one I desire to know who he is and where we may find him that the Empire of the World may be delivered to him But if he cannot be found the business is at an end for every man in the World may pretend himself to be the person and the infinite controversies arising thereupon can never be decided unless either the Genealogies of every one from Noah were extant and proved or we had a Word from Heaven with a sufficient testimony of his mission who announceth it When this is done 't will be time to consider what kind of obedience is due to this wonderfully happy and glorious Person But whilst the first appears to be absolutely impossible and we have no promise or reason to expect the other the proposition is to be esteemed one of our Author 's empty whimseys which cannot be received by mankind unless they come all to be possessed with an Epidemical madness which would cast them into that which Hobbs calls Bellum omnium contra omnes when every Man's Sword would be drawn against every man and every man 's against him if God should so abandon the World to suffer them to fall into such misery If this pretended right be divided it concerns us to know by whom when how and to whom for the division cannot be of any value unless the right was originally in one that he did exercise this right in making the division that the parcels into which the World is divided are according to the allotment that was made and that the persons claiming them by virtue of it are the true Heirs of those to whom they were first granted Many other difficulties may be alledged no less inextricable than these but this seeming sufficient for the present I shall not trouble my self with more promising that when they shall be removed I will propose others or consessing my errors yield up the cause But if the Dominion of the whole World cannot belong to any one man and every one have an equal title to that which should give it or if it did belong to one none did ever exercise it in governing the whole or dividing it or if he did divide it no man knows how when and to whom so that they who lay claim to any parcels can give no testimony of that division nor shew any better title than other men derived from his first progenitor to whom 't is said to have bin granted and that we have neither a Word nor the promise of a Word from God to decide the controversies arising thereupon nor any Prophet giving testimony of his mission that takes upon him to do it the whole Fabrick of our Author 's Patriarchical Dominion falls to the ground and they who propose these Doctrines which if they were received would be a root of perpetual and irreconcilable hatred in every man against every man can be accounted no less than Ministers of the Devil tho they want the abilities he has sometimes insused into those who have bin imploy'd upon the like occasions And we may justly conclude that God having never given the whole World to be governed by one man nor prescribed any rule for the division of it nor declared where the right of dividing or subdividing that which every man has should terminate we may safely affirm that the whole is for ever left to the will and discretion of man We may enter into form and continue in greater or lesser Societies as best pleases our selves The right of Paternity as to Dominion is at an end and no more remains but the love veneration and obedience which proceeding from a due sense of the benefits of Birth and Education have their root in Gratitude and are esteemed sacred and inviolable by all that are sober and vertuous And as 't is impossible to transfer these benefits by inheritance so 't is impossible to transfer the rights arising from them No man can be my Father but he that did beget me and 't is as absurd to say I owe that Duty to one who is not my Father which I owe to my Father as to say he did beget me who did not beget me for the obligation that arises from benefits can only be to him that conferred them 'T is in vain to say the same is due to his Heir for that can take place only when he has but one which in this case signifies nothing For if I being the only Son of my Father inherit his Right and have the same power over my Children as he had over me if I had one hundred Brothers they must all inherit the same and the Law of England which acknowledges one only Heir is not general but municipal and is so far from being general as the precept of God and Nature that I doubt whether it was ever known or used in any Nation of the World beyond our Island The words of the Apostle If we are Children we are therefore Heirs and Co-heirs with Christ are the voice of God and Nature and as the universal Law of God and Nature is always the same every one of us who have Children have the same Right over them as Abraham Isaac and Jacob had over theirs and that Right which was not devolved to any one of them but inherited by them all I mean the right of Father as Father not the peculiar promises which were not according to the Law of Nature but the election of Grace is also inherited by every one of us and ours that is by all Mankind But if that which could be inherited was inherited by all and it be impossible that a right of Dominion over all can be due to every one then all that is or can be inherited by every one is that exemption from the Dominion of another which we call Liberty and is the gift of God and Nature SECT XVIII If a right of Dominion were esteemed Hereditary according to the Law of Nature a multitude of destructive and inextricable Controversies would thereupon arise THere being no such thing therefore according to the Law of Nature as an Hereditary Right to the Dominion of the World or any part of it nor one man that can derive to himself a title from the first Fathers of Mankind by which he can rightly pretend to be preferred before others to that command or a part of it and none can be derived from Nimrod or other Usurpers who had none in themselves we may justly spare our pains of seeking farther into that matter But as things of the highest importance can never be too fully explained it may not be amiss to observe That if Mankind could be brought to believe that such a right of Dominion were by the Law of God and Nature hereditary a great number of the most destructive and inextricable Controversies must thereupon arise which the wisdom and goodness of God can never enjoin and Nature which is reason can never intend but at present I shall only mention two from whence others
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
better or worse one than another cannot spring from any other root than the consent of the several Nations where they are in force and their opinions that such methods were best for them But if God have made a discrimination of people he that would thereupon ground a Title to the dominion of any one must prove that Nation to be under the curse of Slavery which for any thing I know was only denounced against Cham and 't is as hard to determine whether the sense of it be temporal spiritual or both as to tell preeisely what Nations by being only descended from him fall under the Penalties threatned If these therefore be either intirely false or impossible to be proved true there is no discrimination or not known to us and every People has a right of disposing of their Government as well as the Polanders Danes Swedes Germans and such as are or were under the Roman Empire And if any Nation has a natural Lord before he be admitted by their consent it must be by a peculiar act of their own as the Crown of France by an act of that Nation which they call the Salique Law is made hereditary to Males in a direct Line or the nearest to the direct and others in other places are otherwise disposed I might rest here with full assurance that no Disciple of Filmer can prove this of any people in the world nor give so much as the shadow of a reason to perswade us there is any such thing in any Nation or at least in those where we are concerned and presume little regard will be had to what he has said since he cannot prove of any that which he so boldly affirms of all But because good men ought to have no other object than Truth which in matters of this importance can never be made too evident I will venture to go farther and assert That as the various ways by which several Nations dispose of the succession to their respective Crowns shew they were subject to no other Law than their own which they might have made different by the same right they made it to be what it is even those who have the greatest veneration for the reigning Families and the highest regard for proximity of blood have always preferr'd the safety of the Commonwealth before the concernments of any Person or Family and have not only laid aside the nearest in blood when they were found to be notoriously vicious and wicked but when they have thought it more convenient to take others And to prove this I intend to make use of no other Examples than those I find in the Histories of Spain France and England Whilst the Goths governed Spain not above four persons in the space of three hundred years were the immediate successors of their Fathers but the Brother Cousin German or some other man of the Families of the Balthei or Amalthei was preferred before the Children of the deceased King and if it be said this was according to the Law of that Kingdom I answer that it was therefore in the power of that Nation to make Laws for themselves and consequently others have the same right One of their Kings called Wamba was deposed and made a Monk after he had reigned well many years but falling into a swound and his friends thinking him past recovery cut off his hair and put a Monk's Frock upon him that according to the superstition of those times he might die in it and the cutting off the hair being a most disgraceful thing amongst the Goths they would not restore him to his Authority Suintila another of their Kings being deprived of the Crown for his ill Government his Children and Brothers were excluded and Sisinandus crowned in his room This Kingdom being not long after overthrown by the Moors a new one arose from its ashes in the person of Don Pelayo first King of the Asturia's which increasing by degrees at last came to comprehend all Spain and so continues to this day But not troubling my self with all the deviations from the common rule in the collateral Lines of Navarr Arragon and Portugal I find that by fifteen several Instances in that one series of Kings in the Asturia's and Leon who afterwards came to be Kings of Castille it is fully proved that what respect soever they shew'd to the next in blood who by the Law were to succeed they preferred some other person as often as the supreme Law of taking care that the Nation might receive no detriment perswaded them to it Don Pelayo enjoy'd for his life the Kingdom conferred upon him by the Spaniards who with him retired into the Mountains to defend themselves against the Moors and was succeeded by his Son Favila But tho Favila left many Sons when he died Alphonso sirnamed the Chast was advanced to the Crown and they all laid aside Fruela Son to Alphonso the Catholick was for his cruelty deposed put to death and his Sons excluded Aurelio his Cousin German succeeded him and at his death Silo who married his Wives Sister was preferr'd before the Males of the Blood Royal. Alphonso sirnamed El Casto was first violently dispossess'd of the Crown by a Bastard of the Royal Family but he being dead the Nobility and People thinking Alphonso more fit to be a Monk than a King gave the Crown to Bermudo called El Diacono but Bermudo after several years resigning the Kingdom they conceived a better opinion of Alphonso and made him King Alphonso dying without issue Don Ramiro Son to Bermudo was preserred before the Nephews of Alphonso Don Ordonno fourth from Ramiro left four legitimate Sons but they being young the Estates laid them aside and made his Brother Fruela King Fruela had many Children but the same Estates gave the Crown to Alphonso the Fourth who was his Nephew Alphonso turning Monk recommended his Son Ordonno to the Estates of the Kingdom but they resused him and made his Brother Ramiro King Ordonno third Son to Ramiro dying left a Son called Bermudo but the Estates took his Brother Sancho and advanced him to the throne Henry the First being accidentally killed in his youth left only two Sisters Blanche married to Lewis Son to Philip August King of France and Berenguela married to Alphonso King of Leon. The Estates made Ferdinand Son of Berenguela the youngest Sister King excluding Blanche with her Husband and Children for being Strangers and Berenguela her self because they thought not fit that her Husband should have any part in the Government Alphonso El Savio seems to have bin a very good Prince but applying himself more to the study of Astrology than to affairs of Government his eldest Son Ferdinand de la Cerda dying and leaving his Sons Alphonso and Ferdinand very young the Nobility Clergy and People deposed him excluded his Grandchildren and gave the Crown to Don Sancho his younger Son sirnamed El Bravo thinking him more fit to command them against
DISCOURSES CONCERNING GOVERNMENT BY Algernon Sidney Son to Robert Earl of Leicester and Ambassador from the Commonwealth of England to Charles Gustavus King of Sweden Published from an Original Manuscript of the Author LONDON Printed and are to be sold by the Booksellers of London and Westminster MDCXCVIII THE PREFACE HOW highly the Writings of wise and good Men concerning Government have bin esteemed in all Ages the testimony of History and the preservation of so many Books composed by the Antients on that Subject do sufficiently manifest And it may be truly said that unless men have utterly abandon'd themselves to all that is detestable they have seldom attempted to detract from the worth of the Assertors of Liberty tho Ambition and other passions have influenced them to act in opposition to it When Augustus had surprised a young Roman who was related to him reading a political Discourse of Cicero he commended his judgment in that choice The History of France written by the President de Thou with a spirit of Freedom that might have bin worthy of those who had liv'd before the violation of their Liberty has bin so generally valued by men of all ranks in that Nation that'tis hard to find a Book on any important Subject which has had so many Editions And the just esteem that the Emperor Charles the fifth made of the Memoirs of Philip de Commines tho that Author has given so many instances of his detestation of Tyranny may be enough to put this matter out of dispute But if all other proof were wanting the implacable hatred and unwearied industry of the worst of men to suppress such Writings would abundantly testify their excellency That Nations should be well informed of their Rights is of the most absolute necessity because the happiness or infelicity of any People intirely depends upon the enjoyment or deprivation of Liberty which is so invincibly proved in the following Discourses that to endeavour to make it more clear would be an unpardonable presumption If any man think the publication of this Work to be unseasonable at this time he is desired to consider that as men expect good Laws only from a good Government so the Reign of a Prince whose Title is founded upon the principle of Liberty which is here defended cannot but be the most proper if not the only time to inform the People of their just Rights that from a due sense of their inestimable value they may be encouraged to assert them against the attempts of ill men in time to come 'T is not necessary to say any thing concerning the Person of the Author He was so well known in the world so universally esteemed by those who knew how to set a just value upon true Merit and will appear so admirable in the following Discourses as not to stand in need of a flattering Panegyrick But it may not be amiss to say something of the Discourses now published The Paper delivered to the Sheriffs immediately before his death informs us that he had left a Large and a Lesser Treatise written against the Principles contained in Filmer's Book and that a small part of the lesser Treatise had bin produced for evidence against him at his Trial. 'T is there also said that the lesser Treatise neither was nor probably ever should have bin finished This therefore is the Large Work mentioned in that Paper and not the Lesser upon part of which the wicked Sentence pronounc'd and executed against him was grounded It remains only to add a few words for satisfaction of the Publick that these Discourses are genuine And here I shall not need to say that they were put into the hands of a Person of eminent Quality and Integrity by the Author himself and that the Original is in the judgment of those who knew him best all written by his own hand His inimitable manner of treating this noble Subject is instead of a thousand demonstrations that the Work can belong to no other than the Great Man whose name it bears DISCOURSES CONCERNING GOVERNMENT CHAP. I. SECTION I. INTRODUCTION HAVING lately seen a Book intituled Patriarcha written by Sir Robert Filmer concerning the Universal and undistinguished Right of all Kings I thought a time of leisure might be well employed in examining his Doctrine and the Questions arising from it which seem so far to concern all Mankind that besides the influence upon our future Life they may be said to comprehend all that in this World deserves to be cared for If he say true there is but one Government in the World that can have any thing of Justice in it and those who have hitherto bin esteemed the best and wisest of Men for having constituted Commonwealths or Kingdoms and taken much pains so to proportion the Powers of several Magistracies that they might all concur in procuring the Publick Good or so to divide the Powers between the Magistrates and People that a well-regulated Harmony might be preserved in the whole were the most unjust and foolish of all Men. They were not builders but overthrowers of Governments Their business was to set up Aristocratical Democratical or mixed Governments in opposition to that Monarchy which by the immutable Laws of God and Nature is imposed upon Mankind or presumptuously to put Shackles upon the Monarch who by the same Laws is to be absolute and uncontrolled They were rebellious and disobedient Sons who rose up against their Father and not only refused to hearken to his Voice but made him bend to their Will In their opinion such only deserved to be called Good Men who endeavoured to be good to Mankind or to that Country to which they were more particularly related and in as much as that Good consists in a felicity of Estate and perfection of Person they highly valued such as had endeavoured to make Men better wiser and happier This they understood to be the end for which Men enter'd into Societies And tho Cicero says that Commonwealths were instituted for the obtaining of Justice he contradicts them not but comprehends all in that word because 't is just that whosoever receives a Power should employ it wholly for the accomplishment of the Ends for which it was given This Work could be performed only by such as excelled in Virtue but lest they should deflect from it no Government was thought to be well constituted unless the Laws prevailed above the Commands of Men and they were accounted as the worst of Beasts who did not prefer such a Condition before a subjection to the fluctuating and irregular Will of a Man If we believe Sir Robert all this is mistaken Nothing of this kind was ever left to the choice of Men. They are not to enquire what conduces to their own good God and Nature have put us into a way from which we are not to swerve We are not to live to him nor to our selves but to the Master that he hath set over us One Government
this our Author attributes it to the wisdom of Princes But before this comes to be authentick we must at the least be sure that all Princes have this great and profound Wisdom which our Author acknowledges to be in them and which is certainly necessary for the doing of such great things if they were referred to them They seem to us to be born like other men and to be generally no wiser than other men We are not obliged to believe that Nebuchadnezzar was wise till God had given him the heart of a man or that his Grandson Belshazzar who being laid in the balance was found too light had any such profound Wisdom Ahasuerus shewed it not in appointing all the People of God to be slain upon a Lie told to him by a Rascal and the matter was not very much mended when being informed of the truth he gave them leave to kill as many of their Enemies as they pleased The hardness of Pharaoh's heart and the overthrow thereby brought upon himself and People dos not argue so profound a Judgment as our Author presumes every Prince must have And 't is not probable that Samuel would have told Saul He had done foolishly if Kings had always bin so exceeding wise Nay if Wisdom had bin annexed to the Character Solomon might have spared the pains of asking it from God and Rehoboam must have had it Not to multiply examples out of Scripture 't is believed that Xerxes had not inflicted Stripes upon the Sea for breaking his Navy in pieces if he had bin so very wise Caligula for the same reason might have saved the labour of making love to the Moon or have chosen a fitter Subject to advance to the Consulat than his Horse Incitatus Nero had not endeavoured to make a Woman of a Man nor married a Man as a Woman Many other Examples might be alledged to shew that Kings are not always wise and not only the Roman Satyrist who says Quicquid delirant Reges c. shews that he did not believe them to be generally wiser than other men but Solomon himself judges them to be as liable to infirmities when he prefers a wise Child before an old and foolish King If therefore the strength of our Author's Argument lies in the certainty of the Wisdom of Kings it can be of no value till he proves it to be more universal in them than History or Experience will permit us to believe Nay if there be Truth or Wisdom in the Scripture which frequently represents the wicked Man as a Fool we cannot think that all Kings are wise unless it be proved that none of them have bin wicked and when this is performed by Filmer's Disciples I shall confess my error Men give testimony of their Wisdom when they undertake that which they ought to do and rightly perform that which they undertake both which points do utterly fail in the subject of our Discourse We have often heard of such as have adopted those to be their Sons who were not so and some Civil Laws approve it This signifies no more than that such a man either through affection to one who is not his Son or to his Parents or for some other reason takes him into his Family and shews kindness to him as to his Son but the adoption of Fathers is a whimsical piece of nonsense If this be capable of an aggravation I think none can be greater than not to leave it to my own discretion who having no Father may resolve to pay the Duty I owed to my Father to one who may have shewed Kindness to me but for another to impose a Father upon a Man or a People composed of Fathers or such as have Fathers whereby they should be deprived of that natural Honour and Right which he makes the foundation of his Discourse is the utmost of all absurdities If any Prince therefore have ever undertaken to appoint Fathers of his People he cannot be accounted a man of profound Wisdom but a Fool or a Madman and his acts can be of no value But if the thing were consonant to Nature and referred to the will of Princes which I absolutely deny the frequent Extravagancies committed by them in the elevation of their Favourites shews that they intend not to make them Fathers of the People or know not what they do when they do it To chuse or institute a Father is nonsense in the very term but if any were to be chosen to perform the Office of Fathers to such as have none and are not of age to provide for themselves as men do Tutors or Guardians for Orphans none could be capable of being elected but such as in kindness to the person they were to take under their care did most resemble his true Father and had the vertues and abilities required rightly to provide for his good If this fails all Right ceases and such a corruption is introduced as we saw in our Court of Wards which the Nation could not bear when the Institution was perverted and the King who ought to have taken a tender care of the Wards and their Estates delivered them as a prey to those whom he favoured Our Author ridiculously attributes the Title and Authority of Father to the word Prince for it hath none in it and signifies no more than a Man who in some kind is more eminent than the Vulgar In this sense Mutius Scaevola told Porsenna that Three hundred Princes of the Roman Youth had conspired against him by which he could not mean that three hundred Fathers of the Roman Youth but three hundred Roman young men had conspired and they could not be Fathers of the City unless they had bin Fathers of their own Fathers Princeps Senatus was understood in the same sense and T. Sempronius the Censor chusing Q. Fabius Maximus to that Honour gave for a reason Se lectarum Q. Fabium Maximum quem tum Principem Romanae Civitatis esse vel Annibale judice dicturus esset which could not be understood that Hannibal thought him to be the Father or Lord of the City for he knew he was not but the Man who for Wisdom and Valour was the most eminent in it The like are and ought to be the Princes of every Nation and tho something of Honour may justly be attributed to the Descendents of such as have done great Services to their Country yet they who degenerate from them cannot be esteemed Princes much less can such Honours or Rights be conferred upon Court-creatures or Favourites Tiberius Caligula Claudius Nero Galba and others could advance Macro Pallas Narcissus Tigellinus Vinnius Laco and the like to the highest degrees of Riches and Power but they still continued to be Villains and so they died No wise or good Man ever thought otherwise of those who through the folly of Princes have bin advanced to the highest places in several Countries The madness of attributing to them a paternal power seems to
have bin peculiarly reserved to compleat the infamy of our Author for he only could acknowledg a cooptitious Father or give to another man the power of chusing him I confess that a man in his infancy may have bin exposed like Moses Cyrus Oedipus Romulus He may have bin taken in War or by the charity of some good person saved from the teeth of wild Beasts or from the Sword by which his Parents fell and may have bin educated with that care which Fathers usually have of their Children 't is reasonable that such a one in the whole course of his life should pay that veneration and obedience to him who gave him as it were a second birth which was due to his natural Father and this tho improperly may be called an Adoption But to think that any man can assume it to himself or confer it upon another and thereby arrogate to himself the Service and Obedience which by the most tender and sacred Laws of Nature we owe to those from whom we receive Birth and Education is the most preposterous folly that hitherto has ever entered into the heart of man Our Author nevertheless is not ashamed of it and gives Reasons no way unsutable to the Proposition Men are says he adopted Fathers of Provinces for their Abilities Merits or Fortunes But these Abilities can simply deserve nothing for if they are ill employed they are the worst of Vices and the most powerful Instruments of Mischief Merits in regard of another are nothing unless they be to him and he alone can merit from me the respect due to a Father who hath conferred Benefits upon me in some measure proportionable to those which we usually receive from our Fathers and the world may judg whether all the Court-Ministers and Favorites that we have known do upon this account deserve to be esteemed Fathers of Nations But to allow this on account of their Fortunes is if possible more extravagant than any thing that hath bin yet utter'd By this account Mazarin must have bin Father of the French Nation The same Right was inherited by his chast Niece and remained in her till she and her silly Husband dissipated the Treasures which her Uncle had torn from the Bowels of that People The Partizans may generally claim the same Right over the Provinces they have pillaged Old Audley Dog Smith Bp Duppa Brownloe Child Dashwood Fox c. are to be esteemed Fathers of the People of England This Doctrine is perfectly Canonical if Filmer and Heylin were good Divines and Legal if they judged more rightly touching matters of Law But if it be absurd and detestable they are to be reputed Men who by attributing the highest Honours to the vilest Wretches of the world for what they had gain'd by the most abominable means endeavour to encrease those Vices which are already come to such a height that they can by no other way be brought to a greater Daily experience too plainly shews with what rage Avarice usually fills the hearts of men There are not many destructive Villanies committed in the World that do not proceed from it In this respect 't is called Idolatry and the Root of all evil Solomon warns us to beware of such as make haste to grow rich and says they shall not be innocent But 't is no matter what the Prophets the Apostles or the wisest of men say of Riches and the ways of gaining them for our Author tells us that men of the greatest Fortunes without examining how they came to them or what use they make of them deserve to be made Fathers of Provinces But this is not his only quarrel with all that is just and good His whole Book goes directly against the Letter and Spirit of the Scripture The work of all those whom God in several Ages has raised up to announce his Word was to abate the Lusts and Passions that arise in the hearts of men to shew the vanity of worldly Enjoyments with the dangers that accompany Riches and Honours and to raise our hearts to the love of those Treasures that perish not Honest and wise men following the Light of Nature have in some measure imitated this Such as lived private lives as Plato Socrates Epictetus and others made it their business to abate mens Lusts by shewing the folly of seeking vain Honours useless Riches or unsatisfying Pleasures and those who were like to them if they were raised to supreme Magistracies have endeavoured by the severest Punishments to restrain men from committing the Crimes by which Riches are most commonly gained but Filmer and Heylin lead us into a new way If they deserve credit whosoever would become supreme Lord and Father of his Country absolute sacred and inviolable is only to kill him that is in the head of the Government Usurpation confers an equal Right with Election or Inheritance We are to look upon the Power not the Ways by which it is obtained Possession only is to be regarded and men must venerate the present Power as set up by God tho gained by Violence Treachery or Poison Children must not impose Laws upon nor examine the Actions of their Father Those who are a little more modest and would content themselves with the honour of being Fathers and Lords only of Provinces if they get Riches by the favour of the King or the favour of the King by Riches may receive that honour from him The Lord Paramount may make them peculiar Lords of each Province as sacred as himself and by that means every man shall have an immediate and a subaltern Father This would be a Spur to excite even the most sleeping Lusts and a Poison that would fill the gentlest Spirits with the most violent Furies If men should believe this there would hardly be found one of whom it might not be said Hac spe minanti fulmen occurret Jovi No more is required to fill the World with Fire and Blood than the reception of these Precepts No man can look upon that as a Wickedness which shall render him Sacred nor fear to attempt that which shall make him God's Vicegerent And I doubt whether the wickedness of filling mens heads with such Notions was ever equalled unless by him who said Ye shall not die but be as Gods But since our Author is pleased to teach us these strange things I wish he would also have told us how many men in every Nation ought to be look'd upon as adopted Fathers What proportion of Riches Ability or Merit is naturally or divinely required to make them capable of this sublime Character Whether the Right of this Chimerical Father dos not destroy that of the Natural or whether both continue in force and men thereby stand obliged in despite of what Christ said to serve two Masters For if the Right of my Artificial Father arise from any Act of the King in favour of his Riches Abilities or Merit I ought to know whether he is to excel in
