CHAPTER THIRD.

MARCHAMONT NEDHAM.

ERRORS OF GOVERNMENT AND RULES OF POLICY.

"THE first error in ancient Christian policy, which hath indeed been a main foundation of tyranny, is that corrupt division of a state into ecclesiastical and civil."

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Our author enlarges upon this error, and his speculations are worth reading; but as this is not likely to be the error of America, I shall leave it to be read when such danger approaches. "The second error is very frequent under all forms of government. It is this, that care hath not been taken, upon all sions of alteration, to prevent the passage of tyranny out of one form into another, in all the nations of the world. The interest of absolute monarchy and its inconveniences have been visible and fatal under the other forms, and given undeniable proof of this maxim by experience, in all times, that the interest of monarchy may reside in the hands of many as well as of a single person."

The interest of absolute monarchy he defines to be,

"An unlimited, uncontrollable, unaccountable station of power and authority in the hands of a particular person, who governs only according to the dictates of his own will and pleasure; and though it hath often been disguised by sophisters in policy, so as it hath lost its own name by shifting forms, yet the thing in itself hath been discovered under the artificial covers of every form, in the various revolutions of government. In Athens, when they had laid aside their king, the kingly power was retained still in all the after turns of government; for their decimal governors and their thirty tyrants were but a multiplied monarchy, the people being in a worse condition than before; for their kings had supervisors and senatic assemblies that did restrain and correct them; but the new governors having none, ran into all the heats and fits and wild extravagancies of an

unbounded prerogative. Necessity and extremity opening the people's eyes, they at length saw all the inconveniences of kingship wrapt up in new forms, and rather increased than diminished; so that (as the only remedy) they dislodged the power out of those hands, putting it into their own, and placing it in a constant, orderly revolution of persons elective by the community. And now, one would have thought there was no shelter for a monarchal interest, under a popular form too. But alas! they found the contrary; for the people not keeping a strict watch over themselves, according to the rules of a free state, but being won by specious pretences, and deluded by created necessities to intrust the management of affairs into some particular hands, such an occasion was given thereby to those men to frame parties of their own, that by this means they in a short time became able to do what they list without the people's consent; and, in the end, not only discontinued, but utterly extirpated their successive assemblies."

I have given this at length, in our author's own words, because it is an exact compendium of the whole history of Athens, and shows that he had read it attentively, and understood it perfectly well; and because it is a complete refutation of his own system, his Right Constitution of a Commonwealth. Absolute monarchy, unlimited power in a particular person, who governed by his own will, run through all the history and changes in Athens, according to his own account, even when the people had placed the supreme power in an orderly revolution of persons elective by themselves. Why? "Because the people did not keep a watch over themselves." Did any other people keep a strict watch over themselves? Will any people ever keep a strict watch over themselves? No, surely. Is not this, then, a sufficient reason for instituting a senate to keep a strict watch over them? Is not this a sufficient reason for separating the whole executive power from them, which they know will, and must corrupt them, throw them off their guard, and render it impossible to keep a strict watch over themselves?"

"They did not observe the rules of a free state."

Did any people, that ever attempted to exercise unlimited power, observe the rules of a free state? Is it possible they should, any more than obey, without sin, the law of nature and nature's God? When we find one of these sorts of obedience,

we may expect the other. If this writer had been one of the enthusiasts of that day, and told the people they must pray to God for his omnipotent grace to be poured out upon them, to distinguish them from all the rest of mankind as his favorite people, more even than the Jews were, that they might be enabled to observe the rules of a free state, though all history and experience, even that of the Hebrews themselves, and the constitution of human nature, proved it impossible without a miracle; or if he had told them that they were a chosen people, different from all other men, numbers would have believed him, and been disappointed; for it is impious presumption to suppose that Providence will thus distinguish any nation; but it would have been more sensible than thus to acknowledge in effect, as he does repeatedly, the impracticability of his scheme, and still insist upon it.

"The people were won by specious pretences, and deluded by created necessities, to intrust the management of affairs into some particular hands."

