bettering his own estate; for, in such case, they stand effected with the hope that all gamesters have while the cards are shuffling.

The Necessity of the Will.

The question is not, whether a man be a free agent, that is to say, whether he can write or forbear; speak or be silent, according to his will; but whether the will to write, and the will to forbear, come upon him according to his will, or according to anything else in his own power. I acknowledge this liberty, that I can do if will; but to say, I can will if I will, I take to be an absurd speech.

[In answer to Bishop Bramhall's assertion, that the doctrine of free-will is the belief of all mankind, which we have not learned from our tutors, but is imprinted in our hearts by nature ']-It is true, very few have learned from tutors, that a man is not free to will; nor do they find it much in books. That they find in books, that which the poets chant in the theatres, and the shepherds on the mountains, that which the pastors teaches in the churches, and the doctors in the universities, and that which the common people in the markets and all mankind in the whole world do assent unto, is the same that I assent unto-namely, that a man hath freedom to do if he will; but whether he hath freedom to will, is a question which it seems neither the bishop nor they ever thought on. A wooden top that is lashed by the boys, and runs about, sometimes to one wall, sometimes to another, sometimes spinning, sometimes hitting men on the shins, if it were sensible of its own motion, would think it proceeded from its own will, unless it felt what lashed it. And is a man any wiser when he runs to one place for a benefice, to another for a bargain, and troubles the world with writing errors and requiring answers, because he thinks he does it without other cause than his own will, and seeth not what are the lashings that cause that will?

On Precision in Language.

Seeing that truth consisteth in the right ordering of names in our affirmations, a man that seeketh precise truth had need to remember what every name he useth stands for, and to place it accordingly, or else he will find himself entangled in words as a bird in lime-twigs-the more he struggles, the more belimed. And therefore in geometry, which is the only science that it hath pleased God hitherto to bestow on mankind, men begin at settling the significations of their words; which settling of significations they call definitions, and place them in the beginning of their reckoning.

By this it appears how necessary it is for any man that aspires to truc knowledge to examine the definitions of former authors; and either to correct them where they are negligently set down, or to make them himself. For the errors of definitions multiply themselves according as the reckoning proceeds, and lead men into absurdities, which at last they see, but cannot avoid without reckoning anew from the beginning, in which lies the foundation of their errors. From whence it happens that they which trust to books do as they that cast up many little sums into a greater, without considering whether those little sums were rightly cast up or not; and at last, finding the error visible, and not mistrusting their first grounds, know not which way to clear themselves, but spend time in fluttering over their books, as birds that, entering by the chimney, flutter at the false light of a glass window, for want of wit to consider which way they came in. So that in the right definition of names lies the first use of speech, which is the acquisition of science, and in wrong or no definitions lies the first abuse; from which proceed all false and senseless tenets, which make those men that take their instruction from the authority of books, and not from their own meditation, to be as much below the condition of ignorant men as men endued with true science are above it. For between true science and erroneous doctrines, ignorance is in the middle. Natural sense and imagination are not subject to absurdity. Nature itself cannot err; and as men abound in copiousness of language, so they become more wise or more mad than ordinary. Nor is it possible without letters for any man to become either excellently wise, or, unless his memory be hurt by disease or ill constitution of organs, excellently foolish. For words are wise men's counters-they do but reckon by them--but they are the money of fools, that value them by the authority of an Aristotle, a Cicero, or a Thomas, or any other doctor whatsoever, if but a man.

JAMES HARRINGTON.

JAMES HARRINGTON (1611-1677) was a native of Northamptonshire. He studied at Oxford, and for some time was a pupil of the celebrated Chillingworth. Afterwards, he went abroad for several years. While resident at the Hague, and subsequently at Venice, he imbibed many of those republican views which afterwards characterised his writin: s. Visiting Rome, he attracted some attention by refusing on a public occasion to kiss the pope's toe; conduct which he afterwards adroitly defended to the king of England, by saying, that, 'having had the honour of kissing his majesty's hand, he though it beneath him to kiss the toe of any other monarch.' During the Civil War, he was appointed by the parliamentary commis-ioners to be one of the personal attendants of King Charles, who, in 1647, nominated him one of the grooms of his bed-chamber. Except upon politics, the king was fond of Harrington's conversation; and the impression made on the latter by the royal condescension and familiarity was such, as to render him very desirous that a reconciliation between his majesty and the parliament might be effected, and to excite in him the most violent grief when the king was brought to the scaffold. He has, nevertheless, in his writings, placed Charles in an unfavourable light, and spoken of his execution as the consequence of a Divine judgment. During the sway of Cromwell, Harrington occupied himself in composing the Oceana,' which was published in 1656, and led to several controversies. This work is a political romance, illustrating the author's idea of a republic constituted so as to secure that general freedom of which he was so ardent an admirer. All power, he maintains, depends upon property-chiefly upon land. An agrarian law should fix the balance of lands; and the goverment should be ‘established upon an equal agrarian basis, rising into the superstructure, or three orders, the senate debating and proposing, the people resolving, and the magistracy executing by an equal rotation through the suffrage of the people given by ballot.' After the publication of the Oceana,' Harrington continued to exert himself in diffusing his republican opinions, by founding a debating club, called the Rota, and holding conversations with visitors at his own house. This brought him under the suspicion of government soon after the Restoration, and, on pretence of treasonable practices, he was put into confinement, which lasted until an attack of mental derangement made it desirable that he should be given in charge to his friends.

