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Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
kingdom_n	great_a	speak_v	time_n	2,091	5	3.3892	3	false

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ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A60214	Discourses concerning government by Algernon Sidney ... ; published from an original manuscript of the author.	Sidney, Algernon, 1622-1683.	1698 (1698)	Wing S3761; ESTC R11837	539,730	470

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

to be the same in as much as it comprehended all the Freemen that is all the People for the difference between Civis and Servits is irreconcilable and no man whilst he is a Servant can be a Member of a Commonwealth for he that is not in his own power cannot have a part in the Government of others All the forementioned Northern Nations had the like customs among them The Governments they had were so instituted The utmost that any now remaining pretends to is to derive their Right from them If according to Filmer these first Assemblies could not confer it upon the first they had none Such as claim under them can inherit none from those that had none and there can be no right in all the Governments we so much venerate and nothing can tend more to their overthrow than the reception of our Author's Doctrine Tho any one Instance would be sufficient to overthrow his general negative Proposition for a Rule is not generally true if there be any just Exception against it I have alledged many and find it so easy to increase the number that there is no Nation whose Original we know out of whose Histories I will not undertake to produce the like but I have not bin solicitous precisely to distinguish which Nations have acted in their own Persons and which have made use of Delegates nor in what times they have changed from one way to the other for if any have acted by themselves the thing is possible and whatsoever is done by delegated Powers must be referred to their Principals for none can give to any a Power which they have not in themselves He is graciously pleased to confess That when men are assembled by a humane Power that Power that doth assemble them may also limit the manner of the execution of that Power c. But in Assemblies that take their Authority from the Law of Nature it is not so for what liberty or freedom is due to any man by the Law of Nature no inferior Power can alter limit or diminish No one man or multitude of men can give away the natural Right of another c. These are strong Lines and such as if there be any sense in them utterly overthrow all our Author's Doctrine for if any Assembly of men did ever take their Authority from the Law of Nature it must be of such as remaining in the intire fruition of their natural Liberty and restrained by no Contract meet together to deliberate of such matters as concern themselves and if they can be restrained by no one man or number of men they may dispose of their own Affairs as they think fit But because no one of them is obliged to enter into the Society that the rest may constitute he cannot enjoy the benefit of that Society unless he enter into it He may be gone and set up for himself or set up another with such as will agree with him But if he enter into the Society he is obliged by the Laws of it and if one of those Laws be that all things should be determined by the plurality of Voices his Assent is afterwards comprehended in all the Resolutions of that Plurality Reuben or Simeon might according to the Laws of Nature have divided themselves from their Brethren as well as Lot from Abraham or Ismael and the Sons of Keturah from Isaac but when they in hopes of having a part in the Inheritance promised to their Fathers had joined with their Brethren a few of their Descendents could not have a right by their dissent to hinder the Resolutions of the whole Body or such a part of it as by the first Agreement was to pass for an Act of the whole And the Scripture teaches us that when the Lot was fallen upon Saul they who despised him were stiled Men of Belial and the rest after his Victory over the Ammonites would have slain them if he had permitted In the like manner when a number of Men met together to build Rome any man who had disliked the design might justly have refused to join in it but when he had entred into the Society he could not by his Vote invalidate the Acts of the whole nor destroy the Rights of Romulus Numa and the others who by the Senate and People were made Kings nor those of the other Magistrates who aster their expulsion were legally created This is as much as is required to establish the natural Liberty of Mankind in its utmost extent and cannot be shaken by our Author's surmise That a Gap is thereby opened for every seditious multitude to raise a new Commonwealth For till the Commonwealth be established no multitude can be seditious because they are not subject to any humane Law and Sedition implies an unjust and disorderly opposition of that Power which is legally established which cannot be when there is none nor by him who is not a Member of the Society that makes it and when it is made such as entered into it are obliged to the Laws of it This shewing the root and foundation of Civil Powers we may judg of the use and extent of them according to the letter of the Law or the true intentional meaning of it both which declare them to be purely Human Ordinances proceeding from the will of those who seek their own good and may certainly infer that since all Multitudes are composed of such as are under some Contract or free from all no man is obliged to enter into those contracts against his own will nor obliged by any to which he dos not assent Those multitudes that enter into such Contracts and thereupon form Civil Societies act according to their own will Those that are engaged in none take their Authority from the Law of Nature their Rights cannot be limited or diminished by any one man or number of men and consequently whoever dos it or attempts the doing of it violates the most sacred Laws of God and Nature His cavils concerning Proxies and the way of using them deserve no answer as relating only to one sort of men amongst us and can have no influence upon the Laws of Nature or the proceedings of Assemblies acting according to such Rules as they set to themselves In some places they have voted all together in their own persons as in Athens In others by Tribes as in Rome Sometimes by Delegates when the number of the whole People is so great that no one place can contain them as in the Parliaments Diets General Assemblies of Estates long used in the great Kingdoms of Europe In other parts many Cities are joined together in Leagues as antiently the Achaians Etolians Samnites Tuscans and in these times the States of Holland and Cantons of Switzerland but our Author not regarding such matters in pursuance of his folly with an ignorance as admirable as his stupidity repeats his Challenge I ask says he but one Example out of the History of the whole World let

eminency in that Kingdom with the Cities of Paris Bourdeaux and many others in the space of these last fifty years have sided with the perpetual Enemies of their own Country Again other great Alterations have happened within the same Kingdom The Races of Kings four times wholly changed Five Kings deposed in less than 150 Years after the death of Charles the Great The Offices of Maire du Palais and Constable erected and laid aside The great Dukedoms and Earldoms little inferior to Soveraign Principalities establish'd and suppress'd The decision of all Causes and the execution of the Laws placed absolutely in the hands of the Nobility their Deputies Seneschals or Vice-Seneschals and taken from them again Parliaments set up to receive Appeals from the other Courts and to judg soveraignly in all cases expresly to curb them The Power of these Parliaments after they had crushed the Nobility brought so low that within the last twenty years they are made to register and give the Power of Laws to Edicts of which the Titles only are read to them and the General Assemblies of Estates that from the time of Pepin had the Power of the Nation in their hands are now brought to nothing and almost forgotten Tho I mention these things 't is not with a design of blaming them for some of them deserve it not and it ought to be consider'd that the Wisdom of man is imperfect and unable to foresee the Effects that may proceed from an infinite variety of Accidents which according to Emergencies necessarily require new Constitutions to prevent or cure the mischiefs arising from them or to advance a good that at the first was not thought on And as the noblest work in which the Wit of man can be exercised were if it could be done to constitute a Government that should last for ever the next to that is to sute Laws to present Exigencies and so much as is in the power of man to foresee And he that should resolve to persist obstinately in the way he first entered upon or to blame those who go out of that in which their Fathers had walked when they find it necessary dos as far as in him lies render the worst of Errors perpetual Changes therefore are unavoidable and the Wit of man can go no farther than to institute such as in relation to the Forces Manners Nature Religion or Interests of a People and their Neighbours are sutable and adequate to what is seen or apprehended to be seen And he who would oblige all Nations at all times to take the same course would prove as foolish as a Physician who should apply the same Medicine to all Distempers or an Architect that would build the same kind of House for all Persons without considering their Estates Dignities the number of their Children or Servants the Time or Climate in which they live and many other Circumstances or which is if possible more sottish a General who should obstinately resolve always to make War in the same way and to draw up his Army in the same form without examining the nature number and strength of his own and his Enemies Forces or the advantages and disadvantages of the Ground But as there may be some universal Rules in Physick Architecture and Military Discipline from which men ought never to depart so there are some in Politicks also which ought always to be observed and wise Legislators adhering to them only will be ready to change all others as occasion may require in order to the publick Good This we may learn from Moses who laying the Foundation of the Law given to the Israelites in that Justice Charity and Truth which having its root in God is subject to no change left them the liberty of having Judges or no Judges Kings or no Kings or to give the Soveraign Power to High Priests or Captains as best pleased themselves and the Mischiefs they afterwards suffer'd proceeded not simply from changing but changing for the worse The like judgment may be made of the Alterations that have happen'd in other places They who aim at the publick Good and wisely institute Means proportionable and adequate to the attainment of it deserve praise and those only are to be dislik'd who either foolishly or maliciously set up a corrupt private Interest in one or a few men Whosoever therefore would judg of the Roman Changes may see that in expelling the Tarquins creating Consuls abating the violence of Usurers admitting Plebeians to marry with the Patricians rendring them capable of Magistracies deducing Colonies dividing Lands gained from their Enemies erecting Tribunes to defend the Rights of the Commons appointing the Decemviri to regulate the Law and abrogating their Power when they abused it creating Dictators and Military Tribunes with a Consular Power as occasions requir'd they acted in the face of the Sun for the good of the Publick and such Acts having always produced Effects sutable to the rectitude of their Intentions they consequently deserve praise But when another Principle began to govern all things were changed in a very different manner Evil Designs tending only to the advancement of private Interests were carried on in the dark by means as wicked as the end If Tarquin when he had a mind to be King poison'd his first Wife and his Brother contracted an incestuous Marriage with his second by the death of her first Husband murder'd her Father and the best men in Rome yet Cesar did worse He favour'd Catiline and his villanous Associates brided and corrupted Magistrates conspir'd with Crassus and Pompey continued in the Command of an Army beyond the time prescribed by Law and turned the Arms with which he had bin entrusted for the service of the Commonwealth to the destruction of it which was rightly represented by his Dream that he had constuprated his Mother In the like manner when Octavius Antonius and Lepidus divided the Empire and then quarrelled among themselves and when Galba Otho Vitellius and Vespasian set up Parties in several Provinces all was managed with Treachery Fraud and Cruelty nothing was intended but the advancement of one Man and the Recompence of the Villains that served him And when the Empire had suffered infinite Calamities by pulling down or rejecting one and setting up another it was for the most part difficult to determine who was the worst of the two or whether the prevailing side had gained or lost by their Victory The question therefore upon which a Judgment may be made to the praise or dispraise of the Roman Government before or after the loss of their Liberty ought not to be Whether either were subject to changes for neither they nor any thing under the Sun was ever exempted from them but whether the Changes that happened after the establishment of Absolute Power in the Emperors did not solely proceed from Ambition and tend to the publick Ruin whereas those Alterations related by our Author concerning Consuls Dictators Decemviri Tribuns and Laws were

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

in Commonwealths have never produced such slaughters as were brought upon the Empires of Maecedon and Rome or the Kingdoms of Israel Judah France Spain Scotland or England by contests between several Competitors for those Crowns if Tumult War and Slaughter be the point in question those are the worst of all Governments where they have bin most frequent and cruel But tho these are terrible Scourges I deny that Government to be simply the worst that has most of them 'T is ill that men should kill one another in Seditions Tumults and Wars but 't is worse to bring Nations to such misery weakness and baseness as to have neither strength nor courage to contend for any thing to have nothing left worth defending and to give the name of Peace to desolation I take Greece to have bin happy and glorious when it was full of populous Cities flourishing in all the Arts that deserve praise among men When they were courted and feared by the greatest Kings and never assaulted by any but to his own loss and confusion When Babylon and Susa trembled at the motion of their Arms and their valour exercised in these Wars and Tumults which our Author looks upon as the greatest Evils was raised to such a power that nothing upon Earth was found able to resist them and I think it now miserable when Peace reigns within their empty walls and the poor remains of those exhausted Nations sheltering themselves under the ruins of the desolated Cities have neither any thing that deserves to be disputed amongst them nor spirit or force to repel the Injuries they daily suffer from a proud and insupportable Master The like may be said of Italy Whilst it was inhabited by Nations governing themselves by their own Will they fell sometimes into domestick Seditions and had frequent Wars with their Neighbours When they were free they loved their Country and were always ready to fight in its defence Such as succeeded well increased in vigor and power and even those that were the most unfortunate in one Age found means to repair their greatest losses if their Government continued Whilst they had a propriety in their goods they would not suffer the Country to be invaded since they knew they could have none if it were lost This gave occasion to Wars and Tumults but it sharpned their Courage kept up a good Discipline and the Nations that were most exercised by them always increased in power and number so that no Country seems ever to have bin of greater strength than Italy was when Hannibal invaded it and after his defeat the rest of the World was not able to resist their Valour and Power They sometimes killed one another but their Enemies never got any thing but burying-places within their Territories All things are now brought into a very different method by the blessed Governments they are under The fatherly care of the King of Spain the Pope and other Princes has established Peace amongst them We have not in many Ages heard of any Sedition among the Latins Sabins Volsci Equi Samnits or others The thin half-starv'd Inhabitants of Walls supported by Ivy fear neither popular Tumults nor foreign Alarms and their sleep is only interrupted by Hunger the cries of their Children or the howling of Wolves Instead of many turbulent contentious Cities they have a few scatter'd silent Cottages and the fierceness of those Nations is so temper'd that every rafcally Collector of Taxes extorts without fear from every man that which should be the nourishment of his Family And if any of those Countries are free from that pernicious Vermin 't is through the extremity of their Poverty Even in Rome a man may be circumvented by the fraud of a Priest or poison'd by one who would have his Estate Wife Whore or Child but nothing is done that looks like Tumult or Violence The Governors do as little fear Gracchus as Hannibal and instead of wearying their Subjects in Wars they only seek by perverted Laws corrupt Judges false Witnesses and vexatious Suits to cheat them of their Mony and Inheritance This is the best part of their condition Where these Arts are used there are men and they have something to lose but for the most part the Lands lie waste and they who were formerly troubled with the disorders incident to populous Cities now enjoy the quiet and peaceable estate of a Wilderness Again there is a way of killing worse than that of the Sword for as Tertullian says upon a different occasion prohibere nasci est occidere those Governments are in the highest degree guilty of Blood which by taking from men the means of living bring some to perish through want drive others out of the Country and generally disswade men from marriage by taking from them all ways of subsisting their Families Notwithstanding all the Seditions of Florence and other Cities of Tuscany the horrid Factions of Guelphs and Ghibelins Neri and Bianchi Nobles and Commons they continued populous strong and exceeding rich but in the space of less than a hundred and fifty years the peaceable Reign of the Medices is thought to have destroyed nine parts in ten of the people of that Province Amongst other things 't is remarkable that when Philip the second of Spain gave Sienna to the Duke of Florence his Ambassador then at Rome sent him word that he had given away more than six hundred and fifty thousand Subjects and 't is not believ'd there are now twenty thousand Souls inhabiting that City and Territory Pisa Pistoia Arezzo Cortona and other Towns that were then good and populous are in the like proportion diminished and Florence more than any When that City had bin long troubled with Seditions Tumults and Wars for the most part unprosperous they still retain'd such strength that when Charles the eighth of France being admitted as a Friend with his whole Army which soon after conquer'd the Kingdom of Naples thought to master them the people taking Arms struck such a terror into him that he was glad to depart upon such conditions as they thought fit to impose Machiavel reports that in that time Florence alone with the Val d'Arno a small Territory belonging to that City could in a few hours by the sound of a Bell bring together a hundred and thirty five thousand well arm'd men whereas now that City with all the others in that Province are brought to such despicable weakness emptiness poverty and baseness that they can neither resist the oppressions of their own Prince nor defend him or themselves if they were assaulted by a foreign Enemy The People are dispers'd or destroy'd and the best Families sent to seek Habitations in Venice Genoa Rome Naples and Lucca This is not the effect of War or Pestilence they enjoy a perfect peace and suffer no other plague than the Government they are under But he who has thus cured them of Disorders and Tumults dos in my opinion deserve no greater praise than a

their Dominion on the Terra firma and prepared to assault the City it was under God solely preserved by the vigour and wisdom of their Nobility who tho no way educated to War unless by Sea sparing neither persons nor purses did with admirable industry and courage first recover Padoüa and then many other Cities so as at the end of that terrible War they came off without any diminution of their Territories Whereas Portugal having in our age revolted from the House of Austria no one doubts that it had bin immediately reduced if the great men of Spain had not bin pleased with such a lessening of their Master's power and resolved not to repair it by the recovery of that Kingdom or to deprive themselves of an cafy retreat when they should be oppressed by him or his Favourites The like thought was more plainly express'd by the Mareschal de Bassompierre who sceing how hardly Rochel was pressed by Lewis the 13th faid he thought they should be such fools to take it but 't is believ'd they would never have bin such fools and the treachery only of our Countrymen did enable the Cardinal Richlieu to do it as for his own glory and the advancement of the Popish Cause he really intended and nothing is to this day more common in the mouth of their wisest and best men tho Papists than the acknowledgment of their own folly in suffering that place to fall the King having by thar means gotten power to proceed against them at his pleasure The brave Monsieur de Turenne is said to have carried this to a greater height in his last Discourse to the present King of France You think said he you have Armies but you have none the one half of the Officers are the Bawdy-house Companions of Monsieur de xxx or the Creatures of his Whore Madam de xxx the other half may be men of experience and fit for their Imployments but they are such as would be pleased with nothing more than to see you lose two or three Battels that coming to stand in need of them you might cause them to be better used by your Ministers than of late they have bin It may easily be imagin'd how men in such sentiments do serve their Master and nothing is more evident than that the French in this age have had so great advantages that they might have brought Europe and perhaps Asia under their power if the interest of the Nation had bin united to that of the Government and the Strength Vigour and Bravery of the Nobility employ'd that way But since it has pleased God to suffer us to fall into a condition of being little able to help our selves and that they are in so good terms with the Turk as not to attack him 't is our happiness that they do not know their own strength or cannot without ruin to themselves turn it to our prejudice I could give yet more pregnant testimonies of the difference between men fighting for their own interests in the Offices to which they had bin advanced by the votes of numerous Assemblies and such as serve for pay and get preferments by corruption or favour if I were not unwilling to stir the spleen of some men by obliging them to reflect upon what has passed in our own Age and Country to compare the justice of our Tribunals within the time of our memory and the integrity of those who for a while manag'd the publick Treasure the Discipline Valour and Strength of our Armies and Fleets the increase of our Riches and Trade the success of our Wars in Scotland Ireland and at Sea the glory and reputation not long since gained with that condition into which we are of late fallen But I think I shall offend no wise or good man if I say that as neither the Romans nor Grecians in the time of their Liberty ever performed any actions more glorious than freeing the Country from a Civil War that had raged in every part the conquest of two such Kingdoms as Scotland and Ireland and crushing the formidable power of the Hollanders by Sea nor ever produced more examples of Valor Industry Integrity and in all respects compleat disinterested unmovable and incorruptible Virtue than were at that time seen in our Nation So neither of them upon the change of their Affairs did exceed us in weakness cowardice baseness venality lewdness and all manner of corruption We have reason therefore not only to believe that all Princes do not necessarily understand the affairs of their People or provide better for them than those who are otherwise chosen but that as there is nothing of Greatness Power Riches Strength and Happiness which we might not reasonably have hoped for if we had rightly improved the advantages we had so there is nothing of shame and misery which we may not justly fear since we have neglected them If any man think that this evil of advancing Officers for personal respects favour or corruption is not of great extent I desire him to consider that the Officers of State Courts of Justice Church Armies Fleets and Corporations are of such number and power as wholly to corrupt a Nation when they themselves are corrupted and will ever be corrupt when they attain to their Offices by corruption The good mannagement of all Affairs Civil Military and Ecclesiastical necessarily depends upon good order and discipline and 't is not in the power of common men to reform abuses patronized by those in Authority nor to prevent the mischiefs thereupon ensuing and not having power to direct publick actions to the publick good they must consequently want the industry and affection that is required to bring them to a good issue The Romans were easily beaten under the Decemviri tho immediatly before the erection and after the extinction of that Power none of their Neighbours were able to resist them The Goths who with much glory had reigned in Spain for about three hundred years had neither strength nor courage under their lewd and odious King Rodrigo and were in one day subdued with little loss of blood by the Saracens and could not in less than eight hundred years free their Country from them That brave Nation having of late fallen under as base a conduct has now as little heart or power to defend it self Court-Parasites have rendred Valour ridiculous and they who have ever shew'd themselves as much inclin'd to Arms as any people of the world do now abhor them and are sent to the Wars by force laid in Carts and bound like Calves brought to the Shambles and left to starve in Flanders as soon as they arrive It may easily be judged what service can be expected from such men tho they should happen to be well commanded but the great Officers by the corruption of the Court think only of enriching themselves and encreasing the misery of the Soldiers by their frauds both become equally useless to the State Notwithstanding the seeming prosperity

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

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

Generations We see nothing in Scripture of Precept or Example that is not utterly abhorrent to this Chimera The only sort of Kings mentioned there with approbation is such a one as may not raise his Heart above his Brethren If God had constituted a Lord Paramount with an absolute Power and multitudes of Nations were to labour and fight for his Greatness and Pleasure this were to raise his Heart to a height that would make him forget he was a Man Such as are versed in Scripture not only know that it neither agrees with the Letter or Spirit of that Book but that it is unreasonable in it self unless he were of a Species different from the rest of Mankind His exaltation would not agree with God's Indulgence to his Creatures tho he were the better for it much less when probably he would be made more unhappy and worse by the Pride Luxury and other Vices that always attend the highest Fortunes 'T is no less incredible that God who disposes all things in Wisdom and Goodness and appoints a due Place for all should without distinction ordain such a Power to every one succeeding in such a Line as cannot be executed the Wise would refuse and Fools cannot take upon them the burden of it without ruin to themselves and such as are under them or expose Mankind to a multitude of other Absurdities and Mischiefs subjecting the Aged to be governed by Children the Wise to depend on the Will of Fools the Strong and Valiant to expect defence from the Weak or Cowardly and all in general to receive Justice from him who neither knows nor cares for it SECT VII Abraham and the Patriarchs were not Kings IF any Man say that we are not to seek into the depth of God's Counsels I answer That if he had for Reasons known only to himself affixed such a Right to any one Line he would have set a Mark upon those who come of it that Nations might know to whom they owe Subjection or given some testimony of his Presence with Filmer and Heylin if he had sent them to reveal so great a Mystery 'Till that be done we may safely look upon them as the worst of men and teachers only of Lies and Follies This perswades me little to examine what would have bin if God had at once created many Men or the Conclusions that can be drawn from Adam's having bin alone For nothing can be more evident than that if many had bin created they had bin all equal unless God had given a Preference to one All their Sons had inherited the same Right after their death and no Dream was ever more empty than his Whimsey of Adam's Kingdom or that of the ensuing Patriarchs To say the truth 't is hard to speak seriously of Abraham's Kingdom or to think any Man to be in earnest who mentions it He was a Stranger and a Pilgrim in the Land where he lived and pretended to no Authority beyond his own Family which consisted only of a Wife and Slaves He lived with Lot as with his Equal and would have no Contest with him because they were Brethren His Wife and Servants could neither make up nor be any part of a Kingdom in as much as the despotical Government both in Practice and Principle differs from the Regal If his Kingdom was to be grounded on the Paternal Right it vanished away of it self he had no Child Eliezer of Damascus for want of a better was to be his Heir Lot tho his Nephew was excluded He durst not own his own Wife He had not one foot of Land till he bought a Field for a burying place His three hundred and eighteen Men were Servants bought according to the custom of those days or their Children and the War he made with them was like to Gideon's Enterprize which shews only that God can save by a few as well as by many but makes nothing to our Author's purpose For if they had been as many in number as the Army of Semiramis they could have no relation to the Regal much less to the Paternal Power for a Father doth not buy but beget Children Notwithstanding this our Author bestows the proud Title of Lord Paramount upon him and transmits it to Isaac who was indeed a King like his Father great admirable and glorious in Wisdom and Holiness but utterly void of all worldly splendor or power This spiritual Kingdom was inherited by Jacob whose Title to it was not founded on Prerogative of Birth but Election and peculiar Grace but he never enjoyed any other worldly Inheritance than the Field and Cave which Abraham had bought for a burying place and the Goods he had gained in Laban's Service The Example of Judah his Sentence upon Thamar is yet farther from the purpose if it be possible for he was then a Member of a private Family the fourth Son of a Father then living neither in possession nor under the promise of the Privileges of Primogeniture tho Ruben Simeon and Levi fell from it by their Sins Whatsoever therefore the Right was which belonged to the Head of the Family it must have bin in Jacob but as he professed himself a keeper of Sheep as his Fathers had bin the exercise of that Emploiment was so far from Regal that it deserves no explication If that Act of Judah is to be imputed to a Royal Power I have as much as I ask He tho living with his Father and elder Brothers when he came to be of Age to have Children had the same Power over such as were of or came into his Family as his Father had over him for none can go beyond the Power of Life and Death The same in the utmost extent cannot at the same time equally belong to many If it be divided equally it is no more than that Universal Liberty which God hath given to Mankind and every Man is a King till he devest himself of his Right in consideration of something that he thinks better for him SECT VIII Nimrod was the first King during the Life of Chush Cham Shem and Noah THE Creation is exactly described in the Scripture but we know so little of what passed between the finishing of it and the Flood that our Author may say what he pleases and I may leave him to seek his Proofs where he can find them In the mean time I utterly deny that any Power did remain in the Heads of Families after the Flood that dos in the least degree resemble the Regal in Principle or Practice If in this I am mistaken such Power must have been in Noah and transmitted to one of his Sons The Scripture says only that he built an Altar sacrificed to the Lord was a Husbandman planted a Vineyard and performed such Offices as bear nothing of the Image of a King for the space of three hundred and fifty Years We have reason to believe that his Sons after his Death continued in the same manner of