The Paternal Right devolves to and is inherited by all the Children THO the perversity of our Author's Judgment and Nature may have driven him into the most gross Errors 't is not amiss to observe that many of those delivered by him proceed from his ignorance of the most important Differences between Father and Lord King and Tyrant which are so evident and irreconcilable that one would have thought no man could be so stupid as not to see it impossible for one and the same man at the same time to be Father and Master King and Tyrant over the same Persons But lest he should think me too scrupulous or too strict in inquiring after Truth I intend for the present to wave that inquiry and to seek what was good for Adam or Noah What we have reason to believe they desired to transmit to their Posterity and to take it for a perpetual Law in its utmost extent which I think will be of no advantage to our Author for this Authority which was universal during their lives must necessarily after their decease be divided as an Inheritance into as many parcels as they had Children The Apostle says If Children then Heirs Heirs of God and joint Heirs with Christ which alluding to the Laws and Customs of Nations could have bin of no force unless it had bin true and known to be so But if Children are Heirs or joint Heirs whatsoever Authority Adam or Noah had is inherited by every man in the world and that title of Heir which our Author so much magnifies as if it were annexed to one single person vanishes into nothing or else the words of the Apostle could have neither strength nor truth in them but would be built upon a false Foundation which may perhaps agree with our Author's Divinity Yet if the Apostle had not declared himself so fully in this Point we might easily have seen that Adam and Noah did leave their Children in that equality for Fathers are ever understood to embrace all their Children with equal Affection till the discovery of personal Vertues or Vices make a difference But the personal Vertues that give a reasonable preference of one before another or make him more fit to govern than the others cannot appear before he is nor can be annexed to any one Line Therefore the Father cannot be thought to have given to one Man or his Descendents the Government of his Brethren and their Descendents Besides tho the Law of England may make one man to be sole Heir of his Father yet the Laws of God and Nature do not so All the Children of Noah were his Heirs The Land promised to Abraham Isaac and Jacob was equally divided among their Children If the Children of Joseph made two Tribes it was not as the first born but by the Will of Jacob who adopted Ephraim and Manasseh and they thereby became his Sons and obtained an Inheritance equal to that of the other Tribes The Law allowed a double Portion to the first-begotten but this made a difference between Brothers only in proportion whereas that between Lord and Servant is in specie not in degree And if our Author's Opinion might take place instead of such a division of the common Inheritance between Brothers as was made between the Children of Jacob all must continue for ever Slaves to one Lord which would establish a difference in specie between Brethren which Nature abhors If Nature dos not make one man Lord over his Brethren he can never come to be their Lord unless they make him so or he subdue them If he subdue them it is an act of Violence contrary to Right which may consequently be recovered If they make him Lord 't is for their own sakes not for his and he must seek their good not his own lest as Aristotle says he degenerate from a King into a Tyrant He therefore who would perswade us that the Dominion over every Nation dos naturally belong to one Man Woman or Child at a venture or to the Heir whatsoever he or she be as to Age Sex or other Qualifications must prove it good for all Nations to be under them But as Reason is our Nature that can never be natural to us that is not rational Reason gives Paria paribus equal Power to those who have equal Abilities and Merit It allots to every one the part he is most fit to perform and this fitness must be equally lasting with the Law that allots it But as it can never be good for great Nations having men amongst them of Vertue Experience Wisdom and Goodness to be governed by Children Fools or vicious and wicked Persons and we neither find that the Vertues required in such as deserve to govern them did ever continue in any race of men nor have reason to believe they ever will it can never be reasonable to annex the Dominion of a Nation to any one Line We may take this upon Solomon's word Wo to thee O Land when thy King is a Child and thy Princes eat in the morning And I wish the experience of all Ages did not make this Truth too evident to us This therefore can never be the Work much less the Law of Nature and if there be any such thing in the world as the Dominion over a Nation inseparably united to a Man and his Family it can have no other Root than a civil or municipal Law which is not the subject of our Discourse Moreover every Father's Right must cease when he ceases to be or be transmitted to those who being also Fathers have the same Title to it And tho the contrary method of annexing the whole Inheritance to one Person or exposing all his Brethren to be destroyed by his rage if they will not submit may conduce to the enlargement of a proud and violent Empire as in Turky where he that gains the Power usually begins his Reign with the slaughter of his Brothers and Nephews yet it can never agree with the piety gentleness and wisdom of the Patriarchs or the Laws of God and Nature These things being agreed we need not trouble our selves with the Limits or Definition of a Family and as little with the Titles given to the Head of it 'T is all one to us whether it be confined to one Roof and Fire or extended farther and none but such as are strangers to the practice of mankind can think that titles of Civility have a power to create a right of Dominion Every man in Latin is called Dominus unless such as are of the vilest condition or in a great subjection to those who speak to them and yet the word strictly taken relates only to Servus for a Man is Lord only of his Servant or Slave The Italians are not less liberal of the Titles of Signore and Padrone and the Spaniards of Sennor but he would be ridiculous in those Countries who thereupon should arrogate to himself a right of Dominion over those who
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
Sons of Vespasian and Constantine inherited the Roman Empire tho their Fathers had no such title but gaining the Empire by violence which Hooker says is meer Tyranny that can create no right they could devolve none to their Children The Kings of France of the three races have inherited the Crown but Meroveus Pepin and Hugh Capet could neither pretend title nor conquest or any other Right than what was conferred upon them by the Clergy Nobility and People and consequently whatsoever is inherited from them can have no other Original for that is the gift of the People which is bestowed upon the first under whom the Successors claim as if it had bin by a peculiar Act given to every one of them It will be more hard to shew how the Crown of England is become hereditary unless it be by the Will of the People for tho it were granted that some of the Saxon Kings came in by inheritance which I do not having as I think proved them to have bin absolutely elective yet William the Norman did not for he was a Bastard and could inherit nothing William Rufus and Henry did not for their elder Brother Robert by right of inheritance ought to have bin preferred before them Stephen and Henry the second did not for Maud the only Heiress of Henry the first was living when both were crowned Richard John and those who followed did not for they were Bastards born in adultery They must therefore have received their Right from the People or they could have none at all and their Successors fall under the same condition Moreover I find great variety in the deduction of this hereditary Right In Sparta there were two Kings of different Families endowed with an equal power If the Heraclidae did reign as Fathers of the People the AEacidae did not if the right was in the AEacidae the Heraclidae could have none for 't is equally impossible to have two Fathers as two thousand 'T is in vain to say that two Families joined and agreed to reign jointly for 't is evident the Spartans had Kings before the time of Hercules or Achilles who were the Fathers of the two Races If it be said that the regal power with which they were invested did entitle them to the right of Fathers it must in like manner have belonged to the Roman Consuls Military Tribunes Dictators and Pretors for they had more Power than the Spartan Kings and that glorious Nation might change their Fathers every year and multiply or diminish the number of them as they pleased If this be most ridiculous and absurd 't is certain that the Name and Office of King Consul Dictator or the like dos not confer any determined Right upon the Person that hath it Every one has a right to that which is allotted to him by the Laws of the Country by which he is created As the Persians Spartans Romans or Germans might make such Magistrates and under such names as best pleased themselves and accordingly enlarge or diminish their Power the same Right belongs to all Nations and the Rights due unto as well as the Duties incumbent upon every one are to be known only by the Laws of that place This may seem strange to those who know neither Books nor Things Histories nor Laws but is well explain'd by Grotius who denying the Soveraign Power to be annexed to any Man speaks of divers Magistrates under several names that had and others that under the same names had it not and distinguishes those who have the Summum Imperium summo modo from those who have it modo non summo and tho probably he looked upon the first sort as a thing meerly speculative if by that summo modo a right of doing what one pleases be understood yet he gives many Examples of the other and among those who had liberrimum imperium if any had it he names the Kings of the Sabeans who nevertheless were under such a condition that tho they were as Agatharchidas reports obeyed in all things whilst they continued within the Walls of their Palace might be stoned by any that met them without it He finds also another obstacle to the Absolute power Cum Rex partem habeat summi Imperii partem Senatus sive Populus which parts are proportioned according to the Laws of each Kingdom whether Hereditary or Elective both being equally regulated by them The Law that gives and measures the Power prescribes Rules how it should be transmitted In some places the supreme Magistrates are annually elected in others their Power is for life in some they are meerly elective in others hereditary under certain Rules or Limitations The antient Kingdoms and Lordships of Spain were hereditary but the Succession went ordinarily to the eldest of the reigning Family not to the nearest in Blood This was the ground of the Quarrel between Corbis the Brother and Orsua the Son of the last Prince decided by Combat before Scipio I know not whether the Goths brought that custom with them when they conquered Spain or whether they learnt it from the Inhabitants but certain it is that keeping themselves to the Families of the Balthei and Amalthei they had more regard to Age than Proximity and almost ever preferred the Brother or eldest Kinsman of the last King before his Son The like custom was in use among the Moors in Spain and Africa who according to the several Changes that happened among the Families of Almohades Almoranides and Benemerini did always take one of the reigning Blood but in the choice of him had most respect to Age and Capacity This is usually called the Law of Thanestry and as in many other places prevailed also in Ireland till that Country fell under the English Government In France and Turky the Male that is nearest in Blood succeeds and I do not know of any deviation from that Rule in France since Henry the First was preferred before Robert his elder Brother Grandchild to Hugh Capet but notwithstanding the great veneration they have for the Royal Blood they utterly exclude Females lest the Crown should fall to a Stranger or a Woman that is seldom able to govern her self should come to govern so great a People Some Nations admit Females either simply as well as Males or under a condition of not marrying out of their Country or without the consent of the Estates with an absolute exclusion of them and their Children if they do according to which Law now in force among the Swedes Charles Gustavus was chosen King upon the resignation of Queen Christina as having no Title and the Crown setled upon the Heirs of his Body to the utter exclusion of his Brother Adolphus their Mother having married a German Tho divers Nations have differently disposed their Affairs all those that are not naturally Slaves and like to Beasts have preferred their own Good before the personal Interests of him that expects the Crown so as upon no pretence
some few may have proved better than was intended it will appear that our Author's Assertions are in the utmost degree false Of this we need no better witness than Tacitus The Civil Wars and the Proscriptions upon which he touches are justly to be attributed to that Monarchy which was then setting up the only question being who should be the Monarch when the Liberty was already overthrown And if any eminent men escaped it was much against the will of those who had usurped the power He acknowledges his Histories to be a continued relation of the slaughter of the most illustrious Persons and that in the times of which he writes Virtue was attended with certain destruction After the death of Germanicus and his eldest Children Valerius Asiaticus Seneca Corbulo and an infinite number more who were thought most to resemble them found this to be true at the expence of their lives Nero in pursuance of the same tyrannical design murder'd Helvidius and Thraseas that he might tear up Virtue by the roots Domitian spared none willingly that had either Virtue or Reputation and tho Trajan with perhaps some other might grow up under him in the remote Provinces yet no good man could escape who came under his eye and was so eminent as to be observed by him Whilst these who were thought to be the best men that appear'd in the Roman Empire did thrive in this manner Sejanus Macro Narcissus Pallas Tigillinus Icetus Vinnius Laco and others like to them had the power of the Empire in their hands Therefore unless Mankind has bin mistaken to this day and that these who have hitherto bin accounted the worst of Villains were indeed the best men in the world and that those destroy'd by them who are thought to have bin the best were truly the worst it cannot be denied that the best men during the Liberty of Rome thrived best that good men suffer'd no indignity unless by some fraud imposed upon the well-meaning People and that so soon as the Liberty was subverted the worst men thrived best The best men were exposed to so many Calamities and Snares that it was thought a matter of great wonder to see a virtuous man die in his bed and if the account were well made I think it might appear that every one of the Emperors before Titus shed more noble and innocent Blood than Rome and all the Commonwealths in the world have done whilst they had the free enjoyment of their own Liberty But if any man in favour of our Author seek to diminish this vast disproportion between the two differing sorts of Government and impute the disorders that happen'd in the time of the Gracchi and others whilst Rome was strugling for her Liberty to the Government of a Commonwealth he will find them no more to be compar'd with those that fell out afterwards than the railings of a turbulent Tribune against the Senate to the Villanies and Cruelties that corrupted and dispeopled the Provinces from Babylon to Scotland And whereas the State never fail'd to recover from any disorders as long as the Root of Liberty remain'd untouch'd and became more powerful and glorious than ever even after the Wars of Marius and Sylla when that was destroy'd the City fell into a languishing condition and grew weaker and weaker till that and the whole Empire was ruin'd by the Barbarians 3. Our Author to shew that his memory is as good as his judgment having represented Rome in the times of Liberty as a publick Slaughter-house soon after blames the clemency of their Laws whereas 't is impossible that the same City could at the same time be guilty of those contrary extremities and no less certain that it was perfectly free from them both His assertion seems to be grounded upon Cesar's Speech related by Salust in favour of Lentulus and Cethegus Companions of Catiline but tho he there endeavoured to put the best colour he could upon their cause it signified only thus much that a Roman Citizen could not be put to death without being heard in publick which Law will displease none that in understanding and integrity may not be compared to Filmer and his Followers 'T is a folly to extend it farther for 't is easily proved that there was always a power of putting Citizens to death and that it was exercised when occasion required The Laws were the same in the time of the Kings and when that Office was executed by Consuls excepting such changes as are already mention'd The Lex perduellionis cited by Livy in the case of Horatius who had kill'd his Sister continued in force from the foundation to the end of that Government the condemnation was to death the words of the Sentence these Caput obnubito infelici arbore reste suspendito verberato intra Pomaerium vel extra Pomaerium He was tried by this Law upon an appeal made to the People by his Father and absolved admiratione magis virtutis quam jure causae which could not have bin if by the Law no Citizen might be put to death The Sons of Brutus were condemn'd to death in publick and executed with the Aquilii and Vitellii their Companions in the same Conspiracy Manlius Capitolinus was put to death by the vote of the People Titus Manlius by the command of his Father Torquatus for fighting without order Two Legions were decimated by Appius Claudius Spurius Melius refusing to appear before the Dictator was killed by Servilius Ahala General of the Horse and pronounced jure caesum Quintus Fabius was by Papirius the Dictator condemn'd to die and could not have bin saved but by the intercession and authority of the People If this be not so I desire to be informed what the Senate meant by condemning Nero to be put to death more majorum if more majorum no Citizen might be put to death Why the Consuls Dictators Military Tribuns Decemviri caused Rods and Axes to be carried beforethem as well within as without the City if no use was to be made of them Were they only vain Badges of a Power never to be executed or upon whom was the Supreme Power signified by them to be exercised within and without the City if the Citizens were not subject to it 'T is strange that a man who had ever read a Book of matters relating to the Affairs of Rome should fancy these things or hope to impose them upon the World if he knew them to be foolish false and absurd But of all the marks of a most supine stupidity that can be given by a man I know no one equal to this of our Author who in the same Clause wherein he says no Citizen could be put to death or banished adds that the Magistrates were upon pain of death forbidden to do it for if a Magistrate might be put to death for banishing a Citizen or causing him to be executed a Citizen might be put to death for the Magistrates were not Strangers but Citizens
not the least similitude of either And tho it were true that Fathers are held by no contracts which generally 't is not for when the Son is of age and dos something for the Father to which he is not obliged or gives him that which he is not bound to give suppose an Inheritance received from a Friend goods of his own acquisition or that he be emancipated all good Laws look upon those things as a valuable consideration and give the same force to contracts thereupon made as to those that pass between strangers it could have no relation to our question concerning Kings One principal reason that renders it very little necessary by the Laws of Nations to restrain the power of Parents over their Children is because 't is presumed they cannot abuse it they are thought to have a Law in their Bowels obliging them more strictly to seek their good than all those that can be laid upon them by another Power and yet if they depart from it so as inhumanly to abuse or kill their Children they are punished with as much rigour and accounted more unpardonable than other men Ignorance or wilful malice perswading our Author to pass over all this he boldly affirms That the Father of a family governs it by no other Law than his own Will and from thence infers that the condition of Kings is the same He would seem to soften the harshness of this Proposition by saying That a King is always tied by the same Law of Nature to keep this general ground that the safety of the Kingdom is his chief Law But he spoils it in the next page by asserting That it is not right for Kings to do injury but it is right that they go unpunished by the People if they do so that in this point it is all one whether Samuel describe a King or a Tyrant for patient obedience is due unto both no remedy in the Text against Tyrants but crying and praying unto God in that day In this our Author according to the custom of Theaters runs round in a Circle pretends to grant that which is true and then by a lie endeavours to destroy all again Kings by the Law of Nature are obliged to seek chiefly the good of the Kingdom but there is no remedy if they do it not which is no less than to put all upon the Conscience of those who manifestly have none But if God has appointed that all other transgressions of the Laws of Nature by which a private man receives damage should be punished in this world notwithstanding the right reserved to himself of a future punishment I desire to know why this alone by which whole Nations may be and often are destroy'd should escape the hands of Justice If he presume no Law to be necessary in this case because it cannot be thought that Kings will transgress as there was no Law in Sparta against Adultery because it was not thought possible for men educated under that discipline to be guilty of such a Crime and as divers Nations left a liberty to Fathers to dispose of their Children as they thought fit because it could not be imagined that any one would abuse that power he ought to remember that the Spartans were mistaken and for want of that Law which they esteemed useless Adulteries became as common there as in any part of the world and the other error being almost every where discovered the Laws of all civilized Nations make it capital for a man to kill his Children and give redress to Children if they suffer any other extreme injuries from their Parents as well as other persons But tho this were not so it would be nothing to our question unless it could be supposed that whoever gets the power of a Nation into his hands must be immediately filled with the same tenderness of affection to the People under him as a Father naturally has towards the Children he hath begotten He that is of this opinion may examine the lives of Herod Tiberius Caligula and some later Princes of like inclinations and conclude it to be true if he find that the whole course of their actions in relation to the People under them do well sute with the tender and sacred name of Father and altogether false if he find the contrary But as every man that considers what has bin or sees what is every day done in the world must confess that Princes or those who govern them do most frequently so utterly reject all thoughts of tenderness and piety towards the Nations under them as rather to seek what can be drawn from them than what should be done for them and sometimes become their most bitter and publick enemies 't is ridiculous to make the safety of Nations to depend upon a supposition which by daily experience we find to be false and impious to prefer the lusts of a man who violates the most sacred Laws of Nature by destroying those he is obliged to preserve before the welfare of that People for whose good he is made to be what he is if there be any thing of justice in the power he exercises Our Author foolishly thinks to cover the enormity of this nonsense by turning Salutem Populi into Salutem Regni for tho Regnum may be taken for the power of commanding in which sense the preservation of it is the usual object of the care of Princes yet it dos more rightly signify the body of that Nation which is governed by a King And therefore if the Maxim be true as he acknowledges it to be then Salus Populi est lex Suprema and the first thing we are to inquire is whether the Government of this or that man do conduce to the accomplishment of that supreme Law or not for otherwise it ought to have bin said Salus Regis est lex suprema which certainly never entred into the head of a wiser or better man than Filmer His reasons are as good as his Doctrin No Law says he can be imposed on Kings because there were Kings before any Laws were made This would not follow tho the Proposition were true for they who imposed no Laws upon the Kings they at first made from an opinion of their Virtue as in those called by the antients Heroum regna might lay restrictions upon them when they were found not to answer the expectation conceived of them or that their Successors degenerated from their Virtue Other Nations also being instructed by the ill effects of an unlimited Power given to some Kings if there was any such might wisely avoid the Rock upon which their Neighbours had split and justly moderate that Power which had bin pernicious to others However a Proposition of so great importance ought to be proved but that being hard and perhaps impossible because the original of Nations is almost wholly unknown to us and their practice seems to have bin so various that what is true in one is not so in another he is
