Feltham’s Resolves. 35. It is rather difficult to fix upon the fittest place for bringing forward some books, which, though moral in their subject, belong to the general literature of the age, and we might strip the province of polite letters of what have been reckoned its chief ornaments. I shall therefore select here such only, as are more worthy of consideration for their matter than for the style in which it is delivered. Several that might range, more or less, under the denomination of moral essays, were published both in English and in other languages. But few of them are now read, or even much known by name. One, which has made a better fortune than the rest, demands mention, the Resolves of Owen Feltham. Of this book, the first part of which was published in 1627, the second not till after the middle of the century, it is not uncommon to meet with high praises in those modern writers, who profess a faithful allegiance to our older literature. For myself, I can only say that Feltham appears not only a laboured and artificial, but a shallow writer. Among his many faults none strikes me more than a want of depth, which his pointed and sententious manner renders more ridiculous. Sallust, among the ancients, is a great dealer in such oracular truisms, a style of writing that soon becomes disagreeable. There are certainly exceptions to this vacuity of original meaning in Feltham; it would be possible to fill a few pages with extracts not undeserving of being read, with thoughts just and judicious, though never deriving much lustre from his diction. He is one of our worst writers in point of style; with little vigour, he has less elegance; his English is impure to an excessive degree, and full of words unauthorised by any usage. Pedantry, and the novel phrases which Greek and Latin etymology was supposed to warrant, appear in most productions of this period; but Feltham attempted to bend the English idiom to his own affectations. The moral reflections of a serious and thoughtful mind are generally pleasing, and to this perhaps is partly owing the kind of popularity which the Resolves of Feltham have obtained; but they may be had more agreeably and profitably in other books.[333]

[333] This is a random sample of Feltham’s style: “Of all objects of sorrow a distressed king is the most pitiful, because it presents us most the frailty of humanity, and cannot but most midnight the soul of him that is fallen. The sorrows of a deposed king are like the distorquements of a darted conscience which none can know but he that hath lost a crown.” Cent. i. 61. We find not long after the following precious phrase: “The nature that is arted with the subtleties of time and practice.” I. 63. In one page we have obnubilate, nested, parallel (as a verb), fails (failings) uncurtain, depraving (calumniating). I. 50. And we are to be disgusted with such vile English, or properly no English, for the sake of the sleepy saws of a trivial morality. Such defects are not compensated by the better and more striking thoughts we may occasionally light upon. In reading Feltham, nevertheless, I seemed to perceive some resemblance to the tone and way of thinking of the Turkish Spy, which is a great compliment to the former; for the Turkish Spy is neither disagreeable nor superficial. The resemblance must lie in a certain contemplative melancholy, rather serious than severe, in respect to the world and its ways; and as Feltham’s Resolves seem to have a charm, by the editions they have gone through, and the good name they have gained, I can only look for it in this.

Browne’s Religo Medici. 36. A superior genius to that of Feltham is exhibited in the Religio Medici of Sir Thomas Browne. This little book made a remarkable impression; it was soon translated into several languages, and is highly extolled by Conringius and others, who could only judge through these versions. Patin, though he rather slights it himself, tells us in one of his letters that it was very popular at Paris. The character which Johnson has given of the Regligio Medici is well known; and, though perhaps rather too favourable, appears in general just.[334] The mind of Browne was fertile, and, according to the current use of the word, ingenious: his analogies are original and sometimes brilliant; and as his learning is also of things out of the beaten path, this gives a peculiar and uncommon air to all his writings, and especially to the Regligio Medici. He was, however, far removed from real philosophy, both by his turn of mind and by the nature of his erudition; he seldom reasons, his thoughts are desultory, sometimes he appears sceptical or paradoxical, but credulity and deference to authority prevail. He belonged to the class, numerous at that time in our church, who halted between popery and protestantism; and this gives him, on all such topics, an appearance of vacillation and irresoluteness which probably represents the real state of his mind. His paradoxes do not seem very original, nor does he arrive at them by any process of argument; they are more like traces of his reading casually suggesting themselves, and supported by his own ingenuity. His style is not flowing, but vigorous; his choice of words not elegant, and even approaching to barbarism as English phrase; yet there is an impressiveness, an air of reflection and sincerity in Browne’s writings, which redeem many of their faults. His egotism is equal to that of Montaigne, but with this difference, that it is the egotism of a melancholy mind, which generally becomes unpleasing. This melancholy temperament is characteristic of Browne. “Let’s talk of graves and worms and epitaphs” seems his motto. His best written work, the Hydriotaphia, is expressly an essay on sepulchral urns; but the same taste for the circumstances of mortality leavens also the Religio Medici.

[334] “The Regligio Medici was no sooner published that it excited the attention of the public by the novelty of paradoxes, the dignity of sentiment, the quick succession of images, the multitude of abstruse allusions, the subtlety of disquisition, and the strength of language.” Life of Browne (in Johnson’s Works, xii. 275).

Selden’s Table Talk. 37. The thoughts of Sir Walter Raleigh on moral prudence are few but precious. And some of the bright sallies of Selden recorded in his Table Talk are of the same description, though the book is too miscellaneous to fall under any single head of classification. The editor of this very short and small volume, which gives, perhaps, a more exalted notion of Selden’s natural talents than any of his learned writings, requests the reader to distinguish times, and “in his fancy to carry along with him the when and the why many of these things were spoken.” This intimation accounts for the different spirit in which he may seem to combat the follies of the prelates at one time, and of the presbyterians or fanatics at another. These sayings are not always, apparently, well reported; some seem to have been misunderstood, and in others the limiting clauses to have been forgotten. But on the whole they are full of vigour, raciness, and a kind of scorn of the half-learned, far less rude, but more cutting than that of Scaliger. It has been said that the Table Talk of Selden is worth all the Ana of the continent. In this I should be disposed to concur; but they are not exactly works of the same class.

