ignity, wealth, and power, upon a supposed divine communicate the same kings, and by a fallacy , impose their usurworld. This they 'he state as in the ions to a divine rally carried ave had the ine favour. erve, on out merit, Men were then made kings for reasons as little relative to good government, as the neighing of the horse of the son of Hystaspes. But the most prevalent, and the general motive was proximity of blood to the last, not to the best king, Nobility in China mount upwards, and he who has it conferred upon him, enobles his ancestors, not his posterity. A wise institution! and espe cially among a people in whose minds a great veneration for their forefa, thers has been always carefully main. hose tained. But in China, as well as in most other countries, royalty has descended, and kingdoms have been reckoned the patrimonies of particu ir families. Sir Francis Walsingham's Anatomizing of Honesty &c. , out of modesty, wn to have a good opireason to the 'S. ault: 287 great matter; but when they once Jost do preserve in them- Some few there are, who (lest the to du brise and re ad over e not only -yed during their orshipped after their they became principal Gods, a majorum gentium. The founders of commonwealths, the law-givers, and the heroes of particular states, became Gods of a second class, Di minorum gentium. All pre-eminence was given in heaven, as well as on earth, in proportion to the benefits that men received. Majesty was the first, and divinity the second reward. Both were earned by services done to mankind, whom it was easy to lead in those days of simplicity and superstition, from admiration and gratitude, to adoration and expectation. When advantage had been taken by some particular men of these dispositions in the generality, and religion and government had become two trades or mysteries, new means of attaining to this pre-eminence were soon devised, and new and even contrary motives worked the same effect. Merit had given rank; but rank was soon kept, and, which is more preposterous, obtained too, with to I have read in one of the histoof the latter Roman empire, ..storians, by the way, which I will not advise others to mispend their time in reading, that Sapores, the famous King of Persia, against whom Julian made the expedition wherein he lost his life, was crowned in his mother's womb. His father left her with child, the magi declared that the child would be a male; whereupon the royal ensigns were brought forth, they were placed on her Majesty's belly, and the princes and the satrapes prostrate recognised the embrio-monarch. But to take a more known example out of multitudes that present themselves, Domitian the worst, and Trajan the best of princes, were promoted to the em pire by the same title. Domitian was the son of Flavius, and the brother, though possibly the prisoner too, of Titus Vespasian: Trajan was the adopted son of Nerva. Hereditary right served the purpose of one, as well as of the other and if Tra jan was translated to a place among the gods, this was no greater a distinction than some of the worst of his predecessors and his successors obtained, for reasons generally as good as that which Seneca puts into the mouth of Diespiter in the Apo ness consists in the love of God; which is only able to fill up all the concerns of the soul with most perfect joy; and consequently to fix all its desires upon those celestial joys that shall never be taken from it. But this, as it cannot be obtained by discourse, but by unfeigned prayer, and the assistance and illumination of God's grace; so it is not my purpose to prick at it. And for that part of felicity which is attained to by moral virtue, I find that every virtue gives a man perfection in some kind, and a degree of felicity too : viz. Honesty, gives a man a good report; Justice, estimation and authority; Prudence, respect and confidence; Courtesy, and Liberality, affection, and a kind of dominion over other men. Temperance, health; Fortitude, a quiet mind, not to be moved by any adversary, and a confidence not to be circumvented by any danger. So that all other virtues give a man but an outward happiness, as receiving their reward from others; only temperance doth pretend to make the body a stranger to pain, both in taking from it the occasion of diseases, and making the outward inconveniencies of want, as hunger and cold, if not delightful, at least sufferable. FRANCIS WALSINGHAM. THE IDEA OF A PATRIOT KING. My intention is not to introduce what I have to say concerning the duties of kings, by any nice in quiry into the original of their institution. What is to be known of it will appear plainly enough, to such as are able and can spare time to trace it, in the broken traditions which are come down to us of a few nations. But those who are not able to trace it there, may trace something better and more worthy to be known, in their own thoughts: I mean what this institution ought to have been, whenever it began, according to the rule of reason, founded in the common rights and inte rests of mankind. On this head it is quite necessary to make some reflections, that will, like angular stones laid on a rock, support the little fabric, the model however of a great building, that I propose to raise. So plain a matter could never have been rendered intricate and voluminous, had it not been for lawless ambition, extravagant vanity, and the detestable spirit of tyranny; abetted by the private interests of artful men, by adulation and superstition, two vices to which that staring, timid creature, man, is excessively prone; if authority had not imposed on such as did not pretend to reason; and if such as did attempt to reason had not been caught in the commun snares of sophism, and bewildered in the labyrinths of disputation. In this case, therefore, as in all those of great concernment, the shortest and the surest method of arriving at real