distributed into many Families of Scotland remains to this day and if proximity of blood is to be consider'd ought always to have bin preferr'd before her and her descendents unless there be a Law that gives the preference to Daughters before Sons What right soever Henry the second had it must necessarily have perished with him all his Children having bin begotten in manifest Adultery on Eleanor of Gascony during the life of Lewis King of France her first Husband and nothing could be alledged to colour the business but a dispensation from the Pope directly against the Law of God and the words of our Saviour who says That a Wife cannot be put away unless for Adultery and he that marrieth her that is put away committeth Adultery The pollution of this spring is not to be cured but tho it should pass unregarded no one part of the Succession since that time has remained intire John was preferred before Arthur his elder brother's Son Edward the third was made King by the deposition of his Father Henry the fourth by that of Richard the 2d If the house of Mortimer or York had the right Henry the 4th 5th and 6th were not Kings and all who claim under them have no title However Richard the third could have none for the Children of his elder Brother the Duke of Clarence were then living The Children of Edward the fourth may be suspected of bastardy and tho it may have bin otherwise yet that matter is not so clear as things of such importance ought to be and the consequence may reach very far But tho that scruple were removed 't is certain that Henry the 7th was not King in the right of his Wife Elizabeth for he reigned before and after her and for his other titles we may believe Philip de Commines who says He had neither cross nor pile If Henry the eighth had a right in himself or from his Mother he should have reigned immediately after her death which he never pretended nor to succeed till his Father was dead thereby acknowledging he had no right but from him unless the Parliament and People can give it The like may be said of his Children Mary could have no title if she was a Bastard begotten in Incest but if her Mother's marriage was good and she legitimate Elizabeth could have none Yet all these were lawful Kings and Queens their Acts continue in force to this day to all intents and purposes the Parliament and People made them to be so when they had no other title The Parliament and People therefore have the power of making Kings Those who are so made are not Usurpers We have had none but such for more than seven hundred years They were therefore lawful Kings or this Nation has had none in all that time and if our Author like this conclusion the account from whence it is drawn may without difficulty be carried as high as our English Histories do reach This being built upon the steddy Foundation of Law History and Reason is not to be removed by any man's opinion especially by one accompanied with such circumstances as Sir Walter Raleigh was in during the last years of his life And there is something of baseness as well as prevarication in turning the words of an eminent Person reduced to great difficulties to a sense no way agreeing with his former actions or writings and no less tending to impair his reputation than to deceive others Our Author is highly guilty of both in citing Sir Walter Raleigh to invalidate the great Charter of our Liberties as begun by Vsurpation and shewed to the world by Rebellion whereas no such thing nor any thing like it in word or principle can be found in the works that deserve to go under his name The Dialogue in question with some other small pieces published after his death deserve to be esteemed spurious Or if from a desire of life when he knew his head lay under the Ax he was brought to say things no way agreeing with what he had formerly profess'd they ought rather to be buried in oblivion than produced to blemish his memory But that the publick Cause may not suffer by his fault 't is convenient the world should be informed that tho he was a well qualified Gentleman yet his Morals were no way exact as appears by his dealings with the brave Earl of Essex And he was so well assisted in his History of the World that an ordinary man with the same helps might have perform'd the same things Neither ought it to be accounted strange if that which he writ by himself had the tincture of another spirit when he was deprived of that assistance tho his life had not depended upon the will of the Prince and he had never said That the bonds of Subjects to their Kings should always be wrought out of Iron and those of Kings to their Subjects out of Cobwebs SECT XXXI Free Nations have a right of meeting when and where they please unless they deprive themselves of it APerverted Judgment always leads men into a wrong way and perswades them to believe that those things favour their cause that utterly overthrow it For a proof of this I desire our Author's words may be consider'd In the former Parliaments says he instituted and continued since Henry the first his time is not to be found the usage of any natural Liberty of the people For all those Liberties that are claimed in Parliament are Liberties of Grace from the King and not the Liberties of Nature to the People For if the Liberty were natural it would give power unto the multitude to assemble themselves when and where they pleased to bestow the Sovereignty and by pactions to limit and direct the exercise of it And I say that Nations being naturally free may meet when and where they please may dispose of the Soveraignty and may direct or limit the exercise of it unless by their own act they have deprived themselves of that right and there could never have bin a lawful Assembly of any People in the world if they had not had that power in themselves It was proved in the preceding Section that all our Kings having no title were no more than what the Nobility and People made them to be that they could have no power but what was given to them and could confer none except what they had received If they can therefore call Parliaments the power of calling them must have bin given to them and could not be given by any who had it not in themselves The Israelites met together and chose Ehud Gideon Samson Jephtha and others to be their Leaders whom they judged fit to deliver them from their Enemies By the same right they assembled at Mispeth to make War against the Tribe of Benjamin when Justice was denied to be done against those who had villanously abused the Levites Concubine In the like manner they would have made Gideon King but
is established over all and no Limits can be set to the Power of the Person that manages it This is the Prerogative or as another Author of the same stamp calls it The Royal Charter granted to Kings by God They all have an equal right to it Women and Children are Patriarchs and the next in Blood without any regard to Age Sex or other Qualities of the Mind or Body are Fathers of as many Nations as fall under their power We are not to examine whether he or she be young or old virtuous or vicious sober minded or stark mad the Right and Power is the same in all Whether Virtue be exalted or suppressed whether he that bears the Sword be a Praise to those that do well and a Terror to those that do evil or a Praise to those that do evil and a Terror to such as do well it concerns us not for the King must not lose his Right nor have his Power diminished on any account I have bin sometimes apt to wonder how things of this nature could enter into the head of any Man Or if no wickedness or folly be so great but some may fall into it I could not well conceive why they should publish it to the World But these thoughts ceased when I considered that a People from all Ages in love with Liberty and desirous to maintain their own Privileges could never be brought to resign them unless they were made to believe that in Conscience they ought to do it which could not be unless they were also perswaded to believe that there was a Law set to all Mankind which none might transgress and which put the examination of all those Matters out of their power This is our Author's Work By this it will appear whose Throne he seeks to advance and whose Servant he is whilst he pretends to serve the King And that it may be evident he hath made use of Means sutable to the Ends proposed for the Service of his great Master I hope to shew that he hath not used one Argument that is not false nor cited one Author whom he hath not perverted and abused Whilst my work is so to lay open these Snares that the most simple may not be taken in them I shall not examin how Sir Robert came to think himself a Man fit to undertake so great a work as to destroy the principles which from the beginning seem to have bin common to all Mankind but only weighing the Positions and Arguments that he alledgeth will if there be either truth or strength in them confess the discovery comes from him that gave us least reason to expect it and that in spight of the Antients there is not in the world a piece of Wood out of which a Mercury may not be made SECT II. The common Notions of Liberty are not from School Divines but from Nature IN the first lines of his Book he seems to denounce War against Mankind endeavouring to overthrow the principle of Liberty in which God created us and which includes the chief advantages of the life we enjoy as well as the greatest helps towards the felicity that is the end of our hopes in the other To this end he absurdly imputes to the School Divines that which was taken up by them as a common notion written in the heart of every Man denied by none but such as were degenerated into Beasts from whence they might prove such Points as of themselves were less evident Thus did Euclid lay down certain Axioms which none could deny that did not renounce common Sense from whence he drew the proofs of such Propositions as were less obvious to the Understanding and they may with as much reason be accused of Paganism who say that the whole is greater than a part that two halfs make the whole or that a streight Line is the shortest way from Point to Point as to say that they who in Politicks lay such Foundations as have been taken up by Schoolmen and others as undeniable Truths do therefore follow them or have any regard to their Authority Tho the Schoolmen were corrupt they were neither stupid nor unlearned They could not but see that which all men saw nor lay more approved Foundations than That Man is naturally free That he cannot justly be deprived of that Liberty without cause and that he doth not resign it or any part of it unless it be in consideration of a greater good which he proposes to himself But if he doth unjustly impute the invention of this to School Divines he in some measure repairs his Fault in saying This hath been fostered by all succeeding Papists for good Divinity The Divines of the Reformed Churches have entertained it and the Common People every where tenderly embrace it That is to say all Christian Divines whether Reformed or Unreformed do approve it and the People every where magnify it as the height of human felicity But Filmer and such as are like to him being neither Reformed nor Unreformed Christians nor of the People can have no title to Christianity and in as much as they set themselves against that which is the height of human Felicity they declare themselves Enemies to all that are concern'd in it that is to all Mankind But says he They do not remember that the desire of Liberty was the first cause of the fall of Man and I desire it may not be forgotten that the Liberty asserted is not a Licentiousness of doing what is pleasing to every one against the command of God but an exemption from all human Laws to which they have not given their assent If he would make us believe there was any thing of this in Adam's Sin he ought to have proved that the Law which he transgressed was imposed upon him by Man and consequently that there was a Man to impose it for it will easily appear that neither the Reformed or Unreformed Divines nor the People following them do place the felicity of Man in an exemption from the Laws of God but in a most perfect conformity to them Our Saviour taught us not to fear such as could kill the Body but him that could kill and cast into Hell And the Apostle tells us that we should obey God rather than Man It hath bin ever hereupon observed that they who most precisely adhere to the Laws of God are least sollicitous concerning the commands of men unless they are well grounded and those who most delight in the glorious Liberty of the Sons of God do not only subject themselves to him but are most regular observers of the just Ordinances of Man made by the consent of such as are concerned according to the Will of God The error of not observing this may perhaps deserve to be pardoned in a Man that had read no Books as proceeding from ignorance if such as are grosly ignorant can be excused when they take upon them to write of such matters as require the highest knowledg But
retain it in themselves But whether that were observed or not by Bellarmin makes nothing to our Cause which we defend and not him The next Point is subtile and he thinks thereby to have brought Bellarmin and such as agree with his Principle to a Nonplus He doubts who shall judg of the lawful Cause of changing the Government and says It is a pestilent Conclusion to place that Power in the Multitude But why should this be esteemed pestilent or to whom If the allowance of such a Power to the Senate was pestilent to Nero it was beneficial to Mankind and the denial of it which would have given to Nero an opportunity of continuing in his Villanies would have been pestilent to the best Men whom he endeavoured to destroy and to all others that received benefit from them But this Question depends upon another for if Governments are constituted for the Pleasure Greatness or Profit of one Man he must not be interrupted for the opposing of his Will is to overthrow the Institution On the other side if the Good of the governed be sought care must be taken that the End be accomplished tho it be with the prejudice of the Governor If the Power be originally in the Multitude and one or more Men to whom the exercise of it or a part of it was committed had no more than their Brethren till it was conferred on him or them it cannot be believed that rational Creatures would advance one or a few of their Equals above themselves unless in consideration of their own Good and then I find no inconvenience in leaving to them a right of judging whether this be duly performed or not We say in general He that institutes may also abrogate most especially when the Institution is not only by but for himself If the Multitude therefore do institute the Multitude may abrogate and they themselves or those who succeed in the same Right can only be fit Judges of the performance of the Ends of the Institution Our Author may perhaps say The publick Peace may be hereby disturbed but he ought to know There can be no Peace where there is no Justice nor any Justice if the Government instituted for the good of a Nation be turned to its ruin But in plain English the Inconvenience with which such as he endeavour to afright us is no more than that He or They to whom the Power is given may be restrained or chastised if they betray their Trust which I presume will displease none but such as would rather submit Rome with the best part of the World depending upon it to the Will of Caligula or Nero than Caligula or Nero to the Judgment of the Senate and People that is rather to expose many great and brave Nations to be destroyed by the rage of a savage Beast than subject that Beast to the Judgment of all or the choicest Men of them who can have no interest to pervert them or other reason to be severe to him than to prevent the Mischiefs he would commit and to save the People from ruin In the next place he recites an Argument of Bellarmin That 't is evident in Scripture God hath ordained Powers but God hath given them to no particular Person because by Nature all Men are equal therefore he hath given Power to the People or Multitude I leave him to untie that Knot if he can but as 't is usual with Impostors he goes about by Surmises to elude the Force of his Argument pretending that in some other place he had contradicted himself and acknowledged that every Man was Prince of his Posterity because that if many Men had bin created together they ought all to have bin Princes of their Posterity But 't is not necessary to argue upon Passages cited from Authors when he that cites them may be justly suspected of Fraud and neither indicates the Place nor Treatise lest it should be detected most especially when we are no way concerned in the Author's Credit I take Bellarmin's first Argument to be strong and if he in some place did contradict it the hurt is only to himself but in this Particular I should not think he did it tho I were sure our Author had faithfully repeated his words for in allowing every Man to be Prince of his Posterity he only says every Man should be chief in his own Family and have a Power over his Children which no man denies But he dos not understand Latin who thinks that the word Princeps doth in any degree signify an absolute Power or a right of transmitting it to his Heirs and Successors upon which the Doctrine of our Author wholly depends On the contrary The same Law that gave to my Father a Power over me gives me the like over my Children and if I had a thousand Brothers each of them would have the same over their Children Bellarmin's first Argument therefore being no way enervated by the alledged Passage I may justly insist upon it and add That God hath not only declared in Scripture but written on the Heart of every Man that as it is better to be clothed than to go naked to live in a House than to lie in the Fields to be defended by the united Force of a Multitude than to place the hopes of his Security solely in his own strength and to prefer the Benefits of Society before a savage and barbarous Solitude He also taught them to frame such Societies and to establish such Laws as were necessary to preserve them And we may as reasonably affirm that Mankind is for ever obliged to use no other Clothes than leather Breeches like Adam to live in hollow Trees and eat Acorns or to seek after the Model of his House for a Habitation and to use no Arms except such as were known to the Patriarchs as to think all Nations for ever obliged to be governed as they governed their Families This I take to be the genuine sense of the Scripture and the most respectful way of interpreting the Places relating to our purpose 'T is hard to imagine that God who hath left all things to our choice that are not evil in themselves should tie us up in this and utterly incredible that he should impose upon us a necessity of following his Will without declaring it to us Instead of constituting a Government over his People consisting of many Parts which we take to be a Model fit to be imitated by others he might have declared in a word That the eldest Man of the eldest Line should be King and that his Will ought to be their Law This had bin more sutable to the Goodness and Mercy of God than to leave us in a dark Labyrinth full of Precipices or rather to make the Government given to his own People a false Light to lead us to destruction This could not be avoided if there were such a thing as our Author calls a Lord Paramount over his Childrens Children to all
Right we do not know who is near to him All Mankind must inherit the Right to which every one hath an equal title and that which is Dominion if in one when 't is equally divided among all men is that universal Liberty which I assert Wherefore I leave it to the choice of such as have inherited our Author's opinions to produce this Jew or Turk that ought to be Lord of the whole Earth or to prove a better title in some other person and to perswade all the Princes and Nations of the World to submit If this be not done it must be confessed this Paternal Right is a meer whimsical Fiction and that no man by birth hath a Right above another or can have any unless by the concession of those who are concerned If this right to an universal Empire be divisible Noah did actually divide it among his three Sons Seventy and two absolute Monarchs did at once arise out of the Multitude that had assembled at Babel Noah nor his Sons nor any of the holy Seed nor probably any elder than Nimrod having bin there many other Monarchs must necessarily have arisen from them Abraham as our Author says was a King Lot must have bin so also for they were equals his Sons Ammon and Moab had no dependance upon the descendents of Abraham Ismael and Esau set up for themselves and great Nations came of them Abraham's Sons by Keturah did so also that is to say every one as soon as he came to be of age to provide for himself did so without retaining any dependence upon the Stock from whence he came Those of that Stock or the head of it pretended to no Right over those who went from them Nay nearness in Blood was so little regarded that tho Lot was Abraham's Brother's Son Eliezer his Servant had bin his Heir if he had died childless The like continued amongst Jacob's Sons no Jurisdiction was given to one above the rest an equal division of Land was made amongst them Their Judges and Magistrates were of several Tribes and Families without any other preference of one before another than what did arise from the advantages God had given to any particular person This I take to be a proof of the utmost extent and certainty that the equality amongst Mankind was then perfect He therefore that will deny it to be so now ought to prove that neither the Prophets Patriarchs or any other men did ever understand or regard the Law delivered by God and Nature to Mankind or that having bin common and free at the first and so continued for many hundreds of years after the Flood it was afterwards abolished and a new one introduced He that asserts this must prove it but till it does appear to us when where how and by whom this was done we may safely believe there is no such thing and that no man is or can be a Lord amongst us till we make him so and that by nature we are all Brethren Our Author by endeavouring farther to illustrate the Patriarchical Power destroys it and cannot deny to any man the Right which he acknowledges to have bin in Ismael and Esau. But if every man hath a Right of setting up for himself with his Family or before he has any he cannot but have a right of joining with others if he pleases As his joining or not joining with others and the choice of those others depends upon his own will he cannot but have a right of judging upon what conditions 't is good for him to enter into such a Society as must necessarily hinder him from exercising the right which he has originally in himself But as it cannot be imagined that men should generally put such Fetters upon themselves unless it were in expectation of a greater good that was thereby to accrue to them no more can be required to prove that they do voluntarily enter into these Societies institute them for their own good and prescribe such rules and forms to them as best please themselves without giving account to any But if every man be free till he enter into such a Society as he chuseth for his own good and those Societies may regulate themselves as they think fit no more can be required to prove the natural equality in which all men are born and continue till they resign it as into a common stock in such measure as they think fit for the constituting of Societies for their own good which I assert and our Author denies SECT XIII There was no shadow of a paternal Kingdom amongst the Hebrews nor precept for it OUr Author is so modest to confess that Jacob's Kingdom consisting of seventy two persons was swallowed up by the power of the greater Monarch Pharaoh But if this was an Act of Tyranny 't is strange that the sacred and eternal Right grounded upon the immutable Laws of God and Nature should not be restored to God's chosen People when he delivered them from that Tyranny Why was not Jacob's Monarchy conferred upon his right Heir How came the People to neglect a point of such importance Or if they did forget it why did not Moses put them in mind of it Why did not Jacob declare to whom it did belong Or if he is understood to have declared it in saying the Scepter should not depart from Judah why was it not delivered into his hands or into his Heirs If he was hard to be found in a people of one kindred but four degrees removed from Jacob their head who were exact in observing Genealogies how can we hope to find him after so many thousand years when we do not so much as know from whom we are derived Or rather how comes that Right which is eternal and universal to have bin nipp'd in the bud and so abolished before it could take any effect in the World as never to have bin heard of amongst the Gentiles nor the People of God either before or after the Captivity from the death of Jacob to this day This I assert and I give up the Cause if I do not prove it To this end I begin with Moses and Aaron the first Rulers of the People who were neither of the eldest Tribe according to birth nor the disposition of Jacob if he did or could give it to any nor were they of the eldest line of their own Tribe and even between them the Superiority was given to Moses who was the younger as 't is said I have made thee a God to Pharaoh and Aaron thy Brother shall be thy Prophet If Moses was a King as our Author says but I deny and shall hereafter prove the matter is worse He must have bin an Usurper of a most unjust Dominion over his Brethren and this Patriarchical power which by the Law of God was to be perpetually fixed in his Descendents perished with him and his Sons continued in an obscure rank amongst the Levites Joshua of the Tribe of Ephraim succeeded him
are so civil The vanity of our Age seems to carry this Point a little higher especially among the French who put a great weight upon the word Prince but they cannot change the true signification of it and even in their sense Prince du Sang signifies no more than a chief Man of the Royal Blood to whom they pay much respect because he may come to the Crown as they at Rome do to Cardinals who have the Power of chusing Popes and out of whose number for some Ages they have bin chosen In this sense did Scevola when he was apprehended by Porsenna say Trecenti conjuravimus Romanae juvcntutis Principes which was never otherwise understood than of such young Citizens as were remarkable amongst their Companions And nothing can be more absurd than to think if the name of Prince had carried an absolute and despotical Power with it that it could belong to three hundred in a City that possessed no more than a ten miles Territory or that it could have been given to them whilst they were young and the most part of their Fathers as is most probable still living I should like our Author run round in a Circle if I should refute what he says of a Regal Power in our first Parents or shew that the Regal where it is is not absolute as often as he dos assert it But having already proved that Adam Noah Abraham Isaac Jacob c. enjoyed no such Power transmitted to every one of their Sons that which they had and they became Fathers of many great Nations who always continued independent on each other I leave to our Author to prove when and by what Law the Right of subdividing the Paternal Power was stopped and how any one or more of their Descendants came to have that Power over their Brethren which none of their immediate Children had over theirs His question to Suarez how and when Sons become free savours more of Jesuitical Sophistry than any thing said by the Jesuit but the Solution is easy for if he mean the respect veneration and kindness proceeding from gratitude it ceases only with the Life of the Father to whom it is due and the memory of it must last as long as that of the Son and if they had bin possessed of such an absolute Power as he fancies it must have ceased with the reasons upon which it was grounded First Because the Power of which a Father would probably have made a wise and gentle use could not be rightly trusted in the hands of one who is not a Father and that which tended only to the preservation of all the Children could not be turned to the increase of the Pride Luxury and Violence of one to the oppression of others who are equally Heirs In the second place Societies cannot be instituted unless the Heads of the Families that are to compose them resign so much of their Right as seems convenient into the publick Stock to which every one becomes subject But that the same Power should at the same time continue in the true Father and the figurative Father the Magistrate and that the Children should owe intire Obedience to the Commands of both which may often cross each other is absurd Thirdly It ceases when it cannot be executed as when men live to see four or five Generations as many do at this day because the Son cannot tell whether he should obey his Father Grandfather or Great-Grandsather and cannot be equally subject to them all most especially when they live in divers places and set up Families of their own as the Sons of the Patriarchs did which being observed I know no place where this Paternal Power could have any effect unless in the fabulous Island of Pines and even there it must have ceased when he died who by the Inventor of the story is said to have seen above ten thousand Persons issued of his body And if it be said that Noah Shem Abraham c. consented that their Children should go where they thought fit and provide for themselves I answer that the like has bin done in all Ages and must be done for ever 'T is the Voice of Nature obeyed not only by mankind but by all living Creatures and there is none so stupid as not to understand it A Hen leaves her Chickens when they can seek their own nourishment A Cow looks after her Calf no longer than till it is able to feed A Lion gives over hunting for his Whelps when they are able to seek their own Prey and have strength enough to provide what is sufficient for themselves And the contrary would be an insupportable burden to all living Creatures but especially to men for the good order that the rational Nature delights in would be overthrown and Civil Societies by which it is best preserved would never be established We are not concerned to examine Whether the Political and Oeconomical Powers be intirely the same or in what they differ for that absolute Power which he contends for is purely despotical different from both or rather inconsistent with either as to the same Subject and that which the Patriarchs exercised having bin equally inherited by their Children and consequently by every one of their Posterity 't is as much as is required for my purpose of proving the natural universal Liberty of Mankind and I am no way concerned in the Question Whether the first Parents of Mankind had a Power of Life and Death over their Children or not SECT V. Freemen join together and frame greater or lesser Societies and give such Forms to them as best please themselves THIS being established I shall leave Filmer to fight against Suarez or Bellarmin or to turn one of them against the other without any concernment in the Combat or the success of it But since he thereupon raises a Question Whether the supreme Power be so in the People that there is but one and the same Power in all the People of the World so that no Power can be granted unless all Men upon the Earth meet and agree to chuse a Governor I think it deserves to be answered and might do it by proposing a Question to him Whether in his opinion the Empire of the whole World doth by the Laws of God and Nature belong to one Man and who that Man is Or how it came so to be divided as we have ever known it to have bin without such an injury to the Universal Monarch as can never be repaired But intending to proceed more candidly and not to trouble my self with Bellarmin or Suarez I say that they who place the Power in a Multitude understand a Multitude composed of Freemen who think it for their convenience to join together and to establish such Laws and Rules as they oblige themselves to observe which Multitude whether it be great or small has the same Right because ten men are as free as ten millions of men and tho it may be more prudent
