-conquerors with him and nothing can be more brutish than to think that by their vertue and valour they had purchased perpetual Slavery to themselves and their Posterity But if it were possible it could not be justifiable and whilst our Dispute is concerning Right that which ought not to be is no more to be received than if it could not be No Right can come by conquest unless there were a Right of making that Conquest which by reason of the equality that our Author confesses to have bin amongst the Heads of Families and as I have proved goes into Infinity can never be on the Aggressor's side No man can justly impose any thing upon those who owe him nothing Our Author therefore who ascribes the enlargement of Nimrod's Kingdom to Usurpation and Tyranny might as well have acknowledged the same in the beginning as he says all other Authors have done However he ought not to have imputed to Sir Walter Raleigh an Approbation of his Right as Lord or King over his Family for he could never think him to be a Lord by the right of a Father who by that rule must have lived and died a Slave to his Fathers that overlived him Whosoever therefore like Nimrod grounds his pretensions of Right upon Usurpation and Tyranny declares himself to be like Nimrod a Usueper and a Tyrant that is an Enemy to God and Man and to have no Right at all That which was unjust in its beginning can of it self never change its nature Tempus in se saith Grotius nullam habet vim effectricem He that persists in doing Injustice aggravates it and takes upon himself all the guilt of his Predecessors But if there be a King in the World that claims a Right by Conquest and would justisy it he might do well to tell whom he conquered when with what assistance and upon what reason he undertook the War for he can ground no title upon the obscurity of an unsearchable antiquity and if he does it not he ought to be looked upon as a usurping Nimrod SECT XII The pretended paternal Right is divisible or indivisible if divisible 't is extinguished if indivisible universal THis paternal right to Regality if there be any thing in it is divisible or indivisible if indivisible as Adam hath but one Heir one man is rightly Lord of the whole World and neither Nimrod nor any of his Successors could ever have bin Kings nor the seventy two that went from Babylon Noah survived him near two hundred years Shem continued one hundred and fifty years longer The Dominion must have bin in him and by him transmitted to his Posterity for ever Those that call themselves Kings in all other Nations set themselves up against the Law of God and Nature This is the man we are to seek out that we may yield obedience to him I know not where to find him but he must be of the race of Abraham Shem was preferred before his Brethren The Inheritance that could not be divided must come to him and from him to Isaac who was the first of his descendants that outlived him 'T is pity that Jacob did not know this and that the Lord of all the Earth through ignorance of his Title should be forced to keep one of his Subjects Sheep for wages and strange that he who had wit enough to supplant his Brother did so little understand his own bargain as not to know that he had bought the perpetual Empire of the World If in conscience he could not take such a price for a dish of Pottage it must remain in Esau However our Lord Paramount must come from Isaac If the Deed of Sale made by Esau be good we must seek him amongst the Jews if he could not so easily divest himself of his Right it must remain amongst his Descendants who are Turks We need not scruple the reception of either since the late Scots Act tells us That Kings derive their Royal Power from God alone and no difference of Religion c. can divert the right of Succession But I know not what we shall do if we cannot find this man for de non apparentibus non existentibus eadem est ratio The Right must fall if there be none to inherit If we do not know who he is that hath the
Othniel was of Judah Ehud of Benjamin Barak of Napthalim and Gideon of Manasseh The other Judges were of several Tribes and they being dead their Children lay hid amongst the common People and we hear no more of them The first King was taken out of the least Family of the least and youngest Tribe The second whilst the Children of the first King were yet alive was the youngest of eight Sons of an obscure man in the Tribe of Judah Solomon one of his youngest Sons succeeded him Ten Tribes deserted Rehoboam and by the command of God set up Jeroboam to be their King The Kingdom of Israel by the destruction of one Family passed into another That of Judah by God's peculiar promise continued in David's race till the Captivity but we know not that the eldest Son was ever preferred and have no reason to presume it David their most reverenced King left no precept for it and gave an example to the contrary he did not set up the eldest but the wisest After the Captivity they who had most wisdom or valour to defend the People were thought most fit to command and the Kingdom at the last came to the Asmonean Race whilst the posterity of David was buried in the mass of the common People and utterly deprived of all worldly Rule or Glory If the Judges had not a regal Power or the regal were only just as instituted by God and eternally annexed to Paternity all that they did was evil There could be nothing of Justice in the Powers exercised by Moses Joshua Gideon Samuel and the rest of the Judges If the power was regal and just it must have continued in the descendants of the first Saul David and Solomon could never have bin Kings The right failing in them their descendants could inherit none from them and the others after the Captivity were guilty of the like injustice Now as the Rule is not general to which there is any one just exception there is not one of these Examples that would not overthrow our Author's doctrine If one deviation from it were lawful another might be and so to infinity But the utmost degree of impudent madness to which perhaps any man in the world hath ever arrived is to assert that to be universal and perpetual which cannot be verified by any one Example to have bin in any place of the World nor justified by any precept If it be objected That all these things were done by God's immediate disposition I answer that it were an impious madness to believe that God did perpetually send his Prophets to overthrow what he had ordained from the beginning and as it were in spite to bring the minds of men into inextricable confusion and darkness and by particular commands to overthrow his universal and eternal Law But to render this point more clear I desire it may be considered That we have but three ways of distinguishing between good and evil 1. When God by his Word reveals it to us 2. When by his deeds he declareth it because that which he does is good as that which he says is true 3. By the light of Reason which is good in as much as it is from God And first It cannot be said we have an explicit word for that continuance of the power in the eldest for it appears not and having none we might conclude it to be left to our liberty For it agrees not with the goodness of God to leave us in a perpetual ignorance of his Will in a matter of so great importance nor to have suffered his own people or any other to persist without the least reproof or admonition in a perpetual opposition to it if it had displeased him To the 2d The Dispensations of his Providence which are the emanations of his Will have gone contrary to this pretended Law There can therefore be no such thing for God is constant to himself his works do not contradict his Word and both of them do equally declare to us that which is good Thirdly If there be any precept that by the light of Nature we can in matters of this kind look upon as certain 't is that the Government of a People should be given to him that can best perform the duties of it No man has it for himself or from himself but for and from those who before he had it were his Equals that he may do good to them If there were a Man who in Wisdom Valour Justice and Purity surpassed all others he might be called a King by Nature because he is best able to bear the weight of so great a charge and like a good Shepherd to lead the People to good Detur digniori is the voice of Reason and that we may be sure Detur seniori is not so Solomon tells us That a wise Child is better than an old and foolish King But if this pretended right do not belong to him that is truly the eldest nothing can be more absurd than a fantastical pretence to a right deduced from him that is not so Now lest I should be thought to follow my own inventions and call them reason or the light of God in us I desire it may be observed that God himself has ever taken this method When he raised up Moses to be the leader of his people he endowed him with the most admirable gifts of his Spirit that ever he bestowed upon a man When he chose seventy men to assist him he endowed them with the same spirit Joshua had no other title to succeed him than the like evidence of God's presence with him When the People through sin fell into misery he did not seek out their Descendants nor such as boasted in a prerogative of Birth but shewed whom he designed for their Deliverer by bestowing such gifts upon him as were required for the performance of his work and never fail'd of doing this till that miserable sinful people rejecting God and his Government desired that which was in use among their accursed Neighbours that they might be as like to them in the most shameful Slavery to Man as in the worship of Idols set up against God But if this pretended Right be grounded upon no word or work of God nor the reason of Man 't is to be accounted a meer figment that hath nothing of truth in it SECT XIV If the paternal Right had included Dominion and was to be transferred to a single Heir it must perish if he were not known and could be applied to no other person HAving shewed that the first Kings were not Fathers nor the first Fathers Kings that all the Kings of the Jews and Gentiles mentioned in Scripture came in upon titles different from and inconsistent with that of Paternity and that we are not led by the Word nor the Works of God nor the Reason of Man or Light of Nature to believe there is any such thing we may safely conclude there never was any such thing or that
and good or to subject the best to the rage of the worst If there be any Family therefore in the world that can by the Law of God and Nature distinct from the Ordinance of Man pretend to an hereditary Right of Dominion over any People it must be one that never did and never can produce any person that is not free from all the Infirmities and Vices that render him unable to exercise the Sovereign Power and is endowed with all the Vertues required to that end or at least a promise from God verified by experience that the next in Blood shall ever be able and fit for that work But since we do not know that any such hath yet appeared in the World we have no reason to believe that there is or ever was any such and consequently none upon whom God hath conferred the Rights that cannot be exercised without them If there was no shadow of a Paternal Right in the Institution of the Kingdoms of Saul and David there could be none in those that succeeded Rehoboam could have no other than from Solomon When he reigned over two Tribes and Jeroboam over ten 't is not possible that both of them could be the next Heir of their last common Father Jacob and 't is absurd to say that ought to be reputed which is impossible for our thoughts are ever to be guided by Truth or such an appearance of it as doth perswade or convince us The same Title of Father is yet more ridiculously or odiously applied to the succeeding Kings Baasha had no other Title to the Crown than by killing Nadab the Son of Jeroboam and destroying his Family Zimri purchased the same honour by the slaughter of Elah when he was drunk and dealing with the House of Baasha as he had done with that of Jeroboam Zimri burning himself transferred the same to Omri as a reward for bringing him to that extremity As Jehu was more fierce than these he seems to have gained a more excellent recompence than any since Jeroboam even a conditional Promise of a perpetual Kingdom but falling from these glorious Privileges purchased by his zeal in killing two wicked Kings and above one hundred of their Brethren Shallum inherited them by destroying Zachary and all that remained of his Race This in plain English is no less than to say that whosoever kills a King and invades a Crown tho the act and means of accomplishing it be never so detestable dos thereby become Father of his Country and Heir of all the divine Privileges annexed to that glorious Inheritance And tho I cannot tell whether such a Doctrine be more sottish monstrous or impious I dare affirm that if it were received no King in the World could think himself safe in his Throne for one day They are already encompassed with many dangers but lest Pride Avarice Ambition Lust Rage and all the Vices that usually reign in the hearts of worldly men should not be sufficient to invite them perpetually to disturb Mankind through the desire of gaining the Power Riches and Splendor that accompanies a Crown our Author proposes to them the most sacred Privileges as a reward of the most execrable Crimes He that was stirred up only by the violence of his own Nature thought that a Kingdom could never be bought at too dear a rate Pro Regno velim Patriam Penates conjugem flammis dare Imperia precio quolibet constant bene Senec. Theb. But if the sacred Character of God's Anointed or Vicegerent and Father of a Country were added to the other Advantages that follow the highest Fortunes the most modest and just men would be filled with fury that they might attain to them Nay it may be even the best would be the most forward in conspiring against such as reigned They who could not be tempted with external Pleasures would be most in love with divine Privileges and since they should become the sacred Ministers of God if they succeeded and Traitors or Rogues only if they miscarried their only care would be so to lay their Designs that they might be surely executed This is a Doctrine worthy of Filmer's Invention and Heylin's Approbation which being well weighed will shew to all good and just Kings how far they are obliged to those who under pretence of advancing their Authority fill the minds of men with such Notions as are so desperately pernicious to them SECT XVI The Antients chose those to be Kings who excelled in the Vertues that are most beneficial to Civil Societies IF the Israelites whose Lawgiver was God had no King in the first Institution of their Government 't is no wonder that other Nations should not think themselves obliged to set up any if they who came all of one stock and knew their Genealogies when they did institute Kings had no regard to our Author 's Chimerical right of Inheritance nor were taught by God or his Prophets to have any 't is not strange that Nations who did not know their own Original and who probably if not certainly came of several Stocks never put themselves to the trouble of seeking one who by his birth deserved to be preferred before others and if the various Changes happening in all Kingdoms whereby in process of time the Crowns were transported into divers Families to which the Right of Inheritance could not without the utmost impiety and madness be imputed such a fancy certainly could only enter into the heads of Fools and we know of none so foolish to have harbour'd it The Grecians amongst others who sollowed the Light of Reason knew no other original Title to the Government of a Nation than that Wisdom Valour and Justice which was beneficial to the People These Qualities gave beginning to those Governments which we call Heroum Regna and the veneration paid to such as enjoyed them proceeded from a grateful sense of the good received from them They were thought to be descended from the Gods who in vertue and beneficence surpassed other men The same attended their Descendents till they came to abuse their Power and by their Vices shewed themselves like to or worse than others Those Nations did not seek the most antient but the most worthy and thought such only worthy to be preferred before others who could best perform their Duty The Spartans knew that Hercules and Achilles were not their Fathers for they were a Nation before either of them were born but thinking their Children might be like to them in valour they brought them from Thebes and Epirus to be their Kings If our Author is of another opinion I desire to know whether the Heraclidae or the AEacidae were or ought to be reputed Fathers of the Lacedemonians for if the one was the other was not The same method was followed in Italy and they who esteemed themselves Aborigines Qui rupto robore nati Compositive Luto nullos habuere parentes Juven Sat. 6. could not set up one to govern them under the Title of
must perpetually spring First if there be such a Law no Human Constitution can alter it No length of time can be a defence against it All Governments that are not conformable to it are vicious and void even in their root and must be so for ever That which is originally unjust may be justly overthrown We do not know of any at least in that part of the World in which we are most concerned that is established or exercised with an absolute power as by the Authors of those opinions is esteemed inseparable from it Many as the Empire and other States are directly contrary and on that account can have no justice in them It being certain therefore that he or they who exercise those Governments have no right that there is a Man to whom it doth belong and no man knowing who he is there is no one man who has not as good a title to it as any other There is not therefore one who hath not a right as well as any to overthrow that which hath none at all He that hath no part in the Government may destroy it as well as he that has the greatest for he neither has that which God ordained he should have nor can shew a title to that which he enjoys from that original Prerogative of Birth from whence it can only be derived If it be said that some Governments are arbitrary as they ought to be and France Turky and the like be alledged as instances the matter is not mended for we do not only know when those who deserve to be regarded by us were not absolute and how they came to be so but also that those very Families which are now in possession are not of very long continuance had no more title to the original right we speak of than any other men and consequently can have none to this day And tho we cannot perhaps say that the Governments of the barbarous Eastern Nations were ever other than they are yet the known Original of them deprives them of all pretence to the Patriarchical Inheritance and they may be as justly as any other deprived of the Power to which they have no title In the second place tho all mens Genealogies were extant and fully verified and it were allowed that the Dominion of the World or every part of it did belong to the right Heir of the first Progenitor or any other to whom the first did rightly assign the parcel which is under question yet it were impossible for us to know who should be esteemed the true Heir or according to what rule he should be judged so to be for God hath not by a precise word determined it and Men cannot agree about it as appears by the various Laws and Customs of several Nations disposing severally of Hereditary Dominions 'T is a folly to say they ought to go to the next in blood for 't is not known who is that next Some give the preference to him who amongst many Competitors is the sewest degrees removed from their common Progenitor who first obtained the Crown Others look only upon the last that possessed it Some admit of representation by which means the Grandchild of a King by his eldest Son is preferred before his second Son he being said to represent his dead Father who was the eldest Others exclude these and advance the younger Son who is nearer by one degree to the common Progenitor that last enjoyed the Crown than the Grandchild According to the first rule Richard the second was advanced to the Crown of England as Son of the eldest Son of Edward the third before his Uncles who by one degree were nearer to the last Possessor And in pursuance of the second Sancho sirnamed the Brave second Son of Alphonso the Wise King of Castile was preferred before Alphonso Son of Ferdinand his elder Brother according to the Law of Thanestry which was in sorce in Spain ever since we have had any knowledg of that Country as appears by the contest between Corbis and Orsua decided by Combat before Stipio Africanus continued in full force as long as the Kingdom of the Goths lasted and was ever highly valued till the House of Austria got possession of that Country and introduced Laws and Customs formerly unknown to the Inhabitants The Histories of all Nations furnish us with innumerable Examples of both sorts and whosoever takes upon him to determine which side is in the right ought to shew by what authority he undertakes to be the Judg of Mankind and how the infinite breaches thereby made upon the rights of the governing Families shall be cured without the overthrow of those that he shall condemn and of the Nations where such Laws have bin in sorce as he dislikes and till that be done in my opinion no place will afford a better lodging for him that shall impudently assume such a Power than the new buildings in Moor-Fields 'T is no less hard to decide whether this next Heir is to be sought in the Male line only or whether Females also be admitted If we follow the first as the Law of God and Nature the title of our English Kings is wholly abolished for not one of them since Henry the 1 st has had the least pretence to an inheritance by the masculine Line and if it were necessary we have enough to say of those that were before them If it be said that the same Right belongs to Females it ought to be proved that Women are as fit as Men to perform the Office of a King that is as the Israelites said to Samuel to go in and out before us to judg us and to fight our Battels for it were an impious folly to say that God had ordained those for the Offices on which the good of Mankind so much depends who by nature are unable to perform the duties of them If on the other side the sweetness gentleness delicacy and tenderness of the Sex render them so unfit for manly exercises that they are accounted utterly repugnant to and inconsistent with that modesty which does so eminently shine in all those that are good amongst them that Law of Nature which should advance them to the Government of Men would overthrow its own work and make those to be the heads of Nations which cannot be the heads of private Families for as the Apostle says The Woman is not the head of the Man but the Man is the head of the Woman This were no less than to oblige Mankind to lay aside the name of reasonable Creature for if Reason be his Nature it cannot enjoin that which is contrary to it self if it be not the definition Homo est animal rationale is false and ought no longer to be assumed If any man think these Arguments to be mistaken or misapplied I desire him to enquire of the French Nation on what account they have always excluded Females and such as descended from them How comes the House of Bourbon to
