wisdom and piety of its preachers, and its own native truth, to let mankind see that we have a clergy who are of the people, obedient to the same. laws, and zealous not only of the supremacy and prerogative of our princes, but of the liberties of their fellow-subjects: this will make us who are your flock burn with joy to see, and with zeal to imitate, your lives and actions. It cannot be expected but that there will be, in so great a body, light, superficial, vain, and ambiticus men, who, being untouched with the sublime force of the Gospel, will think it their interest to insinuate jealousies between the clergy and laity, in hopes to derive from their order a veneration which they know they cannot deserve from their virtue. But while the most worthy, conspicuous, learned, and powerful of your sacred function are moved by the noble and generous incentives of doing good to the souls of men, we will not doubt of seeing by your ministry the love of our country, due regard for our laws and liberties, and resentment for the abuse of truth revive in the hearts of men. And as there are no instruments under heaven so capable of this great work, that God would make you such to this divided nation is the hearty prayer of,

Gentlemen,

Your most dutiful and most obedient

humble servant,

RICHARD STEELE.

PREFACE.

I NEVER saw an unruly crowd of people cool by degrees into temper, but it gave me an idea of the original of power and the nature of civil institutions. One particular man has usually in those cases, from the dignity of his appearance, or other qualities known or imagined by the multitude, been received into sudden favour and authority; the occasion of their difference has been represented to him, and the matter referred to his decision.

This first step towards acting reasonably has brought them to themselves; and when the person, by an appeal to whom they first were taken out of confusion, was gone from amongst them, they have calmly taken further measures from a sense of their common good.

Absolute unlimited power in one person seems to have been the first and natural recourse of mankind from disorder and rapine, and such a government must be acknowledged to be better than no government at all; but all restrictions of power made by laws and participation of sovereignty among

several persons are apparent improvements made upon what began in that unlimited power. This is what seems reasonable to common sense, and the manner of maintaining absolute dominion in one person, wherever it subsists, verifies the observation; for the subjection of the people to such authority is supported only by terrors, sudden and private executions and imprisonments, and not, as with happy Britons, by the judgment, in cases of liberty and property, of the peers and neighbours of men accused or prosecuted. This absolute power in one

person as it is generally exercised is not indeed government, but at best clandestine tyranny, supported by the confederates, or rather favourite slaves, of the tyrant.

I was glad to find this natural sense of power confirmed in me by very great and good men, who have made government, and the principles on which it is founded, their professed study and meditation.

A very celebrated author has these words :

"The case of man's nature standing as it does, some kind of regiment the law of nature doth require; yet the kinds thereof being many, nature tieth not to any one, but leaveth the choice as a thing arbitrary. At the first, when some certain kind of regiment was once approved, it may be that nothing was then further thought upon for the manner of governing, but all permitted unto their

wisdom and discretion which were to rule, till by experience they found this for all parts very inconvenient, so as the thing which they had devised for a remedy did indeed but increase the sore which it should have cured. They saw that to live by one man's will became the cause of all men's misery. This constrained them to come unto laws, wherein all men might see their duties beforehand, and know the penalties of transgressing them. Men always knew that when force and injury was offered, they might be defenders of themselves; they knew that, howsoever men might seek their own commodity, yet if this were done with injury to others it was not to be suffered, but by all men and by all good means to be withstood.

"Finally, they knew that no man might in reason take upon him to determine his own right, and according to his own determination proceed in maintenance thereof, inasmuch as every man is towards himself, and them whom he greatly affecteth, partial; and therefore that strifes and troubles would be endless, except they have their common consent all to be ordered by some whom they should agree upon."

Mr Stanhope, in defence of resistance in cases of extreme necessity, cites this memorable passage from Grotius:

"If the king hath one part of the supreme power, and the other part is in the senate or people, when

such a king shall invade that part that doth not belong to him, it shall be lawful to oppose a just force to him, because his power does not extend so far; which position I hold to be true, even though the power of making war should be vested only in the king, which must be understood to relate only to foreign war; for, as for home, it is impossible for any to have a share of the supreme power and not to have likewise a right to defend that share."

An eminent divine, who deserves all honour for the obligations he has laid upon both Church and State by his writings on the subject of government, argues against unlimited power thus:

"The question is, whether the power of the civil magistrate be unlimited-that is, in other words, whether the nature of his office require it to be so. But what? Is it the end of that office that one particular person may do what he pleaseth without restraint, or that society should be made happy and secure? Who will say the former? And if the latter be the true end of it, a less power than absolute will answer it-nay, an absolute power is a power to destroy that end, and therefore inconsistent with the end itself."

These passages I thought fit to produce by way of preface to the following discourse, as carrying in them the reason and foundation of government itself and in maintenance of what passed at the Revolution.