in some cases to join with the greater than the smaller number because there is more strength it is not so always But however every man must therein be his own judg since if he mistake the hurt is only to himself and the ten may as justly resolve to live together frame a Civil Society and oblige themselves to Laws as the greatest number of men that ever met together in the world Thus we find that a few men assembling together upon the Banks of the Tiber resolved to build a City and set up a Government among themselves And the Multitude that met at Babylon when their design of building a Tower that should reach up to Heaven failed and their Language was confounded divided themselves as our Author says into seventy two parcels and by the same Right might have divided into more as their Descendents did into almost an infinite number before the death of their common Father Noah But we cannot find a more perfect Picture of Freemen living according to their own Will than in Abraham and Lot they went together into Canaan continued together as long as was convenient for them and parted when their Substance did so increase that they became troublesom to each other In the like manner Ismael Isaac and Abraham's six Sons by Keturah might have continued together and made one Nation Isaac and Esau Moab and Ammon might have done so too or all of them that came of the same Stock might have united together but they did not and their Descendents by the same rule might have subdivided perpetually if they had thought it expedient for themselves and if the Sons of Jacob did not do the like 't is probable they were kept together by the hope of an Inheritance promised to them by God in which we find no shadow of a despotical Dominion affected by one as Father or Heir to the first Father or reputed to be the Heir but all continued in that fraternal equality which according to Abraham's words to Lot they ought to do There was no Lord Slave or Vassal no strife was to be among them They were Brethren they might live together or separate as they found it convenient for themselves By the same Law that Abraham and Lot Moab and Ammon Ismael Isaac and the Sons of Keturah Jacob Esau and their Descendents did divide and set up several Governments every one of their Children might have done the like and the same Right remained to their Issue till they had by agreement engaged themselves to each other But if they had no dependence upon each other and might live together in that fraternal equality which was between Abraham and Lot or separate and continue in that separation or reunite they could not but have a right of framing such conditions of their reunion as best pleased themselves By this means every number of men agreeing together and framing a Society became a compleat Body having all Power in themselves over themselves subject to no other human Law than their own All those that compose the Society being equally free to enter into it or not no man could have any Prerogative above others unless it were granted by the consent of the whole and nothing obliging them to enter into this Society but the consideration of their own Good that Good or the opinion of it must have been the Rule Motive and End of all that they did ordain 'T is lawful therefore for any such Bodies to set up one or a few men to govern them or to retain the Power in themselves and he or they who are set up having no other Power but what is so conferred upon them by that Multitude whether great or small are truly by them made what they are and by the Law of their own Creation are to exercise those Powers according to the proportion and to the ends for which they were given These Rights in several Nations and Ages have bin variously executed in the establishment of Monarchies Aristocracies Democracies or mixed Governmeuts according to the variety of Circumstances and the Governments have bin good or evil according to the rectitude or pravity of their Institution and the vertue and wisdom or the folly and vices of those to whom the Power was committed but the end which was ever proposed being the good of the Publick they only performed their duty who procured it according to the Laws of the Society which were equally valid as to their own Magistrates whether they were few or many This might suffice to answer our Author's Question but he endeavours further to perplex it by a fiction of his own brain That God gave this Power to the whole Multitude met and not to every particular Assembly of Men And expects a proof That the whole Multitude met and divided this Power which God gave them in gross by breaking it into parcels and by appointing a distinct Power to each Commonwealth He also fathers it upon the Assertors of Liberty and dos not see as he says how there can be an Election of a Magistrate by any Common-wealth that is not an Vsurpation upon the Privilege of the whole World unless all Mankind had met together and divided the Power into parcels which God had given them in gross But besore I put my self to the trouble of answering that which is but an Appendix to a whimsy of his own I may justly ask What hurt he finds in Usurpation who asserts that the same Obedience is due to all Monarchs whether they come in by Inheritance Election or Usurpation If Usurpation can give a Right to a Monarch why dos it not confer the same upon a People Or rather if God did in gross confer such a Right upon all Mankind and they neither did nor can meet together by consent to dispose of it for the good of the whole why should not those who can and do consent to meet together agree upon that which seems most expedient to them for the Government of themselves Did God create Man under the necessity of wanting Government and all the good that proceeds from it because at the first all did not and afterwards all could not meet to agree upon Rules Or did he ever declare that unless they should use the first opportunity of dividing themselves into such parcels as were to remain unalterable the right of reigning over every one shall fall to the first Villain that should dare to attempt it It is not more consonant to the Wisdom and Goodness of God to leave to every Nation a liberty of repairing the Mischiefs fallen upon them through the omission of their first Parents by setting up Governments among themselves than to lay them under a necessity of submitting to any that should insolently aspire to a Domination over them Is it not more just and reasonable to believe that the universal Right not being executed devolves upon particular Nations as numbers of the great Body than that it should become the reward of Violence
and them before the Lord if he had bin already King and if those Acts had bin empty Ceremonies conferring no Right at all I dare not say that a League dos imply an absolute equality between both Parties for there is a Foedus inequale wherein the weaker as Grotius says dos usually obtain protection and the stronger honour but there can be none at all unless both Parties are equally free to make it or not to make it David therefore was not King till he was elected and those Covenants made and he was made King by that Election and Covenants This is not shaken by our Author's supposition That the People would not have taken Joas Manasseh or Josiah if they had had a right of chusing a King since Solomon says Wo unto the Kingdom whose King is a Child For first they who at the first had a right of chusing whom they pleased to be King by the Covenant made with him whom they did chuse may have deprived themselves of the farther execution of it and rendred the Crown hereditary even to Children unless the Conditions were violated upon which it was granted In the second place if the infancy of a King brings Wo upon a People the Government of such a one cannot be according to the Laws of God and Nature for Governments are not instituted by either for the pleasure of a Man but for the good of Nations and their Weal not their Wo is sought by both and if Children are any where admitted to rule 't is by the particular Law of the place grounded perhaps upon an opinion that it is the best way to prevent dangerous Contests or that other ways may be found to prevent the Inconveniences that may proceed from their weakness Thirdly It cannot be concluded that they might not reject Children because they did not such matters require positive Proofs Suppositions are of no value in relation to them and the whole matter may be altered by particular Circumstances The Jews might reasonably have a great veneration for the House of David they knew what was promised to that Family and whatever respect was paid or privilege granted on that account can be of no advantage to any other in the world They might be farther induced to set up Joas in hope the defects of his Age might be supplied by the Vertue Experience and Wisdom of Jehoiada We do not know what good opinion may have bin conceived of Manasseh when he was twelve years old but much might be hoped from one that had bin virtuously educated and was probably under the care of such as had bin chosen by Hezekiah and tho the contrary did fall out the mischiefs brought upon the People by his wicked Reign proceeded not from the weakness of his childhood but from the malice of his riper years And both the Examples of Joas and Josiah prove that neither of them came in by their own right but by the choice of the People Jehoiada gathered the Levites out of all the Cities of Judah and the chief of the Fathers of Israel and they came to Jerusalem And all the Congregation made a Covenant with the King in the House of God and brought out the King's Son and put upon him the Crown and gave him the Testimony and made him King whereupon they slew Athaliah And when Ammon was stain the people of the Land slew them that had conspired against King Ammon and the people of the Land made Josiah his Son King in his stead which had been most impertinent if he was of himself King before they made him so Besides tho Infancy may be a just cause of excepting against and rejecting the next Heir to a Crown 't is not the greatest or strongest 'T is far more easy to find a Remedy against the solly of a Child if the State be well regulated than the more rooted Vices of grown men The English who willingly received Henry the sixth Edward the fifth and sixth tho Children resolutely opposed Robert the Norman And the French who willingly submitted to Charles the ninth Lewis the thirteenth and fourteenth in their Infancy rejected the lewd remainders of Meroveus his Race Charles of Lorrain with his Kindred descended from Pepin Robert Duke of Burgundy with his Descendents and Henry of Navarr till he had satisfied the Nobility and People in the point of Religion And tho I do not know that the Letter upon the words Vaeregnocujus Rex puer est recited by Lambard was written by Eleutherius Bishop of Rome yet the Authority given to it by the Saxons who made it a Law is much more to be valued than what it could receive from the Writer and whoever he was he seems rightly to have understood Solomon's meaning who did not look upon him as a Child that wanted years or was superannuated but him only who was guilty of Insolence Luxury Folly and Madness and he that said A wise Child was better than an old and foolish King could have no other meaning unless he should say it was worse to be governed by a wise Person than a Fool which may agree with the judgment of our Author but could never enter into the heart of Solomon Lastly Tho the practice of one or more Nations may indicate what Laws Covenants or Customs were in force among them yet they cannot bind others The diversity of them proceeds from the variety of mens Judgments and declares that the direction of all such Affairs depends upon their own Will according to which every People for themselves forms and measures the Magistracy and magistratical Power which as it is directed solely for the good hath its exercises and extent proportionable to the Command of those that institute it and such Ordinances being good for men God makes them his own SECT VIII There is no natural propensity in Man or Beast to Monarchy I See no reason to believe that God did approve the Government of one over many because he created but one but to the contrary in as much as he did endow him and those that came from him as well the youngest as the eldest Line with understanding to provide for themselves and by the invention of Arts and Sciences to be beneficial to each other he shewed that they ought to make use of that understanding in forming Governments according to their own convenience and such occasions as should arise as well as in other matters and it might as well be inferr'd that it is unlawful for us to build clothe arm defend or nourish our selves otherwise than as our first Parents did before or soon after the Flood as to take from us the liberty of instituting Governments that were not known to them If they did not find out all that conduces to the use of man but a Faculty as well as a Liberty was left to every one and will be to the end of the world to make use of his Wit Industry and Experience according to present Exigencies to
were heads of Families for the Scripture only says They were Footmen that drew the Sword or rather all the men of Israel from Dan to Beersheba who were able to make War When six hundred Benjamites did only remain of the 26700 't is plain that no more were left of that Tribe their Women and Children having bin destroyed in the Cities after their defeat The next Chapter makes the matter yet more plain for when all that were at the Congregation in Mispeth were found to have sworn they would not give their Daughters to any of the Tribe of Benjamin no Israelite was free from the Oath but the men of Jabesh Gilead who had not bin at the Assembly All the rest of Israel was therefore comprehended and they continuing to govern in a popular way with absolute power sent twelve thousand of their most valiant men to destroy all the Males of Jabesh Gilead and the Women that had lain by Man reserving the Virgins for the Benjamites This is enough for my purpose for the question is not concerning the power that every Housholder in London hath over his Wife Children and Servants but whether they are all perpetually subject to one man and Family and I intend not to set up their Wives Prentices and Children against them or to diminish their Rights but to assert them as the gift of God and Nature no otherwise to be restrained than by Laws made with their consent Reason failing our Author pleases himself with terms of his own invention When the People begged a King of Samuel they were governed by a Kingly power God out of a special love and care to the house of Israel did chuse to be their King himself and did govern them at that time by his Viceroy Samuel and his Sons The behaviour of the Israelites towards Samuel has bin thought proud perverse and obstinate but the fine Court word begging was never before applied to them and their insolent fury was not only seen against Samuel but against God They have not rejected thee but they have rejected me And I think Filmer is the first who ever found that Beggars in begging did reject him of whom they begged Or if they were Beggars they were such as would not be denied for after all that Samuel had said to disswade them from their wicked design they said Nay but we will have a King But lest I should be thought too much inclined to contradict our Author I confess that once he hath happened to be in the right God out of a special love to the house of Israel chose to be their King He gave them Laws prescribed a Form of Government raised up Men in a wonderful manner to execute it filled them with his Spirit was ever present when they called upon him He gave them counsel in their doubts and assistance in all their extremities He made a Covenant with them and would be exalted by them But what is this to an earthly Monarch Who can from hence derive a Right to any one man to play the Lord over his Brethren or a reason why any Nation should set him up God is our Lord by right of creation and our only Lord because he only hath created us If any other were equal to him in Wisdom Power Goodness and Beneficence to us he might challenge the same duty from us If growing out of our selves receiving being from none depending on no providence we were offered the protection of a Wisdom subject to no error a Goodness that could never fail and a Power that nothing could resist it were reasonable for us to enter into a Covenant submit our selves to him and with all the faculties of our minds to addict our selves to his Service But what Right can from hence accrue to a mortal Creature like to one of us from whom we have received nothing and who stands in need of help as much as we Who can from hence deduce an argument to perswade us to depend upon his Wisdom who has as little as other men To submit to his Will who is subject to the same Frailties Passions and Vices with the rest of Mankind Or to expect protection and defence from him whose life depends upon as slender threds as our own and who can have no power but that which we confer upon him If this cannot be done but is of all things the most contrary to common sense no man can in himself have any right over us we are all as free as the four hundred twenty six thousand seven hundred Hebrew Kings We can naturally owe allegiance to none and I doubt whether all the lusts that have reigned amongst men since the beginning of the World have brought more guilt and misery upon them than that preposterous and impudent pretence of imitating what God had instituted When Saul set himself most violently to oppose the command of God he pretended to fulfil it When the Jews grew weary of God's Government and resolved to reject him that he should not reign over them they used some of Moses his words and asked that King of God whom they intended to set up against him But this King had not bin set up against God the People had not rejected God and sinned in asking for him if every Nation by a general Law ought to have one or by a particular Law one had bin appointed by him over them There was therefore no King amongst them nor any Law of God or Nature particular or general according to which they ought to have one SECT X. Aristotle was not simply for Monarchy or against Popular Government but approved or disapproved of either according to circumstances OUr Author well observes that Aristotle is hardly brought to give a general opinion in favour of Monarchy as if it were the best form of Government or to say true never dos it He uses much caution proposes conditions and limitations and makes no decision but according to circumstances Men of Wisdom and Learning are subject to such doubts but none ought to wonder if stupidity and ignorance defend Filmer and his Followers from them or that their hatred to the antient Vertue should give them an aversion to the Learning that was the Nurse of it Those who neither understand the several Species of Government nor the various tempers of Nations may without fear or shame give their opinions in favour of that which best pleaseth them but wise men will always proportion their praises to the merit of the subject and never commend that simply which is good only according to circumstances Aristotle highly applauds Monarchy when the Monarch has more of those Vertues that tend to the good of a Commonwealth than all they who compose it This is the King mentioned in his Ethicks and extolled in his Politicks He is above all by Nature and ought not by a municipal Law to be made equal to others in Power He ought to govern because 't is better for a People to be
governed by him than to enjoy their Liberty or rather they do enjoy their Liberty which is never more safe than when it is defended by one who is a living Law to himself and others Wheresoever such a man appears he ought to reign He bears in his Person the divine Character of a Sovereign God has raised him above all and such as will not submit to him ought to be accounted Sons of Belial brought forth and slain But he dos withal confess that if no such man be sound there is no natural King All the Prerogatives belonging to him vanish for want of one who is capable of enjoying them He lays severe Censures upon those who not being thus qualified take upon them to govern men equal to or better than themselves and judges the assumption of such Powers by persons who are not naturally adapted to the administration of them as barbarous Usurpations which no Law or Reason can justify and is not so much transported with the excellency of this true King as not to confess he ought to be limit d by Law Qui legem praeesse jubet videtur jubere praeesse Deum Leges qui autem hominem praeesse jubet adjungit bestiam libido quippe talis est atque obliquos agit etiam viros optimos qui sunt in potestate ex quo mens atque appetitus Lex est This agrees with the words of the best King that is known to have bin in the world proceeding as is most probable from a sense of the Passions that reigned in his own breast Man being in honour hath no understanding but is like to the beast that perisheth This shews that such as deny that Kings do reign by Law or that Laws may be put upon Kings do equally set themselves against the opinions of wise Men and the Word of God and our Author having found that Learning made the Grecians seditious may reasonably doubt that Religion may make others worse so as none will be fit Subjects of his applauded Government but those who have neither Religion nor Learning and that it cannot be introduced till both be extinguished Aristotle having declared his mind concerning Government in the Books expresly written on that Subject whatsoever is said by the by in his Moral Discourses must be referred to and interpreted by the other And if he said which I do not find that Monarchy is the best Form of Government and a Popular State the worst he cannot be thought to have meant otherwise than that those Nations were the most happy who had such a Man as he thinks fit to be made a Monarch and those the most unhappy who neither had such a one nor a few that any way excelled the rest but all being equally brutish must take upon them the Government they were unable to manage for he dos no where admit any other end of Just and Civil Government than the good of the governed nor any advantage due to one or a few persons unless for such Vertues as conduce to the common good of the Society And as our Author thinks Learning makes men seditious Aristotle also acknowledges that those who have Understanding and Courage which may be taken for Learning or the effect of it will never endure the Government of one or a few that do not excel them in Vertue but no where dispraises a Popular Government unless the multitude be composed of such as are barbarous stupid lewd vicious and uncapable of the Happiness for which Governments are instituted who cannot live to themselves but like a herd of Beasts must be brought under the dominion of another or who having amongst themselves such an excellent Person as is above described will not submit to him but either kill banish or bring him to be equal with others whom God had made to excel all I do not trouble my self or the Reader with citing here or there a Line out of his Books but refer my self to those who have perused his Moral and Political Writings submitting to the severest Censures if this be not the true sense of them and that Vertue alone in his opinion ought to give the preheminence And as Aristotle following the wise Men of those times shews us how far Reason improved by Meditation can advance in the knowledg and love of that which is truly good so we may in Filmer guided by Heylin see an Example of corrupted Christians extinguishing the Light of Religion by their Vices and degenerating into Beasts whilst they endeavour to support the personal Interest of some men who being raised to Dignities by the consent of Nations or by unwarrantable ways and means would cast all the Power into the hands of such as happen to be born in their Families as if Governments had not bin instituted for the common good of Nations but only to increase their Pride and foment their Vices or that the care and direction of a great People were so easy a work that every Man Woman or Child how young weak foolish or wicked soever may be worthy of it and able to manage it SECT XI Liberty produceth Vertue Order and Stability Slavery is accompanied with Vice Weakness and Misery OUR Author's judgment as well as inclinations to Vertue are manifested in the preference he gives to the manners of the Assyrians and other Eastern Nations before the Grecians and Romans Whereas the first were never remarkable for any thing but Pride Lewdness Treachery Cruelty Cowardice Madness and hatred to all that is good whilst the others excelled in Wisdom Valour and all the Vertues that deserve imitation This was so well observed by St. Augustin that he brings no stronger Argument to prove that God leaves nothing that is good in man unrewarded than that he gave the dominion of the best part of the World to the Romans who in moral Vertues excelled all other Nations And I think no Example can be alledged of a Free People that has ever bin conquer'd by an Absolute Monarch unless he did incomparably surpass them in Riches and Strength whereas many great Kings have bin overthrown by small Republicks and the success being constantly the same it cannot be attributed to Fortune but must necessarily be the production of Vertue and good Order Machiavel discoursing of these matters finds Vertue to be so essentially necessary to the establishment and preservation of Liberty that he thinks it impossible for a corrupted People to set up a good Government or for a Tyranny to be introduced if they be vertuous and makes this Conclusion That where the matter that is the body of the People is not corrupted Tumults and Disorders do no hurt and where it is corrupted good Laws do no good Which being confirmed by Reason and Experience I think no wise man has ever contradicted him But I do not more wonder that Filmer should look upon Absolute Monarchy to be the Nurse of Vertue tho we see they did never subsist together than that he
any regard to the publick good distributed them to his Children according to their number or his passion These either destroy'd one another or sell under the Sword of a third who had the fortune of their Father the greatest part most commonly falling to the share of the worst If at any time the contrary happened the Government of the best was but a lucid interval Well-wishing men grew more extremely to abhor the darkness that follow'd when they were gone The best of them could do no more than suspend mischief for a while but could not correct the corrupt principle of their Government and some of them were destroyed as soon as they were thought to intend it And others who finished their days in peace left the Empire to such persons of their relations as were most unlike to them Domitian came in as Brother to Titus Commodus and Heliogabalus were recommended by the memory of those Virtues that had bin found in Antoninus and Aurelius Honorius and Arcadius who by their baseness brought utter ruin upon the Western and Eastern Empires were the Sons of the brave Theodosius They who could keep their hands free from Blood and their Hearts from Malice Covetousness and Pride could not transmit their Virtues to their Successors nor correct the perverseness that lay at the root and foundation of their Government The whole mass of Blood was vitiated the Body was but one vast Sore which no hand but that of the Almighty could heal and he who from an abhorrence of iniquity had declared he would not hear the cries of his own people when they had chosen the thing that was not good would not shew mercy to Strangers who had done the same thing I have insisted upon the Hebrew Macedonian and Roman Histories because they are the most eminent and best known to us We are in the dark concerning the Babylonian Assyrian Chaldean Bactrian and Egyptian Monarchies We know little more of them than the Scripture occasionally relates concerning their barbarous cruelty bestial pride and extravagant folly Others have bin like to them and I know not where to find a peaceable Monarchy unless it be in Peru where the Ynca Garcilasso de la Vega says that a Man and a Woman Children of the Sun and the Moon appearing amongst a barbarous people living without any Religion or Law established a Government amongst them which continued in much Peace and Justice for twelve Generations But this seeming to be as fabulous as their Birth we may pass it over and fix upon those that are better known of which there is not one that has not suffer'd more dangerous and mischievous Seditions than all the popular Governments that have bin in the World And the condition of those Kingdoms which are not absolute and yet give a preference to Birth without consideration of Merit or Virtue is not much better This is proved by the Reasons of those Seditions and Tumults as well as from the Fact it self The Reasons do arise from the violence of the Passions that incite men to them and the intricacy of the Questions concerning Succession Every man has Passions few know how to moderate and no one can wholly extinguish them As they are various in their Nature so they are governed by various Objects and men usually follow that which is predominant in them whether it proceed from Anger or Desire and whether it terminate in Ambition Covetousness Lust or any other more or less blamable Appetite Every manner of life furnishes something that in some measure may foment these but a Crown comprehends all that can be grateful to the most violent and vicious He who is covetous has vast Revenues besides what he may get by fraud and rapine to satisfy his Appetite If he be given to Sensuality the variety of pleasures and the facility of accomplishing whatever he desires tends farther to inflame that Passion Such as are ambitious are incited by the greatness of their Power to attempt great matters and the most sottish or lazy may discharge themselves of Cares and hope that others will be easily hired to take the burden of Business upon them whilst they lie at ease They who naturally incline to pride and cruelty are more violently tempted to usurp Dominion and the wicked advices of Flatterers always concurring with their Passions incite them to exercise the Power they have gotten with the utmost rigor to satiate their own rage and to secure themselves against the effects of the publick hatred which they know they have deserved If there be as our Author says no other rule than Force and Success and that he must be taken for the Father of a People who is in possession of a Power over them whoever has the one may put the other to a trial Nay even those who have regard to Justice will seldom want Reasons to perswade them that it is on their side Something may be amiss in the State Injuries may be done to themselves and their Friends Such Honours may be denied as they think they deserve or others of less Merit as they suppose may be preferred before them Men do so rarely make a right estimate of their own Merits that those who mean well may be often deceived and if nothing but Success be requir'd to make a Monarch they may think it just to attempt whatever they can hope to accomplish This was the case of Julius Cesar he thought all things lawful when the Consulat which he supposed he had deserved was denied Viribus utendum est quas fecimus arma tenenti Omnia dat qui just a negat Lucan These Enterprizes seem to belong to men of great Spirits but there are none so base not to be capable of undertaking and as things may stand of bringing them to perfection History represents no man under a more contemprible character of sottish Laziness Cowardice and Drunkenness than Vitellius no one more impure and sordid than Galba Otho was advanced for being in his manners like to Nero Vespasian was scorned for his Avarice till the Power fell into such hands as made the world believe none could be unworthy of the Empire and in the following Ages the worst men by the worst means most frequently obtained it These Wounds are not cured by saying that the Law of God and Nature prevents this mischief by annexing the Succession of Crowns to proximity of Blood for mankind had not bin continually afflicted with them if there had bin such a Law or that they could have bin prevented by it and tho there were such a Law yet more Questions would arise about that Proximity than any wise man would dare to determine The Law can be of no effect unless there be a Power to decide the Contests arising upon it But the fundamental Maxim of the great Monarchies is that there can be no Interregnum The Heir of the Crown is in possession as soon as he who did injoy it is dead Le Mort as the French
