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The Great Books Reading Group

Many people are interested in the so-called “Great Books” of Western civilization. The founder of Liberty Fund, Pierre Goodrich, was involved in the University of Chicago Great Books Program in the 1950s and drew up his own list of important authors. The names of these authors are inscribed on the limestone walls of the Goodrich Seminar Room in the Lilly Library at Wabash College, Crawfordsville, Indiana. We have a virtual representation of this here at the OLL.

Some colleges teach courses based upon a “Great Books” approach and other individuals are interested in reading some of these works on their own. This reading list has been drawn up with these people in mind and it contains a selection of 10 key books taken from the “North Wall” of the Goodrich Seminar Room covering the period 900-1800 A.D.

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  1: 1. Rhazes, The Spiritual Physic

  Rhazes (ca. 865-923/32), a renowned alchemist, physician, and Muslim philosopher, lived and worked when the Abbasid Empire was at its height. During this era the empire was the focal point of learning in the known world, and Rhazes was the beneficiary of rulers committed to supporting science and medicine. Along with the Muslim intellectuals Averroes and Avicenna, Rhazes had a great influence on the West during the Middle Ages. Rhazes was well known in Europe, and Chaucer referred to him as one of the fifteen great sources of knowledge. Rhazes’ influence stemmed chiefly from his medical works, which were important source books for Western physicians until the rise of modern medicine in the nineteenth century. Rhazes’ most acclaimed work on human psychology and spirituality is The Spiritual Physic.

  See the entry about Rhazes in the Goodrich Seminar Room.

  Rhazes, The Spiritual Physic of Rhazes, trans. Arthur J. Arberry (London: John Murray, 1950).

  Accessed from oll.libertyfund.org/title/1791 on 2007-12-03

  The text is in the public domain.

  ---

  First Edition . . 1950

  Made and Printed in Great Britain by Butler & Tanner Ltd., Frome and London

  EDITORIAL NOTE

  The object of the editor of this series is a very definite one. He desires above all things that, in their humble way, these books shall be the ambassadors of good-will and understanding between East and West, the old world of Thought, and the new of Action. He is confident that a deeper knowledge of the great ideals and lofty philosophy of Oriental thought may help to a revival of that true spirit of Charity which neither despises nor fears the nations of another creed and colour.

  J. L. CRANMER-BYNG.

  • 50, Albemarle Street,
  • London, W.1.

  INTRODUCTION

  Rhazes, “undoubtedly the greatest physician of the Islamic world and one of the great physicians of all time”,1 was born at Raiy, near modern Teheran, in 864, and died there in 925. As is the case with many of the most famous Arab scholars and writers, comparatively little authentic is known of the details of his life; for the Arabs of old were curiously incurious about the private affairs of their great men of learning, it being sufficient for them to know that they had composed valuable books and carried forward the frontiers of science and letters. Rhazes (this is the latinized form of his name, which was in full Abū Bakr Muhammad ibn Zakarīyā al-Rāzī) is said to have come to the study of medicine somewhat late in life; according to most authorities, he devoted his earlier years to alchemy, mathematics, philosophy and literature. One biographer relates that “in his youth, he played on the lute and cultivated vocal music, but, on reaching the age of manhood, he renounced these occupations, saying that music proceeding from between mustachoes and a beard had no charms to recommend it”.2

  Whenever it was that he turned his mind to more serious things—a respectable authority puts this event in the thirties of Rhazes’ life3 —certainly Baghdad was the city where he learned his medicine. By this time, the capital of the Abbasid Empire had firmly established itself as the leading centre of learning in the known world. Successive rulers, from al-Mansūr (754–75) and Hārūn al-Rashīd (d. 809) to al-Ma’mūn (813–33), had liberally endowed institutes for the study of the ancient Greek sciences; the writings of Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, Hippocrates, Galen, Euclid, Oribasius, Paul of Aegina and many other philosophers, mathematicians and physicians were translated into Arabic, chiefly by the Christian Hunain ibn Ishāq (809–77) and his school. The family of Bukht-Yishū‘, likewise Christians, enjoyed the confidence of their Muslim masters because of their supreme skill in medicine and surgery. When Rhazes came to Baghdad he would have found there fully-equipped hospitals, well-stocked libraries, and a sound tradition of teaching and research. It is said that he studied there under a pupil of the great Hunain who was acquainted with Greek, Persian and Indian medicine1 ; some give the name of ‘Alī ibn Rabban al-Tabarī as his teacher, the author of a celebrated book entitled The Paradise of Wisdom,2 but this is impossible because al-Tabarī was dead before Rhazes came to Baghdad.

  Rhazes presently returned to his birthplace in order to enter the service of the local ruler, and having already achieved a wide reputation as a physician he was given charge of the new hospital there. Later he went back to Baghdad, and directed a great hospital in the capital.3 Thereafter he is stated to have travelled extensively and enjoyed the patronage of a number of royal masters. He composed a very great number of books, especially on medicine; his most celebrated works being the Kitāb al-Mansūrī, dedicated to and named after Abū Sālih al-Mansūr ibn Ishāq ibn Ahmad ibn Nūh, prince of Kirman and Khurasan,1 the Kitāb al-Mulūkī, written in honour of ‘Alī ibn Wēh-Sūdhān of Tabaristan, and the Hāwī, a gigantic encyclopaedia which was unfinished at Rhazes’ death and was edited by his pupils, it is said at the instance of Ibn al-‘Amīd (d. 970), the vizier of the Buyid ruler Rukn al-Daula, who recovered the notebooks containing the rough draft from Rhazes’ sister.2

  Many anecdotes are related to illustrate Rhazes’ pre-eminence as a physician. Of these, one is chosen for reproduction here; not that one can have absolute confidence in its authenticity—for its chronology raises difficulties—but nevertheless it gives an attractive and probably accurate picture of the character of the great sage, and of his royal patrons.

  Another of the House of Sāmān, Amīr Mansūr b. Nūh b. Nasr, became afflicted with an ailment which grew chronic, and remained established, and the physicians were unable to cure it. So the Amīr Mansūr sent messengers to summon Muhammad b. Zakariyyā of Ray to treat him. Muhammad b. Zakariyyā came as far as the Oxus, but when he saw it he said: “I will not embark in the boat; God Most High saith, Do not cast yourselves into peril with your own hands; and, again, it is surely a thing remote from wisdom voluntarily to place one’s self in so hazardous a position.” Ere the Amīr’s messenger had gone to Bukhara and returned, he had composed a treatise entitled Mansūrī. So when a notable arrived with a special led-horse, bringing a message intermingled with promises of reward, he handed this Mansūrī to him, saying: “I am this book, and by this book thou canst attain thine object, so that there is no need of me.”

  When the book reached the Amīr he was in grievous suffering wherefore he sent a thousand dinars and one of his own private horses, saying: “Strive to move him by all these kind attentions, but, if they prove fruitless, bind his hands and feet, place him in the boat, and fetch him across.” So, just as the Amīr had commanded, they urgently entreated Muhammad b. Zakariyyā, but to no purpose. Then they bound his hands and feet, placed him in the boat, and, when they had ferried him across the river, released him. Then they brought the led-horse, fully caparisoned, before him, and he mounted in the best of humours, and set out for Bukhara. And when they enquired of him, saying, “We feared to bring thee across the water lest thou shouldst cherish enmity against us, but thou didst not so, nor do we see thee vexed in heart,” he replied: “I know that every year several thousand persons cross the Oxus without being drowned, and that I too should probably not be drowned; still, it was possible that I might perish, and if this had happened they would have continued till the Resurrection to say, A foolish fellow was Muhammad b. Zakariyyā, in that, of his own free will, he embarked in a boat and so was drowned. But when they bound me, I escaped all danger of censure; for then they would say, They bound the poor fellow’s hands and feet, so that he was drowned. Thus should I have been excused, not blamed, in case of my being drowned.”

  When they reached Bukhara, he saw the Amīr and began to treat him, exerting his powers to the utmost, but without relief to the patient. One day he came in before the Amīr and said: “To-morrow I am going to try another method of treatment, but for the carrying out of it you will have to sacrifice such-and-such a horse and such-and-such a mule,” the two being both animals of note, so that in one night they had gone forty parasangs.

  So next day he took the Amīr to the hot bath of Jū-yi-Mūliyān, outside the palace, leaving that horse and mule ready equipped and tightly girt in the charge of his own servant; while of the King’s retinue and attendants he suffered not one to enter the bath. Then he brought the King into the middle of the hot bath, and poured over him warm water, after which he prepared a draught and gave it to him to drink. And he kept him there till such time as the humours in his joints were matured.

  Then he himself went out and put on his clothes, and, taking a knife in his hand, came in, and stood for a while reviling the King saying: “Thou didst order me to be bound and cast into the boat, and didst conspire against my life. If I do not destroy thee as a punishment for this, I am not Muhammad b. Zakariyyā.”

  The Amīr was furious, sprang from his place, and, partly from anger, partly from fear of the knife and dread of death, rose to his feet. When Muhammad b. Zakariyyā saw the Amīr on his feet he turned round and went out from the bath, and he and his servant mounted, the one the horse, the other the mule, and turned their faces towards the Oxus. At the time of the second prayer they crossed the river, and halted nowhere till they reached Merv. When Muhammad b. Zakariyyā reached Merv, he alighted, and wrote a letter to the Amīr, saying: “May the life of the King be prolonged in health of body and effective command! According to agreement this servant treated his master, doing all that was possible. There was, however, an extreme weakness in the natural caloric, and the treatment of the disease by ordinary means would have been a protracted affair. I therefore abandoned it, and carried you to the hot bath for psychical treatment, and administered a draught, and left you so long as to bring about a maturity of the humours. Then I angered the King, so that an increase in the natural caloric was produced, and it gained strength until those humours, already softened, were dissolved. But henceforth it is not expedient that a meeting should take place between myself and the King.”

  Now after the Amīr had risen to his feet and Muhammad b. Zakariyyā had gone out, the Amīr sat down and at once fainted. When he came to himself he went forth from the bath and called to his servants, saying, “Where has the physician gone?” They answered, “He came out from the bath, and mounted the horse, while his attendant mounted the mule, and went off.”

  Then the Amīr knew what object he had in view. So he came forth on his own feet from the hot bath; and tidings of this ran through the city, and his servants and retainers and people rejoiced greatly, and gave alms, and offered sacrifices, and held high festival. But they could not find the physician, seek him as they might. And on the seventh day Muhammad b. Zakariyyā’s servant arrived, riding the horse and leading the mule, and presented the letter. The Amīr read it, and was astonished, and excused him, and sent him a horse, and a robe of honour, and equipment, and a cloak, and arms, and a turban, and a male slave, and a handmaiden; and further commanded that there should be assigned to him in Ray from the settled estates a yearly allowance of two thousand dinars and two hundred ass-loads of corn. These marks of honour he forwarded to him by the hand of a trusty messenger, together with his apologies. So the Amīr completely regained his health, and Muhammad b. Zakariyyā attained his object.1

  It would be attractive to conjecture that the Spiritual Physick, which was certainly composed for the same ruler as the Mansūrī, was written as a result of this encounter, to explain in greater detail the scientific principles underlying the psychological treatment which Rhazes had adopted with such complete success.

  All our sources agree that in his later years Rhazes was smitten by cataract, and became quite blind. When he was urged to submit to cupping, he is said to have replied, “No, I have seen the world so long that I am tired of it.”2 Confirmatory evidence of his failing sight is furnished by Rhazes’ autobiography, to which reference will presently be made. The spirit in which he faced death is illustrated by some verses he is reported to have composed in his old age.3

  • Truly I know not—and decay
  • Hath laid his hand upon my heart,
  • And whispered to me that the day
  • Approaches, when I must depart—
  • I know not whither I shall roam,
  • Or where the spirit, having sped
  • From this its wasted fleshly home,
  • Will after dwell, when I am dead.

  Rhazes is described as a man with a “great, scaly head”, generous and gracious in his dealings with others, and most compassionate towards the poor, whom he treated free of charge and even maintained out of his own purse. His lectures were thronged by students, and arranged in such a fashion that several junior and senior lecturers dealt with any inquiries which they were competent to answer, only referring to him matters which passed their range of knowledge.1

  The foregoing is the sum of what we are told about Rhazes by Arab and Persian biographers, apart from monumental lists of the titles of his books. A fortunate chance has preserved for us a little tract in which he set about in his later days to justify the manner of life he had lived, and the direction of his studies; and from these pages we are able to reconstruct a far clearer image of the man than anything these unsatisfying sources can supply.2

  Rhazes’ medical writings were highly prized in the Middle Ages, alike by Muslims, Jews and Christians, and were accepted as the basis for modern research. His Hāwī was translated into Latin under the title Continens by the Sicilian Jew Faraj ibn Sālim (Farragut) in 1279; the gigantic version was printed in its entirety five times between 1488 and 1542. The Kitāb al-Mansūrī (“Liber Almansoris”, the companion of the present work) and Kitāb al-Mulūkī (“Liber Regius”) were also published in Latin and cherished by medieval physicians as among their most precious works of reference. His monograph On Smallpox and Measles was printed in various translations some forty times between 1498 and 1866, and has been praised by modern doctors for its clinical accuracy.1 With the possible exception of Avicenna and Averroes, whose influence was in any case philosophical rather than scientific, no man so powerfully affected the course of learning in the Middle Ages and the early Renaissance as Rhazes. It is scarcely surprising that Chaucer’s Doctor of Physic should have included him in his impressive list of authorities.

  • Well know he the old Esculapius,
  • And Dioscorides, and eke Rufus;
  • Old Hippocras, Hali, and Gallien;
  • Serapion, Rasis, and Avicen;
  • Averrois, Damascene, and Constantin;
  • Bernard, and Gatisden, and Gilbertin.

  His philosophical writings were never so widely known, chiefly because they were condemned as heretical by almost all Muslim opinion. Even the illustrious Abū Raihān al-Bīrūnī, the historian of India and broad-minded investigator of Indian philosophy and religion, added his voice to the general chorus of disapproval. Though he wrote a catalogue of Rhazes’ works extant in his day, amounting to 184 items, and confessed that in his youth he was carried away by his enthusiasm for study to the point of reading Rhazes’ Metaphysica, he roundly condemned him for dabbling in freethought, and even spoke of his blindness as a Divine retribution.1 Ibn Hazm, who composed a massive work on sects and heresies, singled out Rhazes for particular rejection.2 So much for the orthodox; even the Ismailis, renegades that they were, disowned his philosophical teaching, and Nāsir-i Khusrau the poet3 and Hamīd al-Dīn al-Kirmānī the theologian4 applied themselves energetically to refuting him. Orthodox and unorthodox were alike shocked most of all by Rhazes’ book On Prophecy—which, needless to say, has not survived—in which he seems to have maintained the thesis that reason is superior to inspiration, a view naturally intolerable to any devout Muslim.

  The Spiritual Physick, which is here offered in the first translation to be made into any language, belongs rather to the realm of popular ethics than to that of high philosophy; yet it enables us to obtain a clear view of the background of Rhazes’ thought, and even to glimpse those dangerous propositions which brought down on his head the execrations of the faithful. The book is preserved in several manuscripts, and was first studied in modern times by the Dutch orientalist De Boer.5 The editio princeps was published in 1939 by the late Paul Kraus,6 a most able and promising scholar, a victim of Nazi persecution, who committed suicide at Cairo during the recent war. His premature death was a severe blow to learning: the present translation is put out as a small tribute to his memory.

  Rhazes, as the list of his writings suggests, and the Spiritual Physick and Autobiography (among other works) amply prove, was thoroughly at home with the books of the Greek philosophers and physicians. He wrote for instance a commentary on Plato’s Timaeus,1 an epitome of Aristotle’s writings on logic,2 a refutation of Porphyry,3 and epitomes of Hippocrates’ Aphorisms4 and of the medical works of Galen and Plutarch.5 He was familiar besides with Oribasius, Aetius and Paul of Aegina, and was unquestionably well grounded in the entire canon of Greek works translated by Hunain ibn Ishāq and his school. His studies of Arabic literature are attested not only by the admirable fluency and eloquence with which he uses the language, but also by the apt poetical quotations which flavour his discourse; the present book contains an anecdote which proves his familiarity with the mentality and technical vocabulary of the Arab grammarians. He writes like a master, and his style has the unmistakable ring of a man confident in the supremacy of his own reason and erudition. His spirit of rational inquiry is entirely Greek; his Persian blood is proved by his fondness for anecdote, besides innumerable little nuances of thought and expression. His attitude of tolerant agnosticism anticipates the more celebrated outlook of another Persian scientist who in modern times has achieved universal fame and popularity—Omar Khayyám.

  In the Autobiography Rhazes rejects the “early life” of Socrates—the inaccurate legend that he refused all pleasures, eschewed all human intercourse, and lived in a barrel in the wilderness—but approves of his “later life” when he is said to have married, begat children, and even taken up arms against the enemy. In that essay, as in the Spiritual Physick, he revolts against the unreasonable austerities of monks and anchorites, and takes the view that God is far too compassionate to impose upon human beings burdens heavier than they can bear. Regarding the immortality of the soul he appears to reserve judgment, though he quotes freely Plato’s opinion and outlines the psychological analysis of the Timaeus. His theory of pleasure—that it consists of a return to the state of nature—is based on the Philebus. When he writes on the fear of death, we seem to catch many echoes of the Epicurean teaching which Lucretius immortalized in a famous passage of the De Natura Rerum. Rhazes’ general attitude might be summed up as one of intellectual hedonism; though its origins in classical philosophy are obvious, it reflects very characteristically the outlook of the cultured Persian gentleman, constantly down the ages informing Iranian thought and life.

  The Spiritual Physick appears therefore as the product of a curiously perfect blend of two civilizations, expressed in the language of a third; an admirable synthesis of science and metaphysics, shaped in the mind of a master physician and given verbal form by a master of language. It is scarcely an exaggeration to say that the book is unique in Arabic literature. The author hardly betrays himself as a Muslim, though his name Muhammad proves him so to have been; otherwise he would have done as all other Arabs did who wrote on ethics, elaborating his discourse with quotations from the Koran and the sayings of the Prophet, and only introducing the views of Greek thinkers where they appeared to accord with sound Islamic teaching. Avicenna was much more orthodox; he even wrote commentaries on parts of the Koran.

  Rhazes’ God is a very rational and reasonable God, a God, we might almost say, with a sense of humour, an eminently Persian God. When we lay down this book, we feel that we have been in the presence of a man who knew no vain fear because he had analysed fear out of his mind; a man who knew no vain hope because he knew that the laws of nature were as beneficent as they were immutable; a man indifferent to fame and wealth because he was intellectually persuaded of their worthlessness; a man whose counsel is a sure guide through the baffling perplexities that are the inevitable accompaniment of human life, a sage and reasonable comfort under the dark shadows of extreme affliction and death.

  To conclude these prefatory remarks, we here append some passages drawn from Rhazes’ defence of the philosophic life, so that we may leave the reader with the voice of the author himself speaking. He begins the Autobiography by stating the charge that unnamed critics had brought against him.

  Certain men of a speculative turn, discriminating and of undoubted attainments, having observed that we consort with our fellows and engage in various manners of earning a livelihood, reproach us on this account, finding it to be detrimental in us and asserting that we are swerving aside from the philosophic life.

  The criticism is particularly levelled at his alleged failure to live up to the ideals of Socrates, his confessed master, who is pictured as living a life of utmost rigour; at the same time Socrates himself is criticized—according to this legend—for conduct contrary to the laws of nature and liable to lead to the extinction of the human race and the desolation of the world. Rhazes agrees with the objection that is raised to Socrates’ “earlier life”, but makes it clear that he differs from his master “only quantitively, not qualitatively”; he is in full agreement with the view that life should be lived in a disciplined manner, but cannot accept the doctrine of extreme self-abnegation. He argues the proposition that pleasure is not to be indulged when it is irrational in its appeal, much along the same lines as in the Spiritual Physick. Then he turns to the problem of pain.

  Since we have laid it down as the foundation of our case that our Lord and Ruler is kindly and compassionate towards us and regards us with loving care, it follows from this that He hates that any pain should befall us; it also follows that whatever happens to us not of our own earning and choosing but due to some necessity of nature, is to be regarded as inevitable. It therefore behoves us not to pain any sentient creature whatsoever, unless it deserves to be pained, or unless it be to avert from it still greater pain.

  Rhazes follows up the implications of this conclusion by condemning blood sports except when practised against carnivorous beasts such as lions, tigers and wolves; at the same time he urges the annihilation of snakes, scorpions and other noisome creatures that have no discoverable beneficial use or property. From the animal kingdom he turns back to man.

  Since it is prohibited by the verdict of reason and justice alike for any man to inflict pain upon another, it follows from this that he should not inflict pain upon himself either. Many things come under this general observation as being rejected by the arbitrament of reason—for instance, the Indian way of propitiating God by burning the body and casting it down upon sharp spikes, or the Manichean practice of self-mutilation to overcome the sexual urge, excessive fasting, and defiling oneself by washing in urine. The same heading also includes—though at a much lower level—the monasticism and hermit-life taken up by some Christians, and the fashion followed by many Muslims of spending their whole time at mosque, declining to earn their living, and contenting themselves with little and unappetizing food and rough, uncomfortable clothes.

  The practice of austerity is obviously easier for those not accustomed to luxury from birth than for the children of rich parents; the latter cannot be required to compete with the former in this respect on a basis of equality.

  But the boundary which cannot be transgressed is that they should refrain from such pleasures as may not be attained save by perpetrating cruelty and murder—in short, all those things that provoke the wrath of God and are forbidden by the verdict of reason and justice.

  This is what Rhazes calls the “upper limit” of discipline which he holds to be obligatory for all men to respect; to keep above the “lower limit” is equally important.

  This means that a man should eat such food as will not harm him or make him ill, while not exceeding this to partake of such delicious and appetising dishes as are desired for the mere gratification of pleasure and greed, and not to allay hunger; that he should wear such clothes as his skin can tolerate without discomfort, not hankering after fine and flowery raiment; and that he should seek such a dwelling-place as may shelter him from excessive heat and cold, not going beyond this to look for magnificent residences painted up in fine colours and lavishly ornamented; unless indeed he possesses such ample means that he can afford to maintain this style without injustice or aggression towards others and without exerting himself unduly to earn the wherewithal.

  Such are the two extremes within which it behoves the philosopher to confine himself.

  Since the Creator is Omniscient and All-Just, since He is absolute knowledge and justice and mercy, and since He is our Creator and Ruler and we are His creatures and subjects; whereas that servant is most beloved by his master who the most closely follows his master’s lead and example, it follows that the creature nearest to God’s favour is he who is the most knowing, the justest, the most merciful and compassionate. This indeed is what the philosophers meant when they said that the purpose of philosophy was “to make oneself like to God, to the greatest extent possible to man.”1 That is the sum total of the philosophic life.

  Rhazes refers his readers to the Spiritual Physick for a detailed explanation of his argument; then he concludes his defence as follows.

  Now that we have explained what we desired to set forth in this place, we will go back to set out what we have to say in reply to our critics; declaring that by God’s help and assistance we have up to this very day in no way conducted ourselves in a manner meriting our expulsion from the title of philosopher. For only those men deserve to have their names expunged from the roll of philosophy who have fallen short in both branches of philosophy—the theoretical and the practical—together, either through ignorance of what a philosopher should know, or out of failure to conduct their lives as a philosopher ought. We, God be praised and thanked for His assistance and guidance, are innocent of such failure.

  To take theory: if we possessed only so much strength of knowledge as was necessary to compose this present book, that alone would suffice to prevent our name from being expunged from the roll of philosophy; not to mention our other writings [Rhazes here adds a considerable list of titles] which amount in all to approximately two hundred items, reckoning in books, pamphlets and essays, down to the time of making this present pamphlet; writings which cover all branches of philosophy, physical and metaphysical alike. As for mathematics, I freely concede that I have only looked into this subject to the extent that was absolutely indispensable, not wasting my time upon refinements; of set purpose, not out of incapacity for the study. If any man wishes to have my excuse on this head, I make bold to assert that the right course is in fact that which I have followed, not the one adopted by some so-called philosophers who fritter away their whole lives indulging in geometrical superfluities. If therefore the amount of knowledge I possess is not sufficient for me to deserve the name of philosopher, I should very much like to know who of my contemporaries is so qualified.

  Now as to the practical side: by God’s help and succour I have never in all my life transgressed the twain limits which I have defined, nor have I committed any act so far as I am aware that would justify my conduct being called unphilosophical. I have never kept the ruler’s company in the way of bearing arms or undertaking the control of affairs; my service has been confined to that of a physician and a courtier charged with two responsibilities—to treat and restore him when he was sick, and when he was well to win his confidence and offer him counsel; and in counselling him, let God be my witness, I have only advised such actions as I hoped would prove beneficial both to him and to his subjects. I have never been observed to be greedy to amass wealth, or to be extravagant in spending it; I have not been forward to quarrel and dispute with my fellows, or to oppress them—on the contrary, it is well known that I have always acted in the very opposite manner, to the point of sacrificing many of my own rights for the sake of others.

  As for my habits of eating and drinking, and my amusements, those who have observed me frequently will be aware that I have never been guilty of excess or extravagance in these, any more than in regard to my clothes, my mount, my servants and handmaidens.

  My love and passion for knowledge, and my labours to acquire the same, are familiar to all who have kept my company or seen me at my studies; from my youth up to this very time, I have not ceased to devote myself to this object. If ever I have come upon a book I have not read, or heard tell of a man I have not met, I have not turned aside to any engagement whatever—even though it has been to my great loss—before mastering that book or learning all that man knew. So great in fact have been my endeavours and endurance, that in a single year I have written as many as 20,000 pages in a script as minute as that used for amulets. I was engaged fifteen years upon my great compendium, working night and day, until my sight began to fail and the nerves of my hand were paralysed, so that at the present time I am prevented from reading and writing; even so I do not give up these occupations so far as I am able, but always enlist the help of someone to read and write for me.

  If the amount of my accomplishments in all these matters is still regarded by my critics as disqualifying me from occupying the rank of a philosopher in practice, and if their conception of the purpose of following the philosophic life is other than what we have described, let them state their charge against us, either verbally or in writing. Then, if they can prove superior knowledge, we will accept their verdict; on the other hand, if we can establish any error or weakness in their case, we will refute it. Or let me be lenient with them; let me acknowledge that I have been wanting on the practical side; yet what have they to say on the side of theory? If they find me deficient in this respect too, they only have to state their case and we will examine it; if they are right, we will submit, and if they are wrong, we will reject their charge. But if they do not hold me inadequate on the theoretical side, the best they can do is to profit of my theory, and pay no heed to my personal conduct, remembering what the poet has said:

  • Practise what I have preached; and if there be
  • In what I practised some deficiency,
  • Yet thou canst profit of my theory,
  • And my shortcomings will not injure thee.

