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industry, skill, experience, and valour. In like manner, he only can, according to the rules of nature, be advanced to the dignities of the world, who excels in the virtues required for the performance of the duties annexed to them; for he only can answer the end of his institution.

ALGERNON SIDNEY..

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 were 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.

IBID.

NATIONS are left to the use of their own judgment, in making provision for their own welfare: there is no lawful magistrate over any of them, but such as they have set up; in creating them, they do not seek the advantage of their magistrate, but their own; and having found

that an absolute power over a people is a burden which no man can bear, and that no wise or good man ever desired it; we may from thence conclude, that it is not good for any to have it, nor just for any to affect it, though it were personally good for himself; because he is not exalted to seek his own good, but that of the public.

ALGERNON SIDNEY.

THESE rights, in several nations and ages, have been variously executed, in the establishment of monarchies, aristocracies, democracies, or mixed governments, according to the variety of circumstances; and the governments have been good or evil, according to the rectitude or pravity of their institution, and the virtue and wisdom, or the folly and vices of those to whom the power was committed: but the end which was ever proposed, being the good of the public, they only performed their duty, who procured it, according to the laws of the society, which were equally valid as to their magistrates, whether they were few or many.

IBID.

ALL Israel was, by the command of God, assembled at Mispeth, to choose a king, and did choose Saul: he being slain, all Judah came to Hebron, and made David their king; after the death of Ishbosheth, all the tribes went to Hebron, and anointed him king over them, and he made

a covenant with them before the Lord. When Solomon was dead, all Israel met together in Shechem, and ten tribes disliking the proceedings of Rehoboam, rejected him, and made Jeroboam their king. The same people, in the time of the judges, had general assemblies, as often as occasion did require, to set up a judge, make war, or the like, and the several tribes had their assemblies to treat of businesses relating to themselves. histories of all nations, especially of those that have peopled the best parts of Europe, are so full of examples in this kind, that no man can question them, unless he be brutally ignorant, or maliciously contentious.

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ALGERNON SIDNEY.

WHY may not a people meet to choose a prince as well as any other magistrate? Why might not the Athenians, Romans, or Carthaginians, have chosen princes, as well as archons, consuls, dictators, or suffetes, if it had pleased them? Who chose all the Roman kings, except Tarquin the Proud, if the people did not; since their histories testify that he was the first, who took upon him to reign sine jussa populi? Who ever heard of a king of the Goths in Spain, that was not chosen by the nobility and people? Or how could they choose him, if they did not meet in their persons, or by their deputies, which is the same thing when a people has agreed it should be so? How did the kings of Sweden come by

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their power, unless by the like election, till the crown was made hereditary, in the time of Gustavus I. as a reward of his virtue and service, in delivering that country from the tyranny of the Danes? How did Charles Gustavus come to be king, unless it was by the election of the nobility? He acknowledged, by the act of his election, and upon all occasions, that he had no other right to the crown than what they had conferred on him. Did not the like custom prevail in Hungary and Bohemia, till those countries fell under the power of the house of Austria? and in Denmark, till the year 1660? Does not the style of the oath of allegiance, used in the kingdom of Arragon, as it is related by Antonio Perez, secretary of state to Philip II. shew that their kings were of their own making? Could they say,* “ We, who are as good as you, make you our king, on condition that you keep and “ observe our privileges and liberties; and if not, "not," if he did not come in by their election? Were not the Roman emperors, in disorderly times, chosen by the soldiers; and, in such as were more regular, by the senate, with the consent of the people?

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ALGERNON SIDNEY.

THE opinions of Hooker, That all public regimen of what kind so ever, ariseth from the deli

Nos que valemos tanto come vos, os hazemos nuestro rey, con tal que, nos guardeys nuestros fueros y libertades, y sino, Relacion de Ant. Perez.

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berate advice of men seeking their own good, and that all other is mere tyranny, are real truths, grounded upon the laws of God and nature, acknowledged and practised by mankind. And no nation being justly subject to any, but such as they set up, nor in any other manner than according to such laws as they ordain, the right of choosing and making those that are to govern them, must wholly depend upon their will.

ALGERNON SIDNEY.

PLATO, Aristotle, Hooker, and (I may say in short) all wise men have held, that order required that the wisest, best, and most valiant men should be placed in the offices where wisdom, virtue, and valour, are requisite. If common sense did not teach us this, we might learn it from the Scripture. When God gave the conduct of his people to Moses, Joshua, Samuel, and others, he endowed them with all the virtues and graces that were required for the right performance of their duty. When the Israelites were oppressed by the Midianites, Philistines, and Ammonites, they expected help from the most wise and valiant. When Hannibal was at the gates of Rome, and had filled Italy with fire and blood; or when the Gauls overwhelmed that country with their multitudes and fury, the senate and people of Rome, put themselves under the conduct of Camillus, Manlius, Fabius, Scipio, and the like;

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