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-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
Monarchies by the violence of some Princes and the baseness folly and cowardice of others together with what they have suffer'd in contests for the several Crowns whilst men divided into divers Factions ftrive with as much vehemency to advance the Person they favour as if they or their Country were interested in the quarrel and fight as fiercely for a Master as they might reasonably do to have none I am not able to determine which of the two evils is the most mortal 'T is evident the Vices of Princes result to the damage of the People but whether Pride and Cruelty or Stupidity and Sloth be the worst I cannot tell All Monarchies are subject to be afflicted with Civil Wars but whether the most frequent and bloody do arise from the quarrels of divers Competitors for Crowns before any one gain the possession of them or afterwards through the fears of him that would keep what he has gained or the rage of those who would wrest it from him is not so easily decided But Commonwealths are less troubled with those Distempers Women Children or such as are notoriously foolish or mad are never advanced to the supreme Power Whilst the Laws and that Disciplin which nourishes Virtue is in force Men of Wisdom and Valor are never wanting and every man desires to give testimony of his Virtue when he knows 't will be rewarded with Honour and Power If unworthy persons creep into Magistracies or are by mistake any way prefer'd their Vices for the most part turn to their own hurt and the State cannot easily receive any great damage by the incapacity of one who is not to continue in Office above a year and is usually encompassed with those who having born or are aspiring to the same are by their Virtue able to supply his defects cannot hope for a reward from one unable to corrupt them and are sure of the favour of the Senate and People to support them in the defence of the publick Interest As long as this good Order continues private quarrels are suppress'd by the authority of the Magistrate or prove to be of little effect Such as arise between the Nobles and Commons frequently produce good Laws for the maintenance of Liberty as they did in Rome for above three hundred years after the expulsion of Tarquin and almost ever terminated with little or no blood Sometimes the errors of one or both parties are discovered by the discourse of a wise and good man and those who have most violently opposed one another become the best Friends every one joining to remove the evil that causes the division When the Senate and People of Rome seemed to be most furiously incensed against each other the creation of Tribuns communication of Honours and Marriages between the Patrician and Plebeian Families or the mitigation of Usury composed all and these were not only harmless things but such as gave opportunities of correcting the defects that had bin in the first Constitution of the Government without which they could never have attained to the Greatness Glory and Happiness they afterwards enjoy'd Such as had seen that People meeting in tumult running through the City crying out against the Kings Consuls Senate or Decemviri might have thought they would have filled all with blood and slaughter but no such thing hapned They desired no more than to take away the Kingdom which Tarquin had wickedly usurped and never went about so much as to punish one Minister of the mischiefs he had done or to take away his Goods till upon pretence of treating his Ambassadors by a new treachery had cast the City into greater danger than ever Tho the Decemviri had by the like Villanies equally provoked the People they were used with the like gentleness Appius Claudius and Oppius having by voluntary death substracted themselves from publick punishment their Collegues were only banished and the Magistracies of the City reduced to the former order without the effusion of more blood They who contended for their just Rights were satisfied with the recovery of them whereas such as follow the impulse of an unruly Ambition never think themselves safe till they have destroyed all that seem able to disturb them and satiated their rage with the blood of their Adversaries This makes as well as shews the difference between the Tumults of Rome or the secession of the common People to Mount Aventine and the Battels of Towton Teuxbury Eveshal Lewes Hexham Barnet St. Albans and Bosworth 'T is in vain to say these ought rather to be compared to those of Pharsalia Actium or Philippi for when the Laws of a Commonwealth are abolish'd the name also ceases Whatever is done by force or fraud to set up the Interests and Lusts of one man in opposition to the Laws of his Country is purely and absolutely Monarchical Whatsoever passed between Marius Sylla Cinna Catiline Caesar Pompey Crassus Augustus Antonius and Lepidus is to be imputed to the Contests that arise between Competitors for Monarchy as well as those that in the next age happened between Galba Otho Vitellius and Vespasian Or which is worse whereas those in Commonwealths fight for themselves when there is occasion and if they succeed enjoy the fruits of their Victory so as even those who remain of the vanquished party partake of the Liberty thereby established or the good Laws thereupon made such as follow'd the Ensigns of these men who sought to set up themselves did rather like beasts than men hazard and suffer many unspeakable evils to purchase misery to themselves and their Posterity and to make him their Master who increasing in Pride Avarice and Cruelty was to be thrown down again with as much Blood as he had bin set up These things if I mistake not being in the last degree evident I may leave to our Author all the advantages he can gain by his rhetorical Description of the Tumults of Rome when Blood was in the Market-place suckt up with Sponges and the Jakes stuffed with Carcases to which he may add the crimes of Sylla's Life and the miseries of his Death but withal I desire to know what number of Sponges were sufficient to suck up the Blood of five hundred thousand men slain in one day when the Houses of David and Jeroboam contended for the Crown of Israel or of four hundred thousand who fell in one battel between Joash and Amaziah on the same occasion what Jakes were capacious enough to contain the Carcases of those that perished in the quarrels between the Successors of Alexander the several Competitors for the Roman Empire or those which have happened in France Spain England and other places upon the like occasions If Sylla for some time acted as an absolute Monarch 't is no wonder that he died like one or that God punished him as Herod Philip the second of Spain and some others because the hand of his fellow-Citizens had unjustly spar'd him If when he was become detestable to God
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
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
Will and can he be offended with those who desire to live in a conformity to that Law Or could it justly be said The People had chosen that which is not good if nothing in Government be good but what they chose But as the worst men delight in the worst things and Fools are pleased with the most extreme absurdities he not only gives the highest praises to that which bears so many marks of God's hatred but after having said that Abraham Isaac Jacob and Moses were Kings he goes on and says The Israelites begged a King of Samuel which had bin impertinent if the Magistrates instituted by the Law were Kings and tho it might be a folly in them to ask what they had already it could be no sin to desire that which they enjoyed by the Ordinance of God If they were not Kings it follows that the only Government set up by God amongst men wanted the principal part even the Head and Foundation from whence all the other parts have their action and being that is God's Law is against God's Law and destroys it self But if God did neither by a general and perpetual Ordinance establish over all Nations the Monarchy which Samuel describes nor prescribe it to his own People by a particular Command it was purely the Peoples Creature the production of their own fancy conceived in wickedness and brought forth in iniquity an Idol set up by themselves to their own destruction in imitation of their accursed Neighbours and their Reward was no better than the concession of an impious Petition which is one of God's heaviest Judgments Samuel's words are acknowledged by all Interpreters who were not malicious or mad to be a disswasion from their wicked purpose not a description of what a King might justly do by virtue of his Office but what those who should be set up against God and his Law would do when they should have the power in their hands And I leave such as have the understandings of men and are not abandoned by God to judg what influence this ought to have upon other Nations either as to obligation or imitation SECT IV. No People can be obliged to suffer from their Kings what they have not a right to do OUR Author's next work is to tell us That the scope of Samuel was to teach the People a dutiful obedience to their King even in the things that they think mischievous or inconvenient For by telling them what the King would do he indeed instructs them what a Subject must suffer Yet not so that it is right for Kings to do injury but it is right for them to go unpunished by the People if they do it so that in this point it is all one whether Samuel describe a King or a Tyrant This is hard but the Conclusion is grounded upon nothing There is no relation between a Prediction that a thing shall be attempted or done to me and a Precept that I shall not defend my self or punish the person that attempts or dos it If a Prophet should say that a Thief lay in the way to kill me it might reasonably perswade me not to go or to go in such a manner as to be able to defend my self but can no way oblige me to submit to the violence that shall be offer'd or my Friends and Children not to avenge my death if I fall much less can other men be deprived of the natural right of defending themselves by my imprudence or obstinacy in not taking the warning given whereby I might have preserved my life For every man has a right of resisting some way or other that which ought not to be done to him and tho human Laws do not in all cases make men Judges and Avengers of the Injuries offer'd to them I think there is none that dos not justify the man who kills another that offers violence to him if it appear that the way prescribed by the Law for the preservation of the Innocent cannot be taken This is not only true in the case of outragious attempts to assassinate or rob upon the high way but in divers others of less moment I knew a man who being appointed to keep his Master's Park killed three men in one night that came to destroy his Deer and putting himself into the hands of the Magistrate and consessing the Fact both in matter and manner he was at the publick Assizes not only acquitted but commended for having done his duty and this in a time when 't is well known Justice was severely administred and little favour expected by him or his Master Nay all Laws must fall human Societies that subsist by them be dissolved and all innocent persons be exposed to the violence of the most wicked if men might not justly defend themselves against injustice by their own natural right when the ways prescribed by publick Authority cannot be taken Our Author may perhaps say this is true in all except the King And I desire to know why if it be true in all except the King it should not be true in relation to him Is it possible that he who is instituted for the obtaining of Justice should claim the liberty of doing Injustice as a Privilege Were it not better for a people to be without Law than that a Power should be established by Law to commit all manner of violences with impunity Did not David resist those of Saul Did he not make himself head of the Tribe of Judah when they revolted against his Son and afterwards of the ten Tribes that rejected his Posterity Did not the Israelites stone Adoram who collected the Taxes revolt from the house of David set up Jeroboam and did not the Prophet say it was from the Lord If it was from the Lord was it not good If it was good then is it not so for ever Did good proceed from one root then and from another now If God had avenged the Blood of Naboth by fire from Heaven and destroyed the House of Ahab as he did the two Captains and their men who were sent to apprehend Elijah it might be said he reserv'd that vengeance to himself but he did it by the Sword of Jehu and the Army which was the People who had set him up for an Example to others But 't is good to examine what this dutiful Obedience is that our Author mentions Men usually owe no more than they receive 'T is hard to know what the Israelites owed to Saul David Jeroboam Ahab or any other King whether good or bad till they were made Kings And the Act of the People by which so great a dignity was conferr'd seems to have laid a duty upon them who did receive more than they had to give so that something must be due from them unless it were releas'd by virtue of a Covenant or Promise made and none could accrue to them from the people afterwards unless from the merit of the person in rightly executing his Office If a Covenant
and People at London and Harold excused himself for not performing his Oath to William the Norman because he said he had made it unduly and presumptuously without consulting the Nobility and People and without their Authority William was received with great joy by the Clergy and People and saluted King by all swearing to observe the antient good and approved Laws of England and tho he did but ill perform his Oath yet before his death he seemed to repent of the ways he had taken and only wishing his Son might be King of England he confessed in his last Will made at Caen in Normandy that he neither found nor left the Kingdom as an Inheritance If he possessed no right except what was conferred upon him no more was conserred than had bin enjoy'd by the antient Kings according to the approved Laws which he swore to observe Those Laws gave no power to any till he was elected and that which they did then give was so limited that the Nobility and People reserved to themselves the disposition of the greatest Affairs even to the deposition and expulsion of such as should not well perform the duty of their Oaths and Office And I leave it to our Author to prove how they can be said to have had the Sword and the Power so as to be feared otherwise than as the Apostle says by those that do evil which we acknowledg to be not only in the King but in the lowest Officer of Justice in the world If it be pretended that our later Kings are more to be seared than William the Norman or his Predecessors it must not be as has bin proved either from the general right of Kings or from the Doctrine of the Apostle but from something else that is peculiar and subsequent which I leave our Author's Disciples to prove and an answer may be found in due time But to show that our Ancestors did not mistake the words of the Apostle 't is good to consider when to whom and upon what occasion he spoke The Christian Religion was then in its infancy his discourses were addressed to the Professors of it who tho they soon grew to be considerable in number were for the most part of the meanest sort of People Servants or Inhabitants of the Cities rather than Citizens and Freemen joined in no civil Body or Society nor such as had or could have any part in the Government The occasion was to suppress the dangerous mistake of many converted Jews and others who knowing themselves to be freed from the power of Sin and the Devil presumed they were also freed from the obligation of human Laws And if this Error had not bin crop'd in the bud it would have given occasion to their Enemies who desired nothing more to destroy them all and who knowing that such Notions were stirring among them would have bin glad that they who were not easily to be discovered had by that means discovered themselves This induced a necessity of diverting a poor mean scatter'd People from such thoughts concerning the State to convince them of the Error into which they were fallen that Christians did not owe the same obedience to Civil Laws and Magistrates as other men and to keep them from drawing destruction upon themselves by such ways as not being warranted by God had no promise of his Protection St. Paul's work was to preserve the Professors of Christianity as appears by his own words I exhort that first of all Supplications Prayers Intercessions and giving of thanks be made for all men for Kings and for all that are in Authority that we may live a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty Put them in mind to be subject to Principalities and Powers to obey Magistrates to be ready for every good work St. Peter agrees with him fully in describing the Magistrate and his Duty shewing the reasons why obedience should be pay'd to him and teaching Christians to be humble and contented with their condition as free yet not using their Liberty for a cover to malice and not only to fear God and honor the King of which conjunction of words such as Filmer are very proud but to honor all men as is said in the same verse This was in a peculiar manner the work of that time in which those who were to preach and propagate the Gospel were not to be diverted from that Duty by entangling themselves in the care of State-affairs but it dos in some sense agree with all times for it can never be the duty of a good man to oppose such a Magistrate as is the Minister of God in the exercise of his Office nor to deny to any man that which is his due But as the Christian Law exempts no man from the Duty he ows to his Father Master or the Magistrate it dos not make him more a Slave than he was before nor deprive him of any natural or civil Right and if we are obliged to pay Tribute Honor or any other thing where it is not due it must be by some Precept very different from that which commands us to give to Cesar that which is Cesar's If he define the Magistrate to be the Minister of God doing Justice and from thence draws the Reasons he gives for rendring Obedience to him we are to inquire whose Minister he is who overthrows it and look for some other reason sor rendring obedience to him than the words of the Apostles If David who was willing to lay down his life sor the people who hated iniquity and would not suffer a liar to come into his presence was the Minister of God I desire to know whose Minister Caligula was who set up himself to be worshipped for a God and would at once have destroyed all the people that he ought to have protected Whose Minister was Nero who besides the abominable impurities of his lise and hatred to all virtue as contrary to his Person and Government set fire to the great City If it be true that contrariorum contraria est ratio these questions are easily decided and if the reasons of things are eternal the same distinction grounded upon truth will be good for ever Every Magistrate and every man by his works will for ever declare whose Minister he is in what spirit he lives and consequently what obedience is due to him according to the Precept of the Apostle If any man ask what I mean by Justice I answer That the Law of the Land as far as it is Sanctio recta jubens honesta prohibens contraria declares what it is But there have bin and are Laws that are neither just nor commendable There was a Law in Rome that no God should be worshipped vvithout the consent of the Senat Upon vvhich Tertullian says scoffingly That God shall not be God unless he please Man and by virtue of this Law the first Christians were exposed to all manner of cruelties and some
able than themselves to bear the weight of a Crown convinces me fully that they had so framed our Laws that even children women or ill men might either perform as much as was necessarily required of them or be brought to reason if they transgressed and arrogated to themselves more than was allow'd For 't is not to be imagined that a company of men should so far degenerate from their own Nature which is Reason to give up themselves and their Posterity with all their concernments in the world to depend upon the will of a child a woman an ill man or a fool If therefore Laws are necessary to popular States they are no less to Monarchies or rather that is not a State or Government which has them not and 't is no less impossible for any to subsist without them than for the body of a man to be and perform its functions without Nerves or Bones And if any People had ever bin so foolish to establish that which they called a Government without Laws to support and regulate it the impossibility of subsisting would evidence the madness of the Constitution and ought to deter all others from following their example 'T is no less incredible that those Nations which rejected Kings did put themselves into the Power of one man to prescribe to them such Laws as he pleased But the instances alledged by our Author are evidently false The Athenians were not without Laws when they had Kings AEgeus was subject to the Laws and did nothing of importance without the consent of the People and Theseus not being able to please them died a banished man Draco and Solon did not make but propose Laws and they were of no force till they were established by the Authority of the People The Spartans dealt in the same manner with Lycurgus he invented their Laws but the People made them and when the Assembly of all the Citizens had approved and sworn to observe them till his return from Crete he resolved rather to die in a voluntary banishment than by his return to absolve them from the Oath they had taken The Romans also had Laws during the Government of their Kings but not finding in them that Perfection they desired the Decemviri were chosen to frame others which yet were of no value till they were passed by the People in the Comitia Centuriata and being so approved they were established But this Sanction to which every man whether Magistrate or private Citizen was subject did no way bind the whole body os the People who still retained in themselves the Power os changing both the matter and the form of their Government as appears by their instituting and abrogating Kings Consuls Dictators Tribuns with consular Power and Decemviri when they thought good for the Commonwealth And if they had this Power I leave our Author to shew why the like is not in other Nations SECT XIV Laws are not made by Kings not because they are busied in greater matters than doing Justice but because Nations will be governed by Rule and not Arbitrarily OUR Author pursuing the mistakes to which he seems perpetually condemned says that when Kings were either busied in War or distracted with publick Cares so that every private man could not have access unto their Persons to learn their Wills and Pleasures then of necessity were Laws invented that so every particular Subject might find his Prince's Pleasure I have often heard that Governments were established for the obtaining of Justice and if that be true 't is hard to imagine what business a supreme Magistrate can have to divert him from accomplishing the principal end of his Institution And 't is as commonly said that this distribution of Justice to a People is a work surpassing the strength of any one man Jethro seems to have bin a wise man and 't is probable he thought Moses to be so also but he found the work of judging the People to be too heavy for him and therefore advised him to leave the judgment of Causes to others who should be chosen for that purpose which advice Moses accepted and God approved The governing power was as insupportable to him as the Judicial He desired rather to die than to bear so great a burden and God neither accusing him of sloth or impatience gave him seventy Assistants But if we may believe our Author the Powers Judicial and Legislative that of judging as well as that of governing is not too much for any man woman or child whatsoever and that he stands in no need either of God's Statutes to direct him or Man's Counsel to assist him unless it be when he is otherwise employ'd and his Will alone is sufficient for all But what if he be not busied in greater matters or distracted with publick cares is every Prince capable of this work Tho Moses had not found it too great for him or it should be granted that a man of excellent natural Endowments great Wisdom Learning Experience Industry and Integrity might perform it is it certain that all those who happen to be born in reigning Families are so If Moses had the Law of God before his eyes and could repair to God himself for the application or explanation of it have all Princes the same Assistance Do they all speak with God face to face or can they do what he did without the Assistance he had If all Kings of mature years are of that perfection are we assured that none shall die before his Heir arrive to the same Or shall he have the same ripeness of Judgment in his Infancy If a Child come to a Crown dos that immediately infuse the most admirable Endowments and Graces Have we any promise from Heaven that Women shall enjoy the same Prerogatives in those Countries where they are made capable of the Succession Or dos that Law which renders them capable defend them not only against the frailty of their own Nature but confer the most sublime virtues upon them But who knows not that no Families do more frequently produce weak or ill men than the greatest and that which is worse their greatness is a snare to them so that they who in a low condition might have passed unregarded being advanced to the highest have often appeared to be or became the worst of all Beasts and they who advance them are like to them For if the Power be in the Multitude as our Author is forced to confess otherwise the Athenians and Romans could not have given all as he says nor a part as I say to Draco Solon or the Decemviri they must be Beasts also who should have given away their Right and Liberty in hopes of receiving Justice from such as probably will neither understand nor regard it or protection from those who will not be able to help themselves and expect such Virtue Wisdom and Integrity should be and for ever remain in the Family they set up as was never known to