  PREFACE

  God give the Prince perfect happiness and complete bliss.—Mention having been made in the presence of the Prince (God give him long life!) of a treatise I compiled upon the reformation of the character, that had been required of me by certain of my brethren in Baghdad during my sojourn there, my Lord the Prince (may God assist him!) commanded me to compose a book that should contain the chief points of this subject, to be as brief and concise as possible, and to entitle it the Spiritual Physick; that it might be a companion to the Liber Almansoris1 (whose purpose is the Bodily Physick) and correspond therewith; for he estimated (God prolong his power!) that if it were joined to the other, general profit would be the result, as comprehending both the soul and the flesh.

  I therefore applied myself to this task, and promoted it before all my other occupations; and I pray that God may so assist me, that I shall please my Lord the Prince and win his favour and approval. I have divided this book into twenty chapters, as follows:

  (1) Of the Excellence and Praise of Reason.

  (2) Of Suppressing and Restraining the Passion, with a Summary of the Views of Plato the Philosopher.

  (3) Summary Prolegomena to the Detailed Account of Each of the Evil Dispositions of the Soul.

  (4) Of How a Man may Discover his Own Vices.

  (5) Of Repelling Carnal Love and Familiarity, with a Summary Account of Pleasure.

  (6) Of Repelling Conceit.

  (7) Of Repelling Envy.

  (8) Of Repelling Excessive and Hurtful Anger.

  (9) Of Casting Away Mendacity.

  (10) Of Casting Away Miserliness.

  (11) Of Repelling Excessive and Hurtful Anxiety and Worry.

  (12) Of Dismissing Grief.

  (13) Of Repelling Greed.

  (14) Of Repelling Habitual Drunkenness.

  (15) Of Repelling Addiction to Sexual Intercourse.

  (16) Of Repelling Excessive Fondness, Trifling, and Ritual.

  (17) Of the Amount of Earning, Acquiring, and Expending.

  (18) Of Repelling the Strife and Struggle in Quest of Worldly Rank and Station, and the Difference between the Counsel of Passion and Reason.

  (19) Of the Virtuous Life.

  (20) Of the Fear of Death.

  The discrepancy between the wording of the chapter headings as given here, and that found in the body of the text, reflects the author’s inconsistency in the original Arabic.

  CHAPTER I

  Of the Excellence and Praise of Reason

  The Creator (Exalted be His Name) gave and bestowed upon us Reason to the end that we might thereby attain and achieve every advantage, that lies within the nature of such as us to attain and achieve, in this world and the next. It is God’s greatest blessing to us, and there is nothing that surpasses it in procuring our advantage and profit. By Reason we are preferred above the irrational beasts, so that we rule over them and manage them, subjecting and controlling them in ways profitable alike to us and them. By Reason we reach all that raises us up, and sweetens and beautifies our life, and through it we obtain our purpose and desire. For by Reason we have comprehended the manufacture and use of ships, so that we have reached unto distant lands divided from us by the seas; by it we have achieved medicine with its many uses to the body, and all the other arts that yield us profit. By Reason we have comprehended matters obscure and remote, things that were secret and hidden from us; by it we have learned the shape of the earth and the sky, the dimension of the sun, moon and other stars, their distances and motions; by it we have achieved even the knowledge of the Almighty, our Creator, the most majestic of all that we have sought to reach and our most profitable attainment. In short, Reason is the thing without which our state would be the state of wild beasts, of children and lunatics; it is the thing whereby we picture our intellectual acts before they become manifest to the senses, so that we see them exactly as though we had sensed them, then we represent these pictures in our sensual acts so that they correspond exactly with what we have represented and imagined.

  Since this is its worth and place, its value and significance, it behoves us not to bring it down from its high rank or in any way to degrade it, neither to make it the governed seeing that it is the governor, or the controlled seeing that it is the controller, or the subject seeing that it is the sovereign; rather must we consult it in all matters, respecting it and relying upon it always, conducting our affairs as it dictates and bringing them to a stop when it so commands. We must not give Passion the mastery over it, for Passion is the blemish of Reason, clouding it and diverting it from its proper path and right purpose, preventing the reasonable man from finding the true guidance and the ultimate salvation of all his affairs. Nay, but we must discipline and subject our Passion, driving and compelling it to obey the every dictate of Reason. If we do thus, our Reason will become absolutely clear and will illuminate us with all its light, bringing us to the achievement of all that we desire to attain; and we shall be happy in God’s free gift and grace of it.

  CHAPTER II

  Of Suppressing and Restraining the Passion, with a Summary of the Views of Plato the Philosopher

  Now following on this we will proceed to speak about Spiritual Physick, the goal of which is the reformation of the soul’s character; and we propose to be extremely concise, going straight forward to deal with those points, principles and ideas which are the foundations of this entire object. We state that our intention in prefixing our views on Reason and Passion was because we considered this to be as it were the starting-point of our whole purpose; we shall now follow it up with a discussion of the most important and loftiest fundamentals of this matter.

  The loftiest and most important of these fundamentals, and that most helpful in reaching our object in the present book, is the suppression of passion, the opposing of natural inclinations in most circumstances, and the gradual training of the soul to that end. For this is the first point of superiority of man over the beasts—I mean the faculty of will, and the release of action after deliberation. This is because the beasts are undisciplined, and do whatever their natural inclinations dictate, acting without restraint or deliberation. You will not find that any undisciplined animal will refrain from defecating, or from seizing upon its food whenever it is there at hand and it feels the need of it, in the way you find a man leaving that on one side and compelling his inclinations to obedience at the dictate of various intellectual ideas; on the contrary, the beasts act exactly as their instincts urge, without restraint or conscious choice.

  This degree of superiority over the beasts, in the way of reining the natural impulses, belongs pretty well to the majority of men, even if it be as a result of training and education. It is general and universal, and may readily be observed on all hands, and in fact every child is accustomed to it and is brought up accordingly; the point requires no labouring. At the same time there is a great difference and a wide range of variety between the different peoples in this respect. However, to reach the highest summit of this virtue attainable by human nature is scarcely open to any but the supreme philosopher; such a man must be accounted as superior to the common run of humanity, as mankind as a whole excels the beasts in reining the natural instincts and controlling the passion. From this we realize that whosoever desires to adorn himself with this ornament, and to perfect this virtue in his soul, is upon a hard and difficult quest; he needs to acclimatize himself to controlling and opposing and wrestling with his passion. And because there is a great difference and a wide range of variety between men as regards their temperaments, the acquisition of certain virtues rather than others and the getting rid of certain vices rather than others will prove a harder or an easier task for some men rather than the rest.

  Now I will begin by mentioning how this virtue may be acquired—I mean the suppression and opposing of the passion—seeing that it is the loftiest and most important of these virtues, and its position relative to this entire purpose is similar to that of the element which immediately succeeds the origin.

  Passion and instinct are always inciting and urging and pressing us to follow after present pleasures and to choose them without reflection or deliberation upon the possible consequence, even though this may involve pain hereafter and prevent us from attaining a pleasure many times greater than that immediately experienced. This is because they, our passion and instinct, see nothing else but the actual state in which they happen to be, and only seek to get rid of the pain that hurts them at that very moment. In this way a child suffering from ophthalmia will rub its eyes and eat dates and play in the sun. It therefore behoves the intelligent man to restrain and suppress his passion and instinct, and not to let them have their way except after careful and prudent consideration of what they may bring in their train; he will represent this to himself and weigh the matter accurately, and then he will follow the course of greater advantage. This he will do, lest he should suffer pain where he supposed he would experience pleasure, and lose where he thought he would gain. If in the course of such representation and balancing he should be seized by any doubt, he will not give his appetite free play, but will continue to restrain and suppress it; for he cannot be sure that in gratifying his appetite he will not involve himself in evil consequences very many times more painful and distressing than the labour of resolutely suppressing it. Prudence clearly dictates that he should deny such a lust. Again, if the two discomforts—that of suppression, and that consequent upon gratification—seem exactly balanced, he will still continue to suppress his appetite; for the immediate bitterness is easier and simpler to taste than that which he must inevitably expect to swallow in the great majority of cases.

  Nor is this enough. He ought further to suppress his passion in many circumstances even when he foresees no disagreeable consequence of indulgence, and that in order to train and discipline his soul to endure and become accustomed to such denial (for then it will be far less difficult to do so when the consequences are bad), as much as to prevent his lusts getting control of him and dominating him. The lusts in any case have sufficient hold, in the ordinary way of nature and human disposition, without needing to be reinforced by habit as well, so that a man will find himself in a situation where he cannot resist them at all.

  You must know also that those who persistently indulge and gratify their appetites ultimately reach a stage where they no longer have any enjoyment of them, and still are unable to give them up. For instance, those who are forever having intercourse with women, or drinking, or listening to music—though these are the strongest and deepest-rooted of all the lusts—do not enjoy these indulgences so much as men who do not incessantly gratify them; for these passions become for them exactly the same as any other passion with other men—that is to say, they become commonplace and habitual. Nevertheless it is not within their power to leave off these pursuits because they have turned into something of the nature of a necessity of life for them, instead of being a luxury and a relish. They are in consequence affected adversely in their religious life as well as their mundane situation, so that they are compelled to employ all kinds of shifts, and to acquire money by risking their lives and precipitating themselves into any sort of danger. In the end they find they are miserable where they expected to be happy, that they are sorrowful where they expected to rejoice, that they are pained where they expected to experience pleasure. So what difference is there between them and the man who deliberately sets out to destroy himself? They are exactly like animals duped by the bait laid for them in the snares; when they arrive in the trap, they neither obtain what they had been duped with nor are they able to escape from what they have fallen into.

  This then will suffice as to the amount the appetites should be suppressed: they may only be indulged where it is known that the consequence will not involve a man in pain and temporal loss equivalent to the pleasure thereby obtained—much less discomfort superior to and exceeding the pleasure that is momentarily experienced. This is the view and assertion and recommendation even of those philosophers who have not considered the soul to have an independent existence, but to decay and perish with the body in which it is lodged. As for those who hold that the soul has an individual identity of its own, and that it uses the body as it would an instrument or an implement, not perishing simultaneously with it, they rise far, far beyond the mere reining of the instincts, and combating and opposing the passions. They despise and revile exceedingly those who allow themselves to be led by and who incline after their lower nature, considering them to be no better than beasts. They believe that by following and indulging their passion, by inclining after and loving their appetites, by regretting anything they may miss, and inflicting pain on animals in order to secure and satisfy their lusts, these men will experience, after the soul has left the body, pain and regret and sorrow for the evil consequences of their actions alike abundant and prolonged.

  These philosophers can put forward the very physique of man to prove that he is not equipped to occupy himself with pleasures and lusts, seeing how deficient he is in this respect compared with the irrational animals, but rather to use his powers of thought and deliberation. For a single wild beast experiences more pleasure in eating and having intercourse than a multitude of men can possibly achieve; while as for its capacity for casting care and thought aside, and enjoying life simply and wholly, that is a state of affairs no man can ever rival. This is because that is the animal’s entire be-all and end-all; we may observe that a beast at the very moment of its slaughter will still go on eating and drinking with complete absorption. They further argue that if the gratification of the appetites and the indulgence of the calls of nature had been the nobler part, man would never have been made so deficient in this respect or been more meanly endowed than the animals. The very fact that man is so deficient—in spite of his being the noblest of mortal animals—in his share of these things, whereas he possesses such an ample portion of deliberation and reflection, is enough to teach us that it is nobler to utilize and improve the reason, and not to be slave and lackey of the calls of nature.

  Moreover, they say, if the advantage lay in gratifying carnal pleasure and lust, the creature furnished by nature to that end would be nobler than that not so equipped. By such a standard the bull and the ass would be superior not only to man, but also to the immortal beings, and to God Himself, Who is without carnal pleasure and lust.

  It may be (they go on) that certain undisciplined men unused to reflect and deliberate upon such matters will not agree with us that the beasts enjoy greater pleasure than men. Those who argue thus may quote against us such an instance as that of a king who, having triumphed over an opposing foe, thenceforward sits at his amusement, and summons together and displays all his pomp and circumstance, so that he achieves the ultimate limit of what a man may reach. “What”, they ask, “is the pleasure of a beast in comparison with the pleasure of such a man? Can so great a pleasure be measured or related with any other?” Those who speak in this fashion should realize that the perfection or imperfection of such pleasures must not be judged by comparing one pleasure with another, but in relation to the need felt for such a pleasure. Consider the case of a man who requires 1,000 dinars to put his affairs in order: if he is given 999, that will not completely restore his position for him. On the other hand suppose a man needs a single dinar: his situation will be perfectly amended by obtaining that one dinar. Yet the former has been given many times more than the latter, and still his state is not completely restored. When a beast has enjoyed full satisfaction of the call of its instincts, its pleasure therein is perfect and complete; it feels no pain or hurt at missing a still greater gratification because such an idea never occurs to its mind at all. Yet in any case the beast always experiences the superior pleasure; for there is no man who can ever attain all his hopes and desires, since his soul being endowed with the faculties of reflection, deliberation, and imagination of what he yet lacks, and it being in its nature always to consider that the state enjoyed by another is bound to be superior, never under any circumstances is it free from yearning and gazing after what it does not itself possess, and from being fearful and anxious lest it lose what it has possessed; its pleasure and desire are therefore always in a state of imperfect realization. If any man should possess half the world, his soul would still wrestle with him to acquire the remainder, and would be anxious and fearful of losing hold of as much as it has already gotten; and if he possessed the entire world, nevertheless he would yearn for perpetual well-being and immortality, and his soul would gaze after the knowledge of all the mysteries of heaven and earth. One day, as I have heard tell, someone spoke in the presence of a great-souled king of the splendid and immortal joys of Paradise, whereupon the king remarked, “Such bliss seems to me wholly bitter and wearisome, when I reflect that if I were granted it, I should be in the position of one on whom a favour and a kindness had been conferred.” How could such a man ever know perfect pleasure and enjoyment of his lot? And who is there that rejoices within himself, save only the beasts and those who live like beasts? So the poet says:

  • Can any man be truly blest,
  • Save him immortally possessed
  • Of fortune, who has scarce a care
  • And never goes to bed with fear?

  This sect of philosophers soar beyond the mere reining and opposing of passion, even beyond the contempt and mortification thereof, unto a matter exceedingly sublime. They partake of a bare subsistence of food and drink; they acquire not wealth or lands or houses; and some advance so far in this opinion that they go apart from other men, and withdraw into waste places. Such are the arguments they put forward in support of their views regarding the things that are present and seen. As for their reasonings about the state of the soul after it has left the body, to speak of this would take us far beyond the scope of the present book, alike in loftiness, length and breadth: in loftiness, because this involves research into the nature of the soul, the purpose of its association with and separation from the body, and its state after it has gone out of it; in length, because each of these several branches of research requires its own interpretation and explanation, to an extent many times the discourse contained in this book; and in breadth, because the purpose of such researches is the salvation of the soul after it has left the body, though it is true that the discourse involves a major consideration of the reformation of character. Still, there will be no harm in giving a very brief account of these matters, without however involving ourselves in an argument for or against their opinions; what we have particularly in view are those ideas which we think will assist and enable us to fulfil the purpose of our present book.

  Plato, the chief and greatest of the philosophers, held that there are three souls in every man. The first he called the rational and divine soul, the second the choleric and animal, and the third the vegetative, incremental and appetitive soul. The animal and vegetative souls were created for the sake of the rational soul. The vegetative soul was made in order to feed the body, which is as it were the instrument and implement of the rational soul; for the body is not of an eternal, indissoluble substance, but its substance is fluid and soluble, and every soluble object only survives by leaving behind it something to replace that element which is dissolved. The choleric soul’s function is to be of assistance to the rational soul in suppressing the appetitive soul and in preventing it from preoccupying the rational soul with its manifold desires so that it is incapable of using its reason. If the rational soul employed its reason completely, this would mean that it would be delivered from the body in which it is enmeshed. These two souls—the vegetative and the choleric—possess in Plato’s view no special substance that survives the corruption of the body, such as that which belongs to the rational soul. On the contrary one of them, the choleric, is the entire temperament of the heart, while the other, the appetitive, is the entire temperament of the liver. As for the temperament of the brain, this he said is the first instrument and implement used by the rational soul.

  Man is fed and derives his increase and growth from the liver, his heat and pulse-movement from the heart, his sensation, voluntary movement, imagination, thought and memory from the brain. It is not the case that this is part of its peculiar property and temperament; it belongs rather to the essence dwelling within it and using it after the manner of an instrument or implement. However, it is the most intimate of all the instruments and implements associated with this agent.

  Plato taught that men should labour by means of corporeal physick (which is the well-known variety) as well as spiritual physick (which is persuasion through arguments and proofs) to equilibrate the actions of the several souls so that they may neither fail nor exceed what is desired of them. Failure in the vegetative soul consists in not supplying food, growth and increase of the quantity and quality required by the whole body; its excess is when it surpasses and transgresses that limit so that the body is furnished with an abundance beyond its needs, and plunges into all kinds of pleasures and desires. Failure in the choleric soul consists in not having the fervour, pride and courage to enable it to rein and vanquish the appetitive soul at such times as it feels desire, so as to come between it and its desires; its excess is when it is possessed of so much arrogance and love of domination that it seeks to overcome all other men and the entire animal kingdom, and has no other ambition but supremacy and domination—such a state of soul as affected Alexander the Great. Failure in the rational soul is recognized when it does not occur to it to wonder and marvel at this world of ours, to meditate upon it with interest, curiosity and a passionate desire to discover all that it contains, and above all to investigate the body in which it dwells and its form and fate after death. Truly, if a man does not wonder and marvel at our world, if he is not moved to astonishment at its form, and if his soul does not gaze after the knowledge of all that it contains, if he is not concerned or interested to discover what his state will be after death, his portion of reason is that of the beasts—nay, of bats and fishes and worthless things that never think or reflect. Excess in the rational soul is proved when a man is so swayed and overmastered by the consideration of such things as these that the appetitive soul cannot obtain the food and sleep and so forth to keep the body fit, or in sufficient quantity to maintain the temperament of the brain in a healthy state. Such a man is forever seeking and probing and striving to the utmost of his powers, supposing that he will attain and realize these matters in a shorter time than that which is absolutely necessary for their achievement. The result is that the temperament of the whole body is upset, so that he falls a prey to depression and melancholia, and he misses his entire quest through supposing that he could quickly master it.

  Plato held that the period which has been appointed for the survival of this dissoluble and corruptible body, in a state the rational soul can make use of to procure the needs of its salvation after it leaves the body—the period that is from the time a man is born until he grows old and withers—is adequate for the fulfilment of every man, even the stupidest; provided he never gives up thinking and speculating and gazing after the matters we have mentioned as proper to the rational soul, and provided he despises this body and the physical world altogether, and loathes and detests it, being aware that the sentient soul, so long as it is attached to any part of it, continues to pass through states deleterious and painful because generation and corruption are forever succeeding each other in the body; provided further that he does not hate but rather yearns to depart out of the body and to be liberated from it. He believed that when the time comes for the sentient soul to leave the body in which it is lodged, if it has acquired and believed firmly in these ideas it will pass immediately into its own world, and will not desire to be attached to any particle of the body thereafter; it will remain living and reasoning eternally, free from pain, and rejoicing in its place of abode. For life and reason belong to it of its own essence; freedom from pain will be the consequence of its removal from generation and corruption; it will rejoice in its own world and place of abiding because it has been liberated from association with the body and existence in the physical world. But if the soul leaves the body without having acquired these ideas and without having recognized the true nature of the physical world, but rather still yearning after it and eager to exist therein, it will not leave its present dwelling-place but will continue to be linked with some portion of it; it will not cease—because of the succession of generation and corruption within the body in which it is lodged—to suffer continual and reduplicated pains, and cares multitudinous and afflicting.

  Such in brief are the views of Plato, and of Socrates the Divine Hermit before him.

  Besides all this, there is neither any purely mundane view whatsoever that does not necessitate some reining of passion and appetite, or that gives them free head and rope altogether. To rein and suppress the passion is an obligation according to every opinion, in the view of every reasoning man, and according to every religion. Therefore let the reasoning man observe these ideals with the eye of his reason, and keep them before his attention and in his mind; and even if he should not achieve the highest rank and level of this order described in the present book, let him at least cling hold of the meanest level. That is the view of those who advocate the reining of the passion to the extent that will not involve mundane loss in this present life; for if he tastes some bitterness and unpleasantness at the beginning of his career through reining and suppressing his passion, this will presently be followed by a consequent sweetness and a pleasure in which he may rejoice with great joy and gladness; while the labour he endures in wrestling with his passion and suppressing his appetites will grow easier by habit, especially if this be effected gradually—by accustoming himself to the discipline and leading on his soul gently, first to deny trifling appetites and to forgo a little of its desires at the requirement of reason and judgment, and then to seek after further discipline until it becomes associated with his character and habit. In this way his appetitive soul will become submissive and will grow accustomed to being subject to his rational soul. So the process will continue to develop; and the discipline will be reinforced by the joy he has in the results yielded by this reining of his passion, and the profit he has of his judgment and reason and of controlling his affairs by them; by the praise men lavish upon him, and their evident desire to emulate his achievement.

  CHAPTER III

  Summary Prolegomena to the Detailed Account of Each of the Evil Dispositions of the Soul

  Now that we have laid level the foundations for that part of our discourse which is to follow, and have mentioned the most important principles as constituting an adequate capital and reserve on which to draw, we will proceed to describe the various evil dispositions of the soul, and the gentle means of reforming them, to serve as an analogy and an example for what we have not attempted to set forth. We shall withal endeavour to be as brief and concise as possible in speaking of these vices; for we have already established the chief cause and principal reason, from which we shall derive and on which we shall build all the divers treatments necessary for the reformation of any particular evil characteristic. Indeed, if we should not single out even one of these for special consideration, but leave them all aside without any individual mention, ample resources would be available for putting them to right by keeping in mind and holding fast to our first principle. For all these dispositions are the result of obeying the call of passion and yielding to the persuasion of the appetite: to rein and guard these twain will effectively prevent being seized and moulded by them. But in any case we intend to state as much on this subject as we consider needful and necessary to assist in fulfilling the purpose of our present book. And God be our help in this.

  CHAPTER IV

  Of How a Man may Discover his Own Vices

  Inasmuch as it is impossible for any of us to deny his passion, because of the affection he has for his own self and the approval and admiration he feels for his own actions, or to look upon his own character and way of life with the pure and single eye of reason, it can scarcely fall to any man to have a clear view of his vices and reprehensible habits. Since the knowledge of this is denied him, he will hardly depart out of any vice, seeing that he is not even aware of it; much less will he think it disgraceful and endeavour to be rid of it.

  He must therefore rely in this matter upon an intelligent man who is his frequent associate and constant companion. He will ask and implore and insist upon his informing him of whatever he knows of his vices, making him understand that in that way he will be doing what he most desires and what will have the greatest effect on him. He will tell him that he is immensely obliged and infinitely grateful to him for such a kindness. He will beg him not to be shy of him, or blandish him, and will tell him bluntly that if he is easy on him, or dilatory in informing him of anything, he will have done him an injury and deceived him, and will deserve his severe reproaches.

  When his supervisor begins to inform him, and to tell him what he sees and discovers about him, he must not exhibit any sorrow or sense of disgrace; on the contrary he must appear to rejoice at what he hears and to be eager for more. If he observes in any circumstance that his friend has concealed anything from him out of shyness, or has been too moderate in expressing his disapproval, above all if he has actually approved of his conduct, then he will reproach him and make it plain that he is very much upset by him; he will inform him that he does not like him to act in that way, and that all he desires is perfect frankness and absolute candour. If on the other hand he finds that his mentor has gone too far, and has been excessive in his disapproval and abhorrence at some act of his, he will not therefore fly into a rage; rather will he applaud him and make him see how happy and pleased he is with his conduct.

  Moreover he must renew his request to such a supervisor time and time again; for evil characteristics and habits have a way of returning after they have been expelled. He should also try to discover and be on the lookout for what his neighbours and colleagues and associates say about him; what they find to praise in him, and what to blame.

  When a man follows this course in these matters, scarcely one of his vices will be hidden from him, however insignificant and secret it may be. Then if it should happen that he falls in with an enemy or an adversary that delights in exposing his weaknesses and vices, he will not have to wait to make good his knowledge of his faults at his hand; rather he will be compelled and obliged to get rid of them betimes, if he has some regard for himself and is ambitious to be a decent and virtuous man. Galen wrote a book on this subject entitled Good Men Profit by their Enemies, in which he gave an account of the benefits he derived from having an enemy; and another treatise called How a Man May Discover his Own Vices, which we have here abstracted and epitomized. What we have set out in this chapter is amply sufficient; if any man will make use of it, he will ever be like a poised and whetted arrow.

  CHAPTER V

  Of Carnal Love and Familiarity, with a Summary Account of Pleasure

  The aforesaid men of lofty purpose and soul are far removed from this calamity by their very nature and temperament. For there is nothing more grievous to them than to be mean and humble and abject, to manifest want and need, and to endure injury and arrogance. Having reflected on what lovers must perforce suffer in these respects, they run away from love, holding themselves steadfast, and stopping their passion for love if they are ever afflicted by it. So too do those who are involved in pressing and extreme worldly or other-worldly occupations and cares. But men that are effeminate, flirtatious, idle, soft, and given over to appetite, who make pleasure their sole interest and seek only for worldly gratification, who take it to be a great loss and sorrow to lose it, and reckon what they cannot attain to be a real misery and misfortune—such men are hardly delivered from this affliction. Especially is this the case if they are much addicted to reading lovers’ tales, to the recitation of delicate, amorous poetry and to listening to sorrowful music and singing.

  Let us now speak of how to be on one’s guard against this disposition, and to be awake to its stealthy hidy-holes and lurking-places, so much as befits the object of our present book. And first we will prefix some profitable remarks which will be of help in attaining both what has gone before and what lies ahead in this book; namely, the discussion of Pleasure.

  Pleasure consists simply of the restoration of that condition which was expelled by the element of pain, while passing from one’s actual state until one returns to the state formerly experienced. An example is provided by the man who leaves a restful, shady spot to go out into the desert; there he proceeds under the summer sun until he is affected by the heat; then he returns to his former place. He continues to feel pleasure in that place, until his body returns to its original state; then he loses the sense of pleasure as his body goes back to normal. The intensity of his pleasure on coming home is in proportion to the degree of intensity of the heat, and the speed of his cooling-off in that place. Hence the philosophers have defined pleasure as a return to the state of nature.