or Fraud Or is it possible that any one man can make himself Lord of a People or parcel of that Body to whom God had given the liberty of governing themselves by any other means than Violence or Fraud unless they did willingly submit to him If this Right be not devolved upon any one Man is not the invasion of it the most outragious Injury that can be done to all Mankind and most particularly to the Nation that is enslaved by it Or if the Justice of every Government depends necessarily upon an original Grant and a Succession certainly deduced from our first Fathers dos not he by his own Principles condemn all the Monarchies of the World as the most detestable Usurpations since not one of them that we know do any way pretend to it Or tho I who deny any Power to be just that is not founded upon consent may boldly blame Usurpation is it not an absurd and unpardonable impudence in Filmer to condemn Userpation in a People when he has declared that the Right and Power of a Father may be gained by Usurpation and that Nations in their Obedience are to regard the Power not the Means by which it was gained But not to lose more time upon a most frivolous fiction I affirm that the Liberty which we contend for is granted by God to every man in his own Person in such a manner as may be useful to him and his Posterity and as it was exercised by Noah Shem Abraham Isaac Jacob c. and their Children as has bin proved and not to the vast Body of all Mankind which never did meet together since the first Age after the Flood and never could meet to receive any benefit by it His next Question deserves scorn and hatred with all the effects of either if it proceed from malice tho perhaps he may deserve compassion if his Crime proceed from ignorance Was a general Meeting of a whole Kingdom says he ever known for the Election of a Prince But if there never was any general Meetings of whole Nations or of such as they did delegate and entrust with the Power of the whole how did any man that was elected come to have a Power over the whole Why may not a People meet to chuse a Prince as well as any other Magistrate Why might not the Athenians Romans or Carthaginians have chosen Princes as well as Archons Consuls Dictators or Suffetes if it had pleased them Who chose all the Roman Kings except Tarquin the proud if the People did not since their Histories testify that he was the first who took upon him to reign sine jussu populi Who ever heard of a King of the Goths in Spain that was not chosen by the Nobility and People Or how could they chuse him if they did not meet in their Persons or by their Deputies which is the same thing when a People has agreed it should be so How did the Kings of Sweden come by their Power unless by the like Election till the Crown was made hereditary in the time of Gustavus the First as a Reward of his Vertue and Service in delivering that Country from the Tyranny of the Danes How did Charles Gustavus come to be King unless it was by the Election of the Nobility He acknowledged by the Act of his Election and upon all occasions that he had no other right to the Crown than what they had conferred on him Did not the like Custom prevail in Hungary and Bohemia till those Countries fell under the Power of the House of Austria and in Denmark till the Year 1660 Do not the Kings of Poland derive their Authority from this popular Election which he derides Dos not the stile of the Oath of Allegiance used in the Kingdom of Arragon as it is related by Antonio Perez Secretary of State to Philip 2d shew that their Kings were of their own making Could they say We who are as good as you make you our King on condition that you keep and observe our Privileges and Liberties and if not not if he did not come in by their Election Were not the Roman Emperors in disorderly times chosen by the Souldiers and in such as were more regular by the Senate with the consent of the People Our Author may say the whole Body of these Nations did not meet at their Elections tho that is not always true for in the Infancy of Rome when the whole People dwelt within the Walls of a small City they did meet for the choice of their Kings as afterwards for the choice of other Magistrates Whilst the Goths Franks Vandals and Saxons lived within the Precincts of a Camp they frequently met for the Election of a King and raised upon a Target the Person they had chosen but finding that to be inconvenient or rather impossible when they were vastly increased in number and dispersed over all the Countries they had conquered no better way was found than to institute Gemotes Parliaments Diets Cortez Assemblies of Estates or the like to do that which formerly had bin performed by themselves and when a People is by mutual compact joined together in a civil Society there is no difference as to Right between that which is done by them all in their own Persons or by some deputed by all and acting according to the Powers received from all If our Author was ignorant of these things which are the most common in all Histories he might have spared the pains of writing upon more abstruse Points but 't is a stupendous folly in him to presume to raise Doctrines depending upon the universal Law of God and Nature without examining the only Law that ever God did in a publick manner give to Man If he had looked into it he might have learnt That all Israel was by the command of God assembled at Mispeth to chuse a King and did chuse Saul He being slain all Judah came to Hebron and made David their King after the death of Ishbosheth all the Tribes went to Hebron and anointed him King over them and he made a Covenant with them before the Lord. When Solomon was dead all Israel met together in Shechem and ten Tribes disliking the proceedings of Rehoboam rejected him and made Jeroboam their King The same People in the time of the Judges had general Assemblies as often as occasion did require to set up a Judg make War or the like and the several Tribes had their Assemblies to treat of Businesses relating to themselves The Histories of all Nations especially of those that have peopled the best parts of Europe are so full of Examples in this kind that no man can question them unless he be brutally ignorant or maliciously contentious The great matters among the Germans were transacted omnium consensu De minoribus consultant Principes de majoribus omnes The Michelgemote among the Saxons was an Assembly of the whole People The Baronagium is truly said
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
transcribing his words and shewing how vilely he is abused by Filmer concluding that if he be in the right the choice and constitution of Government the making of Laws Coronation Inauguration and all that belongs to the chusing and making of Kings or other Magistrates is meerly from the People and that all Power exercised over them which is not so is Usurpation and Tyranny unless it be by an immediate Commission from God which if any man has let him give testimony of it and I will confess he comes not within the reach of our reasonings but ought to be obeyed by those to whom he is sent or over whom he is placed Nevertheless our Author is of another opinion but scorning to give us a reason he adds to Hooker's words As if these Solemnities were a kind of deed whereby the right of Dominion is given which strange untrue and unnatural Conceits are set abroad by Seedsmen of Rebellion and a little farther Unless we will openly proclaim defiance unto all Law Equity and Reason we must say for there is no remedy that in Kingdoms hereditary Birthright giveth a Right unto Soveraign Dominion c. Those Solemnities do either serve for an open testification of the Inheritor's Right or belong to the form of inducing him into the possession These are bold Censures and do not only reach Mr. Hooker whose modesty and peaceableness of spirit is no less esteemed than his Learning but the Scriptures also and the best of human Authors upon which he founded his Opinions But why should it be thought a strange untrue or unnatural Conceit to believe that when the Scriptures say Nimrod was the first that grew powerful in the Earth long before the death of his Fathers and could consequently neither have a right of Dominion over the multitude met together at Babylon nor subdue them by his own strength he was set up by their Consent or that they who made him their Governor might prescribe Rules by which he should govern Nothing seems to me less strange than that a Multitude of reasonable Creatures in the performance of Acts of the greatest importance should consider why they do them And the infinite variety which is observed in the constitution mixture and regulation of Governments dos not only shew that the several Nations of the World have considered them but clearly prove that all Nations have perpetually continued in the exercise of that Right Nothing is more natural than to follow the voice of Mankind The wisest and best have ever employed their studies in forming Kingdoms and Commonwealths or in adding to the perfections of such as were already constituted which had bin contrary to the Laws of God and Nature if a general Rule had bin set which had obliged all to be for ever subject to the Will of one and they had not bin the best but the worst of men who had departed from it Nay I may say that the Law given by God to his peculiar People and the Commands delivered by his Servants in order to it or the prosecution of it had bin contrary to his own eternal and universal Law which is impossible A Law therefore having bin given by God which had no relation to or consistency with the absolute paternal power Judges and Kings created who had no pretence to any preference before their Brethren till they were created and commanded not to raise their Hearts above them when they should be created the Wisdom and Vertue of the best men in all ages shewn in the constitution or reformation of Governments and Nations in variously framing them preserving the possession of their natural Right to be governed by none and in no other way than they should appoint The opinions of Hooker That all publick regiment of what kind soever ariseth from the deliberate advice of men seeking their own good and that all other is meer Tyranny are not untrue and unnatural conceits set abroad by the Seedsmen of Rebellion but real Truths grounded upon the Laws of God and Nature acknowledged and practised by Mankind And no Nation being justly subject to any but such as they set up nor in any other manner than according to such Laws as they ordain the right of chusing and making those that are to govern them must wholly depend upon their Will SECT VII The Laws of every Nation are the measure of Migistratical Power OUr Author lays much weight upon the word Hereditary but the question is What is inherited in an Hereditary Kingdom and how it comes to be hereditary 'T is in vain to say the Kingdom for we do not know what he means by the Kingdom 't is one thing in one place and very different in others and I think it not easy to find two in the world that in power are exactly the same If he understand all that is comprehended within the precincts over which it reaches I deny that any such is to be found in the World If he refer to what preceding Kings enjoyed no determination can be made till the first original of that Kingdom be examined that it may be known what that first King had and from whence he had it If this variety be denied I desire to know whether the Kings of Sparta and Persia had the same power over their Subjects if the same whether both were absolute or both limited if limited how came the Decrees of the Persian Kings to pass for Laws if absolute how could the Spartan Kings be subject to Fines Imprisonment or the sentence of Death and not to have power to send for their own Supper out of the Common Hall Why did Xenophon call Agesilaus a good and faithful King obedient to the Laws of his Country when upon the command of the Ephori he left the War that he had with so much glory begun in Asia if he was subject to none How came the Ephori to be established to restrain the Power of Kings if it could no way be restrained if all owed obedience to them and they to none Why did Theopompus his Wife reprove him for suffering his power to be diminished by their creation if it could not be diminished Or why did he say he had made the Power more permanent in making it less odious if it was perpetual and unalterable We may go farther and taking Xenophon and Plutarch for our guides assert that the Kings of Sparta never had the powers of War or Peace Life and Death which our Author esteems inseparable from Regality and conclude either that no King has them or that all Kings are not alike in power If they are not in all places the same Kings do not reign by an universal Law but by the particular Laws of each Country which give to every one so much power as in the opinion of the givers conduces to the end of their institution which is the publick good It may be also worth our inquiry how this inherited Power came to be hereditary We know that the
whatever to admit of one who is evidently guilty of such Vices as are prejudicial to the State For this reason the French tho much addicted to their Kings rejected the vile remainders of Meroveus his Race and made Pepin the Son of Charles Martel King And when his Descendents sell into the like Vices they were often deposed till at last they were wholly rejected and the Crown given to Capet and to his Heirs Male as formerly Yet for all this Henry his Grandchild being esteemed more fit to govern than his elder Brother Robert was as is said before made King and that Crown still remains in his Descendents no consideration being had of the Children of Robert who continued Dukes of Burgundy during the reigns of ten Kings And in the memory of our Fathers Henry of Navarr was rejected by two Assemblies of the Estates because he differed in Religion from the Body of the Nation and could never be received as King till he had renounced his own tho he was certainly the next in Blood and that in all other respects he excelled in those Vertues which they most esteem We have already proved that our own History is full of the like Examples and might enumerate a multitude of others if it were not too tedious and as the various Rules according to which all the hereditary Crowns of the World are inherited shew that none is set by Nature but that every People proceeds according to their own Will the frequent deviations from those Rules do evidently testify that Salus Populi est Lex suprema and that no Crown is granted otherwise than in submission to it But tho there were a Rule which in no case ought to be transgressed there must be a Power of judging to whom it ought to be applied 'T is perhaps hard to conceive one more precise than that of France where the eldest Legitimate Male in the direct Line is preserred and yet that alone is not sufficient There may be Bastardy in the case Bastards may be thought legitimate and legitimate Sons Bastards The Children born of Isabel of Portugal during her Marriage with John the Third of Castile were declared Bastards and the Title of the House of Austria to that Crown depends upon that Declaration We often see that Marriages which have bin contracted and for a long time taken to be good have bin declared null and the legitimation of the present King of France is founded solely upon the abolition of the marriage of Henry the Fourth with Marguerite of Valois which for the space of twenty seven Years was thought to have bin good Whilst Spain was divided into five or six Kingdoms and the several Kings linked to each other by mutual Alliances incestuous Marriages were often contracted and upon better consideration annulled many have bin utterly void through the preingagement of one of the Parties These are not feigned Cases but such as happen frequently and the diversity of Accidents as well as the humours of Men may produce many others which would involve Nations in the most satal Disorders if every one should think himself obliged to follow such a one who pretended a Title that to him might seem plausible when another should set up one as pleasing to others and there were no Power to terminate those Disputes to which both must submit but the decision must be lest to the Sword This is that which I call the Application of the Rule when it is as plain and certain as humane Wisdom can make it but if it be lest more at large as where Females inherit the difficulties are inextricable and he that says The next Heir is really King when one is dead before he be so declared by a Power that may judg of his Title dos as far as in him lies expose Nations to be split into the most desperate Factions and every man to fight for the Title which he fancies to be good till he destroy those of the contrary Party or be destroyed by them This is the blessed way proposed by our Author to prevent Sedition But God be thanked our Ancestors found a better They did not look upon Robert the Norman as King of England after the death of his Father and when he did proudly endeavour on pretence of Inheritance to impose himself upon the Nation that thought fit to prefer his younger Brothers before him he paid the Penalty of his solly by the loss of his Eyes and Liberty The French did not think the Grandchild of Pharamond to be King after the death of his Father nor seek who was the next Heir of the Merovingian Line when Chilperic the third was dead nor regard the Title of Charles of Lorrain after the death of his Brother Lothair or of Robert of Burgundy eldest Son of King Robert but advanced Meroveus Pepin Capet and Henry the first who had no other Right than what the Nobility and People bestowed upon them And if such Acts do not destroy the Pretences of all who lay claim to Crowns by Inheritance and do not create a Right I think it will be hard to find a lawful King in the world or that there ever have bin any since the first did plainly come in like Nimrod and those who have bin every where since Histories are known to us owed their exaltation to the Consent of Nations armed or unarmed by the deposition or exclusion of the Heirs of such as had reigned before them Our Author not troubling himself with these things or any other relating to the matter in question is pleased to slight Hooker's Opinions concerning Coronation and Inauguration with the heaps of Scripture upon which he grounds them whereas those Solemnities would not only have bin foolish and impertinent but profane and impious if they were not Deeds by which the Right of Dominion is really conferred What could be more wickedly superstitious than to call all Israel together before the Lord and to cast Lots upon every Tribe Family and Person for the election of a King if it had bin known to whom the Crown did belong by a natural and unalterable Right Or if there had bin such a thing in Nature how could God have cauled that Lot to fall upon one of the youngest Tribe for ever to discountenance his own Law and divert Nations from taking any notice of it It had bin absurd for the Tribe of Judah to chuse and anoint David and for the other Tribes to follow their example after the death of Ishbosheth if he had bin King by a Right not depending on their Will David did worse in slaying the Sons of Rimmon saying they had killed a righteous Man lying upon his bed if Ishbosheth whose Head they presented had most unrighteously detained from him as long as he lived the Dominion of the ten Tribes The King Elders and People had most scornfully abused the most sacred things by using such Ceremonies in making him King and compleating their work in a Covenant made between him
and them before the Lord if he had bin already King and if those Acts had bin empty Ceremonies conferring no Right at all I dare not say that a League dos imply an absolute equality between both Parties for there is a Foedus inequale wherein the weaker as Grotius says dos usually obtain protection and the stronger honour but there can be none at all unless both Parties are equally free to make it or not to make it David therefore was not King till he was elected and those Covenants made and he was made King by that Election and Covenants This is not shaken by our Author's supposition That the People would not have taken Joas Manasseh or Josiah if they had had a right of chusing a King since Solomon says Wo unto the Kingdom whose King is a Child For first they who at the first had a right of chusing whom they pleased to be King by the Covenant made with him whom they did chuse may have deprived themselves of the farther execution of it and rendred the Crown hereditary even to Children unless the Conditions were violated upon which it was granted In the second place if the infancy of a King brings Wo upon a People the Government of such a one cannot be according to the Laws of God and Nature for Governments are not instituted by either for the pleasure of a Man but for the good of Nations and their Weal not their Wo is sought by both and if Children are any where admitted to rule 't is by the particular Law of the place grounded perhaps upon an opinion that it is the best way to prevent dangerous Contests or that other ways may be found to prevent the Inconveniences that may proceed from their weakness Thirdly It cannot be concluded that they might not reject Children because they did not such matters require positive Proofs Suppositions are of no value in relation to them and the whole matter may be altered by particular Circumstances The Jews might reasonably have a great veneration for the House of David they knew what was promised to that Family and whatever respect was paid or privilege granted on that account can be of no advantage to any other in the world They might be farther induced to set up Joas in hope the defects of his Age might be supplied by the Vertue Experience and Wisdom of Jehoiada We do not know what good opinion may have bin conceived of Manasseh when he was twelve years old but much might be hoped from one that had bin virtuously educated and was probably under the care of such as had bin chosen by Hezekiah and tho the contrary did fall out the mischiefs brought upon the People by his wicked Reign proceeded not from the weakness of his childhood but from the malice of his riper years And both the Examples of Joas and Josiah prove that neither of them came in by their own right but by the choice of the People Jehoiada gathered the Levites out of all the Cities of Judah and the chief of the Fathers of Israel and they came to Jerusalem And all the Congregation made a Covenant with the King in the House of God and brought out the King's Son and put upon him the Crown and gave him the Testimony and made him King whereupon they slew Athaliah And when Ammon was stain the people of the Land slew them that had conspired against King Ammon and the people of the Land made Josiah his Son King in his stead which had been most impertinent if he was of himself King before they made him so Besides tho Infancy may be a just cause of excepting against and rejecting the next Heir to a Crown 't is not the greatest or strongest 'T is far more easy to find a Remedy against the solly of a Child if the State be well regulated than the more rooted Vices of grown men The English who willingly received Henry the sixth Edward the fifth and sixth tho Children resolutely opposed Robert the Norman And the French who willingly submitted to Charles the ninth Lewis the thirteenth and fourteenth in their Infancy rejected the lewd remainders of Meroveus his Race Charles of Lorrain with his Kindred descended from Pepin Robert Duke of Burgundy with his Descendents and Henry of Navarr till he had satisfied the Nobility and People in the point of Religion And tho I do not know that the Letter upon the words Vaeregnocujus Rex puer est recited by Lambard was written by Eleutherius Bishop of Rome yet the Authority given to it by the Saxons who made it a Law is much more to be valued than what it could receive from the Writer and whoever he was he seems rightly to have understood Solomon's meaning who did not look upon him as a Child that wanted years or was superannuated but him only who was guilty of Insolence Luxury Folly and Madness and he that said A wise Child was better than an old and foolish King could have no other meaning unless he should say it was worse to be governed by a wise Person than a Fool which may agree with the judgment of our Author but could never enter into the heart of Solomon Lastly Tho the practice of one or more Nations may indicate what Laws Covenants or Customs were in force among them yet they cannot bind others The diversity of them proceeds from the variety of mens Judgments and declares that the direction of all such Affairs depends upon their own Will according to which every People for themselves forms and measures the Magistracy and magistratical Power which as it is directed solely for the good hath its exercises and extent proportionable to the Command of those that institute it and such Ordinances being good for men God makes them his own SECT VIII There is no natural propensity in Man or Beast to Monarchy I See no reason to believe that God did approve the Government of one over many because he created but one but to the contrary in as much as he did endow him and those that came from him as well the youngest as the eldest Line with understanding to provide for themselves and by the invention of Arts and Sciences to be beneficial to each other he shewed that they ought to make use of that understanding in forming Governments according to their own convenience and such occasions as should arise as well as in other matters and it might as well be inferr'd that it is unlawful for us to build clothe arm defend or nourish our selves otherwise than as our first Parents did before or soon after the Flood as to take from us the liberty of instituting Governments that were not known to them If they did not find out all that conduces to the use of man but a Faculty as well as a Liberty was left to every one and will be to the end of the world to make use of his Wit Industry and Experience according to present Exigencies to
