Page images
PDF
EPUB

or alienation, as the hire of those whom he had solicited to come in and destroy whole cities and countries; be he king, or tyrant, or emperor, the sword of justice is above him; * in whose hand soever is found sufficient power to avenge the effusion, and so great a deluge of innocent blood. For if all human power to execute, not accidentally but intendedly, the wrath of God upon evil-doers without exception, be of God; then that power, whether ordinary, or if that fail, extraordinary, so executing that intent of God, is lawful, and not to be resisted. But to unfold more at large this whole question, though with all expedient brevity, I shall here set down, from first beginning, the original of kings; how and wherefore exalted to that dignity above their brethren; and from thence shall prove, that turning to tyranny they may be as lawfully deposed and punished, as they were at first elected this I shall do by authorities and reasons, not learnt in corners among schisms and heresies, as our doubling divines are ready to calumniate, but fetched out of the midst of choicest and most authentic learning, and no prohibited authors; nor many heathen, but Mosaical, Christian, orthodoxal, and, which must needs be more convincing to our adversaries, presbyterial.

:

No man, who knows aught, can be so stupid to deny, that all men naturally were born free,t being the image and

the Ten Roman Persecutions. Not to speak of those many whippings, pillories, and other corporal inflictions, whereof his reign also, before this war, was not unbloody: some have died in prison under cruel restraint, others in banishment, whose lives were shortened through the rigour of that persecution, wherewith so many years he infested the true church." "Yet here," in the Eikon Basilikè, he asks, "whose innocent blood he hath shed, what widows' or orphans' tears can witness against him ?"-(Eikonoklastes, §. 9.)-ED.

*What he here alludes to is explained at large in the "Eikonoklastes," where he says, "after the beginning of this parliament, whom he saw so resolute and unanimous to relieve the commonwealth, and that the Earl of Strafford was condemned to die, other of his evil counsellors impeached and imprisoned; to shew there wanted not evil counsel within himself sufficient to begin a war upon his subjects, though no way by them provoked, he sends an agent with letters to the King of Denmark, requiring aid against the parliament: and that aid was coming, when divine Providence, to divert them, sent a sudden torrent of Swedes into the bowels of Denmark." (§. 10. See also §. 12, 13, 18, 21, 22.)-Ed.

But Sir Robert Filmer, who made pretensions to know something, and those who, since his time, have stood up in defence of absolute monarchy,

resemblance of God himself, and were, by privilege above! all the creatures, born to command, and not to obey: and that they lived so, till from the root of Adam's transgression falling among themselves to do wrong and violence, and foreseeing that such courses must needs tend to the destruction of them all, they agreed by common league to bind each other from mutual injury, and jointly to defend themselves against any that gave disturbance or opposition to such agreement. Hence came cities, towns, and commonwealths.* And because no faith in all was found sufficiently binding, they saw it needful to ordain some authority that might restrain by force and punishment what was violated against peace and common right.

This authority and power of self-defence and preservation being originally and naturally in every one of them, and unitedly in them all; for ease, for order, and lest each man should be his own partial judge, they communicated and derived either to one, whom for the eminence of his wisdom and integrity they chose above the rest, or to more than one, whom they maintain, on the contrary, that "all men are born slaves;" and it must be acknowledged that, in most countries, experience is on their side. Upon this proposition, however, Locke makes himself merry in his first book on Government, observing, that "we must believe them upon their own bare words, when they tell us we are all born slaves, and must continue so, there is no remedy for it: life and thraldom we entered upon together, and can never be quit of the one till we part with the other." Sir Robert Filmer's argument is ingenious. "Adam," he says, 'was an absolute monarch, and so are all princes ever since." But, as we are all descended from Adam, we must all be princes, born with the same right to absolute dominion over each other; and it is some obscure perception of this truth, some secret inkling of their indefeasible rights, that urges so many of Adam's children to contend for empire. However, if princes would be content with the measure of authority possessed by Adam, and seek no other subjects than themselves, there would be few inclined to dispute their pretensions.-ED.

[ocr errors]

*Aristotle, who, in the first book of his Politics, has many very ingenious speculations on the origin and progress of society, observes, that "the union of various villages forms at length a city (Toxic) or commonwealth, that finished fabric of society reaching, as near as may be, the bound of perfectness, self-sufficient and complete, constituted for safety, and productive of happiness." (c. 2.) And Goguet, a learned and sensible, though, in some things, a prejudiced writer, has traced more laboriously, with the help of our modern voyagers and travellers, the various steps by which man rises from a state of barbarism to the enjoyment of just laws and a free government. (Origine des Loix, t. i. p. 14—32.) Plato, in his "Republic and Laws," enters into the question in his usual profound and original way. See also Locke on Government, b. ii. c. 8.—Ed.

thought of equal deserving: the first was called a king; the other, magistrates: not to be their lords and masters, (though afterward those names in some places were given voluntarily to such as had been authors of inestimable good to the people,) but to be their deputies and commissioners, to execute, by vir tue of their intrusted power, that justice, which else every man by the bond of nature and of covenant must have executed for himself, and for one another. And to him that shall consider well, why among free persons one man by civil right should bear authority and jurisdiction over another, no other end or reason can be imaginable.