  Now since pain and the departure from the state of nature sometimes occur little by little over a long period of time, and then the return to the state of nature happens all at once, in a brief space, under such circumstances we are not aware of the element of pain, whereas the sharpness of the sense of a return to nature is multiplied. This state we call pleasure. Those who have had no training suppose this has happened without any prior pain; they imagine it as a pure and solitary phenomenon, wholly disassociated from pain. Now this is not really the case at all; there cannot in fact be any pleasure except in proportion to a prior pain, that of departing from the state of nature. One takes pleasure in eating and drinking according to the degree to which one has hungered and thirsted; when the hungry and thirsty man returns to his original state, there is no more exquisite torture than to compel him to go on partaking of food and drink, in spite of the fact that just previously he could think of nothing more pleasurable and desirable than these. It is the same with all other pleasures: the definition is universally valid and all-embracing. Nevertheless in order to make this clear we need to discuss the question in more detail, with greater delicacy, and at fuller length than hitherto. We have in fact explained the matter in our book On the Nature of Pleasure,1 and therefore what we have mentioned here will have to suffice for our present needs.

  Most of those who incline after pleasure and follow it blindly do not know it for what it really is, and have never imagined it save in the second state—that is, the period extending from the beginning of the end of the painful reaction up to the complete return to the original state. They therefore love pleasure, and desire never under any circumstances to be without it; not realizing that this is impossible, seeing that it is a state which cannot exist and cannot be known except the original state precede it.

  Now the pleasure imagined by lovers and others possessed and infatuated by some passion—such as those in love with authority, rulership, and all other excessive objects infatuation with which dominates some men’s souls so that they desire nothing else but to achieve that, and think life worthless without it—this pleasure, I say, seems to them very great indeed and beyond all reckoning when they imagine the realization of their desire. This is because they only imagine the achievement and attaining of their quest—which is a subject very precious to their souls—without it ever occurring to their minds that their original state is so to speak the road and pathway to the attainment of the quest. If they only thought and reflected upon the hardness, roughness and difficulty of that road, upon its dangers and perils and pitfalls, what now seems to them so sweet would appear bitter, and what they make little of would seem very great, by the side of what they have to suffer and endure.

  Having given the gist of the Nature of Pleasure and made clear wherein lie the errors of those who imagine it to be pure and free of suffering and pain, we will now return to our discussion and call attention to the evil qualities of this disposition—love—and its essential baseness.

  Lovers transgress the bounds of the animals in their lack of self-control, their failure to rein their passion, and their subservience to their lusts. For they are not content merely with gratifying this lust—that is, sexual enjoyment—in spite of the fact that of all the appetites it is the foulest and the most disreputable in the view of the rational soul that is the true man. They are not content with gratifying it with any means at their disposal, but must needs enjoy it in a particular and precise situation, so that they join and pile up one lust upon another; they serve and submit to their passion over and over again, and add one slavery to another. No wild animal goes any way near to this extent in regard to this especial matter; on the contrary, the beasts gratify their urge to the amount required by nature to get rid of that sensation of suffering and pain which urges them in that direction—so much and no more; then they recover complete repose from it. Now since such men do not confine themselves to the animal degree of subservience to instinct, but even invoke the aid of the intellect—which God gave them to mark their superiority over the beasts, and in order that they might see the evil qualities of passion and therefore rein and rule it—so as to scale the most subtle and secret lusts and enjoy them to the last degree of refinement; it is therefore right and proper that they should never reach any goal or achieve any repose, but forever continue to have the discomfort of a multitude of urges, and to regret the vast amount they miss. They are never joyous and satisfied by what they have in fact attained and been able to get, because they are always turning away from these lusts and attaching their ambitions to an infinite succession of yet higher pleasures.

  Furthermore lovers, because of their obedience to passion and their preference and worship of pleasure, experience sorrow where they precisely suppose that they will rejoice, and pain where they think they will have pleasure. This is because they never reach or attain any single pleasure without being affected and controlled by a sense of anxiety and effort. It may well happen that they will continue in a state of constant anguish and unremitting agony without accomplishing any desire whatsoever. Many of them are reduced by prolonged insomnia, worry and undernourishment to a state of madness and delusion, of consumption and wasting away. Behold them then in the trap and toils of pleasure, dragged down to the most dreadful and horrid fate! See how the consequences of such “pleasure” have brought them to the extremes of misery and ruin! As for those who think they will achieve the pleasure of love completely by possessing and having power over it, they have made a palpable mistake and error. For pleasure, when it is attained, is in strict proportion to the degree of suffering and pain that stimulate and incite to such pleasure; and when a man possesses and has power over anything, the stimulus within him weakens and quietens down and comes to rest rapidly. It is a very true saying that that which is attained is soon wearied of, while that which is denied is mightily desired.

  Moreover to part from the beloved is an inescapable necessity, that is to say at death, even if one be secure from all the other mundane accidents and incidents that scatter friends and divide lovers. Since therefore there is no escape from swallowing this anguish and tasting this bitterness, to put it forward and so have rest from it is more expedient than to postpone it and wait for it to happen. For when the inevitable is put forward, one is relieved of the burden of dreading it during the period of its postponement. Besides this, it is obviously simpler and easier to deny the soul its beloved, before love becomes firmly established and dominant over the soul. Once familiarity is added to affection, it is much more difficult to break away and get free of it. For the bane of familiarity is no whit less than the bane of love; indeed, it would not be wrong to say that it is even stronger and further-reaching.

  When the duration of love is short, and the meetings with the beloved are few, it is more likely that love will not be confounded and fortified with familiarity. The judgment of reason therefore decrees on this consideration too that one should act betimes in denying the soul and reining it from love before it ever falls into love, or to wean it from love if it should succumb to it before its love becomes firmly established. This is the argument which Plato used in the case of a pupil who was afflicted by an attachment for a girl and therefore failed to be in his place in Plato’s classes. He ordered that the student should be sought and brought before him. When he appeared, he said, “Tell me, friend—do you doubt that some day you will have to part from this girl friend of yours?” “I do not doubt that,” the young man answered. “Well then,” said Plato, “let yourself taste to-day the bitterness which you must certainly swallow on that day, and make yourself rid of the intervening constant dread of anticipation—the anticipation of what must inevitably come to pass—and the difficulty of dealing with that emotion after it has taken firm hold of you and has been further reinforced by familiarity.” It is said that the pupil replied to Plato, “Wise Master, what you say is true. But I feel that my anticipation of that event will become a consolation with the passage of time, and will become lighter for me to bear.” Plato retorted, “How can you have confidence in the consolation of time, and not fear the familiarity it brings? Why are you so sure that the circumstances of parting will not come upon you before you are consoled, and yet after your love is firmly established? In that case your anguish would be heightened and your bitterness redoubled.” It is related that the youth prostrated himself before Plato in that same hour, expressing his gratitude to him with praise and blessings; he neither returned to his former state, nor exhibited any sorrow or longing, and from that time forward he continued in attendance at Plato’s classes without ever failing. It is added that after this discourse Plato turned to his other pupils and upbraided them for leaving the youth to his own devices and allowing him to devote his energies to the other branches of philosophy before he had reformed and suppressed his appetitive soul and subjected it to his rational soul.

  Now because certain silly people contend and wage war with the philosophers about this conception, using language as weak and flaccid as themselves—and they forsooth called wits and literary gentlemen—we propose to set down what they have to say on the subject and then give our own version of it.

  They say that love is a habit only of refined natures and subtle brains, and that it encourages cleanliness, elegance, spruceness and a handsome turn-out. They accompany such statements by quoting eloquent lyrics to the same effect, and fortify their argument with references to men of letters, poets, chiefs and leaders who indulged in love, even going so far as to include prophets. To this we answer that refinement of nature and mental subtlety and clarity are recognized and proven by the capacity of those so endowed to comprehend obscure, remote matters and fine, subtle sciences, to express clearly difficult and complicated ideas, and to invent useful and profitable arts. Now these things we find only in the philosophers; whereas we observe that love-making is not their habit, but the frequent and constant use of Bedouins, Kurds, Nabateans1 and such-like clodhoppers. We also discover it to be a general and universal fact that there is no nation on earth of finer intellect and more evident wisdom than the Greeks, who on the whole are less preoccupied by love than any other people.

  This proves the very opposite of what the others claim; that is to say, it proves that love is in fact the habit of gross natures and stupid minds; for those who are little given to thought, reflection and deliberation run headlong after the call of their natures and the inclination of their appetites. As for their argument about the great number of literary men, poets, chiefs and leaders who have indulged in love, to this we answer that headship and leadership, poetry and purity of speech are not the invariable and indisputable signs of perfect intelligence and wisdom. This being so, it is entirely possible that men of the kind described who have been great lovers were in reality quite deficient in intelligence and wisdom. But those who argue against us are so ignorant and silly that they suppose knowledge and wisdom to consist solely of grammar, poetry, correctness of speech and eloquence; they are quite unaware that philosophers do not count a single one of these subjects as wisdom, or those skilled in them as wise. On the contrary, their idea of a wise man is he who knows the conventions and rules of logical demonstration, and succeeds to acquire and achieve the highest degree of mathematical, physical and metaphysical knowledge that lies within human capacity.

  I remember once being present when one of these smart fellows was engaged with a shaikh of ours at Baghdad; the aforesaid shaikh, besides being a philosopher, had considerable competence in grammar, lexicography and poetry. The fellow argued with him and bandied quotations against him, jeering and sneering all the while he spoke, going to great lengths of exaggerated encomium in praise of those who practised his particular art, while he vilified all other men. The whole time the shaikh bore with him, well knowing his ignorance and conceit, the while he smiled at me. Finally the fellow exclaimed, “This is in fact what science really is; all the rest is mere wind.” Then the shaikh said, “My son, that is the science of the man who has no real knowledge; it rejoices those who are without intellect.” Turning to me, he prompted me, “Ask this lad here some questions relating to the elements of the ‘necessary’ sciences. He is one of those who think that they who are skilled in lexicography can answer any enquiry that is put to them.” I said, “Tell me about the sciences—are they necessary or conventional?” I did not complete the division on purpose; but he at once blurted out, “All the sciences are conventional.” This was because he had heard one of our companions reproaching this group on the grounds that their science was conventional, and so he wanted to criticize them in the same terms, not being aware of what they had further on this subject. Then I asked him, “Take the case of the man who knows that the moon will be eclipsed on such-and-such a night, and that scammony1 liberates the stomach when it is seized, or that litharge neutralizes the acidity of vinegar when it is pounded and thrown into it—is his knowledge of this correct only because people conventionally adopt these opinions?” “No,” he answered. “Then whence did he derive his knowledge?” I went on. Now he lacked the discrimination to see whither I was leading him; and so he said, “I say that all sciences are necessary, supposing that it was permissible to include in this category grammar.” “Very well then,” I proceeded. “Tell me about the man who knows that the simple vocative is put in the nominative whereas the compound vocative is put in the accusative1 —is his knowledge of something necessary and natural, or is it of something conventional according to the general consensus of opinion?” He stammered out something he had heard from his professors, trying to prove that this was a necessary matter; while I proceeded to show him how he had contradicted himself and how his argument fell to pieces, which reduced him to a state of shame and great confusion and dismay. Then the shaikh began to laugh at him, saying, “My son, try the taste of a science that really is a science!”

  We have only recounted this story in order that it may serve as an additional encouragement and incentive to the nobler part; for that is the sole object we have before us in this book. It is far from our intention, where we have sought to demonstrate ignorance and deficiency in the course of our present discussion, to condemn all who have concerned themselves with grammar and linguistics or have made these their occupation and study; for some of these scholars have been additionally blessed by God with an ample portion of the true sciences. Our purpose is merely to expose those ignoramuses who think that no other science exists but these two, and that these alone qualify a man to be called learned.

  It remains for us to deal with an argument about which we have not yet said anything, namely their attempt to exonerate carnal love on the grounds that even the prophets were afflicted by it. Now there is surely nobody who is prepared to allow that love-making should be accounted one of the merits or virtues of the prophets, or that it is something they particularly chose and approved; on the contrary, it is to be reckoned among their slips and peccadilloes. This being so, there are no grounds whatsoever for exonerating or embellishing or applauding or propagating love on account of the prophets. For it behoves us to incite and urge ourselves to emulate those actions of virtuous men which they found pleasing and approved in themselves and desired that others should imitate, not those slips and peccadilloes which they regretted and of which they repented, wishing they had never happened to them or been committed by them.

  As for their assertion that love encourages cleanliness, elegance, a handsome turn-out and spruceness: what is the use of a beautiful physique, when the soul is ugly? Who wants physical beauty anyway, or labours to attain it, except women and effeminates? It is recorded that a certain man invited a philosopher to his house; all its appointments were extremely fine and splendid, but the man himself was excessively ignorant and stupid and idiotic. The philosopher examined attentively everything in the house, and then spat at the man himself. When the fellow burst into a fit of anger, the philosopher said, “Do not be angry. I looked at everything in your house with the greatest care, but I saw nothing fouler or filthier than yourself; so as I thought you were very suitable for the purpose, I made you my spittoon.” It is said that thereafter the man took a humble opinion of his situation and became eager for learning and speculation.

  Since we have already mentioned before the subject of familiarity, we will now discourse a little on its nature, and how to be on one’s guard against it. Familiarity is an accident that befalls the soul as a result of long companionship, coupled with a reluctance to be parted from the person so accompanied; it too is a vast affliction that increases and augments with the passage of time, and yet is not sensed until the actual moment of parting, when it suddenly bursts forth all at once in a most painful form, exceedingly distressing to the soul. This disposition affects the beasts as well, though in some it is more marked than in others. The method of guarding against it is constantly to dispose oneself to parting from one’s companion, never forgetting this and never losing heed of it, but to train oneself gradually to practise it.

  We have now set out what is sufficient for this chapter; we will therefore proceed to speak of conceit.

  CHAPTER VI

  Of Conceit

  Because every man is in love with himself, his admiration of every fine quality he possesses is of necessity above its merits, while his disapprobation of every bad quality is correspondingly below its deserts. Whereas on the other hand his admiration of the good and disapprobation of the bad in others are exactly just, if they be free of love or hate; for then his reason is clear, and unclouded and uninfluenced by passion. It is on this account that if a man has the least virtue, it becomes enormous in his eyes and he is eager to be applauded for it above his due; and when this state of mind gets a firm hold on him it converts into conceit; especially if he find others to assist him in this by encouraging and applauding him as much as he desires.

  Now one of the calamities of conceit is that it leads to the diminution of the very thing about which a man originally became conceited; for a conceited man never seeks to increase or improve, or acquire from others, the quality about which he is conceited. A man who is conceited about his horse does not seek to exchange it for one that is still brisker, for he thinks that no horse can possibly be brisker than his; similarly a man who is conceited about his work will never try to improve it, because he thinks that it cannot be improved. And when a man ceases to desire more of anything, it inevitably diminishes and he falls away from the level of his rivals and equals; for the latter, if they be not conceited, continue to seek improvement and therefore go on improving and progressing until soon they surpass the conceited man while he finds himself left behind.

  A method of repelling conceit is to entrust the estimate of one’s bad and good qualities to another, in the manner we have described when we were discussing how a man may discover his own vices. He should not estimate or judge himself in reference to people who are mean and worthless and who have not an abundance of the quality about which he is conceited, or live in a town whose inhabitants are of this sort. If a man is on his guard in these two respects, he will find every day something occurring to him that will incline him to underestimate himself rather than to be conceited. In short, he should not begin to have a good opinion of himself until he has surpassed all his rivals in the judgment of others; nor to have a mean opinion of himself until he falls below them and those inferior to him and them in other men’s eyes. If he does this, and keeps himself straight in this way, he will be innocent of vain conceit and base meanness, and people will call him a man who knows his own worth.

  What we have mentioned is sufficient for this chapter; we will therefore proceed to speak of envy.

  CHAPTER VII

  Of Envy

  Envy is another evil disposition, springing from a combination in the soul of miserliness and greed. Those who discourse upon the reformation of character call a man malicious when he takes pleasure instinctively in injuries that befall others while resenting anything that occurs to their advantage, even though they never injured or offended him in any way. Similarly they give the name of benevolent to the man who is glad and takes pleasure in whatever occurs to the advantage and profit of others. Envy is worse than miserliness, because the miser merely does not want and does not think to give anyone anything that belongs to him or is his property; whereas the envious man does not want anyone to obtain anything good whatsoever, even though it be something he does not himself own. Envy is indeed a grievously hurtful disease of the soul.

  A method of repelling it is for the intelligent man to examine envy, for he will find that it has a large share of the stamp of malice; the envious man is stamped as resenting what happens to the advantage of those who never injured or offended him. This is one half of the definition of malice; and the malicious man deserves the hatred both of God and men—of God, because his will is diametrically opposed to God’s, seeing that God is the All-Bountiful and desires the good of all men; and of men, because he is hateful and unjust to mankind. For whoever wishes evil to befall any man whatsoever, and does not wish good to come to him, is thereby proven hateful to him; and if that man has further never injured or offended him, then he is unjust to him into the bargain. Furthermore, the person envied has never deprived the envier of any of his possessions, or prevented him from achieving anything that he might have gained, or used him in any way to his own advantage. This being so, he, the envied, is in exactly the same position as any other man who has obtained some good and realized his hopes, and whom the envier has never seen at all. How then should he not envy those living in India and China? If he does not envy them because he has never seen them, it is only necessary for him to picture them as they are, living in the lap of luxury. Now if it be folly and madness to grieve over what they have obtained, and the hopes they have realized, it is equally foolish and mad to grieve and sorrow over what those who are actually before him have obtained, since they are in the same position as those who are absent from him in the sense that they never robbed him of anything he possessed or prevented him from achieving anything he might have gained or used him in any way to their own advantage. There is not the slightest difference between those whom the envier can see and those he cannot, except the actual fact of his being able to contemplate their circumstances, the very like of which he may readily imagine in the case of those who are absent from him, and know and be quite sure that they are enjoying precisely the same advantages.

  Some men err in their definition of envy, so much so that they label as envious those who only resent good happening to people whose success involves them in some injury and trouble. Yet it is not proper to call anyone of that kind envious; rather the term ought to be applied absolutely to those who are upset when another man obtains something good where they experience no injury whatsoever; while the excessively envious man is similarly upset even when there is something to his advantage in the other man’s good fortune. When injuries and troubles result, they have the effect of creating not envy but a corresponding enmity in the soul.

  This sort of mutual envy only arises practically speaking as between relatives, associates and acquaintances. Thus we may observe that when a stranger rules over a community, the people of that province scarcely discover any resentment of the fact within themselves; then if one of their own townsfolk comes to power, hardly a single man escapes from a sense of resentment, despite the fact that the townsman may be far more considerate and compassionate towards them than the stranger. People are brought to this pass by their extreme self-love; each one of them, because of this love for himself, wishes to be the first to reach the coveted offices rather than anyone else. So, when they see someone outstripping them and advanced over them who was but yesterday at their own level, they are very much upset and find it very hard and irksome to stomach his outstripping them. They are not in the least gratified by his sympathy and kindness towards them; their hearts are still firmly attached to the ambition of achieving what the other has beaten them to, and nothing else will content or mollify them. As for the stranger who comes to rule them, since they never saw him in his former state they do not picture how completely he has outstripped and surpassed them, and therefore they feel less grief and regret. In such circumstances it is necessary to have recourse to reason, and to reflect on what I am about to say on this subject.

  There are no grounds whatever in justice for the envious man’s rage and fury and hatred of the neighbour who has outstripped him. He has never prevented his rival from competing with him to reach the goal, even though it was he who achieved and attained it instead of the other. The fortune which the successful man obtained is not something the envier had a better right to or a greater need of. Then let him not hate or be furious with him; let him keep his fury rather for himself, or for his luck perhaps or his slackness—for it was one or the other of these that deprived and disqualified him from achieving his ambition. Moreover if the successful one is his brother or cousin, or a kinsman or acquaintance or townsman, his success is to the greater advantage of the envier, encouraging the hope that he will secure his welfare and giving him greater protection against his malice; for there is between them the bond of relationship, which is a strong and natural tie. Further, since there must of necessity be some men that are the chiefs and kings, wealthy and of great possessions, while the envier neither expects nor hopes that what they have will pass to him or to anyone whose proprietorship will be to his profit, there are no grounds whatever in reason for him to resent the other’s continued enjoyment of his possessions, since it is all one to him whether he is the owner or someone else whose ownership is equally unprofitable to him.

  Again we say that the reasonable man will rein his animal soul by means of the perspicacity of his rational soul and the strength of his choleric soul, so as to restrain it from enjoying even the things that are pleasurable and delicious, let alone that which is neither appetizing nor pleasing and is at the same time positively harmful to both soul and body. I would add that envy is one of those things in which there is no pleasure; or even if it contains some degree of pleasure, it is very much less than all other pleasures; it is moreover harmful to both soul and body. It harms the soul, because it is a stupefying influence, robbing the soul of its powers of reflection and so preoccupying it that it is not free to control even the things that profit the body and itself, because of the evil dispositions, such as prolonged sorrow, anxiety and care, that affect the soul in association with it. It harms the body, because when these accidents befall the soul, the body is exposed to prolonged insomnia and malnutrition, and these bring in their train a poor colour, a muddy complexion and a disordered temperament. When the reasonable man reins his passion by means of his reason—for passion commends to him pleasurable appetites though they have previously been followed by discomfort—it is all the more proper for him to strive to expunge this disposition from his soul, to forget and forsake it, and to cease thinking about it whenever it occurs to his mind.

  There is the additional point that envy is an admirable ally assisting the envied to take revenge upon the envier. For envy keeps the envier perpetually anxious; it fuddles his mind and tortures the body; by preoccupying his soul and weakening his body it enfeebles his cunning and endeavours against the envied if it continues long enough. What judgment then is more deserving of condemnation and contempt than that which brings only harm upon those who adopt it? What weapon is better fit to be cast away than that which protects the enemy while wounding him that bears it?

  Another method of expunging envy from the soul and making it easier and pleasanter to give it up is for the intelligent man to consider the conditions of various men during their progress upwards, and while they are reaching their cherished goal, and their circumstances when they have finally achieved what they sought in these ways. If he will ponder this carefully in the light of our present remarks, he will discover that the inward state of the envied man is quite the opposite of what his envier supposes; the picture which the latter draws of the former, in all his grandeur and splendour, his extreme happiness and enjoyment, is quite untrue. Let me add that men never cease admiring and wondering at a given state, wishing and longing to achieve and attain it, and thinking that those who have reached it and attained it are without a doubt in the last degree of beatitude and gratification. But when they themselves reach and attain that state, their joy and happiness last for a very brief time, no longer in fact than the time required for them to be fixed and established in that state and to be known to have achieved it. During this short period a man considers himself really fortunate and happy. But when the yearned-for state is actually realized, when he is firmly established in his possession of it and is known by others to be so situated, his soul yearns for greater heights and his hopes are fixed on yet loftier reaches. So he comes to belittle and despise his hard-won circumstances, that were previously his entire goal and ambition. Then he finds himself torn between anxiety and fear—fear lest he should lose the advancement he has already succeeded in winning, and anxiety to achieve what he reckons still to attain. So he is perpetually desperate, dissatisfied and disappointed with his existing circumstances; he wears out his thoughts and his body inventing means to shift out of that level and climb up still higher. Yet his second state is still the same, and he feels no different when he reaches a third level and attains any other state.

  This being so, it behoves the intelligent man not to envy any of his fellows on account of some superfluity of worldly goods which the other may have obtained and which he can very well do without and yet maintain a reasonable level of subsistence; he should not suppose that those who have greater and ampler means enjoy a superior ease and pleasure corresponding with their more abundant worldly wealth. For such men, by reason of the long continuance and constancy of those circumstances, after first enjoying prolonged ease and leisure come in the end not to enjoy their advantages at all, because they are finally regarded by them as something quite natural, and necessary to keep them alive; and so their enjoyment tends to approximate to the enjoyment any man experiences in his habitual circumstances. Such too is the case as regards lack of repose; since they are always striving and struggling to improve themselves and to climb up still higher, they get little rest, perhaps even less than those inferior to them in circumstance; I would go further, and say that in the majority of cases that is in fact always and invariably true.

  When the intelligent man regards these facts considerately, using his reason while doing so and putting aside his passion, he will realize that the utmost attainable limit of a pleasant and reposeful life is summed up in a modest competence. Whatever goes beyond that in the circumstances of living is pretty much of a muchness; in fact, competence always furnishes the superior ease. What reason therefore remains to justify mutual envy, except it be ignorance of these things, and a disposition to follow the dictates of passion rather than reason?

  What we have now mentioned is sufficient for this chapter; we will therefore proceed to speak of anger.

  CHAPTER VIII

  Of Repelling Anger

  Anger is put into an animal to be a means of taking revenge upon another that causes it pain. When this disposition is taken to excess and surpasses its proper bounds, to the extent that reason is lost in consequence, it may well be that the injury and suffering it brings upon the one moved by this emotion will prove severer and more grievous than that endured by the object of such anger. It therefore behoves the intelligent man to recall frequently the cases of those whom anger has brought sooner or later to disagreeable circumstances, and to try to picture himself in their predicament when his anger is roused. For many men when they are angry are apt to strike out with their fists and slap and even butt with their heads, and often enough hurt themselves more than the person with whom they are angry. I have seen a man punch another on the jaw and dislocate his fingers in doing so, so that he had to nurse them for a long time, whereas his victim came to no great harm. I once saw another man get into a rage and scream and spit blood on the spot; that led on to consumption, which caused his death. We have heard tell of men who during the time of their anger have brought suffering upon their families and children and dear ones for which they repented a long while, and which they perhaps never put right till the end of their lives. Galen states that his mother used to rush at a padlock with her mouth and bite it if it was difficult for her to open. Upon my life, there is no great difference between the man who loses his powers of thought and reflection when he is angry and a lunatic.

  If a man will constantly keep such situations in mind while he is normal, he is more likely to be able to picture them when anger seizes him. He should be aware that those who do such monstrous things when they are angry are only brought to that pass because they lose their reason at that time; and so he ought to see to it that when he is angry he will not do anything except after due thought and deliberation, lest he injure himself where he intended to injure another. He should not share with the beasts in liberating action without reflection. And during the time he is inflicting punishment, he ought to be free of four emotions—arrogance, anger against the person he is punishing, and the opposites of these two; for the two former states of mind provoke him to make his punishment and vengeance exceed the dimension of the crime, while the two latter result in their being too lenient. If the intelligent man will keep these ideas in mind, and prevail upon his passion to follow them out, his anger and revenge will be proportionately just, and he will be secure from suffering any consequent injury to his soul or body in this world or the next.