we examine things more distinctly we shall find that all things varied according to the humour of the Prince Whilst Pharaoh lived who had received such signal Services from Joseph the Israelites were well used but when another rose up who knew him not they were persecuted with all the extremities of injustice and cruelty till the furious King persisting in his design of exterminating them brought destruction upon himself and the Nation Where the like Power hath prevailed it has ever produced the like effects When some great men of Persia had perswaded Darius that it was a fine thing to command that no man for the space of thirty days should make any Petition to God or Man but to the King only Daniel the most wise and holy Man then in the world must be thrown to the Lions When God had miraculously saved him the same Sentence was passed against the Princes of the Nation When Haman had filled Ahasuerus his ears with Lies all the Jews were appointed to be slain and when the fraud of that Villain was detected leave was given them with the like precipitancy to kill whom they pleased When the Israelites came to have Kings they were made subject to the same Storms and always with their Blood suffer'd the Penalty of their Prince's madness When one kind of fury possessed Saul he slew the Priests persecuted David and would have killed his brave Son Jonathan When he sell under another he took upon him to do the Priest's Office pretended to understand the Word of God better than Samuel and spared those that God had commanded him to destroy Upon another whimsey he killed the Gibeonites and never rested from finding new Inventions to vex the People till he had brought many thousands of them to perish with himself and his Sons on Mount Gilboa We do not find any King in Wisdom Valour and Holiness equal to David and yet he falling under the temptations that attend the greatest Fortunes brought Civil Wars and a Plague upon the Nation When Solomon's heart was drawn away by strange Women he filled the Land with Idols and oppressed the People with intolerable Tributes Rehoboam's Folly made that Rent in the Kingdom which could never be made up Under his Successors the people served God Baal or Ashtaroth as best pleased him who had the Power and no other marks of Stability can be alledged to have bin in that Kingdom than the constancy of their Kings in the practice of Idolatry their cruelty to the Prophets hatred to the Jews and civil Wars producing such Slaughters as are reported in few other Stories The Kingdom was in the space of about two hundred years possessed by nine several Families not one of them getting possession otherwise than by the slaughter of his Predecessor and the extinction of his Race and ended in the Bondage of the ten Tribes which continues to this day He that desires farther proofs of this Point may seek them in the Histories of Alexander of Macedon and his Successors He seems to have bin endow'd with all the Vertues that Nature improved by Discipline did ever attain so that he is believed to be the Man meant by Aristotle who on account of the excellency of his Vertues was by Nature framed for a King and Plutarch ascribes his Conquests rather to those than to his Fortune But even that Vertue was overthrown by the Successes that accompanied it He burnt the most magnificent Palace of the world in a frolick to please a mad drunken Whore Upon the most frivolous suggestions of Eunuchs and Rascals he kill'd the best and bravest of his Friends and his Valour which had no equal not subsisting without his other Vertues perished when he became lewd proud cruel and superstitious so as it may be truly said he died a Coward His Successors did not differ from him When they had killed his Mother Wise and Children they exercised their fury against one another and tearing the Kingdom to pieces the Survivors left the Sword as an Inheritance to their Families who perished by it or under the weight of the Roman Chains When the Romans had lost that Liberty which had bin the Nurse of their Vertue and gained the Empire in lieu of it they attained to our Author 's applauded Stability Julius being slain in the Senate the first Question was whether it could be restored or not And that being decided by the Battel of Philippi the Conquerors set themselves to destroy all the eminent men in the City as the best means to establish the Monarchy Augustus gained it by the death of Antonius and the corruption of the Souldiers and he dying naturally or by the fraud of his Wife the Empire was transferred to her Son Tiberius under whom the miserable People suffer'd the worst effects of the most impure Lust and inhuman Cruelty He being stifled the Government went on with much uniformity and stability Caligula Claudius Nero Galba Otho Vitellius regularly and constantly did all the mischief they could and were not more like to each other in the Villanies they committed than in the Deaths they suffered Vespasian's more gentle Reign did no way compensate the Blood he spilt to attain the Empire And the Benefits received from Titus his short-liv'd Vertue were infinitely overbalanced by the detestable Vices of his Brother Domitian who turned all things into the old Channel of Cruelty Lust Rapine and Perfidiousness His slaughter gave a little breath to the gasping perishing World and men might be vertuous under the Government of Nerva Trajan Antoninus Aurelius and a few more tho even in their time Religion was always dangerous But when the Power sell into the hands of Commodus Heliogabalus Caracalla and others of that sort nothing was sase but obscurity or the utmost excesses of lewdness and baseness However whilst the Will of the Governor passed for a Law and the Power did usually sall into the hands of such as were most bold and violent the utmost security that any man could have for his Person or Estate depended upon his temper and Princes themselves whether good or bad had no longer Leases of their lives than the furious and corrupted Soldiers would give them and the Empire of the World was changeable according to the Success of a Battel Matters were not much mended when the Emperors became Christians Some favour'd those who were called Orthodox and gave great Revenues to corrupt the Clergy Others supported Arianism and persecuted the Orthodox with as much asperity as the Pagans had done Some revolted and shewed themselves more fierce against the professors of Christianity than they that had never had any knowledg of it The World was torn in pieces amongst them and osten suffered as great miseries by their sloth ignorance and cowardice as by their fury and madness till the Empire was totally dissolved and lost That which under the weakness and irregularity of a popular Government had conquer'd all from the Euphrates to Britain and
they fear which are the principal Arguments that perswade men to expose themselves to labours or dangers 'T is a folly to say that the vigilance and wisdom of the Monarch supplies the desect of care in others for we know that no men under the Sun were ever more void of both and all manner of virtue requir'd to such a work than very many Monarchs have bin And which is yet worse the strength and happiness of the People being frequently dangerous to them they have not so much as the will to promote it nay sometimes set themselves to destroy it Antient Monarchies afford us frequent examples of this kind and if we consider those of France and Turky which seem most to flourish in our Age the People will appear to be so miserable under both that they cannot sear any change of Governor or Government and all except a few Ministers are kept so far from the knowledg of or power in the management of Affairs that if any of them should fancy a possibility of something that might befal them worse than what they suffer or hope for that which might alleviate their misery they could do nothing towards the advancement of the one or prevention of the other Tacitus observes that in his time no man was able to write what passed Inscitia Reipublicae ut alienae They neglected the publick Affairs in which they had no part In the same Age it was said that the People who whilst they fought for their own Interests had bin invincible being enslaved were grown sordid idle base running after Stage-plays and Shows so as the whole strength of the Roman Armies consisted of Strangers When their Spirits were depressed by servitude they had neither courage to defend themselves nor will to fight for their wicked Masters and least of all to increase their Power which was destructive to themselves The same thing is found in all places Tho the Turk commands many vast Provinces that naturally produce as good Soldiers as any yet his greatest strength is in Children that do not know their Fathers who not being very many in number may perish in one Battel and the Empire by that means be lost the miserable Nations that groan under That Tyranny having neither courage power nor will to defend it This was the fate of the Mamalukes They had for the space of almost two hundred years domineer'd in Egypt and a great part of Asia but the people under them being weak and disaffected they could never recover the Defeat they received from Selim near Tripoli who pursuing his Victory in a few months utterly abolished their Kingdom Notwithstanding the present pride of France the numbers and warlike Inclinations of that People the bravery of the Nobility extent of Dominion convenience of Situation and the vast Revenues of their King his greatest Advantages have bin gained by the mistaken Counsels of England the valour of our Soldiers unhappily sent to serve him and the Strangers of whom the strength of his Armies consists which is so unsteady a support that many who are well versed in Affairs of this nature incline to think he subsists rather by little Arts and corrupting Ministers in Foreign Courts than by the Power of his own Armies and that some reformation in the Counsels of his Neighbours might prove sufficient to overthrow that Greatness which is grown formidable to Europe the same misery to which he has reduced his People rendring them as unable to defend him upon any change of Fortune as to defend their own Rights against him This proceeds not from any particular defect in the French Government but that which is common to all Absolute Monarchies And no State can be said to stand upon a steady Foundation except those whose strength is in their own Soldiery and the body of their own People Such as serve for Wages often betray their Masters in distress and always want the courage and industry which is found in those who fight for their own Interests and are to have a part in the Victory The business of Mercenaries is so to perform their duty as to keep their Employments and to draw profit from them but that is not enough to support the Spirits of men in extream dangers The Shepherd who is a hireling flies when the Thief comes and this adventitious help failing all that a Prince can reasonably expect from a disaffected and oppressed People is that they should bear the Yoak patiently in the time of his Prosperity but upon the change of his Fortune they leave him to shift for himself or join with his Enemies to avenge the Injuries they had received Thus did Alphonso and Ferdinand Kings of Naples and Lodovico Sforza Duke of Milan fall in the times of Charles the Eighth and Louis the Twelfth Kings of France The two first had bin false violent and cruel nothing within their Kingdom could oppose their fury but when they were invaded by a Foreign Power they lost all as Guicciardin says without breaking one Lance and Sforza was by his own mercenary Soldiers delivered into the hands of his Enemies I think it may be hard to find Examples of such as proceeding in the same way have had better Success But if it should so fall out that a People living under an Absolute Monarchy should through custom or fear of something worse if that can be not only suffer patiently but desire to uphold the Government neither the Nobility nor Commonalty can do any thing towards it They are strangers to all publick Concernments All things are govern'd by one or a few men and others know nothing either of Action or Counsel Filmer will tell us 't is no matter the profound Wisdom of the Prince provides for all But what if this Prince be a Child a Fool a superannuated Dotard or a Madman Or if he dos not fall under any of these extremities and possesses such a proportion of Wit Industry and Courage as is ordinarily seen in men how shall he supply the Office that indeed requires profound Wisdom and an equal measure of Experience and Valour 'T is to no purpose to say a good Council may supply his defects for it dos not appear how he should come by this Council nor who should oblige him to follow their advice If he be left to his own will to do what he pleases tho good advice be given to him yet his judgment being perverted he will always incline to the worst If a necessity be imposed upon him of acting according to the advice of his Council he is not that absolute Monarch of whom we speak nor the Government Monarchical but Aristocratical These are imperfect Fig-leave coverings of Nakedness It was in vain to give good counsel to Sardanapalus and none could defend the Assyrian Empire when he lay wallowing amongst his Whores without any other thought than of his Lusts. None could preserve Rome when Domitian's chief business was to kill Flies and that of Honorius to take
was as soon composed as the rebellion of the County of Vaux against the Canton of Bern and those few of the like nature that have happened among them have had the like Success So that Thuanus in the History of his time comprehending about fifty years and relating the horrid domestick and foreign Wars that distracted Germany France Spain Italy Flanders England Scotland Poland Denmark Sweden Hungary Transilvania Muscovy Turky Africk and other places has no more to say of them than to shew what Arts had bin in vain used to disturb their so much envied quiet But if the modest temper of the People together with the Wisdom Justice and Strength of their Government could not be discomposed by the measures of Spain and France by the industry of their Ambassadors or the malicious craft of the Jesuits we may safely conclude that their State is as well setled as any thing among men can be and can hardly comprehend what is like to interrupt it As much might be said of the Cities of the Hanseatick Society if they had an entire Soveraignty in themselves But the Cities of the United Provinces in the Low Countries being every one of them Soveraign within themselves and many in number still continuing in their Union in spite of all the endeavours that have bin used to divide them give us an example of such steddiness in practice and principle as is hardly to be parallel'd in the world and that undeniably prove a temper in their Constitutions directly opposite to that which our Author imputes to all popular Governments and if the Death of Barnevelt and De Wit or the preserment of some most unlike to them be taken for a testimony that the best men thrive worst and the worst best I hope it may be consider'd that those Violences proceeded from that which is most contrary to Popularity tho I am not very willing to explain it If these matters are not clear in themselves I desire they may be compared with what has happen'd between any Princes that from the beginning of the world have bin joined in League to each other whether they were of the same or of different Nations Let an example be brought of six thirteen or more Princes or Kings who enter'd into a League and sor the space of one or more ages did neither break it nor quarrel upon the explication of it Let the States of the Switzers Grisons or Hollanders be compared with that of France when it was sometimes divided between two three or four Brothers of Meroveus or Pepin's Races with the Heptarchy of England the Kingdoms of Leon Arragon Navarr Castille and Portugal under which the Christians in Spain were divided or those of Cordoua Sevil Malaga Granada and others under the Power of the Moors and if it be not evident that the popular States have bin remarkable for Peace among themselves constancy to their Union and Fidelity to the Leagues made with their Associates whereas all the abovementioned Kingdoms and such others as are known among men to have bin joined in the like Leagues were ever infested with domestick Rebellions and Quarrels arising from the Ambition of Princes so as no Confederacy could be so cautiously made but they would find ways to elude it or so solemn and sacred but they would in far less time break through it I will confess that Kingdoms have sometimes bin as free from civil disturbances and that Leagues made between several Princes have bin as constantly and religiously observed as by Commonwealths But if no such thing do appear in the world and no man who is not impudent or ignorant dare pretend it I may justly conclude that tho every Commonwealth hath its Action sutable to its Constitution and that many associated together are not so free from disturbances as those that wholly depend upon the Authority of a Mother City yet we know of none that have not bin and are more regular and quiet than any Principalities and as to Foreign Wars they seek or avoid them according to their various Constitutions SECT XXIII That is the best Government which best provides for War OUR Author having huddled up all popular and mixed Governments into one has in some measure forced me to explain the various Constitutions and Principles upon which they are grounded but as the wisdom of a Father is seen not only in providing Bread for his Family or encreasing his Patrimonial Estate but in making all possible provision for the security of it so that Government is evidently the best which not relying upon what it dos at first enjoy seeks to increase the number strength and riches of the People and by the best Discipline to bring the Power so improved into such order as may be of most use to the Publick This comprehends all things conducing to the administration of Justice the preservation of domestick Peace and the increase of Commerce that the People being pleased with their present condition may be filled with love to their Country encouraged to fight boldly for the publick Cause which is their own and as men do willingly join with that which prospers that Strangers may be invited to fix their Habitations in such a City and to espouse the principles that reign in it This is necessary for several reasons but I shall principally insist upon one which is that all things in their beginning are weak The Whelp of a Lion newly born has neither strength nor fierceness He that builds a City and dos not intend it should increase commits as great an absurdity as if he should desire his Child might ever continue under the same weakness in which he is born If it do not grow it must pine and perish for in this world nothing is permanent that which dos not grow better will grow worse This increase also is useless or perhaps hurtful if it be not in Strength as well as in Riches or Number for every one is apt to seize upon ill guarded Treasures and the terror that the City of London was possessed with when a few Dutch Ships came to Chatham shews that no numbers of men tho naturally valiant are able to defend themselves unless they be well arm'd disciplin'd and conducted Their multitude brings consusion their Wealth when 't is like to be made a prey increases the fears of the owners and they who if they were brought into good order might conquer a great part of the World being destitute of it durst not think of defending themselves If it be said that the wise Father mention'd by me endeavours to secure his Patrimony by Law not by Force I answer that all defence terminates in force and if a private man dos not prepare to defend his Estate with his own Force 't is because he lives under the protection of the Law and expects the force of the Magistrate should be a security to him but Kingdoms and Commonwealths acknowledging no Superior except God alone can reasonably hope to be protected
de Moret and other Bastards of the Royal Family following their example the Houses of Guise D' Elbeuf Bouillon Nemours Rochefocault and almost all the most eminent in France with the Parliaments of Paris Bourdeaux and some others joining with them I might alledg many more Examples to shew that this Monarchy as well as all others has from the first establishment bin full of blood and slaughter through the violence of those who possessed the Crown and the Ambition of such as aspired to it and that the end of one Civil War has bin the beginning of another but I presume upon the whole these will be thought sufficient to prove that it never enjoyed any permanent domestick quiet The Kingdoms of Spain have bin no less disturbed by the same means but especially that of Castille where the Kings had more power than in other places To cite all the Examples were to transcribe their Histories but whoever has leisure to examine them will find that after many troubles Alphonso the II notwithstanding his glorious sirname of Wise was deposed by means of his ambitious Son Don Alonso sirnamed El Desheredado supplanted by his Uncle Don Sancho el bravo Peter the Cruel cast from the Throne and killed by his bastard Brother the Conde de Trastamara From the time of the above-named Alphonso to that of Ferdinand and Isabella containing about two hundred years so few of them passed without Civil Wars that I hardly remember two together that were free from them And whosoever pretends that of late years that Monarchy has bin more quiet must if he be ingenuous confess their Peace is rather to be imputed to the dexterity of removing such Persons as have bin most likely to raise disturbances of which number were Don John of Austria Don Carlos Son to Philip the second another of the same name Son to Philip the third and Don Balthazar Son to Philip the sourth than to the rectitude of their Constitutions He that is not convinced of these Truths by what has bin said may come nearer home and see what Mischiefs were brought upon Scotland by the Contests between Baliol and Bruce with their consequences till the Crown came to the Stuart Family the quiet Reigns and happy Deaths of the five James's together with the admirable Stability and Peace of the Government under Queen Mary and the perfect Union in which she lived with her Husband Son and People as well as the Happiness of the Nation whilst it lasted But the Miseries of England upon the like occasions surpass all William the Norman was no sooner dead but the Nation was rent in pieces by his Son Robert contesting with his Sons William and Henry for the Crown They being all dead and their Sons the like happen'd between Stephen and Maud Henry the second was made King to terminate all disputes but it proved a fruitless Expedient Such as were more scandalous and not less dangerous did soon arise between him and his Sons who besides the Evils brought upon the Nation vexed him to death by their Rebellion The Reigns of John and Henry the third were yet more tempestuous Edward the second 's lewd foolish infamous and detestable Government ended in his deposition and death to which he was brought by his Wife and Son Edward the third employ'd his own and his Subjects Valour against the French and Scots but whilst the Foundations were out of order the Nation could never receive any advantage by their Victories All was calculated for the Glory and turned to the Advantage of one man He being dead all that the English held in Scotland and in France was lost through the baseness of his Successor with more blood than it had been gained and the Civil Wars raised by his wickedness and madness ended as those of Edward the second had done The Peace of Henry the fourth's Reign was interrupted by dangerous Civil Wars and the Victory obtained at Shrewsbury had not perhaps secured him in the Throne if his death had not prevented new Troubles Henry the fifth required such reputation by his Virtue and Victories that none dared to invade the Crown during his life but immediatly after his death the Storms prepared against his Family broke out with the utmost violence His Son's weakness encouraged Richard Duke of York to set up a new Title which produced such mischiefs as hardly any people has suffer'd unless upon the like occasion For besides the slaughter of many thousands of the people and especially of those who had bin accustom'd to Arms the devastation of the best parts of the Kingdom and the loss of all that our Kings had inherited in France or gained by the blood of their Subjects fourscore Princes of the Blood as Philip de Commines calls them died in Battel or under the hand of the Hangman Many of the most noble Families were extinguished others lost their most eminent Men. Three Kings and two presumptive Heirs of the Crown were murder'd and the Nation brought to that shameful exigence to set up a young Man to reign over them who had no better cover for his sordid extraction than a Welsh Pedigree that might shew how a Tailor was descended from Prince Arthur Cadwallader and Brutus But the wounds of the Nation were not to be healed with such a plaister He could not relie upon a Title made up of such stuff and patch'd with a Marriage to a Princess of a very questionable Birth His own meanness enclin'd him to hate the Nobility and thinking it to be as easy for them to take the Crown from him as to give it to him he industriously applied himself to glean up the remainders of the House of York from whence a Competitor might arise and by all means to crush those who were most able to oppose him This exceedingly weakned the Nobility who held the Balance between him and the Commons and was the first step towards the dissolution of our antient Government but he was so far from setling the Kingdom in peace that such Rascals as Perkin Warbeck and Simnel were able to disturb it The Reign of Henry the eighth was turbulent and bloody that of Mary furious and such as had brought us into subjection to the most powerful proud and cruel Nation at that time in the world if God had not wonderfully protected us Nay Edward the sixth and Queen Elizabeth notwithstanding the natural excellency of their Dispositions and their knowledg of the Truth in matters of Religion were forced by that which men call jealousy of State to foul their hands so often with illustrious Blood that if their Reigns deserve to be accounted amongst the most gentle of Monarchies they were more heavy than the Government of any Commonwealth in time of Peace and yet their lives were never secure against such as conspired against them upon the account of Title Having in some measure shew'd what miseries have bin usually if not perpetually brought upon Nations subject to
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 Porâ— Alexander the seventh by one sordid cheat upon the sale of Corn â—â— 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 'T were an endless work to mention all the places where this peace able solitude has bin 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 every one is sollicitous 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 Sylla's Cruelties as a proof that the mischiefs suffer'd under free States are more universal than under Kings and Tyrants 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 Battel of Pharsalia he would have made a more modest use of his Victory than Cesar did or that Rome would have bin more happy under him than under the other His Cause was more plausible because the Senate follow'd him and Cesar was the Invader but he was no better in his person and his designs seem to have bin the same He had bin long before Suarum legum auctor eversor He gave the beginning to the first Triumvirat and 't were folly to think that he who had bin 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. SECT XXVII The Mischiefs and Cruelties proceeding from Tyranny are greater than any that can come from Popular or mixed Governments 'T Is now time to examin 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 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 bin 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 Yoak 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 bin to Nero and as the one burn'd Rome the other would have destroy'd Parma if he had not bin prevented The like has bin and will be every where 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 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 and 't is hard to find out how such a man can be an 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 dos not say he was unjust but gives us reason to think he was so 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 bin 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 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
