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-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
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
assert that which is agreeable to divine or human Story as to matter of fact and as little conformable to common sense It does not only appear contrary to his general Proposition That all Governments have not begun with the Paternal power but we do not find that any ever did They who according to his rules should have bin Lords of the whole Earth lived and died private men whilst the wildest and most boisterous of their Children commanded the greatest part of the then inhabited World not excepting even those Countries where they spent and ended their days and instead of entring upon the Government by the right of Fathers or managing it as Fathers they did by the most outragious injustice usurp a violent Domination over their Brethren and Fathers It may easily be imagined what the Right is that could be thus acquired and transmitted to their Successors Nevertheless our Author says All Kings either are or ought to be reputed next Heirs c. But why reputed if they were not How could any of the accursed race of Ham be reputed Father of Noah or Shem to whom he was to be a Servant How could Nimrod and Ninus be reputed Fathers of Ham and of those whom they ought to have obeyed Can reason oblige me to believe that which I know to be false Can a Lie that is hateful to God and good men not only be excused but enjoyned when as he will perhaps say it is for the King's Service Can I serve two Masters or without the most unpardonable injustice repute him to be my Father who is not my Father and pay the obedience that is due to him who did beget and educate me to one from whom I never received any good If this be so absurd that no man dares affirm it in the person of any 't is as preposterous in relation to his Heirs For Nimrod the first King could be Heir to no man as King and could transmit to no man a Right which he had not If it was ridiculous and abominable to say that he was Father of Chush Ham Shem and Noah 't is as ridiculous to say he had the Right of Father if he was not their Father or that his Successors inherited it from him if he never had it If there be any way through this it must have accrued to him by the extirpation of all his Elders and their Races so as he who will assert this pretended Right to have been in the Babylonian Kings must assert that Noah Shem Japhet Ham Chush and all Nimrod's elder Brothers with all their Descendents were utterly extirpated before he began to reign and all Mankind to be descended from him This must be if Nimrod as the Scripture says was the first that became mighty in the Earth unless men might be Kings without having more Power than others for Chush Ham and Noah were his Elders and Progenitors in the direct Line and all the Sons of Shem and Japhet and their Descendents in the Collaterals were to be preferred before him and he could have no Right at all that was not directly contrary to those Principles which our Author says are grounded upon the eternal and indispensable Laws of God and Nature The like may be said of the seventy two Heads of Colonies which following as I suppose Sir Walter Raleigh he says went out to people the Earth and whom he calls Kings for according to the same Rule Noah Shem and Japhet with their Descendents could not be of the number so that neither Nimrod nor the others that established the Kingdoms of the World and from whence he thinks all the rest to be derived could have any thing of Justice in them unless it were from a Root altogether inconsistent with his Principles They are therefore false or the Establishments before mentioned could have no Right If they had none they cannot be reputed to have any for no man can think that to be true which he knows to be false having none they could transmit none to their Heirs and Successors And if we are to believe that all the Kingdoms of the Earth are established upon this Paternal Right it must be proved that all those who in birth ought to have bin preferred before Nimrod and the seventy two were extirpated or that the first and true Heir of Noah did afterwards abolish all these unjust Usurpations and making himself Master of the whole left it to his Heirs in whom it continues to this day When this is done I will acknowledg the Foundation to be well laid and admit of all that can be rightly built upon it but if this fails all fails The poison of the Root continues in the Branches If the right Heir be not in possession he is not the right who is in possession If the true Heir be known he ought to be restored to his Right If he be not known the Right must perish That cannot be said to belong to any man if no man knows to whom it belongs and can have no more effect than if it were not This conclusion will continue unmoveable tho the division into seventy two Kingdoms were allowed which cannot be without destroying the Paternal Power or subjecting it to be subdivided into as many parcels as there are men which destroys Regality for the same thing may be required in every one of the distinct Kingdoms and others derived from them We must know who was that true Heir of Noah that recovered all How when and to whom he gave the several Portions and that every one of them do continue in the possession of those who by this prerogative of birth are raised above the rest of mankind and if they are not 't is an impious folly to repute them so to the prejudice of those that are and if they do not appear to the prejudice of all mankind who being equal are thereby made subject to them For as Truth is the Rule of Justice there can be none when he is reputed superior to all who is certainly inferior to In this place two Pages are wanting in the Original Manuscript degenerated from that Reason which distinguisheth men from beasts Tho it may be fit to use some Ceremonies before a man be admitted to practise Physick or set up a Trade 't is his own skill that makes him a Doctor or an Artificer and others do but declare it An Ass will not leave his stupidity tho he be covered with Scarlet and he that is by nature a Slave will be so still tho a Crown be put upon his Head and 't is hard to imagine a more violent inversion of the Laws of God and Nature than to raise him to the Throne whom Nature intended for the Chain or to make them Slaves to Slaves whom God hath endowed with the Vertues required in Kings Nothing can be more preposterous than to impute to God the frantick Domination which is often exercised by wicked foolish and vile Persons over the wise valiant just
from the ardency of a paternal Affection When Nero by the death of Helvidius Priscus and Thraseas endeavoured to cut up Vertue by the roots ipsam exscindere virtutem he did it because he knew it was good for the World that there should be no vertuous man in it When he fired the City and when Caligula wished the People had but one Neck that he might strike it off at one blow they did it through a prudent care of their Childrens good knowing that it would be for their advantage to be destroyed and that the empty desolated World would be no more troubled with popular Seditions By the same rule Pharaoh Eglon Nabuchodonosor Antiochus Herod and the like were Fathers of the Hebrews And without looking far backward or depending upon the Faith of History we may enumerate many Princes who in a paternal care of their People have not yielded to Nero or Caligula If our Author say true all those Actions of theirs which we have ever attributed to the utmost excess of Pride Cruelty Avarice and Perfidiousness proceeded from their princely Wisdom and fatherly Kindness to the Nations under them and we are beholden to him for the discovery of so great a Mystery which hath bin hid from mankind from the beginning of the World to this day if not we may still look upon them as Children of the Devil and continue to believe that Princes as well as other Magistrates were set up by the People for the publick Good that the Praises given to such as are Wise Just and Good are purely personal and can belong only to those who by a due exercise of their Power do deserve it and to no others CHAP. II. SECT I. That 't is natural for Nations to govern or to chuse Governors and that Vertue only gives a natural preference of one man above another or reason why one should be chosen rather than another IN this Chapter our Author fights valiantly against Bellarmin and Suarez seeming to think himself victorious if he can shew that either of them hath contradicted the other or himself but being no way concerned in them I shall leave their followers to defend their Quarrel My work is to seek after Truth and tho they may have said some things in matters not concerning their beloved Cause of Popery that are agreeable to Reason Law or Scripture I have little hope of finding it among those who apply themselves chiefly to School-Sophistry as the best means to support Idolatry That which I maintain is the Cause of Mankind which ought not to suffer tho Champions of corrupt Principles have weakly defended or maliciously betraid it and therefore not at all relying on their Authority I intend to reject whatsoever they say that agrees not with Reason Scripture or the approved Examples of the best polished Nations He also attacks Plato and Aristotle upon whose Opinions I set a far greater value in as much as they seem to have penetrated more deeply into the secrets of human Nature and not only to have judged more rightly of the Interests of Mankind but also to have comprehended in their Writings the Wisdom of the Grecians with all that they had learnt from the Phaenicians Egyptians and Hebrews which may lead us to the discovery of the Truth we seek If this be our work the question is not whether it be a Paradox or a received Opinion That People naturally govern or chuse Governors but whether it be true or not for many Paradoxes are true and the most gross Errors have often bin most common