The two Twins could not agree Jacob was sent away by his Mother he reigned over Esau only and 't is not easy to determine who was the Heir of his worldly Kingdom for the Jacob had the birth-right we do not find he had any other Goods than what he had gotten in Laban's service If our Author say true the right of Primogeniture with the Dominion perpetually annexed by the Laws of God and Nature must go to the eldest Isaac therefore tho he had not bin deceived could not have conferred it upon the younger for Man cannot overthrow what God and Nature have instituted Jacob in the Court Language had bin a double Rebel in beguiling his Father and supplanting his Brother The blessing of being Lord over his Brethren could not have taken place Or if Isaac had Power and his Act was good the Prerogative of the elder is not rooted in the Law of God or Nature but a matter of conveniency only which may be changed at the Will of the Father whether he know what he do or not But if this Paternal Right to Dominion were of any value or Dominion over Men were a thing to be desired why did Abraham Isaac and Jacob content themselves with such a narrow Territory when after the death of their Ancestors they ought according to that rule to have bin Lords of the World All Authors conclude that Shem was the eldest by birth or preferred by the appointment of God so as the Right must have bin in him and from him transmitted to Abraham and Isaac but if they were so possessed with the contemplation of a Heavenly Kingdom as not to care for the greatest on Earth 't is strange that Esau whose modesty is not much commended should so far forget his Interest as neither to lay claim to the Empire of the World nor dispute with his Brother the possession of the Field and Cave bought by Abraham but rather to fight for a dwelling on Mount Seir that was neither possessed by nor promised to his Fathers If he was fallen from his Right Jacob might have claimed it but God was his Inheritance and being assured of his Blessing he contented himself with what he could gain by his Industry in a way that was not at all sutable to the Pomp and Majesty of a King Which way soever theresore the business be turned whether according to Isaac's Blessing Esau should serve Jacob or our Author's opinion Jacob must serve Esau neither of the two was effected in their Persons And the Kingdom of two being divided into two each of them remained Lord of himself SECT IX The Power of a Father belongs only to a Father THIS leads us to an easy determination of the Question which our Author thinks insoluble If Adam was Lord of his Children he doth not see how any can be free from the subjection of his Parents For as no good Man will ever desire to be free from the respect that is due to his Father who did beget and educate him no wise Man will ever think the like to be due to his Brother or Nephew that did neither If Esau and Jacob were equally free if Noah as our Author affirms divided Europe Asia and Africa amongst his three Sons tho he cannot prove it and if seventy two Nations under so many Heads or Kings went from Babylon to people the Earth about a hundred and thirty years after the Flood I know not why according to the same rule and proportion it may not be safely concluded that in four thousand years Kings are so multiplied as to be in number equal to the Men that are in the World that is to say they are according to the Laws of God and Nature all free and independent upon each other as Shem Ham and Japhet were And therefore tho Adam and Noah had reigned alone when there were no Men in the World except such as issued from them that is no reason why any other should reign over those that he hath not begotten As the Right of Noah was divided amongst the Children he left and when he was dead no one of them depended on the other because no one of them was Father of the other and the Right of a Father can only belong to him that is so the like must for ever attend every other Father in the World This paternal Power must necessarily accrue to every Father He is a King by the same Right as the Sons of Noah and how numerous soever Families may be upon the increase of Mankind they are all free till they agree to recede from their own Right and join together in or under one Government according to such Laws as best please themselves SECT X. Such as enter into Society must in some degree diminish their Liberty REASON leads them to this No one Man or Family is able to provide that which is requisite for their convenience or security whilst every one has an equal Right to every thing and none acknowledges a Superior to determine the Controversies that upon such occasions must continually arise and will probably be so many and great that Mankind cannot bear them Therefore tho I do not believe that Bellarmin said a Commonwealth could not exercise its Power for he could not be ignorant that Rome and Athens did exercise theirs and that all the Regular Kingdoms in the World are Commonwealths yet there is nothing of absurdity in saying That Man cannot continue in the perpetual and entire fruition of the Liberty that God hath given him The Liberty of one is thwarted by that of another and whilst they are all equal none will yield to any otherwise than by a general consent This is the ground of all just Governments for violence or fraud can create no Right and the same consent gives the Form to them all how much soever they differ from each other Some small numbers of Men living within the Precincts of one City have as it were cast into a common Stock the Right which they had of governing themselves and Children and by common Consent joining in one body exercised fuch Power over every single Person as seemed beneficial to the whole and this Men call perfect Democracy Others chose rather to be governed by a select number of such as most excelled in Wisdom and Vertue and this according to the signification of the word was called Aristocracy Or when one Man excelled all others the Government was put into his hands under the name of Monarchy But the wisest best and far the greatest part of mankind rejecting these simple Species did form Governments mixed or composed of the three as shall be proved hereafter which commonly received their respective Denomination from the part that prevailed and did deserve Praise or Blame as they were well or ill proportioned It were a folly hereupon to say that the Liberty for which we contend is of no use to us since we cannot endure the Solitude Barbarity Weakness Want Misery and Dangers

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

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

may be liable to hard Censures but those who use them most gently must confess that such an extreme deviation from the end of their Institution annuls it and the Wound thereby given to the natural and original Rights of those Nations cannot be cured unless they resume the Liberties of which they have bin deprived and return to the antient Custom of chusing those to be Magistrates who for their Vertues best deserve to be preferred before their Brethren and are endowed with those Qualities that best enable men to perform the great end of providing for the Publick Safety SECT XVII 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 OUR Author's next Inquiry is What becomes of the Right of Fatherhood in case the Crown should escheat for want of an Heir Whether it doth not escheat to the People His answer is 'T is but the negligence or ignorance of the People to lose the knowledg of the true Heir c. And a little below The Power is not devolved to the Multitude No the Kingly Power escheats on independent Heads of Families All such prime Heads have Power to consent in the uniting or conferring their Fatherly Right of Sovereign Authority on whom they please and he that is so elected claims not his Power as a Donative from the People but as being substituted by God from whom he receives his Royal Charter of Vniversal Father c. In my opinion before he had asked What should be done in case the Crown should escheat for want of an Heir he ought to have proved there had bin a Man in the world who had the Right in himself and telling who he was have shewed how it had bin transmitted for some Generations that we might know where to seek his Heir and before he accused the Multitude of ignorance or negligence in not knowing this Heir he ought to have informed us how it may be possible to know him or wh●t it would avail us if we did know him for 't is in vain to know to whom a Right belongs that never was and never can be executed But we may go farther and affirm that as the Universal Right must have bin in Noah and Shem if in any who never exercised it we have reason to believe there never was any such thing And having proved from Scripture and Human History That the first Kingdoms were set up in a direct opposition to this Right by Nimrod and others he that should seek and find their Heirs would only find those who by a most accursed Wickedness had usurped and continued a Dominion over their Fathers contrary to the Laws of God and Nature and we should neither be more wise nor more happy than we are tho our Author should furnish us with certain and authentick Genealogies by which we might know the true Heirs of Nimrod and the seventy two Kings that went from Babylon who as he supposes gave beginning to all the Kingdoms of the Earth Moreover if the Right be Universal it must be in one for the Univers being but one the whole Right of commanding it cannot at the same time be in many and proceed from the Ordinance of God or of Man It cannot proceed from the Ordinance of God for he doth nothing in vain He never gave a Right that could not be executed No man can govern that which he dos not so much as know No man did ever know all the World no man therefore did or could govern it and none could be appointed by God to do that which is absolutely impossible to be done for it could not consist with his Wisdom We find this in our selves It were a shame for one of us poor weak short sighted Creatures in the disposal of our Affairs to appoint such a method as were utterly ineffectual for the preservation of our Families or destructive to them and the blasphemy of imputing to God such an Ordinance as would be a Reproach to one of us can sute only with the wicked and impudent Fury of such as our Author who delights in Monsters This also shews us that it cannot be from Men One or a few may commit Follies but mankind dos not universally commit and perpetually persist in any They cannot therefore by a general and permanent Authority enact that which is utterly absurd and impossible or if they do they destroy their own Nature and can no longer deserve the name of reasonable Creatures There can be therefore no such man and the solly of seeking him or his Heir that never was may be left to the Disciples of Filmer The Difficulties are as great if it be said The World might be divided into parcels and we are to seek the Heirs of the first Possessors for besides that no man can be obliged to seek that which cannot be found all men knowing that Caliginosa nocte haec premit Deus and that the Genealogies of mankind are so confused that unless possibly among the Jews we have reason to believe there is not a man in the world who knows his own Original it could be of no advantage to us tho we knew that of every one for the Division would be of no value unless it were at the first rightly made by him who had all the Authority in himself which dos no where appear and rightly deduced to him who according to that division claims a right to the parcel he enjoys and I fear our Author would terribly shake the Crowns in which the Nations of Europe are concerned if they should be perswaded to search into the Genealogies of their Princes and to judg of their Rights according to the proofs they should give of Titles rightly deduced by succession of Blood from the seventy two first Kings from whom our Author fancies all the Kingdoms of the World to be derived Besides tho this were done it would be to no purpose for the seventy two were not sent out by Noah nor was he or his Sons of that number but they went or were sent from Babylon where Nimrod reigned who as has bin already proved neither had nor could have any right at all but was a mighty Hunter even a proud and cruel Tyrant usurping a power to which he had no right and which was perpetually exercised by him and his Successors against God and his People from whence I may sasely conclude That no right can ever be derived and may justly presume it will be denied by none who are of better Morals and of more sound principles in matters of Law and Religion than Filmer and Heylin since 't is no less absurd to deduce a right from him that had none than to expect pure and wholsom Waters from a filthy polluted and poisonous Fountain If it be pretended that some other man since Noah had this universal Right it must either remain in one single person as his right Heir or be divided If in

justly can be quiet under it If God be the Fountain of Justice Mercy and Truth and those his Servants who walk in them no exercise of Violence Fraud Cruelty Pride or Avarice is patronized by him and they who are the Authors of those Villanies cannot but be the Ministers of him who sets himself up against God because 't is impossible that Truth and Falshood Mercy and Cruelty Justice and the most violent Oppression can proceed from the same Root It was a folly and a lie in those Jews to call themselves the Children of Abraham who did not the Works of Abraham and Christ declared them to be the Children of the Devil whose Works they did which words proceeding from the Eternal Truth do as well indicate to us whose Child and Servant every man is to be accounted as to those who first heard them If our Author 's former Assertions were void of Judgment and Truth his next Clause shews a great defect in his Memory and contradicts the former The Judgments of God says he who hath Power to give and take away Kingdoms are most just yet the ministry of Men who execute God's Judgments without Commission is sinful and damnable If it be true as he says that we are to look at the Power not the Ways by which it is gained and that he who hath it whether it be by Usurpation Conquest or any other means is to be accounted as Father or right Heir to the Father of the People to which Title the most sublime and divine Privileges are annexed a man who by the most wicked and unjust Actions advances himself to the Power becomes immediately the Father of the People and the Minister of God which I take to be a piece of Divinity worthy our Author and his Disciples It may be doubted what he means by a Commission from God for we know of none but what is outwardly by his Word or inwardly by his Spirit and I am apt to think that neither he nor his Abettors allowing of either as to the Point in question he doth fouly prevaricate in alledging that which he thinks cannot be of any effect If any man should say that the Word of God to Moses Joshua Ehud Gideon Samuel Jeroboam and Jehu or any others are in the like cases Rules to be observed by all because that which was from God was good that which was good is good and he that dos good is justified by it He would probably tell us that what was good in them is not good in others and that the Word of God doth justify those only to whom it is spoken That is to say No man can execute the just Judgments of God to the benefit of mankind according to the Example of those Servants of God without damnable sin unless he have a precise Word particularly directed to him for it as Moses had But if any man should pretend that such a Word was come to him he would be accounted an Enthusiast and obtain no credit So that which way soever the Clause be taken it appears to be full of Fraud confessing only in the Theory that which he thinks can never be brought into practice that his beloved Villanies may be thereby secured and that the glorious Examples of the most heroick Actions performed by the best and wisest men that ever were in the World for the benefit of mankind may never be imitated The next Clause shews that I did our Author no wrong in saying that he gave a right to Usurpation for he plainly says That whether the Prince be the supreme Father of his People or the true Heir of such a Father or whether he come to the Crown by Vsurpation or Election of the Nobles or People or by any other way whatsoever c. it is the only Right and Authority of the natural Father In the 3d Chap. Sect. 8. It skills not which way the King comes by his Power whether by Election Donation Succession or by any other means And in another place That we are to regard the Power not the Means by which it is gained To which I need say no more than that I cannot sufficiently admire the ingeniously invented Title of Father by Usurpation and confess that since there is such a thing in the World to which not only private men but whole Nations owe obedience whatsoever has been said antiently as was thought to express the highest excess of Fury and Injustice as Jus datum sceleri Jus omne in ferro est situm Jus licet in jugulos nostros sibi fecerit ense Sylla potens Mariusque ferox Cinna cruentus Caesareaeque domus series were solid Truths good Law and Divinity which did not only signify the actual exercise of the Power but induced a conscientious Obligation of obeying it The Powers so gained did carry in themselves the most sacred and inviolable Rights and the actors of the most detestable Villanies thereby became the Ministers of God and the Fathers of their subdued People Or if this be not true it cannot be denied that Filmer and his followers in the most impudent and outragious Blasphemy have surpassed all that have gone before them To confirm his Assertions he gives us a wonderful explanation of the fifth Commandment which he says enjoins Obedience to Princes under the terms of Honour thy Father and thy Mother drawing this Inference That as all Power is in the Father the Prince who hath it cannot be restrained by any Law which being grounded upon the perfect likeness between Kings and Fathers no man can deny it to be true But if Claudius was the Father of the Roman People I suppose the chast Messalina was the Mother and to be honoured by virtue of the same Commandment But then I fear that such as met her in the most obscene places were not only guilty of Adultery but of Incest The same Honour must needs belong to Nero and his vertuous Poppaea unless it were transferred to his new-made Woman Sporus or perhaps he himself was the Mother and the glorious Title of Pater Patriae belonged to the Raskal who married him as a Woman The like may be said of Agathocles Dionysius Phalaris Busiris Machanidas Peter the Cruel of Castille Christiern of Denmark the last Princes of the House of Valois in France and Philip the Second of Spain Those Actions of theirs which men have ever esteemed most detestable and the whole course of their abominable Government did not proceed from Pride Avarice Cruelty Madness and Lust but from the tender care of most pious Fathers Tacitus sadly describes the state of his Country Vrbs incendiis vastata consumptis antiquissimis delubris ipso Capitolio Civium manibus incenso pollutae Ceremoniae magna Adulteria plenum Exiliis mare infecti caedibus scopuli atrocius in Vrbe saevitum Nobilitas opes omissi vel gesti honores pro crimine ob virtutes certissimum exitium but he was to blame All this proceeded

should attribute Order and Stability to it whereas Order doth principally consist in appointing to every one his right Place Office or Work and this lays the whole weight of the Government upon one Person who very often dos neither deserve nor is able to bear the least part of it Plato Aristotle Hooker and I may say in short all wise men have held that Order required that the wisest best and most valiant Men should be placed in the Offices where Wisdom Vertue and Valour are requisite If common sense did not teach us this we might learn it from the Scripture When God gave the conduct of his People to Moses Joshua Samuel and others he endowed them with all the Vertues and Graces that were required for the right performance of their Duty When the Israelites were oppressed by the Midianites Philistins and Ammonites they expected help from the most wise and valiant When Hannibal was at the Gates of Rome and had filled Italy with Fire and Blood or when the Gauls overwhelmed that Country with their multitudes and fury the Senate and People of Rome put themselves under the conduct of Camillus Manlius Fabius Scipio and the like and when they failed to chuse such as were fit for the work to be done they received such defeats as convinced them of their Error But if our Author say true Order did require that the Power of defending the Country should have bin annexed as an Inheritance to one Family or lest to him that could get it and the exercise of all Authority committed to the next in Blood tho the weakest of Women or the basest of Men. The like may be said of judging or doing of Justice and 't is absurd to pretend that either is expected from the Power not the Person of the Monarch for experience doth too well shew how much all things halt in relation to Justice or Defence when there is a defect in him that ought to judg us and to fight our Battels But of all things this ought least to be alledged by the Advocates for absolute Monarchy who deny that the Authority can be separated from the Person and lay it as a fundamental Principle that whosoever hath it may do what he pleases and be accountable to no man Our Author's next work is to shew that Stability is the effect of this good Order but he ought to have known that Stability is then only worthy of praise when it is in that which is good No man delights in sickness or pain because it is long or incurable nor in slavery and misery because it is perpetual much less will any man in his senses commend a permanency in vice and wickedness He must therefore prove that the Stability he boasts of is in things that are good or all that he says of it signifies nothing I might leave him here with as little fear that any man who shall espouse his Quarrel shall ever be able to remove this Obstacle as that he himself should rise out of his Grave and do it But I hope to prove that of all things under the Sun there is none more mutable or unstable than Absolute Monarchy which is all that I dispute against professing much veneration for that which is mixed regulated by Law and directed to the Publick Good This might be proved by many Arguments but I shall confine my self to two the one drawn from Reason the other from matters of Fact Nothing can be called stable that is not so in Principle and Practice in which respect human Nature is not well capable of Stability but the utmost deviation from it that can be imagined is when such an Error is laid for a Foundation as can never be corrected All will confess that if there be any Stability in man it must be in Wisdom and Vertue and in those Actions that are thereby directed for in weakness solly and madness there can be none The Stability therefore that we seek in relation to the exercise of Civil and Military Powers can never be found unless care be taken that such as shall exercise those Powers be endowed with the Qualities that should make them stable This is utterly repugnant to our Author's Doctrine He lays for a Foundation That the Succession goes to the next in Blood without distinction of Age Sex or personal Qualities whereas even he himself could not have the impudence to say that Children and Women where they are admitted or Fools Madmen and such as are full of all wickedness do not come to be the Heirs of reigning Families as well as of the meanest The Stability therefore that can be expected from such a Government either depends upon those who have none in themselves or is referred wholly to Chance which is directly opposite to Stability This would be the case tho it were as we say an even Wager whether the Person would be fit or unfit and that there were as many men in the world able as unable to perform the Duty of a King but Experience shewing that among many millions of men there is hardly one that possesses the Qualities required in a King 't is so many to one that he upon whom the Lot shall fall will not be the man we seek in whose Person and Government there can be such a stability as is asserted And that failing all must necessarily fail for there can be no stability in his Will Laws or Actions who has none in his Person That we may see whether this be verified by Experience we need not search into the dark relations of the Babylonian and Assyrian Monarchies Those rude Ages afford us little instruction and tho the fragments of History remaining do sufficiently show that all things there were in perpetual fluctuation by reason of the madness of their Kings and the violence of those who transported the Empire from one Place or Family to another I will not much rely upon them but slightly touching some of their Stories pass to those that are better known to us The Kings of those Ages seem to have lived rather like Beasts in a Forest than Men joined in Civil Society they followed the Example of Nimrod the mighty Hunter Force was the only Law that prevailed the stronger devoured the weaker and continued in Power till he was ejected by one of more strength or better fortune By this means the race of Ninus was destroy'd by Belochus Arbaces rent the Kingdom asunder and took Media to himself Morodach extinguished the Race of Belochus and was made King Nabuchodonosor like a Flood overwhelmed all sor a time destroy'd the Kingdoms of Jerusalem and Egypt with many others and found no obstacle till his rage and pride turned to a most bestial madness And the Assyrian Empire was wholly abolish'd at the death of his Grandchild Belshazzar and no Stability can be found in the reigns of those great Kings unless that name be given to the Pride Idolatry Cruelty and Wickedness in which they remained constant If