wicked King says that he did Saevitiam ignaviae obtendere and we do not more certainly find that Cowards are the cruellest 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 savour 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 Melius 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 dos not perhaps proceed from the temper of those Nations different from others but from a knowledg that whosoever offers an injury to a private person or attemps 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 rendring himself the Author of all the evils that the People suffer 't is absurd to expect that he should remove them SECT XXX A Monarchy cannot be well regulated unless the Powers of the Monarch are limited by Law 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 This is the language of French Lackeys Valet de Chambre's Taylors and others like them in Wisdom Learning and Policy who when they fly to England for sear of a well-deserved Gally Gibet or Wheel are ready to say Il faut que le Roy soit absolu autrement il n'est point Roy. 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 dos 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. 'T is strange that he who frequently cites Aristotle and Plato should unluckily acknowledg 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 4. Nor 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 any thing 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
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
has bin 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 bin 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 aster 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 entred into that Quarrel 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 't is 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 11 th yet they retained so much of their antient Liberty that in the last Age when the House of Valois was as much depraved as those of Meroveus and Pepin had bin and Henry the third by his own Lewdness Hypocrisy Cruelty and Impurity together with the baseness of his Minions and Favorites had rendred 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 The later Commotions in Paris Bourdeaux 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 any thing of right in what they set up That which was true in the beginning is so and must be so for ever 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 any thing against the Laws of their Country 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 bin tried by the Parliament of Tholouse for a Duel in which a Gentleman was kill'd and it appearing to the Court then in that City that he had bin 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 Salique Law nor the succession of her Children or any thing 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 Hottoman says the Estates made the Division and allotted to each such a part as they thought fit 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 dismembred which Constitution continuing in force to this day the Sons or Brothers of their Kings receive such an Apannage 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 't is 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 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 't is 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 'T is not the King that gives them a right to judg of matters of War or Peace to grant Supplies of men and mony 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 mischiess 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 Senat or People their part of the Supreme Authority 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 Which is as much as to say that the Law upholds the Power it gives and turns against those who abuse it This Doctrin 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 't is 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 lews is aw'd and the bestial madness of the most violently wicked and outragious 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 Common-wealth 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 judg 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 sall 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 't is much more so in those relating to the publick The lewd extravagancies of Edward and Richard the Seconds 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 't was 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 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 Soveraignty 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 We have heard of Nations that admitted a man to reign over them that is made him King 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 Arragon 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 he should have said to them I who am better than you make you to be a People
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 sools vicious incapable or wicked persons they can be reasonably granted to none because no man knows what any one 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 grosly 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 'T is 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 Consulat 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 'T is hard to judg 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 bin 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 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 befal 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 't is difficult for any man without the Spirit of Prophesy to tell what this will produce Whilst the antient Constitutions of our Northern Kingdoms remain'd intire 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 't is not improbable that when men see there is no Medium between Tyranny and Popularity they who would have bin 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 asswaged 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 bin 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 acknowledg 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 SECT XXXI The Liberties of Nations are from God and Nature not from Kings 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 bin already treated but being the foundation of the Doctrine I oppose it may not be amiss farther to examin 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 bin 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 bin 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 bin proved that there is no resemblance 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 every one 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 bin 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 prophane 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 'T was impossible for them to confer any thing 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 every one 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 Martius 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 bin 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 't is 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 dorment 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 vvho 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 bin 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 bin 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 Tamerlan 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 meer whimsey It was not Agathocles Dionysius Nabis Marius Sylla or Cesar 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 bin gained by the violence they used it must have bin 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 and 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 And the principal difference that I have observ'd between the most regular proceedings of the wisest Senats or Assemblies of the people in their Persons or Delegates and the fury of the most dissolute Villains has bin 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 't is the same thing Cesar 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 Senat 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 every one 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 sutable 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 Rixhofmeisters Parliaments Diets Assemblies of Estates Cortez and the like by which those have bin admitted to succeed who seemed most fit for the publick Service the unworthy have bin 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 bin set up by the violence of a corrupted Soldiery as in the antient Roman Empire the
not the least similitude of either And tho it were true that Fathers are held by no contracts which generally 't is not for when the Son is of age and dos 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 't is 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 perswading 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 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 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 any one 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 every where 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 sute with the tender and sacred name of Father and altogether false if he find the contrary But as every man that considers what has bin 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 't is 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 any thing 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 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 dos 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 bin said Salus Regis est lex suprema which certainly never entred into the head of a wiser or better man than Filmer His reasons are as good as his Doctrin No Law says he can be imposed on Kings because there were Kings before any Laws were made 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 antients 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 bin 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 bin 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 perswade 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 bin 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 bin blamed if there had bin no Law for that which is not cannot be transgressed Cain could not have seared that every man who met him would slay him if there had not bin 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 dos 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 bin 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 Cham had Laws when the blessed Descendents 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 gos 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 sor they asked one They could not have asked one of Samuel if he had bin a King He had not bin 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 If it had bin a Law to the People it must have bin made publick but as it was only to the King he laid it up before God to restify 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 bin 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 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 outragiously 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 'T is 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 inser 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
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 bin given him under a conditional promise of perpetuity to be intirely 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 Philistin 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 bin 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 't were as absurd to say David made no War because he killed no men as that Charles the eighth made no War in Italy because Guicciardin 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 immediatly transfer'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 privat 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 Ishbosbeth 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 't is 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 Object But David's Heart smote him when he had cut off the skirt of Saul's Garment and he would not suffer Abishai to kill him This might be of some force if it were pretended that every man was obliged to kill an ill King whensoever he could do it which I think no man ever did say and no man having ever affirmed it no more can be concluded than is confessed by all But how is it possible that a man of a generous Spirit like to David could see a great and valiant King chosen from amongst all the Tribes of Israel anointed by the command of God and the hand of the Prophet famous for victories obtained against the enemies of Israel and a wonderful deliverance thereby purchased to that People cast at his feet to receive Life or Death from the hand of one whom he had so furiously persecuted and from whom he least deserved and could least expect mercy without extraordinary commotion of mind most especially when Abishai who saw all that he did and thereby ought best to have known his thoughts expressed so great a readiness to kill him This could not but make him reflect upon the instability of all that seemed to be most glorious in men and shew him that if Saul who had bin named even among the Prophets and assisted in an extraordinary manner to accomplish such great things was so abandoned and given over to fury misery and shame he that seemed to be most firmly established ought to take care lest he should fall Surely these things are neither to be thought strange in relation to Saul who was God's Anointed nor communicable to such as are not Some may suppose he was King by virtue of God's unction tho if that were true he had never bin chosen and made King by the People but it were madness to think he became God's Anointed by being King for if that were so the same Right and Title would belong to every King even to those who by his command were accursed and destroyed by his Servants Moses Joshua and Samuel The same men at the same time and in the same sense would be both his anointed and accursed loved and detested by him and the most sacred Privileges made to extend to the worst of his enemies Again the War made by David was not upon the account of being King as anointed by Samuel but upon the common natural right of defending himself against the violence and fury of a wicked man he trusted to the promise that he should be King but knew that as yet he was not so and when Saul found he had spared his Life he said I now know well that thou shalt surely be King and that the Kingdom of Israel shall surely be established in thy hand not that it was already Nay David himself was so far from
taking upon him to be King till the Tribe of Judah had chosen him that he often acknowledged Saul to be his Lord. When Baanah and Rechab brought the head of Ishbosheth to him he commanded them to be slain Because they had killed a righteous man upon his Bed in his own House which he could not have said if Ishbosheth had unjustly detained from him the ten Tribes and that he had a right to reign over them before they had chosen him The Word of God did not make him King but only foretold that he should be King and by such ways as he pleased prepared the hearts of the People to set him up and till the time designed by God for that work was accomplished he pretended to no other Authority than what the six hundred men who first followed him afterwards the Tribe of Judah and at last all the rest of the People conferred upon him I no way defend Absalom's revolt he was wicked and acted wickedly but after his death no man was ever blamed or questioned for siding with him and Amasa who commanded his Army is represented in Scripture as a good man even David saying that Joab by slaying Abner and Amasa had killed two men who were better than himself which could not have bin unless the People had a right of looking into matters of Government and of redressing abuses tho being deceived by Absalom they so far erred as to prefer him who was in all respects wicked before the man who except in the matter of Uriah is said to be after God's own heart This right was acknowledged by David himself when he commanded Hushai to say to Absalom I will be thy Servant O King and by Hushai in the following Chapter Nay but whom the Lord and his People and all the men of Israel chuse his will I be and with him will I abide which could have no sense in it unless the People had a right of chusing and that the choice in which they generally concurred was esteemed to be from God But if Saul who was made King by the whole People and anointed by the command of God might be lawfully resisted when he departed from the Law of his Institution it cannot be doubted that any other for the like reason may be resisted If David tho designed by God to be King and anointed by the hand of the Prophet was not King till the People had chosen him and he had made a Covenant with them it will if I mistake not be hard to find a man who can claim a right which is not originally from them And if the People of Israel could erect and pull down institute abrogate or transfer to other Persons or Families Kingdoms more firmly established than any we know the same right cannot be denied to other Nations SECT II. The Kings of Israel and Judah were under a Law not safely to be transgress'd OUR Author might be pardon'd if he only vented his own follies but he aggravates his own crime by imputing them to men of more Credit and tho I cannot look upon Sir Walter Raleigh as a very good Interpreter of Scripture he had too much understanding to say That if practice declare the greatness of Authority even the best Kings of Israel and Judah were not tied to any Law but they did whatsoever they pleased in the greatest matters for there is no sense in those words If practice declares the greatness of Authority even the best were tied to no Law signifies nothing for practice cannot declare the greatness of Authority Peter the Cruel of Castille and Christiern the 2d of Denmark kill'd whom they pleas'd but no man ever thought they had therefore a right to do so and if there was a Law all were tied by it and the best were less likely to break it than the worst But if Sir Walter Raleigh's opinion which he calls a conjecture be taken there was so great a difference between the Kings of Israel and Judah that as to their general proceedings in point of Power hardly any thing can be said which may rightly be applied to both and he there endeavours to show that the reason why the ten Tribes did not return to the house of David after the destruction of the houses of Jeroboam and Baasba was because they would not endure a Power so absolute as that which was exercised by the house of David If he has therefore any where said that the Kings did what they pleased it must be in the sense that Moses Maimonides says The Kings of Israel committed many extravagancies because they were insolent impious and despisers of the Law But whatsoever Sir Walter Raleigh may say for I do not remember his words and have not leisure to seek whether any such are found in his Books 't is most evident that they did not what they pleased The Tribes that did not submit to David nor crown him till they thought fit and then made a Covenant with him took care it might be observed whether he would or not Absalom's Rebellion follow'd by almost all Israel was a terrible check to his Will That of Sheba the Son of Bichri was like to have bin worse if it had not bin suppressed by Joab's diligence and David often confessed the Sons of Zerviah were too hard for him Solomon indeed overthrowing the Law given by Moses multiplying Gold and Silver Wives and Horses introducing Idolatry and lifting up his heart above his Brethren did what he pleased but Rehoboam paid for all the ten Tribes revolted from him by reason of the heavy burdens laid upon them stoned Adoram who was sent to levy the Tributes and set up Jeroboam who as Sir Walter Raleigh says in the place before cited had no other Title than the curtesy of the People and utterly rejected the house of David If practice therefore declares a right the practice of the People to avenge the injuries they suffered from their Kings as soon as they found a man fit to be their Leader shews they had a right of doing it 'T is true the best of the Kings with Moses Joshua and Samuel may in one sense be said to have done what they pleased because they desired to do that only which was good But this will hardly be brought to confer a right upon all Kings And I deny that even the Kings of Judah did what they pleased or that it were any thing to our question if they did Zedekiah professed to the great men that is to the Sanhedrin that without them he could do nothing When Amaziah by his folly had brought a great slaughter upon the Tribe of Judah they conspired against him in publick Council whereupon he fled to Lachish and they pursuing him thither killed him avowed the Fact and it was neither question'd nor blamed which examples agree with the paraphrase of Josephus on Deut. 17. He shall do nothing without the consent of the Sanhedrin and if
he attempt it they shall hinder him This was the Law of God not to be abrogated by man a Law of Liberty directly opposite to the necessity of submitting to the will of a man This was a Gift bestowed by God upon his Children and People whereas slavery was a great part of the Curse denounced against Cham for his wickedness and perpetually incumbent upon his Posterity The great Sanhedrin were constituted Judges as Grotius says most particularly of such matters as concern'd their Kings and Maimonides affirms that the Kings were judged by them The distribution of the power to the inferior Sanhedrins in every Tribe and City with the right of calling the People together in general Assemblies as often as occasion required were the foundations of their Liberty and being added to the Law of the Kingdom prescribed in the 17 th of Deuteronomy if they should think fit to have a King established the Freedom of that People upon a solid foundation And tho they in their fury did in a great measure wave the benefits God had bestowed upon them yet there was enough left to restrain the Lusts of their Kings Ahab did not treat with Naboth as with a Servant whose Person and Estate depended upon his Will and dos not seem to have bin so tender-hearted to grieve much for his refusal if by virtue of his royal Authority he could have taken away his Vineyard and his Life But that failing he had no other way of accomplishing his design than by the fraud of his accursed Wife and the perfidious wretches she employed And no better proof that it did fail can reasonably be required than that he was obliged to have recourse to such fordid odious and dangerous Remedies but we are furnished with one that is more unquestionable Hast thou killed and also taken possession In the place where Dogs licked the blood of Naboth shall they lick thy Blood even thine This shews that the Kings were not only under a Law but under a Law of equality with the rest of the People even that of Retaliation He had raised his heart above his Brethren but God brought him down and made him to suffer what he had done he was in all respects wicked but the justice of this sentence consisted in the Law he had broken which could not have bin if he had bin subject to none But as this Retaliation was the sum of all the Judicial Law given by God to his People the Sentence pronounced against Ahab in conformity to it and the execution committed to Jehu shews that the Kings were no less obliged to perform the Law than other men tho they were not so easily punished for transgressing it as others were and if many of them did escape it perfectly agrees with what had bin foretold by Samuel SECT III. Samuel did not describe to the Israelites the glory of a free Monarchy but the Evils the People should suffer that he might divert them from desiring a King THO no restraint had bin put upon the Lusts of the Hebrew Kings it could be no prejudice to any other Nation They deflected from the Law of God and rejecting him that he should reign over them no longer they fell into that misery which could affect none but those who enjoy the same Blessings and with the same fury despise them If their Kings had more Power than consisted with their welfare they gave it and God renounces the institution of such He gave them a Law of Liberty and if they fell into the shame and misery that accompanies slavery it was their own work They were not obliged to have any King and could not without a crime have any but one who must not raise his heart above the rest of them This was taught by Moses And Samuel who spoke by the same Spirit could not contradict him and in telling the people what such a King as they desired would do when he should be established he did announce to them the misery they would bring upon themselves by chusing such a one as he had forbidden This free Monarchy which our Author thinks to be so majestically described was not only displeasing to the Prophet but declared by God to be a rejection of him and inconsistent with his reign over them This might have bin sufficient to divert any other people from their furious resolution but the Prophet farther enforcing his disswasion told them that God who had in all other cases bin their helper would not hear them when they should cry to him by reason of their King This is the majestick description of that free Monarchy with which our Author is so much pleased It was displeasing to the Prophet hateful to God an aggravation of all the crimes they had committed since they came out of Egypt and that which would bring as it did most certain and irreparable destruction upon themselves But it seems the Regal Majesty in that Age was in its infancy and little in comparison of that which we find described by Tacitus Suetonius and others in later times He shall take your Sons says Samuel and set them over his Chariots and your Daughters to make them Confectioners and Cooks but the Majesty of the Roman Emperors was carried to a higher pitch of Glory Ahab could not without employing treachery and fraud get a small spot of ground for his mony to make a Garden of Herbs But Tiberius Caligula and Nero killed whom they pleased and took what they pleased of their Estates When they had satiated their cruelty and avarice by the murders and confications of the most eminent and best men they commonly exposed their Children to the Lust of their Slaves If the power of doing evil be glorious the utmost excess is its perfection and 't is pity that Samuel knew no more of the effects produced by unrestrained Lust that he might have made the description yet more majestick and as nothing can be suffer'd by man beyond constupration torments and death instead of such trifles as he mention'd he might have shew'd them the effects of Fury in its greatest exaltation If it be good for a Nation to live under such a Power why did not God of his own goodness institute it Did his Wisdom and Love to his People fail Or if he himself had not set up the best Government over them could he be displeased with them for asking it Did he separate that Nation from the rest of Mankind to make their condition worse than that of others Or can they be said to have sinned and rejected God when they desir'd nothing but the Government which by a perpetual Ordinance he had established over all the Nations of the World Is not the Law of Nature a Rule which he has given to things and the Law of man's Nature which is Reason an emanation of the divine Wisdom or some footsteps of divine Light remaining in us Is it possible that this which is from God can be contrary to his