  CHAPTER IX

  Of Casting Away Mendacity

  This is another evil disposition which is due to the provocation of passion. When a man loves authority and domination in whatever form and under whatever circumstance, he wants always to be the one to teach and give information, because that gives him an advantage over the recipient of such tidings. Now we have already remarked that the intelligent man ought not to liberate his passion when he fears that this may afterwards involve him in worry, pain and regret; and we find that lying involves the liar in precisely these consequences. For the chronic and habitual liar is bound to be exposed; he can hardly escape it, either because he contradicts himself through carelessness or bad memory, or because someone he is talking to knows that the facts are contrary to what he states. The liar can never obtain anything near so much pleasure and enjoyment in lying, though he should lie all his life, much less equal, the worry and disgrace and shame at being exposed, even on one occasion in the whole of his career, and despised and held up to the ridicule and contempt and disapprobation of his fellows, who are likely to be little inclined to rely on him and trust him thereafter; provided of course he has some self-respect, and is not utterly base and abandoned. But such a creature as the latter ought not to be reckoned as a man, much less be made the object of discourse aimed at his reformation.

  Because the means of exposure in this matter may sometimes be very late in coming, the ignorant man is liable to be led astray in this; but the intelligent man does not plunge himself into a course when he fears (or does not feel secure against) its involving him in disgraceful exposure; rather does he make his dispositions and resolve himself prudently to avoid that.

  There are two varieties, as I see it, of untruthful information. In one kind the informant has in view some seemly and commendable object which will clearly excuse him when the facts are discovered and prove to the advantage of the person informed, obliging him to tell the story in the way he has even though there is no truth in it. For example, if a man knows that a certain ruler is resolved upon executing a friend of his upon the morrow, but that when the morrow is over the ruler will come into possession of certain facts obliging him not to kill his friend. If therefore he comes to his friend and tells him that he has hidden some treasure in his house, and requires his assistance the following day; if he then takes him home with him and keeps him busy there all that day, plying him to dig and search for the treasure, until the day is past and the king comes into possession of the said facts, and he then tells his friend the whole truth of the matter—I say that that man, even though in the first place he tells his friend what is entirely untrue, is nevertheless not to be blamed, neither is he exposed to shame when the facts are discovered to be contrary to his account of them, since his object was seemly and respectable, and of advantage to the person receiving the information. Such examples of untruthful information as these involve the informant in no disgrace or blame or regret; on the contrary, they bring him gratitude and seemly approbation.

  As for the second variety which lacks this commendable purpose, there discovery certainly means disgrace and blame—disgrace, if the person informed suffers no harm whatsoever, as for example when a man tells his friend that he has seen in such-and-such a city a certain animal or precious stone or plant of such-and-such a kind and description, and there is no truth at all in what he says, the liar’s object being merely to provoke admiration in the other; or blame, if his information brings harm to his informant into the bargain, as for instance when a man tells his friend that the ruler of a remote land desires and yearns for his company, and he is confident within himself that if he takes horse and proceeds thither he will secure from him a certain place and rank, but he only acts as he does in order to get possession of something the other leaves behind, and then, his friend having taken the trouble to ride off and come at great labour to that ruler’s court, he discovers that there is not an atom of truth in the whole story, and finds to boot that the ruler is angry and enraged against him, and he is ruined.

  All the same it is better to call a man a liar, and to avoid and beware of him, if he lies not out of necessity nor with any important object in view; for if a man approves of lying and indulges in it for mean and worthless ends, it is all the more likely and probable that he will do so when he has large and important advantages in view.

  CHAPTER X

  Of Miserliness

  This disposition cannot be described as wholly due to passion. For we find some people are prompted to be tight-fisted and careful with their possessions by excessive fear of poverty and a far-sighted consideration of the consequences, as well as an extreme caution in taking measures against misfortunes and hardships. Others on the contrary take pleasure in keeping things to themselves purely for its own sake. Thus we may observe how some boys are entirely lacking in thought and prudence, and give away all they possess to their playmates, while other boys are quite miserly.

  It is therefore necessary to combat this disposition when it springs merely out of passion: this diagnosis is confirmed when one asks a person what reason he has for holding on to his possessions and he cannot find any clear and acceptable argument proving a coherent excuse, but answers in a botchy and patched-up manner with much confusion and repetition. I once asked a tight-fisted man why he behaved in that way, and his response was of the kind I have described. I then proceeded to show him how bad his answer was, and that he had no real reason for being so mean. I did not demand of him that he should give away money in a manner he would notice, much less that he should ruin himself or disburse more than he could readily afford. The end of the matter was that he said to me, “That is what I want, that is how I would like to do.” So I made him realize that he had turned aside from the arbitrament of reason to follow his passion, since the excuses he had adopted could not affect either his actual circumstances or his prudence and security and his consideration for the future.

  That is the degree of this disposition that requires to be amended, so that passion may not be allowed to consort freely with it: namely, to be miserly over what cannot effect a catastrophic decline in one’s present circumstances, or render it difficult or impossible for one to achieve the fortune one aims at attaining. When however a man has a clear and valid excuse on one or other of these grounds, or on both, his canniness is not the result of passion but is due to reason and deliberation, and it ought not to be abolished but increased and confirmed. Still, not every canny person is free to advance the second of these arguments. When a man has despaired, for all his caution, of achieving a higher or more important position than that which he already holds—if for instance he is at the end of his life, or if he has attained the furthest advancement open to his like—in such an event he cannot rest his case at all on the second line of reasoning.

  CHAPTER XI

  Of Repelling Excessive and Hurtful Anxiety and Worry

  These two dispositions, although affections of the reason, are nevertheless just as hurtful and deleterious when present in excess, in the way of denying access to the achievement of our desires, as the lack of them, as we have already explained when we discussed the excessive activity of the rational soul. It therefore behoves an intelligent man to give his body repose from them, and to indulge it in as much diversion and amusement and pleasure as it requires to keep it fit and maintain it in good health; otherwise the body will weaken and become emaciated and finally collapse, so preventing us from reaching our goal.

  Because men differ so much in temperament and habit, there is also a difference in the amount of anxiety and worry they can stand; some can endure a great deal of them without being adversely affected, while others are unable to put up with so much. This power of endurance needs to be looked after and taken care of and gradually increased as much as possible before the matter becomes too difficult; habit is of great help and assistance here. In short, we ought to indulge in diversion and amusement and pleasure not for their own sakes, but in order that we may be recreated and strengthened to engage the thought and care we require to reach our purpose. As the traveller’s object in giving his horse provender is not to give it the pleasure of eating but to strengthen it so that it may bring him safely to his lodging-place, so it is necessary for us to act in watching over the interests of our bodies.

  If we act in this way and give the matter this amount of consideration, we shall attain our goals in the quickest time they can possibly be reached; we shall not be like the man who destroyed his mount before ever coming to the land he intended by overloading and overstraining it, neither shall we resemble the other man who was so concerned with pampering and fattening his horse that the time went by in which he ought to have reached his stage and lodging-place.

  Let us give a further example. Say a man wanted to study philosophy, and was so fond of it that he devoted all his care and occupied all his thought to that one end. Then he had the ambition to rival Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Theophrastus, Eudemus, Chrysippus, Themistius and Alexander,1 say in the period of one year. So he prolonged his cogitations and speculations, and took less and less food and repose—for insomnia would be the inevitable result of such a procedure. I say that this man would become a prey to delusion and melancholia, consumption and wasting away ere the whole of that time was past, and long before he in any way approached the philosophers we have named. I would add that if another man also desired to attain a perfect knowledge of philosophy, but only looked into it from time to time when he had no other occupation and was bored with his pleasures and appetites, whereas if the slightest task occurred to him or if his least appetite was stirred he at once stopped his studies and returned to his former routine—I repeat that this man would never completely master philosophy in the whole of his life, nor would he come anywhere near to doing so. Both these men would therefore have failed to achieve their purpose; the one because of excess, the other owing to shortcoming. Hence it behoves us to be moderate in our anxieties and worries if we aim at achieving our purposes; then indeed we will reach our goals, and not fail on account of shortcoming or excess.

  CHAPTER XII

  Of Repelling Grief

  When the passion through the reason pictures the loss of a beloved associate, grief thereby follows. We need a very long and detailed discussion in order to make clear whether grief is an affection of the reason or the passion; but we have already stated at the beginning of this book that we shall not here enter into any discussion unless it be unavoidable in view of the purpose we have here been pursuing. On this account we shall leave aside the discussion of this theme and proceed straight to the purpose at which we have aimed in this book. Still, it may be possible for anyone with the slightest grasp of philosophy to deduce and extract this idea from the sketch we have made of grief at the beginning of the discourse. Now we will have done with that and leave it on one side in order to go after our principal purpose.

  Since grief clouds the thought and reason, and is harmful alike to soul and body, it is our duty to endeavour to dismiss and repel it, or at any rate to reduce and diminish it as much as possible. This can be done in two different ways. The first is to be on one’s guard against it before it actually comes in order that it may not happen, or if it does, so that it will be as slight as possible. The second is to repel and banish it when it has occurred, either wholly or to the greatest possible extent, and to take precautions betimes either in order that it may not happen, or if it does, so that it will be slight and weak. This may be accomplished by reflecting on the ideas which I am now about to mention.

  Since the substance out of which sorrows are generated is simply and solely the loss of one’s loved ones, and since it is impossible that these loved ones should not be lost because men have their turns with them and by reason of the fact that they are subject to the succession of generation and corruption, it follows that the man most severely afflicted by grief must be he who has the greatest number of loved ones and whose love is the most ardent, while the man least affected by grief is he whose circumstances are the reverse. It would therefore seem that the intelligent man ought to cut away from himself the substance of his griefs, by making himself independent of the things whose loss involves him in grief; and that he should not be deceived and deluded by the sweetness they impart while they remain in being, but rather keep in mind and image the bitterness that must be tasted when they are lost.

  If it be objected that he who takes the precaution of not making and acquiring loved ones, because he is afraid of the grief of losing them, merely hastens forward the day of grief; the answer would be that even if his precautions and previsions do have this result, the grief such a man hastens forward is by no means equal to that he fears to fall into. A man who has no children cannot be so grief-stricken as the man who loses his child; this is true even if the childless man is of the sort that grieves because he has no child—I leave out of account those who do not trouble or care or grieve about such a matter at all. The grief of him who has no darling is nothing beside the grief of him who loses his darling.

  It is said that someone remarked to a philosopher, “If only you took a child!” To this the philosopher replied, “The trouble and grief I have trying to keep this body and soul of mine in health tax me beyond my powers—how then should I add and join to them the like again?” I once heard an intelligent woman remark, “One day I saw a woman terribly distressed over the loss of a child—so much so that she was afraid to go near her husband for fear that she might find herself having another child on whose account she might suffer equal affliction.”

  Because the possession of the beloved is agreeable and congenial to nature, and the loss thereof is contrary and repugnant to nature, the soul is bound to be more sensitive to the pain of losing the beloved than to the pleasure of having him. In the same way a man may be in good health for a long time and feel no pleasure in being so, yet if he is affected by sickness in one of his members he immediately feels severe pain there. So it is with all loved persons: so long as they are there, or one has their company for a long while, one ceases to feel such pleasure in their existence, but as soon as one loses them one is smitten by severe pain at their loss. It is for this reason that if a man has enjoyed for a long time the possession of a family and a precious child, and is then afflicted by the loss of both, he experiences in a single day, nay, a single hour, a sense of pain exceeding and obliterating the pleasure he formerly enjoyed in having them. This is because nature accounts and reckons all that long enjoyment as her due and right; nay, she counts it as yet less than her right, for even in those circumstances she is never without the feeling that what she possesses is very little, and is constantly and forevermore wanting to have more of it, being as she is so fond and avid of pleasure.

  This being so—since the pleasure and enjoyment felt in having loved ones, while they are there, is something so poor, so obscure, so feeble and inconsiderable, whereas the grief, distress and anguish of losing them are so palpable, so huge, so painful and ruinous; what is one to do, but get rid of them altogether, or assert one’s independence of them, in order that their evil consequences, their train of hurtful, wasting griefs, may be destroyed or at least diminished? This is the highest level that can be reached on this topic, and the most effective in amputating the very substance of grief.

  After this it follows that a man should picture and represent to himself the loss of his loved ones, and keep this constantly in his mind and imagination, knowing that it is impossible for them to continue unchanged forever. He should never for a moment give up remembering this and putting it into his thoughts, strengthening his resolve and fortifying his endurance against the day when the calamity happens. That is the way to train and gradually to discipline and strengthen the soul, so that it will protest little when misfortunes occur; because one has been little habituated and felt small trust and reliance in the survival of the loved ones during the time they were actually there, and one has frequently represented to the soul and inured and familiarized it with the picturing of those misfortunes before they occurred. It was in this sense that the poet said:

  • The man of prudence pictures in his soul,
  • Ere they descend, what mishaps may befall:
  • So, come they sudden, he is not dismayed,
  • Having within his soul their image laid.
  • He views the matter reaching to its worst,
  • And what must hap at last, faces at first.

  If however a man is excessively cowardly and extremely inclined to passion and pleasure, and he cannot trust himself to use anything of these twain devices, it is not necessary for him to endeavour to satisfy himself with one beloved out of his many, and to regard her as indispensable and irreplaceable; he should on the contrary adopt several, so as to have one always to stand in the stead (or come near to doing so) of any he may unfortunately lose. In this way it is possible for his sorrow and grief not to be extreme over the loss of any of them.

  This is a summary of the precautions that may be taken against the fact and the occurrence of grief. As for the manner in which grief may be repelled or lessened when it has become a reality and has actually happened, we shall proceed to discourse on that subject now.

  When the intelligent man examines and considers those things within this world which are affected by the alternation of generation and corruption, when he perceives that their element is changeable and dissoluble and fluid, that nothing is constant or permanent as an individual, but rather that all things pass away and perish and change and decay and vanish; when he reflects on all this, he ought not to take too much to heart or feel too outraged or stricken by the sudden deprivation of anything. On the contrary, he must reckon the period of their survival to be an advantage, and the enjoyment he has of them a positive gain, seeing that they will inevitably perish and cease to be. Then it will not seem so very terrible or important to him when the end comes, because that is a thing which must come upon them sooner or later. So long as he goes on desiring that they should survive for ever, he is yearning for the impossible, and by yearning for the impossible he is bound to bring grief upon himself, and follow the inclinations of his passion rather than his reason. Moreover the loss of those things that are not necessary to the continuance of life does not call for everlasting grief and sorrow; they are soon replaced and made good, and this leads on to consolation and oblivion; gaiety returns, and things come back to what they were before the misfortune happened. How many men we have seen struck down by a terrible and shocking calamity, and presently pick themselves up again, until they became exactly as they were before the blow fell, enjoying life to the full and entirely content with their circumstances!

  It therefore behoves the intelligent man to remind himself, when the misfortune is upon him, how it will presently pass and give way and he will return once more to normality; he should present this picture to his mind, and stir within himself the desire for its realization, all the time drawing to himself what may preoccupy and divert his thoughts as much as possible, to speed his emergence into this settled state. The impact of grief can also be greatly lightened and assuaged by reminding oneself how many there are that share one’s misfortunes, and how scarcely a single man is free of them; by remembering too how others have been after the blow has fallen, and the various ways they have consoled themselves; and then by considering his own circumstances and how he has previously consoled himself, when and if misfortunes have come upon him before.

  Furthermore, if it be true that the man most severely afflicted by grief is he who has the greatest number of loved ones and whose love is the most ardent, all the same the loss of one of them is bound to result in a corresponding diminution of grief; indeed such a loss relieves his soul of perpetual worry and anticipatory fear, so that he acquires a wariness and a fortitude to endure subsequent buffetings. In this way the loss of loved ones actually brings profit in its train, even though the passion may revolt against it; and while the sedative may be bitter to the taste, yet it does in the end afford relief. It was such an idea as this the poet had in mind when he wrote:

  • In truth, though we have lost in thee our lord,
  • Our cave of refuge, and for thee
  • Have grieved and fretted long,
  • Yet hath our loss yielded this much reward:
  • We can outface calamity,
  • Though it be massive strong.

  As for the man who prefers to follow the dictate of reason and to deny the call of passion, who has complete possession and control of himself, against grief he has one sure protection. The intelligent and perfect man never chooses to continue in a situation that is harmful to him, and therefore he is up betimes to reflect upon the cause of the grief whereby he has been visited. If it be a matter that can be repelled and put an end to, he substitutes for grieving a consideration of the means he may adopt to repel and put an end to that cause. If however it be a matter that cannot be treated after this fashion, he forthwith sets about diverting his mind from it and trying to forget it, striving to obliterate it from his thoughts and drive it out of his soul. This is because it is passion, not reason, that invites him to continue grieving in those circumstances; for reason only urges one towards a course that yields profit sooner or later. But to grieve over what yields no return whatsoever, but only immediate loss, is bound, so far from proving profitable, to lead to yet further loss in the long run too. The intelligent and perfect man follows only the dictate of reason, and never continues in any state unless he feels free to do so for a definite reason and with a clear justification; he will not follow or obey or go along with his passion when it would lead him in a contrary direction.

  CHAPTER XIII

  Of Greed

  Greed and gluttony are among those evil dispositions that afterwards yield pain and mischief. For not only do they bring upon a man the contempt and vilification of his fellows; they land him with indigestion into the bargain, and that leads on to all sorts of very serious ailments.

  Greed is generated out of the force of the appetitive soul; when this is reinforced and assisted by blindness of the rational soul—in other words lack of shame—it becomes apparent and revealed in addition. This too is a sort of following after passion; it is brought on and stimulated by picturing the pleasure of tasting the food one is about to eat. I have been told of a greedy man who one day fell upon a variety of foods with extreme gluttony and greed; when he was full and his sides were bursting, and he could not touch a single scrap more, he broke into tears. Questioned as to the reason for his weeping, he replied that it was because he was unable, as he averred, to eat any of the things before him. Again I remember I was eating once with a certain man in Baghdad, and a huge quantity of dates was put before us. I refrained from taking more than a moderate amount, but he persevered until he had very nearly finished the lot. When he was full and had given over eating, I noticed that he was goggling at the remainder as they were removed from the table; and so I asked him whether his soul was satisfied and his appetite assuaged. He answered, “I only wish I could be in my former state again, and this plate be put before us right now!” I said to him, “If the pain and gnawing of desire have not left you even now, would it not be better to refrain before you are full, so as to relieve yourself at least of the heaviness and distention of being replete? The indigestion which you cannot be sure of not suffering is bound to bring upon you ailments that will be many, many times more painful for you than the pleasure you had in what you have taken.” I saw that he understood my meaning, and that my words went home and did him good; and upon my life, such reasoning as this satisfies those who have not been trained in the discipline of philosophy, more than arguments based on philosophic principles.

  This is because the man who believes that the appetitive soul is united with the rational soul only in order that it may supply this body, which serves the rational soul as an instrument and an implement, with sufficient to keep it alive for the period required by the rational soul to acquire knowledge of this world—such a man will always suppress the appetitive soul and prevent it from obtaining food above a modest adequacy. For he takes the view that the object and purpose of feeding in created beings is not enjoyment but survival, which cannot be secured without food. This is illustrated by the story of the philosopher who was eating with a youth wholly undisciplined. The latter expressed surprise at the small amount the philosopher was taking, saying among other things, “If my whack of food was only as much as yours, I would not care whether I was alive or not.” The philosopher replied, “That is quite true, my son. I eat in order that I may live, whereas you only want to live in order that you may eat.”

  As for the man who sees no harm on religious or theoretical grounds in filling himself and taking as much food as possible, he should nevertheless be held back from doing so by the argument about balancing the pleasure so enjoyed against the consequent pain, as we have explained before. We would also add that since it is inevitable that the food which gives so much pleasure must be denied the eater in the end, it behoves the intelligent man to put forward the moment, before the situation arises where he cannot be sure of not being involved in evil consequences. For if he does not do this, he will lose and not gain at all, by exposing himself to pain and sickness: that is how he may lose, while his failure to gain is evidenced by the fact, that the mortification of being denied the pleasure of eating is in any case bound to overtake him some time. And if he departs from this rule or inclines in the opposite direction, let him be aware that he has dethroned his reason in favour of his passion.

  Greed and gluttony are characterized besides by a great voracity and wolfishness; if they are indulged and given their head, this element becomes extremely strong and it proves difficult to rid the soul of it, whereas if they are restrained and suppressed it grows weak and faint and feeble as time goes on, and finally disappears altogether. The poet says:

  • Know, that the use of hunger is a shield
  • And a protection, that doth riches yield;
  • Whereas the habit of satiety
  • May stir a hunger fiercer yet in thee.

  CHAPTER XIV

  Of Drunkenness

  Chronic and habitual drunkenness is one of the evil dispositions that bring those indulging it to ruin, calamity and all kinds of sickness. This is because the excessive drinker is imminently liable to apoplexy and asphyxia, that filling of the inner heart which induces sudden death, rupture of the arteries of the brain, and stumbling and falling into crevices and wells; not to mention various fevers, bloody clots and bilious swellings in the intestines and principal parts, and delirium tremens and palsy especially if there be a natural weakness of the nerves. Besides all this, drunkenness leads to loss of reason, immodesty, divulging of secrets, and a general incapacity to grasp even the most important mundane and spiritual matters; so that a man will hardly hold on to any cherished purpose or achieve any lasting happiness, but on the contrary he will go on slipping and sliding downwards. It was of such a situation that the poet wrote:

  • When shall it be within thy power
  • To grasp the good things God doth shower,
  • Though they be but a span from thee,
  • If all thy nights in revelry
  • Be passed, and in the morn thou rise
  • With fumes of drinking in thine eyes
  • And, heavy with its wind, ere noon
  • Returnest to thy drunkard’s boon?

  In short, drink is one of the most serious constituents of passion, and one of the greatest disorders of the reason. That is because it strengthens the appetitive and choleric souls and sharpens their powers, so that they demand urgently and insistently that the drinker shall embark precipitately upon their favourite course. Drink also weakens the rational soul and stultifies its powers, so that it is scarcely able to undertake careful thought and deliberation but rushes headlong to a decision and liberates action before its energy is firmly established. Hence the rational soul is led on easily and smoothly by the appetitive soul, until it is scarcely able to resist it or deny it anything. This is the sign of a departure from rationality, and of enrolment in the order of beasts.

  It therefore behoves the intelligent man to beware of drink, and to keep it in its proper place, namely that which is here indicated, fearing it as he would fear one who aims to rob him of his most prized and precious possessions. If he touches drink at all, he should do so only when anxiety and care oppress and overwhelm him. Moreover his purpose and intention should be not to seek pleasure for its own sake and to follow it wherever it may lead, but to reject superfluous pleasure and to indulge only so much as he is confident will not mischief him and upset his constitution. He should call to mind in this and similar situations our remarks on the suppression of passion, keeping before him a picture of these overall observations and general principles so that he may not need to remember them again and repeat them. In particular he should recall our statement that the constant and assiduous indulgence of pleasure diminishes our enjoyment thereof, reducing that to the position of something necessary for the maintenance of life.

  This idea is almost more valid when applied to the pleasure of drunkenness than in the case of any other pleasure; that is because the drunkard reaches a stage where he cannot conceive of living without drink, while sobriety is to him just like the state of a man beset by pressing cares. Moreover drunkenness is not less insatiable than greed; indeed it is even very much more insatiable; one must accordingly be equally swift to grapple with it and equally strenuous in reining and denying it.

  Sometimes of course drink is a necessity, so as to dispel anxiety, and in other situations requiring excessive cheerfulness, courage, impetuosity and recklessness. Still it is proper to beware of it, and not to come near it at all in situations that need exceptional thought, a clear understanding and a steady resolve.

  CHAPTER XV

  Of Sexual Intercourse

  This again is one of the evil dispositions stimulated and induced by passion and the preference for pleasure, involving the man indulging it in all kinds of calamities and evil disorders. It weakens the eyesight, undermines and wears out the body, brings on premature old age, senility and wasting, injures the brain and nerves, and reduces and weakens the strength; quite apart from other ailments too numerous to mention. It is marked by an extreme voracity just like other pleasurable occupations—indeed it is more strongly and powerfully affected than the rest, because the soul remembers how excessively pleasurable it is compared with the others. In addition to this, frequent use of the sexual organ enlarges the testicles and attracts to them much blood, with the result that more and more sperm is generated in them; so the lust and yearning to indulge augments and increases over and over again. Contrariwise, when one diminishes or refrains from intercourse, the body retains that original freshness which is the peculiar property of the substance of the members, with the result that the period of growth and development is extended and the processes of aging, drying up, emaciation and senility are retarded; the testicles contract and cease to demand supplies; the generation of sperm is diminished; distention becomes slight; the male organ recedes; and the appetite falls away, so that its urge is no longer violent and its demands are no more pressing.

  It therefore behoves the intelligent man to rein and restrain himself in this respect too, striving with his soul that it may not egg him on and excite him, lest it bring him to a state where it is difficult if not impossible to check and restrain it from indulgence. He should remember and keep in mind all that we have remarked on the reining and restraining of passion, especially our statement in the chapter on greed that the appetite rages and burns and incites and demands gratification even after it has attained and achieved the very limit of what it can possibly endure to enjoy. This is because this idea is even more valid and obvious when applied to the pleasure enjoyed in sexual intercourse than in the case of all other pleasures, because of the superiority it is pictured as having over the rest. For the soul—especially if it be neglected and left to its own devices, undisciplined, or what the philosophers call unrestrained—by no means finds its appetite diminished by the constant indulgence of the sexual urge, neither does frequent resort to concubines in any way lessen its desire and yearning for still others. And because this cannot be infinitely accomplished, such a man is inevitably burnt up by the flame and fire of thwarted enjoyment of the desired object; he suffers and endures the pain of deprivation, while the urge and incentive still rage within him; either for want of money and vigour, or through a natural and constitutional weakness and impotence. It is impossible in any case ever to attain as much gratification of the desired object as the lust demands and urges; as with the two men referred to in the chapter on greed.

  This being so, the only right course lies in advancing the event which must in any case occur and be endured—namely the thwarting of enjoyment of the desired object while the incentive and urge still remain—before that enjoyment has been extensively and excessively indulged; in that way one can hope to be saved from its evil consequences, and avert its voracity and wolfishness and violent incitements and demands.

  Besides all this, this particular pleasure is in any case the most proper and right of all pleasures to be cast away. This is because it is not necessary for the continuance of life, like eating and drinking, while there is no obvious and palpable pain in giving it up, like the pain of hunger and thirst; whereas its excessive and immoderate indulgence destroys and demolishes the structure of the body. To obey its summons and to go along with it is a sure and certain sign that the passion has triumphed and obliterated the reason—and that is a state of affairs which the intelligent man ought certainly to disdain and rise superior to, not seeking to emulate stallion bucks and bulls and other beasts that are without deliberation and regard for the future.

