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against offenders? The reason, which can only be given in nature for a necessity of this, is, because those things are now made crimes, which were never esteemed so in former ages; and there must needs be a new court set up to punish that, which all the old ones were bound to protect and reward. But I am so far from declaiming (as you call it) against these wickednesses (which if I should undertake to do, I should never get to the peroration), that you see I only give a hint of some few, and pass over the rest, as things that are too many to be numbered, and must only be weighed in gross, Let any man show me (for, though I pretend not to much reading, I will defy him in all history) let any man show me (I say) an example of any nation in the world (though much greater than ours) where there have, in the space of four years, been made 80 many prisoners, only out of the endless jealousies of one tyrant's guilty imagination. I grant you, that Marius and Sylla, and the accursed triumvirate after them, put more people to death; but the reason, I think, partly was, because in those times that had a mixture of some honour with their madness, they thought it a more civil revenge against a Roman, to take away his life, than to take away his liberty. But truly in the point of murder too, we have little reason to think that our late tyranny has been deficient to the examples that have ever been set it in other Countries. Our judges and our courts of justice have not been idle: and, to omit the whole reign of our late king (till the beginning of the war), in which no drop of blood was ever drawn but from two or three ears, I think the longest time of our worst princes scarce saw many more executions, than the short one of our blest reformer. And we saw, and smelt in our open streets (as I marked to you at first) the broiling of human bowels as a burnt-offering of a sweet savour to our idol; but all murdering, and all torturing (though after the subtilest invention of his predecessors of Sicily) is more humane and more supportable, than his selling of Christians, Englishmen, gentlemen; his selling of them (oh monstrous! oh incredible) to be slaves in America. If his whole life could be reproached with no other action, yet this alone would weigh down all the multiplicity of crimes in any of our tyrants; and I dare only touch, without stopping or insisting upon, so insolent and so execrable a cruelty, for fear of falling into so violent (though a just) passion, as would make me exceed that temper and moderation, which I resolve to observe in this discourse with you.

"These are great calamities; but even these are not the most insupportable that we have endured; for so it is, that the scorn, and mockery, and insultings of an enemy, are more painful than the deepest wounds of his serious fury. This man was wanton and merry (unwittily and ungracefully merry) with our sufferings: he loved to say and do senseless and fantastical things, only to show his power of doing or saying any thing It would ill befit mine, or any civil mouth, to repeat those words which he spoke concerning the most sacred of our English laws, the Petition of Right, and Magna Charta 4. To In the case of Coney, before mentioned.

day, you should see him ranting so wildly, that nobody durst come near him: to morrow, flinging of cushions, and playing at snowballs, with his servants. This month, he assembles a parliament, and professes himself with humble tears to be only their servant and their minister; the next month, he swears by the living God, that he will turn them out of doors, and he does so, in his princely way of threatening, bidding them, "Turn the buckles of their girdles behind them." The representative of whole, nay of three whole nations, was in his esteem so contemptible a meeting, that he thought the affronting and expelling of them to be a thing of so little consequence, as not to deserve that he should advise with any mortal man about it. What shall we call this? boldness or brutishness? rashness or phrensy? There is no name can come up to its and therefore we must leave it without one. Now a parliament must be chosen in the new manner, next time in the old form, but all cashiered still after the newest mode. Now he will govern by major-generals, now by one house, now by another house, now by no house; now the freak takes him, and he makes seventy peers of the land at one clap (extempore, and stans pede in uno); and, to manifest the absolute power of the potter, he chooses not only the worst clay he could find, but picks up even the dirt and mire, to form out of it his vessels of honour. It was said anciently of Fortune, that, when she had a mind to be merry and to divert herself, she was wont to raise up such kind of people to the highest dignities. This son of Fortune, Cromwell, (who was himself one of the primest of her jets) found out the true haut goust of this pleasure, and rejoiced in the extravagance of his ways, as the fullest demonstration of his uncontroulable sovereignty, Good God! What have we seen? and what have we suffered? what do all these actions signify? what do they say aloud to the whole nation, but this (even as plainly as if it were proclaimed by heralds through the streets of London), "You are slaves and fools, and so I will use you!"