Osborn’s Advice to his Son. 38. We must now descend much lower, and could find little worth remembering. Osborn’s Advice to his Son may be reckoned among the moral and political writings of this period. It is not very far above mediocrity, and contains a good deal that is common-place, yet with a considerable sprinkling of sound sense and observation. The style is rather apophthegmatic, though by no means more so than was then usual.

John Valentine Andreæ. 39. A few books, English as well as foreign, are purposely deferred for the present; I am rather apprehensive that I shall be found to have overlooked some not unworthy of notice. One written in Latin by a German writer has struck me as displaying a spirit which may claim for it a place among the livelier and lighter class, though with serious intent, of moral essays. John Valentine Andreæ was a man above his age, and a singular contrast to the narrow and pedantic herd of German scholars and theologians. He regarded all things around him with a sarcastic but benevolent philosophy, keen in exposing the errors of mankind, yet only for the sake of amending them. It has been supposed by many that he invented the existence of the famous Rosicrucian society, not so much, probably, for the sake of mystification, as to suggest an institution so praiseworthy and philanthropic as he delineated for the imitation of mankind. This, however, is still a debated problem in Germany.[335] But among his numerous writings, that alone of which I know anything is entitled in the original Latin, Mythologiæ Christianæ, sive Virtutum et Vitiorum Vitæ Humanæ Imaginum Libri Tres. (Strasburg, 1618.) Herder has translated a part of this book in the fifth volume of his Zerstreute Blätter; and it is here that I have met with it. Andreæ wrote, I believe, solely in Latin, and his works appear to be scarce, at least in England. These short apologues, which Herder has called Parables, are written with uncommon terseness of language, a happy and original vein of invention, and a philosophy looking down on common life without ostentation and without passion. He came too before Bacon, but he had learned to scorn the disputes of the schools, and had sought for truth with an entire love, even at the hands of Cardan and Campanella. I will give a specimen, in a note, of the peculiar manner of Andreæ, but my translation does not, perhaps, justice to that of Herder. The idea, it may be observed, is now become more trite.[336]

[335] Brucker, iv. 735. Biogr. Univ. art. Andreæ, et alibi.

[336] “The Pen and the Sword strove with each other for superiority, and the voices of the judges were divided. The men of learning talked much and persuaded many; the men of arms were fierce and compelled many to join their side. Thus nothing could be determined; it followed that both were left to fight it out, and settle their dispute in single combat.

“On one side books rustled in the libraries, on the other arms rattled in the arsenals; men looked on in hope and fear, and waited the end.

“The Pen, consecrated to truth, was notorious for much falsehood; the Sword, a servant of God, was stained with innocent blood: both hoped for the aid of heaven, both found its wrath.

“The State, which had need of both, and disliked the manners of both, would put on the appearance of caring for the weal and woe of neither. The Pen was weak, but quick, glib, well exercised, and very bold, when one provoked it. The Sword was stern, implacable, but less compact and subtle, so that on both sides the victory remained uncertain. At length for the security of both, the common weal pronounced that both in turn should stand by her side and bear with each other. For that only is a happy country where the Pen and the Sword are faithful servants, not where either governs by its arbitrary will and passion.”

If the touches in this little piece are not always clearly laid on, it may be ascribed as much, perhaps, to their having passed through two translations, as to the fault of the excellent writer. But in this early age we seldom find the entire neatness and felicity which later times attained.

Sect. II.

Abandonment of anti-monarchical theories. 41. In the sixteenth century, we have seen that notions of popular rights, and of the amissibility of sovereign power for misconduct, were alternately broached by the two great religious parties of Europe, according to the necessity in which they stood for such weapons against their adversaries. Passive obedience was preached as a duty by the victorious, rebellion was claimed as a right by the vanquished. The history of France and England, and partly of other countries, was the clue to these politics. But in the following period, a more tranquil state of public opinion, and a firmer hand upon the reigns of power, put an end to such books as those of Languet, Buchanan, Rose, and Mariana. The last of these, by the vindication of tyrannicide in his treatise De Rege, contributed to bring about a reaction in political literature. The Jesuits in France, whom Henry IV. was inclined to favour, publicly condemned the doctrine of Mariana in 1606. A book by Becanus, and another by Suarez, justifying regicide, were condemned by the parliament of Paris, in 1612.[337] The assassination indeed of Henry IV., committed by one, not perhaps metaphysically speaking sane, but whose aberration of intellect had evidently been either brought on or nourished by the pernicious theories of that school, created such an abhorrence of the doctrine, that neither the Jesuits nor others ventured afterwards to teach it. Those also who magnified, as far as circumstances would permit, the alleged supremacy of the See of Rome over temporal princes, were little inclined to set up, like Mariana, a popular sovereignty, a right of the multitude not emanating from the Church, and to which the Church itself might one day be under the necessity of submitting. This became therefore a period favourable to the theories of absolute power; not so much shown by means of their positive assertion through the press as by the silence of the press, comparatively speaking, on all political theories whatever.

[337] Mezeray, Hist. de la Mère et du Fils.