we examine things more distinctly we shall find that all things varied according to the humour of the Prince Whilst Pharaoh lived who had received such signal Services from Joseph the Israelites were well used but when another rose up who knew him not they were persecuted with all the extremities of injustice and cruelty till the furious King persisting in his design of exterminating them brought destruction upon himself and the Nation Where the like Power hath prevailed it has ever produced the like effects When some great men of Persia had perswaded Darius that it was a fine thing to command that no man for the space of thirty days should make any Petition to God or Man but to the King only Daniel the most wise and holy Man then in the world must be thrown to the Lions When God had miraculously saved him the same Sentence was passed against the Princes of the Nation When Haman had filled Ahasuerus his ears with Lies all the Jews were appointed to be slain and when the fraud of that Villain was detected leave was given them with the like precipitancy to kill whom they pleased When the Israelites came to have Kings they were made subject to the same Storms and always with their Blood suffer'd the Penalty of their Prince's madness When one kind of fury possessed Saul he slew the Priests persecuted David and would have killed his brave Son Jonathan When he sell under another he took upon him to do the Priest's Office pretended to understand the Word of God better than Samuel and spared those that God had commanded him to destroy Upon another whimsey he killed the Gibeonites and never rested from finding new Inventions to vex the People till he had brought many thousands of them to perish with himself and his Sons on Mount Gilboa We do not find any King in Wisdom Valour and Holiness equal to David and yet he falling under the temptations that attend the greatest Fortunes brought Civil Wars and a Plague upon the Nation When Solomon's heart was drawn away by strange Women he filled the Land with Idols and oppressed the People with intolerable Tributes Rehoboam's Folly made that Rent in the Kingdom which could never be made up Under his Successors the people served God Baal or Ashtaroth as best pleased him who had the Power and no other marks of Stability can be alledged to have bin in that Kingdom than the constancy of their Kings in the practice of Idolatry their cruelty to the Prophets hatred to the Jews and civil Wars producing such Slaughters as are reported in few other Stories The Kingdom was in the space of about two hundred years possessed by nine several Families not one of them getting possession otherwise than by the slaughter of his Predecessor and the extinction of his Race and ended in the Bondage of the ten Tribes which continues to this day He that desires farther proofs of this Point may seek them in the Histories of Alexander of Macedon and his Successors He seems to have bin endow'd with all the Vertues that Nature improved by Discipline did ever attain so that he is believed to be the Man meant by Aristotle who on account of the excellency of his Vertues was by Nature framed for a King and Plutarch ascribes his Conquests rather to those than to his Fortune But even that Vertue was overthrown by the Successes that accompanied it He burnt the most magnificent Palace of the world in a frolick to please a mad drunken Whore Upon the most frivolous suggestions of Eunuchs and Rascals he kill'd the best and bravest of his Friends and his Valour which had no equal not subsisting without his other Vertues perished when he became lewd proud cruel and superstitious so as it may be truly said he died a Coward His Successors did not differ from him When they had killed his Mother Wise and Children they exercised their fury against one another and tearing the Kingdom to pieces the Survivors left the Sword as an Inheritance to their Families who perished by it or under the weight of the Roman Chains When the Romans had lost that Liberty which had bin the Nurse of their Vertue and gained the Empire in lieu of it they attained to our Author 's applauded Stability Julius being slain in the Senate the first Question was whether it could be restored or not And that being decided by the Battel of Philippi the Conquerors set themselves to destroy all the eminent men in the City as the best means to establish the Monarchy Augustus gained it by the death of Antonius and the corruption of the Souldiers and he dying naturally or by the fraud of his Wife the Empire was transferred to her Son Tiberius under whom the miserable People suffer'd the worst effects of the most impure Lust and inhuman Cruelty He being stifled the Government went on with much uniformity and stability Caligula Claudius Nero Galba Otho Vitellius regularly and constantly did all the mischief they could and were not more like to each other in the Villanies they committed than in the Deaths they suffered Vespasian's more gentle Reign did no way compensate the Blood he spilt to attain the Empire And the Benefits received from Titus his short-liv'd Vertue were infinitely overbalanced by the detestable Vices of his Brother Domitian who turned all things into the old Channel of Cruelty Lust Rapine and Perfidiousness His slaughter gave a little breath to the gasping perishing World and men might be vertuous under the Government of Nerva Trajan Antoninus Aurelius and a few more tho even in their time Religion was always dangerous But when the Power sell into the hands of Commodus Heliogabalus Caracalla and others of that sort nothing was sase but obscurity or the utmost excesses of lewdness and baseness However whilst the Will of the Governor passed for a Law and the Power did usually sall into the hands of such as were most bold and violent the utmost security that any man could have for his Person or Estate depended upon his temper and Princes themselves whether good or bad had no longer Leases of their lives than the furious and corrupted Soldiers would give them and the Empire of the World was changeable according to the Success of a Battel Matters were not much mended when the Emperors became Christians Some favour'd those who were called Orthodox and gave great Revenues to corrupt the Clergy Others supported Arianism and persecuted the Orthodox with as much asperity as the Pagans had done Some revolted and shewed themselves more fierce against the professors of Christianity than they that had never had any knowledg of it The World was torn in pieces amongst them and osten suffered as great miseries by their sloth ignorance and cowardice as by their fury and madness till the Empire was totally dissolved and lost That which under the weakness and irregularity of a popular Government had conquer'd all from the Euphrates to Britain and

destroyed the Kingdoms of Asia Egypt Macedon Numidia and a multitude of others was made a Prey to unknown barbarous Nations and rent into as many pieces as it had bin composed of when it enjoy'd the Stability that accompanies Divine and Absolute Monarchy The like may be said of all the Kingdoms in the World they may have their ebbings and flowings according to the Vertues or Vices of Princes or their Favorites but can never have any Stability because there is and can be none in them Or if any Exception may be brought against this Rule it must be of those Monarchies only which are mixed and regulated by Laws where Diets Parliaments Assemblies of Estates or Senats may supply the defects of a Prince restrain him if he prove extravagant and reject such as are found to be unworthy of their Office which are as odious to our Author and his Followers as the most popular Governments and can be of no advantage to his cause There is another ground of perpetual Fluctuation in Absolute Monarchies or such as are grown so strong that they cannot be restrained by Law tho according to their Institution they ought to be distinct from but in some measure relating to the Inclinations of the Monarch that is the impulse of Ministers Favorites Wives or Whores who frequently govern all things according to their own Passions or Interests And tho we cannot say who were the Favorites of every one of the Assyrian or Egyptian Kings yet the Examples before-mentioned of the different method follow'd in Egypt before and after the death of Joseph and in Persia whilst the idolatrous Princes and Haman or Daniel Esther and Mordecai were in credit the violent Changes happening thereupon give us reason to believe the like were in the times of other Kings and if we examine the Histories of later Ages and the Lives of Princes that are more exactly known we shall find that Kingdoms are more frequently swayed by those who have Power with the Prince than by his own Judgment So that whosoever hath to deal with Princes concerning Foreign or Domestick Affairs is obliged more to regard the humour of those Persons than the most important Interests of a Prince or People I might draw too much envy upon my self if I should take upon me to cite all the Examples of this kind that are found in modern Histories or the Memoirs that do more precisely shew the Temper of Princes and the secret Springs by which they were moved But as those who have well observed the management of Affairs in France during the Reigns of Francis the First Henry the Second Francis the Second Charles the Ninth Henry the Third Henry the Fourth and Lewis the Thirteenth will confess that the Interests of the Dukes of Montmorency and Guise Queen Katherine de Medicis the Duke of Epernon La Fosseuse Madame de Guiche de Gabriele d' Entragues the Marechal d' Ancre the Constable de Luines and the Cardinal de Richelieu were more to be consider'd by those who had any private or publick Business to treat at Court than the Opinions of those Princes or the most weighty Concernments of the State so it cannot be denied that other Kingdoms where Princes legally have or wrongfully usurp the like Power are governed in the like manner or if it be there is hardly any Prince's Reign that will not furnish abundant proof of what I have asserted I agree with our Author that good Order and Stability produce Strength If Monarchy therefore excel in them Absolute Monarchies should be of more strength than those that are limited according to the proportion of their Riches extent of Territory and number of People that they govern and those limited Monarchies in the like proportion more strong than popular Governments or Commonwealths If this be so I wonder how a few of those giddy Greeks who according to our Author had learning enough only to make them seditious came to overthrow those vast Armies of the Persians as often as they met with them and seldom found any other difficulty than what did arise from their own Countrymen who sometimes sided with the Barbarians Seditions are often raised by a little prating but when one Man was to fight against fifty or a hundred as at the Battels of Salamine Platea Marathon and others then Industry Wisdom Skill and Valour was required and if their Learning had not made them to excel in those Vertues they must have bin overwhelmed by the prodigious multitudes of their Enemies This was so well known to the Persians that when Cyrus the younger prepar'd to invade his Brother Artaxerxes he brought together indeed a vast Army of Asiaticks but chiefly relied upon the Counsel and Valour of ten thousand Grecians whom he had engaged to serve him These giddy heads accompanied with good hands in the great Battel near Babylon found no resistance from Artaxerxes his Army and when Cyrus was killed by accident in the pursuit of the Victory they had gained and their own Officers treacherously murder'd they made good their retreat into Greece under the conduct of Xenophon in despite of above four hundred thousand Horse and Foot who endeavour'd to oppose them They were destitute of Horse Mony Provisions Friends and all other help except what their Wisdom and Valour furnished them and thereupon relying they passed over the Bellies of all the Enemies that ventur'd to appear against them in a march of a thousand miles These things were performed in the weakness of popular confusion but Agesilaus not being sensible of so great defects accompanied only with six and thirty Spartans and such other Forces as he could raife upon his personal credit adventured without Authority or Mony to undertake a War against that great King Artaxerxes and having often beaten Pharnabazus and Tissaphernes his Lieutenants was preparing to assault him in the heart of his Kingdom when he was commanded by the Ephori to return for the defence of his own Country It may in like manner appear strange that Alexander with the Forces of Greece much diminished by the Phocean Peloponnesian Theban and other intestine Wars could overthrow all the powers of the East and conquer more Provinces than any other Army ever saw if so much order and stability were to be found in absolute Monarchies and if the Liberty in which the Grecians were educated did only fit them for Seditions and it would seem no less astonishing that Rome and Greece whilst they were free should furnish such numbers of men excelling in all moral Vertues to the admiration of all succeeding Ages and thereby become so powerful that no Monarchs were able to resist them and that the same Countries since the loss of their Liberty have always bin weak base cowardly and vicious if the same Liberty had not bin the Mother and Nurse of their Vertue as well as the root of their Power It cannot be said that Alexander was a Monarch in our Author's sense for the power

so many of those who had enjoy'd the same honour or might aspire to it as to bring them for his pleasure to betray their Country and as no man was ever chosen who had not given great testimonies of his Vertues so no one did ever forfeit the good opinion conceived of him Vertue was then honour'd and thought so necessarily to comprehend a sincere love and fidelity to the Commonwealth that without it the most eminent qualities were reputed vile and odious and the memory of former Services could no way expiate the guilt of conspiring against it This seeming Severity was in truth the greatest Clemency for tho our Author has the impudence to say that during the Roman Liberty the best men thrived worst and the worst best he cannot alledg one example of any eminent Roman put to death except Manlius Capitolinus from the expulsion of the Tarquins to the time of the Gracchi and the Civil Wars not long after ensuing and of very few who were banished By these means Crimes were prevented and the temptations to evil being removed Treachery was destroy'd in the root and such as might be naturally ambitious were made to see there was no other way to Honour and Power than by acting virtuously But lest this should not be sufficient to restrain aspiring men what Power soever was granted to any Magistrate the Soveraignty still remained in the People and all without exception were subject to them This may seem strange to those who think the Dictators were absolute because they are said to have bin sine provocatione but that is to be only understood in relation to other Magistrates and not to the People as is clearly proved in the case of Q. Fabius whom Papirius the Dictator would have put to death Tribunos Plebis appello says Fabius Maximus his Father provoco ad Populum eumque tibi fugienti exercitus tui fugienti Senatus judicium Judicem fero qui certe unus plusquam tua dictatura potest polletque videro cessurusne sis provocationi cui Tullus Hostilius cessit And tho the People did rather interceed for Fabius than command his deliverance that modesty did evidently proceed from an opinion that Papirius was in the right and tho they desired to save Fabius who seems to have bin one of the greatest and best men that ever the City produced they would not enervate that military Discipline to which they owed not only their greatness but their subsistence most especially when their Soveraign Authority was acknowledged by all and the Dictator himself had submitted This right of Appeals to the People was the foundation of the Roman Commonwealth laid in the days of Romulus submitted to by Hostilius in the case of Horatius and never violated till the Laws and the Liberty which they supported were overthrown by the power of the Sword This is confirmed by the speech of Metellus the Tribune who in the time of the second Carthaginian War causelesly disliking the Proceedings of Q. Fabius Maximus then Dictator in a publick Assembly of the People said Quod si antiquus animus Plebi Romanae esset se audacter laturum de abrogando Q. Fabii Imperio nunc modicam rogationem promulgaturum de aequando Magistri Equitum Dictatoris jure which was done and that Action which had no precedent shews that the People needed none and that their Power being eminently above that of all Magistrates was obliged to no other rule than that of their own Will Tho I do therefore grant that a Power like to the Dictatorian limited in time circumscribed by Law and kept perpetually under the supreme Authority of the People may by vertuous and well-disciplin'd Nations upon some occasions be prudently granted to a vertuous man it can have no relation to our Author's Monarch whose Power is in himself subject to no Law perpetually exercised by himself and for his own sake whether he have any of the abilities required for the due performance of so great a work or be intirely destitute of them nothing being more unreasonable than to deduce consequences from cases which in substance and circumstances are altogether unlike but to the contrary these examples shewing that the Romans even in the time of such Magistrates as seemed to be most absolute did retain and exercise the Soveraign Power do most evidently prove that the Government was ever the same remaining in the People who without prejudice might give the Administration to one or more men as best pleased themselves and the success shews that they did it prudently SECT XIV No Sedition was hurtful to Rome till through their Prosperity some men gained a Power above the Laws LIttle pains is required to confute our Author who imputes much bloodshed to the popular Government of Rome for he cannot prove that one man was unjustly put to death or slain in any Sedition before Publius Gracchus The Foundations of the Common-wealth were then so shaken that the Laws could not be executed and whatsoever did then fall out ought to be attributed to the Monarchy for which the great men began to contend Whilst they had no other Wars than with neighbouring Nations they had a strict eye upon their Commanders and could preserve Discipline among the Soldiers but when by the excellence of their Valour and Conduct the greatest Powers of the World were subdued and for the better carrying on of foreign Wars Armies were suffered to continue in the same hands longer than the Law did direct Soldiery came to be accounted a Trade and those who had the worst designs against the Commonwealth began to favour all manner of Licentiousness and Rapine that they might gain the favour of the Legions who by that means became unruly and seditious 't was hard if not impossible to preserve a Civil equality when the Spoils of the greatest Kingdoms were brought to adorn the Houses of private men and they who had the greatest Cities and Nations to be their Dependents and Clients were apt to scorn the power of the Law This was a most dangerous Disease like those to which human Bodies are subject when they are arrived to that which Physicians call the Athletick habit proceeding from the highest perfection of Health Activity and Strength that the best Constitution by Diet and Exercise can attain Whosoever falls into them shews that he had attain'd that perfection and he who blames that which brings a State into the like condition condemns that which is most perfect among men Whilst the Romans were in the way to this no Sedition did them any hurt they were composed without Blood and those that seemed to be the most dangerous produced the best Laws But when they were arrived to that condition no Order could do them good the fatal period set to human things was come they could go no higher Summisque negatum Stare diu and all that our Author blames is not to be imputed to their Constitution but their departing from

they fear which are the principal Arguments that perswade men to expose themselves to labours or dangers 'T is a folly to say that the vigilance and wisdom of the Monarch supplies the desect of care in others for we know that no men under the Sun were ever more void of both and all manner of virtue requir'd to such a work than very many Monarchs have bin And which is yet worse the strength and happiness of the People being frequently dangerous to them they have not so much as the will to promote it nay sometimes set themselves to destroy it Antient Monarchies afford us frequent examples of this kind and if we consider those of France and Turky which seem most to flourish in our Age the People will appear to be so miserable under both that they cannot sear any change of Governor or Government and all except a few Ministers are kept so far from the knowledg of or power in the management of Affairs that if any of them should fancy a possibility of something that might befal them worse than what they suffer or hope for that which might alleviate their misery they could do nothing towards the advancement of the one or prevention of the other Tacitus observes that in his time no man was able to write what passed Inscitia Reipublicae ut alienae They neglected the publick Affairs in which they had no part In the same Age it was said that the People who whilst they fought for their own Interests had bin invincible being enslaved were grown sordid idle base running after Stage-plays and Shows so as the whole strength of the Roman Armies consisted of Strangers When their Spirits were depressed by servitude they had neither courage to defend themselves nor will to fight for their wicked Masters and least of all to increase their Power which was destructive to themselves The same thing is found in all places Tho the Turk commands many vast Provinces that naturally produce as good Soldiers as any yet his greatest strength is in Children that do not know their Fathers who not being very many in number may perish in one Battel and the Empire by that means be lost the miserable Nations that groan under That Tyranny having neither courage power nor will to defend it This was the fate of the Mamalukes They had for the space of almost two hundred years domineer'd in Egypt and a great part of Asia but the people under them being weak and disaffected they could never recover the Defeat they received from Selim near Tripoli who pursuing his Victory in a few months utterly abolished their Kingdom Notwithstanding the present pride of France the numbers and warlike Inclinations of that People the bravery of the Nobility extent of Dominion convenience of Situation and the vast Revenues of their King his greatest Advantages have bin gained by the mistaken Counsels of England the valour of our Soldiers unhappily sent to serve him and the Strangers of whom the strength of his Armies consists which is so unsteady a support that many who are well versed in Affairs of this nature incline to think he subsists rather by little Arts and corrupting Ministers in Foreign Courts than by the Power of his own Armies and that some reformation in the Counsels of his Neighbours might prove sufficient to overthrow that Greatness which is grown formidable to Europe the same misery to which he has reduced his People rendring them as unable to defend him upon any change of Fortune as to defend their own Rights against him This proceeds not from any particular defect in the French Government but that which is common to all Absolute Monarchies And no State can be said to stand upon a steady Foundation except those whose strength is in their own Soldiery and the body of their own People Such as serve for Wages often betray their Masters in distress and always want the courage and industry which is found in those who fight for their own Interests and are to have a part in the Victory The business of Mercenaries is so to perform their duty as to keep their Employments and to draw profit from them but that is not enough to support the Spirits of men in extream dangers The Shepherd who is a hireling flies when the Thief comes and this adventitious help failing all that a Prince can reasonably expect from a disaffected and oppressed People is that they should bear the Yoak patiently in the time of his Prosperity but upon the change of his Fortune they leave him to shift for himself or join with his Enemies to avenge the Injuries they had received Thus did Alphonso and Ferdinand Kings of Naples and Lodovico Sforza Duke of Milan fall in the times of Charles the Eighth and Louis the Twelfth Kings of France The two first had bin false violent and cruel nothing within their Kingdom could oppose their fury but when they were invaded by a Foreign Power they lost all as Guicciardin says without breaking one Lance and Sforza was by his own mercenary Soldiers delivered into the hands of his Enemies I think it may be hard to find Examples of such as proceeding in the same way have had better Success But if it should so fall out that a People living under an Absolute Monarchy should through custom or fear of something worse if that can be not only suffer patiently but desire to uphold the Government neither the Nobility nor Commonalty can do any thing towards it They are strangers to all publick Concernments All things are govern'd by one or a few men and others know nothing either of Action or Counsel Filmer will tell us 't is no matter the profound Wisdom of the Prince provides for all But what if this Prince be a Child a Fool a superannuated Dotard or a Madman Or if he dos not fall under any of these extremities and possesses such a proportion of Wit Industry and Courage as is ordinarily seen in men how shall he supply the Office that indeed requires profound Wisdom and an equal measure of Experience and Valour 'T is to no purpose to say a good Council may supply his defects for it dos not appear how he should come by this Council nor who should oblige him to follow their advice If he be left to his own will to do what he pleases tho good advice be given to him yet his judgment being perverted he will always incline to the worst If a necessity be imposed upon him of acting according to the advice of his Council he is not that absolute Monarch of whom we speak nor the Government Monarchical but Aristocratical These are imperfect Fig-leave coverings of Nakedness It was in vain to give good counsel to Sardanapalus and none could defend the Assyrian Empire when he lay wallowing amongst his Whores without any other thought than of his Lusts. None could preserve Rome when Domitian's chief business was to kill Flies and that of Honorius to take

by him only and by him if with industry and courage they make use of the means he has given them for their own defence God helps those who help themselves and men are by several reasons suppose to prevent the increase of a suspected Power induced to succour an industrious and brave People But such as neglect the means of their own preservation are ever left to perish with shame Men cannot rely upon any League The State that is defended by one Potentat against another becomes a Slave to their Protector Mercenary Souldiers always want Fidelity or Courage and most commonly both If they are not corrupted or beaten by the Invader they make a prey of their Masters These are the followers of Camps who have neither faith nor piety but prefer Gain before Right They who expose their Blood to sale look where they can make the best bargain and never fail of pretences for following their interests Moreover private Families may by several arts increase their Wealth as they increase in number but when a People multiplies as they will always do in a good Climat under a good Government such an enlargement of Territory as is necessary for their subsistence can be acquired only by War This was known to the Northern Nations that invaded the Roman Empire but for want of such Constitutions as might best improve their Strength and Valour the numbers they sent out when they were overburden'd provided well for themselves but were of no use to the Countries they left and whilst those Goths Vandals Franks and Normans enjoyed the most opulent and delicious Provinces of the World their Fathers languished obscurely in their frozen Climats For the like reasons or through the same defect the Switzers are obliged to serve other Princes and often to imploy that valour in advancing the power of their Neighbours which might be used to increase their own Genoua Lucca Geneva and other small Commonwealths having no Wars are not able to nourish the men they breed but sending many of their Children to seek their Fortunes abroad scarce a third part of those that are born among them die in those Cities and if they did not take this course they would have no better than the Nations inhabiting near the River Niger who sell their Children as the increase of their Flocks This dos not less concern Monarchies than Commonwealths nor the absolute less than the mixed All of them have bin prosperous or miserable glorious or contemptible as they were better or worse arm'd disciplin'd or conducted The Assyrian Valour was irresistible under Nabuchodonozor but was brought to nothing under his base and luxurious Grandson Belsbazzar The Persians who under Cyrus conquer'd Asia were like Swine exposed to slaughter when their Discipline failed and they were commanded by his proud cruel and cowardly Successors The Macedonian Army overthrown by Paulus Emilius was not less in number than that with which Alexander gained the Empire of the East and perhaps had not bin inferior in Valour if it had bin as well commanded Many poor and almost unknown Nations have bin carried to such a height of Glory by the Bravery of their Princes that I might incline to think their Government as fit as any other for disciplining a People to War if their Virtues continued in their Families or could be transmitted to their Successors The impossibility of this is a breach never to be repaired and no account is to be made of the good that is always uncertain and seldom enjoy'd This disease is not only in absolute Monarchies but in those also where any regard is had to Succession of Blood tho under the strictest limitations The fruit of all the Victories gained by Edward the first and third or Henry the fifth of England perished by the baseness of their Successors the glory of our Arms was turned into shame and we by the loss of Treasure Blood and Territory suffer'd the punishment of their Vices The effects of these changes are not always equally violent but they are frequent and must fall out as often as occasion is presented It was not possible for Lewis the 13th of France to pursue the great designs of Henry the Fourth Christina of Sweden could not supply the place of her brave Father nor the present King in his infancy accomplish what the great Charles Gustavus had nobly undertaken and no remedy can be found for this mortal infirmity unless the power be put into the hands of those who are able to execute it and not left to the blindness of fortune When the Regal power is committed to an annual or otherwise chosen Magistracy the Virtues of excellent men are of use but all dos not depend upon their persons One man finishes what another had begun and when many are by practice rendred able to perform the same things the loss of one is easily supplied by the election of another When good Principles are planted they do not die with the person that introduced them and good Constitutions remain tho the Authors of them perish Rome did not fall back into slavery when Brutus was killed who had led them to recover their Liberty Others like to him pursued the same ends and notwithstanding the loss of so many great Commanders consumed in their almost continual Wars they never wanted such as were fit to execute whatever they could design A well-governed State is as fruitful to all good purposes as the seven-headed Serpent is said to have bin in evil when one head is cut off many rise up in the place of it Good Order being once established makes good men and as long as it lasts such as are fit for the greatest imployments will never be wanting By this means the Romans could not be surprised No King or Captain ever invaded them who did not find many excellent Commanders to oppose him whereas they themselves found it easy to overthrow Kingdoms tho they had bin established by the bravest Princes through the baseness of their Successors But if our Author say true 't is of no advantage to a popular State to have excellent men and therefore he imposes a necessity upon every People to chuse the worst men for being the worst and most like to themselves lest that if virtuous and good men should come into power they should be excluded for being vicious and wicked c. Wise men would seize upon the State and take it from the People For the understanding of these words 't is good to consider whether they are to be taken simply as usually applied to the Devil and some of his instruments or relatively as to the thing in question If simply it must be concluded that Valerius Brutus Cincinnatus Capitolinus Mamercus Paulus Emilius Nasica and others like to them were not only the worst men of the City but that they were so often advanced to the supreme Magistracies because they were so if in the other sense relating to Magistracy and the command of Armies