which they are condemned perpetually to the Gallies and such as are aiding to them to grievous Fines But before this be acknowledged to have any similitude or relation to our discourse concerning Kings it must be proved that the present King or those under whom he claims is or were Proprietors of all the Lands in England and granted the several parcels under the condition of suffering patiently such Inconveniences and Miseries as are above-mentioned or that they who did confer the Crown upon any of them did also give a Propriety in the Land which I do not find in any of the fifteen or sixteen Titles that have bin since the coming in of the Normans and if it was not done to the first of every one it cannot accrue to the others unless by some new act to the same purpose which will not easily be produced It will be no less difficult to prove that any thing unworthy of freemen is by any Tenures imposed in England unless it be the offering up of the Wives and Daughters of Tenants to the Lust of Abbots and Monks and they are so far from being willingly suffer'd that since the Dens and Nurseries of those Beasts were abolished no man that succeeds them has had impudence sufficient to exact the performance and tho the letter of the Law may favour them the turpitude of the thing has extinguished the usage But even the Kings of Israel and Judah who brought upon the People those evils that had bin foretold by Samuel did not think they had a right to the Powers they exercised If the Law had given a right to Ahab to take the best of their Vineyards he might without ceremony have taken that of Naboth and by the majestick power of an absolute Monarch have chastized the churlish Clown who resused to sell or change it for another but for want of it he was obliged to take a very different course If the lives of Subjects had in the like manner depended upon the will of Kings David might without scruple have killed Vriah rather than to place him in the front of the Army that he might fall by his own courage The malice and treachery of such Proceedings argues a defect of power and he that acts in such an oblique manner shews that his actions are not warranted by the Law which is boldly executed in the face of the Sun This shews the interpretation put upon the words Against thee only have I sinned by Court-flatterers to be false If he had not sinned against Bathsheba whom he corrupted Vriah whom he caused to be killed the People that he scandalized and the Law which he violated he had never endeavoured to cover his guilt by so vile a sraud And as he did not thereby fly the sight of God but of men 't is evident that he in that action feared men more than God If by the Examples of Israel and Judah we may judg whether the Inconveniences and Miseries brought upon Nations by their Kings be tolerable or intolerable it will be enough to consider the madness of Sauls cruelty towards his Subjects and the slaughter brought upon them by the hand of the Philistins on Mount Gilboa where he fell with the flower of all Israel the Civil Wars that hapned in the time of David and the Plague brought upon the People by his wickedness the heavy burdens laid upon them by Solomon and the Idolatry favour'd by him the wretched folly of Rehoboam and the defection of the ten Tribes caused by it the Idolatry established by Jeroboam and the Kings of Israel and that of many of those of Judah also the frequent Wars and unheard of Slaughters ensuing thereupon between the Tribes the daily devastations of the Country by all sorts of Strangers the murders of the Prophets the abolition of God's Worship the desolation of Towns and Provinces the Captivity of the ten Tribes carried away into unknown Countries and in the end the abolition of both Kingdoms with the captivity of the Tribe of Judah and the utter destruction of the City It cannot be said that these things were suffer'd under Kings and not from or by them for the desolation of the Cities People and Country is in many places of Scripture imputed to the Kings that taught Israel to sin as appears by what was denounced against Jeroboam Jehu Ahaz Manasseh Zedekiah and others Nay the Captivity of Babylon with the evils ensuing were first announced to Hezekiah for his vanity and Josiah by the like brought a great slaughter upon himself and people But if mischiess fell upon the People by the frailty of these who after David were the best nothing surely less than the utmost of all Miseries could be expected from such as were set to do evil and to make the Nation like to themselves in which they met with too great success If it be pretended that God's People living under an extraordinary Dispensation can be no example to us I desire other Histories may be examined for I confess I know no Nation so great happy and prosperous nor any Power so well established that two or three ill Kings immediately succeeding each other have not bin able to destroy and bring to such a condition that it appeared the Nations must perish unless the Senates Diets and other Assemblies of State had put a stop to the mischief by restraining or deposing them and tho this might be proved by innumerable Testimonies I shall content my self with that of the Roman Empire which perished by the vices corruption and baseness of their Princes the noble Kingdom of the Goths in Spain overthrown by the Tyranny of Witza and Rodrigo the present state of Spain now languishing and threatning ruin from the same causes France brought to the last degree of misery and weakness by the degenerate races of Pharamond and Charles preserved and restored by the Virtues of Pepin and Capet to which may be added those of our own Country which are so well known that I need not mention them SECT VI. 'T is not good for such Nations as will have Kings to suffer them to be glorious powerful or abounding in Riches OUR Author having hitherto spoken of all Nations as born under a necessity of being subject to Absolute Monarchy which he pretends to have bin set up by the universal and indispensible Law of God and Nature now seems to leave to their discretion whether they will have a King or not but says that those who will have a King are bound to allow him Royal maintenance by providing Revenues for the Crown since it is for the Honour Profit and Safety of the People to have their King glorious powerful and abounding in Riches If there be any thing of sense in this Clause there is nothing of truth in the foundation or principle of his whole Book For as the right and being of a Father is natural or inherent and no ways depending upon the will of the Child that of a
and People at London and Harold excused himself for not performing his Oath to William the Norman because he said he had made it unduly and presumptuously without consulting the Nobility and People and without their Authority William was received with great joy by the Clergy and People and saluted King by all swearing to observe the antient good and approved Laws of England and tho he did but ill perform his Oath yet before his death he seemed to repent of the ways he had taken and only wishing his Son might be King of England he confessed in his last Will made at Caen in Normandy that he neither found nor left the Kingdom as an Inheritance If he possessed no right except what was conferred upon him no more was conserred than had bin enjoy'd by the antient Kings according to the approved Laws which he swore to observe Those Laws gave no power to any till he was elected and that which they did then give was so limited that the Nobility and People reserved to themselves the disposition of the greatest Affairs even to the deposition and expulsion of such as should not well perform the duty of their Oaths and Office And I leave it to our Author to prove how they can be said to have had the Sword and the Power so as to be feared otherwise than as the Apostle says by those that do evil which we acknowledg to be not only in the King but in the lowest Officer of Justice in the world If it be pretended that our later Kings are more to be seared than William the Norman or his Predecessors it must not be as has bin proved either from the general right of Kings or from the Doctrine of the Apostle but from something else that is peculiar and subsequent which I leave our Author's Disciples to prove and an answer may be found in due time But to show that our Ancestors did not mistake the words of the Apostle 't is good to consider when to whom and upon what occasion he spoke The Christian Religion was then in its infancy his discourses were addressed to the Professors of it who tho they soon grew to be considerable in number were for the most part of the meanest sort of People Servants or Inhabitants of the Cities rather than Citizens and Freemen joined in no civil Body or Society nor such as had or could have any part in the Government The occasion was to suppress the dangerous mistake of many converted Jews and others who knowing themselves to be freed from the power of Sin and the Devil presumed they were also freed from the obligation of human Laws And if this Error had not bin crop'd in the bud it would have given occasion to their Enemies who desired nothing more to destroy them all and who knowing that such Notions were stirring among them would have bin glad that they who were not easily to be discovered had by that means discovered themselves This induced a necessity of diverting a poor mean scatter'd People from such thoughts concerning the State to convince them of the Error into which they were fallen that Christians did not owe the same obedience to Civil Laws and Magistrates as other men and to keep them from drawing destruction upon themselves by such ways as not being warranted by God had no promise of his Protection St. Paul's work was to preserve the Professors of Christianity as appears by his own words I exhort that first of all Supplications Prayers Intercessions and giving of thanks be made for all men for Kings and for all that are in Authority that we may live a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty Put them in mind to be subject to Principalities and Powers to obey Magistrates to be ready for every good work St. Peter agrees with him fully in describing the Magistrate and his Duty shewing the reasons why obedience should be pay'd to him and teaching Christians to be humble and contented with their condition as free yet not using their Liberty for a cover to malice and not only to fear God and honor the King of which conjunction of words such as Filmer are very proud but to honor all men as is said in the same verse This was in a peculiar manner the work of that time in which those who were to preach and propagate the Gospel were not to be diverted from that Duty by entangling themselves in the care of State-affairs but it dos in some sense agree with all times for it can never be the duty of a good man to oppose such a Magistrate as is the Minister of God in the exercise of his Office nor to deny to any man that which is his due But as the Christian Law exempts no man from the Duty he ows to his Father Master or the Magistrate it dos not make him more a Slave than he was before nor deprive him of any natural or civil Right and if we are obliged to pay Tribute Honor or any other thing where it is not due it must be by some Precept very different from that which commands us to give to Cesar that which is Cesar's If he define the Magistrate to be the Minister of God doing Justice and from thence draws the Reasons he gives for rendring Obedience to him we are to inquire whose Minister he is who overthrows it and look for some other reason sor rendring obedience to him than the words of the Apostles If David who was willing to lay down his life sor the people who hated iniquity and would not suffer a liar to come into his presence was the Minister of God I desire to know whose Minister Caligula was who set up himself to be worshipped for a God and would at once have destroyed all the people that he ought to have protected Whose Minister was Nero who besides the abominable impurities of his lise and hatred to all virtue as contrary to his Person and Government set fire to the great City If it be true that contrariorum contraria est ratio these questions are easily decided and if the reasons of things are eternal the same distinction grounded upon truth will be good for ever Every Magistrate and every man by his works will for ever declare whose Minister he is in what spirit he lives and consequently what obedience is due to him according to the Precept of the Apostle If any man ask what I mean by Justice I answer That the Law of the Land as far as it is Sanctio recta jubens honesta prohibens contraria declares what it is But there have bin and are Laws that are neither just nor commendable There was a Law in Rome that no God should be worshipped vvithout the consent of the Senat Upon vvhich Tertullian says scoffingly That God shall not be God unless he please Man and by virtue of this Law the first Christians were exposed to all manner of cruelties and some
Countries they enslaved But if this be equally false sottish absurd and execrable all those Epithets belong to our Author and his Doctrine for attempting to depress all modest and regular Magistracies and endeavouring to corrupt the Scripture to patronize the greatest of Crimes No man therefore who does not delight in error can think that the Apostle designed precisely to determin such questions as might arise concerning any one mans right or in the least degree to prefer any one form of Government before another In acknowledging the Magistrate to be Man's Ordinance he declares that Man who makes him to be may make him to be what he pleaseth and tho there is found more prudence and virtue in one Nation than in another that Magistracy which is established in any one ought to be obeyed till they who made the establishment think fit to alter it All therefore whilst they continue are to be look'd upon with the same respect Every Nation acting freely has an equal right to frame their own Government and to employ such Officers as they please The Authority Right and Power of these must be regulated by the judgment right and power of those who appoint them without any relation at all to the name that is given for that is no way essential to the thing The same name is frequently given to those who differ exceedingly in right and power and the same right and power is as osten annexed to Magistracies that differ in name The same power which had bin in the Roman Kings was given to the Consuls and that which had bin legally in the Dictators for a time not exceeding six months was asterwards usurped by the Cesars and made perpetual The supreme Power which some pretend belongs to all Kings has bin and is enjoy'd in the fullest extent by such as never had the name and no Magistracy was ever more restrain'd than those that had the name of Kings in Sparta Arragon England Poland and other places They therefore that did thus institute regulate and restrain create Magistracies and give them names and powers as seemed best to them could not but have in themselves the coercive as well as the directive over them for the regulation and restriction is coercion but most of all the institution by which they could make them to be or not to be As to the exterior force 't is sometimes on the side of the Magistrate and sometimes on that of the People and as Magistrates under several names have the same work incumbent upon them and the same Power to perform it the same Duty is to be exacted from them and rendred to them which being distinctly proportion'd by the Laws of every Country I may conclude that all Magistratical Power being the Ordinance of Man in pursuance of the Ordinance of God receives its being and measure from the Legislative Power of every Nation And whether the power be placed simply in one a few or many men or in one body composed of the three simple Species whether the single Person be called King Duke Marquess Emperor Sultan Mogol or Grand Signor or the number go under the name of Senat Council Pregadi Diet Assembly of Estates and the like 't is the same thing The same obedience is equally due to all whilst according to the Precept of the Apostle they do the work of God for our good and if they depart from it no one of them has a better Title than the other to our obedience SECT XIII Laws were made to direct and instruct Magistrates and if they will not be directed to restrain them I Know not who they are that our Author introduces to say that the first invention of Laws was to bridle or moderate the overgreat Power of Kings and unless they give some better proof of their judgment in other things shall little esteem them They should have considered that there are Laws in many places where there are no Kings that there were Laws in many before there were Kings as in Israel the Law was given three hundred years before they had any but most especially that as no man can be a rightful King except by Law nor have any just Power but from the Law if that Power be found to be overgreat the Law that gave it must have bin before that which was to moderate or restrain it for that could not be moderated which was not in being Leaving therefore our Author to fight with these Adversaries if he please when he finds them I shall proceed to examin his own Positions The truth is says he the Original of Laws was for the keeping of the Multitude in order Popular Estates could not subsist at all without Laws whereas Kingdoms were govern'd many Ages without them The People of Athens as soon as they gave over Kings were forced to give power to Draco first then to Solon to make them Laws If we will believe him therefore wheresoever there is a King or a man who by having power in his hands is in the place of a King there is no need of Law He takes them all to be so wise just and good that they are Laws to themselves Leges viventes This was certainly verified by the whole succession of the Cesars the ten last Kings of Pharamond's Race all the Successors of Charles the Great and others that I am not willing to name but referring my self to History I desire all reasonable men to consider whether the piety and tender care that was natural to Caligula Nero or Domitian was such a security to the Nations that lived under them as without Law to be sufficient for their preservation for if the contrary appear to be true and that their Government was a perpetual exercise of rage malice and madness by which the worst of men were armed with power to destroy the best so that the Empire could only be saved by their destruction 't is most certain that mankind can never fall into a condition which stands more in need of Laws to protect the innocent than when such Monsters reign who endeavour their extirpation and are too well furnished with means to accomplish their detestable designs Without any prejudice therefore to the Cause that I defend I might confess that all Nations were at the first governed by Kings and that no Laws were imposed upon those Kings till they or the Successors of those who had bin advanced for their virtues by falling into Vice and Corruption did manifestly discover the inconveniences of depending upon their will Besides these there are also children women and fools that often come to the succession of Kingdoms whose weakness and ignorance stands in as great need of support and direction as the desperate fury of the others can do of restriction And if some Nations had bin so sottish not to foresee the mischief of leaving them to their will others or the same in succeeding Ages discovering them could no more be obliged to continue in so pernicious a
continue in any If the Power be not conferred upon them they have it not and if they have it not their want of leisure to do Justice cannot have bin the cause for which Laws are made and they cannot be the signification of their Will but are that to which the Prince ows Obedience as well as the meanest Subject This is that which Bracton calls esse sub lege and says that Rex in regno superiores habet Deum Legem Fortescue says The Kings of England cannot change the Laws and indeed they are so far from having any such Power that the Judges swear to have no regard to the King's Letters or Commands but if they receive any to proceed according to Law as if they had not bin And the breach of this Oath dos not only bring a blemish upon their Reputation but exposes them to capital Punishments as many of them have found 'T is not therefore the King that makes the Law but the Law that makes the King It gives the rule for Succession making Kingdoms sometimes Hereditary and sometimes Elective and more often than either simply Hereditary under condition In some places Males only are capable of inheriting in others Females are admitted Where the Monarchy is regular as in Germany England c. the Kings can neither make nor change Laws They are under the Law and the Law is not under them their Letters or Commands are not to be regarded In the administration of Justice the question is not what pleases them but what the Law declares to be right which must have its course whether the King be busy or at leisure whether he will or not The King who never dies is always present in the supreme Courts and neither knows nor regards the pleasure of the man that wears the Crown But lest he by his Riches and Power might have some influence upon judicial Proceedings the great Charter that recapitulates and acknowledges our antient inherent Liberties obliges him to swear that he will neither sell delay nor deny Justice to any man according to the Laws of the Land which were ridiculous and absurd if those Laws were only the signification of his Pleasure or any way depended upon his Will This Charter having bin confirmed by more than thirty Parliaments all succeeding Kings are under the obligation of the same Oath or must renounce the benefit they receive from our Laws which if they do they will be found to be equal to every one of us Our Author according to his custom having laid down a false proposition gos about to justify it by false examples as those of Draco Solon the Decemviri and Moses of whom no one had the Power he attributes to them and it were nothing to us if they had The Athenians and Romans as was said before were so far from resigning the absolute Power without appeal to themselves that nothing done by their Magistrates was of any force till it was enacted by the People And the power given to the Decemviri sine provocatione was only in private cases there being no superior Magistrate then in being to whom Appeals could be made They were vested with the same Power the Kings and Dictators enjoy'd from whom there lay no Appeal but to the People and always to them as appears by the case of Horatius in the time of Tullus Hostilius that of Marcus Fabius when Papirius Cursor was Dictator and of Nenius the Tribun during that of Q. Fabius Maximus all which I have cited already and reser to them There was therefore a reservation of the supreme Power in the People notwithstanding the creation of Magistrates without Appeal and as it was quietly exercised in making Strangers or whom they pleased Kings restraining the power of Dictators to six months and that of the Decemviri to two years when the last did contrary to Law endeavour by force to continue their Power the People did by force destroy it and them The case of Moses is yet more clear he was the most humble and gentle of all men he never raised his heart above his brethren and commanded Kings to live in the same modesty he never desired the People should depend upon his will In giving Laws to them he fulfill'd the will of God not his own and those Laws were not the signification of his will but of the will of God They were the production of God's Wisdom and Goodness not the invention of Man given to purify the People not to advance the glory of their Leader He was not proud and insolent nor pleas'd with that ostentation of Pomp to which fools give the name of Majesty and whoever so far exalts the power of a man to make Nations depend upon his pleasure dos not only lay a burden upon him which neither Moses nor any other could ever bear and every wise man will always abhor but with an impious fury endeavours to set up a Government contrary to the Laws of God presumes to accuse him of want of wisdom or goodness to his own People and to correct his Errors which is a work fit to be undertaken by such as our Author From hence as upon a solid foundation he proceeds and making use of King James's words infers that Kings are above the Laws because he so teaches us But he might have remembred that having affirmed the People could not judg of the disputes that might happen between them and Kings because they must not be judges in their own case 't is absurd to make a King judg of a case so nearly concerning himself in the decision of which his own Passions and Interests may probably lead him into errors And if it be pretended that I do the same in giving the judgment of those matters to the People the case is utterly different both in the nature and consequences The King's judgment is merely for himself and if that were to take place all the Passions and Vices that have most power upon men would concur to corrupt it He that is set up for the publick good can have no contest with the whole People whose good he is to procure unless he deflect from the end of his Institution and set up an interest of his own in opposition to it This is in its nature the highest of all delinquencies and if such a one may be judg of his own crimes he is not only sure to avoid punishment but to obtain all that he sought by them and the worse he is the more violent will his desires be to get all the power into his hands that he may gratify his lusts and execute his pernicious designs On the other side in a popular Assembly no man judges for himself otherwise than as his good is comprehended in that of the publick Nothing hurts him but what is prejudicial to the Commonwealth such amongst them as may have received private Injuries are so far only considered by others as their Sufferings may have influence upon the