  Moreover the disapprobation evinced by the great majority of mankind for this business, their revulsion against it and the way they hide and conceal it when they do practise it, prove it to be a thing detested by the rational soul. For that general revulsion of men against this affair must be due either to a natural instinct or to education and training; on either count, it is clear that it must be something revolting and evil in itself. That is because it is laid down in the laws of logic that opinions about whose soundness no doubt is to be entertained are those commonly held either by all or the majority or the wisest of mankind.

  It is not incumbent upon us to persist in doing the thing that is revolting and hideous; rather it is our duty to leave it alone altogether; or, if we cannot avoid doing it, then we should do it as little as possible, and then with a due sense of shame and self-reproach. To act otherwise is to deny the reason and follow the inclinations of passion; and anyone who so comports himself is reckoned by intelligent men to be baser than the animals, and more subservient to passion than even they, since he prefers to follow and obey the call of passion in spite of the fact that his reason informs and warns him of the disadvantages he will suffer in acting thus; whereas the animal merely follows its natural instincts, having nothing to warn it, or inform it of the disadvantages resulting from its behaviour.

  CHAPTER XVI

  Of Excessive Fondness and Trifling, and Ritual

  Nothing further is required for the abandonment and giving up of these two—fondness and trifling 1 —than a sound resolve to do so, and a sense of shame and disdain for them; reinforced by a habitual reminding of the soul to that effect on all occasions of trifling and inordinate fondness, until these two dispositions themselves act like the string tied about one’s finger as a reminder. It is related of a certain king, a man of intelligence, that he was very fond and partial to trifling with some part of his body—I think it was his beard. This went on for a long time, despite the fact that he was constantly being told about it by a courtier; it was as though some fit of absentmindedness and forgetfulness always insisted that he should revert to the habit. Finally one of his ministers said to him one day, “Your Majesty, make a separate resolution to deal with this business, as sensible men do.” The king blushed and became furiously angry, but he was never once observed to do that thing again. The man’s rational soul had excited his choleric soul to pride and disdain, so that the resolve became sound and firm within his rational soul until it affected him powerfully and became a constant reminder to him, arousing him whenever he was heedless. And by my life, the only purpose for which the choleric soul was made is to assist the rational against the appetitive soul when the struggle is fierce, the attraction strong and the draw difficult to withstand.

  It behoves the intelligent man to be angry, and to be affected by disdain and pride, whenever he observes any appetite trying to dominate him and overcome his better judgment and his reason; then he will humble and suppress it, obliging it perforce obsequiously to stand by the arbitrament of his reason. It would be strange, and indeed impossible, for a man who was able to rein his soul against following its lusts, despite their powerful urge and incitements, yet to find it difficult to prevent its giving in to fondness and trifling, which constitute no such great appetite and pleasure. Most of what is required to meet this situation is to be mindful and alert, for in most cases the trouble only occurs because of forgetfulness and absentmindedness.

  As for ritual,1 this calls for merely a few words to demonstrate that it is an accident of the passion and not the intellect; we shall therefore say something on this subject brief and to the point. Cleanliness and purity ought to be assessed only by the senses, not by analogy; and matters therewith connected should be regulated according to the reach of the sensation, not of the imagination. If the senses fail to perceive any impurity in a thing, we call it pure; if the senses fail to perceive any filth in a thing, we call it clean.

  Now our object in desiring and intending these two conditions—purity and cleanliness—is either for the sake of religion or out of squeamishness; and we are not injured in either of these respects by a little impurity or filth so trifling as to escape the senses. Thus, religion has sanctioned the performance of the ritual prayer while wearing a single garment that has been touched by the feet of flies which have fallen into blood and dung; and purification by means of running water is recognized even though we may know that it has been staled, or by means of stagnant water in a large pool although we may know that it contains a drop of blood or wine. Nor does this injure us in regard to our sense of squeamishness, because obviously what escapes the senses cannot be perceived by us, and what we do not perceive, our spirits do not fear; and what our spirits do not fear, there is no sense whatever in feeling squeamish about. Therefore we are not injured by impurity or filth so slight as to be swallowed up and not noticed; it is not right that we should think about it, neither need its presence occur to our minds at all.

  If however we go on looking for purity and cleanliness in full reality and exactitude, and treat the matter as touching our imagination and not our senses, we shall never find our way to anything that is pure and clean by this arbitrament. This is because we can never be sure regarding the water we use that it has not been filthied by human agency, or that the carcase of a reptile or wild or domestic animal or its dung or droppings has not fallen into it. If we pour and spray it over ourselves a great deal, we cannot be certain that the last rinse will not be the filthiest and impurest. Consequently God has not imposed the duty of self-purification upon His servants after this manner, for that would be something beyond our means and capability.

  This it is that makes life intolerable to the man who has a squeamish fancy, because he cannot touch any food or approach anything and be quite sure that there is not some filth swallowed up there. If these matters are as we have described, the ritualist has no argument left to him; and how deplorable it is for an intelligent man to make a stand over a point where he has no valid excuse or argument to support him! That is the very abnegation of reason, and the pursuit of pure and unadulterated passion.

  CHAPTER XVII

  Of Earning, Acquiring and Expending

  Reason, our especial gift whereby we have been preferred above the other irrational animals, has made it possible for us to enjoy a good life in mutual helpfulness. Rarely do we see beasts performing a like service for each other; and we observe that the agreeable circumstances of our life are due in the main to co-operation and mutual helpfulness. But for this, we should have no advantage in the way of a pleasant life over the brute beasts. For since the beasts have not perfected any system of co-operation and intellectual assistance such as that which organizes our life, the efforts of the many do not bring benefit to the individual with them, as we observe the case to be with man.

  Each one of us eats, is clothed, has shelter, and is secure; yet the individual only prosecutes one of these businesses. If he is a husbandman, he cannot be a builder; if he is a builder, he cannot be a weaver; if he is a weaver, he cannot be a warrior. In short, if you could imagine a single man living alone in a waterless desert, perhaps you would not picture him as existing at all; and even were you to imagine him alive, you would scarcely picture his life as good and agreeable, such as that of one whose needs were all amply supplied and the requirements of his striving adequately met; rather would you represent his life as wild, beastly and sordid. That is because he would lack that co-operation and mutual assistance which would confer on him a good and pleasant life and tranquillity.

  When many men agree to co-operate and help each other, they parcel out the various sorts of profitable endeavour among themselves; each labours upon a single business until he achieves its complete fulfilment, so that every man is simultaneously a servant and served, toiling for others and having others toiling for him. In this way all enjoy an agreeable life and all know the blessings of plenty; even though there is a wide difference between them and an extensive variety of rank and accomplishment; nevertheless there is not one who is not served and laboured for, or whose needs are not wholly sufficed.

  Having prefixed what we thought good and necessary as a prelude to this chapter, we now return to our immediate object. Since human life can only be completely and effectively organized on the basis of co-operation and mutual help, it is the duty of every man to adhere to one or other of the means of providing this assistance, and to labour to the limits of his powers and abilities to that end, avoiding at the same time the two extremes of excess and deficiency. For one of these extremes—that is, deficiency—is vile baseness and mean worthlessness, since it brings a man down to the level of a pauper and a charge upon others; while the other extreme involves labour without respite and slavery without term.

  When a man desires his neighbour to give him something of his belongings without any exchange or compensation, he thereby debases himself and puts himself in the same position as one disabled by paralysis or accidental injury from earning his living. And when a man fixes no definite limit to his earning and is not prepared to restrict himself to such a limitation, the service he renders to his fellows is many times greater than their service to him, and he continues moreover in bondage and perpetual slavery; for if he labours and toils all his life to earn more than he requires for his expenses and needs and to provide an adequate capital and reserve, he is really the loser in the long run, and is both deceived and enslaved without being aware of the fact. For men take wealth as a mark and a stamp whereby it is mutually recognized how much each deserves for his labour and the toil he performs that is profitable to all. Therefore when any one man is specially distinguished for amassing tokens by his toil and labour, and does not dispose of them in ways that will yield him repose, through the labour of his fellows to supply his needs, he is really the loser and has suffered himself to be deceived and enslaved; for he will have given away his own toil and effort without obtaining in compensation any adequate provision or repose. Such a man has not bartered toil against toil and service against service; the exchange he will have received is worthless and useless; his effort and toil and provision will have yielded profit to his fellows which they will have enjoyed, whereas their provision and toil on his account will have passed him by, and his enjoyment of their produce will be far less than the worth of his deserts seeing how he has provided and laboured for them. So he will have lost out and been deceived and enslaved, as we have stated. The true object in earning is therefore to gain as much as will balance the amount of one’s expenditure, with something over to put away and keep in store against such emergencies and accidents as may prevent one from earning. The man who follows this rule in earning his living will have received in exchange toil for toil and service for service.

  Now for a few words on the subject of acquisition. To acquire and store away is also one of the means necessary to the enjoyment of a good life, resting as it does upon a sound intellectual prognosis. The matter is too apparent and obvious to require an explanation; even many animals that are not rational acquire and store away. It is more proper that such animals should have a superior mental imagination compared with those that are not acquisitive; for the reason and motive for such acquisition is the picturing of a situation in which the object acquired may be lost while the need for it still remains. All the same it may be necessary to observe moderation in this, according to what we have stated in our discussion on the quantity of earning: deficiency may lead to its complete non-existence while the need still exists, as for instance with a man whose provisions are exhausted while he is in a waterless desert, while excess may have the same result as incessant toil and exhaustion, after the fashion we have described. The just medium in regard to acquisition is for a man to be able to have recourse to what he has acquired, sufficient to support him in his continuing circumstances at a time when an accident may occur preventing him from earning.

  As for the man whose purpose in acquiring is to move himself out of the circumstances in which he finds himself, into a higher and grander state, and who never sets any limit on this to which he will strictly confine himself: such a man continues in perpetual toil and bondage, and lacks withal—whatever be his original state—any enjoyment or happiness in the state to which he moves, since he still goes on toiling and is never satisfied. He is always working to shift himself into another, higher state, yearning and hankering after attaching himself to yet grander circumstances. This we have stated in the chapter on envy, and we shall give a clearer and fuller explanation and account of the matter in the section following this.

  The best possible acquisition, at once the most lasting, the most respectable and the securest, is a profession, especially if it be a natural and necessary one which is always and constantly in demand in every country and among all nations. Properties, precious things, treasures are not secure against the accidents of time, and therefore the philosophers have reckoned no man rich in respect of his properties, but only in regard to his profession. It is told how a certain philosopher was shipwrecked at sea, and lost all his belongings, but when he came to shore he saw on the ground the drawing of a geometrical design; and he rejoiced because he knew that he had fallen upon an island where there were learned people. He obtained wealth and a position of leadership amongst them, and remained there. Ships afterwards passed by, making for his native land, and they asked him whether there was any message they could carry for him to his people. He replied, “When you come to them, say to them, Acquire and store away that which cannot be sunk.”

  As for the quantity of expenditure: we have mentioned before that the amount of earning must be equivalent to the amount of spending, with a little bit over acquired and stored away for accidents and emergencies. The amount of expenditure must therefore obviously be less than the amount of earning. All the same, a man ought not to be so moved by the inclination to acquire that he is parsimonious and cheese-paring, or so carried away by the love and pursuit of his appetites that he gives up acquiring altogether. Every man should observe moderation in this matter, according to the amount he earns, his habits of expenditure, the manner of life he has been brought up to, his actual circumstances, his position in society, and what it behoves a man like himself to acquire and store away.

  CHAPTER XVIII

  Of the Quest for Worldly Rank and Station

  We have already put out earlier in various chapters of this book some general statements of what is required in the present chapter; however, in view of the lofty purpose aimed at in this chapter and its very great usefulness, we propose to devote a separate discussion to this particular subject, gathering together the different points and ideas that have gone before, and adding to these some further observations which we think will help to achieve and complete our object.

  If any man desires to ornament and ennoble his soul with this virtue, and to release and relieve it from imprisonment and bondage, and the manifold cares and sorrows that visit him and deliver him over to passion—that passion which urges him to pursue an object diametrically opposed to the purpose intended in this chapter—if this be his desire, it behoves him in the first place to remember and keep in mind what we have already remarked on the superiority of reason and rational action; and then our statement on the reining and suppressing of desire, and its subtle deceits and traps. He should also recall our description and definition of pleasure; after which he should diligently deliberate and meditate and unremittingly study what we have written in the chapter on envy, where we said that the intelligent man ought to consider the various circumstances of his fellows. He ought further to study what we have stated at the beginning of the chapter on the repelling of grief. When he thoroughly knows and understands all these things, and they are firmly fixed and established in his soul, let him finally proceed to comprehend what we are about to remark in this place.

  Because of the faculty we possess of dramatization and intellectual analogy, it often happens that we picture to ourselves the consequences and issues of various affairs, so that we sense and perceive them as though they had actually happened. Then if these are hurtful we turn away from them, whereas if they are profitable we make haste to realize them. Upon this fact depends in the main the good life we enjoy, as well as our immunity from those things that are harmful, evil and destructive. It therefore behoves us to respect and reverence this virtue, making use of it and summoning it to our aid; we ought to conduct our affairs according to its guidance. For it is a way to salvation and safety, and distinguishes us above the beasts that pursue impetuously paths whose end and issue they cannot visualize.

  Let us therefore consider, with the eye of reason unclouded by passion, the question of removing from one set of circumstances to another and from a lower rank to a higher, in order that we may ascertain which is the better and more restful and reasonable state to seek and cleave to. We will make this our point of departure in the present investigation.

  These so-called states may be enumerated as three—our present continuing state in which we have grown up and been nurtured, that which is grander and higher, and that which is lower and meaner. That the soul, at first blush and without reflection or consideration, prefers and loves and clings to the state that is grander and higher, this much we can discover from examining ourselves; yet we cannot be sure that we are not being motivated by the inclination and impetuosity of desire rather than the arbitrament of reason. Let us accordingly marshal our arguments and proofs, and then pass our verdict as they require.

  To remove out of the state to which we have always been used and accustomed into grander circumstances can only be the result—if we except rare and wonderful accidents—of driving oneself, and the most strenuous endeavour. Let us therefore consider also whether it is really right for us to press and exhaust ourselves, in order to rise to a grander state than what we have been accustomed to or what our bodies have been familiar with. On this point we would observe that if a man’s body has grown and reached maturity, while he has never been accustomed to be treated as a person of authority, with retinues going before and after him, and if he then strains and strives to achieve that state, he stands convicted of having turned away from reason to follow passion. For he can never attain such a rank, except by toil and violent effort and by driving himself to face dangers and take risks and put himself in jeopardy, in short to do those things which in the majority of cases lead to ruin; neither will he succeed in his ambition, without bringing upon himself suffering many times greater than the pleasure he will stand to enjoy after achieving his goal. In that case he is merely deceived and deluded by the picture he has drawn of reaching his object, without forming any image of the road whereby alone he can come to it; so we have explained in our discussion of pleasure. And when he has at last attained and achieved his cherished desire, it is not long before he loses all happiness and enjoyment of it; for his new circumstances become like all other customary and usual conditions. Consequently the pleasure he feels in his new life rapidly diminishes, while he finds himself loaded with increasingly heavy burdens in the effort to maintain and preserve his advance. Passion will not in any case allow him to abandon or give up his achievements—so we showed when we were speaking of the reining of passion—so that in fact he has gained nothing and lost many things. He has gained nothing, because once he is used and habituated to those new circumstances they become exactly the same to him as his original position, so that he ceases to feel any joy and happiness in them. He has lost many things, on account of the weariness in the first place, and the danger and hazard he runs in struggling to the new state, and in the second place because of the effort to keep it, the fear of losing it, the grief if it should be gone, and the stress of habituating himself to living and wanting to live in such circumstances.

  We would make the same comment on every set of circumstances beyond a modest sufficiency. For if the body is accustomed to a rough diet and commonplace clothes, and if one then struggles to change these for delicate food and fine raiment, the extreme pleasure a man feels in achieving these falls away once he is used to them, so that in the end they become exactly the same to him as what he had originally; while all that he has gained is the extra toil and effort to attain and preserve these amenities, the fear of being deprived of them, and the labour of getting used to them—from all of which disadvantages he was previously exempt.

  We have the same remarks to offer on power, position, renown, and all other worldly ambitions. There is no rank whatever that one can reach or achieve, but that the happiness and enjoyment of its attaining every day grows less and diminishes until it finally vanishes altogether. So any rank whatsoever comes in the end to mean no more to him who attains it than the station he left to mount up to it, and all he gains for the sake of his ambition is extra trouble, worry, care and grief such as he never knew in the past. For he still continues to think little of the position he is actually occupying, and to struggle to mount up yet higher, while he never reaches a station completely satisfying to his soul once he has won through and become established there. It may be indeed that before he arrives, his passion represents him as satisfied and content with the conditions at which he is aiming; but that is one of passion’s greatest deceits and weapons and traps, to spur him on and draw him forward to the cherished goal; once he has arrived at his destination, he at once gazes up at a still loftier reach. That is the condition he finds himself in, so long as he associates with and is obedient to his passion. We have made statements to this effect elsewhere in this book, representing this to be one of passion’s greatest snares and delusions. For in such circumstances passion appears to a man in the semblance of reason, camouflaging itself and making him imagine that its appeal is that of the reason and not of the passion at all; it represents to him that the vision it is granting him is of virtue, not lust, so that it makes some show of intellectual argument and satisfaction. But the satisfaction and argument do not prevail long; when they are collated with straightforward reasoning, they are soon confounded and disproved.

  The discourse on the difference between reasoned and passionate representation is an important topic of the art of logical demonstration, which however it is not necessary to introduce in this context; we have already adumbrated it in more than one place in our present book, quite sufficiently for our purpose. Moreover we propose to set out a few of its headings in enough detail to enable us to attain our actual object in this book.

  Reason represents, chooses and desires always that course which is preferable, nobler and more salutary in the issue, even though it may to begin with impose upon the soul trouble, hardship and difficulty. Passion is exactly the opposite of this, in that it always chooses and prefers the immediate, contiguous and adherent impulse of the moment, even though its consequences may be harmful, without any consideration or reflection of what comes after. An instance of this is the case we mentioned when we were discussing the reining of the passion, that of the boy with ophthalmia who preferred to eat dates and play in the sun rather than take myrobalan1 and submit to cupping and the usual treatment for eye-disease. Reason represents what is to one’s advantage as well as what is hurtful to one, whereas passion always shows one what is advantageous and blinds one to the rest. For example, a man will be blind to his own faults, while seeing his few virtues as greater than they really are. It therefore behoves the intelligent man always to suspect his judgment in matters that seem to his advantage and not to his detriment, and to suppose that his opinion is influenced by passion not reason; he should investigate such matters very thoroughly before he acts.

  Reason supports its representations with argument and clear justification, while passion satisfies and represents merely on the basis of inclination and congeniality, not with argument that can be logically stated and expressed. Sometimes passion fastens on to a certain show of logic, as when it sets out to assume the semblance of reason; but its argument is hesitant and interrupted, and its justification is neither obvious nor clear. Examples of this are available in the cases of the lovers, those seduced by intoxication or bad and hurtful food, ritualists, men who habitually pluck out their beards, and those who trifle or are inordinately fond of some part of their bodies. Ask some of these to justify their conduct, and they will not have a word to say; the only argument they will be able to muster will amount to no more than that such is their inclination, that they find it congenial, or that they like doing it—an instinctive, not a logical liking, mark you. Some of them indeed begin to argue and say something, but as soon as they are refuted they relapse into repetition and meaningless drivel; presently things get too much for them and they become furious; under pressure they are unable to speak; finally, having been silenced, they are cured.

  These few headings are sufficient in this context, to prove the necessity of being on one’s guard against passion and ignorantly going along with it.

  We have shown how advancement to high rank involves effort and danger, and means casting oneself into circumstances that yield only a little happiness and joy, while experiencing such troubles and hardships as one was wholly exempt from in one’s original state—evils that cannot be extricated and withdrawn from. It has been made clear that the most salutary state is that of a modest adequacy, and to reach after that in the easiest possible way, the manner most secure as to its sequel. We must prefer this state, and continue in it, if we wish to be people who are intellectually happy, and to avoid the troubles that lurk and lie in wait for those who pursue and prefer passion; and if we desire to profit to the full of our human advantage—the gift of reason, by which alone we are distinguished above the beasts. If however we are unable to control passion so completely as to cast away from us all that is superfluous to that modest competence, at least those of us who possess such superfluity should limit themselves to their usual and accustomed state, and not exert and drive themselves and risk their lives to move upwards. Even if it should be within our power to attain a grand position without any labour or hazard, yet it is better and more salutary not to suffer ourselves to remove into it; for we should not be free of those troubles which we have enumerated as consequentially befalling us after reaching and attaining the desired rank. If we did in fact move into those new circumstances, it must be on condition that we do not change any of our former habits and customs in eating, drinking, clothing ourselves, and all the other bodily requisites. Unless we do this, we shall find ourselves presently accustomed to superfluous extravagance, and in a state that makes demands upon us to live up to our new situation even should we lose it. Unless we do this, we shall experience extreme sorrow in the loss of these advantages when such loss comes upon us. Finally, we shall have deserted reason to join the ranks of passion, and therefore we shall fall into those very calamities which we have described.

  CHAPTER XIX

  Of the Virtuous Life

  The life which has been followed by all the great philosophers of the past may be described in a few words: it consists in treating all men justly. Thereafter it means acting nobly towards them, with a proper continence, compassion, universal benevolence, and an endeavour to secure the advantage of all men; save only those who have embarked upon a career of injustice and oppression, or who labour to overthrow the constitution, practising those things which good government prohibits—disorder, mischief and corruption.

  Now many men are constrained by their evil laws and systems to live a life of wrongdoing; such are the followers of Daisan,1 the Red Khurramis,2 and others who hold it lawful to act deceitfully and treacherously towards their opponents; or the Manicheans with their refusal to give water or food to those who do not share their opinions or to treat them medically when they are ill, who abstain from killing snakes, scorpions and suchlike noisome creatures which cannot possibly be expected to be of use or to be turned to any profitable purpose whatsoever, and who decline to purify themselves with water. Many men, I say, are of this persuasion and do various things, some of which result in mischief to the community as a whole, while some are hurtful to the practitioner himself. Such men cannot be won from their evil manner of life, except by serious discourse on opinions and doctrines; and that discussion far transcends the scope and purpose of this book.

  There is nothing left for us to say on this subject, therefore, further than to recall the kind of life which, when strictly followed, will secure a man from the hurt of his fellows, and will earn him their love. So we assert that if a man cleaves to justice and continence, and allows himself but rarely to quarrel and contend with his fellows, he will in the main be safe from them. If to this he adds goodness and benevolence and mercy in his dealings with others, he will win their love. These two attributes are the reward of the virtuous life; and what we have said is sufficient for our purpose in this book.

  CHAPTER XX

  Of the Fear of Death

  This disposition cannot be expelled from the soul entirely, except it be satisfied that it will pass after death into a state more salutary to it than its present. Now this is a topic which calls for an extremely long discussion, if it be sought by way of logical demonstration and not mere report; and there is no possibility of such a discussion, especially in this book, because as we have said before its content exceeds the content of this alike in loftiness, breadth and length. For it would need a consideration of all the religions and sects which believe and require that man will have a certain estate after death, and passing verdict thereafter in favour of those which are true and against those which are false. It is no secret that the purport of this matter is very difficult, and needs and must have a long discussion. We shall therefore put this aside, and turn our attention to satisfying those who hold and believe that the soul perishes with the corruption of the body; for as long as a man continues to fear death he will turn away from reason to follow after passion.

  Man, according to these, will after death be affected by no pain whatsoever; for pain is a sensation, and sensation is a property only of the living being, who during the state of his life is plunged and saturated in pain. Now the state in which there is no pain is obviously more salutary than the state in which pain exists; death is therefore more salutary to man than life.

  If it be objected that man, even though he be afflicted during his lifetime by pain, nevertheless also experiences pleasures which will not fall to him after death, the reply to this is a question: will he feel pain, or will he care or be troubled in any way whatever when he is in that state, merely because he cannot enjoy any pleasure? If the answer to this be no—and so it is bound to be, because if this response is not given the implication will be that a man is alive even when he is dead—then it may be observed again that pain affects only the living and not the dead; and so the objection is met by the remark that man will not be troubled by the fact that he cannot enjoy any pleasure. This being so, the argument returns to the point where it started, namely that the state of death is the more salutary.

  For the factor which you supposed proved the advantage of the living over the dead is pleasure, and the dead have no need or yearning for pleasure, neither are the dead pained at not attaining it as are the living. Hence the living have no advantage over the dead; for advantage can only be spoken of in the case of two parties being in need of a certain thing, when one of the parties possesses the advantage while the need still exists; but when the thing needed is a matter of indifference, the advantage disappears. This being so, we return once more to the proposition that the state of death is the more salutary.

  If it now be objected that these ideas cannot be applied to the dead, because they do not exist so far as the dead are concerned, we reply that we did not say that these ideas existed for them; on the contrary, we merely posited them as imaginary and fictitious, to have a standard of analogy and comparison. When this line is denied to you, you are finished according to the laws of logic: this is a well-known variety of termination which is called by logicians “applying the closure”, because the opponent closes the discourse and runs away from it, not attempting to carry it on any further for fear of having the verdict go against him. Even if he has resort to repetition and saying the same things all over again, the ultimate result is the same.

  Know, that the verdict of reason that the state of death is more salutary than the state of life depends upon the belief a man has in the soul; it may nevertheless happen that he will continue to follow his passion in this matter. For the difference between passionate and rational opinion is that the former is chosen and preferred and clung to not on account of any obvious proof or clear justification, but out of a sort of inclination towards that opinion, a sense of congeniality and affection for it in the soul; whereas the latter is chosen on obvious proof and clear justification, even though the soul may revolt against it and turn away from it.

  Again, what is this so much desired and coveted pleasure? Is it anything else in reality than repose from that which causes pain, as we have already demonstrated? If this be so, only the ignorant man will picture it as something to be sought after and desired; for he who enjoys repose from pain is indifferent to that repose which, when it follows pain, is called pleasure.

  Furthermore if it be true, as we have proved before, that it is superfluous to grieve over what must inevitably come to pass, and if death be a thing that must inevitably happen, to grieve over the fear of it is superfluous, whereas to divert one’s thoughts from it and to forget it is a manifest gain. It is on this account that we have always admired the beasts in this respect, because they possess by nature this kind of attitude to perfection, whereas we cannot hope to achieve it save by contriving to get rid of intellectual thought and imagination. And it would seem that that is the most profitable course to follow in this context; for speculation on death brings upon us many times greater pain than that which is to be expected. The man who imagines death, and is afraid of it, dies a separate death at every image he calls up, so that his imagination over a long period concentrates upon him many deaths. Therefore the best and most advantageous course, for the peace of our souls, is gently but firmly to contrive to expel this grief from us. This agrees with what we have said before, that the intelligent man never grieves; for if there be any cause for his grief that can be averted, instead of grieving he thinks about how to avert the cause of his grief, whereas if it be something that cannot be averted, he forthwith sets about diverting his thoughts and consoling himself, and strives to obliterate it and drive it out of his soul.