sense of the words as they are understood in our Language by those who give them and conducing to the ends for which they are given which can be no other than to defend us from all manner of arbitrary Power and to fix a rule to which we are to conform our Actions and from which according to our deserts we may expect reward or punishment And those who by prevarications cavils or equivocations endeavour to dissolve these Obligations do either maliciously betray the cause of Kings by representing them to the world as men who prefer the Satisfaction of their irregular Appetites before the performance of their duty and trample under foot the most sacred bonds of human Society or from the grossest ignorance do not see that by teaching Nations how little they can rely upon the Oaths of their Princes they instruct them as little to observe their own and that not only because men are generally inclined to follow the examples of those in power but from a most certain conclusion that he who breaks his part of a Contract cannot without the utmost impudence and folly expect the performance of the other nothing being more known amongst men than that all Contracts are of such mutual obligation that he who fails of his part discharges the other If this be so between man and man it must needs be so between one and many millions of men If he were free because he says he is every man must be free also when he pleases if a private man who receives no benefit or perhaps prejudice from a Contract be obliged to perform the conditions much more are Kings who receive the greatest advantages the world can give As they are not by themselves nor for themselves so they are not different in specie from other men they are born live and die as we all do The same Law of Truth and Justice is given to all by God and Nature and perhaps I may say the performance of it is most rigorously exacted from the greatest of men The liberty of Perjury cannot be a privilege annexed to Crowns and 't is absurd to think that the most venerable Authority that can be conferred upon a man is increased by a liberty-to commit or impunity in committing such crimes as are the greatest aggravations of infamy to the basest villains in the world SECT XVIII The next in blood to deceased Kings cannot generally be said to be Kings till they are crowned 'T IS hereupon usually objected that Kings do not come in by Contract nor by Oath but are Kings by or according to proximity of Blood before they are crowned Tho this be a bold Proposition I will not say 't is universally false 'T is possible that in some places the rule of Succession may be set down so precisely that in some cases every man may be able to see and know the sense as well as the Person designed to be the Successor but before I acknowledg it to be universally true I must desire to know what this rule of Succession is and from whence it draws its original I think I may be excused if I make these scruples because I find the thing in dispute to be variously adjudged in several places and have observed five different manners of disposing Crowns esteemed Hereditary besides an infinite number of collateral Controversies arising from them of which we have divers examples and if there be one universal rule appointed one of these only can be right and all the others must be vicious The first gives the inheritance to the eldest Male of the eldest legitimate Line as in France according to that which they call the Salique Law The second to the eldest legitimate Male of the reigning Family as antiently in Spain according to which the Brother of the deceased King has bin often if not always preferr'd before the Son if he were elder as may appear by the dispute between Corbis and Orsua cited before from Titus Livius and in the same Country during the reign of the Goths the eldest Male succeeded whether Legitimate or Illegitimate The fourth receives Females or their Descendents without any other condition distinguishing them from Males except that the younger Brother is preferr'd before the elder Sister but the daughter of the elder Brother is preferr'd before the Son of the younger The fifth gives the Inheritance to Females under a condition as in Sweden where they inherit unless they marry out of the Country without the consent of the Estates according to which rule Charles Gustavus was chosen as any Stranger might have bin tho Son to a Sister of Gustavus Adolphus who by marrying a German Prince had forfeited her right And by the same act of Estates by which her eldest Son was chosen and the Crown entailed upon the Heirs of his Body her second Son the Prince Adolphus was wholly excluded Till these questions are decided by a Judg of such an undoubted Authority that all men may safely submit 't is hard for any man who really seeks the satisfaction of his Conscience to know whether the Law of God and Nature tho he should believe there is one general Law do justify the Customs of the antient Medes and Sabeans mentioned by the Poet who admitted Females or those of France which totally exclude them as unfit to reign over men and utterly unable to perform the duty of a supreme Magistrate as we see they are every where excluded from the exercise of all other Offices in the Commonwealth If it be said that we ought to follow the Customs of our own Country I answer that those of our own Country deserve to be observed because they are of our own Country But they are no more to be called the Laws of God and Nature than those of France or Germany and tho I do not believe that any general Law is appointed I wish I were sure that our Customs in this point were not more repugnant to the light of Nature and prejudicial to our selves than those of some other Nations But if I should be so much an Englishman to think the will of God to have bin more particularly revealed to our Ancestors than to any other Nation and that all of them ought to learn from us yet it would be difficult to decide many questions that may arise For tho the Parliament in the 36th of Henry the sixth made an Act in favour of Richard Duke of York descended from a Daughter of Mortimer who married the Daughter of the Duke of Clarence elder Brother to John of Gaunt they rather asserted their own power of giving the Crown to whom they pleased than determined the question For if they had believed that the Crown had belonged to him by a general and eternal Law they must immediately have rejected Henry as a Usurper and put Richard into the possession of his Right which they did not And tho they did something like to this in the cases of Maud the Empress in relation
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
dangerous and slavish to depend upon the will of a man which perhaps may be irregular or extravagant in one who is subject to no Law our Author very dexterously removes the scruples by telling us 1. That the Prerogative of the King to be above the Law is only for the good of them that are under the Law and to preserve their Liberties 2. That there can be no Laws without a supreme Power to command or make them In Aristocracies the Noblemen are above the Law in Democracies the People By the like reason in a Monarchy the King must of necessity be above the Law There can be no Soveraign Majesty in him that is under the Law that which gives the very being to a King is the power to give Laws Without this Power he is but an equivocal King It skills not how he comes by this Power whether by Election Donation Succession or any other means I am contented in some degree to follow our Author and to acknowledg that the King neither has nor can have any Prerogative which is not for the good of the People and the preservation of their Liberties This therefore is the foundation of Magistratical Power and the only way of discerning whether the Prerogative of making Laws of being above Laws or any other he may pretend be justly due to him or not and if it be doubted who is the fittest judg to determine that question common sense will inform us that if the Magistrate receive his Power by election or donation they who elect or give him that Power best know whether the good they sought be performed or not if by succession they who instituted the Succession if otherwise that is by fraud or violence the point is decided for he has no right at all and none can be created by those means This might be said tho all Princes were of ripe age sober wise just and good for even the best are subject to mistakes and passions and therefore unfit to be judges of their own concernments in which they may by various means be misguided but it would be extreme madness to attribute the same to Children Fools or Madmen who are not able to judg of the least things concerning themselves or others but most especially to those who coming in by usurpation declare their contempt of all human and divine Laws and are enemies to the People they oppress None therefore can be judges of such cases but the People for whom and by whom the Constitutions are made or their Representatives and Delegates to whom they give the power of doing it But nothing can be more absurd than to say that one man has an absolute power above Law to govern according to his will for the Peoples good and the preservation of their Liberty For no Liberty can subsist where there is such a Power and we have no other way of distinguishing between free Nations and such as are not so than that the free are governed by their own Laws and Magistrates according to their own mind and that the others either have willingly subjected themselves or are by force brought under the power of one or more men to be ruled according to his or their pleasure The same distinction holds in relation to particular persons He is a free man who lives as best pleases himself under Laws made by his own consent and the name of slave can belong to no man unless to him who is either born in the house of a Master bought taken subdued or willingly gives his ear to be nailed to the post and subjects himself to the will of another Thus were the Grecians said to be free in opposition to the Medes and Persians as Artabanus acknowledged in his discourse to Themistocles In the same manner the Italians Germans and Spaniards were distinguish'd from the Eastern Nations who for the most part were under the power of Tyrants Rome was said to have recovered liberty by the expulsion of the Tarquins or as Tacitus expresses it Lucius Brutus established Liberty and the Consulat together as if before that time they had never enjoyed any and Julius Cesar is said to have overthrown the liberty of that People But if Filmer deserve credit the Romans were free under Tarquin enslaved when he was driven away and his Prerogative extinguish'd that was so necessarily required for the defence of their Liberty and were never restored to it till Cesar assum'd all the Power to himself By the same rule the Switzers Grisons Venetians Hollanders and some other Nations are now Slaves and Tuscany the Kingdom of Naples the Ecclesiastical State with such as live under a more gentle Master on the other side of the Water I mean the Turk are free Nations Nay the Florentins who complain of Slavery under the House of Medices were made free by the power of a Spanish Army who set up a Prerogative in that gentle Family which for their good has destroyed all that could justly be called so in that Country and almost wholly dispeopled it I who esteem my self free because I depend upon the will of no man and hope to die in the liberty I inherit from my Ancestors am a slave and the Moors or Turks who may be beaten and kill'd whenever it pleases their insolent Masters are Free men But surely the world is not so much mistaken in the signification of words and things The weight of Chains number of Stripes hardness of labour and other effects of a Master's cruelty may make one servitude more miserable than another but he is a slave who serves the best and gentlest man in the world as well as he who serves the worst and he dos serve him if he must obey his commands and depends upon his will For this reason the Poet ingeniously flattering a good Emperor said that Liberty was not more desirable than to serve a gentle Master but still acknowledged that it was a service distinct from and contrary to Liberty and it had not bin a handsom complement unless the evil of servitude were so extreme that nothing but the virtue and goodness of the Master could any way compensate or alleviate it Now tho it should be granted that he had spoken more like to a Philosopher than a Poet that we might take his words in the strictest sense and think it possible to find such Conveniences in a subjection to the will of a good and wise Master as may balance the loss of Liberty it would be nothing to the question because that Liberty is thereby acknowledged to be destroy'd by the Prerogative which is only instituted to preserve it If it were true that no liberty were to be prefer'd before the service of a good Master it could be of no use to the perishing world which Filmer and his Disciples would by such Arguments bring into a subjection to children fools mad or vicious men These are not cases feigned upon a distant imaginary possibility but so frequently found
Kings of Spain France and Sweden so well to understand the meaning of it as to decide extraordinary cases The wisdom of Nations has provided more assured helps and none could have bin so brutish and negligent of the publick Concernments to suffer the Succession to fall to women children c. if they had not reserved a power in themselves to prefer others before the nearest in blood if reason require and prescribed such rules as might preserve the publick from ruin notwithstanding their infirmities and vices These helps provided by our Laws are principally by grand and petit Juries who are not only Judges of matters of fact as whether a man be kill'd but whether he be kill'd criminally These men are upon their Oaths and may be indicted of Perjury if they prevaricate The Judges are present not only to be a check upon them but to explain such points of the Law as may seem difficult And tho these Judges may be said in some sense to be chosen by the King he is not understood to do it otherwise than by the advice of his Council who cannot perform their duty unless they propose such as in their consciences they think most worthy of the Office and most capable of performing the duty rightly nor he accomplish the Oath of his Coronation unless he admit those who upon deliberation seem to be the best The Judges being thus chosen are so far from depending upon the will of the King that they swear faithfully to serve the People as well as the King and to do justice to every man according to the Law of the Land notwithstanding any Writs Letters or Commands received from him and in default thereof they are to forfeit their bodies lands and goods as in cases of Treason These Laws have bin so often and so severely executed that it concerns all Judges well to consider them and the Cases of Tresilian Empson Dudley and others shew that neither the King 's preceding command nor subsequent pardon could preserve them from the punishment they deserved All men knew that what they did was agreeable to the King's pleasure for Tresilian advanced the Prerogative of Edward the 2d and Empson brought great Treasures into the Coffers of Henry the 7th Nevertheless they were charged with Treason for subverting the Laws of the Land and executed as Traitors Tho England ought never to forget the happy Reign of Q. Elizabeth yet it must be acknowledged that she as well as others had her failings She was full of love to the People just in her nature sincere in her intentions but could not so perfectly discover the snares that were laid for her or resist the importunity of the Persons she most trusted as not sometimes to be brought to attempt things against Law She and her Counsellors pressed the Judges very hardly to obey the Patent under her Great Seal in the case of Cavendish but they answered That both she and they had taken an Oath to keep the Law and if they should obey her commands the Law would not warrant them c. And besides the offence against God their Country and the Commonwealth they alledged the example of Empson and Dudley whereby they said they were deterred from obeying her illegal Commands They who had sworn to keep the Law notwithstanding the King's Writs knew that the Law depended not upon his will and the same Oath that obliged them not to regard any command they should receive from him shewed that they were not to expect indemnity by it and not only that the King had neither the power of making altering mitigating or interpreting the Law but that he was not at all to be heard in general or particular matters otherwise than as he speaks in the common course of Justice by the Courts legally established which say the same thing whether he be young or old ignorant or wise wicked or good and nothing dos better evidence the wisdom and care of our Ancestors in framing the Laws and Government we live under than that the People did not suffer extremities by the vices or infirmities of Kings till an Age more full of malice than those in which they lived had found tricks to pervert the rule and frustrate their honest intentions It was not safe for the Kings to violate their Oaths by an undue interposition of their Authority but the Ministers who served them in those violations have seldom escaped punishment This is to be understood when the deviations from Justice are extreme and mischievous for something must always be allow'd to human frailty The best have their defects and none could stand if a too exact scrutiny were made of all their actions Edward the third about the twentieth year of his Reign acknowledged his own in Parliament and as well for the ease of his Conscience as the satisfaction of his People promoted an Act Commanding all Judges to do Justice notwithstanding any Writs Letters or Commands from himself and forbidding those that belonged to the King Queen and Prince to intermeddle in those matters But if the best and wisest of our Princes in the strength and maturity of their years had their failings and every act proceeding from them that tended to the interruption of Justice was a failing how can it be said that the King in his personal capacity directly or indirectly may enter into the discussion of these matters much less to determine them according to his will But says our Author the Law is no better than a Tyrant general Pardons at the Coronation and in Parliament are but the bounty of the Prerogative c. There may be hard cases and citing some perverted pieces from Aristotle's Ethicks and Politicsk adds That when something falls out besides the general rule then it is fit that what the Lawmaker hath omitted or where he hath erred by speaking generally it should be corrected and supplied as if the Lawmaker were present that ordained it The Governor whether he be one man or more ought to be Lord of these things whereof it was impossible that the Law should speak exactly These things are in part true but our Author makes use of them as the Devil dos of Scripture to subvert the truth There may be something of rigour in the Law that in some cases may be mitigated and the Law it self in relation to England dos so far acknowledg it as to refer much to the consciences of Juries and those who are appointed to assist them and the most difficult Cases are referred to the Parliament as the only judges that are able to determine them Thus the Statute of the 35 Edw. 3d enumerating the crimes then declared to be Treason leaves to suture Parliaments to judg what other facts equivalent to them may deserve the same punishment and 't is a general rule in the Law which the Judges are sworn to observe that difficult Cases should be reserved till the Parliament meet who are only able to decide them and
if there be any inconvenience in this 't is because they do not meet so frequently as the Law requires or by sinister means are interrupted in their sitting But nothing can be more absurd than to say that because the King dos not call Parliaments as the Law and his Oath requires that power should accrue to him which the Law and the consent of the Nation has placed in them There is also such a thing in the Law as a general or particular Pardon and the King may in some degree be entrusted with the power of giving it especially for such crimes as merely relate to himself as every man may remit the injuries done to himself but the confession of Edward the third That the Oath of the Crown had not bin kept by reason of the grant of Pardons contrary to Statutes and a new Act made that all such Charters of Pardon from henceforth granted against the Oath of the Crown and the said Statutes should be held for none demonstrates that this power was not in himself but granted by the Nation and to be executed according to such rules as the Law prescribed and the Parliament approved Moreover there having bin many and sometimes bloody contests for the Crown upon which the Nation was almost equally divided and it being difficult for them to know or even for us who have all the parties before us to judg which was the better side it was understood that he who came to be crown'd by the consent of the People was acceptable to all and the question being determined it was no way fit that he should have a liberty to make use of the publick Authority then in his hands to revenge such personal iniuries as he had or might suppose to have received which might raise new and perhaps more dangerous troubles if the Authors of them were still kept in fear of being prosecuted and nothing could be more unreasonable than that he should emplov his power to the destruction of those who had consented to make him King This made it a matter of course for a King as soon as he was crown'd to issue out a general Pardon which was no more than to declare that being now what he was not before he had no enemy upon any former account For this reason Lewis the twelfth of France when he was incited to revenge himself against those who in the reign of his Predecessor Charles the eighth had caused him to be imprisoned with great danger of his life made this answer That the King of France did not care to revenge the injuries done to the Duke of Orleans and the last King of Sweden seemed no otherwise to remember who had opposed the Queens Abdication and his Election than by conferring honours upon them because he knew they were the best men of the Nation and such as would be his friends when they should see how he would govern in which he was not deceived But lest all those who might come to the Crown of England should not have the same prudence and generosity the Kings were obliged by a Custom of no less force than a Law immediately to put an end to all disputes and the inconveniences that might arise from them This did not proceed from the bounty of the Prerogative which I think is nonsense for tho he that enjoys the Prerogative may have bounty the Prerogative can have none but from common sense from his obligation and the care of his own safety and could have no other effect in Law than what related to his person as appears by the forementioned Statute Pardon 's granted by Act of Parliament are of another nature For as the King who has no other power than by Law can no otherwise dispense with the crimes committed against the Laws than the Law dos enable him the Parliament that has the power of making Laws may intirely abolish the crimes and unquestionably remit the punishment as they please Tho some words of Aristotle's Ethicks are without any coherence shuffled together by our Author with others taken out of his Politicks I do not much except against them No Law made by man can be perfect and there must be in every Nation a power of correcting such defects as in time may arise or be discovered This power can never be so rightly placed as in the same hand that has the right of making Laws whether in one person or in many If Filmer therefore can tell us of a place where one man woman or child however he or she be qualified has the power of making Laws I will acknowledg that not only the hard Cases but as many others as he pleases are referr'd to his or her judgment and that they may give it whether they have any understanding of what they do or not whether they be drunk or sober in their senses or stark mad But as I know no such place and should not be much concerned for the sufferings of a People that should bring such misery upon themselves as must accompany an absolute dependence upon the unruly will of such a creature I may leave him to seek it and rest in a perfect assurance that he dos not speak of England which acknowledges no other Law than its own and instead of receiving any from Kings dos to this day obey none but such as have bin made by our Ancestors or our selves and never admitted any King that did not swear to observe them And if Aristotle deserve credit the power of altering mitigating explaining or correcting the Laws of England is only in the Parliament because none but the Parliament can make them SECT XXIII Aristotle proves that no man is to be entrusted with an absolute Power by shewing that no one knows how to execute it but such a man as is not to be found OUR Author having falsly cited and perverted the sense of Aristotle now brings him in saying That a perfect Kingdom is that wherein the King rules all according to his own will But tho I have read his books of Government with some attention I can find no such thing in them unless the word which signifies mere or absolute may be justly translated into perfect which is so far from Aristotle's meaning that he distinguishes the absolute or despotical Kingdoms from the Legitimate and commending the latter gives no better name than that of barbarous to the first which he says can agree only with the nature of such Nations as are base and stupid little differing from Beasts and having no skill to govern or courage to defend themselves must resign all to the will of one that will take care of them Yet even this cannot be done unless he that should take that care be wholly exempted from the vices which oblige the others to stand in need of it for otherwise 't is no better than if a Sheep should undertake to govern Sheep or a Hog to command Swine Aristotle plainly saying That as men are by nature
retained the name of a Senate was made up chiefly of those who had bin his Ministers in bringing the most miserable slavery upon their own Country The Roman Liberty and that bravery of spirit by which it had bin maintained was not only abolished but almost forgotten All consideration of Law and Right was trampled under foot and none could dispute with him who by the power of the sword had seiz'd the Authority both of the Senate and People Nothing was so extravagant that might not be extorted by the insolent violence of a Conqueror who had thirty mercenary Legions to execute his Commands The uncorrupted part of the People that had escaped the sword of Julius had either perished with Hirtius and Pansa Brutus and Cassius or bin destroy'd by the detestable Triumvirate Those that remain'd could lose nothing by a verbal resignation of their Liberty which they had neither strength nor courage to defend The Magistracies were possess'd by the Creatures of the Tyrant and the People was composed of such as were either born under slavery and accustomed to obey or remain'd under the terror of those arms that had consumed the Assertors of their Liberty Our Author standing in need of some Roman Example was obliged to seek it in an age when the Laws were subverted Virtue extinguished Injustice placed in the Throne and such as would not be of the same spirit exposed to the utmost cruelty This was the time when the Sovereign Majesty shined in glory and they who had raised it above the Law made it also the object of their Religion by adoring the Statues of their Oppressor The corruption of this Court spread it self over the best part of the world and reduced the Empire to that irrecoverable weakness in which it languished and perish'd This is the state of things that pleases Filmer and those that are like him who for the introduction of the same among us recommend such an elevation of the Sovereign Majesty as is most contrary to the Laws of God and Men abhorred by all generous Nations and most especially by our Ancestors who thought nothing too dear to be hazarded in the defence of themselves and us from it SECT XXV The Regal Power was not the first in this Nation nor necessarily to be continued tho it had bin the first TRUTH being uniform in it self those who desire to propagate it for the good of mankind lay the foundations of their reasonings in such Principles as are either evident to common sense or easily proved but Cheats and Impostors delighting in obscurity suppose things that are dubious or false and think to build one falshood upon another and our Author can find no better way to perswade us that all our Privileges and Laws are from the King than by saying That the first power was the Kingly Power which was both in this and all other Nations in the world long before any Laws or any other kind of Government was thought of from whence we must necessarily infer that the common Law or common Customs of this Land were originally the Laws and Commands of the King But denying both these points I affirm 1. First that there was a power to make Kings before there was any King 2. Tho Kings had bin the first created Magistrates in all places as perhaps they were in some it dos not follow that they must continue for ever or that Laws are from them To the first I think no man will deny that there was a People at Babylon before Nimrod was King of that place This People had a Power for no number of men can be without it Nay this People had a power of making Nimrod King or he could never have bin King He could not be King by succession for the Scripture shews him to have bin the first He was not King by the right of Father for he was not their Father Chush Cham with his elder Brothers and Father Noah being still living and which is worst of all were not Kings for if they who lived in Nimrod's time or before him neither were Kings nor had Kings he that ought to have bin King over all by the right of nature if there had bin any such thing in nature was not King Those who immediately succeeded him and must have inherited his right if he had any did not inherit or pretend to it and therefore he that shall now claim a right from nature as Father of a People must ground it upon something more certain than Noah's right of reigning over his Children or it can have no strength in it Moreover the Nations who in and before the time of Nimrod had no Kings had Power or else they could have performed no Act nor constituted any other magistrate to this day which is absurd There was therefore a power in Nations before there were Kings or there could never have bin any and Nimrod could never have bin King if the People of Babylon had not made him King which they could not have done if they had not had a power of making him so 'T is ridiculous to say he made himself King for tho he might be strong and valiant he could not be stronger than a multitude of men That which sorces must be stronger than that which is forced and if it be true according to the antient saying that Hercules himself is not sufficient to encounter two 't is sure more impossible for one man to force a multitude for that must be stronger than he If he came in by perswasion they who were perswaded were perswaded to consent that he should be King That Consent therefore made him King But Qui dat esse dat modum esse They who made him King made him such a King as best pleased themselves He had therefore nothing but what was given his greatness and power must be from the multitude who gave it and their Laws and Liberties could not be from him but their Liberties were naturally inherent in themselves and their Laws were the product of them There was a People that made Romulus King He did not make or beget that People nor for any thing we know one man of them He could not come in by inheritance for he was a Bastard the Son of an unknown man and when he died the right that had bin conferred upon him reverted to the People who according to that right chose Numa Hostilius Martius Tarquinius Priscus and Servius all Strangers and without any other right than what was bestow'd upon them and Tarquinius Superbus who invaded the Throne without the command of the People was ejected and the Government of Kings abolisht by the same power that had created it We know not certainly by what Law Moses and the Judges created by the advice of Jethro governed the Israelites but may probably conjecture it to have bin by that Law which God had written in the hearts of mankind and the People submitted to the judgment of good and wise men tho