the worst are the most ignorant unfaithful slothful or cowardly and our Author to make good his proposition must prove that when the People of Rome Carthage Athens and other States had the power of chusing whom they pleased they did chuse Camillus Corvinus Torquatus Fabius Rullus Scipio Amiloar Hannibal Asdrubal Pelopidas Epaminondas Pericles Aristides Themistocles Phocion Alcibiades and others like to them for their Ignorance Infidelity Sloth and Cowardice and on account of those Vices most like to those who chose them But if these were the worst I desire to know what wit or eloquence can describe or comprehend the excellency of the best or of the Discipline that brings whole Nations to such perfection that worse than these could not be found among them And if they were not so but such as all succeeding Ages have justly admir'd for their Wisdom Virtue Industry and Valour the impudence of so wicked and false an Assertion ought to be rejected with scorn and hatred But if all Governments whether Monarchical or Popular absolute or limited deserve praise or blame as they are well or ill constituted for making War and that the attainment of this end do entirely depend upon the qualifications of the Commanders and the Strength Courage Number Affection and temper of the People out of which the Armies are drawn those Governments must necessarily be the best which take the best care that those Armies may be well commanded and so provide for the good of the People that they may daily increase in Number Courage and Strength and be so satisfied with the present state of things as to fear a change and fight for the preservation or advancement of the publick Interest as of their own We have already found that in Hereditary Monarchies no care at all is taken of the Commander He is not chosen but comes by chance and dos not only frequently prove defective but for the most part utterly uncapable of performing any part of his duty whereas in Popular Governments excellent men are generally chosen and there are so many of them that if one or more perish others are ready to supply their places And this Discourse having if I mistake not in the whole series shewn that the advantages of popular Governments in relation to the increase of Courage Number and Strength in a People out of which Armies are to be formed and bringing them to such a temper as prepares them bravely to perform their duty are as much above those of Monarchies as the prudence of choice surpasses the accidents of birth it cannot be denied that in both respects the part which relates to War is much better perform'd in Popular Governments than in Monarchies That which we are by reason led to believe is confirmed to us by experience We every where see the difference between the Courage of men fighting for themselves and their posterity and those that serve a Master who by good success is often render'd insupportable This is of such efficacy that no King could ever boast to have overthrown any considerable Commonwealth unless it were divided within it self or weakned by Wars made with such as were also free which was the case of the Grecian Commonwealths when the Macedonians fell in upon them Whereas the greatest Kingdoms have bin easily destroy'd by Commonwealths and these also have lost all Strength Valour and Spirit after the change of their Government The Power and Virtue of the Italians grew up decayed and perished with their Liberty When they were divided into many Common-wealths every one of them was able to send out great Armies and to suffer many Defeats before they were subdued so that their Cities were delivered up by the old Men Women and Children when all those who were able to bear arms had bin slain And when they were all brought under the Romans either as Associates or Subjects they made the greatest Strength that ever was in the World Alexander of Epirus was in Valour thought equal and in Power little inferior to Alexander of Macedon but having the fortune to attack those who had bin brought up in Liberty taught to hazard or suffer all things for it and to think that God has given to men Hands and Swords only to defend it he perished in his attempt whilst the other encountring slavish Nations under the conduct of proud cruel and for the most part unwarlike Tyrants became Master of Asia Pyrrhus seems to have bin equal to either of them but the Victories he obtain'd by an admirable Valour and Conduct cost him so dear that he desir'd Peace with those Enemies who might be defeated not subdued Hannibal wanting the prudence of Pyrrhus lost the fruits of all his Victories and being torn out of Italy where he had nested himself fell under the Sword of those whose Fathers he had defeated or slain and died a banish'd man from his ruin'd Country The Gauls did once bring Rome when it was small to the brink of Destruction but they left their Carcases to pay for the mischiefs they had done and in succeeding times their Invasions were mention'd as Tumults rather than Wars The Germans did perhaps surpass them in numbers and strength and were equal to them in fortune as long as Rome was free They often enter'd Italy but they continued not long there unless under the weight of their Chains Whereas the same Nations and others like to them assaulting that Country or other Provinces under the Emperors found no other difficulty than what did arise upon contests among themselves who should be Master of them No manly Virtue or Discipline remain'd among the Italians Those who govern'd them relied upon tricks and shifts they who could not defend themselves hired some of those Nations to undertake their Quarrels against others These trinklings could not last The Goths scorning to depend upon those who in Valour and Strength were much inferior to themselves seized upon the City that had commanded the World whilst Honorius was so busy in providing for his Hens that he could not think of defending it Arcadius had the luck not to lose his principal City but passing his time among Fidlers Players Eunuchs Cooks Dancers and Buffoons the Provinces were securely plunder'd and ransack'd by Nations that are known only from their Victories against him 'T is in vain to say that this proceeded from the fatal corruption of that Age for that corruption proceeded from the Government and the ensuing desolation was the effect of it And as the like disorder in Government has bin ever since in Greece and the greatest part of Italy those Countries which for Extent Riches convenience of Situation and numbers of men are equal to the best in the world and for the Wit Courage and Industry of the Natives perhaps justly preferable to any have since that time bin always exposed as a prey to the first Invader Charles the Eighth of France is by Guicciardin and other Writers represented as a Prince equally weak in

say Saisit le vif There can be therefore no such Law or it serves for nothing If there be Judges to interpret the Law no man is a King till judgment be given in his favour and he is not King by his own Title but by the Sentence given by them If there be none the Law is merely imaginary and every man may in his own case make it what he pleases He who has a Crown in his view and Arms in his hand wants nothing but success to make him a King and if he prosper all men are obliged to obey him 'T is a folly to say the matter is clear and needs no decision for every man knows that no Law concerning private Inheritances can be so exactly drawn but many Controversies will arise upon it that must be decided by a Power to which both Parties are subject and the disputes concerning Kingdoms are so much the more difficult because this Law is no where to be found and the more dangerous because the Competitors are for the most part more powerful Again this Law must either be general to all mankind or particular to each Nation If particular a matter of such importance requires good proof when where how and by whom it was given to every one But the Scriptures testifying to the contrary that God gave Laws to the Jews only and that no such thing as hereditary Monarchy according to proximity of Blood was prescribed by them we may safely say that God did never give any such Law to every particular nor to any Nation If he did not give it to any one he did not give it to all for every one is comprehended in all and if no one has it 't is impossible that all can have it or that it should be obligatory to all when no man knows or can tell when where and by what hand it was given nor what is the sense of it all which is evident by the various Laws and Customs of Nations in the disposal of hereditary Successions And no one of them that we know has to this day bin able to shew that the method follow'd by them is more according to nature than that of others If our Author pretend to be God's Interpreter and to give the solution of these doubts I may ask which of the five following ways are appointed by God and then we may examine Cases resulting from them 1. In France Turky and other places the Succession comes to the next Male in the streight eldest Line according to which the Son is preferr'd before the Brother of him who last enjoy'd the Crown as the present King of France before his Uncle the Duke of Orleans and the Son of the eldest before the Brothers of the eldest as in the case of Richard the second of England who was advanced preferably to all the Brothers of the black Prince his Father 2. Others keep to the Males of the reigning Family yet have more regard to the eldest Man than to the eldest Line and representation taking no place among them the eldest Man is thought to be nearest to the first King and a second Son of the person that last reigned to be nearer to him than his Grandchild by the eldest Son according to which Rule any one of the Sons of Edward the third remaining after his death should have bin preferr'd before Richard the second who was his Grandchild 3. In the two cases beforementioned no manner of regard is had to Females who being thought naturally uncapable of commanding men or performing the Functions of a Magistrate are together with their Descendents utterly excluded from the supreme as well as from the inferior Magistracies and in Turky France and other great Kingdoms have no pretence to any Title But in some places and particularly in England the advantages of Proximity belong to them as well as to Males by which means our Crown has bin transported to several Families and Nations 4. As in some places they are utterly rejected and in others received simply without any condition so those are not wanting where that of not marrying out of the Country or without the consent of the Estates is imposed of which Sweden is an Example 5. In some places Proximity of Blood is only regarded whether the Issue be legitimate or illegitimate in others Bastards are wholly excluded By this variety of Judgments made by several Nations upon this Point it may appear that tho it were agreed by all that the next in Blood ought to succeed yet such Contests would arise upon the interpretation and application of the general Rule as must necessarily be a perpetual Spring of irreconcilable and mortal Quarrels If any man say The Rule observed in England is that which God gave to Mankind I leave him first to dispute that point with the Kings of France and many others who can have no right to the Crowns they wear if it be admitted and in the next place to prove that our Ancestors had a more immediate communication with God and a more certain knowledge of his Will than others who for any thing we know may be of Authority equal to them but in the mean time we may rationally conclude that if there be such a Rule we have had no King in England for the space of almost a thousand years having not had one who did not come to the Crown by a most manifest violation of it as appears by the forecited Examples of William the first and second Henry the first Henry the second and his Children John Edward the third Henry the fourth Edward the fourth and his Children Henry the seventh and all that claim under any of them And if Possession or Success can give a right it will I think follow that Jack Straw Wat Tyler Perkin Warbeck or any other Rascal might have had it if he had bin as happy as bold in his Enterprize This is no less than to expose Crowns to the first that can seize them to destroy all Law and Rule and to render Right a slave to Fortune If this be so a late Earl of Pembroke whose understanding was not thought great judged rightly when he said his Grandfather was a wise man tho he could neither write nor read in as much as he resolved to follow the Crown tho it were upon a Coalstaff But if this be sufficient to make a wise man 't is pity the secret was no sooner discovered since many who for want of it liv'd and died in all the infamy that justly accompanies Knavery Cowardice and Folly might have gained the reputation of the most excellent Men in their several ages The bloody Factions with which all Nations subject to this sort of Monarchy have bin perpetually vexed might have bin prevented by throwing up cross or pile or by battel between the Competitors body to body as was done by Corbis and Orsua Cleorestes and Polinices Ironside and Canutus it being most unreasonable or rather impiously absurd for any to

venture their Lives and Fortunes when their Consciences are not concern'd in the Contest and that they are to gain nothing by the Victory If reason teaches that till this expeditious way of ending Controversies be received the ambition of men will be apt to imbroil Nations in their Quarrels and others judging variously of those matters which can be reduced to no certain Rule will think themselves in Conscience obliged to follow the Party that seems to them to be most just experience manifests the same and that Ambition has produced more violent mischiefs than all the other desires and passions that have ever possessed the hearts of men That this may appear it will not be amiss to divide them into such as proceed from him who is in possession of the Power through jealousy of State as they call it to prevent the enterprizes of those who would dispossess him and such as arise between Competitors contending for it Tarquin's Counsel concerning the Poppies and Periander's heads of Corn is of the first sort The most eminent are always most feared as the readiest to undertake and most able to accomplish great Designs This eminence proceeds from Birth Riches Virtue or Reputation and is sometimes wrought up to the greatest height by a conjunction of all these But I know not where to find an example of such a man who could long subsist under Absolute Monarchy If he be of high Birth he must like Brutus conceal his Virtue and gain no reputation or resolve to perish if he do not prevent his own death by that of the Tyrant All other ways are ineffectual the suspicions fears and hatred thereupon arising are not to be removed Personal respects are forgotten and such services as cannot be sufficiently valued must be blotted out by the death of those who did them Various ways may be taken and pretences used according to the temper of Times and Nations but the thing must be done and whether it be colour'd by a trick of Law or performed by a Mute with a Bowstring imports little Henry the fourth was made King by the Earl of Northumberland and his brave Son Hotspur Edward the fourth by the valiant Earl of Warwick Henry the seventh by Stanley but neither of them could think himself safe till his Benefactor was dead No continued fidelity no testimonies of modesty and humility can prevent this The modesty of Germanicus in rejecting the Honours that were offer'd to him and his industry in quieting the mutinied Legions accelerated his ruin When 't was evident he might be Emperor if he pleased he must be so or die There was no middle station between the Throne and the Grave 'T is probable that Caligula Nero and other Beasts like to them might hate Virtue for the good which is in it but I cannot think that either they their Predecessors or Successors would have put themselves upon the desperate design of extirpating it if they had not found it to be inconsistent with their Government and that being once concluded they spared none of their nearest Relations Artaxerxes killed his Son Darius Herod murder'd the best of his Wives and all his Sons except the worst Tiberius destroy'd Agrippa Posthumus and Germanicus with his Wife and two Sons How highly soever Constantine the Great be commended he was polluted with the Blood of his Father-in-law Wife and Son Philip the second of Spain did in the like manner deliver himself from his fears of Don Carlos and 't is not doubted that Philip the fourth for the same reasons dispatched his Brother Don Carlos and his Son Balthasar The like cases were so common in England that all the Plantagenets and the noble Families allied to them being extinguish'd our Ancestors were sent to seek a King in one of the meanest in Wales This method being known those who are unwilling to die so tamely endeavour to find out ways of defending themselves and there being no other than the death of the Person who is in the Throne they usually seek to compass it by secret Conspiracy or open Violence and the number of Princes that have bin destroy'd and Countries disturb'd by those who through fear have bin driven to extremities is not much less than of those who have suffer'd the like from men following the impulse of their own Ambition The disorders arising from Contests between several Competitors before any one could be settled in the possession of Kingdoms have bin no less frequent and bloody than those above-mention'd and the miseries suffer'd by them together with the ruin brought upon the Empires of Macedon and Rome may be sufficient to prove it however to make the matter more clear I shall alledg others But because it may be presumption in me to think I know all the Histories of the World or tedious to relate all those I know I shall content my self with some of the most eminent and remarkable And if it appear that they have all suffer'd the same mischiefs we may believe they proceed not from Accidents but from the power of a permanent Cause that always produces the same or the like Effects To begin with France The Succession not being well settled in the time of Meroveus who dispossess'd the Grandchildren of Pharamond he was no sooner dead than Gillon set up himself and with much slaughter drove Chilperic his Son out of the Kingdom and he after a little time returning with like fury is said to have seen a Vision first of Lions and Leopards then of Bears and Wolves and lastly of Dogs and Cats all tearing one another to pieces This has bin always accounted by the French to be a representation of the nature and fortune of the three Races that were to command them and has bin too much verified by experience Clovis their first Christian and most renowned King having by good means or evil exceedingly enlarged his Territories but chiefly by the murders of Alaric and Ragnacaire with his Children and suborning Sigismond of Metz to kill his Father Sigebert left his Kingdom to be torn in pieces by the rage of his four Sons each of them endeavouring to make himself Master of the whole and when according to the usual fate of such Contests success had crown'd Clothaire who was the worst of them all by the slaughter of his Brothers and Nephews with all the flower of the French and Gaulish Nobility the advantages of his Fortune only resulted to his own person For after his death the miserable Nations suffer'd as much from the madness of his Sons as they had done by himself and his Brothers They had learnt from their Predecessors not to be slow in doing mischief but were farther incited by the rage of two infamous Strumpets Fredegonde and Brunehaud which is a sort of Vermin that I am inclin'd to think has not usually govern'd Senates or Popular Assemblies Chilperic the second who by the slaughter of many Persons of the Royal Blood with infinite numbers of the Nobility

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

de Moret and other Bastards of the Royal Family following their example the Houses of Guise D' Elbeuf Bouillon Nemours Rochefocault and almost all the most eminent in France with the Parliaments of Paris Bourdeaux and some others joining with them I might alledg many more Examples to shew that this Monarchy as well as all others has from the first establishment bin full of blood and slaughter through the violence of those who possessed the Crown and the Ambition of such as aspired to it and that the end of one Civil War has bin the beginning of another but I presume upon the whole these will be thought sufficient to prove that it never enjoyed any permanent domestick quiet The Kingdoms of Spain have bin no less disturbed by the same means but especially that of Castille where the Kings had more power than in other places To cite all the Examples were to transcribe their Histories but whoever has leisure to examine them will find that after many troubles Alphonso the II notwithstanding his glorious sirname of Wise was deposed by means of his ambitious Son Don Alonso sirnamed El Desheredado supplanted by his Uncle Don Sancho el bravo Peter the Cruel cast from the Throne and killed by his bastard Brother the Conde de Trastamara From the time of the above-named Alphonso to that of Ferdinand and Isabella containing about two hundred years so few of them passed without Civil Wars that I hardly remember two together that were free from them And whosoever pretends that of late years that Monarchy has bin more quiet must if he be ingenuous confess their Peace is rather to be imputed to the dexterity of removing such Persons as have bin most likely to raise disturbances of which number were Don John of Austria Don Carlos Son to Philip the second another of the same name Son to Philip the third and Don Balthazar Son to Philip the sourth than to the rectitude of their Constitutions He that is not convinced of these Truths by what has bin said may come nearer home and see what Mischiefs were brought upon Scotland by the Contests between Baliol and Bruce with their consequences till the Crown came to the Stuart Family the quiet Reigns and happy Deaths of the five James's together with the admirable Stability and Peace of the Government under Queen Mary and the perfect Union in which she lived with her Husband Son and People as well as the Happiness of the Nation whilst it lasted But the Miseries of England upon the like occasions surpass all William the Norman was no sooner dead but the Nation was rent in pieces by his Son Robert contesting with his Sons William and Henry for the Crown They being all dead and their Sons the like happen'd between Stephen and Maud Henry the second was made King to terminate all disputes but it proved a fruitless Expedient Such as were more scandalous and not less dangerous did soon arise between him and his Sons who besides the Evils brought upon the Nation vexed him to death by their Rebellion The Reigns of John and Henry the third were yet more tempestuous Edward the second 's lewd foolish infamous and detestable Government ended in his deposition and death to which he was brought by his Wife and Son Edward the third employ'd his own and his Subjects Valour against the French and Scots but whilst the Foundations were out of order the Nation could never receive any advantage by their Victories All was calculated for the Glory and turned to the Advantage of one man He being dead all that the English held in Scotland and in France was lost through the baseness of his Successor with more blood than it had been gained and the Civil Wars raised by his wickedness and madness ended as those of Edward the second had done The Peace of Henry the fourth's Reign was interrupted by dangerous Civil Wars and the Victory obtained at Shrewsbury had not perhaps secured him in the Throne if his death had not prevented new Troubles Henry the fifth required such reputation by his Virtue and Victories that none dared to invade the Crown during his life but immediatly after his death the Storms prepared against his Family broke out with the utmost violence His Son's weakness encouraged Richard Duke of York to set up a new Title which produced such mischiefs as hardly any people has suffer'd unless upon the like occasion For besides the slaughter of many thousands of the people and especially of those who had bin accustom'd to Arms the devastation of the best parts of the Kingdom and the loss of all that our Kings had inherited in France or gained by the blood of their Subjects fourscore Princes of the Blood as Philip de Commines calls them died in Battel or under the hand of the Hangman Many of the most noble Families were extinguished others lost their most eminent Men. Three Kings and two presumptive Heirs of the Crown were murder'd and the Nation brought to that shameful exigence to set up a young Man to reign over them who had no better cover for his sordid extraction than a Welsh Pedigree that might shew how a Tailor was descended from Prince Arthur Cadwallader and Brutus But the wounds of the Nation were not to be healed with such a plaister He could not relie upon a Title made up of such stuff and patch'd with a Marriage to a Princess of a very questionable Birth His own meanness enclin'd him to hate the Nobility and thinking it to be as easy for them to take the Crown from him as to give it to him he industriously applied himself to glean up the remainders of the House of York from whence a Competitor might arise and by all means to crush those who were most able to oppose him This exceedingly weakned the Nobility who held the Balance between him and the Commons and was the first step towards the dissolution of our antient Government but he was so far from setling the Kingdom in peace that such Rascals as Perkin Warbeck and Simnel were able to disturb it The Reign of Henry the eighth was turbulent and bloody that of Mary furious and such as had brought us into subjection to the most powerful proud and cruel Nation at that time in the world if God had not wonderfully protected us Nay Edward the sixth and Queen Elizabeth notwithstanding the natural excellency of their Dispositions and their knowledg of the Truth in matters of Religion were forced by that which men call jealousy of State to foul their hands so often with illustrious Blood that if their Reigns deserve to be accounted amongst the most gentle of Monarchies they were more heavy than the Government of any Commonwealth in time of Peace and yet their lives were never secure against such as conspired against them upon the account of Title Having in some measure shew'd what miseries have bin usually if not perpetually brought upon Nations subject to

