neglected that of England. The alliance between our nation and the Dutch was renewed, I think, in 1662; but the latter had made a defensive league with France a little before, on the supposition principally of a war with England. The war became inevitable very soon. Cromwell had chastised them for their usurpations in trade, and the outrages and cruelties they had committed; but he had not cured them. The same spirit continued in the Dutch, the same resentments in the English: and the pique of merchants became the pique of nations. France entered into the war on the side of Holland; but the little assistance she gave the Dutch showed plainly enough that her intention was to make these two powers waste their strength against one another, whilst she extended her conquests in the Spanish Low Countries. Her invasion in these provinces obliged De Wit to change his conduct. Hitherto he had been attached to France in the closest manner, had led his republic to serve all the purposes of France, and had renewed with the Marshal d'Estrades a project of dividing the Spanish Netherlands between France and Holland, that had been taken up formerly, when Richelieu made use of it to flatter their ambition, and to engage them to prolong the war against Spain ;—a project not unlike to that which was held out to them by the famous Preliminaries and the extravagant Barrier-treaty, in 1709; and which engaged them to continue a war on the principle of ambition, into which they had entered with more reasonable and more moderate views.

THE IDEA OF A PATRIOT KING.

THE OFFICE OF KINGS.

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, 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 Lawgiver. 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 exacts our obedience to the laws of those communities to which each of us is attached by birth, or to which we may be attached by a subsequent and lawful engagement.

From such plain, unrefined, and therefore, I suppose, true 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 incontestable, and on fair deductions from them, than on the chimeras of madmen, or what has been more common, 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.

But the principles we have laid down do not stop here. A divine right in kings is to be deduced evidently from them; a divine right (147)

15

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, arises, 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.

THE SPIRIT OF PATRIOTISM.

ORATORS OF GREECE AND ROME.

Eloquence has charms to lead mankind, and gives a nobler superiority than power, that every dunce may use, or fraud, that every knave may employ. But eloquence must flow like a stream that is fed by an abundant spring, and not spout forth a little frothy water

1

on some gaudy day, and remain dry the rest of the year. The famous orators of Greece and Rome were the statesmen and ministers of those commonwealths. The nature of their governments, and the humour of those ages, made elaborate orations necessary. They harangued oftener than they debated; and the ars dicendi required more study and more exercise of mind, and of body too, among them than are necessary among us. But as much pains as they took in learning how to conduct the stream of eloquence, they took more to enlarge the fountain from which it flowed. Hear Demosthenes, hear Cicero, thunder against Philip, Catiline, and Antony. I choose the example of the first rather than that of Pericles, whom he imitated, or of Phocion, whom he opposed, or of any other considerable personage in Greece; and the example of Cicero rather than that of Crassus or of Hortensius, or of any other of the great men of Rome; because the eloquence of these two has been so celebrated that we are accustomed to look upon them almost as mere orators. They were orators, indeed; and no man who has a soul can read their orations, after the revolution of so many ages, after the extinction of the governments and of the people for whom they were composed, without feeling at this hour the passions they were designed to move, and the spirit they were designed to raise. But if we look into the history of these two men, and consider the parts they acted, we shall see them in another light, and admire them in an higher sphere of action. Demosthenes had been neglected in his education by the same tutors who cheated him of his inheritCicero was bred with greater advantage; and Plutarch, I think, says that when he first appeared, the people used to call him, by way of derision, the Greek and the scholar. But whatever advantage of this kind the latter might have over the former, and to which of them soever you ascribe the superior genius, the progress which both of them made in every part of political knowledge by their industry and application was marvellous. Cicero might be a better philosopher, but Demosthenes was no less a statesman; and both of them performed actions and acquired fame above the reach of eloquence alone. Demosthenes used to compare eloquence to a

ance.

weapon, aptly enough; for eloquence, like every other weapon, is of little use to the owner unless he have the force and the skill to use it. This force and this skill Demosthenes had in an eminent degree. Observe them in one instance among many. It was of mighty importance to Philip to prevent the accession of Thebes to the grand alliance that Demosthenes, at the head of the Athenian commonwealth, formed against the growing power of the Macedonians. Philip had emissaries and his ambassadors on the spot, to oppose to those of Athens, and we may be assured that he neglected none of those arts upon this occasion that he employed so successfully on others. The struggle was great, but Demosthenes prevailed, and the Thebans engaged in the war against Philip. Was it by his eloquence alone that he prevailed, in a divided state, over all the subtilty of intrigue, all the dexterity of negotiation, all the seduction, all the corruption, and all the terror that the ablest and most powerful prince could employ? Was Demosthenes wholly taken up with composing orations and haranguing the people, in this remarkable crisis? He harangued them, no doubt, at Thebes, as well as at Athens, and in the rest of Greece, where all the great resolutions of making alliances, waging war, or concluding peace, were determined in democratical assemblies. But yet haranguing was, no doubt, the least part of his business, and eloquence was neither the sole nor the principal talent, as the style of writers would induce us to believe, on which his success depended. He must have been master of other arts, subserviently to which his eloquence was employed, and must have had a thorough knowledge of his own state, and of the other states of Greece, of their dispositions, and of their interests relatively to one another, and relatively to their neighbours, to the Persians particularly, with whom he held a correspondence, not much to his honour, in appearance, whatever he might intend by it: I say, he must have been master of many other arts, and have possessed an immense fund of knowledge, to make his eloquence in every case successful, and even pertinent or seasonable in some, as well as to direct it, and to furnish it with matter whenever he thought, proper to employ this weapon.