Tho I hope to prove that what he calls a Paradox is not only true but a Truth planted in the hearts of men and acknowledged so to be by all that have hearkned to the voice of Nature and disapproved by none but such as through wickedness stupidity or baseness of Spirit seem to have degenerated into the worst of beasts and to have retained nothing of men but the outward shape or the ability of doing those mischiefs which they have learnt from their Master the Devil We have already seen that the Patriarchical Power resembles not the Regal in principle or practice that the beginning and continuance of Regal Power was contrary to and inconsistent with the Patriarchical that the first Fathers of mankind left all their Children independent on each other and in an equal liberty of providing for themselves that every man continued in this liberty till the number so increased that they became troublesom and dangerous to each other and finding no other remedy to the disorders growing or like to grow among them joined many Families into one civil Body that they might the better provide for the conveniency safety and defence of themselves and their Children This was a collation of every man's private Right into a publick Stock and no one having any other right than what was common to all except it were that of Fathers over their Children they were all equally free when their Fathers were dead and nothing could induce them to join and lessen that natural liberty by joining in Societies but the hopes of a publick Advantage Such as were wise and valiant procured it by setting up regular Governments and placing the best Men in the administration whilst the weakest and basest fell under the power of the most boisterous and violent of their Neighbours Those of the first sort had their root in Wisdom and Justice and are called lawful Kingdoms or Commonwealths and the Rules by which they are governed are known by the name of Laws These Governments have ever bin the Nurses of Vertue The Nations living under them have flourished in Peace and Happiness or made Wars with Glory and Advantage whereas the other sort springing from Violence and Wrong have ever gone under the odious title of Tyrannies and by fomenting Vices like to those from whence they grew have brought shame and misery upon those who were subject to them This appears so plainly in Scripture that the assertors of Liberty want no other Patron than God himself and his Word so fully justifies what we contend for that it were not necessary to make use of human Authority if our Adversaries did not oblige us to examine such as are cited by them This in our present case would be an easy work if our Author had rightly marked the passages he would make use of or had bin faithful in his Interpretation or Explication of such as he truly cites but failing grosly in both 't is hard to trace him He cites the 16th Chapter of the third Book of Aristotle's Politicks and I do not find there is more than twelve or tho that Wound might be cured by saying the Words are in the twelfth his Fraud in perverting the Sense were unpardonable tho the other mistake be passed over 'T is true that Aristotle doth there seem to doubt whether there be any such thing as one man naturally a Lord over many Citizens since a City consists of Equals but
care of his Hens The Monarchy of France must have perished under the base Kings they call Les Roys faineants if the Scepter had not bin wrested out of their unworthy hands The World is full of Examples in this kind and when it pleases God to bestow a just wise and valiant King as a blessing upon a Nation 't is only a momentary help his Virtues end with him and there being neither any divine Promise nor human Reason moving us to believe that they shall always be renewed and continued in his Successors men cannot rely upon it and to alledg a possibility of such a thing is nothing to the purpose On the other side in a popular or mixed Government every man is concerned Every one has a part according to his quality or merit all changes are prejudicial to all whatsoever any man conceives to be for the publick good he may propose it in the Magistracy or to the Magistrate the body of the People is the publick defence and every man is arm'd and disciplin'd The advantages of good success are communicated to all and every one bears a part in the losses This makes men generous and industrious and fills their hearts with love to their Country This and the desire of that praise which is the reward of Virtue raised the Romans above the rest of Mankind and wheresoever the same ways are taken they will in a great measure have the same effects By this means they had as many Soldiers to fight for their Country as there were Freemen in it Whilst they had to deal with the free Nations of Italy Greece Africa or Spain they never conquer'd a Country till the Inhabitants were exhausted But when they came to fight against Kings the success of a Battel was enough to bring a Kingdom under their power Antiochus upon a rufflle received from Acilius at Thermipolae left all that he possessed in Greece and being defeated by Scipio Nasica he quitted all the Kingdoms and Territories of Asia on this side Taurus Paulus Emilius became Master of Macedon by one prosperous fight against Perseus Syphax Gentius Tigranes Ptolomy and others were more easily subdued The mercenary Armies on which they relied being broken the Cities and Countries not caring for their Masters submitted to those who had more virtue and better fortune If the Roman Power had not bin built upon a more sure soundation they could not have subsisted Notwithstanding their Valour they were osten beaten but their losses were immediately repair'd by the excellence of their Discipline When Hannibal had gained the Battels of Trebia Ticinum Thrasimene and Cannae defeated the Romans in many other Encounters and slain above two hundred thousand of their Men with Paulus Emilius C. Servilius Sempronius Gracchus Quintius Marcellus and many other excellent Commanders When about the same time the two brave Scipio's had bin cut off with their Armies in Spain and many great losses had bin sustain'd in Sicily and by Sea one would have thought it impossible for the City to have resisted But their Virtue Love to their Country and good Government was a strength that increased under all their Calamities and in the end overcame all The nearer Hannibal came to the Walls the more obstinate was their resistance Tho he had kill'd more great Captains than any Kingdom ever had others daily stepp'd up in their place who excell'd them in all manner of Virtue I know not if at any time that conquering City could glory in a greater number of men fit for the highest Enterprises than at the end of that cruel War which had consumed so many of them but I think that the finishing Victories by them obtained are but ill prooss of our Author's assertion that they thought basely of the common good and sought only to save themselves We know of none except Cecilius Metellus who after the Battel of Cannae had so base a thought as to design the withdrawing himself from the publick ruin but Scipio asterwards sirnamed Africanus threatning death to those who would not swear never to abandon their Country forced him to leave it This may in general be imputed to good Government and Discipline with which all were so seasoned from their infancy that no affection was so rooted in them as an ardent love to their Country and a resolution to die for it or with it but the means by which they accomplished their great ends so as after their defeats to have such men as carried on their noblest designs with more glory than ever was their annual Elections of Magistrates many being thereby advanc'd to the supreme Commands and every one by the Honours they enjoy'd fill'd with a desire of rendring himself worthy of them I should not much insist upon these things if they had bin seen only in Rome but tho their Discipline seems to have bin more perfect better observed and to have produc'd a Virtue that surpassed all others the like has bin found tho perhaps not in the same degree in all Nations that have enjoyed their Liberty and were admitted to such a part of the Government as might give them a love to it This was evident in all the Nations of Italy The Sabins Volsci AEqui Tuscans Samnites and others were never conquer'd till they had no men lest The Samnites alone inhabiting a small and barren Province suffer'd more defeats before they were subdued than all the Kingdoms of Numidia AEgypt Macedon and Asia and as 't is exprest in their Embassy to Hannibal never yielded till they who had brought vast numbers of men into the Field and by them defeated some of the Roman Armies were reduced to such weakness that they could not resist one Legion We hear of few Spartans who did not willingly expose their Lives for the service of their Country and the Women themselves were so far inflamed with the same affection that they refused to mourn for their Children and Husbands who died in the defence of it When the brave Brasidas was slain some eminent men went to comfort his Mother upon the news of his death and telling her he was the most valiant man in the City she answer'd that he was indeed a valiant man and died as he ought to do but that through the goodness of the Gods many others were lest as valiant as he When Xerxes invaded Greece there was not a Citizen of Athens able to bear Arms who did not leave his Wife and Children to shift for themselves in the neighbouring Cities and their Houses to be burnt when they imbarked with Themistocles and never thought of either till they had defeated the Barbarians at Salamine by Sea and at Platea by Land When men are thus spirited some will ever prove excellent and as none did ever surpass those who were bred under this discipline in all moral military and civil Virtues those very Countries where they flourished most have not produced any eminent men since they lost that Liberty which was the
