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his people was reduced, and had frequently used this word, l'etat; though the king approved the substance of all he had said, yet he was shocked at the frequent repetition of this word, and complained of it as of a kind of indecency to himself. This will not appear so strange to our second, as it may very justly to our first reflections; for what won der is it, that princes are easily be trayed into an error that takes its rise in the general imperfection of our nature, in our pride, our vanity, and our presumption? the bastard children, but the children still, of self-love; a spurious brood, but often a favourite brood, that governs the whole family. As men are apt to make themselves the measure of all being, so they make themselves the final cause of all creation. Thus the reputed orthodox philosophers in all ages have taught that the world was made for man, the earth for him to inhabit, and all the luminous bodies in the immense expanse around us, for him to gaze at. Kings do no more, no not so much, when they imagine themselves the final cause for which societies were formed, and governments instituted.

This capital error, in which almost every prince is confirmed by his education, has so great extent and so general influence, that a right to do every iniquitous thing in government may be derived from it. But as if this was not enough, the characters of princes are spoiled many more ways by their education. I shall not descend into a detail of such particulars, nor presume so much as to hint what regulations might be made about the education of princes, nor what part our parliaments might take occasionally in this momentous affair, lest I should appear too refining or too presumptuous in my speculations. But I may assert in general, that the indifference of mankind upon this head,

especially in a government constituted like ours, is monstrous.

I may also take notice of another cause of the mistakes of princes, I mean the general conduct of those who are brought near to their persons. Such men, let me say, have a particular duty arising from this very situation; a duty common to them all, because it arises not from their stations which are different, but from their situation, which is the same. To enumerate the various applications of this duty would be too minute and tedious; but this may suffice, that all such men should bear constantly in mind, that the master they serve is to be the king of their country; that their attachment to him, therefore, is not to be like that of other servants to other masters, for his sake alone, or for his sake and their own, but for the sake of their country likewise.

Craterus loves the King, but Hephestion loves Alexander, was a say ing of the latter that has been often quoted, but not censured as it ought to be. Alexander gave the preference to the attachment of Hephestion; but this preference was due undoubtedly to that of Craterus. Attachment to a private person must comprehend a great concern for his character and his interests: but attachment to one who is, or may be a king, much more; because the character of the latter is more important to himself and others; and because his interests are vastly more complicated with those of his country, and in some sort with those of mankind. Alexander himself seemed, upon one occasion, to make the distinction that should be always made between our attachment to a prince, and to any private person. It was when Parmenio advised him to accept the terms of peace which Darius offered: they were great, he thought them so; but he thought, no matter for my purpose whether

justly or not, that it would be unbecoming him to accept them; therefore he rejected them, but acknowledged, "that he would have done as he was advised to do, if he had "been Parmenio."

As to persons who are not about a prince in the situation here spoken of, they can do little more than proportion their applause, and the demonstrations of their confidence and affection, to the benefits they actually receive from the prince on the throne, or to the just expectations that a successor gives them. It is of the latter I propose to speak bere particularly. If he gives them those. of a good reign, we may assure ourselves that they will carry, and in this case they ought to carry, that applause, and those demonstrations of their confidence and affection, as high as such a prince himself can desire. Thus the prince and the people take, in effect a sort of engagement with one another; the prince to govern well, and the people to honour and obey him. If he gives them expectations of a bad reign, they have this obligation to him at least, that he puts them early on their guard. And an obligation, and an advantage it will be, if they prepare for his accession as for a great and inevitable evil; and if they guard on every occasion a gainst the ill use they foresee that he will make of money and power. Above all, they should not suffer themselves to be caught in the common snare, which is laid under specious pretences of "gaining such a prince, and of keeping him by pub"lic compliances out of bad hands." That argument has been pressed more than once, has prevailed, and has been fruitful of most pernicious consequences. None indeed can be more absurd: it is not unlike the reasoning of those savages who worship the devil, not because they love him or honour him, or expect any good from him, but that he may do

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them no hurt. Nay, it is more absurd; for the savages suppose, that the devil has independently of them the power to hurt them: whereas the others put more power into the hands of a prince, because he has already some power to hurt them; and trust to the justice and grati tude of one who wants sense, virtue, or both, rather than increase and fortify the barriers against his folly and his vices.