Physician who should boast there was not a sick person in a house committed to his care when he had poison'd all that were in it The Spaniards have established the like peace in the Kingdoms of Naples and Sicily the West-Indies and other places The Turks by the same means prevent Tumults in their Dominions And they are of such efficacy in all places that Mario Chigi Brother to Por● Alexander the seventh by one sordid cheat upon the sale of Corn ●● said within eight years to have destroy'd above a third part of the people in the Ecclesiastical State and that Country which was the strength of the Romans in the time of the Carthaginian Wars suffer'd more by the covetousness and fraud of that Villain than by all the defeats receiv'd from Hannibal 'T were an endless work to mention all the places where this peace able solitude has bin introduc'd by absolute Monarchy but Popular and regular Governments have always applied themselves to increase the Number Strength Power Riches and Courage of their People by providing comfortable ways of subsistence for their own Citizens inviting Strangers and filling them all with such a love to their Country that every man might look upon the publick Cause as his own and be always ready to defend it This may sometimes give occasion to Tumults and Wars as the most vigorous bodies may fall into Distempers When every one is sollicitous for the Publick there may be difference of opinion and some by mistaking the way may bring prejudice when they intend profit But unless a Tyrant do arise and destroy the Government which is the root of their felicity or they be overwhelm'd by the irresistible power of a Virtue or Fortune greater than their own they soon recover and for the most part rise up in greater Glory and Prosperity than before This was seen in the Commonwealths of Greece and Italy which for this reason were justly called Nurseries of Virtue and their Magistrates Preservers of men whereas our Author 's peace-making Monarchs can deserve no better title than that of Enemies and Destroyers of Mankind I cannot think him in earnest when he exaggerates Sylla's Cruelties as a proof that the mischiefs suffer'd under free States are more universal than under Kings and Tyrants For there never was a Tyrant in the World if he was not one tho through weariness infirmity of body fear or perhaps the horror of his own wickedness he at length resigned his Power but the evil had taken root so deep that it could not be removed There was nothing of Liberty remaining in Rome The Laws were overthrown by the violence of the Sword the remaining Contest was who should be Lord and there is no reason to believe that if Pompey had gained the Battel of Pharsalia he would have made a more modest use of his Victory than Cesar did or that Rome would have bin more happy under him than under the other His Cause was more plausible because the Senate follow'd him and Cesar was the Invader but he was no better in his person and his designs seem to have bin the same He had bin long before Suarum legum auctor eversor He gave the beginning to the first Triumvirat and 't were folly to think that he who had bin insolent when he was not come to the highest pitch of Fortune would have proved moderate if success had put all into his hands The proceedings of Marius Cinna Catiline Octavius and Antonius were all of the same nature No Laws were observ'd No publick good intended the ambition of private persons reigned and whatsoever was done by them or for their interests can no more be applied to Popular Aristocratical or mix'd Governments than the furies of Caligula and Nero. SECT XXVII The Mischiefs and Cruelties proceeding from Tyranny are greater than any that can come from Popular or mixed Governments 'T Is now time to examin the reasons of our Author 's general Maxims The Cruelties says he of a Tyrant extend ordinarily no farther than some particular men that offend him and not to the whole Kingdom It is truly said of his late Majesty King James A King can never be so notoriously vicious but he will generally favour Justice and maintain some order Even cruel Domitian Dionysius the Tyrant and many others are commended in Histories as great observers of Justice except in particular cases wherein his inordinate lusts may carry him away This may be said of Popular Governments for tho a People through error do sometimes hurt a private person and that may possibly result to the publick damage because the man that is offended or destroy'd might have bin useful to the Society they never do it otherwise than by error For having the Government in themselves whatever is prejudicial to it is so to them and if they ruin it they ruin themselves which no man ever did willingly and knowingly In absolute Monarchies the matter is quite otherwise A Prince that sets up an interest in himself becomes an Enemy to the Publick in following his own lusts he offends all except a few of his corrupt Creatures by whose help he oppresses others with a Yoak they are unwilling to bear and thereby incurs the universal hatred This hatred is always proportionable to the injuries received which being extreme that must be so too and every People being powerful in comparison to the Prince that governs he will always fear those that hate him and always hate those he fears When Luigi Farnese first Duke of Parma had by his Tyranny incensed the People of that small City their hatred was not less mortal to him than that of the whole Empire had bin to Nero and as the one burn'd Rome the other would have destroy'd Parma if he had not bin prevented The like has bin and will be every where in as much as every man endeavours to destroy those he hates and fears and the greatness of the danger often drives this fear to rage and madness For this reason Caligula wish'd but one Neck to all the People and Nero triumphed over the burning City thinking by that ruin he had prevented his own danger I know not who the good Authors are that commend Domitian for his justice but Tacitus calls him Principem virtutibus infestum and 't is hard to find out how such a man can be an observer of justice unless it be just that whoever dares to be virtuous under a vicious and base Prince should be destroy'd Another Author of the same time speaking of him dos not say he was unjust but gives us reason to think he was so unless it were just for him who had a power over the best part of the World to destroy it and that he who by his cruelty had brought it to the last gasp would have finish'd the work if his rage had not bin extinguished Many Princes not having in themselves power to destroy their People have stirred up foreign Nations

take it This defect may possibly be repair'd in time but to conclude it must be so is absurd for no one has this use and experience when he begins to reign At that time many Errors may be committed to the ruin of himself or people and many have perish'd even in their beginning Edward the fifth and sixth of England Francis the second of France and divers other Kings have died in the beginning of their youth Charles the ninth lived only to add the furies of youth to the follies of his childhood and our Henry the second Edward the second Richard the second and Henry the sixth seem to have bin little wiser in the last than in the first year of their Reign or Life The present Kings of Spain France and Sweden came to the Crowns they wear before the sixth year of their Age and if they did then surpass all annual Magistrates in Wisdom and Valour it was by a peculiar Gift of God which for any thing we know is not given to every King and it was not use and experience that made them to excel If it be pretended that this experience with the Wisdom that it gives comes in time and by degrees I may modestly ask what time is requir'd to render a Prince excellent in Wisdom who is Child or a Fool and who will give security that he shall live to that time or that the Kingdom shall not be ruin'd in the time of his folly I may also doubt how our Author who concludes that every King in time must needs become excellent in Wisdom can be reconciled to Solomon who in preferring a wise Child before an old and foolish King that will not be advised shews that an old King may be a Fool and he that will not be advised is one Some are so naturally brutish and stupid that neither education nor time will mend them 'T is probable that Solomon took what care he could to instruct his only Son Rehoboam but he was certainly a Fool at forty years of age and we have no reason to believe that he deserved a better name He seems to have bin the very Fool his Father intended who tho brayed in a mortar would never leave his folly He would not be advised tho the hand of God was against him ten Tribes revolted from him and the City and Temple was pillaged by the Egyptians Neither experience nor afflictions could mend him and he is called to this day by his own Countrymen Stultitia Gentium I might offend tender ears if I should alledg all the Examples of Princes mentioned in History or known in our own Age who have lived and died as foolish and incorrigible as he but no man I presume will be scandalized that the ten last Kings of Meroveus his Race whom the French Historians call Les Roys faineants were so far from excelling other men in understanding that they liv'd and died more like to beasts than men Nay the Wisdom and Valour of Charles Martel expired in his Grandchild Charles the Great and his Posterity grew to be so sottish that the French Nation must have perished under their conduct if the Nobility and People had not rejected them and placed the Crown upon a more deserving head This is as much as is necessary to be said to the general Proposition for it is false if it be not always true and no conclusion can be made upon it But I need not be so strict with our Author there being no one sound part in his Assertion Many Children come to be Kings when they have no experience and die or are depos'd before they can gain any Many are by nature so sottish that they can learn nothing Others falling under the power of Women or corrupt Favorites and Ministers are perswaded and seduced from the good ways to which their own natural understanding or experience might lead them the Evils drawn upon themselves or their Subjects by the Errors committed in the time of their ignorance are often grievous and sometimes irreparable tho they should be made wise by time and experience A person of royal Birth and excellent Wit was so sensible of this as to tell me That the condition of Kings was most miserable in as much as they never heard Truth till they were ruin'd by Lies and then every one was ready to tell it to them not by way of advice but reproach and rather to vent their own spite than to seek a remedy to the evils brought upon them and the people Others attain to Crowns when they are of full Age and have experience as Men tho none as Kings and therefore are apt to commit as great mistakes as Children And upon the whole matter all the Histories of the world shew that instead of this profound Judgment and incomparable Wisdom which our Author generally attributes to all Kings there is no sort of men that do more frequently and intirely want it But tho Kings were always wise by nature or made to be so by experience it would be of little advantage to Nations under them unless their Wisdom were pure perfect and accompanied with Clemency Magnanimity Justice Valour and Piety Our Author durst hardly have said that these Virtues or Graces are gained by Experience or annexed by God to any rank of Men of Families He gives them where he pleases without distinction We sometimes see those upon Thrones who by God and Nature seem to have bin designed for the most sordid Offices and those have bin known to pass their lives in meanness and poverty who had all the Qualities that could be desir'd in Princes There is likewise a kind of ability to dispatch some sort of Affairs that Princes who continue long in a Throne may to a degree acquire or increase Some men take this for Wisdom but K. James more rightly called it by the name of King-craft and as it principally consists in Dissimulation and the arts of working upon mens Passions Vanities private Interests or Vices to make them for the most part instruments of Mischief it has the advancement or security of their own Persons for object is frequently exercised with all the excesses of Pride Avarice Treachery and Cruelty and no men have bin ever found more notoriously to deflect from all that deserves praise in a Prince or a Gentleman than those that have most excelled in it Pharasmenes King of Iberia is recorded by Tacitus to have bin well vers'd in this Science His Brother Mithradates King of Armenia had married his Daughter and given his own Daughter to Rhadamistus Son of Pharasmenes He had some Contests with Mithradates but by the help of these mutual Alliances nearness of Blood the diligence of Rhadamistus and an Oath strengthen'd with all the Ceremonies that amongst those Nations were esteemed most sacred not to use Arms or Poison against him all was compos'd and by this means getting him into his power he stifled him with a great weight of clothes thrown upon him

has bin in force for so many Ages What the beginning of it was is not known But Charles the sixth receding from this Law and thinking to dispose of the Succession otherwise than was ordained by it was esteemed mad and all his Acts rescinded And tho the Reputation Strength and Valour of the English commanded by Henry the fifth one of the bravest Princes that have ever bin in the world was terrible to the French Nation yet they opposed him to the utmost of their power rather than suffer that Law to be broken And tho our Success under his Conduct was great and admirable yet soon aster his death with the expence of much Blood and Treasure we lost all that we had on that side and suffer'd the Penalty of having unadvisedly entred into that Quarrel By virtue of the same Law the Agreement made by King John when he was Prisoner at London by which he had alienated part of that Dominion as well as that of Francis the first concluded when he was under the same Circumstances at Madrid were reputed null and upon all occasions that Nation has given sufficient testimony that the Laws by which they live are their own made by themselves and not imposed upon them And 't is as impossible for them who made and deposed Kings exalted or depressed reigning Families and prescribed Rules to the Succession to have received from their own Creatures the Power or part of the Government they had as for a man to be begotten by his own Son Nay tho their Constitutions were much changed by Lewis the 11 th yet they retained so much of their antient Liberty that in the last Age when the House of Valois was as much depraved as those of Meroveus and Pepin had bin and Henry the third by his own Lewdness Hypocrisy Cruelty and Impurity together with the baseness of his Minions and Favorites had rendred himself odious and contemptible to the Nobility and People the great Cities Parliaments the greater and in political matters the sounder part of the Nation declared him to be fallen from the Crown and pursued him to the death tho the blow was given by the hand of a base and half-distracted Monk Henry of Bourbon was without controversy the next Heir but neither the Nobility nor the People who thought themselves in the Government would admit him to the Crown till he had given them satisfaction that he would govern according to their Laws by abjuring his Religion which they judged inconsistent with them The later Commotions in Paris Bourdeaux and other places together with the Wars for Religion shew that tho the French do not complain of every Grievance and cannot always agree in the defence and vindication of their violated Liberties yet they very well understand their Rights and that as they do not live by or for the King but he reigns by and for them so their Privileges are not from him but that his Crown is from them and that according to the true Rule of their Government he can do nothing against their Laws or if he do they may oppose him The Institution of a Kingdom is the act of a free Nation and whoever denies them to be free denies that there can be any thing of right in what they set up That which was true in the beginning is so and must be so for ever This is so far acknowledged by the highest Monarchs that in a Treatise published in the year 1667 by Authority of the present King of France to justify his pretensions to some part of the Low-Countries notwithstanding all the Acts of himself and the King of Spain to extinguish them it is said That Kings are under the happy inability to do any thing against the Laws of their Country And tho perhaps he may do things contrary to Law yet he grounds his Power upon the Law and the most able and most trusted of his Ministers declare the same About the year 1660 the Count D' Aubijoux a man of eminent quality in Languedoc but averse to the Court and hated by Cardinal Mazarin had bin tried by the Parliament of Tholouse for a Duel in which a Gentleman was kill'd and it appearing to the Court then in that City that he had bin acquitted upon forged Letters of Grace false Witnesses powerful Friends and other undue means Mazarin desired to bring him to a new Trial but the Chancellor Seguier told the Queen-Mother it could not be for the Law did not permit a man once acquitted to be again question'd for the same Fact and that if the course of the Law were interrupted neither the Salique Law nor the succession of her Children or any thing else could be secure in France This is farther proved by the Histories of that Nation The Kings of Meroveus and Pepin's Races were suffer'd to divide the Kingdom amongst their Sons or as Hottoman says the Estates made the Division and allotted to each such a part as they thought fit But when this way was found to be prejudicial to the Publick an Act of State was made in the time of Hugh Capet by which it was ordain'd that for the future the Kingdom should not be dismembred which Constitution continuing in force to this day the Sons or Brothers of their Kings receive such an Apannage they call it as is bestow'd on them remaining subject to the Crown as well as other men And there has been no King of France since that time except only Charles the sixth who has not acknowledged that he cannot alienate any part of their Dominion Whoever imputes the acknowledgment of this to Kingcraft and says that they who avow this when 't is for their advantage will deny it on a different occasion is of all men their most dangerous Enemy In laying such fraud to their charge he destroys the veneration by which they subsist and teaches Subjects not to keep Faith with those who by the most malicious deceits show that they are tied by none Human Societies are maintained by mutual Contracts which are of no value if they are not observ'd Laws are made and Magistrates created to cause them to be performed in publick and private matters and to punish those who violate them But none will ever be observed if he who receives the greatest benefit by them and is set up to oversee others give the example to those who of themselves are too much inclin'd to break them The first step that Pompey made to his own ruin was by violating the Laws he himself had proposed But it would be much worse for Kings to break those that are established by the Authority of a whole People and confirmed by the succession of many Ages I am far from laying any such blemishes on them or thinking that they deserve them I must believe the French King speaks sincerely when he says he can do nothing against the Laws of his Country And that our King James did the like when he

acknowledged himself to be the Servant of the Commonwealth and the rather because 't is true and that he is placed in the Throne to that end Nothing is more essential and fundamental in the Constitutions of Kingdoms than that Diets Parliaments and Assemblies of Estates should see this perform'd 'T is not the King that gives them a right to judg of matters of War or Peace to grant Supplies of men and mony or to deny them and to make or abrogate Laws at their pleasure All the Powers rightly belonging to Kings or to them proceed from the same root The Northern Nations seeing what mischiess were generally brought upon the Eastern by referring too much to the irregular will of a man and what those who were more generous had suffer'd when one man by the force of a corrupt mercenary Soldiery had overthrown the Laws by which they lived feared they might fall into the same misery and therefore retained the greater part of the Power to be exercised by their General Assemblies or by Delegates when they grew so numerous that they could not meet These are the Kingdoms of which Grotius speaks where the King has his part and the Senat or People their part of the Supreme Authority and where the Law prescribes such limits that if the King attempt to seize that part which is not his he may justly be opposed Which is as much as to say that the Law upholds the Power it gives and turns against those who abuse it This Doctrin may be displeasing to Court-Parasites but no less profitable to such Kings as follow better Counsels than to the Nations that live under them the Wisdom and Virtue of the best is always fortified by the concurrence of those who are placed in part of the Power they always do what they will when they will nothing but that which is good and 't is a happy impotence in those who through ignorance or malice desire to do evil not to be able to effect it The weakness of such as by defects of Nature Sex Age or Education are not able of themselves to bear the weight of a Kingdom is thereby supported and they together with the People under them preserved from ruin the furious rashness of the Insolent is restrained the extravagance of those who are naturally lews is aw'd and the bestial madness of the most violently wicked and outragious suppress'd When the Law provides for these matters and prescribes ways by which they may be accomplished every man who receives or fears an Injury seeks a remedy in a legal way and vents his Passions in such a manner as brings no prejudice to the Common-wealth If his Complaints against a King may be heard and redressed by Courts of Justice Parliaments and Diets as well as against private men he is satisfied and looks no farther for a Remedy But if Kings like those of Israel will neither judg nor be judged and there be no Power orderly to redress private or publick Injuries every man has recourse to force as if he liv'd in a Wood where there is no Law and that force is always mortal to those who provoke it No Guards can preserve a hated Prince from the vengeance of one resolute hand and they as often sall by the Swords of their own Guards as of others Wrongs will be done and when they that do them cannot or will not be judged publickly the injur'd Persons become Judges in their own case and executioners of their own sentence If this be dangerous in matters of private Concernment 't is much more so in those relating to the publick The lewd extravagancies of Edward and Richard the Seconds whilst they acknowledged the power of the Law were gently reproved and restrained with the removal of some profligate Favourites but when they would admit of no other Law than their own Will no relief could be had but by their Deposition The lawful Spartan Kings who were obedient to the Laws of their Country liv'd in safety and died with glory whereas 't was a strange thing to see a lawless Tyrant die without such infamy and misery as held a just proportion with the wickedness of his Life They did as Plutarch says of Dionysius many mischiefs and suffer'd more This is confirmed by the examples of the Kingdom of Israel and of the Empires of Rome and Greece they who would submit to no Law were destroy'd without any I know not whether they thought themselves to be Gods as our Author says they were but I am sure the most part of them died like Dogs and had the burial of Asses rather than of Men. This is the happiness to which our Author would promote them all If a King admit a People to be his companions he ceaseth to be a King and the State becomes a Democracy And a little farther If in such Assemblies the King Nobility and People have equal shares in the Soveraignty then the King hath but one voice the Nobility likewise one and the People one and then any two of these voices should have power to overrule the third Thus the Nobility and Commons should have a power to make a Law to bridle the King which was never seen in any Kingdom We have heard of Nations that admitted a man to reign over them that is made him King but of no man that made a People The Hebrews made Saul David Jeroboam and other Kings when they returned from Captivity they conferred the same Title upon the Asmonean race as a reward of their Valour and Virtue the Romans chose Romulus Numa Hostilius and others to be their Kings the Spartans instituted two one of the Heraclidae the other of the AEacidae Other Nations set up one a few or more Magistrates to govern them and all the World agrees that Qui dat esse dat modum esse He that makes him to be makes him to be what he is and nothing can be more absurd than to say that he who has nothing but what is given can have more than is given to him If Saul and Romulus had no other title to be Kings than what the People conferred upon them they could be no otherwise Kings than as pleased the People They therefore did not admit the People to be partakers of the Government but the People who had all in themselves and could not have made a King if they had not had it bestow'd upon him what they thought fit and retained the rest in themselves If this were not so then instead of saying to the multitude Will ye have this man to reign they ought to say to the man Wilt thou have this multitude to be a People And whereas the Nobles of Arragon used to say to their new made King We who are as good as you make you our King on condition you keep and maintain our Rights and Liberties and if not not he should have said to them I who am better than you make you to be a People

and will govern you as I please But I doubt whether he would have succeeded till that Kingdom was joined to others of far greater strength from whence a power might be drawn to force them out of their usual method That which has bin said of the Governments of England France and other Countries shows them to be of the same nature and if they do not deserve the name of Kingdoms and that their Princes will by our Author's Arguments be perswaded to leave them those Nations perhaps will be so humble to content themselves without that magnificent Title rather than resign their own Liberties to purchase it and if this will not please him he may seek his glorious soveraign Monarchy among the wild Arabs or in the Island of Ceylon for it will not be found among civiliz'd Nations However more ignorance cannot be express'd than by giving the name of Democracy to those Governments that are composed of the three simple species as we have proved that all the good ones have ever bin for in a strict sense it can only sute with those where the People retain to themselves the administration of the supreme Power and more largely when the popular part as in Athens greatly overbalances the other two and that the denomination is taken from the prevailing part But our Author if I mistake not is the first that ever took the antient Governments of Israel Sparta and Rome or those of England France Germany and Spain to be Democracies only because every one of them had Senats and Assemblies of the People who in their Persons or by their Deputies did join with their chief Magistrates in the exercise of the supreme Power That of Israel to the time of Saul is called by Josephus an Aristocracy The same name is given to that of Sparta by all the Greek Authors and the great contest in the Peloponnesian War was between the two kinds of Government the Cities that were governed Aristocratically or desired to be so following the Lacedemonians and such as delighted in Democracy taking part with the Athenians In like manner Rome England and France were said to be under Monarchies not that their Kings might do what they pleased but because one man had a preheminence above any other Yet if the Romans could take Romulus the Son of a man that was never known Numa a Sabin Hostilius and Aneus Martius private men and Tarquinius Priscus the Son of a banished Corinthian who had no Title to a preference before others till it was bestowed upon them 't is ridiculous to think that they who gave them what they had could not set what limits they pleased to their own gift But says our Author The Nobility will then have one Voice and the People another and they joining may overrule the third which was never seen in any Kingdom This may perhaps be a way of regulating the Monarchical Power but it is not necessary nor the only one There may be a Senate tho the People be excluded that Senate may be composed of men chosen for their Virtue as well as for the Nobility of their Birth The Government may consist of King and People without a Senate or the Senate may be composed only of the Peoples Delegates But if I should grant his assertion to be true the reasonableness of such a Constitution cannot be destroy'd by the consequences he endeavours to draw from it for he who would instruct the world in matters of State must show what is or ought to be not what he fancies may thereupon ensue Besides it dos not follow that where there are three equal Votes Laws should be always made by the plurality for the consent of all the three is in many places required and 't is certain that in England and other parts the King and one of the Estates cannot make a Law without the concurrence of the other But to please Filmer I will avow that where the Nobles and Commons have an equal Vote they may join and over-rule or limit the power of the King and I leave any reasonable man to judg whether it be more safe and fit that those two Estates comprehending the whole body of the Nation in their Persons or by Representation should have a right to over-rule or limit the power of that man woman or child who sits in the Throne or that he or she young or old wise or foolish good or bad should over-rule them and by their vices weakness folly impertinence incapacity or malice put a stop to their proceedings and whether the chief concernments of a Nation may more fasely and prudently be made to depend upon the votes of so many eminent Persons amongst whom many wise and good men will always be found if there be any in the Nation and who in all respects have the same interest with them or upon the will of one who may be and often is as vile ignorant and wretched as the meanest Slave and either has or is for the most part made to believe he has an interest so contrary to them that their suppression is his Advancement Common sense so naturally leads us to the decision of this Question that I should not think it possible for Mankind to have mistaken tho we had no examples of it in History and 't is in vain to say that all Princes are not such as I represent for if a right were annexed to the being of a Prince and that his single judgment should over-balance that of a whole Nation it must belong to him as a Prince and be enjoy'd by the worst and basest as well as by the wisest and best which would inevitably draw on the absurdities above-mention'd But that many are and have bin such no man can deny or reasonably hope that they will not often prove to be such as long as any preference is granted to those who have nothing to recommend them but the Families from whence they derive a continual succession of those who excel in virtue wisdom and experience being promised to none nor reasonably to be expected from any Such a Right therefore cannot be claimed by all and if not by all then not by any unless it proceed from a particular grant in consideration of personal Virtue Ability and Integrity which must be proved and when any one goes about to do it I will either acknowledg him to be in the right or give the reasons of my denial However this is nothing to the general Proposition nay if a man were to be found who had more of the qualities requir'd for making a right judgment in matters of the greatest importance than a whole Nation or an Assembly of the best men chosen out of it which I have never heard to have bin unless in the Persons of Moses Joshua or Samuel who had the Spirit of God for their guide it would be nothing to our purpose for even he might be biassed by his personal Interests which Governments are not established principally to

