kings is delivered in the terms of "Honour thy father," as if all power were originally in the father. If obedience to parents be immediately due by a natural law, and subjection to princes but by the mediation of a human ordinance, what reason is there that the laws of nature should give place to the laws of men, as we see the power of the father over his child gives place and is subordinate to the power of the magistrate?

If we compare the natural rights of a father with those of a king, we find them all one, without any difference at all but only in the latitude or extent of them as the father over one family, so the king, as father over many families, extends his care to preserve, feed, clothe, instruct, and defend the whole commonwealth. His war, his peace, his courts of justice, and all his acts of sovereignty, tend only to preserve and distribute to every subordinate and inferior father, and to their children, their rights and privileges, so that all the duties of a king are summed up in an universal fatherly care of his people.

CHAPTER II.

It is unnatural for the People to govern or choose Governors.

1. By conferring these proofs and reasons, drawn from the authority of the Scripture, it appears little less than a paradox which Bellarmine and others affirm of the freedom of the multitude, to choose what rulers they please.

Had the patriarchs their power given them by their own children? Bellarmine does not say it, but the contrary. If then, the fatherhood enjoyed this authority for so many ages by the law of nature, when was it lost, or when forfeited, or how is it devolved to the liberty of the multitude? Because the Scripture is not favourable to the liberty of the people, therefore many fly to natural reason, and to the authority of Aristotle. I must crave liberty to examine or explain the opinion of this great philosopher; but briefly, I find this sentence in the third of his "Politics,"

This

cap. 16 : δοκεῖ δέ τισιν οὐδὲ κατὰ φύσιν εἶναι τὸ κύριον ἕνα πάντων εἶναι τῶν πολιτῶν, ὅπου συνέστηκεν ἐξ ὁμοίων ἡ πόλις. It seems to some not to be natural for one man to be lord of all the citizens, since a city consists of equals, D. Lambine, in his Latin interpretation of this text, hath omitted the translation of this word [row] by this means he maketh that to be the opinion of Aristotle, which Aristotle allegeth to be the opinion but of some. negligence, or wilful escape of Lambine, in not translating a word so material, hath been an occasion to deceive many, who, looking no further than this Latin translation, have concluded, and made the world now of late believe, that Aristotle here maintains a natural equality of men ; and not only our English translator of Aristotle's "Politics" is, in this place, misled by following Lambine, but even the learned Monsieur Duvall, in his "Synopsis," bears them company; and yet this version of Lambine's is esteemed the best, and printed at Paris, with Causabon's corrected Greek copy, though in the rendering of this place the elder translations have been more faithful; and he that shall compare the Greek text with the Latin shall find that Causabon had just cause in his preface to Aristotle's works to complain that the best translations of Aristotle did need correction. To prove that in these words, which seem to favour the equality of mankind, Aristotle doth not speak according to his own judgment, but recites only the opinion of others, we find him clearly deliver his own opinion, that the power of government did originally arise from the right of fatherhood, which cannot possibly consist with that natural equality which men dream of; for, in the first of his "Politics" he agrees exactly with the Scripture, and lays this foundation of government. "The first society (saith he), made of many houses is a village, which seems most naturally to be a colony of families or foster-brethren of children and children's children. And, therefore, at the beginning, cities were under the government of kings, for the eldest in every house is king. And so for kindred sake it is in colonies. And in the fourth of his "Politics," cap. 2, he gives the title of the first and divinest sort of government to the institution of kings, by defining tyranny to be a digression from the first and divinest.

Whosoever weighs advisedly these passages will find little hope of natural reason in Aristotle to prove the natural liberty of the multitude. Also before him the divine Plato concludes a commonweal to be nothing else but a large family. I know for this position Aristotle" quarrels with his master, but most unjustly; for therein he contradicts his own principles, for they both agree to fetch the original of civil government from the prime government. No doubt but Moses's history of the creation guided these two philosophers in finding out of this lineal subjection deduced from the laws of the first parents, according to that rule of St. Chrysostom, "God made all mankind of one man, that he might teach the world to be governed by a king, and not by a multitude."