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
of all were blessed with such Masters This way of expression was used by Lot's Daughters who said There was not a man in all the earth to come in to them because there was none in the neighborhood with whom it was thought fit they should accompany Now that the Eastern Nations were then and are still under the Government of those which all free People call Tyrants is evident to all men God therefore in giving them a Tyrant or rather a Government that would turn into Tyranny gave them what they asked under another name and without any blemish to the Mercy promised to their Fathers suffered them to bear the penalty of their wickedness and folly in rejecting him that he should not reign over them But tho the name of Tyrant was unknown to them yet in Greece from whence the word comes it signified no more than one who governed according to his own will distinguished from Kings that governed by Law and was not taken in an ill sense till those who had bin advanced for their Justice Wisdom and Valour or their Descendents were sound to depart from the ends of their Institution and to turn that Power to the oppression of the people which had bin given for their protection But by these means it grew odious and that kind of Government came to be thought only tolerable by the basest of men and those who destroy'd it were in all places esteemed to be the best If Monarchy had bin universally evil God had not in the 17 th of Deuteronomy given leave to the Israelites to set up a King and if that kind of King had bin asked he had not bin displeased and they could not have bin said to reject God if they had not asked that which was evil for nothing that is good is contrary or inconsistent with a peoples obedience to him The Monarchy they asked was displeasing to God it was therefore evil But a Tyrant is no more than an evil or corrupted Monarch The King therefore that they demanded was a Tyrant God in granting one who would prove a Tyrant gave them what they asked and that they might know what they did and what he would be he told them they rejected him and should cry by reason of the King they desired This denotes him to be a Tyrant for as the Government of a King ought to be gentle and easy tending to the good of the people resembling the tender care of a Father to his Family if he who is set up to be a King and to be like to that Father do lay a heavy Yoak upon the people and use them as Slaves and not as Children he must renounce all resemblance of a Father and be accounted an Enemy But says our Author whereas the peoples crying argues some tyrannical oppression we may remember that the peoples Cries are not always an Argument of their living under a Tyrant No man will say Solomon was a Tyrant yet all the Congregation complain'd that Solomon made their Yoak grievous 'T is strange that when Children nay when Whelps cry it should be accounted a mark that they are troubled and that the Cry of the whole people should be none Or that the Government which is erected for their ease should not be esteemed tyrannical if it prove grievous to those it should relieve But as I know no example of a People that did generally complain without cause our Adversaries must alledg some other than that of Solomon before I believe it of any We are to speak reverently of him He was excellent in Wisdom he built the Temple and God appeared twice to him But it must be confess'd that during a great part of his life he acted directly contrary to the Law given by God to Kings and that his ways were evil and oppressive to the people if those of God were good Kings were forbidden to multiply Horses Wives Silver and Gold But he brought together more Silver and Gold and provided more Horses Wives and Concubines than any man is known to have had And tho he did not actually return to Egypt yet he introduced their abominable Idolatry and so far raised his heart above his Brethren that he made them subservient to his Pomp and Glory The People might probably be pleased with a great part of this but when the Yoak became grievous and his foolish Son would not render it more easy they threw it off and the thing being from the Lord it was good unless he be evil But as just Governments are established for the good of the governed and the Israelites desir'd a King that it might be well with them not with him who was not yet known to them that which exalts one to the prejudice of those that made him must always be evil and the People that suffers the prejudice must needs know it better than any other He that denies this may think the state of France might have bin best known from Bulion the late Treasurer who finding Lewis the Thirteenth to be troubled at the peoples misery told him they were too happy since they were not reduced to eat grass But if words are to be understood as they are ordinarily used and we have no other than that of Tyranny to express a Monarchy that is either evil in the institution or fallen into corruption we may justly call that Tyranny which the Scripture calls a grievous Yoak and which neither the old nor the new Counsellors of Rehoboam could deny to be so for tho the first advised him to promise amendment and the others to do worse yet all agreed that what the people said was true This Yoak is always odious to such as are not by natural stupidity and baseness fitted for it but those who are so never complain An Ass will bear a multitude of blows patiently but the least of them drives a Lion into rage He that said the rod is made for the back of fools confessed that oppression will make a wise man mad And the most unnatural of all oppressions is to use Lions like Asses and to lay that Yoak upon a generous Nation which only the basest can deserve and for want of a better word we call this Tyranny Our Author is not contented to vindicate Solomon only but extends his Indulgence to Saul His custom is to patronize all that is detestable and no better testimony could be given of it It is true says he Saul lost his Kingdom but not for being too cruel or tyrannical unto his Subjects but for being too merciful unto his Enemies But he alledges no other reason than that the slaughter of the Priests is not blamed not observing that the Writers of the Scripture in relating those things that are known to be abominable by the Light of Nature frequently say no more of them And if this be not so Lot's drunkenness and incest Ruben's pollution of his Father's bed Abimelec's slaughter of his seventy Brothers and many of the most wicked Acts that
Princes that have bin in the world who having their power for life and leaving it to descend to their children have wanted the Virtues requir'd for the performance of their duty And I should less fear to be guilty of an absurdity in saying that a Nation might every year change its Head than that he can be the Head who cares not for the Members nor understands the things that conduce to their good most especially if he set up an Interest in himself against them It cannot be said that these are imaginary cases and that no Prince dos these things for the proof is too easy and the examples too numerous Caligula could not have wished the Romans but one Head that he might cut it off at once if he had bin that Head and had advanced no Interest contrary to that of the Members Nero had not burn'd the City of Rome if his concernments had bin inseparably united to those of the people He who caused above three hundred thousand of his innocent unarmed Subjects to be murder'd and fill'd his whole Kingdom with fire and blood did set up a personal Interest repugnant to that of the Nation and no better testimony can be requir'd to shew that he did so than a Letter written by his Son to take off the penalty due to one of the chief Ministers of those cruelties for this reason that what he had done was by the command and for the service of his Royal Father King John did not pursue the advantage of his people when he endeavoured to subject them to the Pope or the Moors And whatever Prince seeks assistance from foreign Powers or makes Leagues with any stranger or enemy for his own advantage against his people however secret the Treaty may be declares himself not to be the Head but an enemy to them The Head cannot stand in need of an exterior help against the Body nor subsist when divided from it He therefore that courts such an assistance divides himself from the Body and if he do subsist it must be by a life he has in himself distinct from that of the Body which the Head cannot have But besides these enormities that testify the most wicked rage and fury in the highest degree there is another practice which no man that knows the world can deny to be common with Princes and incompatible with the nature of a Head The Head cannot desire to draw all the nourishment of the Body to it self nor more than a due proportion If the rest of the parts are sick weak or cold the Head suffers equally with them and if they perish must perish also Let this be compared with the actions of many Princes we know and we shall soon see which of them are Heads of their people If the Gold brought from the Indies has bin equally distributed by the Kings of Spain to the body of that Nation I consent they may be called the Heads If the Kings of France assume no more of the Riches of that great Kingdom than their due proportion let them also wear that honourable name But if the naked backs and empty bellies of their miserable Subjects evince the contrary it can by no means belong to them If those great Nations wast and languish if nothing be so common in the best Provinces belonging to them as misery famine and all the effects of the most outragious oppression whilst their Princes and Favorites possess such treasures as the most wanton prodigality cannot exhaust if that which is gained by the sweat of so many millions of men be torn out of the mouths of their starving Wives and Children to foment the vices of those luxurious Courts or reward the