"These are briefly a part of those merits which you lament to have wanted the reward of more kingdoms, and suppose that, if he had lived longer, he might have had them: which I am so far from concurring to, that I believe his seasonable dying to have been a greater good-fortune to him, than all the victories and prosperities of his life. For he seemed evidently (methinks) to be near the end of his deceitful glories; his own army grew at last as weary of him as the rest of the people; and I never passed of late before his palace (his, do I call it? I ask God and the king pardon) but I never passed of late before Whitehall, without reading upon the gate of it, "Mene Mene, Tekel Upharsin 5." But it pleased God to take him from the ordinary courts of men, and juries of his peers, to his own high court of justice; which being more merciful than ours below, there is a little room yet left for the hope of his friends, if he have any; though the outward unrepentance of his death afford but small materials for the work of charity, especially if he designed even then to entail his own injustice upon his children,

5 Dan. v. 25.

and, by it, inextricable confusions and civil wars upon the nation. But here's at last an end of him. And where 's now the fruit of all that blood and calamity, which his ambition has cost the world? Where is it? Why, his son (you will say) has the whole crop: I doubt, he will find it quickly blasted; I have nothing to say against the gentleman, or any living of his family; on the contrary, I wish him better fortune than to have a long and unquiet possession of his master's inheritance. Whatsoever I have spoken against his father, is that which I should have thought (though decency, perhaps, might have hindered me from saying it) even against mine own, if I had been so unhappy, as that mine, by the same ways, should have left me three kingdoms."

your own.

Here I stopt; and my pretended protector, who, I expected, would have been very angry, fell a laughing; it seems at the simplicity of my discourse, for thus he replied: "You seem to pretend extremely to the old obsolete rules of virtue and conscience, which makes me doubt very much whether from this vast prospect of three kingdoms you can show me any acres of But these are so far from making you a prince, that I am afraid your friends will never have the contentment to see you so much as a justice of peace in your own country. For this, I perceive, which you call virtue, is nothing else but either the frowardness of a Cynic, or the laziness of an Epicurean. I am glad you allow me at least artful dissimulation and unwearied | diligence in my hero; and I assure you, that he, whose life is constantly drawn by those two, shall never be misled out of the way of greatness. But I see you are a pedant and Platonical statesman, a theoretical commonwealth's-man, an Utopian dreamer. Was ever riches gotten by your golden mediocrities? or the supreme place attained to by virtues that must not stir out of the middle? Do you study Aristotle's politics, and write, if you please, comments upon them; and let another but practise Machiavel: and let us see then which of you two will come to the greatest preferment. If the desire of rule and superiority be a virtue (as sure I am it is more imprinted in human nature than any of your lethargical morals; and what is the virtue of any creature, but the exercise of those powers and inclinations which God has infused into it!) if that (I say) be virtue, we ought not to esteem any thing vice, which is the most proper, if not the only, means of attaining of it:

It is a truth so certain, and so clear,
That to the first-born man it did appear;
Did not the mighty heir, the noble Cain,
By the fresh laws of Nature taught, disdain'
That (though a brother) any one should be
A greater favourite to God than he?

He strook him down; and so (said he) so fell
The sheep, which thou didst sacrifice so well.
Since all the fullest sheaves, which I could bring,
Since all were blasted in the offering,
Lest God should my next victim too despise,
The acceptable priest I'll sacrifice.

A remarkable testimony to the blameless character of Richard Cromwell,

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Hence, coward fears; for the first blood so spilt,
As a reward he the first city built.
'Twas a beginning generous and high,
Fit for a grand-child of the Deity.
So well advanc'd, 'twas pity here he staid!
One step of glory more he should have made,
And to the utmost bounds of greatness gone;
Had Adam too been kill'd, he might have reign'd
alone.

One brother's death, what do I mean to name,
A small oblation to revenge and fame?
The mighty soul'd Abimelec, to shew
What for high place a higher spirit can do,
A hecatomb almost of brethren slew,
And seventy times in nearest blood he dy'd
(To make it hold) his royal purple pride.
Why do I name the lordly creature man?
The weak, the mild, the coward woman, can,
When to a crown she cuts her sacred way,
All that oppose with manlike courage slay.
So Athaliah, when she saw her son,
And with his life her dearer greatness, gone,
With a majestic fury slaughter'd all
Whom high-birth might to high pretences call
Since he was dead who all her power sustain'd,
Resolv'd to reign alone; resolv'd, and reign'd,
In vain her sex, in vain the laws, withstood,
In vain the sacred plea of David's blood;
A noble and a bold contention, she
(One woman) undertook with Destiny,
She to pluck down, Destiny to uphold
(Oblig'd by holy oracles of old)
The great Jessæan race on Judah's throne;
Till 'twas at last an equal wager grown,
Scarce Fate, with much ado, the better got by one
Tell me not, she herself at last was slain;
Did she not, first seven years (a life-time,) reign?
Seven royal years t' a public spirit will seem
More than the private life of a Methusalem.
'Tis godlike to be great; and, as they say,
A thousand years to God are but a day,
So a man, when once a crown he wears,
The coronation-day's more than a thousand
years."