But the truth is, that men who reason and act in this manner either mean, or else are led by such as mean, nothing more than to make a private court at the public expence ; who chuse to be the instruments of a bad king rather than to be out of power; and who are often so wicked, that they would prefer such a sevice to that of the best of kings. In fine, these reasons, and every other reason for providing against a bad reign in prospect, acquire a new force when one weak or wicked prince is, in the order of succession, to fol low another of the same character. Such provisions indeed are hardest to be obtained when they are the most necessary; that is, when the spirit of liberty begins to flag in a free people, and when they become disposed by habits that have grown insensibly upon them, to a base submission, But they are necessary too even when they are easiest to be obtained; that is, when the spirit of liberty is in full strength, and a disposition to oppose all instances of mal-administration, and to resist all attempts on liberty, is universal. In both cases, the endeavours of every man who loves his country will be employed with incessant care and constancy to obtain them; that good government and liberty may be the better preserved and secured: but in the latter case, for this further reason also, that the preservation and security of these may be provided for, not only better, but more consistently with public tranquillity, by

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constitutional methods, and a legal course of opposition to the excesses of regal or ministerial power. What I touch upon here might be made extremely plain; and I think the observation would appear to be of no small importance; but I should be carried too far from my subject, and my subject will afford me matter of more agreeable speculation.

I think enough has been already said, to establish the first and true principles of monarchical and indeed of every other kind of government: and I will say with confidence, that no principles but these, and such as these, can be advanced, which deserve to be treated seriously, though Mr. Locke condescended to examine those of Filmer, more out of regard to the prejudices of the time, than to the importance of the work. Upon such foundations we must conclude, that since men were directed by nature to form societies, because they cannot by their nature subsist without them, nor in a state of individuality; and since they were directed in like manner to establish governments, because societies cannot be maintained without them, nor subsist in a state of anarchy; the ultimate end of all governments is the good of the people, for whose sake they were made, and without whose consent they could not have been made. In forming societies, and submitting to government, men give up part of that liberty to which they are all born, and all alike.But why? Is government incompatible with a full enjoyment of liberty? By no means. But because popular liberty without government will degenerate into licence, as go vernment without sufficient liberty will degenerate into tyranny, they are mutually necessary to each other, good government to support legal liberty, and legal liberty to preserve good government.

I speak not here of people, if any such there are, who have been sa

vage or stupid enough to submit to tyranny by original contract; hor of those nations on whom tyranny has stolen as it were imperceptibly, or heen imposed by violence, and settled by prescription. I shall exercise no political casuistry about the rights of such kings, and the obligations of such people. Men are to take their lots, perhaps, in governments as in climates, to fence against the inconveniencies of both, and to bear what they cannot alter. But I speak of people who have been wise and happy enough to establish, and to preserve free constitutions of government, as the people of this island have done. To these there fore I say, that their kings are under the most sacred obligations that human law can create, and divine law authorize, to defend and main, tain, in the first place, and preferable to every other consideration, the freedom of such constitutions.

The good of the people is the ultimate and true end of government.Governors are therefore appointed for this end, and the civil constitution which appoints them, and invests them with their power, is determined to do so by that law of nature and reason, which has deter mined the end of government, and which admits this form of government as the proper mean of arriving at it. Now the greatest good of a people is their liberty and in the case here refered to, the people has judged it so, and provided for it accordingly. Liberty is to the collective body, what health is to every individual body. Without health no pleasure can be tasted by man: without liberty no happiness can be enjoyed by society. The obligation, therefore, to defend and maintain the freedom of such constitutions, will appear most sacred to a patriot king.

Kings who have weak understandings, bad hearts, and strong prejudices, and all these, as it often

happens, inflamed by their pas in hereditary monarchies, where

sions, and rendered incurable by their self-conceit and presumption; such kings are apt to imagine, and they conduct themselves so as to make many of their subjects imagine, that the king and people in free governments are rival powers, who stand in competition with one another, who have different interests, and must of course have different views: that the rights and privileges of the people are so many spoils ta ken from the right and prerogative of the crown; and that the rules and laws, made for the exercise and security of the former, are so many diminutions of their dignity, and restraints on their power.

A patriot king will see all this in a far different and much truer light. The constitution will be considered by him as one law, consisting of two tables, containing the rule of his government, and the measure of his subjects obedience; or as one system, composed of different parts and powers, but all duly proportioned to one another, and conspiring by their harmony to the perfection of the whole. He will make one, and but one distinction between his rights, and those of his people: he will look on his to be a trust, and theirs a property. He will discern, that he can have a right to no more than is trusted to him by the constitution: and that his people, who had an original right to the whole by the law of nature, can have the sole indefeasable right to any part; and really have such a right to that part which they have reserved to them selves. In fine, the constitution will be reverenced by him as the law of God and of man; the force of which binds the king as much as the mean est subject, and the reason of which binds him much more.