Ministers of their lusts the nourishment is not distributed equally to all the parts of the body the oeconomy of the whole is overthrown and they who do these things cannot be the Heads nor parts of the Body but something distinct from and repugnant to it 'T is not therefore he who is found in or advanced to the place of the Head who is truly the Head 'T is not he who ought but he who dos perform the office of the Head that deserves the name and privileges belonging to the Head If our Another theresore will perswade us that any King is Head of his People he must do it by Arguments peculiarly relating to him since those in general are found to be false If he say that the King as King may direct or correct the people and that the power of determining all controversies must be referred to him because they may be mistaken he must show that the King is infallible for unless he do so the wound is not cured This also must be by some other way than by saying he is their Head for such Powers belong not to the office of the Head and we see that all Kings do not deserve that name Many of them want both understanding and will to perform the functions of the Head and many act directly contrary in the whole course of their Government If any therefore among them have merited the glorious name of Heads of Nations it must have bin by their personal Virtues by a vigilant care of the good of their People by an inseparable conjunction of interests with them by an ardent love to every member of the Society by a moderation of spirit affecting no undue Superiority or assuming any singular advantage which they are not willing to communicate to every part of the political body He who finds this merit in himself will scorn all the advantages that can be drawn from misapplied names He that knows such honor to be peculiarly due to him for being the best of Kings will never glory in that which may be common to him with the worst Nay whoever pretends by such general discourses as these of our Author to advance the particular Interests of any one King dos either know he is of no merit and that nothing can be said for him which will not as well agree with the worst of men or cares not what he says so he may do mischief and is well enough contented that he who is set up by such Maxims as a publick plague may fall in the ruin he brings upon the people SECT XL. Good Laws prescribe easy and safe Remedies against the Evils proceeding from the vices or infirmities of the Magistrate and when they fail they must be supplied THOSE who desire to advance the power of the Magistrate above the Law would perswade us that the difficulties and dangers of inquiring into his actions or opposing his will when employ'd in violence and injustice are so great that the remedy is always worse than the disease and that 't is better to suffer all the evils that may proceed from his infirmities and vices than to hazard the consequences of displeasing him But on the contrary I think and hope to prove 1. That in well-constituted Governments the remedies against ill Magistrates are easy
unless the whole body of the Nation for which they serve and who are equally concerned in their resolutions could be assembled This being impracticable the only punishment to which they are subject if they betray their trust is scorn infamy hatred and an assurance of being rejected when they shall again seek the same honor And tho this may seem a small matter to those who fear to do ill only from a sense of the pains inflicted yet it is very terrible to men of ingenuous spirits as they are supposed to be who are accounted fit to be entrusted with so great Powers But why should this be Liberty with a mischief if it were otherwise or how the liberty of particular Societies world be greater if they might do what they pleased than whilst they send others to act for them such wise men only as Filmer can tell us For as no man or number of men can give a Power which he or they have not the Achaians Etolians Latins Samnites and Tuscans who transacted all things relating to their Associations by Delegates and the Athenians Carthaginians and Romans who kept the power of the State in themselves were all equally free And in our days the United Provinces of the Netherlands the Switsers and Grisons who are of the first sort and the Venetians Genoeses and Luccheses who are of the other are so also All men that have any degree of common sense plainly see that the Liberty of those who act in their own persons and of those who send Delegates is perfectly the same and the exercise is and can only be changed by their consent But whatever the Law or Custom of England be in this point it cannot concern our question The general proposition concerning a Patriarchical Power cannot be proved by a single example If there be a general power every where forbidding Nations to give instructions to their Delegates they can do it no where If there be no such thing every people may do it unless they have deprived themselves of their right all being born under the same condition 'T is to no purpose to say that the Nations before mentioned had not Kings and therefore might act as they did For if the general Thesis be true they must have Kings and if it be not none are obliged to have them unless they think fit and the Kings they make are their Creatures But many of these Nations had either Kings or other Magistrates in power like to them The Provinces of the Netherlands had Dukes Earls or Marquesses Genoa and Venice have Dukes If any on account of the narrowness of their Territories have abstained from the name it dos not alter the case for our dispute is not concerning the name but the right If that one man who is in the principal Magistracy of every Nation must be reputed the Father of that people and has a Power which may not be limited by any Law it imports not what he is called But if in small Territories he may be limited by Laws he may be so also in the greatest The least of men is a man as well as a Giant And those in the West-Indies who have not above twenty or thirty Subjects able to bear Arms are Kings as well as Xerxes Every Nation may divide it self into small parcels as some have done by the same Law they have restrained or abolished their Kings joined to one another or taken their hazard of subsisting by themselves acted by delegation or retaining the Power in their own persons given finite or indefinite Powers reserved to themselves a power of punishing those who should depart from their duty or referred it to their General Assemblies And that Liberty for which we contend as the Gift of God and Nature remains equally to them all If men who delight in cavilling should say that great Kingdoms are not to be regulated by the Examples of small States I desire to know when it was that God ordained great Nations should be Slaves and deprived of all right to dispose matters relating to their Government whilst he left to such as had or should divide themselves into small parcels a right of making such Constitutions as were most convenient for them When this is resolved we ought to be informed what extent of territory is required to deserve the name of a great Kingdom Spain and France are esteemed great and yet the Deputies or Procuradores of the several parts of Castille did in the Cortez held at Madrid in the beginning of Charles the fifths reign excuse themselves from giving the supplies he desired because they had received no orders in that particular from the Towns that sent them and afterwards receiving express orders not to do it they gave his Majesty a flat denial The like was frequently done during the reigns of that great Prince and of his Son Philip the second And generally those Procuradores never granted any thing of importance to either of them without particular Orders from their Principals The same way was taken in France as long as there were any General Assemblies of Estates and if it do not still continue 't is because there are none For no man who understood the Affairs of that Kingdom did ever deny that the Deputies were obliged to follow the Orders of those who sent them And perhaps if men would examin by what means they came to be abolished they might find that the Cardinals de Richelieu and Mazarin with other Ministers who have accomplished that work were acted by some other principle than that of Justice or the establishment of the Laws of God and Nature In the General Assembly of Estates held at Blois in the time of Henry the third Bodin then Deputy for the third Estate of Vermandois by their particular Order proposed so many things as took up a great part of their time Other Deputies alledged no other reason for many things said and done by them highly contrary to the King's will than that they were commanded so to do by their superiors These General Assemblies being laid aside the same Custom is still used in the lesser Assemblies of Estates in Languedoc and Britany The Deputies cannot without the infamy of betraying their Trust and fear of punishment recede from the Orders given by their principals and yet we do not find that Liberty with a mischief is much more predominant in France than amongst us The same method is every day practised in the Diets of Germany The Princes and great Lords who have their places in their own right may do what they please but the Deputies of the Cities must follow such Orders as they receive The Histories of Denmark Sweden Poland and Bohemia testify the same thing and if this Liberty with a mischief do not still continue entire in all those places it has bin diminished by such means as sute better with the manners of Pirats than the Laws of God and Nature If England therefore do not still enjoy
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