his Son gave them occasion to resume If this was commendable in them it must be so in other Nations If the Germans might preserve their Liberty as well as the Parthians submit themselves to absolute Monarchy 't is as lawful for the descendents of those Germans to continue in it as for the Eastern Nations to be slaves If one Nation may justly chuse the Government that seems best to them and continue or alter it according to the changes of times and things the same right must belong to others The great variety of Laws that are or have bin in the world proceeds from this and nothing can better shew the wisdom and virtue or the vices and folly of Nations than the use they make of this right they have bin glorious or infamous powerful or despicable happy or miserable as they have well or ill executed it If it be said that the Law given by God to the Hebrews proceeding from his wisdom and goodness must needs be perfect and obligatory to all Nations I answer that there is a simple and a relative perfection the first is only in God the other in the things he has created He saw that they were good which can signify no more than that they were good in their kind and suted to the end for which he designed them For if the perfection were absolute there could be no difference between an Angel and a Worm and nothing could be subject to change or death for that is imperfection This relative perfection is seen also by his Law given to mankind in the persons of Adam and Noah It was good in the kind fit for those times but could never have bin enlarged or altered if the perfection had bin simple and no better evidence can be given to shew that it was not so than that God did asterwards give one much more full and explicit to his People This Law also was peculiarly applicable to that People and season for if it had bin otherwise the Apostles would have obliged Christians to the intire observation of it as well as to abstain from idolatry fornication and blood But if all this be not so then their judicial Law and the form of their Commonwealth must be received by all no human Law can be of any value we are all Brethren no man has a prerogative above another Lands must be equally divided amongst all Inheritances cannot be alienated for above fifty years no man can be raised above the rest unless he be called by God and enabled by his Spirit to conduct the People when this man dies he that has the same Spirit must succeed as Joshua did to Moses and his Children can have no title to his Office when such a man appears a Sanhedrim of seventy men chosen out of the whole People are to judg such causes as relate to themselves whilst those of greater extent and importance are referred to the General Assemblies Here is no mention of a King and consequently if we must take this Law for our pattern we cannot have one If the point be driven to the utmost and the precept of Deuteronomy where God permitted them to have a King if they thought fit when they came into the promised Land be understood to extend to all Nations every one of them must have the same liberty of taking their own time chusing him in their own way dividing the Kingdom having no King and setting up other Governors when they please as before the Election of Saul and after the return from the Captivity and even when they have a King he must be such a one as is describ'd in the same Chapter who no more resembles the Soveraign Majesty that our Author adores and agrees as little with his Maxims as a Tribun of the Roman People We may therefore conclude that if we are to follow the Law of Moses we must take it with all the appendages a King can be no more and no otherwise than he makes him for whatever we read of the Kings they had were extreme deviations from it No Nation can make any Law and our Lawyers burning their Books may betake themselves to the study of the Pentateuch in which tho some of them may be well versed yet probably the profit arising from thence will not be very great But if we are not obliged to live in a conformity to the Law of Moses every People may frame Laws for themselves and we cannot be denied the right that is common to all Our Laws were not sent from Heaven but made by our Ancestors according to the light they had and their present occasions We inherit the same right from them and as we may without vanity say that we know a little more than they did if we find our selves prejudic'd by any Law that they made we may repeal it The safety of the People was their supreme Law and is so to us neither can we be thought less fit to judg what conduces to that end than they were If they in any Age had bin perswaded to put themselves under the power or in our Author's phrase under the sovereign Majesty of a child a fool a mad or desperately wicked person and had annexed the right conferred upon him to such as should succeed it had not bin a just and right Sanction and having none of the qualities essentially belonging to a Law could not have the effect of a Law It cannot be for the good of a People to be governed by one who by nature ought to be governed or by age or accident is rendred unable to govern himself The publick interests and the concernments of private men in their lands goods liberties and lives for the preservation of which our Author says that regal Prerogative is only constituted cannot be preserved by one who is transported by his own passions or follies a slave to his lusts and vices or which is sometimes worse governed by the vilest of men and women who flatter him in them and push him on to do such things as even they would abhor if they were in his place The turpitude and impious madness of such an act must necessarily make it void by overthrowing the ends for which it was made since that justice which was sought cannot be obtain'd nor the evils that were fear'd prevented and they for whose good it was intended must necessarily have a right of abolishing it This might be sufficient for us tho our Ancestors had enslaved themselves But God be thanked we are not put to that trouble We have no reason to believe we are descended from such fools and beasts as would willingly cast themselves and us into such an excess of misery and shame or that they were so tame and cowardly to be subjected by force or fear We know the value they set upon their Liberties and the courage with which they defended them and we can have no better example to incourage us never to suffer them to be violated or diminished
SECT XXVI Tho the King may be entrusted with the power of chusing Judges yet that by which they act is from the Law I Confess that no Law can be so perfect to provide exactly for every case that may fall out so as to leave nothing to the discretion of the Judges who in some measure are to interpret them But that Laws or Customs are ever few or that the paucity is the reason that they cannot give special rules or that Judges do resort to those principles or Common Law Axioms whereupon former judgments in cases something alike have bin given by former Judges who all receive their Authority from the King in his right to give Sentence I utterly deny and affirm 1. That in many places and particularly in England the Laws are so many that the number of them has introduced an uncertainty and confusion which is both dangerous and troublesom and the infinite variety of adjudged cases thwarting and contradicting each other has render'd these difficulties inextricable Tacitus imputes a great part of the miseries suffer'd by the Romans in his time to this abuse and tells us that the Laws grew to be innumerable in the worst and most corrupt state of things and that Justice was overthrown by them By the same means in France Italy and other places where the Civil Law is rendred municipal Judgments are in a manner arbitrary and tho the intention of our Laws be just and good they are so numerous and the volumes of our Statutes with the interpretations and adjudged Cases so vast that hardly any thing is so clear and fixed but men of wit and learning may find what will serve for a pretence to justify almost any judgment they have a mind to give Whereas the Laws of Moses as to the Judicial part being short and few Judgments were easy and certain and in Switzerland Sweden and some parts of Denmark the whole volume that contains them may be read in few hours and by that means no injustice can be done which is not immediately made evident 2. Axioms are not rightly grounded upon judged Cases but Cases are to be judged according to Axioms the certain is not proved by the uncertain but the uncertain by the certain and every thing is to be esteemed uncertain till it be proved to be certain Axioms in Law are as in Mathematicks evident to common sense and nothing is to be taken for an Axiom that is not so Euclid dos not prove his Axioms by his Propositions but his Propositions which are abstruse by such Axioms as are evident to all The Axioms of our Law do not receive their Authority from Coke or Hales but Coke and Hales deserve praise for giving judgment according to such as are undeniably true 3. The Judges receive their Commissions from the King and perhaps it may be said that the Custom of naming them is grounded upon a right with which he is entrusted but their power is from the Law as that of the King also is For he who has none originally in himself can give none unless it be first conserred upon him I know not how he can well perform his Oath to govern according to Law unless he execute the power with which he is entrusted in naming those men to be Judges whom in his conscience and by the advice of his Council he thinks the best and ablest to perform that Office But both he and they are to learn their duty from that Law by which they are and which allots to every one his proper work As the Law intends that men should be made Judges for their integrity and knowledg in the Law and that it ought not to be imagined that the King will break his trust by chusing such as are not so till the violation be evident nothing is more reasonable than to intend that the Judges so qualified should instruct the King in matters of Law But that he who may be a child over aged or otherwise ignorant and uncapable should instruct the Judges is equally absurd as for a blind man to be a guide to those who have the best eyes and so abhorrent from the meaning of the Law that the Judges as I said before are sworn to do justice according to the Laws without any regard to the King's words letters or commands If they are therefore to act according to a set rule from which they may not depart what command soever they receive they do not act by a power from him but by one that is above both This is commonly confess'd and tho some Judges have bin found in several ages who in hopes of reward and preferment have made little account of their Oath yet the success that many of them have had may reasonably deter others from following their example and if there are not more instances in this kind no better reason can be given than that Nations do frequently fail by being too remiss in asserting their own rights or punishing offenders and hardly ever err on the severer side 4. Judgments are variously given in several States and Kingdoms but he who would find one where they lie in the breast of the King must go at least as far as Marocco Nay the Ambassador who was lately here from that place denied that they were absolutely in him However 't is certain that in England according to the Great Charter Judgments are passed by equals no man can be imprison'd disseiz'd of his Freehold depriv'd of Life or Limb unless by the sentence of his Peers The Kings of Judah did judg and were judged and the Judgments they gave were in and with the Sanhedrim In England the Kings do not judg but are judged and Bracton says That in receiving justice the King is equal to another man which could not be if judgments were given by him and he were exempted from the judgment of all by that Law which has put all judgments into the hands of the People This power is executed by them in grand or petty Juries and the Judges are assistants to them in explaining the difficult points of the Law in which 't is presumed they should be learned The strength of every judgment consists in the verdict of these Juries which the Judges do not give but pronounce or declare and the same Law that makes good a verdict given contrary to the advice or direction of the Judges exposes them to the utmost penalties if upon their own heads or a command from the King they should presume to give a Sentence without or contrary to a Verdict and no pretensions to a power of interpreting the Law can exempt them if they break it The power also with which the Judges are entrusted is but of a moderate extent and to be executed bona fide Prevarications are capital as they proved to Tresilian Empson Dudley and many others Nay even in special Verdicts the Judges are only assistants to the Juries who find it specially
and the Verdict is from them tho the Judges having heard the point argued declare the sense of the Law thereupon Wherefore if I should grant that the King might personally assist in judgments his work could only be to prevent frauds and by the advice of the Judges to see that the Laws be duly executed or perhaps to inspect their behaviour If he has more than this it must be by virtue of his politick capacity in which he is understood to be always present in the principal Courts where Justice is always done whether he who wears the Crown be young or old wise or ignorant good or bad or whether he like or dislike what is done Moreover as Governments are instituted for the obtaining of Justice and the King is in a great measure entrusted with the power of executing it 't is probable that the Law would have required his presence in the distribution if there had bin but one Court that at the same time he could be present in more than one that it were certain he would be guilty of no miscarriages that all miscarriages were to be punished in him as well as in the Judges or that it were certain he should always be a man of such wisdom industry experience and integrity as to be an assistance to and a watch over those who are appointed for the administration of Justice But there being many Courts sitting at the same time of equal Authority in several places far distant from each other impossible for the King to be present in all no manner of assurance that the same or greater miscarriages may not be committed in his presence than in his absence by himself than others no opportunity of punishing every delict in him without bringing the Nation into such disorder as may be of more prejudice to the publick than an injury done to a private man the Law which intends to obviate offences or to punish such as cannot be obviated has directed that those men should be chosen who are most knowing in it imposes an Oath upon them not to be diverted from the due course of justice by fear or favour hopes or reward particularly by any command from the King and appoints the severest punishments for them if they prove false to God and their Country If any man think that the words cited from Bracton by our Author upon the question Quis primo principaliter possit debeat judicare c. Sciendum est quod Rex non alius si solus ad haec sufficere possit cum ad hoc per virtutem Sacramenti teneatur are contrary to what I have said I desire the context may be considered that his opinion may be truly understood tho the words taken simply and nakedly may be enough for my purpose For 't is ridiculous to infer that the King has a right of doing any thing upon a supposition that 't is impossible for him to do it He therefore who says the King cannot do it says it must be done by others or not at all But having already proved that the King merely as King has none of the qualities required for judging all or any cases and that many Kings have all the desects of age and person that render men most unable and unfit to give any Sentence we may conclude without contradicting Bracton that no King as King has a power of judging because some of them are utterly unable and unfit to do it and if any one has such a power it must be confer'd upon him by those who think him able and fit to perform that work When Filmer finds such a man we must inquire into the extent of that power which is given to him but this would be nothing to his general proposition sor he himself would hardly have inferr'd that because a power of judging in some cases was conserred upon one Prince on account of his fitness and ability therefore all of them however unfit and unable have a power of deciding all cases Besides if he believe Bracton this power of judging is not inherent in the King but incumbent upon him by virtue of his Oath which our Author endeavours to enervate and annul But as that Oath is grounded upon the Law and the Law cannot presume impossibilities and absurdities it cannot intend and the Oath cannot require that a man should do that which he is unable and unfit to do Many Kings are unfit to judg causes the Law cannot therefore intend they should do it The Context also shews that this imagination of the King 's judging all causes if he could is merely Chymerical for Bracton says in the same Chapter that the power of the King is the power of the Law that is that he has no power but by the Law And the Law that aims at justice cannot make it to depend upon the uncertain humour of a Child a Woman or a foolish Man for by that means it would destroy it self The Law cannot therefore give any such power and the King cannot have it If it be said that all Kings are not so that some are of mature age wise just and good or that the question is not what is good sor the Subject but what is glorious to the King and that he must not lose his right tho the People perish I answer first that whatsoever belongs to Kings as Kings belongs to all Kings this Power of judging cannot belong to all for the Reasons above mentioned it cannot therefore belong to any as King nor without madness be granted to any till he has given testimony of such Wisdom Experience Diligence and Goodness as is required for so great a work It imports not what his Ancestors were Virtues are not entail'd and it were less improper for the Heirs of Hales and Harvey to pretend that the Clients and Patients of their Ancestors should depend upon their advice in matters of Law and Physick than for the Heirs of a great and wise Prince to pretend to Powers given on account of virtue if they have not the same talents for the performance of the works required Common sense declares that Governments are instituted and Judicatures erected for the obtaining of justice The Kings Bench was not established that the Chief Justice should have a great Office but that the oppressed should be relieved and right done The Honor and Profit he receives comes in as it were by accident as the rewards of his service if he rightly perform his duty but he may as well pretend he is there for his own sake as the King God did not set up Moses or Joshua that they might glory in having six hundred thousand men under their command but that they might lead the People into the Land they were to possess that is they were not for themselves but for the People and the glory they acquir'd was by rightly performing the end of their institution Even our Author is obliged to confess this when he says that the Kings Prerogative
than what is suffer'd or must in a short time fall upon those who are in this condition They who are already fallen into all that is odious shameful and miserable cannot justly fear When things are brought to such a pass the boldest counsels are the most safe and if they must perish who lie still and they can but perish who are most active the choice is easily made Let the danger be never so great there is a possibility of safety whilst men have life hands arms and courage to use them but that people must certainly perish who tamely suffer themselves to be oppress'd either by the injustice cruelty and malice of an ill Magistrate or by those who prevail upon the vices and infirmities of weak Princes 'T is in vain to say that this may give occasion to men of raising tumults or civil war for tho these are evils yet they are not the greatest of evils Civil War in Macchiavels account is a Disease but Tyranny is the death of a State Gentle ways are first to be used and 't is best if the work can be done by them but it must not be left undone if they fail 'T is good to use supplications advices and remonstrances but those who have no regard to justice and will not hearken to counsel must be constrained 'T is folly to deal otherwise with a man who will not be guided by reason and a Magistrate who despises the Law or rather to think him a man who rejects the essential principle of a man or to account him a Magistrate who overthrows the Law by which he is a Magistrate This is the last result but those Nations must come to it which cannot otherwise be preserved Nero's madness was not to be cured nor the mischievous effects of it any otherwise to be suppressed than by his death He who had spared such a Monster when it was in his power to remove him had brought destruction upon the whole Empire and by a foolish clemency made himself the Author of his future villanics This would have bin yet more clear if the world had then bin in such a temper as to be capable of an intire liberty But the antient foundations had bin overthrown and nothing better could be built upon the new than something that might in part resist that torrent of iniquity which had overflow'd the best part of the world and give mankind a little time to breath under a less barbarous Master Yet all the best men did join in the work that was then to be done tho they knew it would prove but imperfect The sacred History is not without examples of this kind When Ahab had subverted the Law set up false Witnesses and corrupt Judges to destroy the innocent killed the Prophets and established Idolatry his house must then be cut off and his blood be lickt up by dogs When matters are brought to this pass the decision is easy The question is only whether the punishment of crimes shall fall upon one or a few persons who are guilty of them or upon a whole Nation that is innocent If the Father may not die for the Son nor the Son for the Father but every one must bear the penalty of his own crimes it would be most absurd to punish the people for the guilt of Princes When the Earl of Morton was sent Ambassador to Queen Elizabeth by the Estates of Scotland to justify their proceedings against Mary their Queen whom they had obliged to renounce the Government he alledged amongst other things the murder of her Husband plainly proved against her asserted the antient right and custom of that Kingdom of examining the actions of their Kings by which means he said many had bin punished with death imprisonment and exile confirmed their actions by the examples of other Nations and upon the whole matter concluded that if she was still permitted to live it was not on account of her innocence or any exemption from the penalties of the Law but from the mercy and clemency of the people who contenting themselves with a resignation of her right and power to her Son had spared her This discourse which is set down at large by the Historian cited on the margin being of such strength in it self as never to have bin any otherwise answered than by railing and no way disapproved by Queen Elizabeth or her Council to whom it was made either upon a general account of the pretensions of Princes to be exempted from the penalties of the Law or any pretext that they had particularly misapplied them in relation to their Queen I may justly say that when Nations fall under such Princes as are either utterly uncapable of making a right use of their power or do maliciously abuse that Authority with which they are entrusted those Nations stand obliged by the duty they owe to themselves and their posterity to use the best of their endeavours to remove the evil whatever danger or difficulties they may meet with in the performance Pontius the Samnite said as truly as bravely to his Countrymen That those Arms were just and pious that were necessary and necessary when there was no hope of safety by any other way This is the voice of mankind and is dislik'd only by those Princes who fear the deserved punishments may fall upon them or by their Servants and Flatterers who being for the most part the Authors of their crimes think they shall be involved in their ruin SECT XLI The People for whom and by whom the Magistrate is created can only judg whether he rightly perform his Office or not T IS commonly said that no man ought to be the Judg of his own case and our Author lays much weight upon it as a fundamental maxim tho according to his ordinary inconstancy he overthrows it in the case of Kings where it ought to take place if in any for it often falls out that no men are less capable of forming a right judgment than they Their passions and interests are most powerful to disturb or pervert them No men are so liable to be diverted from justice by the flatteries of corrupt Servants They never act as Kings except for those by whom and for whom they are created and acting for others the account of their actions cannot depend upon their own will Nevertheless I am not afraid to say that naturally and properly a man is the judg of his own concernments No one is or can be deprived of this privilege unless by his own consent and for the good of that Society into which he enters This Right therefore must necessarily belong to every man in all cases except only such as relate to the good of the Community for whose sake he has devested himself of it If I find my self afflicted with hunger thirst weariness cold heat or sickness 't is a folly to tell me I ought not to seek meat drink rest shelter refreshment or physick because I must