Political literature becomes historical. 42. The political writings of this part of the seventeenth century assumed in consequence more of an historical, or, as we might say, a statistical character. Learning was employed in systematic analyses of ancient or modern forms of government, in dissertations explanatory of institutions, in copious and exact statements of the true, rather than arguments upon the right or the expedient. Some of the very numerous works of Herman Conringius, a professor at Helmstadt, seem to fall within this description. But none are better known than a collection, made by the Elzevirs, at different times near the middle of this century, containing accounts, chiefly published before, of the political constitutions of European commonwealths. This collection, which is in volumes of the smallest size, may be called for distinction the Elzevir Republics. It is very useful in respect of the knowledge of facts it imparts, but rarely contains anything of a philosophical nature. Statistical descriptions of countries are much allied to these last; some indeed are included in the Elzevir series. They were as yet not frequent; but I might have mentioned in the last volume one of the earliest, the Description of the Low Countries by Ludovico Guicciardini, brother of the historian.

Campanella’s Politics. 44. The Politics of Campanella are warped by a desire to please the court of Rome, which he recommends as fit to enjoy an universal monarchy, at least by supreme control, and observes with some acuteness, that no prince had been able to obtain an universal ascendant over Christendom, because the presiding vigilance of the Holy See has regulated their mutual contentions, exalting one and depressing another, as seemed expedient for the good of religion.[338] This book is pregnant with deep reflection on history, it is enriched, perhaps, by the study of Bodin, but is much more concise. |La Mothe le Vayer.| In one of the Dialogues of La Mothe le Vayer, we find the fallacy of some general maxims in politics drawn from a partial induction well exposed, by showing the instances where they have wholly failed. Though he pays high compliments to Louis XIII. and to Richelieu, he speaks freely enough, in his sceptical way, of the general advantages of monarchy.

[338] Nullus hactenus Christianus princeps monarchiam super cunctos Christianos populos sibi conservare potuit. Quoniam papa præ est illis, et dissipat erigitque illorum conatus prout religioni expedit. C. 8.

Naudé’s Coups d’Etat 45. Gabriel Naudé, a man of extensive learning, acute understanding, and many good qualities, but rather lax in religious and moral principle, excited some attention by a very small volume, entitled Considerations sur les coups d’état, which he wrote while young, at Rome, in the service of the Cardinal de Bagne. In this he maintains the bold contempt of justice and humanity in political emergencies which had brought disgrace on the Prince of Machiavel, blaming those who, in his own country, had abandoned the defence of the St. Bartholomew massacre. The book is in general heavy and not well written, but coming from a man of cool head, clear judgment and considerable historical knowledge, it contains some remarks not unworthy of notice.

Patriarchal theory of government. 46. The ancient philosophers, the civil lawyers, and by far the majority of later writers had derived the origin of government from some agreement, or tacit consent, of the community. Bodin, explicitly rejecting this hypothesis, referred it to violent usurpation. But, in England, about the beginning of the reign of James, a different theory gained ground with the church; it was assumed, for it did not admit of proof, that a patriarchal authority had been transferred by primogeniture to the heir-general of the human race; so that kingdoms were but enlarged families, and an indefeasible right of monarchy was attached to their natural chief, which, in consequence of the impossibility of discovering him, developed upon the representative of the first sovereign who could be historically proved to have reigned over any nation. This had not perhaps hitherto been maintained at length in any published book, but will be found to have been taken for granted in more than one. It was of course in favour with James I., who had a very strong hereditary title; and it might seem to be countenanced by the fact of Highland and Irish clanship, which does really affect to rest on a patriarchal basis.

Refuted by Suarez. 47. This theory as to the origin of political society, or one akin to it, appears to have been espoused by some on the Continent. Suarez, in the second book of his great work on law, observes in a remarkable passage, that certain canonists hold civil magistracy to have been conferred by God on some prince, and to remain always in his heirs by succession; but “that such an opinion has neither authority nor foundation. For this power, by its very nature, belongs to no one man, but to a multitude of men. This is a certain conclusion, being common to all our authorities as we find by St. Thomas, by the civil laws, and by the great canonists and casuists; all of whom agree that the prince has that power of lawgiving which the people have given him. And the reason is evident, since all men are born equal, and consequently no one has a political jurisdiction over another, nor any dominion; nor can we give any reason from the nature of the thing, why one man should govern another rather than the contrary. It is true that one might alledge the primacy which Adam at his creation necessarily possessed, and hence deduce his government over all men, and suppose that to be derived by some one, either through primogenitary descent, or through the special appointment of Adam himself. Thus Chrysostom has said that the descent of all men from Adam signifies their subordination to one sovereign. But in fact we could only infer from the creation and natural origin of mankind that Adam possessed a domestic or patriarchal (œconomicam), not a political authority; for he had power over his wife, and afterwards a paternal power over his sons till they were emancipated; and he might even in course of time have servants and a complete family, and that power in respect of them which is called patriarchal. But after families began to be multiplied, and single men who were heads of families to be separated, they had each the same power with respect to their own families. Nor did political power begin to exist till many families began to be collected into one entire community. Hence, as that community did not begin by Adam’s creation, nor by any will of his, but by that of all who formed it, we cannot properly say, that Adam had naturally a political headship in such a society; for there are no principles of reason from which this could be inferred, since by the law of nature it is no right of the progenitor to be even king of his own posterity. And if this cannot be proved by the principles of natural law, we have no ground for asserting that God has given such a power by the special gift of providence, inasmuch as we have no revelation or scripture testimony to the purpose.[339] So clear, brief, and dispassionate a refutation might have caused our English divines, who became very fond of this patriarchal theory, to blush before the Jesuit of Granada.

[339] Lib. ii., c. 2, § 3.

His opinion of law. 48. Suarez maintains it to be of the essence of a law that it be exacted for the public good. An unjust law is no law, and does not bind the conscience.[340] In this he breathes the spirit of Mariana. But he shuns some of his bolder assertions. He denies the right of rising in arms against a tyrant, unless he is an usurper; and though he is strongly for preserving the concession made by the kings of Spain to their people, that no taxes shall be levied without the consent of the Cortes, does not agree with those who lay it down as a general rule, that no prince can impose taxes on his people by his own will.[341] Suarez asserts the direct power of the church over heretical princes, but denies it as to infidels.[342] In this last point, as has been seen, he follows the most respectable authorities of his nation.