promote I may go a step farther and truly say that as such vast Powers cannot be generally granted to all who happen to succeed in any Families without evident danger of utter Destruction when they come to be executed by children women sools vicious incapable or wicked persons they can be reasonably granted to none because no man knows what any one will prove till he be tried and the importance of the Affair requires such a trial as can be made of no man till he be dead He that resists one Temptation may fall under the power of another and nothing is more common in the world than to see those men fail grosly in the last actions of their lives who had passed their former days without reproach Wise and good men will with Moses say of themselves I cannot bear the burden and every man who is concern'd for the publick Good ought to let fools know they are not fit to undergo it and by Law to restrain the fury of such as will not be guided by reason This could not be denied tho Governments were constituted for the good of the Governor 'T is good for him that the Law appoints helps for his Infirmities and restrains his Vices but all Nations ought to do it tho it were not so in as much as Kingdoms are not established for the good of one man but of the People and that King who seeks his own good before that of the People departs from the end of his Institution This is so plain that all Nations who have acted freely have some way or other endeavoured to supply the defects or restrain the vices of their supreme Magistrates and those among them deserve most praise who by appointing means adequate to so great a work have taken care that it might be easily and safely accomplished Such Nations have always flourished in Virtue Power Glory and Happiness whilst those who wanted their Wisdom have suffer'd all manner of Calamities by the weakness and injustice of their Princes or have had their hands perpetually in Blood to preserve themselves from their fury We need no better example of the first than that of the Spartans who by appointing such Limits to the power of their Kings as could hardly be transgress'd continued many Ages in great union with them and were never troubled with civil Tumults The like may be said of the Romans from the expulsion of the Tarquins till they overthrew their own Orders by continuing Marius for five years in the Consulat whereas the Laws did not permit a man to hold the same Office two years together and when that rule was broken their own Magistrates grew too strong for them and subverted the Commonwealth When this was done and the power came to be in the hands of one man all manner of evils and calamities broke in like a flood 'T is hard to judg whether the mischiefs he did or those he suffer'd were the greater he who set up himself to be Lord of the World was like to a Beast crowned for the slaughter and his greatness was the forerunner of his ruin By this means some of those who seem not to have bin naturally prone to evil were by their fears put upon such courses to preserve themselves as being rightly estimated were worse than the death they apprehended and the so much celebrated Constantine the Great died no less polluted with the Blood of his nearest Relations and Friends than Nero himself But no place can show a more lively picture of this than the Kingdoms of Granada and others possessed by the Moors in Spain where there being neither Senate nor Assemblies of the Nobility and People to restrain the violence and fury of their Kings they had no other way than to kill them when their vices became insupportable which happening for the most part they were almost all murder'd and things were brought to such extremity that no man would accept a Crown except he who had neither Birth nor Virtue to deserve it If it be said that Kings have now found out more easy ways of doing what they please and securing themselves I answer that they have not proved so to them all and it is not yet time for such as tread in the same steps to boast of their success many have fallen when they thought their designs accomplished and no man as long as he lives can reasonably assure himself the like shall not befal him But if in this corrupted Age the treachery and perjury of Princes be more common than formerly and the number of those who are brought to delight in the rewards of injustice be so increased that their parties are stronger than formerly this rather shows that the balance of Power is broken or hard to be kept up than that there ought to be none and 't is difficult for any man without the Spirit of Prophesy to tell what this will produce Whilst the antient Constitutions of our Northern Kingdoms remain'd intire such as contested with their Princes sought only to reform the Governments and by redressing what was amiss to reduce them to their first Principles but they may not perhaps be so modest when they see the very nature of their Government chang'd and the foundations overthrown I am not sure that they who were well pleased with a moderate Monarchy will submit to one that is absolute and 't is not improbable that when men see there is no Medium between Tyranny and Popularity they who would have bin contented with the reformation of their Government may proceed farther and have recourse to Force when there is no help in the Law This will be a hard work in those places where Virtue is wholly abolished but the difficulty will lie on the other side if any sparks of that remain if Vice and Corruption prevail Liberty cannot subsist but if Virtue have the advantage arbitrary Power cannot be established Those who boast of their Loyalty and think they give testimonies of it when they addict themselves to the will of one Man tho contrary to the Law from whence that quality is derived may consider that by putting their Masters upon illegal courses they certainly make them the worst of men and bring them into danger of being also the most miserable Few or no good Princes have fallen into disasters unless through an extremity of corruption introduced by the most wicked and cannot properly be called unhappy if they perished in their Innocence since the bitterness of Death is asswaged by the tears of a loving People the assurance of a glorious memory and the quiet of a well satisfied mind But of those who have abandoned themselves to all manner of Vice followed the impulse of their own fury and set themselves to destroy the best men for opposing their pernicious designs very few have died in peace Their Lives have bin miserable Death infamous and Memory detestable They therefore who place Kings within the power of the Law and the Law to

pleased only to affirm it without giving the least shadow of a reason to perswade us to believe him This might justify me if I should reject his assertion as a thing said gratis but I may safely go a step farther and affirm That men lived under Laws before there were any Kings which cannot be denied if such a Power necessarily belongs to Kings as he ascribes to them For Nimrod who established his Kingdom in Babel is the first who by the Scripture is said to have bin a mighty one in the Earth He was therefore the first King or Kings were not mighty and he being the first King Mankind must have lived till his time without Laws or else Laws were made before Kings To say that there was then no Law is in many respects most absurd for the nature of man cannot be without it and the violences committed by ill men before the Flood could not have bin blamed if there had bin no Law for that which is not cannot be transgressed Cain could not have seared that every man who met him would slay him if there had not bin a Law to slay him that had slain another But in this case the Scripture is clear at least from the time that Noah went out of the Ark for God then gave him a Law sufficient for the state of things at that time if all violence was prohibited under the name of shedding Blood tho not under the same penalty as Murder But Penal Laws being in vain if there be none to execute them such as know God dos nothing in vain may conclude that he who gave this Law did appoint some way for its execution tho unknown to us There is therefore a Law not given by Kings but laid upon such as should be Kings as well as on any other Persons by one who is above them and perhaps I may say that this Law presseth most upon them because they who have most power do most frequently break out into acts of Violence and most of all disdain to have their will restrained and he that will exempt Kings from this Law must either find that they are excepted in the Text or that God who gave it has not a Power over them Moreover it has bin proved at the beginning of this Treatise that the first Kings were of the accursed race and reigned over the accursed Nations whilst the holy Seed had none If therefore there was no Law where there was no King the accursed Posterity of Cham had Laws when the blessed Descendents of Shem had none which is most absurd the word Outlaw or Lawless being often given to the wicked but never to the just and righteous The impious folly of such Assertions gos farther than our Author perhaps suspected for if there be no Law where there is no King the Israelites had no Law till Saul was made King and then the Law they had was from him They had no King before sor they asked one They could not have asked one of Samuel if he had bin a King He had not bin offended and God had not imputed to them the sin of rejecting him if they had asked that only which he had set over them If Samuel were not King Moses Joshua and the other Judges were not Kings for they were no more than he They had therefore no King and consequently if our Author say true no Law If they had no Law till Saul was King they never had any for he gave them none and the Prophets were to blame for denouncing judgments against them for receding from or breaking their Law if they had none He cannot say that Samuel gave them a Law for that which he wrote in a Book and laid up before the Lord was not a Law to the People but to the King If it had bin a Law to the People it must have bin made publick but as it was only to the King he laid it up before God to restify against him if he should adventure to break it Or if it was a Law to the People the matter is not mended for it was given in the time of a King by one who was not King But in truth it was the Law of the Kingdom by which he was King and had bin wholly impertinent if it was not to bind him for it was given to no other person and to no other end Our Author's Assertion upon which all his Doctrine is grounded That there is no Nation that allows Children any action or remedy for being unjustly governed is as impudently false as any other proposed by him for tho a Child will not be heard that complains of the Rod yet our own Law gives relief to Children against their Fathers as well as against other persons that do them injuries upon which we see many ill effects and I do rather relate than commend the practice In other places the Law gives relief against the extravagancies of which Fathers may be guilty in relation to their Children tho not to that excess as to bring them so near to an equality as in England They cannot imprison sell or kill their Children without exposing themselves to the same punishments with other men and if they take their Estates from them the Law is open and gives relief against them but on the other side Children are punished with Death if they strike or outragiously abuse their Parents which is not so with us Now if the Laws of Nations take such care to preserve private men from being too hardly used by their true and natural Fathers who have such a love and tenderness for them in their own Blood that the most wicked and barbarous do much more frequently commit crimes for them than against them how much more necessary is it to restrain the fury that Kings who at the best are but phantastical Fathers may exercise to the destruction of the whole People 'T is a folly to say that David and some other Kings have had or that all should have a tenderness of affection towards their People as towards their Children for besides that even the first Proposition is not acknowledged and will be hardly verified in any one instance there is a vast distance between what men ought to be and what they are Every man ought to be just true and charitable and if they were so Laws would be of no use but it were a madness to abolish them upon a supposition that they are so or to leave them to a future punishment which many do not believe or not regard I am not obliged to believe that David loved every Israelite as well as his Son Absalom but tho he had I could not from thence inser that all Kings do so unless I were sure that all of them were as wise and virtuous as he But to come more close to the matter Do we not know of many Kings who have come to their Power by the most wicked means that can enter into the heart of man even

ever were committed may pass for laudable and innocent But if Saul were not to be blamed for killing the Priests why was David blamed for the death of Uriah Why were the Dogs to lick the blood of Ahab and Jezebel if they did nothing more than Kings might do without blame Now if the slaughter of one man was so severely avenged upon the Authors and their Families none but such as Filmer can think that of so many innocent men with their Wives and Children could escape unreproved or unpunished But the whole series of the History of Saul shewing evidently that his Life and Reign were full of the most violent cruelty and madness we are to seek no other reason for the ruin threatned and brought upon him and his Family And as those Princes who are most barbarously savage against their own people are usually most gentle to the Enemies of their Country he could not give a more certain testimony of his hatred to those he ought to have protected than by preserving those Nations who were their most irreconcileable Enemies This is proved by reason as well as by experience for every man knows he cannot bear the hatred of all mankind Such as know they have Enemies abroad endeavour to get Friends at home Those who command powerful Nations and are beloved by them fear not to offend Strangers But if they have rendred their own people Enemies to them they cannot hope for help in a time of distress nor so much as a place of retreat or refuge unless from strangers nor from them unless they deserve it by favouring them to the prejudice of their own Country As no man can serve two Masters no man can pursue two contrary Interests Moses Joshua Gideon and Samuel were severe to the Amorites Midianites and Cananites but mild and gentle to the Hebrews Saul who was cruel to the Hebrews spared the Amalekites whose preservation was their destruction and whilst he destroyed those he should have saved and saved those that by a general and particular command of God he should have destroyed he lost his ill-govern'd Kingdom and left an example to posterity of the end that may be expected from pride folly and tyranny The matter would not be much alter'd if I should confess that in the time of Saul all Nations were governed by Tyrants tho it is not true for Greece did then flourish in Liberty and we have reason to believe that other Nations did so also for tho they might not think of a good Government at the first nothing can oblige men to continue under one that is bad when they discover the evils of it and know how to mend it They who trusted men that appeared to have great Virtues with such a power as might easily be turned into Tyranny might justly retract limit or abolish it when they found it to be abused And tho no condition had bin reserved the publick Good which is the end of all Government had bin sufficient to abrogate all that should tend to the contrary As the malice of Men and their Inventions to do mischief increase daily all would soon be brought under the power of the worst if care were not taken and opportunities embraced to find new ways of preventing it He that should make War at this day as the best Commanders did two hundred years past would be beaten by the meanest Souldier The Places then accounted impregnable are now slighted as indefensible and if the Arts of defending were not improved as well as those of affaulting none would be able to hold out a day Men were sent into the World rude and ignorant and if they might not have used their natural Faculties to find out that which is good for themselves all must have bin condemn'd to continue in the ignorance of our first Fathers and to make no use of their understanding to the ends for which it was given The bestial Barbarity in which many Nations especially of Africa America and Asia do now live shews what human Nature is if it be not improved by art and discipline and if the first errors committed through ignorance might not be corrected all would be obliged to continue in them and for any thing I know we must return to the Religion Manners and Policy that were found in our Country at Cesar's landing To affirm this is no less than to destroy all that is commendable in the world and to render the understanding given to men utterly useless But if it be lawful for us by the use of that understanding to build Houses Ships and Forts better than our Ancestors to make such Arms as are most fit for our defence and to invent Printing with an infinite number of other Arts beneficial to mankind why have we not the same right in matters of Government upon which all others do almost absolutely depend If men are not obliged to live in Caves and hollow Trees to eat Acorns and to go naked why should they be for ever obliged to continue under the same form of Government that their Ancestors happened to set up in the time of their ignorance Or if they were not so ignorant to set up one that was not good enough for the age in which they lived why it should not be altered when tricks are found out to turn that to the prejudice of Nations which was erected for their good From whence should malice and wickedness gain a privilege of putting new Inventions to do mischief every day into practice and who is it that so far protects them as to forbid good and innocent men to find new ways also of defending themselves from it If there be any that do this they must be such as live in the same principle who whilst they pretend to exercise Justice provide only for the indemnity of their own Crimes and the advancement of unjust designs They would have a right of attacking us with all the advantages of the Arms now in use and the Arts which by the practice of so many ages have bin wonderfully refined whilst we should be obliged to employ no others in our just defence than such as were known to our naked Ancestors when Cesar invaded them or to the Indians when they fell under the dominion of the Spaniards This would be a compendious way of placing uncontrol'd Iniquity in all the Kingdoms of the World and to overthrow all that deserves the name of Good by the introduction of such accursed Maxims But if no man dares to acknowledg any such except those whose acknowledgment is a discredit we ought not to suffer them to be obliquely obtruded upon us nor to think that God has so far abandoned us into the hands of our Enemies as not to leave us the liberty of using the same Arms in our defence as they do to offend and injure us We shall be told that Prayers and Tears were the only Arms of the first Christians and that Christ commanded his Disciples to pray

Kingdom of Israel they thought his first work would be to throw off the Roman Yoak and not believing him to be the man they would have brought him to avow the thing that they might destroy him But as that was not his business and that his time was not yet come it was not necessary to give them any other answer than such as might disappoint their purpose This shews that without detracting from the honor due to Austin Ambrose or Tertullian I may justly say that the decision of such questions as arise concerning our Government must be decided by our Laws and not by their Writings They were excellent Men but living in another time under a very different Government and applying themselves to other matters they had no knowledg at all of those that concern us They knew what Government they were under and thereupon judged what a broken and dispersed People ow'd to that which had given Law to the best part of the World before they were in being under which they had bin educated and which after a most cruel persecution was become propitious to them They knew that the Word of the Emperor was a Law to the Senate and People who were under the power of that man that could get the best Army but perhaps had never heard of such mixed Governments as ours tho about that time they began to appear in the world And it might be as reasonably concluded that there ought to be no rule in the Succession or Election of Princes because the Roman Emperors were set up by the violence of the Soldiers and for the most part by the slaughter of him who was in possession of the Power as that all other Princes must be absolute when they have it and do what they please till another more strong and more happy may by the like means wrest the same Power from them I am much mistaken if this be not true but without prejudice to our Cause we may take that which they say according to their true meaning in the utmost extent And to begin with Tertullian 'T is good to consider the subject of his Discourse and to whom he wrote The Treatise cited by our Author is the Apologetick and tends to perswade the Pagans that civil Magistrates might not intermeddle with Religion and that the Laws made by them touching those matters were of no value as relating to things of which they had no cognisance 'T is not says he length of time nor the dignity of the Legislators but equity only that can commend Laws and when any are found to be unjust they are deservedly condemned By which words he denied that the Magistratical Power which the Romans acknowledged in Cesar had any thing to do in spiritual things And little advantage can be taken by Christian Princes from what he says concerning the Roman Emperors for he expresly declares That the Cesars would have believed in Christ if they had either not bin necessary to the secular Government or that Christians might have bin Cesars This seems to have proceeded from an opinion received by Christians in the first Ages that the use of the Civil as well as the Military Sword was equally accursed That Christians were to be Sons of peace Enemies to no man and that Christ by commanding Peter to put up his Sword did for ever disarm all Christians He proceeds to say We cannot fight to defend our Goods having in our Baptism denounc'd the World and all that is in it nor to gain Honors accounting nothing more foreign to us than publick Affairs and acknowledging no other Commonwealth than that of the whole World Nor to save our lives because we account it a happiness to be killed He disswades the Pagans from executing Christians rather from charity to them in keeping them from the crime of slaughtering the Innocent than that they were unwilling to suffer and gives no other reasons of their Prayers for the Emperors than that they were commanded to love their Enemies and to pray for those who persecuted them except such as he drew from a mistake that the World was shortly to finish with the dissolution of the Empire All his Works as well those that were written before he fell into Montanism as those published afterwards are full of the like Opinions and if Filmer acknowledges them to be true he must confess That Princes are not Fathers but Enemies and not only they but all those who render themselves Ministers of the Powers they execute in taking upon them the Sword that Christ had cursed do renounce him and we may consider how to proceed with such as do so If our Author will not acknowledg this then no man was ever guilty of a more vile prevarication than he who alledges those words in favour of his Cause which have their only strength in Opinions that he thinks false and in the Authority of a man whom in that very thing he condemns and must do so or overthrow all that he endeavours to support But Tertullian's Opinions concerning these matters have no relation to our present Question The design of his Apology and the Treatise to Scapula almost upon the same subject was to show that the Civil Magistracy which he comprehends under the name of Cesar had nothing to do with matters of Religion and that as no man could be a Christian who would undertake the work of a Magistrate they who were jealous the publick Offices might be taken out of their hands had nothing to fear from Christians who resolved not to meddle with them Whereas our question is only Whether that Magistratical Power which by Law or Usurpation was then in Cesar must necessarily in all times and in all places be in one man or may be divided and balanced according to the Laws of every Country concerning which he says nothing Or whether we who do not renounce the use of the Civil or Military Sword who have a part in the Government and think it our duty to apply our selves to publick Cares should lay them aside because the antient Christians every hour expecting death did not trouble themselves with them If Ambrose after he was a Bishop employ'd the serocity of a Soldier which he still retained rather in advancing the power of the Clergy than the good of Mankind by restraining the rage of Tyrants it can be no prejudice to our Cause of which he had no cognisance He spoke of the violent and despotical Government to which he had bin a Minister before his Baptism and seems to have had no knowledg of the Gothick Polity that within a few years grew famous by the overthrow of the Roman Tyranny and delivering the world from the Yoak which it could no longer bear And if Austin might say That the Emperor is subject to no Laws because he has a Power of making Laws I may as justly say that our Kings are subject to Laws because they can make no Law and have

no Power but what is given by the Laws If this be not the case I desire to know who made the Laws to which they and their Predecessors have sworn and whether they can according to their own will abrogate those antient Laws by which they are made to be what they are and by which we enjoy what we have or whether they can make new Laws by their own Power If no man but our Author have impudence enough to assert any such thing and if all the Kings we ever had except Richard the second did renounce it we may conclude that Austin's words have no relation to our dispute and that 't were to no purpose to examine whether the Fathers mention any reservation of Power to the Laws of the Land or to the People it being as lawful for all Nations if they think fit to frame Governments different from those that were then in being as to build Bastions Halfmoons Hornworks Ravelins or Counterscarps or to make use of Muskets Cannon Mortars Carabines or Pistols which were unknown to them What Solomon says of the Hebrew Kings dos as little concern us We have already proved their Power not to have bin absolute tho greater than that which the Law allows to ours It might upon occasion be a prudent advice to private persons living under such Governments as were usual in the Eastern Countries to keep the King's Commandments and not to say What dost thou because where the Word of a King is there is Power and all that he pleaseth he will do But all these words are not his and those that are must not be taken in a general sense for tho his Son was a King yet in his words there was no power He could not do what he pleased nor hinder others from doing what they pleased He would have added weight to the Yoak that lay upon the necks of the Israelites but he could not and we do not find him to have bin master of much more than his own Tongue to speak as many foolish things as he pleased In other things whether he had to deal with his own people or with strangers he was weak and impotent and the wretches who flatter'd him in his follies could be of no help to him The like has befallen many others Those who are wise virtuous valiant just and lovers of their People have and ought to have Power but such as are lewd vicious foolish and haters of their People ought to have none and are often deprived of all This was well known to Solomon who says That a wise Child is better than an old and foolish King that will not be advised When Nabuchodonosor set himself in the place of God his Kingdom was taken from him and he was driven from the society of men to herd with beasts There was Power for a time in the word of Nero he murdered many excellent men but he was call'd to account and the World abandon'd the Monster it had too long endur'd He found none to defend him nor any better help when he desir'd to die than the hand of a Slave Besides this some Kings by their Institution have little Power some have bin deprived of what they had for abusing or rendring themselves unworthy of it and Histories afford us innumerable examples of both sorts But tho I should confess that there is always Power in the word of a King it would be nothing to us who dispute concerning Right and have no regard to that Power which is void of it A Thief or a Pyrat may have Power but that avails him not when as often befel the Cesars he meets with one who has more and is always unsafe since having no effect upon the Consciences of men every one may destroy him that can And I leave it to Kings to consider how much they stand obliged to those who placing their Rights upon the same foot expose their Persons to the same dangers But if Kings desire that in their Word there should be power let them take care that it be always accompanied with Truth and Justice Let them seek the good of their People and the hands of all good men will be with them Let them not exalt themselves insolently and every one will desire to exalt them Let them acknowledg themselves to be the Servants of the Publick and all men will be theirs Let such as are most addicted to them talk no more of Cesars nor the Tributes due to them We have nothing to do with the name of Cesar. They who at this day live under it reject the Prerogatives antiently usurped by those that had it and are govern'd by no other Laws than their own We know no Law to which we owe obedience but that of God and our selves Asiatick Slaves usually pay such Tributes as are imposed upon them and whilst braver Nations lay under the Roman Tyranny they were forced to submit to the same burdens But even those Tributes were paid for maintaining Armies Fleets and Garisons without which the poor and abject life they led could not have bin preserved We owe none but what we freely give None is or can be imposed upon us unless by our selves We measure our Grants according to our own Will or the present occasions for our own safety Our Ancestors were born free and as the best provision they could make for us they left us that Liberty intire with the best Laws they could devise to defend it 'T is no way impair'd by the Opinions of the Fathers The words of Solomon do rather confirm it The happiness of those who enjoy the like and the shameful misery they lie under who have suffer'd themselves to be forced or cheated out of it may perswade and the justice of the Cause encourage us to think nothing too dear to be hazarded in the defence of it SECT IX Our own Laws confirm to us the enjoyment of our native Rights IF that which our Author calls Divinity did reach the things in dispute between us or that the Opinions of the Fathers which he alledges related to them he might have spared the pains of examining our Laws for a municipal Sanction were of little force to confirm a perpetual and universal Law given by God to mankind and of no value against it since man cannot abrogate what God hath instituted nor one Nation free it self from a Law that is given to all But having abused the Scriptures and the Writings of the Fathers whose Opinions are to be valued only so far as they rightly interpret them he seems desirous to try whether he can as well put a false sense upon our Law and has fully compassed his design Aocording to his custom he takes pieces of passages from good Books and turns them directly against the plain meaning of the Authors expressed in the whole scope and design of their Writings To show that he intends to spare none he is not ashamed to cite Bracton who of all our antient Law-writers is