He would have gone on, I perceived, in his blasphemies, but that by God's grace I became so bold, as thus to interrupt him: "I understand now perfectly (which I guessed at long before) what kind of angel and protector you are, and, though your style in verse be very much mended since you were wont to deliver oracles, yet your doctrine is much worse than ever you had formerly (that I heard of) the face to publish; whether your long practice with mankind has increased and improved your malice, or whether you think us in this age to be grown so impudently wicked, that there needs no more art or disguises to draw us to your party."

"My dominion (said he hastily, and with a dreadful furious look) is so great in this world, and I am so powerful a monarch of it, that I need not be ashamed that you should know me; and,

7 This compliment was intended, not so much to the foregoing, as to the following verses; of which the author had reason to be proud, but, as being delivered in his own person, could not se properly make the paneygric. HURD

1

that you may see I know you too, I know you to be an obstinate and inveterate malignant ; and for that reason I shall take you along with me to the next garrison of ours; from whence you shall go to the Tower, and from thence to the court of justice, and from thence you know whither." I was almost in the very pounces of the great bird of prey :

When, lo, ere the last words were fully spoke,
From a fair cloud which rather op'd than broke,
A flash of light, rather than lightning, came,
So swift, and yet so gentle, was the flame.
Upon it rode (and, in his full career,
Seem'd to my eyes no sooner there than here)
The comeliest youth of all th' angelic race;
Lovely his shape, ineffable his face.

The frowns, with which he strook the trembling fiend,

All smiles of human beauty did transcend ;
His beams of locks fell part dishevell'd down,
Part upwards curl'd, and form'd a natural crown,
Such as the British monarchs us'd to wear;
If gold might be compar'd with angels' hair.
His coat and flowing mantle were so bright,
They seem'd both made of woven silver light:

Across his breast an azure ruban went,
At which a medal hung, that did present,
In wondrous living figures, to the sight,
The mystic champion's, and old dragon's fight;
And from his mantle's side there shone afar,
A fix'd and, I believe, a real star.

In his fair hand (what need was there of more?)
No arms, but th' English bloody cross he bore,
Which when he tow'rds th' affrighted tyrant bent,
And some few words pronounc'd (but what they
meant,

Or were, could not, alas! by me be known,
Only, I well perceiv'd, Jesus was one)
He trembled, and he roar'd, and fled away
Mad to quit thus his more than hop'd-for prey.
Such rage inflames the wolf's wild heart and

eyes

(Robb'd, as he thinks unjustly, of his prize)
Whom unawares the shepherd spies, and draws
The bleating lamb from out his ravenous jaws :
The shepherd fain himself would he assail,
But fear above his hunger does prevail,
He knows his foe too strong, and must be gone;
He grins, as he looks back, and howls as he goes

on.

SEVERAL DISCOURSES,

BY WAY OF ESSAYS,

IN

VERSE AND PROSE.

I.

OF LIBERTY.

THE liberty of a people consists in being governed by laws which they have made themselves, under whatsoever form it be of government: the liberty of a private man, in being master of his own time and actions, as far as may consist with the laws of God and of his country. Of this latter only we are here to discourse, and to enquire what estate of life does best: seat us in the possession of it. This liberty of our own actions, is such a fundamental privilege of human nature, that God himself,notwithstanding all his infinite power and right over us, permits us to enjoy it, and that

too after a forfeiture made by the rebellion of Adam. He takes so much care for the entire preservation of it, to us, that he suffers neither his providence nor eternal decree to break or infringe it. Now for our time, the same God, to whom we are but tenants at will for the whole, requires but the seventh part to be paid to him, as a small quit-rent, in acknowledgment of his title. It is man only that has the impudence to demand our whole time, though he never gave it, nor can restore it, nor is able to pay any considerable value for the least part of it. This birthright of mankind above all other creatures, some are forced by hunger to sell, like Esau, for bread and broth: but the greatest part of men make such a bargain for the delivery-up of themselves,

as Thamar did with Judah; instead of a kid, the necessary provisions for human life, they are contented to do it for rings and bracelets. The great dealers in this world may be divided into the ambitious, the covetous, and the voluptuous; and that all these men sell themselves to be slaves though to the vulgar it may seem a stoical paradox, will appear to the wise so plain and obvious, that they will scarce think it deserves the labour of argumentation.