it never had any effect which to us is the same 'T is as ridiculous to think of retrieving that which from the beginning of the World was lost as to create that which never was But I may go farther and affirm that tho there had bin such a right in the first Fathers of Manking exercised by them and for some ages individually transmitted to their eldest Sons it must necessarily perish since the generations of men are so confused that no man knows his own original and consequently this Heir is no where to be found for 't is a folly for a man to pretend to an Inheritance who cannot prove himself to be the right Heir If this be not true I desire to know from which of Noah's Sons the Kings of England France or Spain do deduce their Original or what reason they can give why the title to Dominion which is fancied to be in Noah did rather belong to the first of their respective Races that attained to the Crowns they now enjoy than to the meanest Peasant of their Kingdoms or how that can be transmitted to them which was not in the first We know that no man can give what he hath not that if there be no giver there is no gift if there be no root there can be no branch and that the first point failing all that should be derived from it must necessarily fail Our Author who is good at resolving difficulties shews us an easy way out of this strait 'T is true says he all Kings are not natural Parents of their Subjects yet they either are or are to be reputed the next Heirs to those first Progenitors who were at first the natural Parents of the whole People and in their right succeed to the exercise of the Supreme Jurisdiction and such Heirs are not only Lords of their own Children but also of their Brethren and all those that were subject to their Father c. By this means it comes to pass that many a Child succeeding a King hath the right of a Father over many a grey-headed multitude and hath the title of Pater Patriae An Assertion comprehending so many points upon which the most important Rights of all mankind do depend might deserve some proof But he being of opinion we ought to take it upon his credit doth not vouchsafe to give us so much as the shadow of any Nevertheless being unwilling either crudely to receive or rashly to reject it I shall take the liberty of examining the Proposition and hope I may be pardoned if I dwell a little more than ordinarily upon that which is the foundation of his Work We are beholden to him for confessing modestly that all Kings are not the natural Fathers of their People and sparing us the pains of proving that the Kings of Persia who reigned from the Indies to the Hellespont did not beget all the men that lived in those Countries or that the Kings of France and Spain who began to reign before they were five years old were not the natural Fathers of the Nations under them But if all Kings are not Fathers none are as they are Kings If any one is or ever was the Rights of Paternity belong to him and to no other who is not so also This must be made evident for matters of such importance require proof and ought not to be taken upon supposition If Filmer therefore will pretend that the right of Father belongs to any one King he must prove that he is the Father of his People for otherwise it doth not appertain to him he is not the man we seek 'T is no less absurd to say he is to be reputed Heir to the first Progenitor for it must be first proved that the Nation did descend from one single Progenitor without mixture of other races that this Progenitor was the Man to whom Noah according to Filmer's whimfical division of Asia Europe and Africa among his Sons did give the Land now inhabited by that people That this Division so made was not capable of Subdivisions and that this Man is by a true and uninterrupted Succession descended from the first and eldest Line of that Progenitor and all fails if every one of these points be not made good If there never was any such man who had that Right it cannot be inherited from him If by the same rule that a parcel of the World was allotted to him that parcel might be subdivided amongst his Children as they increased the subdivisions may be infinite and the right of Dominion thereby destroyed If several Nations inhabit the same Land they owe obedience to several Fathers that which is due to their true Father cannot be rendred to him that is not so for he would by that means be deprived of the Right which is inseparably annexed to his person And lastly whatsoever the right of an Heir may be it can belong only to him that is Heir Lest any should be seduced from these plain Truths by frivolous suggestions 't is good to consider that the title of Pater Patria with which our Author would cheat us hath no relation to the matters of Right upon which we dispute 'T is a figurative speech that may have bin rightly enough applied to some excellent Princes on account of their care and love to their People resembling that of a Father to his Children and can relate to none but those who had it No man that had common sense or valued truth did ever call Phalaris Dionysius Nabis Nero or Caligula Fathers of their Countries but Monsters that to the utmost of their power endeavoured their destruction which is enough to prove that sacred Name cannot be given to all and in consequence to none but such as by their Virtue Piety and good Government do deserve it These matters will yet appear more evident if it be considered that tho Noah had reigned as a King that Zoroaster as some suppose was Ham who reigned over his Children and that thereby some Right might perhaps be derived to such as succeeded them yet this can have no influence upon such as have not the like Original and no man is to be presumed to have it till it be proved since we have proved that many had it not If Nimrod set himself up against his Grandfather and Ninus who was descended from him in the fifth generation slew him they ill deserved the name and rights of Fathers and none but those who have renounced all Humanity Virtue and common sense can give it to them or their Successors If therefore Noah and Shem had not so much as the shadow of Regal Power and the actions of Nimrod Ninus and others who were Kings in their times shew they did not reign in the right of Fathers but were set up in a direct opposition to it the titles of the first Kings were not from Paternity nor consistent with it Our Author therefore who should have proved every point doth neither prove any one nor
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
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
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
Sons of Vespasian and Constantine inherited the Roman Empire tho their Fathers had no such title but gaining the Empire by violence which Hooker says is meer Tyranny that can create no right they could devolve none to their Children The Kings of France of the three races have inherited the Crown but Meroveus Pepin and Hugh Capet could neither pretend title nor conquest or any other Right than what was conferred upon them by the Clergy Nobility and People and consequently whatsoever is inherited from them can have no other Original for that is the gift of the People which is bestowed upon the first under whom the Successors claim as if it had bin by a peculiar Act given to every one of them It will be more hard to shew how the Crown of England is become hereditary unless it be by the Will of the People for tho it were granted that some of the Saxon Kings came in by inheritance which I do not having as I think proved them to have bin absolutely elective yet William the Norman did not for he was a Bastard and could inherit nothing William Rufus and Henry did not for their elder Brother Robert by right of inheritance ought to have bin preferred before them Stephen and Henry the second did not for Maud the only Heiress of Henry the first was living when both were crowned Richard John and those who followed did not for they were Bastards born in adultery They must therefore have received their Right from the People or they could have none at all and their Successors fall under the same condition Moreover I find great variety in the deduction of this hereditary Right In Sparta there were two Kings of different Families endowed with an equal power If the Heraclidae did reign as Fathers of the People the AEacidae did not if the right was in the AEacidae the Heraclidae could have none for 't is equally impossible to have two Fathers as two thousand 'T is in vain to say that two Families joined and agreed to reign jointly for 't is evident the Spartans had Kings before the time of Hercules or Achilles who were the Fathers of the two Races If it be said that the regal power with which they were invested did entitle them to the right of Fathers it must in like manner have belonged to the Roman Consuls Military Tribunes Dictators and Pretors for they had more Power than the Spartan Kings and that glorious Nation might change their Fathers every year and multiply or diminish the number of them as they pleased If this be most ridiculous and absurd 't is certain that the Name and Office of King Consul Dictator or the like dos not confer any determined Right upon the Person that hath it Every one has a right to that which is allotted to him by the Laws of the Country by which he is created As the Persians Spartans Romans or Germans might make such Magistrates and under such names as best pleased themselves and accordingly enlarge or diminish their Power the same Right belongs to all Nations and the Rights due unto as well as the Duties incumbent upon every one are to be known only by the Laws of that place This may seem strange to those who know neither Books nor Things Histories nor Laws but is well explain'd by Grotius who denying the Soveraign Power to be annexed to any Man speaks of divers Magistrates under several names that had and others that under the same names had it not and distinguishes those who have the Summum Imperium summo modo from those who have it modo non summo and tho probably he looked upon the first sort as a thing meerly speculative if by that summo modo a right of doing what one pleases be understood yet he gives many Examples of the other and