  Again I repeat that I have demonstrated that there is no ground for fearing death, if a man holds that there is no future state after death. And now I say that in accordance with the other view—the view that makes out a future state attendant upon death—there is also no need for a man to fear death, if he be righteous and virtuous, and carries out all the duties imposed upon him by the religious law which is true; for this law promises him victory and repose and the attainment of everlasting bliss. And if any man should doubt the truth of that law, or is ignorant of it, or is not certain that it is real, it only behoves him to search and consider to the limit of his strength and power; for if he applies all his capacity and strength, without failing or flagging, he can scarcely fail to arrive at the right goal. And if he should fail—which is scarcely likely to happen—yet Almighty God is more apt to forgive and pardon him, seeing that He requires of no man what lies not within his capacity; rather does He charge and impose upon His servants far, far less than that.

  Since we have now achieved the purpose of our present book, and reached the end of our intention, we will end our discourse by giving thanks to our Lord. Infinite praise be unto God, the Giver of every blessing and Reliever of every perplexity, in accordance with His eternal worth and merit.

  [1 ]M. Meyerhof in Legacy of Islam, p. 323.

  [2 ]Ibn Khallikān, Biographical Dictionary (transl. De Slane), III, p. 312.

  [3 ]Ibn Abī Usaibi‘a, I, p. 309. Ibn Khallikān, loc. cit., says “over forty”.

  [1 ]Legacy of Islam, p. 323.

  [2 ]Ibn Khallikān, loc. cit.

  [3 ]According to the authority quoted by Ibn Abī Usaibi‘a, this was the great hospital established by the Buyid ruler ‘Adud al-Daula; but Ibn Abī Usaibi‘a rightly remarks that Rhazes lived long before ‘Adud al-Daula, and indeed the hospital named after the latter was not completed until 978, see Encylopaedia of Islam, I, p. 143.

  [1 ]Ibn Khallikān, III, p. 313; Encycl. of Islam, III, p. 256. The tradition that the book was dedicated to the Samanid ruler Abū Sālih al-Mansūr ibn Nūh involves an anachronism, for that prince did not come to the throne until 961, long after Rhazes’ death.

  [2 ]Ibn Abī Usaibi‘a, I, p. 314.

  [1 ]Nizāmī, Chahār Maqāla (transl. E. G. Browne), pp. 115–18.

  [2 ]Al-Qiftī, p. 179.

  [3 ]Ibn Abī Usaibi‘a, I, p. 315.

  [1 ]Al-Qiftī, p. 179.

  [2 ]Al-Sīrat al-falsafīya (ed. P. Kraus): see selections from this work quoted at the end of the preface.

  [1 ]M. Meyerhof, op. cit., loc. cit.

  [1 ]Al-Bīrūnī, Risāla (ed. P. Kraus), pp. 3–5.

  [2 ]Ibn Hazm, al-Fasl fi ’l-milal, I, pp. 24–33.

  [3 ]Nāsir-i Khusrau, Zād al-musāfirīn, pp. 72 ff.

  [4 ]Al-Kirmānī, al-Aqwāl al-dhahabīya, quoted by P. Kraus in his edition of Rhazes.

  [5 ]De Boer, De “Medicina Mentis” van Arts Razi.

  [6 ]At Cairo, under the title Rhagensis (Razis) Opera Philosophica, pp. 1–96.

  [1 ]No. 107 in al-Bīrūnī’s list.

  [2 ]No. 91 in al-Bīrūnī.

  [3 ]No. 128 in al-Bīrūnī.

  [4 ]No. 112 in al-Bīrūnī.

  [5 ]Nos. 108–11, 113 in al-Bīrūnī.

  [1 ]A quotation from Plato, Theaetetus, 176 b.

  [1 ]Kitāb al-Mansūrī, see Introduction, pp. 3, 8.

  [1 ]Only fragments in quotation of this work have survived, see P. Kraus, op. cit., pp. 139–64.

  [1 ]A term applied contemptuously to certain peasants.

  [1 ]“A cathartic gum-resin obtained from a species of convolvulus in Asia Minor” (Chambers’s Twentieth Century Dictionary).

  [1 ]Rhazes refers to a rule of Arabic grammar.

  [1 ]Alexander of Aphrodisias. For Rhazes’ knowledge of Greek sources, see Introduction, p. 10.

  [1 ]What we would call fidgeting and playing about with some part of oneself.

  [1 ]Rhazes obviously here refers to such ritual practices as ablution.

  [1 ]“The astringent fruit of certain Indian mountain species of Terminalia” (Chambers).

  [1 ]An early heresiarch.

  [2 ]A branch of the Khurrami sect, heretics of the ninth century.

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  2: 2. Saint Anselm, Proslogium

  Saint Anselm of Canterbury (b. 1033, Aosta, Lombardy; d. 1109, Canterbury, Kent) is generally considered to be the founder of the philosophical school of Scholasticism. He was a major figure in the intellectual life of the Middle Ages, and a major political and ecclesiastical force as well. As archbishop of Canterbury he was at the center of the lay investiture controversy in England. Saint Anselm spent the majority of his tenure as archbishop in opposition to William II (William Rufus, r. 1087-1100) and later Henry I (r. 1100-1135) because of his steadfast position on lay investiture. The reconciliation of the two positions at the Synod of Westminster (1107) was a basis for the Concordat of Worms (1122), which briefly settled the matter in Germany. Saint Anselm is not generally remembered for those accomplishments, however. He is instead revered for his contributions to philosophy and religious study. By coupling philosophy with his religious and scriptural investigations, he refined the discipline of theology. His examination of the nature and existence of God led to the formulation of the ontological proof, an often-cited example of his work:

  Hence, there is no doubt that there exists a being, than which nothing greater can be conceived, and it exists both in the understanding and in reality.

  This proof is based on the Platonistic idea of an absolutely perfect being and the very fact of the idea being itself a demonstration of existence. Despite his application of reason to matters of religion, Saint Anselm was not a believer in reason as the source of religious revelation. His theology bears the unmistakable marks of Saint Augustine in this regard.

  See the entry about Saint Anselm in the Goodrich Seminar Room.

  Saint Anselm, Proslogium; Monologium; An Appendix in Behalf of the Fool by Gaunilon; and Cur Deus Homo, translated from the latin by Sidney Norton Deane (Chicago: Open Court, 1903).

  Accessed from oll.libertyfund.org/title/1033 on 2007-12-03

  The text is in the public domain.

  ---

  INTRODUCTION.

  THE present volume of St. Anselm’s most important philosophical and theological writings contains: (1) The Proslogium (2) the Monologium, (3) the Cur Deus Homo, and (4) by way of historical complement, an Appendix to the Monologium entitled In Behalf of the Fool by Gaunilon, a monk of Marmoutiers. The Proslogium (which, though subsequent in point of time to the Monologium, is here placed first, as containing the famous ontological argument), the Monologium and the Appendix thereto were translated by Mr. Sidney Norton Deane, of New Haven, Conn.; the Cur Deus Homo was rendered by James Gardiner Vose, formerly of Milton, Conn., and later of Providence, R I., and published in 1854 and 1855 in the Bibliotheca Sacra, then issued at Andover, Mass., by Warren F. Draper. The thanks of the reading public are due to all these gentlemen for their gratuitous labors in behalf of philosophy.

  Welch’s recent book Anselm and His Work, by its accessibility, renders any extended biographical notice of Anselm unneccessary. We append, therefore, merely a few brief paragraphs from Weber’s admirable History of Philosophy on Anselm’s position in the world of thought, and we afterwards add (this, at the suggestion of Prof. George M. Duncan, of Yale University) a series of quotations regarding Anselm’s most characteristic contribution to philosophy—the ontological argument—from Descartes, Spinoza, Locke, Leibnitz, Kant, Hegel, Dorner, Lotze, and Professor Flint. A bibliography also has been compiled. Thus the work will give full material and indications for the original study of one of the greatest exponents of Christian doctrine.

  ANSELM’S PHILOSOPHY.
  
  (AFTER WEBER.1 )

  “The first really speculative thinker after Scotus is St. Anselmus, the disciple of Lanfranc. He was born at Aosta (1033), entered the monastery of Bec in Normandy (1060), succeeded Lanfranc as Abbot (1078), and as Archbishop of Canterbury (1093). He died in 1109. He left a great number of writings, the most important of which are: the Dialogus de grammatico, the Monologium de divinitatis essentia sive Exemplum de ratione fidei, the Proslogium sive Fides quœrens intellectum, the De veritate, the De fide trinitatis, and the Cur Deus Homo?

  “The second Augustine, as St. Anselmus had been called, starts out from the same principle as the first; he holds that faith precedes all reflection and all discussion concerning religious things. The unbelievers, he says, strive to understand because they do not believe; we, on the contrary, strive to understand because we believe. They and we have the same object in view; but inasmuch as they do not believe, they cannot arrive at their goal, which is to understand the dogma. The unbeliever will never understand. In religion faith plays the part played by experience in the understanding of the things of this world. The blind man cannot see the light, and therefore does not understand it; the deaf-mute, who has never perceived sound, cannot have a clear idea of sound. Similarly, not to believe means not to perceive, and not to perceive means not to understand. Hence, we do not reflect in order that we may believe; on the contrary, we believe in order that we may arrive at knowledge. A Christian ought never to doubt the beliefs and teachings of the Holy Catholic Church. All he can do is to strive, as humbly as possible, to understand her teachings by believing them, to love them, and resolutely to observe them in his daily life. Should he succeed in understanding the Christian doctrine, let him render thanks to God, the source of all intelligence! In case he fails, that is no reason why he should obstinately attack the dogma, but a reason why he should bow his head in worship. Faith ought not merely to be the starting-point,—the Christian’s aim is not to depart from faith but to remain in it,—but also the fixed rule and goal of thought, the beginning, the middle, and the end of all philosophy.

  “The above almost literal quotations might give one the impression that St. Anselmus belongs exclusively to the history of theology. Such is not the case, however. This fervent Catholic is more independent, more of an investigator and philosopher than he himself imagines. He is a typical scholastic doctor and a fine exponent of the alliance between reason and faith which forms the characteristic trait of mediæval philosophy. He assumes, a priori, that revelation and reason are in perfect accord. These two manifestations of one and the some Supreme Intelligence cannot possibly contradict each other. Hence, his point of view is diametrically opposed to the credo quia absurdum. Moreover, he too had been besieged by doubt. Indeed, the extreme ardor which impels him to search everywhere for arguments favorable to the dogma, is a confession on his part that the dogma needs support, that it is debatable, that it lacks self-evidence, the criterion of truth. Even as a monk, it was his chief concern to find a simple and conclusive argument in support of the existence of God and of all the doctrines of the Church concerning the Supreme Being. Mere affirmation did not satisfy him; he demanded proofs. This thought was continually before his mind; it caused him to forget his meals, and pursued him even during the solemn moments of worship. He comes to the conclusion that it is a temptation of Satan, and seeks deliverance from it. But in vain. After a night spent in meditation, he at last discovers what he has been seeking for years: the incontrovertible argument in favor of the Christian dogma, and he regards himself as fortunate in having found, not only the proof of the existence of God, but his peace of soul. His demonstrations are like the premises of modern rationalism.

  “Everything that exists, he says, has its cause, and this cause may be one or many. If it is one, then we have what we are looking for: God, the unitary being to whom all other beings owe their origin. If it is manifold, there are three possibilities: (1) The manifold may depend on unity as its cause; or (2) Each thing composing the manifold may be self-caused; or (3) Each thing may owe its existence to all the other things. The first case is identical with the hypothesis that everything proceeds from a single cause; for to depend on several causes, all of which depend on a single cause, means to depend on this single cause. In the second case, we must assume that there is a power, force, or faculty of self-existence common to all the particular causes assumed by the hypothesis; a power in which all participate and are comprised. But that would give us what we had in the first case, an absolute unitary cause. The third supposition, which makes each of the ‘first causes’ depend on all the rest, is absurd; for we cannot hold that a thing has for its cause and condition of existence a thing of which it is itself the cause and condition. Hence we are compelled to believe in a being which is the cause of every existing thing, without being caused by anything itself, and which for that very reason is infinitely more perfect than anything else: it is the most real (ens realissimum), most powerful, and best being. Since it does not depend on any being or on any condition of existence other than itself it is a se and per se; it exists, not because something else exists, but it exists because it exists; that is, it exists necessarily, it is necessary being.

  “It would be an easy matter to deduce pantheism from the arguments of the Monologium. Anselmus, it is true, protests against such an interpretation of his theology. With St. Augustine he assumes that the world is created ex nihilo. But though accepting this teaching, he modifies it. Before the creation, he says, things did not exist by themselves, independently of God; hence we say they were derived from non-being. But they existed eternally for God and in God, as ideas; they existed before their creation, in the sense that the Creator foresaw them and predestined them for existence.

  “The existence of God, the unitary and absolute cause of the world, being proved, the question is to determine his nature and attributes. God’s perfections are like human perfections; with this difference, however, that they are essential to him, which is not the case with us. Man has received a share of certain perfections, but there is no necessary correlation between him and these perfections; it would have been possible for him not to receive them; he could have existed without them. God, on the contrary, does not get his perfections from without; he has not received them, and we cannot say that he has them; he is and must be everything that these perfections imply; his attributes are identical with his essence. Justice, an attribute of God, and God are not two separate things. We cannot say of God that he has justice or goodness; we cannot even say that he is just; for to be just is to participate in justice after the manner of creatures. God is justice as such, goodness as such, wisdom as such, happiness as such, truth as such, being as such. Moreover, all of God’s attributes constitute but a single attribute, by virtue of the unity of his essence (unum est quidquid essentialiter de summa substantia dicitur).

  “All this is pure Platonism. But, not content with spiritualising theism, Anselmus really discredits it when, like a new Carneades, he enumerates the difficulties which he finds in the conception. God is a simple being and at the same time eternal, that is, diffused over infinite points of time; he is omnipresent, that is, distributed over all points of space. Shall we say that God is omnipresent and eternal? This proposition contradicts the notion of the simplicity of the divine essence. Shall we say that he is nowhere in space and nowhere in time? But that would be equivalent to denying his existence. Let us therefore reconcile these two extremes and say that God is omnipresent and eternal, without being limited by space or time. The following is an equally serious difficulty: In God there is no change and consequently nothing accidental. Now, there is no substance without accidents. Hence God is not a substance; he transcends all substance. Anselmus is alarmed at these dangerous consequences of his logic, and he therefore prudently adds that, though the term ‘substance’ may be incorrect, it is, nevertheless, the best we can apply to God—si quid digne dici potest—and that to avoid or condemn it might perhaps jeopardise our faith in the reality of the Divine Being.

  “The most formidable theological antinomy is the doctrine of the trinity of persons in the unity of the divine essence. The Word is the object of eternal thought; it is God in so far as he is thought, conceived, or comprehended by himself. The Holy Spirit is the love of God for the Word, and of the Word for God, the love which God bears himself. But is this explanation satisfactory? And does it not sacrifice the dogma which it professes to explain to the conception of unity? St. Anselmus sees in the Trinity and the notion of God insurmountable difficulties and contradictions, which the human mind cannot reconcile. In his discouragement he is obliged to confess, with Scotus Erigena, St. Augustine, and the Neo-Platonists, that no human word can adequately express the essence of the All-High. Even the words ‘wisdom’ (sapientia) and ‘being’ (essentia) are but imperfect expressions of what he imagines to be the essence of God. All theological phrases are analogies, figures of speech, and mere approximations.

  “The Proslogium sive Fides quœrens intellectum has the same aim as the Monologium: to prove the existence of God. Our author draws the elements of his argument from St. Augustine and Platonism. He sets out from the idea of a perfect being, from which he infers the existence of such a being. We have in ourselves, he says, the idea of an absolutely perfect being. Now, perfection implies existence. Hence God exists. This argument, which has been termed the ontological argument, found an opponent worthy of Anselmus in Gaunilo, a monk of Marmoutiers in Touraine. Gaunilo emphasises the difference between thought and being, and points out the fact that we may conceive and imagine a being, and yet that being may not exist. We have as much right to conclude from our idea of an enchanted island in the middle of the ocean that such an island actually exists. The criticism is just. Indeed, the ontological argument would be conclusive, only in case the idea of God and the existence of God in the human mind were identical. If our idea of God is God himself, it is evident that this idea is the immediate and incontrovertible proof of the existence of God. But what the theologian aims to prove is not the existence of the God-Idea of Plato and Hegel, but the existence of the personal God. However that may be, we hardly know what to admire most,—St. Anselmus’s broad and profound conception, or the sagacity of his opponent who, in the seclusion of his cell, anticipates the Transcendental Dialectic of Kant.

  “The rationalistic tendency which we have just noticed in the Monologium and the Proslogium meets us again in the Cur Deus Homo? Why did God become man? The first word of the title sufficiently indicates the philosophical trend of the treatise. The object is to search for the causes of the incarnation. The incarnation, according to St. Anselmus, necessarily follows from the necessity of redemption. Sin is an offence against the majesty of God. In spite of his goodness, God cannot pardon sin without compounding with honor and justice. On the other hand, he cannot revenge himself on man for his offended honor; for sin is an offence of infinite degree, and therefore demands infinite satisfaction; which means that he must either destroy humanity or inflict upon it the eternal punishments of hell. Now, in either case, the goal of creation, the happiness of his creatures, would be missed and the honor of the Creator compromised. There is but one way for God to escape this dilemma without affecting his honor, and that is to arrange for some kind of satisfaction. He must have infinite satisfaction, because the offence is immeasurable. Now, in so far as man is a finite being and incapable of satisfying divine justice in an infinite measure, the infinite being himself must take the matter in charge; he must have recourse to substitution. Hence, the necessity of the incarnation. God becomes man in Christ; Christ suffers and dies in our stead: thus he acquires an infinite merit and the right to an equivalent recompense. But since the world belongs to the Creator, and nothing can be added to its treasures, the recompense which by right belongs to Christ falls to the lot of the human race in which he is incorporated: humanity is pardoned, forgiven, and saved.

  “Theological criticism has repudiated Anselmus’s theory, which bears the stamp of the spirit of chivalry and of feudal customs. But, notwithstanding the attacks of a superficial rationalism, there is an abiding element of truth in it: over and above each personal and variable will there is an absolute, immutable, and incorruptible will, called justice, honor, and duty, in conformity with the customs of the times.”

  CRITICISMS OF ANSELM’S ONTOLOGICAL ARGUMENT FOR THE BEING OF GOD.
  
  DESCARTES.1

  “But now, if from the simple fact that I can draw from my thought the idea of anything it follows that all that I recognise clearly and distinctly to pertain to this thing pertains to it in reality, can I not draw from this an argument and a demonstration of the existence of God? It is certain that I do not find in me the less the idea of him, that is, of a being supremely perfect, than that of any figure or of any number whatever; and I do not know less clearly and distinctly that an actual and eternal existence belongs to his nature than I know that all that I can demonstrate of any figure or of any number belongs truly to the nature of that figure or that number: and accordingly, although all that I have concluded in the preceding meditations may not turn out to be true, the existence of God ought to pass in my mind as being at least as certain as I have up to this time regarded the truths of mathematics to be, which have to do only with numbers and figures: although, indeed, that might not seem at first to be perfectly evident, but might appear to have some appearance of sophistry. For being accustomed in all other things to make a distinction between existence and essence, I easily persuade myself that existence may perhaps be separated from the essence of God, and thus God might be conceived as not existent actually. But nevertheless, when I think more attentively, I find that existence can no more be separated from the essence of God than from the essence of a rectilinear triangle can be separated the equality of its three angles to two right angles, or, indeed, if you please, from the idea of a mountain the idea of a valley; so that there would be no less contradiction in conceiving of a God—that is, of a being supremely perfect, to whom existence was wanting, that is to say, to whom there was wanting any perfection—than in conceiving of a mountain which had no valley.

  “But although, in reality, I might not be able to conceive of a God without existence, no more than of a mountain without a valley, nevertheless, as from the simple fact that I conceive a mountain with a valley, it does not follow that there exists any mountain in the world, so likewise, although I conceive God as existent, it does not follow, it seems, from that, that God exists, for my thought does not impose any necessity on things; and as there is nothing to prevent my imagining a winged horse, although there is none which has wings, so I might, perhaps, be able to attribute existence to God, although there might not be any God which existed. So far from this being so, it is just here under the appearance of this objection that a sophism lies hid; for from the fact that I cannot conceive a mountain without a valley, it does not follow that there exists in the world any mountain or any valley, but solely that the mountain and the valley, whether they exist or not, are inseparable from one another; whereas, from the fact alone that I cannot conceive God except as existent, it follows that existence is inseparable from him, and, consequently, that he exists in reality; not that my thought can make it to be so, or that it can impose any necessity upon things; but on the contrary the necessity which is in the thing itself, that is to say, the necessity of the existence of God, determines me to have this thought.

  “For it is not at my will to conceive of a God without existence, that is to say, a being supremely perfect without a supreme perfection, as it is at my will to conceive a horse with wings or without wings.

  “And it must not also be said here that it is necessarily true that I should affirm that God exists, after I have supposed him to possess all kinds of perfection, since existence is one of these, but that my first supposition is not necessary, no more than it is necessary to affirm that all figures of four sides may be inscribed in the circle, but that, supposing I had this thought, I should be constrained to admit that the rhombus can be inscribed there, since it is a figure of four sides, and thus I should be constrained to admit something false. One ought not, I say, to allege this; for although it may not be necessary that I should ever fall to thinking about God, nevertheless, when it happens that I think upon a being first and supreme, and draw, so to speak, the idea of him from the store-house of mind, it is necessary that I attribute to him every sort of perfection, although I may not go on to enumerate them all, and give attention to each one in particular. And this necessity is sufficient to bring it about (as soon as I recognise that I should next conclude that existence is a perfection) that this first and supreme being exists: while, just as it is not necessary that I ever imagine a triangle, but whenever I choose to consider a rectilinear figure, composed solely of three angles, it is absolutely necessary that I attribute to it all the things which serve for the conclusion that there three angles are not greater than two right angles, although, perhaps, I did not then consider this in particular.”

  SPINOZA.1

  “Prop. XI. God, or substance, consisting of infinite attributes, of which each expresses eternal and infinite essentiality, necessarily exists.

  “Proof.—If this be denied, conceive, if possible, that God does not exist: then his essence does not involve existence. But this (by Prop. vii.) is absurd. Therefore God necessarily exists.

  “Another Proof.—Of everything whatsoever a cause or reason must be assigned, either for its existence, or for its non-existence—e. g., if a triangle exist, a reason or cause must be granted for its existence; if, on the contrary, it does not exist, a cause must also be granted, which prevents it from existing, or annuls its existence. This reason or cause must either be contained in the nature of the thing in question, or be external to it. For instance, the reason for the non-existence of a square circle is indicated in its nature, namely, because it would involve a contradiction. On the other hand, the existence of substance follows also solely from its nature, inasmuch as its nature involves existence. (See Prop. vii.)

  “But the reason for the existence of a triangle or a circle does not follow from the nature of those figures, but from the order of universal nature in extension. From the latter it must follow, either that a triangle necessarily exists, or that it is impossible that it should exist. So much is self-evident. It follows there-from that a thing necessarily exists, if no cause or reason be granted which prevents its existence.

  “If, then, no cause or reason can be given, which prevents the existence of God, or which destroys his existence, we must certainly conclude that he necessarily does exist. If such a reason or cause should be given, it must either be drawn from the very nature of God, or be external to him—that is, drawn from another substance of another nature. For if it were of the same nature, God, by that very fact, would be admitted to exist. But substance of another nature could have nothing in common with God (by Prop. ii.), and therefore would be unable either to cause or to destroy his existence.

  “As, then, a reason or cause which would annul the divine existence cannot be drawn from anything external to the divine nature, such cause must perforce, if God does not exist, be drawn from God’s own nature, which would involve a contradiction. To make such an affirmation about a being absolutely infinite and supremely perfect, is absurd; therefore, neither in the nature of God, nor externally to his nature, can a cause or reason be assigned which would annul his existence. Therefore, God necessarily exists. Q. E. D.

  “Another proof.—The potentiality of non-existence is a negation of power, and contrariwise the potentiality of existence is a power, as is obvious. If, then, that which necessarily exists is nothing but finite beings, such finite beings are more powerful than a being absolutely infinite, which is obviously absurd; therefore, either nothing exists, or else a being absolutely infinite necessarily exists also. Now we exist either in ourselves, or in something else which necessarily exists (see Axiom i. and Prop. vii.). Therefore a being absolutely infinite—in other words, God (Def. vi.)—necessarily exists. Q. E. D.

  “Note.—In this last proof, I have purposely shown God’s existence a posteriori, so that the proof might be more easily followed, not because, from the same premises, God’s existence does not follow a priori. For, as the potentiality of existence is a power, it follows that, in proportion as reality increases in the nature of a thing, so also will it increase its strength for existence. Therefore a being absolutely infinite, such as God, has from himself an absolutely infinite power of existence, and hence he does absolutely exist. Perhaps there will be many who will be unable to see the force of this proof, inasmuch as they are accustomed only to consider those things which flow from external causes. Of such things, they see that those which quickly come to pass—that is, quickly come into existence—quickly also disappear; whereas they regard as more difficult of accomplishment—that is, not so easily brought into existence—those things which they conceive as more complicated.

  “However, to do away with this misconception, I need not here show the measure of truth in the proverb, ‘What comes quickly, goes quickly,’ nor discuss whether, from the point of view of universal nature, all things are equally easy, or otherwise: I need only remark, that I am not here speaking of things, which come to pass through causes external to themselves, but only of substances which (by Prop. vi.) cannot be produced by any external cause. Things which are produced by external causes, whether they consist of many parts or few, owe whatsoever perfection or reality they possess solely to the efficacy of their external cause, and therefore their existence arises solely from the perfection by their external cause, not from their own. Contrariwise, whatsoever perfection is possessed by substance is due to no external cause; wherefore the existence of substance must arise solely from its own nature, which is nothing else but its essence. Thus, the perfection of a thing does not annul its existence, but, on the contrary, asserts it. Imperfection, on the other hand, does annul it; therefore we cannot be more certain of the existence of anything, than of the existence of a being absolutely infinite or perfect—that is, of God. For inasmuch as his essence excludes all imperfection, and involves absolute perfection, all cause for doubt concerning his existence is done away, and the utmost certainty on the question is given. This, I think, will be evident to every moderately attentive reader.”