SIR ROBERT FILMER.

A number of political treatises in favour of extreme or unlimited monarchical power were published at this time by SIR ROBERT FILMER (who died in 1688). The first of these seems to have appeared in 1616, and the latest (also the most celebrated in 1680. The latter was entitled 'Patriarchia,' and was written to prove that all govern

ment was derived from paternal authority, that the law of primogeniture was divine and immutable, and a hereditary monarchy the only form of government consonant with the will of God. This slavish doctrine was adopted by the university of Oxford in 1683! Filmer's work is a poor production, but his theory was answered by Algernon Sidney and Locke.

ALGERNON SIDNEY.

ALGERNON SIDNEY (or Sydney)-circa 1621-1683-son of Robert, Earl of Leicester, is another memorable republican writer of this age. During his father's lieutenancy in Ireland, he served in the army against the rebels in that kingdom. In 1643, during the Civil War between the king and parliament, Sidney was permitted to return to England, where he immediately joined the parliamentary forces, and, as colonel of a regiment of horse, was present at several engagements. He was likewise successively governor of Chichester, Dublin, and Dover. In 1648, he was named a member of the court for trying the king, which, however, he did not attend, though apparently not from any disapproval of the intentions of those who composed it. The usurpation of Cromwell gave offence to Sidney, who declined to accept office either under the Protector or his son Richard; but when the Long Parliament recovered power he readily consented to act as one of the Council of State. At the time of the Restoration, he was engaged in a continental embassy; and apprehensive of the vengeance of the royalists, he remained abroad for seventeen years, at the end of which his father, who was anxious to see him before leaving the world, procured his pardon from the king. After Sidney's return to England in 1677, he opposed the measures of the court, which has subjected him to the the censure of Hume and others, who hold that such conduct, after the royal pardon, was ungrateful. Probably Sidney himself regarded the pardon as rather a cessation of injustice than as an obligation to implicit submission for the future. A more serious charge against the memory of this patriot was first presented in Dalrymple's Memoirs of Great Britain,' published nearly a century after his death. The English patriots, with Lord William Russell at their head, intrigued with Barillon, the French ambassador, to prevent war between France and England, their purpose being to preclude Charles II. from having the command of the large funds which on such an occasion must have been intrusted to him, and which he might have used against the liberties of the nation; while Louis was not less anxious to prevent the English from joining the list of his enemies. The association was a strange one; but it never would have been held as a moral stain upon the patriots, if Sir John Dalrymple had not discovered amongst Barillon's papers one containing a list of persons receiving bribes from the French monarch, amongst whom appears the name of Sidney, together with those of several other leading Whig mem

bers of parliament. Lord Russell was not of the number, but the probabilities are that Sidney stooped to receive the money. He had made proposals to France in 1666 for an insurrection-which he thought might facilitate his cherished scheme of a republic-and the sum he then asked was 100,000 crowns, which the French monarch thought too much for an experiment. It is evident, as Lord Macaulay has argued, how little national feeling was then in England, when Charles II. was willing to become the deputy of France, and a man like Algernon Sidney would have been content to see England reduced to the condition of a French province, in the wild hope that a foreign despot would assist him to establish his darling republic. It appears from the correspondence of his sister, Dorothy, Countess of Sunderland, that Algernon was violent and turbulent of temper and disposition. He took a conspicuous part in the proceedings by which the Whigs endeavoured to exclude the Duke of York from the throne; and when that attempt failed, he joined in the conspiracy for an insurrection to accomplish the same object. This, as is well known, was exposed in consequence of the detection of an inferior plot for the assassination of the king, in which the patriots Russell, Sidney, and others were dexterously inculpated by the court. Sidney was tried for high treason before the infamous Chief-Justice Jeffries. Although the only witness against him was an abandoned character, Lord Howard, and nothing could be produced that even Ostensibly strengthened the evidence, except some manuscripts in which the lawfulness of resisting tyrants was maintained, and a preference given to a free over an arbitrary government, the jury were servile enough to obey the directions of the judge, and pronounce him guilty. Sidney was beheaded on the 7th of December, 1683, glorying in his martyrdom for that 'old cause' in which he had been engaged from his youth.