among those who had liberrimum imperium if any had it he names the Kings of the Sabeans who nevertheless were under such a condition that tho they were as Agatharchidas reports obeyed in all things whilst they continued within the Walls of their Palace might be stoned by any that met them without it He finds also another obstacle to the Absolute power Cum Rex partem habeat summi Imperii partem Senatus sive Populus which parts are proportioned according to the Laws of each Kingdom whether Hereditary or Elective both being equally regulated by them The Law that gives and measures the Power prescribes Rules how it should be transmitted In some places the supreme Magistrates are annually elected in others their Power is for life in some they are meerly elective in others hereditary under certain Rules or Limitations The antient Kingdoms and Lordships of Spain were hereditary but the Succession went ordinarily to the eldest of the reigning Family not to the nearest in Blood This was the ground of the Quarrel between Corbis the Brother and Orsua the Son of the last Prince decided by Combat before Scipio I know not whether the Goths brought that custom with them when they conquered Spain or whether they learnt it from the Inhabitants but certain it is that keeping themselves to the Families of the Balthei and Amalthei they had more regard to Age than Proximity and almost ever preferred the Brother or eldest Kinsman of the last King before his Son The like custom was in use among the Moors in Spain and Africa who according to the several Changes that happened among the Families of Almohades Almoranides and Benemerini did always take one of the reigning Blood but in the choice of him had most respect to Age and Capacity This is usually called the Law of Thanestry and as in many other places prevailed also in Ireland till that Country fell under the English Government In France and Turky the Male that is nearest in Blood succeeds and I do not know of any deviation from that Rule in France since Henry the First was preferred before Robert his elder Brother Grandchild to Hugh Capet but notwithstanding the great veneration they have for the Royal Blood they utterly exclude Females lest the Crown should fall to a Stranger or a Woman that is seldom able to govern her self should come to govern so great a People Some Nations admit Females either simply as well as Males or under a condition of not marrying out of their Country or without the consent of the Estates with an absolute exclusion of them and their Children if they do according to which Law now in force among the Swedes Charles Gustavus was chosen King upon the resignation of Queen Christina as having no Title and the Crown setled upon the Heirs of his Body to the utter exclusion of his Brother Adolphus their Mother having married a German Tho divers Nations have differently disposed their Affairs all those that are not naturally Slaves and like to Beasts have preferred their own Good before the personal Interests of him that expects the Crown so as upon no pretence
much esteemed for Valour and Wisdom God's peculiar People had a peculiar regard to that Wisdom and Valour which was accompanied with his Presence hoping for deliverance only from him The second is known by the name of the great Sanhedrin which being instituted by Moses according to the command of God continued till they were all save one slain by Herod And the third part which is the Assembly of the People was so common that none can be ignorant of it but such as never looked into the Scripture When the Tribes of Reuben Gad and half that of Manasseh had built an Altar on the side of Jordan The whole Congregation of the Children of Israel gathered together at Shiloh to go up to war against them and sent Phineas the Son of Eleazer and with him ten Princes c. This was the highest and most important action that could concern a People even War or Peace and that not with Strangers but their own Brethren Joshua was then alive The Elders never failed but this was not transacted by him or them but by the collected body of the People for They sent Phineas This Democratical Embassy was Democratically received It was not directed to one man but to all the Children of Reuben Gad and Manasseh and the answer was sent by them all which being pleasing to Phineas and the ten that were with him they made their report to the Congregation and all was quiet The last eminent Act performed by Joshua was the calling of a like Assembly to Sechem composed of Elders Heads of Families Judges Officers and all the People to whom he proposed and they agreeing made a Covenant before the Lord. Joshua being dead the Proceedings of every Tribe were grounded upon Counsels taken at such Assemblies among themselves for their own concernments as appears by the Actions of Judah Simeon c. against the Canaanites and when the Levite complained that his Wife had bin forced by those of Gibeah the whole Congregation of Israel met together at Mispeth from all parts even from Dan to Beersheba as one man and there resolved upon that terrible War which they made against the Tribe of Benjamin The like Assembly was gathered together for the Election of Saul every man was there and tho the Elders only are said to have asked a King of Samuel they seem to have bin deputed from the whole Congregation for God said Hearken to the voice of the People In the same manner the Tribe of Judah and after that the rest chose and anointed David to be their King After the death of Solomon all Israel met together to treat with Rehoboam and not receiving satisfaction from him ten of the Tribes abrogated his Kingdom If these Actions were considered singly by themselves Calvin might have given the name of a Democracy to the Hebrew Government as well as to that of Athens for without doubt they evidently manifest the supreme Power to have bin in the supreme manner in these General Assemblies but the Government as to its outward order consisting of those three parts which comprehend the three simple species tho in truth it was a Theocracy and no times having bin appointed nor occasions specified upon which Judges should be chosen or these Assemblies called whereas the Sanhedrim which was the Aristocratical part was permanent the whole might rightly be called an Aristocracy that part prevailing above the others and tho Josephus calls it a Theocracy by reason of God's presence with his People yet in relation to man he calls it an Aristocracy and says that Saul's first Sin by which he fell from the Kingdom was that Gubernationem optimatum sustulit which could not be if they were governed by a Monarch before he was chosen Our Author taking no notice of these matters first endeavours to prove the excellency of Monarchy from natural instinct and then begging the question says that God did always govern his People by Monarchy whereas he ought in the first place to have observed that this instinct if there be any such thing is only an irrational appetite attributed to Beasts that know not why they do any thing and is to be followed only by those men who being equally irrational live in the same ignorance and the second being proved to be absolutely false by the express words of the Scripture There was then no King in Israel several times repeated and the whole series of the History he hath no other evasion than to say That even then the Israelites were under the Kingly Government of the Fathers of particular Families It appears by the forementioned Text cited also by our Author that in the Assembly of the People gathered together to take counsel concerning the War against Benjamin were four hundred thousand Footmen that drew Sword They all arose together saying Not a man of us shall go to his Tent. So all the men of Israel were gathered together against the City This is repeated several times in the relation The Benjamites proceeded in the like manner in preparing for their defence and if all these who did so meet to consult and determine were Monarchs there were then in Israel and Benjamin four hundred and twenty six thousand seven hundred Monarchs or Kings tho the Scriptures say there was not one If yet our Author insist upon his notion of Kingly Government I desire to know who were the Subjects if all these were Kings for the text says that the whole Congregation was gathered together as one man from Dan to Beersheba If there can be so many Kings without one Subject what becomes of the Right of Abraham Isaac and Jacob that was to have bin devolved upon one man as Heir to them and thereby Lord of all If every man had an equal part in that inheritance and by virtue of it became a King why is not the same eternally subdivided to as many men as are in the World who are also Kings If this be their natural condition how comes it to be altered till they do unthrone themselves by consent to set up one or more to have a power over them all Why should they devest themselves of their natural Right to set up one above themselves unless in consideration of their own good If the 426700 Kings might retain the power in themselves or give it to one why might they not give it to any such number of men as should best please themselves or retain it in their own hands as they did till the days of Saul or frame limit and direct it according to their own pleasure If this be true God is the Author of Democracy and no assertor of human Liberty did ever claim more than the People of God did enjoy and exercise at the time when our Author says they were under the Kingly Government which Liberty being not granted by any peculiar concession or institution the same must belong to all Mankind 'T is in vain to say the 426700 men
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
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
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
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
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
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