Thus he will think, and on these principles he will act, whether he come to the throne by immediate or remote election. I say remote; for

men are not elected, families are: and therefore some authors would have it believed, that when a family has been once admitted, and an hereditary right to the crown recog nized in it, that right cannot be forfeited, nor that throne become vacant, as long as any heir of the family remains. How much more agreeably to truth and to common sense would these authors have written, if they had maintained, that every prince who comes to a crown in the course of succession, were he the last of five hundred, comes to it under the, same conditions under which the first took it, whether expressed, or implied; as well as under those, if any such there be, which have been since made by legal authority: and that royal blood can give no right, nor length of succession any prescription, against the constitution of a government? The first and the last hold by the same tenure.

I mention this the rather, because I have an imperfect remembrance, that some scribbler was employed, or employed himself, to assert the hereditary right of the present royal family. A task so unnecessary to any good purpose, that I believe a súspicion arose of its having been designed for a bad one. A patriot king will never countenance such impertinent fallacies, nor deign to lean on broken reeds. He knows that his right is founded on the laws of God and man, that none can shake it but himself, and that his own virtue is sufficient to maintain it against all opposition.

I have dwelt the longer on the first and general principles of monarchical government, and have recurred the oftener to them; because it seems to me that they are the seeds of patriotism, which must be sowed as soon as possible in the mind of a prince, lest their growth should be checked by rank luxuriant weeds,

which are apt to be 'found in such soils, and under which no crop of kingly virtues can ever flourish. A prince, 'who does not know the true principles, cannot propose to himself the true ends of government: and he, who does not propose them, will never direct his conduct steadily to them. There is not a deeper, nor a finer observation in all my Lord BACON's works, than one which I shall apply and paraphrase on this occasion. The most compendious, the most noble, and the most effectual remedy that can be opposed to the uncertain and irregular motions of the human mind, agitated by various passions, allured by various temptations, inclining sometimes towards a state of moral perfection, and oftener even in the best towards a state of moral depravation, is this. We must chuse betimes such virtuous objects as are proportioned to the means we have of pursuing them, and as belong particularly to the stations we are in, and to the duties of those stations. We must determine and fix our minds in such manner upon them, that the pursuit of them may become the business, and the attainment of them the end of our whole lives. Thus we shall imitate the great operations of nature, and not the feeble, slow, and imperfect operations of art. We must not proceed, in forming the moral character, as a statuary proceeds in forming a statue, who works sometimes on the face, sometimes on one part, and sometimes on another: but we must proceed, and it is in our power to proceed, as nature does in forming a flower, an animal, or any other of her productions; rudimenta partium omnium simul parit and producit. "She throws out altogether, "and at once, the whole system of every being, and the rudiments of "all the parts." The vegetable or the animal grows in bulk, and increases in strength; but is the same from the first. Just so our patriot

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king must be a patriot from the first. He must be such in resolution, before he grows such in practice. He must fix at once the general principles and ends of all his actions, and determine that his whole conduct shall be regulated by them, and directed to them. When he has done this, he will have turned, by one great ef fort, the bent of his mind so strongly, towards the perfection of a kingly character, that he will exercise with ease, and as it were by a na tural determination, all the virtues of it; which will be suggested to him on every occasion by the princi ples wherewith his mind is imbued, and by those ends that are the constant objects of his attention.

Let us then see in what manner, and with what effect he will do this, upon the greatest occasion he can have of exercising these virtues, the maintenance of liberty, and the reestablishment of a free constitution.

The freedom of a constitution rests on two points. The orders of it are one: so Machiavel calls them, and I know not how to call them more significantly. He means not only the forms and customs, but the different classes and assemblies of men, with different powers and privileges attributed to them, which are established in the state. The spirit and character of the people are the other. On the mutual conformity and harmony of these the preservation of liberty depends. To take away, or essentially to alter the former, cannot be brought to pass, whilst the latter remains in original purity and vigour: nor can liberty be destroyed by this method, unless the attempt be made with a military force sufficient to conquer the nation, which would not submit in this case till it was conquered, nor with much security to the conquerer even then. But these orders of the state may be essentially altered, and serve more effectually to the destruction of liberty than the taking of

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