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to make this a doubt, your own actions, as well as your tame suf ferings, do but too plainly manifest. For you, that were the champions of our liberty, and to that purpose were raised, are not you become the instruments of our slavery? And your hands, that the people employed to take off the yoke from our necks, are not those the very hands that now do put it on? Do you remember, that you were raised to defend the privileges of parliament, and have sworn to do it; and will you be employed to force elections, and dissolve parliaments, because they will not establish the tyrant's iniquity, and our slavery, by a law? I beseech you, think upon what you have promised, and what you do; and give not posterity, as well as your own generation, the occasion to mention your name with infamy, and to curse that unfortunate valour and success of yours, that only hath gained victories, as you use them, against the commonwealth. Could ever England have thought to have seen that army, that was never mentioned without the titles of religious, zealous, faithful, courageous, the fence of her liberty at home, the terror of her enemies abroad, become her jailers? Not her guard, but her oppressors? Not her soldiers, but a tyrant's executioners, drawing to blocks and gibbets all that dare be honester than them. selves? This you do, and this you are; nor can you ever redeem your own honour, the trust and love of your country, the estimation of brave men, or the prayers of good, if you let not, speedily, the world see you have been deceived; which they will only then believe, when they see your vengeance upon his faithless head that did it. This, if you defer too long to do, you will find too late to attempt, and your repentance will neither vindicate you, nor help us. let you see you may do this, as a lawful action, and to persuade you to it, as a glorious one, is the principal intent of this following paper: which, whatever effects it hath upon you, I shall not ab solutely fail of my ends; for, if it excites not your virtue and courage, it will yet exprobrate your cowardice and baseness. This is from one that was once amongst you, and will be so again, when you dare be as you were.

To

It is not any ambition to be in print, when so few spare paper and the press, nor any instigations of private revenge or malice (though few, that dare be honest, now want their causes) that have prevailed with me to make myself the author of a pamphlet, and to disturb that quiet, which, at present, I enjoy, by his highness's great favour and injustice. Nor am I ignorant, to how little purpose I shall employ that time and pains, which I shall bestow upon this paper. For to think, that any reasons or persuasions of mine, or convictions of their own, shall draw men from any thing, wherein they see profit or security, or to any thing, wherein they fear loss, or see danger, is to have a better opinion, both of myself and them, than either of us both deserve.

Besides, the subject itself is of that nature, that I am not only to expect danger from ill men, but censure and disallowance from many that are good. For these opinions, only looked upon, not

looked into (which all have not eyes for) will appear bloody and cruel; and these compellations I must expect from those that have a zeal, but not according to knowledge. If, therefore, I had considered myself, I had spared whatever this is of pains, and not distasted so many, to please so few, as are, in mankind, the honest and the wise. But, at such a time as this, when God is not only exercising us with a usual and common calamity, of letting us fall into slavery, that used our liberty so ill; but is pleased so far to blind our under. standings, and to debase our spirits, as to suffer us to court our bondage, and to place it amongst the requests we put up to him. In dignation makes a man break that silence, that prudence would persuade him to use; if not to work upon other men's minds, yet to ease his own.

A late pamphlet tells us of a great design, discovered against the person of his highness, and of the parliament's coming (for so does that junto profane that name) to congratulate, with his highness, his happy deliverance from that wicked and bloody attempt. Besides this, that they have ordered that God Almighty shall be mocked with a day of thanksgiving, as I think the world is with the plot, and that the people shall give publick thanks for the publick calamity, that God is yet pleased to continue his judgments upon them, and to frustrate all means that are used for their deliverance. Certainly, none will now deny, that the English are a very thankful people. But, I think, if we had read in Scripture, that the Israelites had cried unto the Lord, not for their own deliverance, but the preservation of their task-masters; and that they had thanked God, with solemnity, that Pharaoh was yet living, and that there were still great hopes of the daily increase of the number of their bricks: Though that people did so many things, not only impiously and prophanely, but ridiculously and absurdly; yet, certainly, they did nothing, we should more have wondered at, than to have found them ceremoniously thankful to God for plagues, that were commonly so brutishly unthankful for mercies; and we should have thought, that Moses had done them a great deal of wrong, if he had not suffered them to enjoy their slavery, and left them to their tasks and garlick.

