第96章 OF THOSE THINGS THAT WEAKEN(1)

OR TEND TO THE DISSOLUTION OF A COMMONWEALTH

THOUGH nothing can be immortal which mortals make;yet,if men had the use of reason they pretend to,their Commonwealths might be secured,at least,from perishing by internal diseases.For by the nature of their institution,they are designed to live as long as mankind,or as the laws of nature,or as justice itself,which gives them life.Therefore when they come to be dissolved,not by external violence,but intestine disorder,the fault is not in men as they are the matter,but as they are the makers and orderers of them.For men,as they become at last weary of irregular jostling and hewing one another,and desire with all their hearts to conform themselves into one firm and lasting edifice;so for want both of the art of making fit laws to square their actions by,and also of humility and patience to suffer the rude and cumbersome points of their present greatness to be taken off,they cannot without the help of a very able architect be compiled into any other than a crazy building,such as,hardly lasting out their own time,must assuredly fall upon the heads of their posterity.

Amongst the infirmities therefore of a Commonwealth,I will reckon in the first place those that arise from an imperfect institution,and resemble the diseases of a natural body,which proceed from a defectuous procreation.

Of which this is one:that a man to obtain a kingdom is sometimes content with less power than to the peace and defence of the Commonwealth is necessarily required.From whence it cometh to pass that when the exercise of the power laid by is for the public safety to be resumed,it hath the resemblance of an unjust act,which disposeth great numbers of men,when occasion is presented,to rebel;in the same manner as the bodies of children gotten by diseased parents are subject either to untimely death,or to purge the ill quality derived from their vicious conception,by breaking out into biles and scabs.And when kings deny themselves some such necessary power,it is not always (though sometimes)out of ignorance of what is necessary to the office they undertake,but many times out of a hope to recover the same again at their pleasure:wherein they reason not well;because such as will hold them to their promises shall be maintained against them by foreign Commonwealths;who in order to the good of their own subjects let slip few occasions to weaken the estate of their neighbours.So was Thomas Becket,Archbishop of Canterbury,supported against Henry the Second by the Pope;the subjection of ecclesiastics to the Commonwealth having been dispensed with by William the Conqueror at his reception,when he took an oath not to infringe the liberty of the Church.And so were the barons,whose power was by William Rufus,to have their help in transferring the succession from his elder brother to himself,increased to a degree inconsistent with the sovereign power,maintained in their rebellion against King John by the French.

Nor does this happen in monarchy only.For whereas the style of the ancient Roman Commonwealth was,"The Senate and People of Rome";neither senate nor people pretended to the whole power;which first caused the seditions of Tiberius Gracchus,Caius Gracchus,Lucius Saturninus,and others;and afterwards the wars between the senate and the people under Marius and Sylla;and again under Pompey and Caesar to the extinction of their democracy and the setting up of monarchy.

The people of Athens bound themselves but from one only action,which was that no man on pain of death should propound the renewing of the war for the island of Salamis;and yet thereby,if Solon had not caused to be given out he was mad,and afterwards in gesture and habit of a madman,and in verse,propounded it to the people that flocked about him,they had had an enemy perpetually in readiness,even at the gates of their city:such damage,or shifts,are all Commonwealths forced to that have their power never so little limited.

In the second place,I observe the diseases of a Commonwealth that proceed from the poison of seditious doctrines,whereof one is that every private man is judge of good and evil actions.This is true in the condition of mere nature,where there are no civil laws;and also under civil government in such cases as are not determined by the law.But otherwise,it is manifest that the measure of good and evil actions is the civil law;and the judge the legislator,who is always representative of the Commonwealth.From this false doctrine,men are disposed to debate with themselves and dispute the commands of the Commonwealth,and afterwards to obey or disobey them as in their private judgments they shall think fit;whereby the Commonwealth is distracted and weakened.