according to the variety of times and other occurrences We have such footsteps remaining of the name of Baron as plainly shew the signification of it The Barons of London and the Cinq Ports are known to be only the Freemen of those places In the petty Court-Barons every man who may be of a Jury is a Baron These are Noblemen for there are noble Nations as well as noble men in Nations The Mammalukes accounted themselves to be all noble tho born slaves and when they had ennobled themselves by the use of Arms they look'd upon the noblest of the Egyptians as their slaves Tertullian writing not to some eminent men but to the whole People of Carthage calls them Antiquitate Nobiles Nobilitate felices Such were the Saxons ennobled by a perpetual application to those exercises that belong to Noblemen and an abhorrence to any thing that is vile and sordid Lest this should seem far fetch'd to those who please themselves with cavilling they are to know that the same General Councils are expressed by other Authors in other words They are called The General Council of the Bishops Noblemen Counts all the wise men Elders and People of the whole Kingdom in the time of Ina. In that of Edward the elder The Great Council of the Bishops Abbots Noblemen and People William of Malmsbury calls them The General Senat and Assembly of the People Sometimes they are in short called Clergy and People but all express the same power neither received from nor limitable by Kings who are always said to be chosen or made and sometimes deposed by them William the Norman found and left the Nation in this condition Henry the second John and Henry third who had nothing but what was conferred upon them by the same Clergy and People did so too Magna Charta could give nothing to the People who in themselves had all and only reduced into a small Volume the Rights which the Nation was resolved to maintain brought the King to confess they were perpetually inherent and time out of mind enjoyed and to swear that he would no way violate them if he did he was ipso facto excommunicated and being thereby declared to be an execrable perjur'd Person they knew how to deal with him This Act has bin confirmed by thirty Parliaments and the proceedings with Kings who have violated their Oaths as well before as after the time of Henry the third which have bin already mentioned are sufficient to shew that England has always bin governed by it self and never acknowledged any other Lord than such as they thought fit to set up SECT XXIX The King was never Master of the Soil THOSE who without regard to truth resolve to insist upon such points as they think may serve their designs when they find it cannot be denied that the powers before mentioned have bin exercised by the English and other Nations say that they were the concessions of Kings who being masters of the Soil might bestow parcels upon some Persons with such conditions as they pleased retaining to themselves the supreme dominion of the whole and having already as they think made them the Fountains of Honour they proceed to make them also the Fountains of Property and for proof of this alledg that all Lands tho held of mean Lords do by their Tenures at last result upon the King as the Head from whom they are enjoyed This might be of force if it were true but matters of the highest importance requiring a most evident proof we are to examine First if it be possible and in the next place if it be true 1. For the first No man can give what he has not Whoever therefore will pretend that the King has bestowed this propriety must prove that he had it in himself I confess that the Kings of Spain and Portugal obtained from the Pope grants of the Territories they possessed in the West-Indies and this might be of some strength if the Pope as Vicar of Christ had an absolute dominion over the whole earth but if that fail the whole falls to the ground and he is ridiculously liberal of that which no way belongs to him My business is not to dispute that point but before it can have any influence upon our Affairs our Kings are to prove that they are Lords of England upon the same Title or some other equivalent to it When that is done we shall know upon whom they have a dependence and may at leisure consider whether we ought to acknowledg and submit to such a Power or give reasons for our refusal But there being no such thing in our present case their property must be grounded upon something else or we may justly conclude they have none In order to this 't is hardly worth the pains to search into the obscure remains of the British Histories For when the Romans deserted our Island they did not confer the right they had whether more or less upon any man but left the enjoyment of it to the poor remainders of the Nation and their own established Colonies who were grown to be one People with the Natives The Saxons came under the conduct of Hengist and Horsa who seem to have bin sturdy Pirats but did not that I can learn bear any Characters in their persons of the so much admired Sovereign Majesty that should give them an absolute dominion or propriety either in their own Country or any other they should set their feet upon They came with about a hundred men and chusing rather to serve Vortigern than to depend upon what they could get by rapine at Sea lived upon a small proportion of Land by him allotted to them Tho this seems to be but a slender encouragement yet it was enough to invite many others to follow their Example and Fortune so that their number increasing the County of Kent was given to them under the obligation of serving the Britans in their Wars Not long after Lands in Northumberland were bestowed upon another company of them with the same condition This was all the Title they had to what they enjoyed till they treacherously killed four hundred and sixty or as William of Malmsbury says three hundred principal men of the British Nobility and made Vortigern Prisoner who had bin so much their Benefactor that he seems never to have deserved well but from them and to have incens'd the Britans by the favour he shew'd them as much as by the worst of his Vices And certainly actions of this kind composed of falshood and cruelty can never create a right in the opinion of any better men than Filmer and his Disciples who think that the power only is to be regarded and not the means by which it is obtained But tho it should be granted that a right had bin thus acquired it must accrue to the Nation not to Hengist and Horsa If such an acquisition be called a Conquest the benefit must belong to
Towns and Provinces upon the most eminent men in them And whilst those Kings were exercised in almost perpetual Wars and placed their glory in the greatness of the actions they atchieved by the power and valour of their people it was their interest always to chuse such as seemed best to deserve that honour It was not to be imagined that through the weakness of some and malice of others those dignities should by degrees be turned into empty titles and become the rewards of the greatest crimes and the vilest services or that the noblest of their Descendents for want of them should be brought under the name of Commoners and deprived of all privileges except such as were common to them with their Grooms Such a stupendous change being in process of time insensibly introduced the foundations of that Government which they had established were removed and the superstructure overthrown The balance by which it subsisted was broken and 't is as impossible to restore it as for most of those who at this day go under the name of Noblemen to perform the duties required from the antient Nobility of England And tho there were a charm in the name and those who have it should be immediately filled with a spirit like to that which animated our Ancestors and endeavour to deserve the Honors they possess by such Services to the Country as they ought to have perform'd before they had them they would not be able to accomplish it They have neither the interest nor the estates required for so great a work Those who have estates at a rack Rent have no dependents Their Tenants when they have paid what is agreed owe them nothing and knowing they shall be turn'd out of their Tenements as soon as any other will give a little more they look upon their Lords as men who receive more from them than they confer upon them This dependence being lost the Lords have only more mony to spend or lay up than others but no command of men and can therefore neither protect the weak nor curb the insolent By this means all things have bin brought into the hands of the King and the Commoners and there is nothing left to cement them and to maintain the union The perpetual jarrings we hear every day the division of the Nation into such factions as threaten us with ruin and all the disorders that we see or fear are the effects of this rupture These things are not to be imputed to our original Constitutions but to those who have subverted them And if they who by corrupting changing enervating and annihilating the Nobility which was the principal support of the antient regular Monarchy have driven those who are truly Noblemen into the same interest and name with the Commons and by that means increased a party which never was and I think never can be united to the Court they are to answer for the Consequences and if they perish their destruction is from themselves The inconveniences therefore proceed not from the institution but from the innovation The Law was plain but it has bin industriously rendred perplex They who were to have upheld it are overthrown That which might have bin easily performed when the people was armed and had a great strong virtuous and powerful Nobility to lead them is made difficult now they are disarmed and that Nobility abolished Our Ancestors may evidently appear not only to have intended well but to have taken a right course to accomplish what they intended This had effect as long as the cause continued