publick if they be few and the matters not great others will not suffer their quiet to be disturbed by them if they are many and grievous the Tyranny thereby appears to be so cruel that the Nation cannot subsist unless it be corrected or suppress'd Corruption of Judgment proceeds from private Passions which in these cases never govern and tho a zeal for the publick good may possibly be misguided yet till it Le so it can never be capable of excess The last Tarquin and his lewd Son exercised their Fury and Lust in the murders of the best men in Rome and the rape of Lucretia Appius Claudius was filled with the like madness Caligula and Nero were so well established in the power of committing the worst of Villanies that we do not hear of any man that offer'd to defend himself or woman that presumed to refuse them If they had bin judges in these cases the utmost of all Villanies and Mischiefs had bin established by Law but as long as the judgment of these matters was in the People no private or corrupt Passion could take place Lucius Brutus Valerius Horatius and Virginius with the People that followed them did not by the expulsion of the Kings or the suppression of the Decemviri assume to themselves a power of committing Rapes and Murders nor any advantages beyond what their equals might think they deserved by their virtues and services to the Commonwealth nor had they more credit than others for any other reason than that they shewed themselves most forward in procuring the publick Good and by their Valour and Conduct best able to promote it Whatsoever happen'd after the overthrow of their Liberty belongs not to my Subject for there was nothing of popularity in the judgments that were made One Tyrant destroy'd another the same Passions and Vices for the most part reigned in both The last was often as bad as his Predecessor whom he had overthrown and one was sometimes approved by the People for no other reason than that it was thought impossible for him to be worse than he who was in possession of the Power But if one instance can be of force amongst an infinite number of various Accidents the words of Valerius Asiaticus who by wishing he had bin the man that had kill'd Caligula did in a moment pacify the fury of the Soldiers who were looking for those that had done it shew that as long as men retain any thing of that Reason which is truly their Nature they never fail of judging rightly of Virtue and Vice whereas violent and ill Princes have always done the contrary and even the best do often deflect from the rules of Justice as appears not only by the examples of Edward the first and third who were brought to confess it but even those of David and Solomon Moreover to shew that the decision of these Controversies cannot belong to any King but to the People we are only to consider that as Kings and all other Magistrates whether supreme or subordinate are constituted only for the good of the People the People only can be fit to judg whether the end be accomplished A Physician dos not exercise his Art for himself but for his Patients and when I am or think I shall be sick I send for him of whom I have the best opinion that he may help me to recover or preserve my health but I lay him aside it I find him to be negligent ignorant or unfaithful and it would be ridiculous for him to say I make my self judg in my own case for I only or such as I shall consult am fit to be the judg of it He may be treacherous and through corruption or malice endeavour to poison me or have other defects that render him unfit to be trusted but I cannot by any corrupt passion be led wilfully to do him injustice and if I mistake 't is only to my own hurt The like may be said of Lawyers Stewards Pilots and generally of all that do not act for themselves but for those who employ them And if a Company going to the Indies should find that their Pilot was mad drunk or treacherous they whose lives and goods are concerned can only be fit to judg whether he ought to be trusted or not since he cannot have a right to destroy those he was chosen to preserve and they cannot be thought to judg perversly because they have nothing to lead them but an opinion of truth and cannot err but to their own prejudice In the like manner not only Solon and Draco but Romulus Numa Hostilius the Consuls Dictators and Decemviri were not distinguished from others that it might be well with them Sed ut bonum faelix faustumque sit Populo Romano but that the prosperity and happiness of the People might be procured which being the thing always intended it were absurd to refer the judgment of the performance to him who is suspected of a design to overthrow it and whose passions interests and vices if he has any lead him that way If King James said any thing contrary to this he might be answered with some of his own words I was says he sworn to maintain the Laws of the Land and therefore had bin perjured if I had broken them It may also be presumed he had not forgotten what his Master Buchanan had taught in the Books he wrote chiefly for his Instruction that the violation of the Laws of Scotland could not have bin so fatal to most of his Predecessors Kings of that Country nor as he himself had made them to his Mother if Kings as Kings were above them SECT XV. A general presumption that Kings will govern well is not a sufficient security to the People BUT says our Author yet will they rule their Subjects by the Law and a King governing in a settled Kingdom leaves to be a King and degenerates into a Tyrant so soon as he ceases to rule according unto his Laws Yet where he sees them rigorous or doubtful he may mitigate or interpret This is therefore an effect of their goodness they are above Laws but will rule by Law we have Filmers's word for it But I know not how Nations can be assured their Princes will always be so good Goodness is always accompanied with Wisdom and I do not find those admirable qualities to be generally inherent or entail'd upon supreme Magistrates They do not seem to be all alike and we have not hitherto found them all to live in the same Spirit and Principle I can see no resemblance between Moses and Caligula Joshua and Claudius Gideon and Nero Samson and Vitellius Samuel and Otho David and Domitian nor indeed between the best of these and their own Children If the Sons of Moses and Joshua had bin like to them in wisdom valour and integrity 't is probable they had bin chosen to succeed them if they were not the like is less to be presumed of others
a Commonwealths-man as Cato but the washed Swine will return to the Mire He overthrows all by a preposterous conjunction of the rights os Kings which are just and by Law with those of Tyrants which are utterly against Law and gives the sacred and gentle name os Father to those Beasts who by their actions declare themselves enemies not only to all Law and Justice but to Mankind that cannot subsist without them This requires no other proof than to examine whether Attila or Tamerlan did well deserve to be called Fathers of the Countries they destroy'd The first of these was usually called the scourge of God and he gloried in the Name The other being reproved for the detestable cruelties he exercised made answer You speak to me as to a man I am not a man but the scourge of God and plague of Mankind This is certainly sweet and gentle Language savouring much of a fatherly tenderness There is no doubt that those who use it will provide for the safety of the Nations under them and the preservation of the Laws of Nature is rightly referred to them and 't is very probable that they who came to burn the Countries and destroy the Nations that fell under their power should make it their business to preserve them and look upon the former Governors as their Fathers whose acts they were obliged to confirm tho they seldom attained to the Dominion by any other means than the slaughter of them and their Families But if the enmity be not against the Nation and the cause of the war be only for Dominion against the ruling Person or Family as that of Baasha against the house of Jeroboam of Zimri against that of Baasha of Omri against Zimri and of Jehu against Joram the prosecution of it is a strange way of becoming the Son of the Person destroyed And Filmer alone is subtil enough to discover that Jehu by extinguishing the house of Ahab drew an obligation upon himself of looking on him as his Father and confirming his acts If this be true Moses was obliged to confirm the acts of the Kings of the Amalekites Moabites and Amorites that he destroy'd the same duty lay upon Joshua in relation to the Cananites but 't is not so easily decided to which of them he did owe that deference for the same could not be due to all and 't is hard to believe that by killing above thirty Kings he should purchase to himself so many Fathers and the like may be said of divers others Moreover there is a sort of Tyrant who has no Father as Agathocles Dionysius Cesar and generally all those who subvert the Liberties of their own Countrey And if they stood obliged to look upon the former Magistrates as their Predecessors and to confirm their Acts the first should have bin to give impunity and reward to any that would kill them it having bin a fundamental Maxim in those States That any man might kill a Tyrant This being in all respects ridiculous and absurd 't is evident that our Author who by proposing such a false security to Nations for their Liberties endeavours to betray them is not less treacherous to Kings when under a pretence of defending their rights he makes them to be the same with those of Tyrants who are known to have none and are Tyrants because they have none and gives no other hopes to Nations of being preserved by the Kings they set up for that end than what upon the same account may be expected from Tyrants whom all wise men have ever abhorr'd and affirmed to have bin produced to bring destruction upon the World and whose Lives have verifi'd the Sentence This is truly to depose and abolish Kings by abolishing that by which and for which they are so The greatness of their Power Riches State and the pleasures that accompany them cannot but create enemies Some will envy that which is accounted Happiness others may dislike the use they make of their Power some may be unjustly exasperated by the best of their Actions when they find themselves incommoded by them others may be too severe judges of slight miscarriages These things may reasonably temper the joys of those who delight most in the advantages of Crowns But the worst and most dangerous of all their enemies are these accursed Sycophants who by making those that ought to be the best of men like to the worst destroy their Being and by perswading the world they aim at the same things and are bound to no other rule than is common to all Tyrants give a fair pretence to ill men to say They are all of one kind And if this should be received for truth even they who think the miscarriages of their Governors may be easily redressed and desire no more would be the most fierce in procuring the destruction of that which is naught in Principle and cannot be corrected SECT XVII Kings cannot be the Interpreters of the Oaths they take OUR Author's Book is so full of absurdities and contradictions that it would be a rope of Sand if a continued series of frauds did not like a string of Poisons running through the whole give it some consistence with it self and shew it to be the work of one and the same hand After having endeavoured to subvert the Laws of God Nature and Nations most especially our own by abusing the Scriptures falsly alledging the Authority of many good Writers and seeking to obtrude upon Mankind a universal Law that would take from every Nation the right of constituting such Governments within themselves as seem most convenient for them and giving rules for the administration of such as they had established he gives us a full view of his Religion and Morals by destroying the force of the Oath taken by our Kings at their Coronation Others says he affirm that although Laws of themselves do not bind Kings yet the Oaths of Kings at their Coronation tie them to keep all the Laws of their Kingdoms How far this is true let us but examine the Oath of the Kings of England at their Coronation the words whereof are these Art thou pleased to cause to be administred in all thy judgments indifferent and upright Justice and to use discretion with Mercy and Verity Art thou pleased that our upright Laws and Customs be observed and dost thou promise that those shall be protected and maintained by thee c. To which the King answers in the Affirmative being first demanded by the Archbishop of Canterbury Pleaseth it you to confirm and observe the Laws and Customs of the antient times granted from God by just and devout Kings unto the English Nation by Oath unto the said People especially the Laws Liberties and Customs granted unto the Clergy and Laity by the famous King Edward From this he infers That the King is not to observe all Laws but such as are upright because he finds evil Laws mention'd in the Oath of Richard the
2d which he swears to abolish Now what Laws are upright and what evil who shall judg but the King c. So that in effect the King doth swear to keep no Laws but such as in his judgment are upright c. And if he did strictly swear to observe all Laws he could not without Perjury give his consent to the repealing or abrogating of any Statute by Act of Parliament c. And again But let it be supposed for Truth that Kings do swear to observe all Laws of their Kingdoms yet no man can think it reason that the Kings should be more bound by their voluntary Oaths than common Persons Now if a private Person make a Contract either with Oath or without Oath he is no farther bound than the equity and justice of the Contract ties him for a man may have relief against an unreasonable and unjust Promise if either deceit or error force or fear induced him thereunto or if it be hurtful or grievous in the performance since the Law in many cases gives the King a Prerogative above common persons Lest I should be thought to insist upon small advantages I will not oblige any man to shew where Filmer found this Oath nor observe the faults committed in the Translation but notwithstanding his false representation I find enough for my purpose and intend to take it in his own words But first I shall take leave to remark that those who for private interests addict themselves to the personal service of Princes tho the ruin of their Country find it impossible to perswade Mankind that Kings may govern as they please when all men know there are Laws to direct and restrain them unless they can make men believe they have their power from a universal and superior Law or that Princes can attempt to dissolve the obligations laid upon them by the Laws which they so solemnly swear to observe without rendring themselves detestable to God and Man and subject to the revenging hands of both unless they can invalidate those Oaths Mr. Hobbes I think was the first who very ingeniously contrived a compendious way of justifying the most abominable Perjuries and all the mischiefs ensuing thereupon by pretending that as the King's Oath is made to the People the People may absolve him from the obligation and that the People having conferred upon him all the Power they had he can do all that they could he can therefore absolve himself and is actually free since he is so when he pleases This is only false in the minor for the People not having conferred upon him all but only a part of their Power that of absolving him remains in themselves otherwise they would never have obliged him to take the Oath He cannot therefore absolve himself The Pope finds a help for this and as Christ's Vicar pretends the power of Absolution to be in him and exercised it in absolving King John But our Author despairing to impose either of these upon our Age and Nation with more impudence and less wit would enervate all Coronation-Oaths by subjecting them to the discretion of the taker whereas all men have hitherto thought their force to consist in the declared sense of those who give them This doctrine is so new that it surpasses the subtilty of the Schoolmen who as an ingenious Person said of them had minced Oaths so fine that a million of them as well as Angels may stand upon the point of a needle and were never yet equalled but by the Jesuits who have overthrown them by mental reservations which is so clearly demonstrated from their books that it cannot be denied but so horrible that even those of their own Order who have the least spark of common honesty condemn the practice And one of them being a Gentleman of a good family told me he would go the next day and take all the Oaths that should be offer'd if he could satisfy his conscience in using any manner of equivocation or mental reservation or that he might put any other sense upon them than he knew to be intended by those who offer'd them And if our Author's conscience were not more corrupted than that of the Jesuit who had lived fifty years under the worst Discipline that I think ever was in the world I would ask him seriously if he truly believe that the Nobility Clergy and Commonalty of England who have bin always so zealous for their antient Laws and so resolute in defending them did mean no more by the Oaths they so solemnly imposed and upon which they laid so much weight than that the King should swear to keep them so far only as he should think fit But he swears only to observe those that are upright c. How can that be understood otherwise than that those who give the Oath do declare their Laws and Customs to be upright and good and he by taking the Oath affirms them to be so Or how can they be more precisely specified than by the ensuing Clause Granted from God by just and devout Kings by Oath especially those of the famous King Edward But says he by the same Oath Richard the 2d was bound to abolish those that were evil If any such had crept in through error or bin obtruded by malice the evil being discovered and declared by the Nobility and Commons who were concerned he was not to take advantage of them or by his refusal to evade the abolition but to join with his people in annulling them according to the general Clause of assenting to those Quas vulgus elegerit Magna Charta being only an abridgment of our antient Laws and Customs the King that swears to it swears to them all and not being admitted to be the interpreter of it or to determin what is good or evil fit to be observed or annulled in it can have no more power over the rest This having bin confirmed by more Parliaments than we have had Kings since that time the same obligation must still lie upon them all as upon John and Henry in whose time that claim of right was compiled The Act was no less solemn than important and the most dreadful curses that could be conceived in words which were denounced against such as should any way infringe it by the Clergy in Westminster-Hall in the presence and with the assent of K. Henry the 3d many of the principal Nobility and all the Estates of the Kingdom shew whether it was referred to the King's Judgment or not when 't is evident they feared the violation from no other than himself and such as he should employ I confess the Church as they then called the Clergy was fallen into such corruption that their Arms were not much to be feared by one who had his conscience clear but that could not be in the case of perjury and our Ancestors could do no better than to employ the spiritual sword reserving to themselves the use of the other in case that should be
to King Stephen and her Son Henry the 2d and of Henry the 7th in relation to the house of York both before he had married a Daughter of it and after her death they did the contrary in the cases of William the first and second Henry the I st Stephen John Richard the 3d Henry the 7th Mary Elizabeth and others So that for any thing I can yet find 't is equally difficult to discover the true sense of the Law of Nature that should be a guide to my Conscience whether I so far submit to the Laws of my Country to think that England alone has produced men that rightly understand it or examine the Laws and Practices of other Nations Whilst this remains undecided 't is impossible for me to know to whom I owe the obedience that is exacted from me If I were a French-man I could not tell whether I ow'd allegiance to the King of Spain Duke of Lorrain Duke of Savoy or many others descended from Daughters of the house of Valois one of whom ought to inherit if the Inheritance belongs to Females or to the house of Bourbon whose only title is founded upon the exclusion of them The like Controversies will be in all places and he that would put Mankind upon such enquiries goes about to subvert all the Governments of the World and arms every man to the destruction of his neighbour We ought to be informed when this right began If we had the Genealogy of every man from Noah and the Crowns of every Nation had since his time continued in one Line we were only to inquire into how many Kingdoms he appointed the world to be divided and how well the division we see at this day agrees with the allotment made by him But Mankind having for many Ages lain under such a vast confusion that no man pretends to know his own original except some Jews and the Princes of the house of Austria we cannot so easily arrive at the end of our work and the Scriptures making no other mention of this part of the world than what may induce us to think it was given to the Sons of Japhet we have nothing that can lead us to guess how it was to be subdivided nor to whom the several parcels were given So that the difficulties are absolutely inextricable and tho it were true that some one man had a right to every parcel that is known to us it could be of no use for that Right must necessarily perish which no man can prove nor indeed claim But as all natural Rights by Inheritance must be by Descent this Descent not being proved there can be no natural Right and all Rights being either natural created or acquired this Right to Crowns not being natural must be created or acquired or none at all There being no general Law common to all Nations creating a Right to Crowns as has bin proved by the several methods used by several Nations in the disposal of them according to which all those that we know are enjoy'd we must seek the Right concerning which we dispute from the particular Constitutions of every Nation or we shall be able to find none Acquir'd Rights are obtained as men say either by fair means or by soul that is by force or by consent such as are gained by force may be recovered by force and the extent of those that are enjoy'd by consent can only be known by the reasons for which or the conditions upon which that consent was obtain'd that is to say by the Laws of every People According to these Laws it cannot be said that there is a King in every Nation before he is crown'd John Sobietski now reigning in Poland had no relation in blood to the former Kings nor any title till he was chosen The last King of Sweden acknowledged he had none but was freely elected and the Crown being conferred upon him and the Heirs of his Body if the present King dies without Issue the right of electing a Successor returns undoubtedly to the Estates of the Country The Crown of Denmark was Elective till it was made Hereditary by an Act of the General Diet held at Copenhagen in the year 1660 and 't is impossible that a Right should otherwise accrue to a younger Brother of the house of Holstein which is derived from a younger Brother of the Counts of Oldenburgh The Roman Empire having passed through the hands of many Persons of different Nations no way relating to each other in blood was by Constantine transferred to Constantinople and after many Revolutions coming to Theodosius by birth a Spaniard was divided between his two Sons Arcadius and Honorius From thence passing to such as could gain most credit with the Soldiers the Western Empire being brought almost to nothing was restored by Charles the Great of France and continuing for some time in his descendents came to the Germans who having created several Emperors of the Houses of Suevia Saxony Bavaria and others as they pleased about three hundred years past chose Rodolphus of Austria and tho since that time they have not had any Emperor who was not of that Family yet such as were chosen had nothing to recommend them but the merits of their Ancestors their own personal Virtues or such political considerations as might arise from the power of their hereditary Countries which being joined with those of the Empire might enable them to make the better defence against the Turks But in this Line also they have had little regard to inheritance according to blood for the elder branch of the Family is that which reigns in Spain and the Empire continues in the descendents of Ferdinand younger Brother to Charles the fifth tho so unfix'd even to this time that the present Emperor Leopold was in great danger of being rejected If it be said that these are Elective Kingdoms and our Author speaks of such as are hereditary I answer that if what he says be true there can be no Elective Kingdom and every Nation has a natural Lord to whom obedience is due But if some are Elective all might have bin so if they had pleased unless it can be proved that God created some under a necessity of subjection and left to others the enjoyment of their liberty If this be so the Nations that are born under that necessity may be said to have a natural Lord who has all the power in himself before he is crowned or any part conferred on him by the consent of the people but it cannot extend to others And he who pretends a right over any Nation upon that account stands obliged to shew when and how that Nation came to be discriminated by God from others and deprived of that liberty which he in goodness had granted to the rest of mankind I confess I think there is no such Right and need no better proof than the various ways of disposing Inheritances in several Countries which not being naturally or universally