  LOCKE.1

  “Our idea of a most perfect being, not the sole proof of a God.—How far the idea of a most perfect being which a man may frame in his mind, does or does not prove the existence of a God, I will not here examine. For, in the different make of men’s tempers, and application of their thoughts, some arguments prevail more on one, and some on another, for the confirmation of the same truth. But yet, I think this I may say, that it is an ill way of establishing this truth and silencing atheists, to lay the whole stress of so important a point as this upon that sole foundation: and take some men’s having that idea of God in their minds (for it is evident some men have none, and some worse than none, and the most very different) for the only proof of a Deity; and out of an over-fondness of that darling invention, cashier, or at least endeavor to invalidate, all other arguments, and forbid us to hearken to those proofs, as being weak or fallacious, which our own existence and the sensible parts of the universe offer so clearly and cogently to our thoughts, that I deem it impossible for a considering man to withstand them.”

  LEIBNITZ.1

  “Although I am for innate ideas, and in particular for that of God, I do not think that the demonstrations of the Cartesians drawn from the idea of God are perfect. I have shown fully elsewhere (in the Actes de Leipsic, and in the Mémoires de Trevoux) that what Descartes has borrowed from Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury, is very beautiful and really very ingenious, but that there is still a gap therein to be filled. This celebrated archbishop, who was without doubt one of the most able men of his time, congratulates himself, not without reason, for having discovered a means of proving the existence of God a priori, by means of its own notion, without recurring to its effects. And this is very nearly the force of his argument: God is the greatest or (as Descartes says) the most perfect of beings, or rather a being of supreme grandeur and perfection, including all degrees thereof. That is the notion of God. See now how existence follows from this notion. To exist is something more than not to exist, or rather, existence adds a degree to grandeur and perfection, and as Descartes states it, existence is itself a perfection. Therefore this degree of grandeur and perfection, or rather this perfection which consists in existence, is in this supreme all-great, all-perfect being: for otherwise some degree would be wanting to it, contrary to its definition. Consequently this supreme being exists. The Scholastics, not excepting even their Doctor Angelicus, have misunderstood this argument, and have taken it as a paralogism; in which respect they were altogether wrong, and Descartes, who studied quite a long time the scholastic philosophy at the Jesuit College of La Fleche, had great reason for re-establishing it. It is not a paralogism, but it is an imperfect demonstration, which assumes something that must still be proved in order to render it mathematically evident; that is, it is tacitly assumed that this idea of the all-great or all-perfect being is possible, and implies no contradiction. And it is already something that by this remark it is proved that, assuming that God is possible, he exists, which is the privilege of divinity alone. We have the right to presume the possibility of every being, and especially that of God, until some one proves the contrary. So that this metaphysical argument already gives a morally demonstrative conclusion, which declares that according to the present state of our knowledge we must judge that God exists, and act in conformity thereto. But it is to be desired, nevertheless, that clever men achieve the demonstration with the strictness of a mathematical proof, and I think I have elsewhere said something that may serve this end.”

  KANT.1

  “Being is evidently not a real predicate, or a concept of something that can be added to the concept of a thing. It is merely the admission of a thing, and of certain determinations in it. Logically, it is merely the copula of a judgment. The proposition, God is almighty, contains two concepts, each having its object, namely, God and almightiness. The small word is, is not an additional predicate, but only serves to put the predicate in relation to the subject. If, then, I take the subject (God) with all its predicates (including that of almightiness), and say, God is, or there is a God, I do not put a new predicate to the concept of God, but I only put the subject by itself, with all its predicates, in relation to my concept, as its object. Both must contain exactly the same kind of thing, and nothing can have been added to the concept, which expresses possibility only, by my thinking its object as simply given and saying, it is. And thus the real does not contain more than the possible. A hundred real dollars do not contain a penny more than a hundred possible dollars. For as the latter signify the concept, the former the object and its position by itself, it is clear that, in case the former contained more than the latter, my concept would not express the whole object, and would not therefore be its adequate concept. In my financial position no doubt there exists more by one hundred real dollars, than by their concept only (that is their possibility). because in reality the object is not only contained analytically in my concept, but is added to my concept (which is a determination of my state), synthetically; but the conceived hundred dollars are not in the least increased through the existence which is outside my concept.

  “By whatever and by however many predicates I may think a thing (even in completely determining it), nothing is really added to it, if I add that the thing exists. Otherwise, it would not be the same that exists, but something more than was contained in the concept, and I could not say that the exact object of my concept existed. Nay, even if I were to think in a thing all reality, except one, that one missing reality would not be supplied by my saying that so defective a thing exists, but it would exist with the same defect with which I thought it; or what exists would be different from what I thought. If, then, I try to conceive a being, as the highest reality (without any defect), the question still remains, whether it exists or not. For though in my concept there may be wanting nothing of the possible real content of a thing in general, something is wanting in its relation to my whole state of thinking. namely, that the knowledge of that object should be possible a posteriori also. And here we perceive the cause of our difficulty. If we were concerned with an object of our senses, I could not mistake the existence of a thing for the mere concept of it; for by the concept the object is thought as only in harmony with the general conditions of a possible empirical knowledge, while by its existence it is thought as contained in the whole content of experience. Through this connection with the content of the whole experience, the concept of an object is not in the least increased; our thought has only received through it one more possible perception. If, however, we are thinking existence through the pure category alone, we need not wonder that we cannot find any characteristic to distinguish it from mere possibility.

  “Whatever, therefore, our concept of an object may contain, we must always step outside it, in order to attribute to it existence. With objects of the senses, this takes place through their connection with any one of my perceptions, according to empirical laws: with objects of pure thought, however, there is no means of knowing their existence, because it would have to be known entirely a priori, while our consciousness of every kind of existence, whether immediately by perception, or by conclusions which connect something with perception, belongs entirely to the unity of experience, and any existence outside that field, though it cannot be declared to be absolutely impossible, is a presupposition that cannot be justified by anything.

  “The concept of a Supreme Being is, in many respects, a very useful idea, but, being an idea only, it is quite incapable of increasing, by itself alone, our knowledge with regard to what exists It cannot even do so much as to inform us any further as to its possibility. The analytical characteristic of possibility, which consists in the absence of contradiction in mere positions (realities), cannot be denied to it; but the connection of all real properties in one and the same thing is a synthesis the possibility of which we cannot judge a priori because these realities are not given to us as such, and because, even if this were so, no judgment whatever takes place, it being necessary to look for the characteristic of the possibility of synthetical knowledge in experience only, to which the object of an idea can never belong. Thus we see that the celebrated Leibnitz is far from having achieved what we thought he had, namely, to understand a priori the possibility of so sublime an ideal Being.

  ‘Time and labor therefore are lost on the famous ontological (Cartesian) proof of the existence of a Supreme Being from mere concepts; and a man might as well imagine that he could become richer in knowledge by mere ideas, as a merchant in capital, if, in order to improve his position, he were to add a few noughts to his cash account.”

  HEGEL.1

  “This proof was included among the various proofs up to the time of Kant, and—by some who have not yet reached the Kantian standpoint—it is so included even to the present day. It is different from what we find and read of amongst the ancients. For it was said that God is absolute thought as objective; for because things in the world are contingent, they are not the truth in and for itself—but this is found in the infinite. The scholastics also knew well from the Aristotelian philosophy the metaphysical proposition that potentiality is nothing by itself, but is clearly one with actuality Later, on the other hand, the opposition between thought itself and Being began to appear with Anselm. It is noteworthy that only now for the first time through the Middle Ages and in Christianity, the universal Notion and Being, as it is to ordinary conception, became established in this pure abstraction as these infinite extremes; and thus the highest law has come to consciousness. But we reach our profoundest depths in bringing the highest opposition into consciousness. Only no advance was made beyond the division as such, although Anselm also tried to find the connection between the sides. But while hitherto God appeared as the absolute existent, and the universal was attributed to Him as predicate, an opposite order begins with Anselm—Being becomes predicate, and the absolute Idea is first of all established as the subject, but the subject of thought. Thus if the existence of God is once abandoned as the first hypothesis, and established as a result of thought, self-consciousness is on the way to turn back within itself. Then we have the question coming in, Does God exist? while on the other side the question of most importance was, What is God?

  “The ontological proof, which is the first properly metaphysical proof of the existence of God, consequently came to mean that God as the Idea of existence which unites all reality in itself, also has the reality of existence within Himself; this proof thus follows from the Notion of God, that He is the universal essence of all essence. The drift of this reasoning is, according to Anselm (Proslogium, C. 2), as follows: ‘It is one thing to say that a thing is in the understanding, and quite another to perceive that it exists. Even an ignorant person (insipiens) will thus be quite convinced that in thought there is something beyond which nothing greater can be thought; for when he hears this he understands it, and everything that is understood is in the understanding. But that beyond which nothing greater can be thought cannot certainly be in the understanding alone. For if it is accepted as in thought alone, we may go on farther to accept it as existent; that, however, is something greater’ than what is merely thought. ‘Thus were that beyond which nothing greater can be thought merely in the understanding, that beyond which nothing greater can be thought would be something beyond which something greater can be thought. But that is truly impossible; there thus without doubt exists both in the understanding and in reality something beyond which nothing greater can be thought.’ The highest conception cannot be in the understanding alone; it is essential that it should exist. Thus it is made clear that Being is in a superficial way subsumed under the universal of reality, that to this extent Being does not enter into opposition with the Notion. That is quite right; only the transition is not demonstrated—that the subjective understanding abrogates itself. This, however, is just the question which gives the whole interest to the matter. When reality or completion is expressed in such a way that it is not yet posited as existent, it is something thought, and rather opposed to Being than that this is subsumed under it.

  “This mode of arguing held good until the time of Kant; and we see in it the endeavor to apprehend the doctrine of the Church through reason. This opposition between Being and thought is the starting-point in philosophy, the absolute that contains the two opposites within itself—a conception, according to Spinoza, which involves its existence likewise. Of Anselm it is however to be remarked that the formal logical mode of the understanding, the process of scholastic reasoning is to be found in him; the content indeed is right, but the form faulty. For in the first place the expression ‘the thought of a Highest’ is assumed as the prius. Secondly, there are two sorts of objects of thought—one that is and another that is not; the object that is only thought and does not exist, is as imperfect as that which only is without being thought. The third point is that what is highest must likewise exist. But what is highest, the standard to which all else must conform, must be no mere hypothesis, as we find it represented in the conception of a highest acme of perfection, as a content which is thought and likewise is. This very content, the unity of Being and thought, is thus indeed the true content: but because Anselm has it before him only in the form of the understanding, the opposites are identical and conformable to unity in a third determination only—the Highest—which, in as far as it is regulative, is outside of them. In this it is involved that we should first of all have subjective thought, and then distinguished from that, Being. We allow that if we think a content (and it is apparently indifferent whether this is God or any other), it may be the case that this content does not exist. The assertion ‘Something that is thought does not exist’ is now subsumed under the above standard and is not conformable to it. We grant that the truth is that which is not merely thought but which likewise is But of this opposition nothing here is said. Undoubtedly God would be imperfect, if He were merely thought and did not also have the determination of Being. But in relation to God we must not take thought as merely subjective; thought here signifies the absolute, pure thought, and thus we must ascribe to Him the quality of Being. On the other hand if God were merely Being, if He were not conscious of Himself as self-consciousness, He would not be Spirit, a thought that thinks itself.

  “Kant, on the other hand, attacked and rejected Anselm’s proof—which rejection the whole world afterwards followed up—on the ground of its being an assumption that the unity of Being and thought is the highest perfection. What Kant thus demonstrates in the present day—that Being is different from thought and that Being is not by any means posited with thought—was a criticism offered even in that time by a monk named Gaunilo. He combated this proof of Anselm’s in a Liber pro insipiente to which Anselm himself directed a reply in his Liber apologeticus adversus insipientem. Thus Kant says (Kritik der reinen Vernunft, p. 464 of the sixth edition): If we think a hundred dollars, this conception does not involve existence. That is certainly true: what is only a conception does not exist, but it is likewise not a true content, for what does not exist, is merely an untrue conception. Of such we do not however here speak, but of pure thought, it is nothing new to say they are different—Anselm knew this just as well as we do. God is the infinite, just as body and soul, Being and thought are eternally united; this is the speculative, true definition of God. To the proof which Kant criticises in a manner which it is the fashion to follow now-a-days, there is thus lacking only the perception of the unity of thought and of existence in the infinite; and this alone must form the commencement.”

  J. A. DORNER.1

  “According to the Monologium, we arrive at the mental representation of God by the agency of faith and conscience, therefore by a combined religious and moral method; by the same means we arrive at the representation of the relativity of the world. But as there seemed to Anselm something inadequate in making the Being of the Absolute dependent upon the existence of the Relative, as if the latter were more certain than the former, he has interpolated in the Proslogium (Alloquium Dei) the Ontological method. The thought of God, which is always given, and the being of which is to be proved, claims, at any rate, to be the highest thought possible; indeed, upon close comparison with all other thoughts which come and go, with thoughts of such things as may just as well not exist as exist, it has the essential peculiarity, the prerogative, so to speak,—and this is Anselm’s discovery,—that, if it is actually thought of as the highest conceivable thought, it is also thought of as existent. Were it not thought of as being, it would not for a moment be actually thought. Anselm then proceeds with his proof as follows: ‘We believe Thou art something, beyond which nothing greater can be thought. The fool (Ps. xiv.) denies the existence of such a Being. Is He therefore non-existent? But the very fool hears and understands what I say, “something, greater than which there is nothing,” and what he understands is in his understanding. That it also exists without him would thus have to be proved. But that, beyond which nothing greater can be thought, cannot exist in mere intellect. For did it exist only in intellect, the thought might be framed that it was realised, and that would be a greater thought. Consequently, were that, a greater than which cannot be thought, existent in mere intellect, the thought quo majus cogitari non potest would at the same time be quo majus cogitari potest, which is impossible. Consequently, there exists, in reality as well as in the understanding, something a greater than which cannot be thought. And this is so true that its non-existence cannot be thought Something may be thought which is only to be thought as existent, and that is a majus than that the non-existence of which may be thought, and that Thou art, O Lord, my God, I must think though I did not believe.’ The nerve of the Anselmic argument lies therefore in the notion that an idea which has an objective existence is a majus than that to which mere subjective existence appertains; that, consequently, as under the idea of God the highest thought possible is at any rate expressed, the idea of God is not thought unless it is thought as existent. For, he says in another place, it may be thought of everything that it does not exist, with the exception of that quod summe est to which being pre-eminently belongs. That is, the non-existence may be thought of everything which has beginning or end, or which is constituted of parts and is nowhere whole. But that, and it alone, cannot be thought as non-existent which has neither beginning nor end, and is not constituted of parts, but is thought of as everywhere existing whole Gaunilo, Count of Montigny, makes a twofold answer in defence of the atheist. He says that that highest essence has no being in the understanding; it only exists therein by the ear, not by being, it only exists as a man who has heard a sound endeavors to embrace a thing wholly unknown to him in an image. And therein, he says, it is concluded that the mental representation of God in mankind is already a purely contingent one, and is produced from without by the sound of words; its necessary presence in the spirit is not proved. Thus, he adds, much is wanting to the ability of inferring its existence from the finding of such an image in the spirit. In the sphere of mere imagination no one thing has a less or a greater existence than any other thing; each has equally no existence at all. Therefore, he writes, granted that the presence of the idea of God in the spirit is not contingent, still the thought or the concept of God does not essentially argue the being of God. Similarly says Kant later on: ‘We are no richer if we think of our ability as one cipher more.’ That Anselm also undoubtedly knew, but he opined that the concept of God is different to any other thought, which remains unaltered, whether it is thought of as existent or non-existent; the concept of God is that thought, which is no longer thought unless it is thought as existent, and which, therefore, essentially involves being. But, of course, it is insufficiently established by Anselm that a concept of God which does not necessarily include existence, is not the highest thought, and therefore is not the concept of God, and that, consequently, the really highest thought must also be thought of as existent. To this the following objection attaches. Inasmuch as Anselm treated existence as a majus compared with non-existence, he treated existence as an attribute, whereas it is the bearer of all attributes. So it is not proved by Anselm that the origin of this idea, which, when thought, is thought as existent, is not contingent to the reason, but necessary; and that reason only remains reason by virtue of this idea. Finally, Anselm thinks, thus overrating the Ontological moment, that he has already attained therein the full concept of God. These shortcomings were to be obviated, stage by stage, by his successors”

  LOTZE.1

  “To conclude that because the notion of a most perfect Being includes reality as one of its perfections, therefore a most perfect Being necessarily exists, is so obviously to conclude falsely, that after Kant’s incisive refutation any attempt to defend such reasoning would be useless. Anselm, in his more free and spontaneous reflection, has here and there touched the thought that the greatest which we can think, if we think it as only thought, is less than the same greatest if we think it as existent. It is not possible that from this reflection either any one should develop a logically cogent proof, but the way in which it is put seems to reveal another fundamental thought which is seeking for expression. For what would it matter if that which is thought as most perfect were, as thought, less than the least reality? Why should this thought disturb us? Plainly for this reason, that it is an immediate certainty that what is greatest, most beautiful, most worthy is not a mere thought, but must be a reality, because it would be intolerable to believe of our ideal that it is an idea produced by the action of thought but having no existence, no power, and no validity in the world of reality. We do not from the perfection of that which is perfect immediately deduce its reality as a logical consequence; but without the circumlocution of a deduction we directly feel the impossibility of its non-existence, and all semblance of syllogistic proof only serves to make more clear the directness of this certainty. If what is greatest did not exist, then what is greatest would not be, and it is not impossible that that which is greatest of all conceivable things should not be.”

  PROFESSOR ROBERT FLINT.2

  “Anselm was the founder of that kind of argumentation which, in the opinion of many, is alone entitled to be described as a priori or ontological. He reasoned thus: ‘The fool may say in his heart, There is no God; but he only proves thereby that he is a fool, for what he says is self-contradictory. Since he denies that there is a God, he has in his mind the idea of God, and that idea implies the existence of God, for it is the idea of a Being than which a higher cannot be conceived. That than which a higher cannot be conceived cannot exist merely as an idea, because what exists merely as an idea is inferior to what exists in reality as well as in idea The idea of a highest Being which exists merely in thought, is the idea of a highest Being which is not the highest even in thought, but inferior to a highest Being which exists in fact as well as in thought.’ This reasoning found unfavorable critics even among the contemporaries of Anselm, and has commended itself completely to few. Yet it may fairly be doubted whether it has been conclusively refuted, and some of the objections most frequently urged against it are certainly inadmissible. It is no answer to it, for example, to deny that the idea of God is innate or universal The argument merely assumes that he who denies that there is a God must have an idea of God. There is also no force, as Anselm showed, in the objection of Gaunilo, that the existence of God can no more be inferred from the idea of a perfect being, than the existence of a perfect island is to be inferred from the idea of such an island. There neither is nor can be an idea of an island which is greater and better than any other that can ever be conceived Anselm could safely promise that he would make Gaunilo a present of such an island when he had really imagined it. Only one being—an infinite, independent, necessary being—can be perfect in the sense of being greater and better than every other conceivable being. The objection that the ideal can never logically yield the real—that the transition from thought to fact must be in every instance illegitimate—is merely an assertion that the argument is fallacious. It is an assertion which cannot fairly be made until the argument has been exposed and refuted. The argument is that a certain thought of God is found necessarily to imply His existence. The objection that existence is not a predicate, and that the idea of a God who exists is not more complete and perfect than the idea of a God who does not exist, is, perhaps, not incapable of being satisfactorily repelled. Mere existence is not a predicate, but specifications or determinations of existence are predicable. Now the argument nowhere implies that existence is a predicate; it implies only that reality, necessity, and independence of existence are predicates of existence; and it implies this on the ground that existence in re can be distinguished from existence in conceptu, necessary from contingent existence, self-existence from derived existence. Specific distinctions must surely admit of being predicated That the exclusion of existence—which here means real and necessary existence—from the idea of God does not leave us with an incomplete idea of God, is not a position, I think, which can be maintained Take away existence from among the elements in the idea of a perfect being, and the idea becomes either the idea of a nonentity or the idea of an idea, and not the idea of a perfect being at all Thus, the argument of Anselm is unwarrantably represented as an argument of four terms instead of three Those who urge the objection seem to me to prove only that if our thought of God be imperfect, a being who merely realised that thought would be an imperfect being, but there is a vast distance between this truism and the paradox that an unreal being may be an ideally perfect being”

  BIBLIOGRAPHY.

  Patrologiæ Cursus Completus. Series Secunda. Tomi CLVIII-CLIX. S. Anselmus. [Ed. Abbé Migne] Paris, 1853.

  Church. A. W. St. Anselm [Third Edition]. London, 1873

  Franck, G F. Anselm von Canterbury. Tübingen, 1842.

  Hasse, F. R Anselm von Canterbury Leipzig, 1843 2 volumes.

  — The same. Translated and abridged by W. Turner. London, 1850.

  Rémusat, Charles deAnselme de Canterbury. Paris, 1854; 2nd ed, 1868.

  Rigg, J. M. St. Anselm of Canterbury London, 1896.

  Rule M The Life and Times of St. Anselm. London, 1883. 2 volumes.

  De Vosges, Le Comte Domet.Saint Anselme, in the series Les Grands Philosophes Paris, 1901.

  Welch, A. C. Anselm and His Work. Edinburgh, 1901.

  Baur, F C. Vorlesungen uber die christliche Dogmengeschichte. Leipzig, 1866. Zwerter Band, 249-251, 298 ff.

  Erdmann, J. E. A History of Philosophy. English Translation [Ed W. S. Hough]. London, 1891. Vol. I, 303-314.

  Hegel, G W F Lectures on the History of Philosophy. Translated from the German by E. S Haldane and F H Simson London, 1896 Vol. III, 61-67

  Hook, W T Lives of the Archbishops of Canterbury London, 1862 Vol. VIII, 169-276.

  Maurice, F D. Moral and Metaphysical Philosophy London, 1882. Vol I, 507-533.

  Pfleiderer, O The Philosophy of Religion. Translated by A. Menzies. London, 1888. Vol III, 271-276

  Ueberweg, F1History of Philosophy. Translated by G. S Morris. New York, 1892. Vol. I, 377-386.

  PROSLOGIUM. MONOLOGIUM. AN APPENDIX IN BEHALF OF THE FOOL BY GAUNILON.

  ANSELM’S PROSLOGIUM
  
  OR DISCOURSE ON THE EXISTENCE OF GOD

  PREFACE.

  In this brief work the author aims at proving in a single argument the existence of God, and whatsoever we believe of God —The difficulty of the task —The author writes in the person of one who contemplates God, and seeks to understand what he believes. To this work he had given this title: Faith Seeking Understanding. He finally named it Proslogium,—that is, A Discourse.

  After I had published, at the solicitous entreaties of certain brethren, a brief work (the Monologium) as an example of meditation on the grounds of faith, in the person of one who investigates, in a course of silent reasoning with himself, matters of which he is ignorant; considering that this book was knit together by the linking of many arguments, I began to ask myself whether there might be found a single argument which would require no other for its proof than itself alone; and alone would suffice to demonstrate that God truly exists, and that there is a supreme good requiring nothing else, which all other things require for their existence and well-being; and whatever we believe regarding the divine Being.

  Although I often and earnestly directed my thought to this end, and at some times that which I sought seemed to be just within my reach, while again it wholly evaded my mental vision, at last in despair I was about to cease, as if from the search for a thing which could not be found. But when I wished to exclude this thought altogether, lest, by busying my mind to no purpose, it should keep me from other thoughts, in which I might be successful; then more and more, though I was unwilling and shunned it, it began to force itself upon me, with a kind of importunity. So, one day, when I was exceedingly wearied with resisting its importunity, in the very conflict of my thoughts, the proof of which I had despaired offered itself, so that I eagerly embraced the thoughts which I was strenuously repelling.

  Thinking, therefore, that what I rejoiced to have found, would, if put in writing, be welcome to some readers, of this very matter, and of some others, I have written the following treatise, in the person of one who strives to lift his mind to the contemplation of God, and seeks to understand what he believes. In my judgment, neither this work nor the other, which I mentioned above, deserved to be called a book, or to bear the name of an author; and yet I thought they ought not to be sent forth without some title by which they might, in some sort, invite one into whose hands they fell to their perusal. I accordingly gave each a title, that the first might be known as, An Example of Meditation on the Grounds of Faith, and its sequel as, Faith Seeking Understanding. But, after both had been copied by many under these titles, many urged me, and especially Hugo, the reverend Archbishop of Lyons, who discharges the apostolic office in Gaul, who instructed me to this effect on his apostolic authority—to prefix my name to these writings. And that this might be done more fitly, I named the first, Monologium, that is, A Soliloquy; but the second, Proslogium, that is, A Discourse.

  CHAPTER I.

  Exhortation of the mind to the contemplation of God.—It casts aside cares, and excludes all thoughts save that of God, that it may seek Him. Man was created to see God. Man by sin lost the blessedness for which he was made, and found the misery for which he was not made. He did not keep this good when he could keep it easily. Without God it is ill with us Our labors and attempts are in vain without God. Man cannot seek God, unless God himself teaches him; nor find him, unless he reveals himself. God created man in his image, that he might be mindful of him, think of him, and love him. The believer does not seek to understand, that he may believe, but he believes that he may understand: for unless he believed he would not understand.

  Up now, slight man! flee, for a little while, thy occupations; hide thyself, for a time, from thy disturbing thoughts. Cast aside, now, thy burdensome cares, and put away thy toilsome business. Yield room for some little time to God; and rest for a little time in him. Enter the inner chamber of thy mind; shut out all thoughts save that of God, and such as can aid thee in seeking him; close thy door and seek him. Speak now, my whole heart! speak now to God, saying, I seek thy face; thy face, Lord, will I seek (Psalms xxvii. 8). And come thou now, O Lord my God, teach my heart where and how it may seek thee, where and how it may find thee.

  Lord, if thou art not here, where shall I seek thee, being absent? But if thou art everywhere, why do I not see thee present? Truly thou dwellest in unapproachable light. But where is unapproachable light, or how shall I come to it? Or who shall lead me to that light and into it, that I may see thee in it? Again, by what marks, under what form, shall I seek thee? I have never seen thee, O Lord, my God; I do not know thy form. What, O most high Lord, shall this man do, an exile far from thee? What shall thy servant do, anxious in his love of thee, and cast out afar from thy face? He pants to see thee, and thy face is too far from him. He longs to come to thee, and thy dwelling-place is inaccessible. He is eager to find thee, and knows not thy place. He desires to seek thee, and does not know thy face. Lord, thou art my God, and thou art my Lord, and never have I seen thee. It is thou that hast made me, and hast made me anew, and hast bestowed upon me all the blessings I enjoy; and not yet do I know thee. Finally, I was created to see thee, and not yet have I done that for which I was made.