Let us first consider the ambitious; and those, both in their progress to greatness, and after the attaining of it. There is nothing truer than what Sallust says, Dominationis in alios servitium suum mercedem dant; they are content to pay so great a price, as their own servitude, to purchase the domination over others. The first thing they must resolve to sacrifice, is their whole time; they must never stop, nor ever turn aside whilst they are in the race of glory, no not like Atalanta for golden apples. Neither indeed can a man stop himself if he would when he is in this

career:

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scribe the character which Cicero 4 gives of this noble slave, because it is a general description of all ambitious men, and which Machiavel perhaps would say ought to be the rule of their life and actions:

"This man (says he, as most of you may well remember) had many artificial touches and strokes, that looked like the beauty of great virtues; his intimate conversation was with the worst of men, and yet he seemed to be an admirer and lover of the best; he was furnished with all the nets of lust and luxury, and yet wanted not the arms of labour and industry: neither do I believe that there was ever any monster of nature, composed out of so many different and disagreeing parts. Who more acceptable, sometimes, to the most honourable persons: who more a favourite to the most infamous ? who, sometimes, appeared a braver champion; who; at other times, a bolder enemy to his countrey? who more dissolute in his pleasures? who more patient in his toils? who more rapacious in robbing? who more profuse in giving? Above all things, this was remarkable and admirable in him, the arts he had to acquire the

Fertur equis auriga, neque audit currus habe- good opinion and kindness of all sorts of men, to

nas3.

retain it with great complaisance, to communicate all things to them, to watch and serve all the ocPray, let us but consider a little, what means casions of their fortune, both with his money, and servile things men do for this imaginary food. his interest, and his industry; and, if need were, We cannot fetch a greater example of it, than not by sticking at any wickedness whatsoever that from the chief men of that nation which boasted might be useful to them, to bend and turn about most of liberty. To what pitiful baseness did his own nature and laveer with every wind: to the noblest Romans submit themselves, for the live severely with the melancholy, merrily with the obtaining of a pretorship, or the consular digni- pleasant, gravely with the aged, wantonly with ty! They put on the habit of suppliants, and ran the young, desperately with the bold, and deabout on foot, and in dirt, through all the tribes, bauchedly with the luxurious: with this variety to beg voices; they flattered the poorest arti- and multiplicity of his nature as he had made sans; and carried a nomenclator with them, to a collection of friendships with all the most wickwhisper in their ear every man's name, lest they ed and restless of all nations; so, by the artificial should mistake it in their salutations; they simulation of some virtues, he made a shift to enshook the hand and kissed the cheek of every share some honest and eminent persons into his popular tradesman; they stood all day at every familiarity. Neither could so vast a design as market in the public places, to show and ingrati- the destruction of this empire have been underate themselves to the rout; they employed all taken by him, if the immanity of so many vices their friends to solicit for them; they kept open had not been covered and disguised by the aptables in every street; they distributed wine, and pearances of some excellent qualities." bread, and money, even to the vilest of the people.

En Romanos rerum dominos 3! Behold the masters of the world begging from door to door! This particular humble way of greatness is now out of fashion; but yet every ambitious person is still in some sort a Roman candidate. He must feast and bribe, and attend and flatter, and adore many beasts, though not the beast with many heads. Catiline, who was so proud that he could not content himself with a less power than Sylla's, was yet so humble, for the attaining of it, as to make himself the most contemptible of all servants; to be a public bawd, to provide whores,and something worse for all the young gentlemen of Rome, whose hot lusts and courages, and heads, he thought he might make use of. And since I happen here to propose Catiline for my instance (though there be thousand of examples for the same thing) give me leave to tran

'Fragm. ed. Mattaire, p. 116.

Virg. Georg. i. 514.

* Virg. Æn. i. 282

I see, methinks, the character of an AntiPaul, "who became all things to all men," that he might destroy all; who only wanted the assistance of fortune, to have been as great as his friend Cæsar was a little after him. And the ways of Cæsar to compass the same ends (I mean till the civil war, which was but another manner of setting his country on fire) were not unlike these, though he used afterwards his unjust dominion with more moderation than I think the other would have done. Sallust therefore, who was well acquainted with them both, and with many such like gentlemen of his time, says, "that it is the nature of ambition, to make men lyars and cheaters; to hide the truth in their breasts, and show, like jugglers, another thing in their mouths: to cut all friendships and enmities to the measure of their own interest; and to make a good countenance without the help of a good will." And can there be freedom with this perpetual constraint? what is it but a kind of

4 Orat. pro. M. Cælio. 5 De Bell. Catil. c.

rack, that forces men to say what they have no mind to!