if there be any inconvenience in this 't is because they do not meet so frequently as the Law requires or by sinister means are interrupted in their sitting But nothing can be more absurd than to say that because the King dos not call Parliaments as the Law and his Oath requires that power should accrue to him which the Law and the consent of the Nation has placed in them There is also such a thing in the Law as a general or particular Pardon and the King may in some degree be entrusted with the power of giving it especially for such crimes as merely relate to himself as every man may remit the injuries done to himself but the confession of Edward the third That the Oath of the Crown had not bin kept by reason of the grant of Pardons contrary to Statutes and a new Act made that all such Charters of Pardon from henceforth granted against the Oath of the Crown and the said Statutes should be held for none demonstrates that this power was not in himself but granted by the Nation and to be executed according to such rules as the Law prescribed and the Parliament approved Moreover there having bin many and sometimes bloody contests for the Crown upon which the Nation was almost equally divided and it being difficult for them to know or even for us who have all the parties before us to judg which was the better side it was understood that he who came to be crown'd by the consent of the People was acceptable to all and the question being determined it was no way fit that he should have a liberty to make use of the publick Authority then in his hands to revenge such personal iniuries as he had or might suppose to have received which might raise new and perhaps more dangerous troubles if the Authors of them were still kept in fear of being prosecuted and nothing could be more unreasonable than that he should emplov his power to the destruction of those who had consented to make him King This made it a matter of course for a King as soon as he was crown'd to issue out a general Pardon which was no more than to declare that being now what he was not before he had no enemy upon any former account For this reason Lewis the twelfth of France when he was incited to revenge himself against those who in the reign of his Predecessor Charles the eighth had caused him to be imprisoned with great danger of his life made this answer That the King of France did not care to revenge the injuries done to the Duke of Orleans and the last King of Sweden seemed no otherwise to remember who had opposed the Queens Abdication and his Election than by conferring honours upon them because he knew they were the best men of the Nation and such as would be his friends when they should see how he would govern in which he was not deceived But lest all those who might come to the Crown of England should not have the same prudence and generosity the Kings were obliged by a Custom of no less force than a Law immediately to put an end to all disputes and the inconveniences that might arise from them This did not proceed from the bounty of the Prerogative which I think is nonsense for tho he that enjoys the Prerogative may have bounty the Prerogative can have none but from common sense from his obligation and the care of his own safety and could have no other effect in Law than what related to his person as appears by the forementioned Statute Pardon 's granted by Act of Parliament are of another nature For as the King who has no other power than by Law can no otherwise dispense with the crimes committed against the Laws than the Law dos enable him the Parliament that has the power of making Laws may intirely abolish the crimes and unquestionably remit the punishment as they please Tho some words of Aristotle's Ethicks are without any coherence shuffled together by our Author with others taken out of his Politicks I do not much except against them No Law made by man can be perfect and there must be in every Nation a power of correcting such defects as in time may arise or be discovered This power can never be so rightly placed as in the same hand that has the right of making Laws whether in one person or in many If Filmer therefore can tell us of a place where one man woman or child however he or she be qualified has the power of making Laws I will acknowledg that not only the hard Cases but as many others as he pleases are referr'd to his or her judgment and that they may give it whether they have any understanding of what they do or not whether they be drunk or sober in their senses or stark mad But as I know no such place and should not be much concerned for the sufferings of a People that should bring such misery upon themselves as must accompany an absolute dependence upon the unruly will of such a creature I may leave him to seek it and rest in a perfect assurance that he dos not speak of England which acknowledges no other Law than its own and instead of receiving any from Kings dos to this day obey none but such as have bin made by our Ancestors or our selves and never admitted any King that did not swear to observe them And if Aristotle deserve credit the power of altering mitigating explaining or correcting the Laws of England is only in the Parliament because none but the Parliament can make them SECT XXIII Aristotle proves that no man is to be entrusted with an absolute Power by shewing that no one knows how to execute it but such a man as is not to be found OUR Author having falsly cited and perverted the sense of Aristotle now brings him in saying That a perfect Kingdom is that wherein the King rules all according to his own will But tho I have read his books of Government with some attention I can find no such thing in them unless the word which signifies mere or absolute may be justly translated into perfect which is so far from Aristotle's meaning that he distinguishes the absolute or despotical Kingdoms from the Legitimate and commending the latter gives no better name than that of barbarous to the first which he says can agree only with the nature of such Nations as are base and stupid little differing from Beasts and having no skill to govern or courage to defend themselves must resign all to the will of one that will take care of them Yet even this cannot be done unless he that should take that care be wholly exempted from the vices which oblige the others to stand in need of it for otherwise 't is no better than if a Sheep should undertake to govern Sheep or a Hog to command Swine Aristotle plainly saying That as men are by nature
his Son gave them occasion to resume If this was commendable in them it must be so in other Nations If the Germans might preserve their Liberty as well as the Parthians submit themselves to absolute Monarchy 't is as lawful for the descendents of those Germans to continue in it as for the Eastern Nations to be slaves If one Nation may justly chuse the Government that seems best to them and continue or alter it according to the changes of times and things the same right must belong to others The great variety of Laws that are or have bin in the world proceeds from this and nothing can better shew the wisdom and virtue or the vices and folly of Nations than the use they make of this right they have bin glorious or infamous powerful or despicable happy or miserable as they have well or ill executed it If it be said that the Law given by God to the Hebrews proceeding from his wisdom and goodness must needs be perfect and obligatory to all Nations I answer that there is a simple and a relative perfection the first is only in God the other in the things he has created He saw that they were good which can signify no more than that they were good in their kind and suted to the end for which he designed them For if the perfection were absolute there could be no difference between an Angel and a Worm and nothing could be subject to change or death for that is imperfection This relative perfection is seen also by his Law given to mankind in the persons of Adam and Noah It was good in the kind fit for those times but could never have bin enlarged or altered if the perfection had bin simple and no better evidence can be given to shew that it was not so than that God did asterwards give one much more full and explicit to his People This Law also was peculiarly applicable to that People and season for if it had bin otherwise the Apostles would have obliged Christians to the intire observation of it as well as to abstain from idolatry fornication and blood But if all this be not so then their judicial Law and the form of their Commonwealth must be received by all no human Law can be of any value we are all Brethren no man has a prerogative above another Lands must be equally divided amongst all Inheritances cannot be alienated for above fifty years no man can be raised above the rest unless he be called by God and enabled by his Spirit to conduct the People when this man dies he that has the same Spirit must succeed as Joshua did to Moses and his Children can have no title to his Office when such a man appears a Sanhedrim of seventy men chosen out of the whole People are to judg such causes as relate to themselves whilst those of greater extent and importance are referred to the General Assemblies Here is no mention of a King and consequently if we must take this Law for our pattern we cannot have one If the point be driven to the utmost and the precept of Deuteronomy where God permitted them to have a King if they thought fit when they came into the promised Land be understood to extend to all Nations every one of them must have the same liberty of taking their own time chusing him in their own way dividing the Kingdom having no King and setting up other Governors when they please as before the Election of Saul and after the return from the Captivity and even when they have a King he must be such a one as is describ'd in the same Chapter who no more resembles the Soveraign Majesty that our Author adores and agrees as little with his Maxims as a Tribun of the Roman People We may therefore conclude that if we are to follow the Law of Moses we must take it with all the appendages a King can be no more and no otherwise than he makes him for whatever we read of the Kings they had were extreme deviations from it No Nation can make any Law and our Lawyers burning their Books may betake themselves to the study of the Pentateuch in which tho some of them may be well versed yet probably the profit arising from thence will not be very great But if we are not obliged to live in a conformity to the Law of Moses every People may frame Laws for themselves and we cannot be denied the right that is common to all Our Laws were not sent from Heaven but made by our Ancestors according to the light they had and their present occasions We inherit the same right from them and as we may without vanity say that we know a little more than they did if we find our selves prejudic'd by any Law that they made we may repeal it The safety of the People was their supreme Law and is so to us neither can we be thought less fit to judg what conduces to that end than they were If they in any Age had bin perswaded to put themselves under the power or in our Author's phrase under the sovereign Majesty of a child a fool a mad or desperately wicked person and had annexed the right conferred upon him to such as should succeed it had not bin a just and right Sanction and having none of the qualities essentially belonging to a Law could not have the effect of a Law It cannot be for the good of a People to be governed by one who by nature ought to be governed or by age or accident is rendred unable to govern himself The publick interests and the concernments of private men in their lands goods liberties and lives for the preservation of which our Author says that regal Prerogative is only constituted cannot be preserved by one who is transported by his own passions or follies a slave to his lusts and vices or which is sometimes worse governed by the vilest of men and women who flatter him in them and push him on to do such things as even they would abhor if they were in his place The turpitude and impious madness of such an act must necessarily make it void by overthrowing the ends for which it was made since that justice which was sought cannot be obtain'd nor the evils that were fear'd prevented and they for whose good it was intended must necessarily have a right of abolishing it This might be sufficient for us tho our Ancestors had enslaved themselves But God be thanked we are not put to that trouble We have no reason to believe we are descended from such fools and beasts as would willingly cast themselves and us into such an excess of misery and shame or that they were so tame and cowardly to be subjected by force or fear We know the value they set upon their Liberties and the courage with which they defended them and we can have no better example to incourage us never to suffer them to be violated or diminished
SECT XXVI Tho the King may be entrusted with the power of chusing Judges yet that by which they act is from the Law I Confess that no Law can be so perfect to provide exactly for every case that may fall out so as to leave nothing to the discretion of the Judges who in some measure are to interpret them But that Laws or Customs are ever few or that the paucity is the reason that they cannot give special rules or that Judges do resort to those principles or Common Law Axioms whereupon former judgments in cases something alike have bin given by former Judges who all receive their Authority from the King in his right to give Sentence I utterly deny and affirm 1. That in many places and particularly in England the Laws are so many that the number of them has introduced an uncertainty and confusion which is both dangerous and troublesom and the infinite variety of adjudged cases thwarting and contradicting each other has render'd these difficulties inextricable Tacitus imputes a great part of the miseries suffer'd by the Romans in his time to this abuse and tells us that the Laws grew to be innumerable in the worst and most corrupt state of things and that Justice was overthrown by them By the same means in France Italy and other places where the Civil Law is rendred municipal Judgments are in a manner arbitrary and tho the intention of our Laws be just and good they are so numerous and the volumes of our Statutes with the interpretations and adjudged Cases so vast that hardly any thing is so clear and fixed but men of wit and learning may find what will serve for a pretence to justify almost any judgment they have a mind to give Whereas the Laws of Moses as to the Judicial part being short and few Judgments were easy and certain and in Switzerland Sweden and some parts of Denmark the whole volume that contains them may be read in few hours and by that means no injustice can be done which is not immediately made evident 2. Axioms are not rightly grounded upon judged Cases but Cases are to be judged according to Axioms the certain is not proved by the uncertain but the uncertain by the certain and every thing is to be esteemed uncertain till it be proved to be certain Axioms in Law are as in Mathematicks evident to common sense and nothing is to be taken for an Axiom that is not so Euclid dos not prove his Axioms by his Propositions but his Propositions which are abstruse by such Axioms as are evident to all The Axioms of our Law do not receive their Authority from Coke or Hales but Coke and Hales deserve praise for giving judgment according to such as are undeniably true 3. The Judges receive their Commissions from the King and perhaps it may be said that the Custom of naming them is grounded upon a right with which he is entrusted but their power is from the Law as that of the King also is For he who has none originally in himself can give none unless it be first conserred upon him I know not how he can well perform his Oath to govern according to Law unless he execute the power with which he is entrusted in naming those men to be Judges whom in his conscience and by the advice of his Council he thinks the best and ablest to perform that Office But both he and they are to learn their duty from that Law by which they are and which allots to every one his proper work As the Law intends that men should be made Judges for their integrity and knowledg in the Law and that it ought not to be imagined that the King will break his trust by chusing such as are not so till the violation be evident nothing is more reasonable than to intend that the Judges so qualified should instruct the King in matters of Law But that he who may be a child over aged or otherwise ignorant and uncapable should instruct the Judges is equally absurd as for a blind man to be a guide to those who have the best eyes and so abhorrent from the meaning of the Law that the Judges as I said before are sworn to do justice according to the Laws without any regard to the King's words letters or commands If they are therefore to act according to a set rule from which they may not depart what command soever they receive they do not act by a power from him but by one that is above both This is commonly confess'd and tho some Judges have bin found in several ages who in hopes of reward and preferment have made little account of their Oath yet the success that many of them have had may reasonably deter others from following their example and if there are not more instances in this kind no better reason can be given than that Nations do frequently fail by being too remiss in asserting their own rights or punishing offenders and hardly ever err on the severer side 4. Judgments are variously given in several States and Kingdoms but he who would find one where they lie in the breast of the King must go at least as far as Marocco Nay the Ambassador who was lately here from that place denied that they were absolutely in him However 't is certain that in England according to the Great Charter Judgments are passed by equals no man can be imprison'd disseiz'd of his Freehold depriv'd of Life or Limb unless by the sentence of his Peers The Kings of Judah did judg and were judged and the Judgments they gave were in and with the Sanhedrim In England the Kings do not judg but are judged and Bracton says That in receiving justice the King is equal to another man which could not be if judgments were given by him and he were exempted from the judgment of all by that Law which has put all judgments into the hands of the People This power is executed by them in grand or petty Juries and the Judges are assistants to them in explaining the difficult points of the Law in which 't is presumed they should be learned The strength of every judgment consists in the verdict of these Juries which the Judges do not give but pronounce or declare and the same Law that makes good a verdict given contrary to the advice or direction of the Judges exposes them to the utmost penalties if upon their own heads or a command from the King they should presume to give a Sentence without or contrary to a Verdict and no pretensions to a power of interpreting the Law can exempt them if they break it The power also with which the Judges are entrusted is but of a moderate extent and to be executed bona fide Prevarications are capital as they proved to Tresilian Empson Dudley and many others Nay even in special Verdicts the Judges are only assistants to the Juries who find it specially
to their Country I say that all Nations amongst whom Virtue has bin esteemed have had a great regard to them and their Posterity And tho Kings when they were made have bin intrusted by the Saxons and other Nations with a Power of ennobling those who by services render'd to their Country might deserve that Honor yet the body of the Nobility was more antient than such for it had bin equally impossible to take Kings according to Tacitus out of the Nobility if there had bin no Nobility as to take Captains for their Virtue if there had bin no Virtue and Princes could not without breach of that trust confer Honors upon those that did not deserve them which is so true that this practice was objected as the greatest crime against Vortigern the last and the worst of the British Kings and tho he might pretend according to such cavils as are usual in our time that the judgment of those matters was reserred to him yet the world judged of his Crimes and when he had render'd himself odious to God and men by them he perished in them and brought destruction upon his Country that had suffer'd them too long As among the Turks and most of the Eastern Tyrannies there is no Nobility and no man has any considerable advantage above the common People unless by the immediate favour of the Prince so in all the legal Kingdoms of the North the strength of the Government has always bin placed in the Nobility and no better defence has bin found against the encroachments of ill Kings than by setting up an Order of men who by holding large Territories and having great numbers of Tenants and Dependents might be able to restrain the exorbitances that either the Kings or the Commons might run into For this end Spain Germany France Poland Denmark Sweeden Scotland and England were almost wholly divided into Lordships under several names by which every particular Possessor owed Allegiance that is such an Obedience as the Law requires to the King and he reciprocally swore to perform that which the same Law exacted from him When these Nations were converted to the Christian Religion they had a great veneration for the Clergy and not doubting that the men whom they esteemed holy would be just thought their Liberties could not be better secured than by joining those who had the direction of their Consciences to the Noblemen who had the command of their Forces This succeeded so well in relation to the defence of the publick Rights that in all the forementioned States the Bishops Abbots c. were no less zealous or bold in defending the publick Liberty than the best and greatest of the Lords And if it were true that things being thus established the Commons did neither personally nor by their Representatives enter into the General Assemblies it could be of no advantage to Kings for such a Power as is above-mentioned is equally inconsistent with the absolute Sovereignty of Kings if placed in the Nobility and Clergy as if the Commons had a part If the King has all no other man nor number of men can have any If the Nobility and Clergy have the power the Commons may have their share also But I affirm that those whom we now call Commons have always had a part in the Government and their place in the Councils that managed it for if there was a distinction it must have bin by Patent Birth or Tenure As for Patents we know they began long after the coming of the Normans and those that now have them cannot pretend to any advantage on account of Birth or Tenure beyond many of those who have them not Nay besides the several Branches of the Families that now enjoy the most antient Honors which consequently are as noble as they and some of them of the elder Houses we know many that are now called Commoners who in antiquity and eminency are no way inferior to the chief of the titular Nobility and nothing can be more absurd than to give a prerogative of Birth to Cr-v-n T-ft-n H-ae B-nn-t Osb-rn and others before the Cliftons Hampdens Courtneys Pelhams St. Johns Baintons Wilbrahams Hungerfords and many others And if the Tenures of their Estates be consider'd they have the same and as antient as any of those who go under the names of Duke or Marquess I forbear to mention the sordid ways of attaining to Titles in our days but whoever will take the pains to examine them shall find that they rather defile than ennoble the possessors And whereas men are truly ennobled only by Virtue and respect is due to such as are descended from those who have bravely serv'd their Country because it is presumed till they shew the contrary that they will resemble their Ancestors these modern Courtiers by their Names and Titles frequently oblige us to call to mind such things as are not to be mentioned without blushing Whatever the antient Noblemen of England were we are sure they were not such as these And tho it should be confess'd that no others than Dukes Marquesses Earls Viscounts and Barons had their places in the Councils mentioned by Cesar and Tacitus or in the great Assemblies of the Saxons it could be of no advantage to such as now are called by those names They were the titles of Offices conserred upon those who did and could best conduct the people in time of War give Counsel to the King administer Justice and perform other publick duties but were never made hereditary except by abuse much less were they sold for money or given as recompences of the vilest services If the antient order be totally inverted and the ends of its institution perverted they who from thence pretend to be distinguished from other men must build their claim upon something very different from Antiquity This being sufficient if I mistake not to make it appear that the antient Councils of our Nation did not consist of such as we now call Noblemen it may be worth our pains to examine of what sort of men they did consist And tho I cannot much rely upon the credit of Camden which he has forfeited by a great number of untruths I will begin with him because he is cited by our Author If we will believe him That which the Saxons called Wittenagemot we may justly name Parliament which has the supreme and most sacred Authority of making abrogating and interpreting Laws and generally of all things relating to the safety of the Commonwealth This Wittenagemot was according to William of Malmsbury The general meeting of the Senat and People and Sir Harry Spelman calls it The General Council of the Clergy and People In the Assembly at Calcuth it was decreed by the Archbishops Bishops Abbots Dukes Senators and the People of the Land Populo terrae that the Kings should be elected by the Priests and Elders of the People By these Offa Ina and others were made Kings and Alfred