[340] Lib. i., c. 7, and lib. iii., c. 22.

[341] Lib. iii., c. 10.

[342] Lib. v., c. 17.

49. Bayle has taken notice of a systematic treatise on Politics, by John Althusius, a native of Germany. Of this I have only seen an edition published at Groningen in 1615, and dedicated to the states of West Friesland. It seems, however, from the article in Bayle, that there was one printed at Herborn in 1603. Several German writers inveigh against this work as full of seditious principles, inimical to every government. It is a political system, taken chiefly from preceding authors, and very freely from Bodin; with great learning, but not very profitable to read. The ephori, as he calls them, by which he means the estates of a kingdom, have the right to resist a tyrant. But this right he denies to the private citizen. His chapter on this subject is written more in the tone of the sixteenth than of the seventeenth century, which indeed had scarcely commenced.[343] He answers in it Albericus Gentilis, Barclay and others who had contended for passive obedience, not failing to draw support from the canonists and civilians whom he quotes. But the strongest passage is in his dedication to the States of Friesland. Here he declares his principle, that the supreme power or sovereignty (jus majestatis) does not reside in the chief magistrate, but in the people themselves, and that no other is proprietor or usufructuary of it, the magistrate being the administrator of this supreme power, but not its owner, nor entitled to use it for his benefit. And these rights of sovereignty are so much confined to the whole community, that they can no more alienate them to another, whether they will or not, than a man can transfer his own life.[344]

[343] Cap. 38. De tyrannide et ejus remediis.

[344] Administratorem, procuratorem, gubernatorem jurium majestatis, principem agnosco. Proprietarium vero et usufructuarium majestatis nullum alium quam populum universum in corpus unum symbioticum ex pluribus minoribus consociationibus consociatum, &c.

50. Few, even among the Calvinists, whose form of government was in some cases republican, would in the seventeenth century have approved this strong language of Althusius. But one of their noted theologians, Paræus, incurred the censure of the university of Oxford in 1623, for some passages in his commentary on the Epistle to the Romans which seemed to impugn their orthodox tenet of unlimited submission. He merely holds that subjects, when not private men but inferior magistrates, may defend themselves and the state and the true religion even by arms against the sovereign under certain conditions; because, these superior magistrates are themselves responsible to the laws of God and of the state.[345] It was, in truth, impossible to deny the right of resistance in such cases without “branding the unsmirched brow” of protestantism itself; for by what other means had the reformed religion been made to flourish in Holland and Geneva, or in Scotland? But in England, where it had been planted under a more auspicious star, there was little occasion to seek this vindication of the protestant church, which had not, in the legal phrase, come in by disseizin of the state, but had united with the state to turn out of doors its predecessor. That the Anglican refugees under Mary were ripe enough for resistance, or even regicide, has been seen in the last volume by an extract from one of their most distinguished prelates.

[345] Subditi non privati, sed in magistratu inferiori constituti adversus superiorem magistratum se et rempublicam et ecclesiam seu veram religionem etiam armis defendere jure possunt, his positis conditionibus: 1. Cum superior magistratus degenerat in tyrannum; 2. Aut ad manifestam idololatriam atque blasphemias ipsos vel subditos alios vult cogere; 3. Cum ipsis atrox infertur injuria; 4. Si aliter incolumes fortunis vita et conscientia esse non possint; 5. Ne prætextu religionis aut justitiæ sua quærant; 6. Servata semper επιεικειᾳ et moderamine inculpatæ tutelæ juxta leges. Paræus in Epist. ad Roman, col. 1350.

Bacon. 51. Bacon ought to appear as a prominent name in political philosophy, if we had never met with it in any other. But we have anticipated much of his praise on this score; and it is sufficient to repeat generally that on such subjects he is among the most sagacious of mankind. It would be almost ridiculous to descend from Bacon, even when his giant shadow does but pass over our scene, to the feebler class of political moralists, such as Saavedra, author of Idea di un principe politico, a wretched effort of Spain in her degeneracy; but an Italian writer must not be neglected, from the remarkable circumstance that he is esteemed one of the first who have treated the science of political œconomy. |Political œconomy.| It must, however, be understood that, besides what may be found on the subject in the ancients, many valuable observations which must be referred to political œconomy occur in Bodin, that the Italians had, in the sixteenth century, a few tracts on coinage, that Botero touches some points of the science, and that in English there were, during the same age, pamphlets on public wealth, especially one entitled, A Brief Conceit of English Policy.[346]

[346] This bears the initials of W. S., which some have idiotically taken for William Shakspeare. I have some reason to believe, that there was an edition considerably earlier than that of 1584, but, from circumstances unnecessary to mention, cannot produce the manuscript authority on which this opinion is founded. It has been reprinted more than once, if I mistake not, in modern times.

Serra on the means of obtaining money without mines. 52. The author to whom we allude is Antonio Serra, a native of Cosenza, whose short treatise on the causes which may render gold and silver abundant in countries that have no mines, is dedicated to the Count de Lemos, “from the prison of Vicaria this tenth day of July, 1613.” It has hence been inferred, but without a shadow of proof, that Serra had been engaged in the conspiracy of his fellow citizen Campanella fourteen years before. The dedication is in a tone of great flattery, but has no allusion to the cause of his imprisonment, which might have been any other. He proposes, in his preface, not to discuss political government in general, of which he thinks that the ancients have treated sufficiently, if we well understood their works, and still less to speak of justice and injustice, the civil law being enough for this, but merely of what are the causes that render a country destitute of mines abundant in gold and silver, which no one has ever considered, though some have taken narrow views, and fancied that a low rate of exchange is the sole means of enriching a country.