In the other by the Parliament which being the representative body of the People and the collected wisdom of the Nation is least subject to error most exempted from passion and most free from corruption their own good both publick and private depending upon the rectitude of their Sanctions Thev cannot do any thing that is ill without damage to themselves and their posterity which being all that can be done by human understanding our Lives Liberties and Properties are by our Laws directed to depend upon them SECT XLIII Proclamations are not Laws Our Author according to his usual method and integrity lays great weight upon Proclamations as the significations of the King's pleasure which in his opinion is our only Law But neither Law nor Reason openly directing nor by consequences insinuating that such a Power should be put into an uncertain or suspected hand we may safely deny them to be Laws or in any sense to have the effect of Laws Nay they cannot be so much as significations of his will for as he is King he can have no will but as the Law directs If he depart from the Law he is no longer King and his will is nothing to us Proclamations at most are but temporary by the advice of Council in pursuance of the Law If they be not so the Subject is no way obliged to obey them and the Counsellors are to be punished for them These Laws are either immemorial Customs or Statutes The first have their beginning and continuance from the universal consent of the Nation The latter receive their Authority and Force of Laws from Parliaments as is frequently expressed in the Preambles These are under God the best defence of our Lives Liberties and Estates they proceed not from the blind corrupt and fluctuating humor of a man but from the mature deliberation of the choicest Persons of the Nation and such as have the greatest interest in it Our Ancestors have always relied upon these Laws and 't is to be hoped we shall not be so abandoned by God so deprived of courage and common sense to suffer our selves to be cheated of the Inheritance which they have so frequently so bravely and so constantly defended Tho experience has too well taught us that Parliaments may have their failings and that the Vices which are industriously spread amongst them may be too prevalent yet they are the best helps we have and we may much more reasonably depend upon them than upon those who propagate that corruption among them for which only they can deserve to be suspected We hope they will take care of our concernments since they are as other men so soon as a Session is ended and can do nothing to our prejudice that will not equally affect them and their posterity besides the guilt of betraying their Country which can never be washed off If some should prove false to their trust 't is probable that others would continue in their integrity Or if the base arts which are usually practised by those who endeavour to delude corrupt enslave and ruin Nations should happen to prevail upon the youngest and weakest it may be reasonably hoped that the wisest will see the snares and instruct their companions to avoid them But if all things were so put into the hands of one man that his Proclamations were to be esteemed Laws the Nation would be exposed to ruin as soon as it should chance to fall into an ill hand 'T is in vain to say we have a good King who will not make an ill use of his power for even the best are subject to be deceived by flatterers and Crown'd heads are almost ever encompassed by them The principal art of a Courtier is to observe his Master's passions and to attack him on that side where he seems to be most weak It would be a strange thing to find a man impregnable in every part and if he be not 't is impossible he should resist all the attempts that are made upon him If his Judgment come to be prepossess'd he and all that depend on him are lost Contradictions tho never so just are then unsafe and no man will venture upon them but he who dares sacrifice himself for the publick good The nature of man is frail and stands in need of assistance Virtuous actions that are profitable to a Commonwealth ought to be made as far as it is possible safe easy and advantageous and 't is the utmost imprudence to tempt men to be enemies to the publick by making the most pernicious actions to be the means of obtaining honour and favour whilst no man can serve his Country but with the ruin of himself and his family However in this case the question is not concerning a person the same Counsels are to be follow'd when Moses or Samuel is in the Throne as if Caligula had invaded it Laws ought to aim at perpetuity but the Virtues of a man die with him and very often before him Those who have deserved the highest praises for wisdom and integrity have frequently left the honors they enjoyed to foolish and vicious children If virtue may in any respect be said to outlive the person it can only be when good men frame such Laws and Constitutions as by favouring it preserve themselves This has never bin done otherwise than by balancing the Powers in such a manner that the corruption which one or a few men might fall into should not be suffer'd to spread the contagion to the ruin of the whole The long continuance of Lycurgus his Laws is to be attributed to this They restrained the lusts of Kings and reduced those to order who adventured to transgress them Whereas the whole fabrick must have fallen to the ground in a short time if the first that had a fancy to be absolute had bin able to effect his design This has bin the fate of all Governments that were made to depend upon the virtue of a man which never continues long in any family and when that fails all is lost The Nations therefore that are so happy to have good Kings ought to make a right use of them by establishing the good that may outlast their lives Those of them that are good will readily join in this work and take care that their Successors may be obliged in doing the like to be equally beneficial to their own families and the people they govern If the rulers of Nations be restrained not only the people is by that means secured from the mischiefs of their vices and follies but they themselves are preserved from the greatest temptations to ill and the terrible effects of the vengeance that frequently ensues upon it An unlimited Prince might be justly compared to a weak ship exposed to a violent storm with a vast Sail and no Rudder We have an eminent example of this in the book of Esther A wicked Villain having filled the ears of a foolish King with false stories of the Jews he issues out
the same we must have bin deprived of it either by such unjustifiable means or by our own consent But thanks be to God we know no People who have a better right to Liberty or have better defended it than our own Nation And if we do not degenerate from the Virtue of our Ancestors we may hope to transmit it intire to our Posterity We always may and often do give Instructions to our Delegates but the less we fetter them the more we manifest our own Rights for those who have only a limited Power must limit that which they give but he that can give an unlimited Power must necessarily have it in himself The great Treasurer Burleigh said the Parliament could do any thing but turn a Man into a Woman Sir Thomas Moor when Rich Sollicitor to K. Henry the 8 th asked him if the Parliament might not make R. Rich King said that was casus levis taking it for granted that they might make or unmake whom they pleased The first part of this which includes the other is asserted by the Statute of the 13th of Q. Elizabeth denouncing the most grievous punishments against all such as should dare to contradict it But if it be in the Parliament it must be in those who give to Parliament-men the powers by which they act for before they are chosen they have none and can never have any if those that send them had it not in themselves They cannot receive it from the Magistrate for that power which he has is derived from the same spring The power of making and unmaking him cannot be from himself for he that is not can do nothing and when he is made can have no other power than is conferred upon him by those that make him He who departs from his duty desires to avoid the punishment the power therefore of punishing him is not from himself It cannot be from the House of Peers as it is constituted for they act for themselves and are chosen by Kings and 't is absurd to think that Kings who generally abhor all restriction of their Power should give that to others by which they might be unmade If one or more Princes relying upon their own Virtue and Resolutions to do good had given such a Power against themselves as Trajan did when he commanded the Prefect to use the Sword for him if he governed well and against him if he governed ill it would soon have bin rescinded by their Successors If our Edward the first had made such a Law his lewd Son would have abolished it before he would have suffered himself to be imprisoned and deposed by it He would never have acknowledged his unworthiness to reign if he had bin tied to no other Law than his own will for he could not transgress that nor have owned the mercy of the Parliament in sparing his Life if they had acted only by a power which he had conferred upon them This Power must therefore be in those who act by a delegated Power and none can give it to their Delegates but they who have it in themselves The most certain testimony that can be given of their unlimited power is that they rely upon the wisdom and fidelity of their Deputies so as to lay no restrictions upon them they may do what they please if they take care ne quid detrimenti Respublica accipiat that the Commonwealth receive no detriment This is a Commission fit to be granted by wise and good men to those they chuse through an opinion that they are so also and that they cannot bring any prejudice upon the Nation that will not fall upon themselves and their posterity This is also fit to be received by those who seeking nothing but that which is just in it self and profitable to their Country cannot foresee what will be proposed when they are altogether much less resolve how to vote till they hear the reasons on both sides The Electors must necessarily be in the same ignorance and the Law which should oblige them to give particular orders to their Knights and Burgesses in relation to every vote would make the decision of the most important Affairs to depend upon the judgment of those who know nothing of the matters in question and by that means cast the Nation into the utmost danger of the most inextricable confusion This can never be the intention of that Law which is Sanctio recta and seeks only the good of those that live under it The foresight therefore of such a mischief can never impair the Liberties of the Nation but establish them SECT XLV The Legislative Power is always Arbitrary and not to be trusted in the hands of any who are not bound to obey the Laws they make IF it be objected that I am a defender of Arbitrary Powers I confess I cannot comprehend how any Society can be established or subsist without them for the establishment of Government is an arbitrary Act wholly depending upon the will of men The particular Forms and Constitutions the whole Series of the Magistracy together with the measure of Power given to every one and the rules by which they are to exercise their charge are so also Magna Charta which comprehends our antient Laws and all the subsequent Statutes were not sent from Heaven but made according to the will of men If no men could have a power of making Laws none could ever have bin made for all that are or have bin in the world except those given by God to the Israelites were made by them that is they have exercised an Arbitrary Power in making that to be Law which was not or annulling that which was The various Laws and Governments that are or have bin in several ages and places are the product of various opinions in those who had the power of making them This must necessarily be unless a general rule be set to all for the judgments of men will vary if they are left to their liberty and the variety that is found among them shews they are subject to no rule but that of their own reason by which they see what is fit to be embraced or avoided according to the several circumstances under which they live The Authority that judges of these circumstances is arbitrary and the Legislators shew themselves to be more or less wise and good as they do rightly or not rightly exercise this Power The difference therefore between good and ill Governments is not that those of one sort have an Arbitrary Power which the others have not for they all have it but that those which are well constituted place this Power so as it may be beneficial to the people and set such rules as are hardly to be transgressed whilst those of the other sort fail in one or both these points Some also through want of courage fortune or strength may have bin oppressed by the violence of Strangers or suffer'd a corrupt Party to rise up within themselves and by
transcribing his words and shewing how vilely he is abused by Filmer concluding that if he be in the right the choice and constitution of Government the making of Laws Coronation Inauguration and all that belongs to the chusing and making of Kings or other Magistrates is meerly from the People and that all Power exercised over them which is not so is Usurpation and Tyranny unless it be by an immediate Commission from God which if any man has let him give testimony of it and I will confess he comes not within the reach of our reasonings but ought to be obeyed by those to whom he is sent or over whom he is placed Nevertheless our Author is of another opinion but scorning to give us a reason he adds to Hooker's words As if these Solemnities were a kind of deed whereby the right of Dominion is given which strange untrue and unnatural Conceits are set abroad by Seedsmen of Rebellion and a little farther Unless we will openly proclaim defiance unto all Law Equity and Reason we must say for there is no remedy that in Kingdoms hereditary Birthright giveth a Right unto Soveraign Dominion c. Those Solemnities do either serve for an open testification of the Inheritor's Right or belong to the form of inducing him into the possession These are bold Censures and do not only reach Mr. Hooker whose modesty and peaceableness of spirit is no less esteemed than his Learning but the Scriptures also and the best of human Authors upon which he founded his Opinions But why should it be thought a strange untrue or unnatural Conceit to believe that when the Scriptures say Nimrod was the first that grew powerful in the Earth long before the death of his Fathers and could consequently neither have a right of Dominion over the multitude met together at Babylon nor subdue them by his own strength he was set up by their Consent or that they who made him their Governor might prescribe Rules by which he should govern Nothing seems to me less strange than that a Multitude of reasonable Creatures in the performance of Acts of the greatest importance should consider why they do them And the infinite variety which is observed in the constitution mixture and regulation of Governments dos not only shew that the several Nations of the World have considered them but clearly prove that all Nations have perpetually continued in the exercise of that Right Nothing is more natural than to follow the voice of Mankind The wisest and best have ever employed their studies in forming Kingdoms and Commonwealths or in adding to the perfections of such as were already constituted which had bin contrary to the Laws of God and Nature if a general Rule had bin set which had obliged all to be for ever subject to the Will of one and they had not bin the best but the worst of men who had departed from it Nay I may say that the Law given by God to his peculiar People and the Commands delivered by his Servants in order to it or the prosecution of it had bin contrary to his own eternal and universal Law which is impossible A Law therefore having bin given by God which had no relation to or consistency with the absolute paternal power Judges and Kings created who had no pretence to any preference before their Brethren till they were created and commanded not to raise their Hearts above them when they should be created the Wisdom and Vertue of the best men in all ages shewn in the constitution or reformation of Governments and Nations in variously framing them preserving the possession of their natural Right to be governed by none and in no other way than they should appoint The opinions of Hooker That all publick regiment of what kind soever ariseth from the deliberate advice of men seeking their own good and that all other is meer Tyranny are not untrue and unnatural conceits set abroad by the Seedsmen of Rebellion but real Truths grounded upon the Laws of God and Nature acknowledged and practised by Mankind And no Nation being justly subject to any but such as they set up nor in any other manner than according to such Laws as they ordain the right of chusing and making those that are to govern them must wholly depend upon their Will SECT VII The Laws of every Nation are the measure of Migistratical Power OUr Author lays much weight upon the word Hereditary but the question is What is inherited in an Hereditary Kingdom and how it comes to be hereditary 'T is in vain to say the Kingdom for we do not know what he means by the Kingdom 't is one thing in one place and very different in others and I think it not easy to find two in the world that in power are exactly the same If he understand all that is comprehended within the precincts over which it reaches I deny that any such is to be found in the World If he refer to what preceding Kings enjoyed no determination can be made till the first original of that Kingdom be examined that it may be known what that first King had and from whence he had it If this variety be denied I desire to know whether the Kings of Sparta and Persia had the same power over their Subjects if the same whether both were absolute or both limited if limited how came the Decrees of the Persian Kings to pass for Laws if absolute how could the Spartan Kings be subject to Fines Imprisonment or the sentence of Death and not to have power to send for their own Supper out of the Common Hall Why did Xenophon call Agesilaus a good and faithful King obedient to the Laws of his Country when upon the command of the Ephori he left the War that he had with so much glory begun in Asia if he was subject to none How came the Ephori to be established to restrain the Power of Kings if it could no way be restrained if all owed obedience to them and they to none Why did Theopompus his Wife reprove him for suffering his power to be diminished by their creation if it could not be diminished Or why did he say he had made the Power more permanent in making it less odious if it was perpetual and unalterable We may go farther and taking Xenophon and Plutarch for our guides assert that the Kings of Sparta never had the powers of War or Peace Life and Death which our Author esteems inseparable from Regality and conclude either that no King has them or that all Kings are not alike in power If they are not in all places the same Kings do not reign by an universal Law but by the particular Laws of each Country which give to every one so much power as in the opinion of the givers conduces to the end of their institution which is the publick good It may be also worth our inquiry how this inherited Power came to be hereditary We know that the
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
doing the like unless they have made municipal Laws of their own to the contrary which our Author and his Followers may produce when they can find them His next work is to go back again to the Tribute paid by Christ to Cesar and judiciously to infer that all Nations must pay the same Duty to their Magistrates as the Jews did to the Romans who had subdued them Christ did not says he ask what the Law of the Land was nor inquire whether there was a Statute against it nor whether the Tribute were given by the consent of the People but upon sight of the superscription concluded c. It had bin strange if Christ had inquired after their Laws Statutes or Consent when he knew that their Commonwealth with all the Laws by which it had subsisted was abolished and that Israel was become a Servant to those who exercised a most violent domination over them which being a peculiar punishment for their peculiar sins can have no influence upon Nations that are not under the same circumstances But of all that he says nothing is more incomprehensible than what he can mean by lawful Kings to whom all is due that was due to the Roman Usurpers For lawful Kings are Kings by the Law In being Kings by the Law they are such Kings as the Law makes them and that Law only must tell us what is due to them or by a universal Patriarchical Right to which no man can have a title as is said before till he prove himself to be the right Heir of Noah If neither of these are to be regarded but that Right follows Possession there is no such thing as a Usurper he who has the Power has the Right as indeed Filmer says and his Wisdom as well as his Integrity is sufficiently declared by the Assertion This wicked extravagancy is followed by an attempt of as singular ignorance and stupidity to shuffle together Usurpers and Conquerors as if they were the same whereas there have bin many Usurpers who were not Conquerors and Conquerors that deserved not the name of Usurpers No wife man ever said that Agathocles or Dionysius conquer'd Syracuse Tarquin Galba or Otho Rome Cromwel England or that the Magi who seiz'd the Government of Persia after the death of Cambyses conquer'd that Country When Moses and Joshua had overthrown the Kingdoms of the Amorites Moabites and Cananites or when David subdued the Ammonites Edomites and others none as I suppose but such Divines as Filmer will say they usurped a Dominion over them There is such a thing amongst men as just War or else true Valour would not be a Virtue but a Crime and instead of glory the utmost infamy would always be the companion of Victory There are says Grotius Laws of War as well as of Peace He who for a just Cause and by just Means carries on a just War has as clear a right to what is acquired as can be enjoy'd by Man but all usurpation is detestable and abominable SECT X. The words of St. Paul enjoying obedience to higher Powers favour all sorts of Governments no less than Monarchy OUR Author's next quarrel is with St. Paul who did not as he says in enjoyning subjection to the higher Powers signify the Laws of the Land or mean the highest Powers as well Aristocratical and Democratical as Regal but a Monarch that carries the Sword c. But what if there be no Monarch in the place or what if he do not carry the Sword Had the Apostle spoken in vain if the liberty of the Romans had not bin overthrown by the fraud and violence of Cesar Was no obedience to be exacted whilst that people enjoy'd the benefit of their own Laws and Virtue flourished under the moderate Government of a legal and just Magistracy established for the common good by the common consent of all Had God no Minister amongst them till Law and Justice was overthrown the best part of the people destroy'd by the fury of a corrupt mercenary Souldiery and the world subdued under the Tyranny of the worst Monsters that it had ever produced Are these the ways of establishing God's Vicegerents and will he patronize no Governors or Governments but such as these Do's God uphold evil and that only If the world has bin hitherto mistaken in giving the name of evil to that which is good and calling that good which is evil I desire to know what can be call'd good amongst men if the Government of the Romans till they entred Greece and Asia and were corrupted by the Luxury of both do not deserve that name or what is to be esteemed evil if the establishment and exercise of the Cesars Power were not so But says he Wilt thou not be afraid of the Power And was there no Power in the Governments that had no Monarchs Were the Carthaginians Romans Grecians Gauls Germans and Spaniards without Power Was there no Sword in that Nation and their Magistrates who overthrew the Kingdoms of Armenia Egypt Numidia Macedon and many others whom none of the Monarchs were able to resist Are the Venetians Switzers Grisons and Hollanders now lest in the same weakness and no obedience at all due to their Magistrates If this be so how comes it to pass that justice is so well administred amongst them Who is it that defends the Hollanders in such a manner that the greatest Monarchs with all their Swords have had no great reason to boast of any advantages gained against them at least till we whom they could not resist when we had no Monarch tho we have bin disgracefully beaten by them since we had one by making Leagues against them and sowing divisions amongst them instigated and assisted the greatest Power now in the world to their destruction and our own But our Author is so accustom'd to fraud that he never cites a passage of Scripture which he does not abuse or vitiate and that he may do the same in this place he leaves out the following words For there is no power but of God that he might intitle one sort only to his protection If therefore the People and popular Magistrates of Athens the two Kings Ephori and Senate of Sparta the Sanhedrims amongst the Hebrews the Consuls Tribuns Pretors and Senate of Rome the Magistrates of Holland Switzerland and Venice have or had power we may conclude that they also were ordained by God and that according to the precept of the Apostle the same obedience sor the same reason is due to them as to any Monarch The Apostle farther explaining himself and shewing who may be accounted a Magistrate and what the duty of such a one is informs us when we should fear and on what account Rulers says he are not a terror to good works but to the evil Wilt thou then not be afraid of the Power do that which is good and thou shalt have praise of the same for he is the Minister of God a revenger to execute wrath
folly than we are to live in that wretched Barbarity in which the Romans found our Ancestors when they first entred this Island If any man say that Filmer dos not speak of Monsters nor of Children Women or Fools but of wise just and good Princes I answer that if there be a right inherent in Kings as Kings of doing what they please and in those who are next in blood to succeed them and inherit the same it must belong to all Kings and such as upon title of blood would be Kings And as there is no family that may not and dos not often produce such as I mentioned it must also be acknowledged in them and that power which is left to the wife just and good upon a supposition that they will not make an ill use of it must be devolved to those who will not or cannot make a good one but will either maliciously turn it to the destruction of those they ought to protect or through weakness suffer it to fall into the hands of those that govern them who are found by experience to be for the most part the worst of all most apt to use the basest arts and to flatter the humors and foment the vices that are most prevalent in weak and vicious Princes Germanicus Corbulo Valerius Asiaticus Thraseas Soranus Helvidius Priscus Julius Agricola and other excellent men lived in the times of Tiberius Caligula Claudius and Nero but the power was put into the hands of Sejanus Macro Tigellinus and other Villains like to them and I wish there were not too many modern examples to shew that weak and vicious Princes will never chuse such as shall preserve Nations from the mischiefs that would ensue upon their own incapacity or malice but that they must be imposed upon them by some other power or Nations be ruined for want of them This imposition must be by Law or by Force But as Laws are made to keep things in good order without the necessity of having recourse to force it would be a dangerous extravagance to arm that Prince with force which probably in a short time must be opposed by force and those who have bin guilty of this error as the Kingdoms of the East and the antient Roman Empire where no provision was made by Law against ill-governing Princes have found no other remedy than to kill them when by extreme sufferings they were driven beyond patience and this fell out so often that few of their Princes were observed to die by a common death But since the Empire was transmitted to Germany and the Emperors restrain'd by Laws that Nation has never bin brought to the odious extremities of suffering all manner of Indignities or revenging them upon the heads of Princes And if the Pope had not disturb'd them upon the account of Religion nor driven their Princes to disturb others they might have passed many ages without any civil Dissension and all their Emperors might have lived happily and died peaceably as most of them have done This might be sufficient to my purpose for if all Princes without distinction whether good or bad wise or foolish young or old sober or mad cannot be intrusted with an unlimited power and if the power they have ought to be limited by Law that Nations may not with danger to themselves as well as to the Prince have recourse to the last remedy this Law must be given to all and the good can be no otherwise distinguished from the bad and the wise from the foolish than by the observation or violation of it But I may justly go a step farther and affirm that this Law which by restraining the Lusts of the vicious and foolish frequently preserves them from the destruction they would bring upon themselves or people and sometimes upon both is an assistance and direction to the wisest and best so that they also as well as the Nations under them are gainers by it This will appear strange only to those who know not how difficult and insupportable the Government of great Nations is and how unable the best man is to bear it And if it surpass the strength of the best it may easily be determined how ordinary men will behave themselves under it or what use the worst will make of it I know there have bin wise and good Kings but they had not an absolute Power nor would have accepted it tho it had bin offer'd much less can I believe that any of them would have transmitted such a power to their posterity when none of them could know any more than Solomon whether his Son would be a wise man or a fool But if the best might have desired and had bin able to bear it tho Moses by his own confession was not that could be no reason why it should be given to the worst and weakest or those who probably will be so Since the assurance that it will not be abused during the life of one man is nothing to the constitution of a State which aims at perpetuity And no man knowing what men will be especially if they come to the power by succession which may properly enough be called by chance 't is reasonably to be feared they will be bad and consequently necessary so to limit their power that if they prove to be so the Commonwealth may not be destroy'd which they were instituted to preserve The Law provides for this in leaving to the King a full and ample power of doing as much good as his heart can wish and in restraining his power so that if he should depart from the duty of his Office the Nation may not perish This is a help to those who are wise and good by directing them what they are to do more certainly than any one mans personal judgment can do and no prejudice at all since no such man did ever complain he was not suffer'd to do the evil which he would abhor if it were in his power and is a most necessary curb to the sury of bad Princes preventing them from bringing destruction upon the people Men are so subject to vices and passions that they stand in need of some restraint in every condition but most especially when they are in power The rage of a private man may be pernicious to one or a few of his Neighbours but the fury of an unlimited Prince would drive whole Nations into ruin And those very men who have lived modestly when they had little power have often proved the most savage of all Monsters when they thought nothing able to resist their rage 'T is said of Caligula that no man ever knew a better Servant nor a worse Master The want of restraint made him a Beast who might have continued to be a Man And tho I cannot say that our Law necessarily admits the next in Blood to the Succession for the contrary is proved yet the facility of our Ancestors in receiving children women or such men as were not more
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