he refused In the same place they met and chose Saul to be their King He being dead the men of Judah assembled themselves and anointed David Not long after all the Tribes met at Hebron made a Contract with him and received him as their King In the same manner tho by worse Counsel they made Absalom King And the like was attempted in favour of Sheba the Son of Bichri tho they then had a King chosen by themselves When they found themselves oppressed by the Tributes that had bin laid upon them by Solomon they met at Shechem and being displeased with Rehoboam's answer to their complaints ten of the Tribes made Jeroboam King Jehu and all the other Kings of Israel whether good or bad had no other Title than was conferred upon them by the prevailing part of the People which could not have given them any unless they had met together nor meet together without the consent and against the will of those that reigned unless the Power had bin in themselves Where Governments are more exactly regulated the power of judging when 't is fit to call the Senate or People together is refer'd to one or more Magistrates as in Rome to the Consuls or Tribuns in Athens to the Archons and in Thebes to the Beotarches but none of them could have these Powers unless they had bin given by those who advanced them to the Magistracies to which they were annexed nor could they have bin so annexed if those who created them had not had the right in themselves If these Officers neglected their duty of calling such Assemblies when the publick Affairs required the people met by their own Authority and punished the Person or abrogated the Magistracy as appears in the case of the Decemviri and many others that might be alledged if the thing were not so plain as to need no further proof The reason of this is that they who institute a Magistracy best know whether the end of the Institution be rightly pursued or not And all just Magistracies being the same in essence tho differing in form the same right must perpetually belong to those who put the Sovereign Power into the hands of one a few or many men which is what our Author calls the disposal of the Sovereignty Thus the Romans did when they created Kings Consuls Military Tribuns Dictators or Decemviri and it had bin most ridiculous to say that those Officers gave authority to the people to meet and chuse them for they who are chosen are the Creatures of those who chuse and are nothing more than others till they are chosen The last King of Sweden Charles Gustavus told a Gentleman who was Ambassador there That the Swedes having made him King when he was poor and had nothing in the world he had but one work to do which was so to reign that they might never repent the good opinion they had conceived of him They might therefore meet and did meet to confer the Sovereignty upon him or he could never have had it For tho the Kingdom be hereditary to Males or Females and his Mother was Sister to the Great Gustavus yet having married a stranger without the consent of the Estates she performed not the condition upon which women are admitted to the Succession and thereby falling from her right he pretended not to any The Act of his Election declares he had none and gives the Crown to him and the Heirs of his body with this farther declaration that the benefit of his Election should no way extend to his Brother Prince Adolphus and 't is confessed by all the Swedish Nation that if the King now reigning should die without children the Estates would proceed to a new Election 'T is rightly observ'd by our Author that if the people might meet and give the Sovereign Power they might also direct and limit it for they did meet in this and other Countries they did confer the Sovereign Power they did limit and direct the exercise and the Laws of each people shew in what manner and measure it is every where done This is as certain in relation to Kings as any other Magistrates The Commission of the Roman Dictators was to take care that the Commonwealth might receive no detriment The same was sometimes given to the Consuls King Offa's confession that he was made King to preserve the publick Liberty expresses the same thing And Charles Gustavus who said he had no other work than to govern in such a manner that they who had made him King might not repent shew'd there was a Rule which he stood obliged to follow and an end which he was to procure that he might merit and preserve their good opinion This power of conferring the Sovereignty was exercised in France by those who made Meroveus King in the prejudice of the two Grandchildren of Pharamond Sons to Clodion by those who excluded his Race and gave the Crown to Pepin by those who deposed Lewis le Debonair and Charles le Gros by those who brought in five Kings that were either Bastards or Strangers between him and Charles le Simple by those who rejected his Race and advanced Hugh Capet by those who made Henry the first King to the prejudice of Robert his elder Brother and continued the Crown in the Race of Henry for ten Generations whilst the Descendents of Robert were only Dukes of Burgundy The like was done in Castille and Arragon by frequently preferring the younger before the elder Brother the Descendents of Females before those of the Male-line in the same degree the more remote in Blood before the nearest and sometimes Bastards before the legitimate Issue The same was done in England in relation to every King since the coming in of the Normans as I shewed in the last Section and other places of this Work That they who gave the Sovereignty might also circumscribe and direct it is manifest by the several ways of providing for the Succession instituted by several Nations Some are merely elective as the Empire of Germany and the Kingdom of Poland to this day the Kingdom of Denmark till the year 1660 that of Sweden till the time of Gustavus Ericson who delivered that Nation from the oppression of Christiern the second the cruel King of the Danes In others the Election was confined to one or more Families as the Kingdom of the Goths in Spain to the Balthei and Amalthei In some the eldest Man of the reigning Family was preferr'd before the nearest as in Scotland before the time of Kennethus In other places the nearest in Blood is preferr'd before the elder if more remote In some no regard is had to Females or their Descendents as in France and Turky In others they or their Descendents are admitted either simply as well as Males or under a condition of marrying in the Country or with the consent of the Estates as in Sweden And no other reason can be given for this almost infinite variety of
be ravaged by Swedes Tartars and Cosacks The present Emperor who passed his time in setting Songs in Musick with a wretched Italian Eunuch when he ought to have bin at the head of a brave Army raised to oppose the Turks in the year 1664 and which under good conduct might have overthrown the Ottoman Empire as soon as he was delivered from the fear of that Enemy fell upon his own Subjects with such cruelty that they are now sorced to fly to the Turks for protection the Protestants especially who find their condition more tolerable under those professed Enemies to Christianity than to be exposed to the pride avarice perfidiousness and violence of the Jesuits by whom he is governed And the qualities of the King of Portugal are so well known together with the condition to which he would have brought his Kingdom if he had not bin sent to the Tercera's that I need not speak particularly of him If Kings therefore by virtue of their office are constituted Judges over the body of their people because the People or Parliaments representing them are not insallible those Kings who are children fools disabled by age or madmen are so also women have the same right where they are admitted to the succession those men who tho of ripe age and not superannuated nor directly fools or madmen yet absolutely uncapable of judging important Affairs or by their passions interests vices or malice and wickedness of their Ministers Servants and Favorites are set to oppress and ruin the people enjoy the same privilege than which nothing can be imagined more absurd and abominable nor more directly tending to the corruption and destruction of the Nations under them for whose good and safety our Author confesses they have their power SECT XXXIX Those Kings only are heads of the People who are good wise and seek to advance no Interest but that of the Publick THE worst of men seldom arrive to such a degree of impudence as plainly to propose the most mischievous follies and enormities They who are enemies to Virtue and fear not God are afraid of men and dare not offer such things as the world will not bear lest by that means they should overthrow their own designs All poison must be disguised and no man can be perswaded to eat Arsenic unless it be cover'd with something that appears to be harmless Creusa would have abhorr'd Medea's present if the pestilent venom had not bin hidden by the exterior lustre of Gold and Gems The Garment that destroy'd Hercules appear'd beautiful and Eve had neither eaten of the forbidden Tree nor given the Fruit to her Husband if it had not seemed to be good and pleasant and she had not bin induced to believe that by eating it they should both be as Gods The Servants of the Devil have always followed the same method their malice is carried on by fraud and they have seldom destroy'd any but such as they had first deceived Truth can never conduce to mischief and is best discovered by plain words but nothing is more usual with ill men than to cover their mischievous designs with figurative phrases It would be too ridiculous to say in plain terms that all Kings without distinction are better able to judg of all matters than any or all their people they must therefore be called the Head that thereby they may be invested with all the preeminences which in a natural body belong to that part and men must be made to believe the analogy between the natural and political body to be perfect But the matter must be better examined before this mortal poison seem fit to be swallowed The word Head is figuratively used both in Scripture and prosane Authors in several senses in relation to places or persons and always implies something of real or seeming preeminence in point of honor or jurisdiction Thus Damascus is said to be the head of Syria Samaria of Ephraiam and Ephraim of the ten Tribes that is Ephraim was the chief Tribe Samaria was the chief City of Ephraim and Damascus of Syria tho it be certain that Ephraim had no jurisdiction over the other Tribes nor Samaria over the other Cities of Ephraim but every one according to the Law had an equal power within it self or the Territories belonging to it and no privileges were granted to one above another except to Jerusalem in the matter of Religion because the Temple was placed there The words also Head Prince principal Man or Captain seem to be equivocal and in this sense the same men are called Heads of the Tribes Princes in the houses of their Fathers and 't is said that two hundred Heads of the Tribe of Reuben were carried away captive by Tiglath Pilezer and proportionably in the other Tribes which were a strange thing if the word did imply that supreme absolute and infinite Power that our Author attributes to it and no man of less understanding than he can comprehend how there should be two hundred or more sovereign unlimited Powers in one Tribe most especially when 't is certain that one series of Kings had for many Ages reigned over that Tribe and nine more and that every one of those Tribes as well as the particular Cities even from their first entrance into the promised Land had a full jurisdiction within it self When the Gileadites came to Jephtha he suspected them and asked whether indeed they intended to make him their Head they answered if he would lead them against the Ammonites he should be their Head In the like sense when Jul. Caesar in despair would have killed himself one of his Soldiers disswaded him from that design by telling him That the safety of so many Nations that had made him their Head depending upon his life it would be cruelty in him to take such a resolution But for all that when this Head was taken off the Body did still subsist upon which I observe many fundamental differences between the relation of this figurative Head even when the word is rightly applied and that of the natural Head to their respective Bodies The figurative Heads may be many the natural but one The people makes or creates the figurative Head the natural is from it self or connate with the Body The natural Body cannot change or subsist without the natural Head but a people may change and subsist very well without the artificial Nay if it had bin true that the world had chosen Cesar as it was not for he was chosen only by a sactious mercenary Army and the soundest part so far opposed that Election that they brought him to think of killing himself there could have bin no truth in this flattering assertion That the safety of the whole depended upon his life for the world could not only subsist without him but without any such Head as it had done before he by the help of his corrupted Soldiery had usurped the Power which also shews that a civil Head may be
Author presume that they will always be of profound wisdom to comprehend all of them and of perfect integrity always to act according to their understanding Which is no less than to lay the foundation of the Government upon a thing merely contingent that either never was or very often fails as is too much verified by experience and the Histories of all Nations or else to refer the decision of all to those who through the infirmities of age sex or person are often uncapable of judging the least or subject to such passions and vices as would divert them from Justice tho they did understand it both which seem to be almost equally preposterous 2. The Law must also presume that the Prince is always present in all the places where his name is used The King of France is as I have said already esteemed to be present on the seat of Justice in all the Parliaments and sovereign Courts of the Kingdom and if his corporeal Presence were by that phrase to be understood he must be in all those distinct and far distant places at the same time which absurdity can hardly be parallel'd unless by the Popish opinion of Transubstantiation But indeed they are so far from being guilty of such monstrous absurdity that he cannot in person be present at any trial and no man can be judged if he be This was plainly asserted to Lewis the 13th who would have bin at the Trial of the Duke of Candale by the President de Bellievre who told him that as he could judg no man himself so they could not judg any if he were present upon which he retired 3. The Laws of most Kingdoms giving to Kings the Confiscation of Delinquents estates if they in their own persons might give judgment upon them they would be constituted both Judges and Parties which besides the foremention'd incapacities to which Princes are as much subject as other men would tempt them by their own personal interest to subvert all manner of Justice This therefore not being the meaning of the Law we are to inquire what it is and the thing is so plain that we cannot mistake unless we do it wilfully Some name must be used in all manner of Transactions and in matters of publick concernment none can be so fit as that of the principal Magistrate Thus are Leagues made not only with Kings and Emperors but with the Dukes of Venice and Genoa the Avoyer and Senat of a Canton in Switzerland the Burgermaster of an Imperial Town in Germany and the States-General of the United Provinces But no man thinking I presume these Leagues would be of any value if they could only oblige the Persons whose names are used 't is plain that they do not stipulate only for themselves and that their stipulations would be of no value if they were merely personal And nothing can more certainly prove they are not so than that we certainly know these Dukes Avoyers and Burgermasters can do nothing of themselves The power of the States-General of the United Provinces is limited to the points mentioned in the Act of Union made at Vtrecht The Empire is not obliged by any stipulation made by the Emperor without their consent Nothing is more common than for one King making a League with another to exact a confirmation of their Agreement by the Parliaments Diets or General Estates because says Grotius a Prince dos not stipulate for himself but for the people under his Government and a King deprived of his Kingdom loses the right of sending an Ambassador The Powers of Europe shewed themselves to be of this opinion in the case of Portugal When Philip the second had gained the possession they treated with him concerning the affairs relating to that Kingdom Few regarded Don Antonio and no man considered the Dukes of Savoy Parma or Braganza who perhaps had the most plausible Titles But when his Grandson Philip the fourth had lost that Kingdom and the people had set up the Duke of Braganza they all treated with him as King And the English Court tho then in amity with Spain and not a little influenced by a Spanish faction gave example to others by treating with him and not with Spain touching matters relating to that State Nay I have bin informed by those who well understood the affairs of that time that the Lord Cottington advising the late King not to receive any persons sent from the Duke of Braganza Rebel to his Ally the King of Spain in the quality of Ambassadors the King answered that he must look upon that person to be King of Portugal who was acknowledged by the Nation And I am mistaken if his Majesty now reigning did not find all the Princes and States of the world to be of the same mind when he was out of his Kingdom and could oblige no man but himself and a few followers by any Treaty he could make For the same reason the names of Kings are used in Treaties when they are either Children or otherwise uncapable of knowing what Alliances are fit to be made or rejected and yet such Treaties do equally oblige them their successors and people as if they were of mature age and fit for government No man therefore ought to think it strange if the King's name be used in domestick affairs of which he neither ought nor can take any cognizance In these cases he is perpetually a Minor He must suffer the Law to take its due course and the Judges tho nominated by him are obliged by Oath not to have any regard to his Letters or personal Commands If a man be sued he must appear and a Deliquent is to be tried coram rege but no otherwise than secundum legem terrae according to the Law of the Land not his personal will or opinion And the judgments given must be executed whether they please him or not it being always understood that he can speak no otherwise than the Law speaks and is always present as far as the Law requires For this reason a noble Lord who was irregularly detain'd in prison in 1681 being by Habeas Corpus brought to the Bar of the King's Bench where he sued to be releas'd upon bail and an ignorant Judg telling him he must apply himself to the King he replied that he came thither for that end that the King might eat drink or sleep where he pleased but when he render'd Justice he was always in that place The King that renders Justice is indeed always there He never sleeps he is subject to no infirmity he never dies unless the Nation be extinguished or so dissipated as to have no Government No Nation that has a sovereign Power within it self dos ever want this King He was in Athens and Rome as well as at Babylon and Sufa and is as properly said to be now in Venice Switserland or Holland as in France Morocco or Turky This is he to whom we all owe a simple and unconditional obedience
manifest this by the words Be it enacted by the Lords Spiritual and Temporal and Commons in Parliament assembled and by Authority of the same But King James says Filmer in his Law of free Monarchy affirms the contrary and it may be so yet that is nothing to us No man doubts that he desired it might be so in England but it dos not from thence appear that it is so The Law of a free Monarchy is nothing to us for that Monarchy is not free which is regulated by a Law not to be broken without the guilt of Perjury as he himself confessed in relation to ours As to the words cited from Hooker I can find no hurt in them To draw up the form of a good Law is a matter of invention and judgment but it receives the force of a Law from the power that enacts it We have no other reason for the paiment of Excise or Customs than that the Parliament has granted those Revenues to the King to defray the publick Charges Whatever therefore King James was pleased to say in his Books or in those written for him we do not so much as know that the killing of a King is Treason or to be punished with death otherwise than as it is enacted by Parliament and it was not always so for in the time of Ethelstan the Estimates of Lives were agreed in Parliament and that of a King valued at thirty thousand Thrymsae And if that Law had not bin alter'd by the Parliament it must have bin in force at this day It had bin in vain for a King to say he would have it otherwise for he is not created to make Laws but to govern according to such as are made and sworn to assent to such as shall be proposed He who thinks the Crown not worth accepting on these conditions may refuse it The words Le Roy le veult are only a pattern of the French fashions upon which some Kings have laid great stress and would no doubt have bin glad to introduce Car tel est nostre plaisir but that may prove a difficult matter Nay in France it self where that Stile and all the ranting expressions that please the vainest of men are in mode no Edict has the power of a Law till it be registred in Parliament This is not a mere ceremony as some pretend but all that is essential to a Law Nothing has bin more common than for those Parliaments to refuse Edicts sent to them by the King When John Chastel had at the instigation of the Jesuits stabb'd Henry the fourth in the Mouth and that Order had designed or executed many other execrable crimes they were banished out of the Kingdom by an Arrest of the Parliament of Paris Some other Parliaments registred the same but those of Tholouse and Bordeaux absolutely refused and notwithstanding all that the King could do the Jesuits continued at Tournon and many other places within their Precincts till the Arrest was revoked These proceedings are so displeasing to the Court that the most violent ways have bin often used to abolish them About the year 1650 Seguier then Chancellor of France was sent with a great number of Soldiers to oblige the Parliament of Paris to pass some Edicts upon which they had hesitated but he was so far from accomplishing his design that the People rose against him and he thought himself happy that he escaped with his Life If the Parliaments do not in all parts of the Kingdom continue in the Liberty of approving or rejecting all Edicts the Law is not altered but oppressed by the violence of the Sword And the Prince of Condé who was principally employ'd to do that work may as I suppose have had leisure to reflect upon those Actions and cannot but find reason to conclude that his excellent valour and conduct was used in a most noble exploit equally beneficial to his Country and himself However those who are skilled in the Laws of that Nation do still affirm that all publick Acts which are not duly examined and registred are void in themselves and can be of no force longer than the miserable People lies under the violence of Oppression which is all that could reasonably be said if a Pirat had the same power over them But whether the French have willingly offer'd their ears to be bor'd or have bin subdued by force it concerns us not Our Liberties depend not upon their will virtue or fortune how wretched and shameful soever their Slavery may be the evil is only to themselves We are to consider no human Laws but our own and if we have the spirit of our Ancestors we shall maintain them and die as free as they left us Le Roy le veut tho written in great Letters or pronounced in the most tragical manner can signify no more than that the King in performance of his Oath dos assent to such Laws as the Lords and Commons have agreed Without prejudice to themselves and their Liberties a People may suffer the King to advise with his Council upon what they propose Two eyes see more than one and human judgment is subject to errors Tho the Parliament consist of the most eminent men of the Nation yet when they intend good they may be mistaken They may sefely put a check upon themselves that they may farther consider the most important matters and correct the errors that may have bin committed if the King's Council do discover them but he can speak only by the advice of his Council and every man of them is with his head to answer for the advices he gives If the Parliament has not bin satisfied with the reasons given against any Law that they offer'd it has frequently pass'd and if they have bin satisfied 't was not the King but they that laid it aside He that is of another opinion may try whether Le Roy le veut can give the force of a Law to any thing conceived by the King his Council or any other than the Parliament But if no wise man will affirm that he can do it or deny that by his Oath he is obliged to assent to those that come from them he can neither have the Legislative power in himself nor any other part in it than what is necessarily to be performed by him as the Law prescribes I know not what our Author means by saying Le Roy le veut is the interpretative phrase pronounced at the passing of every Act of Parliament For if there be difficulty in any of them those words do no way remove it But the following part of the paragraph better deserves to be observed It was says he the antient custom for á long time until the days of Henry the fifth for the Kings when any Bill was brought to them that had passed both Houses to take and pick out what they liked not and so much as they chose was enacted as a Law But the custom of the