knowledge, is to unlearn the lessons we have been taught; to remount to first principles, and take no body's word about them; for it is about them that almost all the jug gling and legerdemain, employed by men whose trade it is to deceive, are set to work. Now he who does so in this case, will discover soon, that the notions concerning the divine institution and right of kings, as well as the absolute power belonging to their office, have no foundation in fact or reason, but have risen from an old alliance between ecclesiastical and civil policy. The characters of king and priest have been sometimes blended toge ther; and when they have been divided, as kings have found the great effects wrought in government by the empire which priests obtain over the consciences of mankind, so priests have been taught by experience, that the best method to preserve their own rank, dignity, wealth, and power, all raised upon a supposed divine right, is to communicate the same pretension to kings, and by a fallacy common to both, impose their usurpations on a silly world. This they have done: and in the state as in the church, these pretensions to a divine right have been generally carried highest by those who have had the least pretension to the divine favour. It is worth while to observe, on what principle some men were advanced to a great pre-eminence over others, in the early ages of those nations that are a little known to us: I speak not of such as raised themselves by conquest, but of such as were raised by common consent. Now you will find in all these proceedings an entire uniformity of principle. The authors of such inventions as were of general use to the well-being of mankind, were not only reverenced and obeyed during their lives, but worshipped after their deaths: they became principal Gods, Dii majorum gentium. The founders of commonwealths, the law-givers, and the heroes of particular states, became Gods of a second class, Di minorum gentium. All pre-eminence was given in heaven, as well as on earth, in proportion to the benefits that men received. Majesty was the first, and divinity the second reward. Both were earned by services done to mankind, whom it was easy to lead in those days of simplicity and superstition, from admiration and gratitude, to adoration and expectation. When advantage had been taken by some particular men of these dispositions in the generality, and religion and government had become two trades or mysteries, new means of attaining to this pre-eminence were soon devised, and new and even contrary motives worked the same effect. Merit had given rank; but rank was soon kept, and, which is more preposterous, obtained too, with out merit. Men were then made kings for reasons as little relative to good government, as the neighing of the horse of the son of Hystaspes. But the most prevalent, and the general motive was proximity of blood to the last, not to the best king, Nobility in China mount upwards, and he who has it conferred upon him, enobles his ancestors, not his posterity. A wise institution! and espe cially among a people in whose minds a great veneration for their forefa, thers has been always carefully main. tained. But in China, as well as in most other countries, royalty has descended, and kingdoms have been reckoned the patrimonies of particu lar families. I have read in one of the historians of the latter Roman empire, historians, by the way, which I will not advise others to mispend their time in reading, that Sapores, the famous King of Persia, against whom Julian made the expedition wherein he lost his life, was crowned in his mother's womb. His father left her with child, the magi declared that the child would be a male; whereupon the royal ensigns were brought forth, they were placed on her Majesty's belly, and the princes and the satrapes prostrate recognised the embrio-monarch. But to take a more known example out of multitudes that present themselves, Domitian the worst, and Trajan the best of princes, were promoted to the empire by the same title. Domitian was the son of Flavius, and the brother, though possibly the prisoner too, of Titus Vespasian: Trajan was the adopted son of Nerva. Hereditary right served the purpose of one, as well as of the other and if Trajan was translated to a place among the gods, this was no greater a distinction than some of the worst of his predecessors and his successors obtained, for reasons generally as good as that which Seneca puts into the mouth of Diespiter in the Apo kolokyntosis of Claudius, Cum sit ei republica esse aliquem qui cum Romulo possit ferventia rapa vorare. To say the truth, it would have been a wiser measure to have made these royal persons gods at once: as gods they would have done neither good nor hurt; but as emperors, in their way to divinity, they acted like devils, If my readers are ready by this time to think me anti-monarchial, and in particular an enemy to the succession of kings by hereditary right, I hope to be soon restored to their good opinion. I esteem monarchy above any other form of government, and hereditary monarchy above elective. I reverence kings, their office, their rights, their persons; and it will never be owing to the principles I am going to establish, because the character and government of a Patriot King can be established on no other, if their office and their right are not always held divine, and their persons always sacred. Now we are subject, by the constitution of human nature, and therefore by the will of the Author of this and every other nature, to two laws. One given immediately to all men by God, the same to all, and obligatory alike on all. The other given to man by man; and therefore not the same to all, nor obligatory alike on all founded indeed on the same principles, but varied by different applications of them to times, to characters, and to a number which may be reckoned infinite, of