His causes of wealth. 53. In the first part of this treatise, Serra divides the causes of wealth, that is, of abundance of money, into general and particular accidents (accidenti communi e proprj), meaning by the former circumstances which may exist in any country, by the latter such as are peculiar to some. The common accidents are four: abundance of manufactures, character of the inhabitants, extent of commerce, and wisdom of government. The peculiar are, chiefly, the fertility of the soil, and convenience of geographical position. Serra prefers manufacture to agriculture; one of his reasons is their indefinite capacity of multiplication; for no man whose land is fully cultivated by sowing a hundred bushels of wheat, can sow with profit a hundred and fifty; but in manufactures he may not only double the produce, but do this a hundred times over, and that with less proportion of expense. Though this is now evident, it is perhaps what had not been much remarked before.

His praise of Venice. 54. Venice, according to Serra, held the first place as a commercial city, not only in Italy, but Europe; “for experience demonstrates that all the merchandizes which come from Asia to Europe pass through Venice and thence are distributed to other parts.” But as this must evidently exclude all the traffic by the Cape of Good Hope, we can only understand Serra to mean the trade with the Levant. It is, however, worthy of observation, that we are apt to fall into a vulgar error in supposing that Venice was crushed, or even materially affected, as a commercial city, by the discoveries of the Portuguese. She was in fact more opulent, as her buildings of themselves may prove, in the sixteenth century than in any preceding age. The French trade from Marseilles to the Levant, which began later to flourish, was what impoverished Venice, rather than that of Portugal with the East Indies. This republic was the perpetual theme of admiration with the Italians. Serra compares Naples with Venice; one, he says, exports grain to a vast amount, the other imports its whole subsistence; money is valued higher at Naples, so that there is a profit in bringing it in, its export is forbidden; at Venice it is free; at Naples the public revenues are expended in the kingdom; at Venice they are principally hoarded. Yet Naples is poor and Venice rich. Such is the effect of her commerce and of the wisdom of her government, which is always uniform, while in kingdoms, and far more in vice-royalties, the system changes with the persons. In Venice the method of choosing magistrates is in such perfection, that no one can come in by corruption or favour, nor can any one rise to high offices who has not been tried in the lower.

Low rate of exchange not essential to wealth. 55. All causes of wealth, except those he has enumerated, Serra holds to be subaltern or temporary; thus the low rate of exchange is subject to the common accidents of commerce. It seems, however, to have been a theory of superficial reasoners on public wealth, that it depended on the exchanges far more than is really the case; and in the second part of this treatise Serra opposes a particular writer, named De Santis, who had accounted in this way alone for abundance of money in a state. Serra thinks that to reduce the weight of coin may sometimes be an allowable expedient, and better than to raise its denomination. The difference seems not very important. The coin of Naples was exhausted by the revenues of absentee proprietors, which some had proposed to withhold: a measure to which Serra justly objects. This book has been reprinted at Milan in the collection of Italian œconomists, and as it anticipates the principles of what has been called the mercantile theory, deserves some attention in following the progress of opinion. The once celebrated treatise of Mun, England’s Treasure by Foreign Trade, is supposed to have been written before 1640; but as it was not published till after the Restoration, we may postpone it to the next period.

Analysis of his three treatises. 57. Those, he begins by observing, who have hitherto written upon civil polity have assumed that man is an animal framed for society; as if nothing else were required for the institution of commonwealths than that men should agree upon some terms of compact which they call laws. But this is entirely false. That men do naturally seek each other’s society, he admits in a note on the published edition of De Cive; but political societies are not mere meetings of men, but unions founded on the faith of covenants. Nor does the desire of men for society imply that they are fit for it. Many may desire it who will not readily submit to its necessary conditions.[347] This he left out in the two other treatises, thinking it, perhaps, too great a concession to admit any desire of society in man.

[347] Societates autem civiles non sunt meri congressus, sed fœdera, quibus faciendis fides et pacta necessaria sunt.... Alia res est appetere, alia esse capacem. Appetunt enim illi qui tamen conditiones æquas, sine quibus societas esse non potest, accipere per superbiam non dignantur.

58. Nature has made little odds among men of mature age as to strength or knowledge. No reason, therefore, can be given why one should by any intrinsic superiority command others, or possess more than they. But there is a great difference in their passions; some through vain glory seeking pre-eminence over their fellows, some willing to allow equality, but not to lose what they know to be good for themselves. And this contest can only be decided by battle, showing which is the stronger.

59. All men desire to obtain good and to avoid evil, especially death. Hence, they have a natural right to preserve their own lives and limbs, and to use all means necessary for this end. Every man is judge for himself of the necessity of the means, and the greatness of the danger. And hence, he has a right by nature to all things, to do what he wills to others, to possess and enjoy all he can. For he is the only judge whether they tend or not to his preservation. But every other man has the same right. Hence, there can be no injury towards another in a state of nature. Not that in such a state a man may not sin against God, or transgress the laws of nature.[348] But injury, which is doing anything without right, implies human laws that limit right.

[348] Non quod in tali statu peccare in Deum, aut leges naturales violare impossibile sit. Nam injustitia erga homines supponit leges humanas, quales in statu naturali nullæ sunt. De Cive, c. 1. This he left out in the later treatises. He says afterwards (sect. 28), omne damnum homini illatum legis naturalis violatio atque in Deum injuria est.

