But the "observation of this oath may be griev ous." If I received money the last year upon bond, promise, or sale of a manor or farm, can it be thought grievous to me to be compelled to repay, or to make over the land according to my agreement? Or if I did not seal the bond till I had the money, must not I perform the condition, or at the least restore what I had received? If it be grievous to any king to preserve the liberties, lives, and estates, of his subjects, and to govern according to their laws, let him resign the crown, and the people to whom the oath was made, will probably release him. Others may possibly be found who will not think it grievous: or if none will accept a crown, unless they may do what they please, the people must bear the misfortune of being obliged to govern themselves, or to institute some other sort of magistracy, that will be satisfied with a less exorbitant power. Perhaps they may succeed as well as some others have done, who, without being brought to that necessity, have voluntarily cast themselves into the misery of living without the majestic splendour of a monarch: or, if that fail, they may, as their last refuge, surrender up themselves to slavery. When that is done, we will acknowledge, that whatsoever we have is derived from the favour of our master. But no such thing yet appearing amongst us, we may be pardoned, if we think we are free men governed by our own laws, and that no man has a power over us, which is not given and regulated by them; nor that any thing but a new law made by ourselves, can exempt our kings from the obligation of performing their oaths taken, to govern according to the old, in the true 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, but perhaps prejudice, from a con tract, 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 species 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 it 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. SECTION XVIII. THE NEXT IN BLOOD TO DECEASED KINGS CAN NOT GENERALLY BE SAID TO BE KINGS TILL THEY ARE CROWNED. It 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. Though this be a bold proposition, I will not say it is universally false. It is impossible, that in some places the rule of succession may be set 159000 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 acknowledge 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 anciently in Spain, according to which the brother of the deceased king has been often, if not always, preferred 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 descendants, without any other condition distinguishing them from males, except that the younger brother is preferred before the elder sister, but the daughter of the elder brother is preferred 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 been, though 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 judge of such an undoubted authority, that all men may safely submit, it is hard for any man, who really seeks the satisfaction of his conscience, to know whether the law of God and nature (though he should believe there is one general law) do justify the custom of the ancient* Medes and Sabeans, mentioned by the poet, who admitted females, as 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 Medis levibusque Sabæis Imperat hic sexus, reginarumque sub armis LUCAN. |