I can, with justice say, my principal intention, in this paper, is not to declaim against my lord protector, or his accomplices; for, were it not more to justify others, than accuse them, I should think their own actions did that work sufficiently, and I should not take pains to tell the world what they knew before. My design is, to examine whether if there hath been such a plot as we hear of, and that it was contrived by Mr. Sindercombe, against my lord protector, and not by my lord protector, against Mr. Sindercombe, which is doubtful, whether it deserves those epithets, Mr. Speaker is pleased to give it, of bloody, wicked, and proceeding from the prince of darkness. I know very well, how uncapable the vulgar are of considering what is extraordinary and singular in every case, and that they judge of things, and name them, by their exterior appearances, without penetrating at all into their causes or natures And, without

doubt, when they hear the protector was to be killed, they strait conclude, a man was to be murdered, not a malefactor punished; for they think, the formalities do always make the things them. selves; and that it is the judge and the cryer that makes the justice, and the jail the criminal. And, therefore, when they read, in the pamphlet, Mr. Speaker's speech, they certainly think, he gives these plotters their right titles; and, as readily as a high court of justice, they condemn them, without ever examining whether they would have killed a magistrate, or destroyed a tyrant, over whom every man is naturally a judge, and an executioner, and whom the laws of God, of nature, and of nations, expose, like beasts of prey, to be destroyed as they are met.

That I may be as plain as I can, I shall, first, make it a question, which, indeed, is none, whether my lord protector be a tyrant or not? Secondly, if he be, whether it is lawful to do justice upon him, without solemnity, that is, to kill him? Thirdly, if it be lawful, whether it is likely to prove profitable or noxious to the commonwealth?

The civil law makes tyrants of two sorts; tyrannus sine titulo, and tyrannus exercitio: the one called a tyrant, because he hath no right to govern; the other, because he governs tyrannically. We will briefly discourse of them both, and see whether the pro tector may not, with great justice, put in his claim to both titles.

We shall sufficiently demon rate who they are that have not a right to govern, if we shew who they are that have, and what it is that makes the power just, which those, that rule, have over the nas tural liberty of other men. To fathers, within their private families, nature hath given a supreme power. Every man, says Aristotle, of right governs his wife and children; and this power was necessarily exercised, every where, whilst families lived dispersed, before the constitutions of commonwealths; and, in many places, is continued after, as appears by the laws of Solon, and the most ancient of those of Rome. And, indeed, as by the laws of God, and nature, the care, defence, and support of the family lies upon every man whose it is ; so, by the same law, there is due unto every man from his family, a subjection and obedience, in compensation of that support. But, se veral families uniting themselves together, to make up one body of a commonwealth, and being independent one of another, without any natural superiority or obligation, nothing can introduce, amongst them, a disparity of rule and subjection, but some power that is over them, which power none can pretend to have, but God and themselves: Wherefore all power, which is lawfully exercised over such a society of men, which, from the end of its institution, we call a commonwealth, must necessarily be derived, either from the appointment of God Almighty, who is supreme Lord of all and every part, or from the consent of the society itself, who have the next power to his, of disposing of their own liberty, as they shall think fit, for their own good. This power God hath given to societies of men, as well as he gave it to particular persons; and when he in