60. Thus the state of man in natural liberty is a state of war, a war of every man against every man, wherein the notions of right and wrong, justice and injustice have no place. Irresistible might gives of itself right, which is nothing but the physical liberty of using our power as we will for our own preservation and what we deem conducive to it. But as, through the equality of natural powers, no man possesses this irresistible superiority, this state of universal war is contrary to his own good which he necessarily must desire. Hence, his reason dictates that he should seek peace as far as he can, and strengthen himself by all the helps of war against those with whom he cannot have peace. This, then, is the first fundamental law of nature. For a law of nature is nothing else than a rule or precept found out by reason for the avoiding what may be destructive to our life.

62. The next law of nature, according to Hobbes, is that men should fulfil their covenants. What contracts and covenants are, he explains in the usual manner. None can covenant with God, unless by special revelation; therefore, vows are not binding, nor do oaths add anything to the swearer’s obligation. But covenants entered into by fear he holds to be binding in a state of nature, though they may be annulled by the law. That the observance of justice, that is, of our covenants, is never against reason, Hobbes labours to prove, for if ever its violation may have turned out successful, this being contrary to probable expectation ought not to influence us. “That which gives to human actions the relish of justice, is a certain nobleness or gallantness of courage rarely found; by which a man scorns to be beholden for the contentment of his life to fraud or breach of promise.”[349] A short gleam of something above the creeping selfishness of his ordinary morality!

[349] Leviathan, c. 15.

63. He then enumerates many other laws of nature, such as gratitude, complaisance, equity, all subordinate to the main one of preserving peace, by the limitation of the natural right, as he supposes, to usurp all. These laws are immutable and eternal; the science of them is the only true science of moral philosophy. For that is nothing but the science of what is good and evil in the conversation and society of mankind. In a state of nature private appetite is the measure of good and evil. But all men agree that peace is good, and therefore the means of peace, which are the moral virtues or laws of nature, are good also, and their contraries evil. These laws of nature are not properly called such, but conclusions of reason as to what should be done or abstained from; they are but theorems concerning what conduces to conservation and defence; whereas, law is strictly the word of him that by right has command over others. But so far as these are enacted by God in Scripture, they are truly laws.

64. These laws of nature, being contrary to our natural passions, are but words of no strength to secure any one without a controlling power. For till such a power is erected, every man will rely on his own force and skill. Nor will the conjunction of a few men or families be sufficient for security, nor that of a great multitude guided by their own particular judgments and appetites. “For if we could suppose a great multitude of men to consent in the observation of justice and other laws of nature without a common power to keep them all in awe, we might as well suppose all mankind to do the same, and then there neither would be, nor need to be, any civil government or commonwealth at all, because there would be peace without subjection.”[350] Hence, it becomes necessary to confer all their power on one man, or assembly of men, to bear their person or represent them; so that every one shall own himself author of what shall be done by such representative. It is a covenant of each with each, that he will be governed in such a manner, if the other will agree to the same. This is the generation of the great Leviathan, or mortal God, to whom, under the immortal God, we owe our peace and defence. In him consists the essence of the commonwealth, which is one person, of whose acts a great multitude by mutual covenant have made themselves the authors.

[350] Lev., c. 17.

65. This person (including of course an assembly as well as individual) is the sovereign, and possesses sovereign power. And such power may spring from agreement or from force. A commonwealth by agreement or institution is when a multitude do agree and covenant one with another that whatever the major part shall agree to represent them, shall be the representative of them all. After this has been done, the subjects cannot change their government without its consent, being bound by mutual covenant to own its actions. If any one man should dissent, the rest would break their covenant with him. But there is no covenant with the sovereign. He cannot have covenanted with the whole multitude, as one party, because it has no collective existence till the commonwealth is formed; nor with each man separately, because the acts of the sovereign are no longer his sole acts, but those of the society, including him who would complain of the breach. Nor can the sovereign act unjustly towards a subject; for he who acts by another’s authority cannot be guilty of injustice towards him; he may, it is true, commit iniquity, that is, violate the laws of God and nature, but not injury.

66. The sovereign is necessarily judge of all proper means of defence, of what doctrines shall be taught, of all disputes and complaints, of rewards and punishments, of war and peace with neighbouring commonwealths, and even of what shall be held by each subject in property. Property, he admits in one place, existed in families before the institution of civil society; but between different families there was no meum and tuum. These are by the law and command of the sovereign; and hence, though every subject may have a right of property against his fellow, he can have none against the sovereign. These rights are incommunicable, and inseparable from the sovereign power; there are others of minor importance, which he may alienate; but if anyone of the former is taken away from him he ceases to be truly sovereign.

67. The sovereign power cannot be limited nor divided. Hence, there can be but three simple forms of commonwealth; monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy. The first he greatly prefers. The king has no private interest apart from the people, whose wealth, honour, security from enemies, internal tranquility, are evidently for his own good. But in the other forms each man may have a private advantage to seek. In popular assemblies, there is always an aristocracy of orators, interrupted sometimes by the temporary monarchy of one orator. And though a king may deprive a man of all he possesses to enrich a flatterer or favourite, so may also a democratic assembly, where there may be as many Neros as orators, each with the whole power of the people he governs. And these orators are usually more powerful to hurt others than to save them. A king may receive counsel of whom he will, an assembly from those only who have a right to belong to it, nor can their counsel be secret. They are also more inconstant both from passion and from their numbers; the absence of a few often undoing all that had been done before. A king cannot disagree with himself, but an assembly may do so, even to producing civil war.