These for a while governed well, and with much equity decided all things at their own arbitrement; till the temptation of such a power, left absolute in their hands, perverted them at length to injustice and partiality. Then did they, who now by trial had found the danger and inconveniencies of committing arbitrary power to any, invent laws, either framed or consented to by all, that should confine and limit the authority of whom they chose to govern them: that so man, of whose failing they had proof, might no more rule over them, but law and reason, abstracted as much as might be from personal errors and frailities. "While, as the magistrate was set above the people, so the law was set above the magistrate." When this would not serve, but that the law was either not executed, or misapplied, they were constrained from that time, the only remedy left them, to put conditions and take oaths from all kings and magistrates at their first instalment, to do impartial justice by law: who, upon those terms and no other, received allegiance from the people, that is to say, bond or covenant to obey them in execution of those laws, which they, the people, had themselves made or assented to. And this ofttimes with

In Media, a country afterwards noted for the completeness of its despotism, the people originally enjoyed a certain degree of freedom. Astyages, it seems, was the first prince who, in that ancient monarchy, perverted his government into a tyranny: for when the elder Cyrus, in his boyhood, signified to his mother, Mandane, a desire to remain in Media, in compliance with her sire's wishes, she was troubled with scruples respecting the notions he would be in danger of imbibing." "Justice," said she to her son, "is not the same thing in Media as in Persia; for here your grandfather has rendered himself master of everything, while in Persia justice consists in equality. Your father obeys the laws, like the other citizens; HE EVEN RECEIVES LAWS FROM THEM; for not his own will, but the law, is the rule of his actions." (Cyropæd. i. 3.)—ED.

express warning, that if the king or magistrate proved unfaithful to his trust, the people would be disengaged.* They added also counsellors and parliaments, not to be only at his beck, but, with him or without him, at set times, or at all times, when any danger threatened, to have care of the public safety. Therefore saith Claudius Sesell, a French statesman, "The parliament was set as a bridle to the king;" which I instance rather, not because our English lawyers have not said the same long before, but because that French monarchy is granted by all to be a far more absolute one than ours. That this and the rest of what hath hitherto been spoken is most true, might be copiously made appear through all stories, heathen and Christain; even of those nations where kings and emperors have sought means to abolish all ancient memory of the people's right by their encroachments and usurpations. But I spare long insertions, appealing to the German, French, Italian, Arragonian, English, and not least the Scottish histories: not forgetting this only by the way, that William the Norman, though a conqueror, and not unsworn at his coronation, was compelled a second time to take oath at St. Alban's ere the people would be brought to yield obedience.

It being thus manifest, that the power of kings and magistrates is nothing else but what is only derivative, transferred, and committed to them in trust from the people to the common good of them all, in whom the power yet remains fundamentally, and cannot be taken from them, without a violation of their natural birthright; and seeing that from hence Aristotle, and the best of political writers, have defined a king, “him who governs to the good and profit of his people, and not for his own ends;" it follows from necessary causes, that the titles of sovereign lord, natural lord, and the

* Precisely the same doctrine is maintained by Locke, and is acknowledged ever since 1688, by the constitution of these realms. "It can never be supposed to be the will of the society, that the legislative should have a power to destroy that which every one designs to secure by entering into society, and for which the people submitted themselves to legislators of their own making. Whenever the legislators endeavour to take away, and destroy the property of the people, or to reduce them to slavery under arbitrary power, they put themselves into a state of war with the people, who are thereupon absolved from any further obedience, and are left to the common refuge which God hath provided for all men against force and violence.” (Locke on Government, b. ii. ch. 19.)-ED.

like, are either arrogancies or flatteries, not admitted by emperors and kings of best note, and disliked by the church both of Jews (Isa. xxvi. 13) and ancient Christians, as appears by Tertullian and others. Although generally the people of Asia, and with them the Jews also,* especially since the time they chose a king against the advice and counsel of God, are noted by wise authors much inclinable to slavery.

Secondly, that to say, as is usual, the king hath as good right to his crown and dignity as any man to his inheritance, is to make the subject no better than the king's slave, his chattel, or his possession that may be bought and sold: and doubtless, if hereditary title were sufficiently inquired, the best foundation of it would be found but either in courtesy or convenience. But suppose it to be of right hereditary, what can be more just and legal, if a subject for certain crimes be to forfeit by law from himself and posterity all his inheritance to the king, than that a king, for crimes proportional, should forfeit all his title and inheritance to the people? Unless the people must be thought created all for him, he not for them, and they all in one body inferior to him single; which were a kind of treason against the dignity of mankind to affirm.†

Thirdly, it follows, that to say kings are accountable to * In the splendid discourse of Etienne de la Beotie. "De la Servitude Volontaire," this slavish disposition of the Jews is adverted to with singular energy of scorn, "Doubtless," he says, "there is no people upon earth, who, were the choice within their power, whether they would be governed by one man, or by law and reason, would not prefer the latter; unless, indeed, the children of Israel, who, without constraint or necessity, made unto themselves a tyrant; for which reason I never read their history without having my indignation roused, until I almost became inhuman enough to rejoice at the multitude of evils with which their kings overwhelmed them." See the whole discourse appended to "Montaigne's Essais," t. ix. p. 312— 389. Edit. de Coste, London, 1769.-ED.

James I., who, until he of Sans Souci disputed the title with him, was esteemed the Solomon of the North, agreed, on this point, with Milton; for, in his speech to the parliament in 1603, he maintains "that the special and greatest point of difference that is between a rightful king and an usurping tyrant, is this, that whereas the proud and ambitious tyrant doth think his kingdom and people are only ordained for satisfaction of his desires and unreasonable appetites; the righteous and just king doth by the contrary acknowledge himself to be ordained for the procuring of the wealth and property of the people." He makes no allusion indeed to freedom, valuable beyond all "wealth and property;" but the spread of knowledge was then narrow, and few minds were emancipated from the political ignorance of the darker ages.-Ed.

« PreviousContinue »