Except some of his letters, the only published work of Algernon Sidney is Discourses on Government,' which first appeared in 1698. The Discourses were written in reply to the 'Patriarcha' of Sir Robert Filmer, referred to above-a weak vindication of the doctrine that the first kings were fathers of families; that it was unnatural for the people to govern or to choose governors; and that positive laws do not infringe the natural and fatherly power of kings This 'royal charter, granted to kings by God,' Sidney set himself to overturn, contending justly that Filmer had not used one argument that was not false, nor cited one author whom he did not pervert and abuse. Locke afterwards attacked the work of Filmer with greater weight of reasoning; but Sidney's Discourses, though somewhat diffuse in style, reflect honour on the literary talents, no less than on the patriotism of their noble author. They fill a folio volume of 462 pages.

Liberty and Government.

Such as enter into society must, in some degree, diminish their liberty. Reason leads them to this. No one man or family is able to provide that which is requisite for their convenience or security, whilst every oue has an equal right to everything, and none acknowledges a superior to determine the controversies that upon such Occasions must continually arise, and will probably be so many and great, that mankind cannot bear them. Therefore, though I do not believe that Bellarmine said a commonwealth could not exercise its power; for he could not be ignorant that Rome and Athens did exercise theirs, and that all the regular kingdoms in the world are commonwealths; yet there is nothing of absurdity in saying, that man cannot continue in the perpetual and entire fruition of the liberty that God hath given him. The liberty of one is thwarted by that of another; and whilst they are all equal, none will yield to any, otherwise than by a general consent. This is the ground of all just governments; for violence or fraud can create no right; and the same consent gives the form to them all, how much soever they differ from each other. Some sinall numbers of men, living within the precincts of one city, have, as it were, cast into a common stock the right which they had of governing themselves and children, and, by common consent joining in one body, exercised such power over every single person as seemed beneficial to the whole; and this men call perfect democracy. Others' choose rather to be governed by a select number of such as most excelled in wisdom and virtue; and this, according to the signification of the word, was called aristocracy; or when one man excelled all others, the government was put into his hands, under the name of monarchy. But the wisest, best, and far the greatest part of mankind, rejecting these simple species, did form governments mixed or composed of the three, as shall be proved hereafter, which commonly received their respective denomination from the part that prevailed, and did deserve praise or blame as they were well or ill proportioned.

It were a folly hereupon to say, that the liberty for which we contend is of no use to us, since we cannot endure the solitude, barbarity, weakness, want, misery, and dangers that accompany it whilst we live alone, nor can enter into a society without resigning it; for the choice of that society, and the liberty of framing it according to our own wills, for our own good, is all we seek. This remains to us whilst we form governments, that we ourselves are judges how far it is good for us to recede from our natural liberty; which is of so great importance, that from thence only we can know whether we are freemen or slaves; and the difference between the best government and the worst doth wholly depend on a right or wrong exercise of that power. If men are naturally free, such as have wisdom and understanding will always frame good governments: but if they are born under the necessity of a perpetual slavery, no wisdom can be of use to them; but all must for ever depend on the will of their lords, how cruel, mad, proud, or wicked soever they be.

The Grecians, amongst others who followed the light of reason, knew no other original title to the government of a nation, than that wisdom. valour, and justice which was beneficial to the people. These qualities gave beginning to those governments which we call Heroum Reina [the Governments of the Heroes]; and the veneration paid to such as enjoyed them. proceeded from a grateful sense of the good received from them; they were thought to be descended from the gods, who in virtue and beneficence surpassed other men: the same attended their descendants, till they came to abuse their power, and by their vices shewed themselves like to, or worse than others, who could best perform their duty.

Upon the same grounds we may conclude that no privilege is peculiarly annexed to any form of government; but that all magistrates are equally the ministers of God, who perform the work for which they are instituted; and that the people which institutes them may proportion, regulate, and terminate their power as to time, measure, and number of persons, as seems most convenient to themselves, which can be no other than their own good. For it cannot be imagined that a multitude of people should send for Numa, or any other person to whom they owed nothing, to reign over them, that he might live in glory and pleasure; or for any other reason, than that it might be good for them and their posterity. This shews the work of all magistrates to be always and everywhere the same, even the doing of justice, and procur