and the only fault that can be ascribed to that which they established is that it has not proved to be perpetual which is no more than may be justly said of the best human Constitutions that ever have bin in the world If we will be just to our Ancestors it will become us in our time rather to pursue what we know they intended and by new Constitutions to repair the breaches made upon the old than to accuse them of the defects that will for ever attend the Actions of men Taking our Affairs at the worst we shall soon find that if we have the same spirit they had we may easily restore our Nation to its antient liberty dignity and happiness and if we do not the fault is owing to our selves and not to any want of virtue and wisdom in them SECT XXXVIII The Power of calling and dissolving Parliaments is not simply in the King The variety of Customs in chusing Parliament men and the Errors a people may commit neither prove that Kings are or ought to be Absolute THE original of magistratical Power the intention of our Ancestors in its creation and the ways prescribed for the direction and limitation of it may I presume sufficiently appear by what has bin said But because our Author taking hold of every twig pretends that Kings may call and dissolve Parliaments at their pleasure and from thence infers the Power to be wholly in them alledges the various customs in several parts of this Nation used in the elections of Parliament men to proceed from the King's will and because a people may commit Errors thinks all Power ought to be put into the hands of the King I answer 1. That the Power of calling and dissolving Parliaments is not simply in Kings They may call Parliaments if there be occasion at times when the Law dos not exact it they are placed as Sentinels and ought vigilantly to observe the motions of the Enemy and give notice of his approach But if the Sentinel fall asleep neglect his duty or maliciously endeavour to betray the City those who are concern'd may make use of all other means to know their danger and to preserve themselves The ignorance incapacity negligence or luxury of a King is a great calamity to a Nation and his malice is worse but not an irreparable ruin Remedies may be and often have bin found against the worst of their Vices The last French Kings of the Races of Meroveus and Pepin brought many mischiefs upon the Kingdom but the destruction was prevented Edward and Richard the Seconds of England were not unlike them and we know by what means the Nation was preserved The question was not who had the Right or who ought to call Parliaments but how the Commonwealth might be saved from ruin The Consuls or other chief Magistrates in Rome had certainly a right of assembling and dismissing the Senat But when Hannibal was at the Gates or any other imminent danger threatned them with destruction if that Magistrate had bin drunk mad or gained by the Enemy no wise man can think that Formalities were to have bin observed In such cases every man is a Magistrate and he who best knows the danger and the means of preventing it has a right of calling the Senat or People to an Assembly The people would and certainly ought to follow him as they did Brutus and Valerius against Tarquin or Horatius and
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
of Parliament and to pick out what might serve her turn but frequently passed forty or fifty in a Session without reading one of them She knew that she did not reign for her self but for her People that what was good for them was either good for her or that her good ought not to come into competition with that of the whole Nation and that she was by Oath obliged to pass such Laws as were presented to her on their behalf This not only shews that there is no such thing as a Legislative Power placed in Kings by the Laws of God and Nature but that Nations have it in themselves It was not by Law nor by Right but by Usurpation Fraud and Perjury that some Kings took upon them to pick what they pleased out of the publick Acts. Henry the fifth did not grant us the right of making our own Laws but with his approbation we abolished a detestable abuse that might have proved fatal to us And if we examine our History we shall find that every good and generous Prince has sought to establish our Liberties as much as the most base and wicked to infringe them THE END THE TABLE CHAP. I. SEction 1. The Introduction Page 1. Sect. 2. The common notions of Liberty are not from School-Divines but from Nature p. 5. Sect. 3. Implicit Faith belongs to Fools and Truth is comprehended by examining Principles p. 8. Sect. 4. The Rights of particular Nations cannot subsist if general Principles contrary to them are received as true p. 11. Sect. 5. To depend upon the will of a man is slavery p. 12. Sect. 6. God leaves to man the choice of forms in Government and those who constitute one form may abrogate it p. 14. Sect. 7. Abraham and the Patriarchs were not Kings p. 17. Sect. 8. Nimrod was the first King during the life of Chusn Cham Shem and Noah p. 19. Sect. 9. The Power of a Father belongs only to a Father p. 22. Sect. 10. Such as enter into Society must in some degree diminish their Liberty p. 23. Sect. 11. No man comes to command many unless by consent or by force p. 24. Sect. 12. The pretended paternal Right is divisible or indivisible if divisible 't is extinguished if indivisible universal p. 25. Sect. 13. There was no shadow of a paternal Kingdom amongst the Hebrews nor precept for it p. 27. Sect. 14. If the paternal Right had included Dominion and was to be transferr'd to a single Heir it must perish if he were not known and could be applied to no other person p. 30. Sect. 16. The Antients chose those to be Kings who excell'd in the Virtues that are most beneficial to Civil Societies p. 36. Sect. 17. God having given the Government of the World to no one man nor declared how it should be divided left it to the will of man p. 41. Sect. 18. If a right of Dominion were esteemed hereditary according to the Law of Nature a multitude of destructive and inextricable Controversies would thereupon arise p. 45. Sect. 19. Kings cannot confer the Right of Father upon Princes nor Princes upon Kings p. 48. Sect. 20. All just Magistratical Power is from the People p. 54. CHAP. II. SECT 1. That 't is natural for Nations to govern or to chuse Governors and that Virtue only gives a natural preference of one man above another or reason why one should be chosen rather than another p. 59. Sect. 2. Every man that hath Children hath the right of a Father and is capable of preferment in a Society composed of many p. 67. Sect. 3. Government is not instituted for the good of the Governor but of the Governed and Power is not an advantage but a burden p. 70. Sect. 4. The paternal Right devolves to and is inherited by all the Children p. 71. Sect. 5. Free men join together and frame greater or lesser Societies and give such forms to them as best pleases themselves p. 75. Sect. 6. They who have a right of chusing a King have the right of making a King p. 83. Sect. 7. The Laws of every Nation are the measure of magistratical Power p. 87. Sect. 8. There is no natural propensity in man or beast to Monarchy p. 94. Sect. 9. The Government instituted by God over the Israelites was Aristocratical p. 96. Sect. 10. Aristotle was not simply for Monarchy or against Popular Government but approved or disapproved of either according to circumstances p. 102. Sect. 11. Liberty produceth Virtue Order and Stability Slavery is accompanied with Vice Weakness and Misery p. 104. Sect. 12. The Glory Virtue and Power of the Romans began and ended with their Liberty p. 112. Sect. 13. There is no disorder or prejudice in changing the name or number of Magistrates whilst the root and principle of their Power continues intire p. 117. Sect. 14. No Sedition was hurtful to Rome till through their prosperity some men gained a Power above the Laws p. 120. Sect. 15. The Empire of Rome perpetually decay'd when it fell into the hands of one man p. 123. Sect. 16. The best Governments of the World have bin composed of Monarchy Aristocracy and Democracy p. 130. Sect. 17. Good Governments admit of changes in the Superstructures whilst the Foundations remain unchangeable p. 134. Sect. 18. Xenophon in blaming the disorders of Democracies favours Aristocracies not Monarchies p. 138. Sect. 19. That corruption and venality which is natural to Courts is seldom found in Popular Governments p. 145. Sect. 20. Man's natural love to Liberty is temper'd by Reason which originally is his nature p. 151. Sect. 21. Mixed and Popular Governments preserve Peace and manage Wars better than Absolute Monarchies p. 154. Sect. 22. Commonwealths seek Peace or War according to the variety of their Constitutions p. 159. Sect. 23. That is the best Government which provides best for War p. 165. Sect. 24. Popular Governments are less subject to Civil disorders than Monarchies manage them more ably and more easily recover out of them p. 172. Sect. 25. Courts are more subject to venality and corruption than Popular Governments p. 200. Sect. 26. Civil Tumults and Wars are not the greatest evils that befal Nations p. 206. Sect. 27. The mischiefs and cruelties proceeding from Tyranny are greater than any that can come from popular or mixed Governments p. 210. Sect. 28. Men living under popular or mixed Governments are more careful of the publick Good than in Absolute Monarchies p. 215. Sect. 29. There is no assurance that the distempers of a State shall be cured by the wisdom of a Prince p. 223. Sect. 30. A Monarchy cannot be well regulated unless the Powers of the Monarch are limited by Law p. 229. Sect. 31. The Liberties of Nations are from God and Nature not from Kings p. 242. Sect. 32. The Contracts made between Magistrates and the Nations that created them were real solemn and obligatory p. 247. CHAP. III. SECT 1. Kings not being Fathers of their People nor
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