And will not the people always be won by specious pretences, when they are unchecked? Is any people more sagacious or sensible than the Athenians, those ten thousand citizens, who had four hundred thousand slaves to maintain them at leisure to study? Will not a few capital characters in a single assembly always have the power to excite a war, and thus create a necessity of commanders? Has not a general a party of course? Are not all his officers and men at his devotion so long as to acquire habits of it? When a general saves a nation from destruction, as the people think, and brings home triumph, peace, glory, and prosperity to his country, is there not an affection, veneration, gratitude, admiration, and adoration of him, that no people can resist? It is want of patriotism not to adore him; it is enmity to liberty; it is treason. His judgment, which is his will, becomes the only law; reason will allay a hurricane as soon; and if the executive and judicial power are in the people, they at once give him both, in substance at first, and not long afterwards in form. The representatives lose all authority before him. If they disoblige him, they are left out by their constituents at the next election, and one of his idolaters is chosen.

"In Rome, also, the case was the same, under every alteration; and all occasioned by the crafty contrivances of grandizing

parties, and the people's own facility and negligence in suffering themselves to be deluded; for with the Tarquins (as it is observed by Livy and others) only the name king was expelled, but not the thing; the power and interest of kingship was still retained in the senate, and engrossed by the consuls; for besides the rape of Lucretia, among the other faults objected against Tarquin, this was most considerable, that he had acted all things after his own head, and discontinued consultations with the senate, which was the very height of arbitrary power; but yet as soon as the senate was in the saddle, they forgot what was charged by themselves upon Tarquin, and ran into the same error, by establishing an arbitrary, hereditary, unaccountable, power in themselves and their posterity, not admitting the people (whose interest and liberty they had pleaded) into any share in consultation or government, as they ought to have done, by a present erecting of their successive assemblies; so that you see the same kingly interest, which was in one before, resided then in the hands of many. Nor is it my observation only, but pointed out by Livy, in his second book, and in many other places, 'Cum a patribus non consulem sed carnificem, &c.' when the senators strove to create, not consuls, but executioners and tormentors, to vex and tear the people, &c. And in another place of the same book, 'Consules, immoderatâ infinitaque potestate, omnes metus legum, &c.' the consuls, having an immoderate and unlimited power, turned the terror of laws and punishments only upon the people, themselves (in the mean while) being accountable to none but themselves, and their confederates in the senate. Then, the consular government being cashiered, came on the decemviri: Cum consulari imperio ac regio, sine provocatione,' saith my author; being invested with a consular and kingly power, without appeal to any other. in his third book he saith, 'Decem regum species erat,' it was a form of ten kings; the miseries of the people being increased ten times more than they were under kings and consuls. For remedy, therefore, the ten were cashiered also; and consuls being restored, it was thought fit, for the bridling of their power, to revive also the dictatorship (which was a temporary kingship, used only now and then upon occasion of necessity) and also those deputies of the people, called tribunes, which one would have thought had been sufficient bars against monarchic interest,

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especially being assisted by the people's successive assemblies; but yet, for all this, the people were cheated through their own neglect, and bestowing too much confidence and trust upon such as they thought their friends; for when they swerved from the rules of a free state, by lengthening the dictatorship in any hand, then monarchic interest stept in there, as it did under Sylla, Cæsar, and others, long before it returned to a declared monarchal form; and when they lengthened commands in their armies, then it crept in there, as it did under the aforenamed persons, as well as Marius, Cinna, and others also; and even Pompey himself, not forgetting the pranks of the two triumvirates, who all made a shift under every form, being sometimes called consuls, sometimes dictators, and sometimes tribunes of the people, to outact all the flagitious enormities of an absolute monarchy.”

This valuable passage, so remarkable as an abridgment of the Roman history, as containing the essence of the whole that relates to the constitution, as a profound judgment of what passes in all societies, has been transcribed in the author's own words; and, it may be truly said, it contains a full confutation of his own system, and a complete proof of the necessity of the composition of three branches. It is strictly true, that there is a strong and continual effort in every society of men, arising from the constitution of their minds, towards a kingly power; it is as true in a simple democracy, or a democracy by representation, as it is in simple aristocracy, oligarchy, or monarchy, and in all possible combinations and mixtures of them. This tendency can never be eradicated; it can only be watched and controlled; and the whole art of government consists in combining the powers of society in such a manner, that it shall not prevail over the laws. The excellence of the Spartan and Roman constitutions lay in this; that they were mixtures which did restrain it, in some measure, for a long period, but never perfectly. Why? Because the mixture was not equal. The balance of three branches is alone adequate to this end; and one great reason is, because it gives way to human nature so far, as to determine who is the first man. Such is the constitution of men's minds, that this question, if undecided, will forever disorder the state. It is a question that must be decided, whatever blood or wounds it may occasion, in every species of gregarious animals, as well as men. This point, in the triple division of