most opposite to his Maxims He lived says he in Henry the third's time since Parliaments were instituted as if there had bin a time when England had wanted them or that the establishment of our Liberty had bin made by the Normans who if we will believe our Author came in by force of Arms and oppressed us But we have already proved the Essence of Parliaments to be as antient as our Nation and that there was no time in which there were not such Councils or Assemblies of the People as had the power of the whole and made or unmade such Laws as best pleased themselves We have indeed a French word from a People that came from France but the Power was always in our selves and the Norman Kings were obliged to swear they would govern according to the Laws that had bin made by those Assemblies It imports little vvhether Bracton lived before or after they came amongst us His vvords are Omnes sub eo ipse sub nullo sed tantum sub Deo All are under him and he under none but God only If he offend since no Writ can go out against him their Remedy is by petitioning him to amend his Faults which if he will not do it is punishment enough for him to expect God as an avenger Let none presume to look into his Deeds much less to oppose him Here is a mixture of Sense and Nonsense Truth and Falshood the vvords of Bracton vvith our Author's foolish Inferences from them Bracton spoke of the politick capacity of the King vvhen no Law had forbidden him to divide it from his natural He gave the name of King to the sovereign Power of the Nation as Jacob called that of his Descendents The Scepter vvhich he said should not depart from Judah till Shiloh came tho all men know that his Race did not reign the third part of that time over his own Tribe nor full fourscore years over the whole Nation The same manner of speech is used in all parts of the world Tertullian under the name of Cesar comprehended all magistratical Power and imputed to him the Acts of which in his person he never had any knowledg The French say their King is always present sur son lit de justice in all the Sovereign Courts of the Kingdom which are not easily numbred and that Maxim could have in it neither sense nor truth if by it they meant a Man who can be but in one place at one time and is always comprehended within the Dimensions of his own Skin These things could not be unknown to Bracton the like being in use amongst us and he thought it no offence so far to follow the dictates of Reason prohibited by no Law as to make a difference between the invisible and omnipresent King who never dies and the Person that wears the Crown whom no man without the guilt of Treason may endeavour to kill since there is an Act of Parliament in the case I will not determine whether he spoke properly or no as to England but if he did not all that he said being upon a false supposition is nothing to our purpose The same Bracton says the King doth no wrong in as much as he doth nothing but by Law The Power of the King is the Power of the Law a power of right not of wrong Again If the King dos injustice he is not King In another place he has these words The King therefore ought to exercise the Power of the Law as becomes the Vicar and Minister of God upon Earth because that Power is the Power of God alone but the Power of doing wrong is the Power of the Devil and not of God And the King is his Minister whose Work he dos Whilst he dos Justice he is the Vicar of the Eternal King but if he deflect from it to act unjustly he is the Minister of the Devil He also says that the King is singulis major universis minor and that he who is in justitia exequenda omnibus major in justitia recipienda cuilibet ex plebe fit aequalis I shall not say Bracton is in the right when he speaks in this manner but 't is a strange impudence in Filmer to cite him as a Patron of the absolute Power of Kings who dos so extremely depress them But the grossest of his follies is yet more pardonable than his detestable fraud in falsifying Bracton's words and leaving out such as are not for his purpose which shew his meaning to be directly contrary to the sense put upon them That this may appear I shall set down the words as they are found in Bracton Ipse autem Rex non debet esse sub homine sed sub Deo sub Lege quia Lex facit Regem Attribuat ergo Rex Legi quod Lex attribuit ei id est dominationem potestatem Non est enim Rex ubi dominatur volunt as non Lex quod sub Lege esse debeat cum sit Dei vicarius evidenter apparet If Bracton therefore be a competent Judg the King is under the Law and he is not a King nor God's Vicegerent unless he be so and we all know how to proceed with those who being under the Law offend against it For the Law is not made in vain In this case something more is to be done than petitioning and 't is ridiculous to say that if he will not amend 't is punishment enough for him to expect God an Avenger for the same may be said of all Malefactors God can sufficiently punish Thieves and Murderers but the future Judgment of which perhaps they have no belief is not sufficient to restrain them from committing more Crimes nor to deter others from following their example God was always able to punish Murderers but yet by his Law he commands man to shed the blood of him who should shed man's blood and declares that the Land cannot be purged of the Guilt by any other means He had Judgments in store for Jeroboam Ahab and those that were like them but yet he commanded that according to that Law their Houses should be destroy'd from the earth The dogs lick'd up the blood of Ahab where they had licked that of Naboth and eat Jezebel who had contrived his murder But says our Author we must not look into his deeds much less oppose them Must not David look into Saul's deeds nor oppose them Why did he then bring together as many men as he could to oppose and make foreign Alliances against him even with the Moabites and the accursed Philistins Why did Jehu not only destroy Ahab's house but kill the King of Judah and his forty Brothers only for going to visit his Children Our Author may perhaps say because God commanded them But if God commanded them to do so he did not command them and all mankind not to do so and if he did not forbid they have nothing to restrain them from

may be alledged From which we may safely conclude that if the death of one King do really invest the next Heir with the Right and Power or that he who is so invested be subject to no Law but his own Will all matters relating to that Kingdom must have bin horribly confused during the reigns of 22 Kings of Pharamonds race they can have had no rightful King from the death of Chilperic to King John and the Succession since that time is very liable to be questioned if not utterly overthrown by the house of Austria and others who by the Counts of Hapsburg derive their Descent from Pharamond and by the house of Lorrain claiming from Charles who was excluded by Capet all which is most absurd and they who pretend it bring as much confusion into their own Laws and upon the Polity of their own Nation as shame and guilt upon the memory of their Ancestors who by the most extreme injustice have rejected their natural Lord or dispossessed those who had bin in the most solemn manner placed in the Government and to whom they had generally sworn Allegiance 3. If the next Heir be actually King seized of the power by the death of his Predecessor so that there is no intermission then all the Solemnities and religious Ceremonies used at the Coronations of their Kings with the Oaths given and taken are the most profane abuses of sacred things in contempt of God and Man that can be imagined most especially if the Act be as our Author calls it voluntary and the King receiving nothing by it be bound to keep it no longer than he pleases The Prince who is to be sworn might spare the pains of watching all night in the Church fasting praying confessing communicating and swearing that he will to the utmost of his power defend the Clergy maintain the union of the Church obviate all excess rapine extortion and iniquity take care that in all judgments Justice may be observed with Equity and Mercy c. or of invoking the assistance of the Holy Ghost for the better performance of his Oath and without ceremony tell the Nobility and People that he would do what he thought fit 'T were to as little purpose for the Archbishop of Rheims to take the trouble of saying Mass delivering to him the Crown Scepter and other ensigns of Royalty explaining what is signified by them anointing him with the Oil which they say was deliver'd by an Angel to St. Remigius blessing him and praying to God to bless him if he rightly performed his Oath to God and the People and denouncing the contrary in case of failure on his part if these things conferred nothing upon him but what he had before and were of no obligation to him Such ludifications of the most sacred things are too odious and impious to be imputed to Nations that have any virtue or profess Christianity This cannot fall upon the French and Spaniards who had certainly a great zeal to Religion whatever it was and were so eminent for moral Virtues as to be a reproach to us who live in an Age of more Knowledg But their meaning is so well declared by their most solemn Acts that none but those who are wilfully ignorant can mistake One of the Councils held at Toledo declared by the Clergy Nobility and others assisting That no man should be placed in the Royal Seat till he had sworn to preserve the Church c. Another held in the same place signified to Sisinandus who was then newly crown'd That if he or any of his Successors should contrary to their Oaths and the Laws of their Country proudly and cruelly presume to exercise Domination over them he should be excommunicated and separated from Christ and them to eternal judgment The French Laws and their best Writers asserting the same things are confirmed by perpetual practice Henry of Navarr tho certainly according to their Rules and in their esteem a most accomplish'd Prince was by two General Assemblies of the Estates held at Blois deprived of the Succession for being a Protestant and notwithstanding the greatness of his Reputation Valour Victories and Affability could never be admitted till he had made himself capable of the ceremonies of his Coronation by conforming to the Religion which by the Oath he was to defend Nay this present King tho haughty enough by nature and elevated by many successes has acknowledged as he says with joy that he can do nothing contrary to Law and calls it a happy impotence in pursuance of which he has annulled many Acts of his Father and Grandfather alienating the demeasnes of the Crown as things contrary to Law and not within their power These things being confirmed by all the good Authors of that Nation Filmer finds only the worst to be fit for his turn and neither minding Law nor History takes his Maxims from a vile flattering discourse of Bellay calculated for the personal interest of Henry the fourth then King of Navarr in which he says That the Heir apparent tho furious mad a fool vicious and in all respects abominably wicked must be admitted to the Crown But Bellay was so far from attaining the ends designed by his Book that by such Doctrines which filled all men with horror he brought great prejudice to his Master and procured little favour from Henry who desired rather to recommend himself to his People as the best man they could set up than to impose a necessity upon them of taking him if he had bin the worst But our Author not contented with what this Sycophant says in relation to such Princes as are placed in the Government by a Law establishing the Succession by inheritance with an impudence peculiar to himself asserts the same right to be in any man who by any means gets into Power and imposes the same necessity of obedience upon the Subject where there is no Law as Bellay dos by virtue of one that is established 4. In the last place As Bellay acknowledges that the right belongs to Princes only where 't is established by Law I deny that there is was or ever can be any such No People is known to have bin so mad or wicked as by their own consent for their own good and for the obtaining of Justice to give the power to Beasts under whom it could never be obtain'd or if we could believe that any had bin guilty of an act so full of folly turpitude and wickedness it could not have the force of a Law and could never be put in execution for tho the rules by which the proximity should be judged be never so precise it will still be doubted whose case sutes best with them Tho the Law in some places gives private Inheritances to the next Heir and in others makes allotments according to several proportions no one knows to whom or how far the benefit shall accrue to any man till it be adjudged by a Power to which the parties

Union among them and bringing every man to an exact understanding of his own and the publick Rights On the other side he that would introduce an ill Magistrate make one evil who was good or preserve him in the exercise of injustice when he is corrupted must always open the way for him by vitiating the People corrupting their Manners destroying the validity of Oaths and Contracts teaching such evasions equivocations and frauds as are inconsistent with the thoughts that become men of virtue and courage and overthrowing the confidence they ought to have in each other make it impossible for them to unite among themselves The like Arts must be used with the Magistrate he cannot be for their turn till he is perswaded to believe he has no dependence upon and ows no duty to the People that he is of himself and not by their Institution that no man ought to inquire into nor be judg of his actions that all obedience is due to him whether he be good or bad wise or foolish a father or an enemy to his Country This being calculated for his personal interest he must pursue the same designs or his Kingdom is divided within it self and cannot subsist By this means those who flatter his humour come to be accounted his Friends and the only men that are thought worthy of great Trusts whilst such as are of another mind are exposed to all persecution These are always such as excel in Virtue Wisdom and greatness of Spirit they have Eyes and they will always see the way they go and leaving fools to be guided by implicit Faith will distinguish between good and evil and chuse that which is best they will judg of men by their actions and by them discovering whose Servant every man is know whether he is to be obeyed or not Those who are ignorant of all good careless or enemies to it take a more compendious way their slavish vitious and base natures inclining them to seek only private and present advantages they easily slide into a blind dependence upon one who has Wealth and Power and desiring only to know his will care not what injustice they do if they may be rewarded They worship what they find in the Temple tho it be the vilest of Idols and always like that best which is worst because it agrees with their inclinations and principles When a party comes to be erected upon such a foundation debauchery lewdness and dishonesty are the true badges of it Such as wear them are cherished but the principal marks of favour are reserved for those who are the most industrious in mischief either by seducing the People with the allurements of sensual Pleasures or corrupting their Understandings by false and slavish Doctrines By this means a man who calls himself a Philosopher or a Divine is often more useful than a great number of Tapsters Cooks Buffoons Players Fidlers Whores or Bawds These are the Devil's Ministers of a lower Order they seduce single Persons and such as fall into their snares are for the most part men of the simpler sort but the principal supporters of his Kingdom are they who by false Doctrines poison the springs of Religion and Virtue and by preaching or writing if their falshood and wickedness were not detected would extinguish all principles of common honesty and bring whole Nations to be best satisfied with themselves when their actions are most abominable And as the means must always be sutable to the end proposed the Governments that are to be established or supported by such ways must needs be the worst of all and comprehend all manner of evil SECT XX. Unjust Commands are not to be obey'd and no man is obliged to suffer for not obeying such as are against Law IN the next place our Author gravely proposes a question Whether it be a sin to disobey the King if he command any thing contrary to Law and as gravely determines that not only in human Laws but even in Divine a thing may be commanded contrary to Law and yet obedience to such a Command is necessary The sanctifying of the Sabbath is a divine Law yet if a Master command his Servant not to go to Church upon a Sabbath day the best Divines teach us the Servant must obey c. It is not fit to tie the Master to acquaint the Servant with his secret Counsel Tho he frequently contradicts in one line what he says in another this whole Clause is uniform and sutable to the main design of his Book He sets up the authority of Man in opposition to the command of God gives it the preference and says the best Divines instruct us so to do St. Paul then must have bin one of the worst for he knew that the Powers under which he lived had under the severest penalties forbidden the publication of the Gospel and yet he says Wo to me if I preach it not St. Peter was no better than he for he tells us That it is better to obey God than Man and they could not speak otherwise unless they had forgotten the words of their Master who told them They should not fear them that could only kill the Body but him who could kill and cast into Hell And if I must not fear him that can only kill the Body not only the reason but all excuse for obeying him is taken away To prove what he says he cites a pertinent example from St. Luke and very logically concludes that because Christ reproved the hypocrisy of the Pharisees who generally adhered to the external and circumstantial part of the Law neglecting the essential and taking upon themselves to be the interpreters of that which they did not understand the Law of God is not to be obeyed and as strongly proves that because Christ shewed them that the same Law which by their own consession permitted them to pull an Ass out of a pit on the Sabbath day could not but give a liberty of healing the sick therefore the commands of Kings are to be obeyed tho they should be contrary to human and divine Laws But if perversness had not blinded him he might have seen that this very Text is wholly against his purpose for the Magistratical Power was on the side of the Pharisees otherwise they would not have sought an occasion to ensnare him and that power having perverted the Law of God by salse glosses and a superinduction of human Traditions prohibited the most necessary acts of Charity to be done on the Sabbath day which Christ reproved and restored the sick man to his health in their sight But I could wish our Author had told us the names of those Divines who he says are the best and who pretend to teach us these fine things I know some who are thought good that are of a contrary opinion and say that God having required that day to be set apart for his Service and Worship man cannot dispense with the Obligation unless he can abrogate the

Law of God Perhaps for want of other Arguments to prove the contrary I may be told that this savours too much of Puritanism and Calvinism But I shall take the reproach till some better Patrons than Laud and his creatures may be found for the other opinion By the advice and instigation of these men from about the year 1630 to 1640 sports and revelings which ended for the most part in drunkenness and lewdness were not only permitted on that day but enjoined And tho this did advance human Authority in derogation to the Divine to a degree that may please such as are of our Author's mind yet others resolving rather to obey the Laws of God than the Commands of Men could not be brought to pass the Lord's day in that manner Since that time no man except Filmer and Heylin has bin so wicked to conceive or so impudent to assert such brutal absurdities But leaving the farther consideration of the original of this abuse I desire to know whether the Authority given to Masters to command things contrary to the Law of God be peculiar in relation to the Sabbath or to a few other points or ought generally to extend to all God's Laws and whether he who may command his Servant to act contrary to the Law of God have not a right in himself of doing the same If peculiar some Authority or Precept must be produced by which it may appear that God has slighted his Ordinance concerning that day and suffer'd it to be contemned whilst he exacts obedience to all others If we have a liberty left to us of slighting others also more or less in number we ought to know how many what they are and how it comes to pass that some are of obligation and others not If the Empire of the world is not only divided between God and Cesar but every man also who can give five pounds a year to a Servant has so great a part in it that in some cases his commands are to be obeyed preferably to those of God it were fit to know the limits of each Kingdom lest we happen preposterously to obey man when we ought to obey God or God when we are to follow the commands of men If it be general the Law of God is of no effect and we may safely put an end to all thoughts and discourses of Religion the word of God is nothing to us we are not to enquire what he has commanded but what pleases our Master how insolent foolish vile or wicked soever he may be The Apostles and Prophets who died for preferring the commands of God before those of men fell like fools and perished in their sins But if every particular man that has a servant can exempt him from the commands of God he may also exempt himself and the Laws of God are at once abrogated throughout the world 'T is a folly to say there is a passive as well as an active Obedience and that he who will not do what his Master commands ought to suffer the punishment he inflicts for if the Master has a right of commanding there is a duty incumbent on the servant of obeying He that suffers for not doing that which he ought to do draws upon himself both the guilt and the punishment But no one can be obliged to suffer for that which he ought not to do because he who pretends to command has not so far an Authority However our question is whether the Servant should forbear to do that which God commands rather than whether the Master should put away or beat him if he do not for if the Servant ought to obey his Master rather than God as our Author says the best Divines assert he sins in disobeying and that guilt cannot be expiated by his suffering If it be thought I carry this point to an undue extremity the limits ought to be demonstrated by which it may appear that I exceed them tho the nature of the case cannot be altered for if the Law of God may not be abrogated by the commands of men a Servant cannot be exempted from keeping the Sabbath according to the Ordinance of God at the will of his Master But if a power be given to man at his pleasure to annul the Laws of God the Apostles ought not to have preached when they were forbidden by the Powers to which they were subject The tortures and deaths they suffer'd for not obeying that command were in their own wrong and their blood was upon their own heads His second instance concerning Wars in which he says the Subject is not to examine whether they are just or unjust but must obey is weak and frivolous and very often false whereas consequences can rightly be drawn from such things only as are certainly and universally true Tho God may be merciful to a Soldier who by the wickedness of a Magistrate whom he honestly trusts is made a Minister of injustice 't is nothing to this case For if our Author say true that the word of a King can justify him in going against the command of God he must do what is commanded tho he think it evil The Christian Soldiers under the Pagan Emperors were obliged to destroy their Brethren and the best men in the world for being so Such as now live under the Turk have the same obligation upon them of defending their Master and slaughtering those he reputes his Enemies for adhering to Christianity And the King of France may when he pleases arm one part of his Protestant Subjects to the destruction of the other which is a godly doctrine and worthy our Author's invention But if this be so I know not how the Israelites can be said to have sinned in following the examples of Jeroboam Omri Ahab or other wicked Kings they could not have sinned in obeying if it had bin a sin to disobey their commands and God would not have punished them so severely if they had not sinned 'T is impertinent to say they were obliged to serve their Kings in unjust Wars but not to serve Idols for tho God be jealous of his glory yet he forbids Rapine and Murder as well as Idolatry If there be a Law that forbids the Subject to examine the commands tending to the one it cannot but enjoin obedience to the other The same Authority which justifies Murder takes away the guilt of Idolatry and the Wretches both Judges and Witnesses who put Naboth to death could as little alledg ignorance as those that worshipped Jeroboam's Calves the same light of Nature by which they should have known that a ridiculous Image was not to be adored as God instructing them also that an innocent man ought not under pretence of Law to be murdered by perjury S E C T. XXI It cannot be for the good of the People that the Magistrate have a power above the Law and he is not a Magistrate who has not his power by Law THAT we may not be displeased or think it

person or a few were delegated by many For they who have a right inherent in themselves may resign it to others and they who can give a Power to others may exercise it themselves unless they recede from it by their own act for it is only matter of convenience of which they alone can be the Judges because 't is for themselves only that they judg If this were not so it would be very prejudicial to Kings for 't is certain that Cassivellaunus Caractatus Arviragus Galgacus Hengist Horsa and others amongst the Britans and Saxons what name soever may have bin abusively given to them were only temporary Magistrates chosen upon occasion of present Wars but we know of no time in which the Britans had not their Great Council to determine their most important Affairs and the Saxons in their own Country had their Councils where all were present and in which Tacitus assures us they dispatched their greatest business These were the same with the Micklegemots which they afterwards held here and might have bin called by the same name if Tacitus had spoken Dutch If a People therefore have not a power to create at any time a Magistracy which they had not before none could be created at all for no Magistracy is eternal And if for the validity of the Constitution it be necessary that the beginning must be unknown or that no other could have bin before it the Monarchy amongst us cannot be established upon any right for tho our Ancestors had their Councils and Magistrates as well here as in Germany they had no Monarchs This appears plainly by the testimony of Cesar and Tacitus and our later Histories show that as soon as the Saxons came into this Country they had their Micklegemots which were general Assemblies of the Noble and Free men who had in themselves the Power of the Nation and tho when they increased in numbers they erected seven Kingdoms yet every one retained the same usage within it self These Assemblies were evidently the same in power with our Parliaments and tho they differ'd in name or form it matters not for they who could act in the one could not but have a power of instituting the other that is the same people that could meet together in their own persons and according to their own pleasure order all matters relating to themselves whilst three of four Counties only were under one Government and their numbers were not so great or their habitation so far distant that they might not meet altogether without inconvenience with the same right might depute others to represent them when being joined in one no place was capable of receiving so great a multitude and that the Frontiers would have bin exposed to the danger of foreign Invasions if any such thing had bin practised But if the Authority of Parliaments for many Ages representing the whole Nation were less to be valued as our Author insinuates because they could not represent the whole when it was not joined in one body that of Kings must come to nothing for there could be no one King over all when the Nation was divided into seven distinct Governments And 't is most absurd to think that the Nation which had seven great Councils or Micklegemots at the same time they had seven Kingdoms could not as well unite the seven Councils as the seven Kingdoms into one 'T is to as little purpose to say that the Nation did not unite it self but the several parcels came to be inherited by one for that one could inherit no more from the others than what they had and the seven being only Magistrates set up by the Micklegemots c. the one must be so also And 't is neither reasonable to imagine nor possible to prove that a fierce Nation jealous of Liberty and who had obstinately defended it in Germany against all Invaders should conquer this Country to enslave themselves and purchase nothing by their valour but that servitude which they abhorred or be less free when they were united into one state than they had bin when they were divided into seven and least of all that one man could first subdue his own People and then all the rest when by endeavouring to subdue his own he had broken the trust reposed in him and lost the right conferred upon him and without them had not power to subdue any But as it is my fate almost ever to dissent from our Author I affirm that the variety of Government which is observed to have bin amongst the Saxons who in some Ages were divided in others united sometimes under Captains in other times under Kings sometimes meeting personally in the Micklegemots sometimes by their Delegates in the Wittenagemots dos evidently testify that they ordered all things according to their own pleasure which being the utmost Act of Liberty it remained inviolable under all those changes as we have already proved by the confession of Offa Ina Alfred Canutus Edward and other particular as well as universal Kings And we may be sure those of the Norman Race can have no more power since they came in by same way and swore to govern by the same Laws 2. I am no way concerned in our Author's doubt Whether Parliaments did in those days consist of Nobility and Clergy or whether the Commons were also called For if it were true as he asserts that according to the eternal Law of God and Nature there can be no Government in the World but that of an absolute Monarch whose Sovereign Majesty can be diminished by no Law or Custom there could be no Parliaments or other Magistracies that did not derive their power and being from his Will But having proved that the Saxons had their general Councils and Assemblies when they had no Kings that by them Kings were made and the greatest Affairs determined whether they had Kings or not it can be of no importance whether in one or more Ages the Commons had a part in the Government or not For the same Power that instituted a Parliament without them might when they thought fit receive them into it or rather if they who had the Government in their hands did for reasons known to themselves recede from the exercise of it they might resume it when they pleased Nevertheless it may be worth our pains to enquire what our Author means by Nobility If such as at this day by means of Patents obtained for mony or by favour without any regard to merit in the persons or their Ancestors are called Dukes Marquesses c. I give him leave to impute as late and base an Original to them as he pleases without fearing that the Rights of our Nation can thereby be impaired and am content that if the King do not think fit to support the Dignity of his own Creatures they may fall to the ground But if by Noblemen we are to understand such as have bin ennobled by the virtues of their Ancestors manifested in services done