tion." This was spoken as became the bravest man who was ever born in the bravest commonwealth. But with us generally, no condition passes for servitude, that is accompanied with great riches, with honours, and with the service of many inferiors. This is but a deception of the sight through a false medium; for if a groom serve a gentleman in his chamber, that gentleman a lord, and that lord a prince; the groom, the gentleman, and the lord, are as much servants one as the other; the circumstantial difference of the one's getting only his bread and wages, the second a plentiful, and the third a superfluous éstate, is no more intrinsical to this inatter, than the difference between a plain, a rich, and gaudy livery. I do not say, that he who sells his whole time and his own will for one hundred thousand is not a wiser merchant than he who docs it for one hundred pounds; but I will swear they are both merchants, and that he is happier than both, who can live contentedly without selling that estate to which he was born. But this dependance upon superiors is but one chain of the lovers of power:

I have wondered at the extravagant and barbarous stratagem of Zopirus, and more at the praises which I find of so deformed an action; who, though he was one of the seven grandees of Persia, and the son of Megabises, who had freed before his country from an ignoble servitude, slit his own nose and lips, cut off his own ears, scourged and wounded his whole body, that he might, under pretence of having been mangled so inhumanly by Darius, be received into Babylon (then besieged by the Persians) and get into the command of it by the recommendation of so cruel a sufferance, and their hopes of his endeavouring to revenge it. It is great pity the Babylonians suspected not his falsehood, that they might have cut off his hands too, and whipt him back again. But the design succeeded; he betrayed the city, and was made governor of it. What brutish master ever punished his offending slave with so little mercy, as ambition did this Zopirus? and yet how many are there in all nations, who imitate him, in some degree, for a less reward; who, though they endure not so much corporal pain for a small preferment or some honour (as they call it), yet stick not to commit actions, by which they are more shamefully and more lastingly stigmatised! But you may say, though these be the most ordinary and open ways to greatness, yet there are narrow, thorny, and little-trodden paths too, through which some men find a passage by virtuous industry. I grant, sometimes they may; but then that industry must be such, as cannot consist with liber-This is so essential a part of greatness, that ty, though it may with honesty.

Thou art careful, frugal, painful; we commend a servant so, but not a friend.

Well then, we must acknowledge the toil and drudgery which we are forced to endure in this ascent; but we are epicures and lords when once we are gotten up into the high places. This is but a short apprenticeship, after which we are made free of a royal company. If we fall in love with any beauteous woman, we must be content that they should be our mistresses whilst we woo them as soon as we are wedded and enjoy, it is we shall be the masters.

I am willing to stick to this similitude in the case of greatness: we enter into the bonds of it, like those of matrimony: we are bewitched with the outward and painted beauty, and take it for better or worse, before we know its true nature and interior inconveniences. A great fortune (says Seneca) is a great servitude; but many are of that opinion which Brutus imputes (I hope untruly) even to that patron of liberty, his friend Cicero: "We fear (says he to Atticus) death, and banishment, and poverty, a great deal too much. Cicero, I am afraid, thinks these to be the worst of evils; and, if he have but some persons, from whom he can obtain what he has a mind to, and others who will flatter and worship him, seems to be well enough contented with an honourable servitude, if any thing indeed ought to be called honourable in so base and contumelious a condi,

This parenthesis does honour to the writer's sense, as well as candour. Hurn.

Amatorem trecentæ

Pirithoum cohibent catenæ7,

:

Let us begin with him by break of day for by that time he is besieged by two or three hundred suitors; and the hall and antichambers (all the out-works) possessed by the enemy: as soon as his chamber opens, they are ready to break into that, or to corrupt the guards, for entrance,

There

whosoever is without it, looks like a fallen fa-
vourite, like a person disgraced, and condemned
to do what he pleases all the morning.
are some who, rather than want this, are con-
tented to have their rooms filled up every day
with murmuring and cursing creditors, and to
charge bravely through a body of them to get to
their coach. Now I would fain know which is the
worst duty, that of any one particular person
who waits to speak with the great man, or the
great man's, who waits every day to speak with
all company.

Aliena negotia centum

Per caput, & circa saliunt latus *___ a hundred businesses of other men (many unjust, and most impertinent) fly continually about bis head and ears, and strike him in the face like Dorres. Let us contemplate him a little at another special scene of glory, and that is his

table. Here he seems to be the lord of all nature: the earth affords him her best metals for his

dishes, her best vegetables and animals for his food; the air and sea supply him with their choicest birds and fishes; and a great many men, who look like masters, attend upon him; and yet, when all this is done, even all this is but table d'hoste; it is crowded with people for whom he cares not, with many parasites and some spies, with the most burthensome sort of guests, the endeavourers to be witty.

7 Hor. 3 Od. iv. 79.
Hor. 2 Sat, vi. 34.

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