other circumstances. By the first you see, that I mean the universal law of reason; and by the second, the particular law, or constitution of laws, by which every distinct community has chosen to be governed. The obligation of submission to both, is discoverable by so clear and so simple an use of our intellectual faculties, that it may be said properly enough to be revealed to us by God; and though both these laws cannot be said properly to be given by him, yet our obligation to submit to the civil law is a principal paragraph in the natural law, which he has most manifestly given us. In truth, we can no more doubt of the obligations of both these laws, than of the existence of the law-giver. As supreme lord over all his works, his general providence regards immediately the great commonwealth of mankind; but then, as supreme lord, likewise, his authority gives a sanction to the particular bodies of law which are made under it. The law of nature is the law of all his subjects: the constitutions of particular governments are like the by-laws of cities, or the appropriated customs of provinces. It follows, therefore, that he who breaks the laws of his country, resists the ordinance of God, that is, the law of his nature. God has instituted neither monarchy nor aristocracy, nor democracy, nor mixed government: but though God has instituted no particular form of government among men, yet, by the general laws of his kingdom, he ex acts our obedience to the laws of those communities to which each of us is attached by birth, or to which he may be attached by a subsequent and lawful engagement. From such plain, unrefined, and therefore, I suppose truc reasoning, the just authority of kings, and the due obedience of subjects, may be deduced with the utmost certainty, And surely it is far better for kings themselves to have their authority thus founded on principles incontes tible, and on fair deductions from them, than on the chimeras of madmen, or, what has been more com mon, the sophisms of knaves. A human right, that cannot be controverted, is preferable surely to a pretended divine right, which every man must believe implicitly, as few will do, or not believe at all. A divine But the principles we have laid down do not stop here. right in kings is to be deduced evi dently from them. A divine right to govern well, and conformably to the constitution at the head of which they are placed. A divine right to govern ill, is an absurdity: to assert it is blasphemy! A people may choose, or hereditary succession may raise, a bad prince to the throne; but a good king alone can derive his right to govern from God. The reason is plain good government alone can be in the divine intention. God has made us to desire happiness; he has made our happiness dependent on society; and the happiness of society dependent on good or bad government. His intention therefore was, that government should be good. This is essential to his wisdom; for wisdom consists surely in proportioning means to ends: therefore it cannot be said without absurd impiety, that he confers a right to oppose his intention. The office of kings is then of right divine, and their persons are to be reputed sacred. As men, they have no such right, no such sacredness belonging to them as kings they have both, unless they forfeit them. Reverence for government obliges to reverence governors, who, for the sake of it, are raised above the level of other men but reverence for governors, independently of government, any further than reverence would be due to their virtues if they were private men, is preposterous, and repugnant to common sense, The spring from which this legal reverence, for so I may call it, is national, not personal. As well might we say that a ship is built, and loaded, and manned, for the sake of any particular pilot, instead of acknowledging that the pilot is made for the sake of the ship, her lading, and her crew, who are always the owners in the political vessel, as to say that kingdoms were instituted for kings, not kings for kingdoms. In short, and to carry our allusion higher, majesty is not an inherent, but a reflected light. All this is as true of elective, as it is of hereditary monarchs; though the scribblers for tyranny, under the name of monarchy, would have us believe that there is something more august, and more sacred, in one than the other. They are sacred alike, and this attribute is to be ascribed, or not ascribed to them, as they an swer, or do not answer, the ends of their institution. But there is another comparison to be made, in which a great and most important dissimilitude will be found between hereditary and elective monarchy.. Nothing can be more absurd, in pure speculation, than an hereditary right in any mortal to govern other men and yet, in practice, nothing can be more absurd than to have a king to choose at every vacancy of a throne. We draw at a lottery indeed in one case, where there are many chances to lose, and few to gain. But have we much more advantage of this kind in the other? I think not. Upon these, and upon most occasions, the multitude would do at least as well to trust to chance as choice, and to their fortune as to their judgment. But in another respect the advantage is entirely on the side of hereditary succession: for in elective monarchies, these elections, whether well or ill made, are often attended with such national calamities, that even the best reigns cannot make amends for them; whereas in hereditary monarchy, whether a good or a bad prince succeeds, these calamities are avoided. There is one source of evil the less open: and one source of evil the less in human affairs, where there are so many, is sufficient to decide. We may lament the imperfections of our human state, which is such, that in cases of the utmost importance to the order and good government of society, and by consequence to the happiness of our |