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

he refused In the same place they met and chose Saul to be their King He being dead the men of Judah assembled themselves and anointed David Not long after all the Tribes met at Hebron made a Contract with him and received him as their King In the same manner tho by worse Counsel they made Absalom King And the like was attempted in favour of Sheba the Son of Bichri tho they then had a King chosen by themselves When they found themselves oppressed by the Tributes that had bin laid upon them by Solomon they met at Shechem and being displeased with Rehoboam's answer to their complaints ten of the Tribes made Jeroboam King Jehu and all the other Kings of Israel whether good or bad had no other Title than was conferred upon them by the prevailing part of the People which could not have given them any unless they had met together nor meet together without the consent and against the will of those that reigned unless the Power had bin in themselves Where Governments are more exactly regulated the power of judging when 't is fit to call the Senate or People together is refer'd to one or more Magistrates as in Rome to the Consuls or Tribuns in Athens to the Archons and in Thebes to the Beotarches but none of them could have these Powers unless they had bin given by those who advanced them to the Magistracies to which they were annexed nor could they have bin so annexed if those who created them had not had the right in themselves If these Officers neglected their duty of calling such Assemblies when the publick Affairs required the people met by their own Authority and punished the Person or abrogated the Magistracy as appears in the case of the Decemviri and many others that might be alledged if the thing were not so plain as to need no further proof The reason of this is that they who institute a Magistracy best know whether the end of the Institution be rightly pursued or not And all just Magistracies being the same in essence tho differing in form the same right must perpetually belong to those who put the Sovereign Power into the hands of one a few or many men which is what our Author calls the disposal of the Sovereignty Thus the Romans did when they created Kings Consuls Military Tribuns Dictators or Decemviri and it had bin most ridiculous to say that those Officers gave authority to the people to meet and chuse them for they who are chosen are the Creatures of those who chuse and are nothing more than others till they are chosen The last King of Sweden Charles Gustavus told a Gentleman who was Ambassador there That the Swedes having made him King when he was poor and had nothing in the world he had but one work to do which was so to reign that they might never repent the good opinion they had conceived of him They might therefore meet and did meet to confer the Sovereignty upon him or he could never have had it For tho the Kingdom be hereditary to Males or Females and his Mother was Sister to the Great Gustavus yet having married a stranger without the consent of the Estates she performed not the condition upon which women are admitted to the Succession and thereby falling from her right he pretended not to any The Act of his Election declares he had none and gives the Crown to him and the Heirs of his body with this farther declaration that the benefit of his Election should no way extend to his Brother Prince Adolphus and 't is confessed by all the Swedish Nation that if the King now reigning should die without children the Estates would proceed to a new Election 'T is rightly observ'd by our Author that if the people might meet and give the Sovereign Power they might also direct and limit it for they did meet in this and other Countries they did confer the Sovereign Power they did limit and direct the exercise and the Laws of each people shew in what manner and measure it is every where done This is as certain in relation to Kings as any other Magistrates The Commission of the Roman Dictators was to take care that the Commonwealth might receive no detriment The same was sometimes given to the Consuls King Offa's confession that he was made King to preserve the publick Liberty expresses the same thing And Charles Gustavus who said he had no other work than to govern in such a manner that they who had made him King might not repent shew'd there was a Rule which he stood obliged to follow and an end which he was to procure that he might merit and preserve their good opinion This power of conferring the Sovereignty was exercised in France by those who made Meroveus King in the prejudice of the two Grandchildren of Pharamond Sons to Clodion by those who excluded his Race and gave the Crown to Pepin by those who deposed Lewis le Debonair and Charles le Gros by those who brought in five Kings that were either Bastards or Strangers between him and Charles le Simple by those who rejected his Race and advanced Hugh Capet by those who made Henry the first King to the prejudice of Robert his elder Brother and continued the Crown in the Race of Henry for ten Generations whilst the Descendents of Robert were only Dukes of Burgundy The like was done in Castille and Arragon by frequently preferring the younger before the elder Brother the Descendents of Females before those of the Male-line in the same degree the more remote in Blood before the nearest and sometimes Bastards before the legitimate Issue The same was done in England in relation to every King since the coming in of the Normans as I shewed in the last Section and other places of this Work That they who gave the Sovereignty might also circumscribe and direct it is manifest by the several ways of providing for the Succession instituted by several Nations Some are merely elective as the Empire of Germany and the Kingdom of Poland to this day the Kingdom of Denmark till the year 1660 that of Sweden till the time of Gustavus Ericson who delivered that Nation from the oppression of Christiern the second the cruel King of the Danes In others the Election was confined to one or more Families as the Kingdom of the Goths in Spain to the Balthei and Amalthei In some the eldest Man of the reigning Family was preferr'd before the nearest as in Scotland before the time of Kennethus In other places the nearest in Blood is preferr'd before the elder if more remote In some no regard is had to Females or their Descendents as in France and Turky In others they or their Descendents are admitted either simply as well as Males or under a condition of marrying in the Country or with the consent of the Estates as in Sweden And no other reason can be given for this almost infinite variety of

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

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

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

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

orderly chosen by a willing People were the true Shepherds who came in by the gate of the Sheepfold and might justly be called the Ministers of God so long as they performed their duty in providing for the good of the Nations committed to their charge SECT XVII Good Governments admit of Changes in the Superstructures whilst the Foundations remain unchangeable IF I go a step farther and confess the Romans made some changes in the outward Form of their Government I may safely say they did well in it and prosper'd by it After the Expulsion of the Kings the Power was chiefly in the Nobility who had bin Leaders of the People but it was necessary to humble them when they began to presume too much upon the advantages of their Birth and the City could never have been great unless the Plebeians who were the Body of it and the main strength of their Armies had bin admitted to a participation of Honours This could not be done at the first They who had bin so vilely opprest by Tarquin and harass'd with making or cleansing Sinks were not then fit for Magistracies or the Command of Armies but they could not justly be excluded from them when they had men who in courage and conduct were equal to the best of the Patricians and it had bin absurd for any man to think it a disparagement to him to marry the Daughter of one whom he had obey'd as Dictator or Consul and perhaps follow'd in his Triumph Rome that was constituted for War and sought its Grandeur by that means could never have arriv'd to any considerable height if the People had not bin exercised in Arms and their Spirits raised to delight in Conquests and willing to expose themselves to the greatest fatigues and dangers to accomplish them Such men as these were not to be used like Slaves or opprest by the unmerciful hand of Usurers They who by their sweat and blood were to defend and enlarge the Territories of the State were to be convinced they fought for themselves and they had reason to demand a Magistracy of their own vested with a Power that none might offend to maintain their Rights and to protect their Families whilst they were abroad in the Armies These were the Tribunes of the People made as they called it Sacrosancti or inviolable and the creation of them was the most considerable Change that happened till the time of Marius who brought all into disorder The creation or abolition of Military Tribunes with Consular Power ought to be accounted as nothing for it imported little whether that Authority were exercised by two or by five That of the Decemviri was as little to be regarded they were intended only for a Year and tho new ones were created for another on pretence that the Laws they were to frame could not be brought to perfection in so short a time yet they were soon thrown down from the Power they usurped and endeavoured to retain contrary to Law The creation of Dictators was no novelty they were made occasionally from the beginning and never otherwise than occasionally till Julius Cesar subverted all order and invading that supreme Magistracy by force usurped the Right which belong'd to all This indeed was a mortal Change even in root and principle All other Magistrates had bin created by the People for the publick good and always were within the power of those that had created them But Cesar coming in by force sought only the satisfaction of his own raging Ambition or that of the Soldiers whom he had corrupted to destroy their Country and his Successors governing for themselves by the help of the like Raskals perpetually exposed the Empire to be ravaged by them But whatever opinion any man may have of the other Changes I dare affirm there are few or no Monarchies whose Histories are so well known to us as that of Rome which have not suffer'd Changes incomparably greater and more mischievous than those of Rome whilst it was free The Macedonian Monarchy fell into pieces immediately after the death of Alexander 'T is thought he perished by Poison His Wives Children and Mother were destroyed by his own Captains The best of those who had escaped his fury fell by the Sword of each other When the famous Argyraspides might have expected some reward of their labours and a little rest in old age they were maliciously sent into the East by Antigonus to perish by hunger and misery after he had corrupted them to betray Eumenes No better fate attended the rest all was in confusion every one follow'd whom he pleased and all of them seemed to be filled with such a rage that they never ceased from mutual slaughters till they were consumed and their Kingdoms continued in perpetual Wars against each other till they all fell under the Roman Power The fortune of Rome was the same after it became a Monarchy Treachery Murder and Fury reigned in every part there was no Law but Force he that could corrupt an Army thought he had a sufficient Title to the Empire by this means there were frequently three or four and at one time thirty several Pretenders who called themselves Emperors of which number he only reigned that had the happiness to destroy all his Competitors and he himself continued no longer than till another durst attempt the destruction of him and his Posterity In this state they remained till the wasted and bloodless Provinces were possess'd by a multitude of barbarous Nations The Kingdoms established by them enjoy'd as little Peace or Justice that of France was frequently divided into as many parts as the Kings of Meroveus or Pepin's Race had Children under the names of the Kingdoms of Paris Orleans Soissons Arles Burgundy Austrasia and others These were perpetually vexed by the unnatural fury of Brothers or nearest Relations whilst the miserable Nobility and People were obliged to fight upon their foolish Quarrels till all fell under the power of the strongest This mischief was in some measure cured by a Law made in the time of Hugh Capet that the Kingdom should no more be divided But the Appannages as they call them granted to the King's Brothers with the several Dukedoms and Earldoms erected to please them and other great Lords produced frequently almost as bad effects This is testified by the desperate and mortal Factions that went under the names of Burgundy and Orleans Armagnac and Orleans Montmorency and Guise These were followed by those of the League and the Wars of the Huguenots They were no sooner finish'd by the taking of Rochel but new ones began by the Intrigues of the Duke of Orleans Brother to Lewis the 13th and his Mother and pursued with that animosity by them that they put themselves under the protection of Spain To which may be added that the Houses of Condé Soissons Montmorency Guise Vendosme Angouleme Bouillon Rohan Longueville Rochfocault Epernon and I think I may say every one that is of great

or may not be question'd because none have bin questioned But in truth they are frequently questioned The people do perpetually judg of the behaviour of their Deputies Whensoever any of them has the misfortune not to satisfy the major part of those that chose him he is sure to be rejected with disgrace the next time he shalldesire to be chosen This is not only a sufficient punishment for such faults as he who is but one of five hundred may probably commit but as much as the greatest and freest people of the world did ever inflict upon their Commanders that brought the greatest losses upon them Appius Claudius Pomponius and Terentius Varro survived the greatest defeats that ever the Romans suffer'd and tho they had caused them by their folly and perversness were never punished Yet I thing no man doubts that the Romans had as much right over their own Officers as the Athenians and Carthaginians who frequently put them to death They thought the mind of a Commander would be too much distracted if at the same time he should stand in fear both of the Enemy and his own Countrymen And as they always endeavoured to chuse the best men they would lay no other necessity upon them of performing their duty than what was suggested by their own virtue and love to their Country 'T is not therefore to be thought strange if the people of England have follow'd the most generous and most prosperous Examples Besides if any thing has bin defective in their usual proceedings with their Delegats the inconvenience has bin repaired by the modesty of the best and wisest of them that were chosen Many in all Ages and sometimes the whole body of the Commons have refused to give their opinion in some cases till they had consulted with those that sent them The Houses have bin often adjourned to give them time to do it and if this were done more frequently or that the Towns Cities and Counties had on some occasions given instructions to their Deputies matters would probably have gone better in Parliament than they have often done 3. The question is not whether the Parliament be impeccable or infallible but whether an Assembly of Nobility with a House of Commons composed of those who are best esteemed by their Neighbors in all the Towns and Counties of England are more or less subject to error or corruption than such a man woman or child as happens to be next in blood to the last King Many men do usually see more than one and if we may believe the wisest King In the multitude of Counsellors there is safety Such as are of mature Age good Experience and approved reputation for Virtue and Wisdom will probably judg better than children or fools Men are thought to be more fit for War than women and those who are bred up in Discipline to understand it better than those who never knew any thing of it If some Counties or Cities fail to chuse such men as are eminently capable all will hardly be so mistaken as to chuse those who have no more of Wisdom or Virtue than is usually intail'd upon Families But Filmer at a venture admires the profound Wisdom of the King tho besides such as we have known Histories give us too many proofs that all those who have bin possessed of Crowns have not excelled that way He speaks of Kings in general and makes no difference between Solomon and his foolish Son He distinguishes not our Edward the first from Edward the second Edward the third from Richard the second or Henry the fifth from Henry the sixth And because all of them were Kings all of them if he deserves credit must needs have bin endow'd with profound Wisdom David was wise as an Angel of God therefore the present Kings of France Spain and Sweden must have bin so also when they were but five years old Joan of Castille could not be mad nor the two Joans of Naples infamous Strumpets or else all his Arguments fall to the ground For the Solomon's Wisdom surpassed that of all the people yet men could not rely equally upon that of Rehoboam unless it had bin equal And if they are all equal in Wisdom when they come to be equally Kings Perses of Macedon was as great a Captain as Philip or Alexander Commodus and Heliogabalus were as wise and virtuous as Marcus Aurelius and Antoninus Pius Nay Christina of Sweden in her infancy was as fit to command an Army as her valiant Father If this be most absurd and false there can be neither reason nor sense in proposing as our Author dos that the Power should be in the King because the Parliament is not infallible It is says he for the Head to correct and not to expect the consent of the Members or Parties peccant to be Judges in their own cases nor is it needful to confine the King c. Besides that this is directly contrary to his own fundamental Maxim that no man mnst be the Judg of his own case in as much as this would put the Power into the King's hands to decide the Controversies between himself and the people in which his own Passions privat Interest and the corrupt Counsels of ill Ministers will always lead him out of the way of Justice the inconveniences that may arise from a possibility that the Parliament or People is not infallible will be turned to the most certain and destructive mischiefs as must have fallen out in Spain if upon a supposition that the Estates of Castille might err the correction of such Errors had bin lest to the profound Wisdom and exquisit Judgment of Joan their Queen and Head who was stark mad And the like may be said of many other Princes who through natural or accidental infirmities want of age or dotage have bin utterly unable to judg of any thing The matter will not be much mended tho I pass from Ideots and Lunaticks to such as know well enough how to clothe and feed themselves and to perform the ordinary functions of life and yet have bin as uncapable of giving a right judgment concerning the weighty matters of Government as the weakest of Children or the most furious of Madmen Good manners forbid me to enumerate the examples of this kind which Europe has produced even in this Age But I should commit a greater fault if I did in silence pass over the extravagances of those who being most weak in judgment and irregular in their appetites have bin most impatient of any restraint upon their will The brave Gustavus Adolphus and his Nephew Carolus Gustavus who was not inferior to him in Valour Wisdom and love to his people were content with the Power that the Laws of their Country gave to them But Frederick the fourth of Denmark never rested till he had overthrown the Liberty of that Nation Casimir by attempting the like in Poland lost almost half of that Kingdom and flying from the other left all to

be ravaged by Swedes Tartars and Cosacks The present Emperor who passed his time in setting Songs in Musick with a wretched Italian Eunuch when he ought to have bin at the head of a brave Army raised to oppose the Turks in the year 1664 and which under good conduct might have overthrown the Ottoman Empire as soon as he was delivered from the fear of that Enemy fell upon his own Subjects with such cruelty that they are now sorced to fly to the Turks for protection the Protestants especially who find their condition more tolerable under those professed Enemies to Christianity than to be exposed to the pride avarice perfidiousness and violence of the Jesuits by whom he is governed And the qualities of the King of Portugal are so well known together with the condition to which he would have brought his Kingdom if he had not bin sent to the Tercera's that I need not speak particularly of him If Kings therefore by virtue of their office are constituted Judges over the body of their people because the People or Parliaments representing them are not insallible those Kings who are children fools disabled by age or madmen are so also women have the same right where they are admitted to the succession those men who tho of ripe age and not superannuated nor directly fools or madmen yet absolutely uncapable of judging important Affairs or by their passions interests vices or malice and wickedness of their Ministers Servants and Favorites are set to oppress and ruin the people enjoy the same privilege than which nothing can be imagined more absurd and abominable nor more directly tending to the corruption and destruction of the Nations under them for whose good and safety our Author confesses they have their power SECT XXXIX Those Kings only are heads of the People who are good wise and seek to advance no Interest but that of the Publick THE worst of men seldom arrive to such a degree of impudence as plainly to propose the most mischievous follies and enormities They who are enemies to Virtue and fear not God are afraid of men and dare not offer such things as the world will not bear lest by that means they should overthrow their own designs All poison must be disguised and no man can be perswaded to eat Arsenic unless it be cover'd with something that appears to be harmless Creusa would have abhorr'd Medea's present if the pestilent venom had not bin hidden by the exterior lustre of Gold and Gems The Garment that destroy'd Hercules appear'd beautiful and Eve had neither eaten of the forbidden Tree nor given the Fruit to her Husband if it had not seemed to be good and pleasant and she had not bin induced to believe that by eating it they should both be as Gods The Servants of the Devil have always followed the same method their malice is carried on by fraud and they have seldom destroy'd any but such as they had first deceived Truth can never conduce to mischief and is best discovered by plain words but nothing is more usual with ill men than to cover their mischievous designs with figurative phrases It would be too ridiculous to say in plain terms that all Kings without distinction are better able to judg of all matters than any or all their people they must therefore be called the Head that thereby they may be invested with all the preeminences which in a natural body belong to that part and men must be made to believe the analogy between the natural and political body to be perfect But the matter must be better examined before this mortal poison seem fit to be swallowed The word Head is figuratively used both in Scripture and prosane Authors in several senses in relation to places or persons and always implies something of real or seeming preeminence in point of honor or jurisdiction Thus Damascus is said to be the head of Syria Samaria of Ephraiam and Ephraim of the ten Tribes that is Ephraim was the chief Tribe Samaria was the chief City of Ephraim and Damascus of Syria tho it be certain that Ephraim had no jurisdiction over the other Tribes nor Samaria over the other Cities of Ephraim but every one according to the Law had an equal power within it self or the Territories belonging to it and no privileges were granted to one above another except to Jerusalem in the matter of Religion because the Temple was placed there The words also Head Prince principal Man or Captain seem to be equivocal and in this sense the same men are called Heads of the Tribes Princes in the houses of their Fathers and 't is said that two hundred Heads of the Tribe of Reuben were carried away captive by Tiglath Pilezer and proportionably in the other Tribes which were a strange thing if the word did imply that supreme absolute and infinite Power that our Author attributes to it and no man of less understanding than he can comprehend how there should be two hundred or more sovereign unlimited Powers in one Tribe most especially when 't is certain that one series of Kings had for many Ages reigned over that Tribe and nine more and that every one of those Tribes as well as the particular Cities even from their first entrance into the promised Land had a full jurisdiction within it self When the Gileadites came to Jephtha he suspected them and asked whether indeed they intended to make him their Head they answered if he would lead them against the Ammonites he should be their Head In the like sense when Jul. Caesar in despair would have killed himself one of his Soldiers disswaded him from that design by telling him That the safety of so many Nations that had made him their Head depending upon his life it would be cruelty in him to take such a resolution But for all that when this Head was taken off the Body did still subsist upon which I observe many fundamental differences between the relation of this figurative Head even when the word is rightly applied and that of the natural Head to their respective Bodies The figurative Heads may be many the natural but one The people makes or creates the figurative Head the natural is from it self or connate with the Body The natural Body cannot change or subsist without the natural Head but a people may change and subsist very well without the artificial Nay if it had bin true that the world had chosen Cesar as it was not for he was chosen only by a sactious mercenary Army and the soundest part so far opposed that Election that they brought him to think of killing himself there could have bin no truth in this flattering assertion That the safety of the whole depended upon his life for the world could not only subsist without him but without any such Head as it had done before he by the help of his corrupted Soldiery had usurped the Power which also shews that a civil Head may be