68. An elective or limited king is not the sovereign, but the sovereign’s minister; nor can there be a perfect form of government, where the present ruler has not power to dispose of the succession. His power, therefore, is wholly without bounds, and correlative must be the people’s obligation to obey. Unquestionably there are risks of mischiefs and inconveniences attending a monarchy; but these are less than in the other forms; and the worst of them is not comparable to those of civil war, or the anarchy of a state of nature, to which the dissolution of the commonwealth would reduce us.

69. In the exercise of government the sovereign is to be guided by one maxim, which contains all his duty: Salus populi suprema lex. And in this is to be reckoned not only the conservation of life, but all that renders it happy. For this is the end for which men entered into civil society, that they might enjoy as much happiness as human nature can attain. It would be, therefore, a violation of the law of nature, and of the trust reposed in them, if sovereigns did not study, as far as by their power it may be, that their subjects should be furnished with everything necessary, not for life alone but for the delights of life. And even those who have acquired empire by conquest must desire to have men fit to serve them, and should, in consistency with their own aims, endeavour to provide what will increase their strength and courage. Taxes, in the opinion of Hobbes, should be laid equally, and rather on expenditure than on revenue; the prince should promote agriculture, fisheries, and commerce, and in general whatever makes men happy and prosperous. Many just reflections on the art of government are uttered by Hobbes, especially as to the inexpediency of interfering too much with personal liberty. No man, he observes in another place, is so far free as to be exempted from the sovereign power; but if liberty consists in the paucity of restraining laws, he sees not why this may not be had in monarchy as well as in a popular government. The dream of so many political writers, a wise and just despotism, is pictured by Hobbes as the perfection of political society.

70. But, most of all, is the sovereign to be without limit by the power of the priesthood. This is chiefly to be dreaded, that he should command anything under the penalty of death, and the clergy forbid it under the penalty of damnation. The pretensions of the See of Rome, of some bishops at home, and those of even the lowest citizens to judge for themselves and determine upon public religion, are dangerous to the state and the frequent cause of wars. The sovereign, therefore, is alone to judge whether religions are safely to be admitted or not. And it may be urged, that princes are bound to cause such doctrine as they think conducive to their subject’s salvation to be taught, forbidding every other, and that they cannot do otherwise in conscience. This, however, he does not absolutely determine. But he is clearly of opinion that, though it is not the case where the prince is infidel,[351] the head of the state, in a Christian commonwealth, is head also of the church; that he, rather than any ecclesiastics, is the judge of doctrines; that a church is the same as a commonwealth under the same sovereign, the component members of each being precisely the same. This is not very far removed from the doctrine of Hooker, and still less from the practice of Henry VIII.

[351] Imperantibus autem non Christianis in temporalibus quidem omnibus eandem deberi obedientiam etiam a cive Christiano extra controversiam est: in spiritualibus vero, hoc est, in iis quæ pertinent ad modum colendi Dei Sequenda est ecclesia aliqua Christianorum. De Cive, c. 18, § 3.

71. The second class of commonwealths, those by forcible acquisition, differ more in origin than in their subsequent character from such as he has been discussing. The rights of sovereignty are the same in both. Dominion is acquired by generation or by conquest; the one parental, the other despotical. Parental power, however, he derives not so much from having given birth to, as from having preserved, the child, and, with originality and acuteness, thinks it belongs by nature to the mother rather than to the father, except where there is some contract between the parties to the contrary. The act of maintenance and nourishment conveys, as he supposes, an unlimited power over the child, extending to life and death, and there can be no state of nature between parent and child. In his notion of patriarchal authority he seems to go as far as Filmer; but, more acute than Filmer, perceives that it affords no firm basis for political society. By conquest and sparing the lives of the vanquished they become slaves; and so long as they are held in bodily confinement, there is no covenant between them and their master; but in obtaining corporal liberty they expressly or tacitly covenant to obey him as their lord and sovereign.

72. The political philosophy of Hobbes had much to fix the attention of the world and to create a sect of admiring partizans. The circumstances of the time, and the character of the passing generation, no doubt powerfully conspired with its intrinsic qualities; but a system so original, so intrepid, so disdainful of any appeal but to the common reason and common interests of mankind, so unaffectedly and perspicuously proposed, could at no time have failed of success. From the two rival theories; on the one hand, that of original compact between the prince and people, derived from antiquity, and sanctioned by the authority of fathers and schoolmen; on the other, that of an absolute patriarchal transmuted into an absolute regal power, which had become prevalent among part of the English clergy, Hobbes took as much as might conciliate a hearing from both, an original covenant of the multitude, and an unlimited authority of the sovereign. But he had a substantial advantage over both these parties, and especially the latter, in establishing the happiness of the community as the sole final cause of government, both in its institution and its continuance; the great fundamental theorem upon which all political science depends, but sometimes obscured or lost in the pedantry of theoretical writers.

73. In the positive system of Hobbes we find less cause for praise. We fall in at the very outset with a strange and indefensible paradox; the natural equality of human capacities, which he seems to have adopted rather in opposition to Aristotle’s notion of a natural right in some men to govern, founded on their superior qualities, than because it was at all requisite for his own theory. By extending this alledged equality, or slightness of difference, among men to physical strength, he has more evidently shown its incompatibility with experience. If superiority in mere strength has not often been the source of political power it is for two reasons: first, because, though there is a vast interval between the strongest man and the weakest, there is generally not much between the former and him who comes next in vigour; and secondly, because physical strength is multiplied by the aggregation of individuals, so that the stronger few may be overpowered by the weaker many; while in mental capacity, comprehending acquired skill and habit as well as natural genius and disposition, both the degrees of excellence are removed by a wider distance, and what is still more important, the aggregation of individual powers does not regularly and certainly augment the value of the whole. That the real or acknowledged superiority of one man to his fellows has been the ordinary source of power is sufficiently evident from what we daily see among children, and must, it should seem, be admitted by all who derive civil authority from choice or even from conquest, and therefore is to be inferred from the very system of Hobbes.