terposes not his own authority, and appoints not himself who shall be his vicegerents, and rule under him, he leaves it to none, but the people themselves, to make the election, whose benefit is the end of all government. Nay, when he himself hath been pleased to appoint rulers for that people, which he was pleased particularly to own, he many times made the choice, but left the confirmation and ratification of that choice to the people themselves. So Saul was chosen by God, and anointed king by his prophet, but made king by all the people of Gilgal. David was anointed king by the same prophet; but was afterwards, after Saul's death, confirmed by the people of Judah, and, seven years after, by the elders of Israel, the people's deputies, at Hebron. And it is observable, that, though they knew that David was appointed king by God, and anointed by his prophet, yet they likewise knew, that God allowed to themselves, not only his confir mation, but likewise the limitation of his power; for, before his inauguration, they made a league with him; that is, obliged him, by compact, to the performance of such conditions, as they thought ne cessary for the securing their liberty. Nor is it less remarkable, that, when God gives directions to his people, concerning their govern ment, he plainly leaves the form to themselves: for he says not, when thou shalt have come into the land which the Lord thy God gives thee, Status super te regem; but si* dixeris, statuam. God says not, thou shalt appoint a king over thee: But, if thou shalt say, I will appoint, leaving it to their choice, whether they would say so or no. And it is plain, in that place, that God gives the people the choice of their king, for he there instructs them whom they shall choose, e medio fratrum tuorum, one out of the midst of thy brethren; much more might we say, if it were a less manifest truth, that all just power of government is founded upon these two bases, of God's immediate command, or the people's consent. And therefore, whosoever arrogates to himself that power, or any part of it, that cannot produce one of those two titles, is not a ruler, but an invader; and those, that are subject to that power, are not governed, but oppressed.

This being considered, have not the people of England much rea son to ask the protector this question, Quis constituit te virum prin cipem & judicem super nos? Who made thee a prince and a judge over us? If God made thee, make it manifest to us; if the people, where did we meet to do it? Who took our subscriptions? To whom deputed we our authority? And when and where did those deputies make the choice? Sure these interrogations are very natural, and, I believe, would much trouble his highness, his council, and his junto, to an swer. In a word, that I may not tire my reader (who will not want proofs for what I say, if he wants not memory) if to change the government without the people's consent: if to dissolve their repre sentatives by force, and disannul their acts: if to give the name of the people's representatives to confederates of his own, that he may establish iniquity by a law: if to take away men's lives, out of all course of law, by certain murderers of his own appointment whom

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by his own power, to impose upon the people what taxes he pleases; and to maintain all this by force of arms: if, I say, all this does make a tyrant, his own impudence cannot deny, but he is as com. pleat a one, as ever hath been, since there have been societies of men. He that hath done, and does all this, is the person for whose preser vation the people of England must pray; but, certainly, if they do, it is for the same reason, that the old woman of Syracuse prayed for the long life of the tyrant Dionysius, lest the devil should come

next.

Now, if, instead of God's command, or the people's consent, his highness hath no other title but force and fraud, which is to want all title: and if to violate all laws, and propose none to rule by, but those of his own will, be to exercise that tyranny he hath usurped, and to make his administration conformable to his claim; then the first question we proposed is a question no longer.

But before we come to the second, seeing things are more easily perceived and found by the description of their exterior accidents and qualities, than the defining their essences: it will not be amiss to see, whether his highness hath not as well the outward marks and characters by which tyrants are known, as he hath their nature and essential properties: whether he hath not the skin of the lion, and tail of the fox, as well as he hath the violence of the one, and deceit of the other? Now, in this delineation which I intend to make of a tyrant, all the lineaments, all the colours will be found so naturally to correspond with the life, that it cannot but be doubted, whether his highness be the original or the copy; whether I have, in drawing the tyrant, represented him; or in representing him expressed a tyrant: and therefore, lest I should be suspected to deal unsincerely with his highness, and not to have applied these following characters, but made them, I shall not give you any of my own stamping, but such as I find in Plato, Aristotle, Tacitus, and his highness's own evangelist, Machiavel.

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1. Almost all tyrants have been first captains and generals for the people, under pretences of vindicating and defending their liberties: Ut imperium evertant, libertatem præferunt; cum perverterunt, ipsam aggrediuntur; 'says Tacitus, 'to subvert the present government, they pretend liberty for the people; when the government is down, they then invade that liberty themselves; this needs no application.

2. Tyrants accomplish their ends much more by fraud than force; neither virtue nor force, says Machiavel, are so necessary to that purpose, as una astutia fortunata, a lucky craft; which, says he, without force has been often found sufficient, but never force without that. And in another place he tells us, their way is Aggirare icervelli de gli huomini con astutia, &c. With cunning plausi. ble pretences to impose upon men's understandings, and in the end they master those that had so little as to rely upon their faith and Integrity.

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