The ignorance of the creation occasioned several errors amongst the heathen philosophers. Polybius, though otherwise a most profound philosopher and judicious historian, yet here he stumbles; for in searching out the original of civil societies, he conceited that multitudes of men after a deluge, a famine, or a pestilence, met together like herds of cattle without any dependency, until the strongest bodies and boldest minds got the mastery of their fellows; as it is (saith he) among bulls, bears, and cocks.”

even

And Aristotle himself, forgetting his first doctrine, tells us the first heroical kings were chosen by the people for their deserving well of the multitude, either by teaching them some new arts, or by warring for them, or by gathering them together, or by dividing land amongst them; also Aristotle had another fancy, that those men who prove wise of mind, were by nature intended to be lords and govern; and those which were strong of body were ordained to obey, and to be servants. But this is a dangerous and uncertain rule, and not without some folly; for if a man prove both wise and strong, what will Aristotle have done with him? as he was wise, he could be no servant, and as he had strength, he could not be a master; besides, to speak like a philosopher, Nature intends all things to be perfect both in wit and strength. The folly or imbecility proceeds from some error in generation or education; for Nature aims at perfection in all her works.

2. Suarez, the Jesuit, riseth up against the royal authority

of Adam, in defence of the freedom and liberty of the people, and thus argues :-" By right of creation (saith he) Adam had only economical power, but not political. He had a power over his wife, and a fatherly power over his sons, whilst they were not made free. He might also, in process

of time, have servants and a complete family, and in that family he might have complete economical power. But after that families began to be multiplied, and men to be separated and become the heads of several families, they had the same power over their families. But political power did not begin until families began to be gathered together into one perfect community; wherefore, as the community did not begin by the creation of Adam, nor by his will alone, but of all them which did agree in this community, so we cannot say that Adam naturally had political primacy in that community; for that cannot be gathered by any natural principles, because by the force of the law of Nature alone it is not due unto any progenitor to be also king of his posterity. And if this be not gathered out of the principles of Nature, we cannot say, God by a special gift or providence gave him this power, for there is no revelation of this, nor testimony of Scripture." Hitherto Suarez.

Whereas he makes Adam to have a fatherly power over his sons, and yet shuts up this power within one family, he seems either to imagine that all Adam's children lived within one house and under one roof with their father, or else, as soon as any of his children lived out of his house they ceased to be subject, and did thereby become free. For my part I cannot believe that Adam (although he were sole monarch of the world) had any such spacious palace as might contain any such considerable part of his children. It is likelier that some mean cottage or tent did serve him to keep his court in. It were hard he should lose part of his authority because his children lay not within the walls of his house. But if Suarez will allow all Adam's children to be of his family, howsoever they were separate in dwellings, if their habitations were either contiguous or at such distance as might easily receive his fatherly commands; and that all that were under his commands were of his family, although they had many children or servants married, having themselves also children, then I see no reason but that we

may call Adam's family a commonwealth, except we will wrangle about words, for Adam, living 930 years, and seeing seven or eight descents from himself, he might live to command of his children and their posterity a multitude far bigger than many commonwealths and kingdoms.

3. I know the politicians and civil lawyers do not agree well about the definition of a family, and Bodin doth seem in one place to confine it to a house; yet in his definition he doth enlarge his meaning to all persons under the obedience of one and the same head of the family, and he approves better of the propriety of the Hebrew word for a family, which is derived from a word that signifies a head, a prince, or lord, than the Greek word for a family, which is derived from oikos, which signifies a house. Nor doth Aristotle .confine a family to one house, but esteems it to be made of those that daily converse together; whereas, before him, Charondas called a family. homosypioi, those that feed together out of one common pannier. And Epimenides the Cretian terms a family homocapnoi, those that sit by a common fire or smoke. But let Suarez understand what he please by Adam's family, if he will but confess, as he needs must, that Adam and the patriarchs had absolute power of life and death, of peace and war, and the like, within their houses or families, he must give us leave, at least, to call them kings of their houses or families; and if they be so by the law of Nature, what liberty will be left to their children to dispose of?

Aristotle gives the lie to Plato, and those that say political and economical societies are all one, and do not differ specie, but only multitudine and paucitate, as if there were no difference betwixt a great house and a little city. All the argument I find he brings against them is this:

The community of man and wife differs from the community of master and servant, because they have several ends. The intention of Nature, by conjunction of male and female, is generation; but the scope of master and servant is preservation, so that a wife and a servant are by Nature distinguished, because Nature does not work like the cutlers of Delphos, for she makes but one thing for one use. we allow this argument to be sound, nothing doth follow but only this: That conjugal and despotic communities do

If