76. This theory of a mutual covenant is defective also in a most essential point. It furnishes no adequate basis for any commonwealth beyond the lives of those who established it. The right indeed of men to bind their children and through them a late posterity is sometimes asserted by Hobbes, but in a very transient manner, and as if he was aware of the weakness of his ground. It might be inquired whether the force on which alone he rests the obligation of children to obey, can give any right beyond its own continuance; whether the absurdity he imputes to those who do not stand by their own engagements is imputable to such as disregard the covenants of their forefathers; whether, in short, any law of nature requires our obedience to a government we deem hurtful, because in a distant age, a multitude whom we cannot trace bestowed unlimited power on some unknown persons from whom that government pretends to derive its succession.

77. A better ground for the subsisting rights of his Leviathan, is sometimes suggested, though faintly, by Hobbes himself. “If one refuse to stand to what the major part shall ordain, or make protestation against any of their decrees, he does contrary to his covenant, and therefore unjustly: and whether he be of the congregation or not, whether his consent be asked or not, he must either submit to their decrees, or be left in the condition of war he was in before, wherein he might without injustice be destroyed by any man whatsoever.”[352] This renewal of the state of war which is the state of nature, this denial of the possibility of doing an injury to anyone who does not obey the laws of the commonwealth, is enough to silence the question why we are obliged still to obey. The established government and those who maintain it, being strong enough to wage war against gainsayers, give them the option of incurring the consequences of such warfare, or of complying with the laws. But it seems to be a corollary from this, that the stronger part of a commonwealth, which may not always be the majority, have not only a right to despise the wishes but the interests of dissentients. Thus, the more we scrutinize the theories of Hobbes, the more there appears a deficiency of that which only a higher tone of moral sentiment can give, a security against the appetites of others, and for them against our own. But it may be remarked that his supposition of a state of war, not as a permanent state of nature, but as just self-defence, is perhaps the best footing on which we can place the right to inflict severe, and especially capital, punishment upon offenders against the law.

[352] Lev., c. 18.

78. The positions so dogmatically laid down as to the impossibility of mixing different sorts of government were, even in the days of Hobbes, contradicted by experience. Several republics had lasted for ages under a mixed aristocracy and democracy; and there had surely been sufficient evidence that a limited monarchy might exist, though, in the revolution of ages, it might one way or other, pass into some new type of polity. And these prejudices in favour of absolute power are rendered more dangerous by paradoxes unusual from an Englishman, even in those days of high prerogative when Hobbes began to write, that the subject has no property relatively to the sovereign, and, what is the fundamental error of his whole system, that nothing done by the prince can be injurious to any one else. This is accompanied by the other portents of Hobbism, scattered through these treatises, especially the Leviathan, that the distinctions of right and wrong, moral good and evil, are made by the laws, that no man can do amiss who obeys the sovereign authority, that though private belief is of necessity beyond the prince’s control, it is according to his will, and in no other way, that we must worship God.

79. The political system of Hobbes, like his moral system, of which, in fact, it is only a portion, sears up the heart. It takes away the sense of wrong, that has consoled the wise and good in their dangers, the proud appeal of innocence under oppression, like that of Prometheus to the elements, uttered to the witnessing world, to coming ages, to the just ear of Heaven. It confounds the principles of moral approbation, the notions of good and ill desert, in a servile idolatry of the monstrous Leviathan it creates, and after sacrificing all right at the altar of power, denies to the Omnipotent the prerogative of dictating the laws of his own worship.

Sect. III.

Roman Jurisprudence—Grotius on the Laws of War and Peace—Analysis of this Work—Defence of it against some Strictures.

Civil jurists of this period. 80. In the Roman jurisprudence we do not find such a cluster of eminent men during this period as in the sixteenth century; and it would of course be out of our province to search for names little now remembered, perhaps, even in forensic practice. Many of the writings of Fabre of Savoy, who has been mentioned in the last volume, belong to the first years of this century. Farinacci, or Farinaceus, a lawyer of Rome, obtained a celebrity, which, after a long duration, has given way in the progress of legal studies, less directed than formerly towards a superfluous erudition.[353] But the work of Menochius de præsumptionibus, or, as we should say, on the rules of evidence, is said to have lost none of its usefulness, even since the decline of the civil law in France.[354] No book, perhaps, belonging to this period is so generally known as the commentaries of Vinnius on the Institutes, which, as far as I know, has not been superseded by any of later date. Conringius of Helmstadt may be reckoned in some measure among the writers on jurisprudence, though chiefly in the line of historical illustration. The Elementa Juris Civilis, by Zouch, is a mere epitome, but neatly executed, of the principal heads of the Roman law, and nearly in its own words. Arthur Duck, another Englishman, has been praised even by foreigners, for a succinct and learned, though elementary and popular, treatise on the use and authority of the civil law in different countries of Europe. This little book is not disagreeably written; but it is not of course, from England that much could be contributed towards Roman jurisprudence.

[353] Biogr. Univ.

[354] Id.

Suarez on laws. 81. The larger principles of jurisprudence, which link that science with general morals, and especially such as relate to the intercourse of nations, were not left untouched in the great work of Suarez on laws. I have not, however, made myself particularly acquainted with this portion of his large volume. Spain appears to have been the country in which these questions were originally discussed upon principles broader than precedent, as well as upon precedents themselves; and Suarez, from the general comprehensiveness of his views in legislation and ethics, is likely to have said well whatever he may have said on the subject of international law. It does not appear however that he is much quoted by later writers.