  O wretched lot of man, when he hath lost that for which he was made! O hard and terrible fate! Alas, what has he lost, and what has he found? What has departed, and what remains? He has lost the blessedness for which he was made, and has found the misery for which he was not made. That has departed without which nothing is happy, and that remains which, in itself, is only miserable. Man once did eat the bread of angels, for which he hungers now; he eateth now the bread of sorrows, of which he knew not then. Alas! for the mourning of all mankind, for the universal lamentation of the sons of Hades! He choked with satiety, we sigh with hunger. He abounded, we beg. He possessed in happiness, and miserably forsook his possession; we suffer want in unhappiness, and feel a miserable longing, and alas! we remain empty.

  Why did he not keep for us, when he could so easily, that whose lack we should feel so heavily? Why did he shut us away from the light, and cover us over with darkness? With what purpose did he rob us of life, and inflict death upon us? Wretches that we are, whence have we been driven out; whither are we driven on? Whence hurled? Whither consigned to ruin? From a native country into exile, from the vision of God into our present blindness, from the joy of immortality into the bitterness and horror of death. Miserable exchange of how great a good, for how great an evil! Heavy loss, heavy grief heavy all our fate!

  But alas! wretched that I am, one of the sons of Eve, far removed from God! What have I undertaken? What have I accomplished? Whither was I striving? How far have I come? To what did I as pire? Amid what thoughts am I sighing? I sought blessings, and lo! confusion. I strove toward God, and I stumbled on myself. I sought calm in privacy, and I found tribulation and grief, in my inmost thoughts. I wished to smile in the joy of my mind, and I am compelled to frown by the sorrow of my heart. Gladness was hoped for, and lo! a source of frequent sighs!

  And thou too, O Lord, how long? How long, O Lord, dost thou forget us; how long dost thou turn thy face from us? When wilt thou look upon us, and hear us? When wilt thou enlighten our eyes, and show us thy face? When wilt thou restore thyself to us? Look upon us, Lord; hear us, enlighten us, reveal thyself to us. Restore thyself to us, that it may be well with us,—thyself, without whom it is so ill with us. Pity our toilings and strivings toward thee, since we can do nothing without thee. Thou dost invite us; do thou help us. I beseech thee, O Lord, that I may not lose hope in sighs, but may breathe anew in hope. Lord, my heart is made bitter by its desolation; sweeten thou it, I beseech thee, with thy consolation. Lord, in hunger I began to seek thee; I beseech thee that I may not cease to hunger for thee. In hunger I have come to thee; let me not go unfed. I have come in poverty to the Rich, in misery to the Compassionate; let me not return empty and despised. And if, before I eat, I sigh, grant, even after sighs, that which I may eat. Lord, I am bowed down and can only look downward; raise me up that I may look upward. My iniquities have gone over my head; they overwhelm me; and, like a heavy load, they weigh me down. Free me from them; unburden me, that the pit of iniquities may not close over me.

  Be it mine to look up to thy light, even from afar, even from the depths. Teach me to seek thee, and reveal thyself to me, when I seek thee, for I cannot seek thee, except thou teach me, nor find thee, except thou reveal thyself. Let me seek thee in longing, let me long for thee in seeking; let me find thee in love, and love thee in finding. Lord, I acknowledge and I thank thee that thou hast created me in this thine image, in order that I may be mindful of thee, may conceive of thee, and love thee; but that image has been so consumed and wasted away by vices, and obscured by the smoke of wrong-doing, that it cannot achieve that for which it was made, except thou renew it, and create it anew. I do not endeavor, O Lord, to penetrate thy sublimity, for in no wise do I compare my understanding with that; but I long to understand in some degree thy truth, which my heart believes and loves. For I do not seek to understand that I may believe, but I believe in order to understand. For this also I believe,—that unless I believed, I should not understand.

  CHAPTER II.

  Truly there is a God, although the fool hath said in his heart, There is no God.

  And so, Lord, do thou, who dost give understanding to faith, give me, so far as thou knowest it to be profitable, to understand that thou art as we believe; and that thou art that which we believe. And, indeed, we believe that thou art a being than which nothing greater can be conceived. Or is there no such nature, since the fool hath said in his heart, there is no God? (Psalms xiv. 1). But, at any rate, this very fool, when he hears of this being of which I speak—a being than which nothing greater can be conceived—understands what he hears, and what he understands is in his understanding; although he does not understand it to exist.

  For, it is one thing for an object to be in the understanding, and another to understand that the object exists. When a painter first conceives of what he will afterwards perform, he has it in his understanding, but he does not yet understand it to be, because he has not yet performed it. But after he has made the painting, he both has it in his understanding, and he understands that it exists, because he has made it.

  Hence, even the fool is convinced that something exists in the understanding, at least, than which nothing greater can be conceived. For, when he hears of this, he understands it. And whatever is understood, exists in the understanding. And assuredly that, than which nothing greater can be conceived, cannot exist in the understanding alone. For, suppose it exists in the understanding alone: then it can be conceived to exist in reality; which is greater.

  Therefore, if that, than which nothing greater can be conceived, exists in the understanding alone, the very being, than which nothing greater can be conceived, is one, than which a greater can be conceived. But obviously this is impossible. Hence, there is no doubt that there exists a being, than which nothing greater can be conceived, and it exists both in the understanding and in reality.

  CHAPTER III.

  God cannot be conceived not to exist.—God is that, than which nothing greater can be conceived.—That which can be conceived not to exist is not God.

  And it assuredly exists so truly, that it cannot be conceived not to exist. For, it is possible to conceive of a being which cannot be conceived not to exist; and this is greater than one which can be conceived not to exist. Hence, if that, than which nothing greater can be conceived, can be conceived not to exist, it is not that, than which nothing greater can be conceived. But this is an irreconcilable contradiction. There is, then, so truly a being than which nothing greater can be conceived to exist, that it cannot even be conceived not to exist; and this being thou art, O Lord, our God.

  So truly, therefore, dost thou exist, O Lord, my God, that thou canst not be conceived not to exist; and rightly. For, if a mind could conceive of a being better than thee, the creature would rise above the Creator; and this is most absurd. And, indeed, whatever else there is, except thee alone, can be conceived not to exist. To thee alone, therefore, it belongs to exist more truly than all other beings, and hence in a higher degree than all others. For, whatever else exists does not exist so truly, and hence in a less degree it belongs to it to exist. Why, then, has the fool said in his heart, there is no God (Psalms xiv. 1), since it is so evident, to a rational mind, that thou dost exist in the highest degree of all? Why, except that he is dull and a fool?

  CHAPTER IV

  How the fool has said in his heart what cannot be conceived.—A thing may be conceived in two ways: (1) when the word signifying it is conceived; (2) when the thing itself is understood As far as the word goes, God can be conceived not to exist; in reality he cannot.

  But how has the fool said in his heart what he could not conceive; or how is it that he could not conceive what he said in his heart? since it is the same to say in the heart, and to conceive.

  But, if really, nay, since really, he both conceived, because he said in his heart; and did not say in his heart, because he could not conceive; there is more than one way in which a thing is said in the heart or conceived. For, in one sense, an object is conceived, when the word signifying it is conceived; and in another, when the very entity, which the object is, is understood.

  In the former sense, then, God can be conceived not to exist; but in the latter, not at all. For no one who understands what fire and water are can conceive fire to be water, in accordance with the nature of the facts themselves, although this is possible according to the words. So, then, no one who understands what God is can conceive that God does not exist; although he says these words in his heart, either without any. or with some foreign, signification. For, God is that than which a greater cannot be conceived. And he who thoroughly understands this, assuredly understands that this being so truly exists, that not even in concept can it be non-existent. Therefore, he who understands that God so exists, cannot conceive that he does not exist.

  I thank thee, gracious Lord, I thank thee; because what I formerly believed by thy bounty, I now so understand by thine illumination, that if I were unwilling to believe that thou dost exist, I should not be able not to understand this to be true.

  CHAPTER V.

  God is whatever it is better to be than not to be; and he, as the only self-existent being, creates all things from nothing.

  What art thou, then, Lord God, than whom nothing greater can be conceived? But what art thou, except that which, as the highest of all beings, alone exists through itself, and creates all other things from nothing? For, whatever is not this is less than a thing which can be conceived of. But this cannot be conceived of thee. What good, therefore, does the supreme Good lack, through which every good is? Therefore, thou art just, truthful, blessed, and whatever it is better to be than not to be. For it is better to be just than not just; better to be blessed than not blessed.

  CHAPTER VI

  How God is sensible (sensibilis) although he is not a body —God is sensible, omnipotent, compassionate, passionless; for it is better to be these than not be He who in any way knows, is not improperly said in some sort to feel

  But, although it is better for thee to be sensible, omnipotent, compassionate, passionless, than not to be these things; how art thou sensible, if thou art not a body; or omnipotent, if thou hast not all powers; or at once compassionate and passionless? For, if only corporeal things are sensible, since the senses encompass a body and are in a body, how art thou sensible, although thou art not a body, but a supreme Spirit, who is superior to body? But, if feeling is only cognition, or for the sake of cognition,—for he who feels obtains knowledge in accordance with the proper functions of his senses; as through sight, of colors; through taste, of flavors,—whatever in any way cognises is not inappropriately said, in some sort, to feel.

  Therefore, O Lord, although thou art not a body, yet thou art truly sensible in the highest degree in respect of this, that thou dost cognise all things in the highest degree; and not as an animal cognises, through a corporeal sense.

  CHAPTER VII.

  How he is omnipotent, although there are many things of which he is not capable.—To be capable of being corrupted, or of lying, is not power, but impotence. God can do nothing by virtue of impotence, and nothing has power against him.

  But how art thou omnipotent, if thou art not capable of all things? Or, if thou canst not be corrupted, and canst not lie, nor make what is true, false—as, for example, if thou shouldst make what has been done not to have been done, and the like—how art thou capable of all things? Or else to be capable of these things is not power, but impotence. For, he who is capable of these things is capable of what is not for his good, and of what he ought not to do; and the more capable of them he is, the more power have adversity and perversity against him; and the less has he himself against these.

  He, then, who is thus capable is so not by power, but by impotence. For, he is not said to be able because he is able of himself, but because his impotence gives something else power over him. Or, by a figure of speech, just as many words are improperly applied, as when we use “to be” for “not to be,” and “to do” for what is really “not to do,” or “to do nothing.” For, often we say to a man who denies the existence of something: “It is as you say it to be,” though it might seem more proper to say, “It is not, as you say it is not.” In the same way, we say: “This man sits just as that man does,” or, “This man rests just as that man does”; although to sit is not to do anything, and to rest is to do nothing.

  So, then, when one is said to have the power of doing or experiencing what is not for his good, or what he ought not to do, impotence is understood in the word power. For, the more he possesses this power, the more powerful are adversity and perversity against him, and the more powerless is he against them.

  Therefore, O Lord, our God, the more truly art thou omnipotent, since thou art capable of nothing through impotence, and nothing has power against thee.

  CHAPTER VIII.

  How he is compassionate and passionless God is compassionate, in terms of our experience, because we experience the effect of compassion. God is not compassionate, in terms of his own being, because he does not experience the feeling (affectus) of compassion.

  But how art thou compassionate, and, at the same time, passionless? For, if thou art passionless, thou dost not feel sympathy; and if thou dost not feel sympathy, thy heart is not wretched from sympathy for the wretched; but this it is to be compassionate. But if thou art not compassionate, whence cometh so great consolation to the wretched? How, then, art thou compassionate and not compassionate, O Lord, unless because thou art compassionate in terms of our experience, and not compassionate in terms of thy being.

  Truly, thou art so in terms of our experience, but thou art not so in terms of thine own. For, when thou beholdest us in our wretchedness, we experience the effect of compassion, but thou dost not experience the feeling. Therefore, thou art both compassionate, because thou dost save the wretched, and spare those who sin against thee; and not compassionate, because thou art affected by no sympathy for wretchedness.

  CHAPTER IX.

  How the all-just and supremely just God spares the wicked, and justly pities the wicked He is better who is good to the righteous and the wicked than he who is good to the righteous alone. Although God is supremely just, the source of his compassion is hidden. God is supremely compassionate, because he is supremely just He saveth the just, because justice goes with them, he frees sinners by the authority of justice. God spares the wicked out of justice; for it is just that God, than whom none is better or more powerful, should be good even to the wicked, and should make the wicked good If God ought not to pity, he pities unjustly. But this it is impious to suppose. Therefore, God justly pities.

  But how dost thou spare the wicked, if thou art all just and supremely just? For how, being all just and supremely just, dost thou aught that is not just? Or, what justice is that to give him who merits eternal death everlasting life? How, then, gracious Lord, good to the righteous and the wicked, canst thou save the wicked, if this is not just, and thou dost not aught that is not just? Or, since thy goodness is incomprehensible, is this hidden in the unapproachable light wherein thou dwellest? Truly, in the deepest and most secret parts of thy goodness is hidden the fountain whence the stream of thy compassion flows.

  For thou art all just and supremely just, yet thou art kind even to the wicked, even because thou art all supremely good. For thou wouldst be less good if thou wert not kind to any wicked being. For, he who is good, both to the righteous and the wicked, is better than he who is good to the wicked alone; and he who is good to the wicked, both by punishing and sparing them, is better than he who is good by punishing them alone. Therefore, thou art compassionate, because thou art all supremely good. And, although it appears why thou dost reward the good with goods and the evil with evils; yet this, at least, is most wonderful, why thou, the all and supremely just, who lackest nothing, bestowest goods on the wicked and on those who are guilty toward thee.

  The depth of thy goodness, O God! The source of thy compassion appears, and yet is not clearly seen! We see whence the river flows, but the spring whence it arises is not seen. For, it is from the abundance of thy goodness that thou art good to those who sin against thee; and in the depth of thy goodness is hidden the reason for this kindness.

  For, although thou dost reward the good with goods and the evil with evils, out of goodness, yet this the concept of justice seems to demand. But, when thou dost bestow goods on the evil, and it is known that the supremely Good hath willed to do this, we wonder why the supremely Just has been able to will this.

  O compassion, from what abundant sweetness and what sweet abundance dost thou well forth to us! O boundless goodness of God, how passionately should sinners love thee! For thou savest the just, because justice goeth with them; but sinners thou dost free by the authority of justice. Those by the help of their deserts; these, although their deserts oppose. Those by acknowledging the goods thou hast granted; these by pardoning the evils thou hatest. O boundless goodness, which dost so exceed all understanding, let that compassion come upon me, which proceeds from thy so great abundance! Let it flow upon me, for it wells forth from thee. Spare, in mercy; avenge not, in justice.

  For, though it is hard to understand how thy compassion is not inconsistent with thy justice; yet we must believe that it does not oppose justice at all, because it flows from goodness, which is no goodness without justice; nay, that it is in true harmony with justice. For, if thou art compassionate only because thou art supremely good, and supremely good only because thou art supremely just, truly thou art compassionate even because thou art supremely just. Help me, just and compassionate God, whose light I seek; help me to understand what I say.

  Truly, then, thou art compassionate even because thou art just. Is, then, thy compassion born of thy justice? And dost thou spare the wicked, therefore, out of justice? If this is true, my Lord, if this is true, teach me how it is. Is it because it is just, that thou shouldst be so good that thou canst not be conceived better; and that thou shouldst work so powerfully that thou canst not be conceived more powerful? For what can be more just than this? Assuredly it could not be that thou shouldst be good only by requiting (retribuendo) and not by sparing, and that thou shouldst make good only those who are not good, and not the wicked also. In this way, therefore, it is just that thou shouldst spare the wicked, and make good souls of evil.

  Finally, what is not done justly ought not to be done; and what ought not to be done is done unjustly. If, then, thou dost not justly pity the wicked, thou oughtest not to pity them. And, if thou oughtest not to pity them, thou pityest them unjustly. And if it is impious to suppose this, it is right to believe that thou justly pityest the wicked.

  CHAPTER X

  How he justly punishes and justly spares the wicked.—God, in sparing the wicked, is just, according to his own nature, because he does what is consistent with his goodness; but he is not just, according to our nature, because he does not inflict the punishment deserved.

  But it is also just that thou shouldst punish the wicked. For what is more just than that the good should receive goods, and the evil, evils? How, then, is it just that thou shouldst punish the wicked, and, at the same time, spare the wicked? Or, in one way, dost thou justly punish, and, in another, justly spare them? For, when thou punishest the wicked, it is just, because it is consistent with their deserts; and when, on the other hand, thou sparest the wicked, it is just, not because it is compatible with their deserts, but because it is compatible with thy goodness.

  For, in sparing the wicked, thou art as just, according to thy nature, but not according to ours, as thou art compassionate, according to our nature, and not according to thine; seeing that, as in saving us, whom it would be just for thee to destroy, thou art compassionate, not because thou feelest an affection (affectum), but because we feel the effect (effectum); so thou art just, not because thou requitest us as we deserve, but because thou dost that which becomes thee as the supremely good Being. In this way, therefore, without contradiction thou dost justly punish and justly spare.

  CHAPTER XI.

  How all the ways of God are compassion and truth; and yet God is just in all his ways —We cannot comprehend why, of the wicked, he saves these rather than those, through his supreme goodness; and condemns those rather than these, through his supreme justice.

  But, is there any reason why it is not also just, according to thy nature, O Lord, that thou shouldst punish the wicked? Surely it is just that thou shouldst be so just that thou canst not be conceived more just; and this thou wouldst in no wise be if thou didst only render goods to the good, and not evils to the evil For, he who requiteth both good and evil according to their deserts is more just than he who so requites the good alone. It is, therefore, just, according to thy nature, O just and gracious God, both when thou dost punish and when thou sparest.

  Truly, then, all the paths of the Lord are mercy and truth (Psalms xxv. 10); and yet the Lord is righteous in all his ways (Psalms cxlv. 17). And assuredly without inconsistency: For, it is not just that those whom thou dost will to punish should be saved, and that those whom thou dost will to spare should be condemned. For that alone is just which thou dost will; and that alone unjust which thou dost not will. So, then, thy compassion is born of thy justice.

  For it is just that thou shouldst be so good that thou art good in sparing also; and this may be the reason why the supremely Just can will goods for the veil. But if it can be comprehended in any way why thou canst will to save the wicked, yet by no consideration can we comprehend why, of those who are alike wicked, thou savest some rather than others, through supreme goodness; and why thou dost condemn the latter rather than the former, through supreme justice.

  So, then, thou art truly sensible (sensibilis), omnipotent, compassionate, and passionless, as thou art living, wise, good, blessed, eternal: and whatever it is better to be than not to be.

  CHAPTER XII.

  God is the very life whereby he lives: and so of other like attributes

  But undoubtedly, whatever thou art, thou art through nothing else than thyself. Therefore, thou art the very life whereby thou livest; and the wisdom wherewith thou art wise; and the very goodness whereby thou art good to the righteous and the wicked; and so of other like attributes.

  CHAPTER XIII

  How he alone is uncircumscribed and eternal, although other spirits are uncircumscribed and eternal —No place and time contain God. But he is himself everywhere and always He alone not only does not cease to be, but also does not begin to be.

  But everything that is in any way bounded by place or time is less than that which no law of place or time limits. Since, then, nothing is greater than thou, no place or time contains thee; but thou art everywhere and always. And since this can be said of thee alone, thou alone art uncircumscribed and eternal. How is it, then, that other spirits also are said to be uncircumscribed and eternal?

  Assuredly thou art alone eternal; for thou alone among all beings not only dost not cease to be, but also dost not begin to be.

  But how art thou alone uncircumscribed? Is it that a created spirit, when compared with thee, is circumscribed, but when compared with matter, uncircumscribed? For altogether circumscribed is that which, when it is wholly in one place, cannot at the same time be in another. And this is seen to be true of corporeal things alone. But uncircumscribed is that which is, as a whole, at the same time everywhere. And this is understood to be true of thee alone. But circumscribed, and, at the same time, uncircumscribed is that which, when it is anywhere as a whole, can at the same time be somewhere else as a whole, and yet not everywhere. And this is recognised as true of created spirits. For, if the soul were not as a whole in the separate members of the body, it would not feel as a whole in the separate members.

  Therefore, thou, Lord, art peculiarly uncircumscribed and eternal; and yet other spirits also are uncircumscribed and eternal.

  CHAPTER XIV.

  How and why God is seen and yet not seen by those who seek him.

  Hast thou found what thou didst seek, my soul? Thou didst seek God. Thou hast found him to be a being which is the highest of all beings, a being than which nothing better can be conceived; that this being is life itself, light, wisdom, goodness, eternal blessedness and blessed eternity; and that it is everywhere and always.

  For, if thou hast not found thy God, how is he this being which thou hast found, and which thou hast conceived him to be, with so certain truth and so true certainty? But, if thou hast found him, why is it that thou dost not feel thou hast found him? Why, O Lord, our God, does not my soul feel thee, if it hath found thee? Or, has it not found him whom it found to be light and truth? For how did it understand this, except by seeing light and truth? Or, could it understand anything at all of thee, except through thy light and thy truth?

  Hence, if it has seen light and truth, it has seen thee; if it has not seen thee, it has not seen light and truth. Or, is what it has seen both light and truth; and still it has not yet seen thee, because it has seen thee only in part, but has not seen thee as thou art? Lord my God, my creator and renewer, speak to the desire of my soul, what thou art other than it hath seen, that it may clearly see what it desires. It strains to see thee more; and sees nothing beyond this which it hath seen, except darkness. Nay, it does not see darkness, of which there is none in thee; but it sees that it cannot see farther, because of its own darkness.

  Why is this, Lord, why is this? Is the eye of the soul darkened by its infirmity, or dazzled by thy glory? Surely it is both darkened in itself, and dazzled by thee. Doubtless it is both obscured by its own insignificance, and overwhelmed by thy infinity. Truly, it is both contracted by its own narrowness and overcome by thy greatness.

  For how great is that light from which shines every truth that gives light to the rational mind? How great is that truth in which is everything that is true, and outside which is only nothngness and the false? How boundless is the truth which sees at one glance whatsoever has been made and by whom, and through whom, and how it has been made from nothing? What purity, what certainty, what splendor where it is? Assuredly more than a creature can conceive.

  CHAPTER XV

  He is greater than can be conceived.

  Therefore, O Lord, thou art not only that than which a greater cannot be conceived, but thou art a being greater than can be conceived. For, since it can be conceived that there is such a being, if thou art not this very being, a greater than thou can be conceived. But this is impossible.

  CHAPTER XVI.

  This is the unapproachable light wherein he dwells.

  Truly, O Lord, this is the unapproachable light in which thou dwellest; for truly there is nothing else which can penetrate this light, that it may see thee there. Truly, I see it not, because it is too bright for me. And yet, whatsoever I see, I see through it, as the weak eye sees what it sees through the light of the sun, which in the sun itself it cannot look upon. My understanding cannot reach that light, for it shines too bright. It does not comprehend it, nor does the eye of my soul endure to gaze upon it long. It is dazzled by the brightness, it is overcome by the greatness, it is overwhelmed by the infinity, it is dazed by the largeness, of the light.

  O supreme and unapproachable light! O whole and blessed truth, how far art thou from me, who am so near to thee! How far removed art thou from my vision, though I am so near to thine! Everywhere thou art wholly present, and I see thee not. In thee I move, and in thee I have my being; and I cannot come to thee. Thou art within me, and about me, and I feel thee not.

  CHAPTER XVII.

  In God is harmony, fragrance, sweetness, pleasantness to the touch, beauty, after his ineffable manner

  Still thou art hidden, O Lord, from my soul in thy light and thy blessedness; and therefore my soul still walks in its darkness and wretchedness. For it looks, and does not see thy beauty. It hearkens, and does not hear thy harmony. It smells, and does not perceive thy fragrance. It tastes, and does not recognise thy sweetness. It touches, and does not feel thy pleasantness. For thou hast these attributes in thyself, Lord God, after thine ineffable manner, who hast given them to objects created by thee, after their sensible manner; but the sinful senses of my soul have grown rigid and dull, and have been obstructed by their long listlessness.

  CHAPTER XVIII.

  God is life, wisdom, eternity, and every true good.—Whatever is composed of parts is not wholly one; it is capable, either in fact or in concept, of dissolution. In God wisdom, eternity, etc., are not parts, but one, and the very whole which God is, or unity itself, not even in concept divisible.

  And lo, again confusion; lo, again grief and mourning meet him who seeks for joy and gladness. My soul now hoped for satisfaction; and lo, again it is overwhelmed with need. I desired now to feast, and lo, I hunger more. I tried to rise to the light of God, and I have fallen back into my darkness. Nay, not only have I fallen into it, but I feel that I am enveloped in it. I fell before my mother conceived me. Truly, in darkness I was conceived, and in the cover of darkness I was born. Truly, in him we all fell, in whom we all sinned. In him we all lost, who kept easily, and wickedly lost to himself and to us that which when we wish to seek it, we do not know; when we seek it, we do not find; when we find, it is not that which we seek.

  Do thou help me for thy goodness’ sake! Lord, I sought thy face; thy face, Lord, will I seek; hide not thy face far from me (Psalms xxvii. 8). Free me from myself toward thee. Cleanse, heal, sharpen, enlighten the eye of my mind, that it may behold thee. Let my soul recover its strength, and with all its understanding let it strive toward thee, O Lord. What art thou, Lord, what art thou? What shall my heart conceive thee to be?

  Assuredly thou art life, thou art wisdom, thou art truth, thou art goodness, thou art blessedness, thou art eternity, and thou art every true good. Many are these attributes: my straitened understanding cannot see so many at one view, that it may be gladdened by all at once. How, then, O Lord, art thou all these things? Are they parts of thee, or is each one of these rather the whole, which thou art? For, whatever is composed of parts is not altogether one, but is in some sort plural, and diverse from itself; and either in fact or in concept is capable of dissolution.

  But these things are alien to thee, than whom nothing better can be conceived of. Hence, there are no parts in thee, Lord, nor art thou more than one. But thou art so truly a unitary being, and so identical with thyself, that in no respect art thou unlike thyself; rather thou art unity itself, indivisible by any conception. Therefore, life and wisdom and the rest are not parts of thee, but all are one; and each of these is the whole, which thou art, and which all the rest are.

  In this way, then, it appears that thou hast no parts, and that thy eternity, which thou art, is nowhere and never a part of thee or of thy eternity. But everywhere thou art as a whole, and thy eternity exists as a whole forever.

  CHAPTER XIX.

  He does not exist in place or time, but all things exist in him.

  But if through thine eternity thou hast been, and art, and wilt be; and to have been is not to be destined to be; and to be is not to have been, or to be destined to be; how does thine eternity exist as a whole forever? Or is it true that nothing of thy eternity passes away, so that it is not now; and that nothing of it is destined to be, as if it were not yet?

  Thou wast not, then, yesterday, nor wilt thou be to-morrow; but yesterday and to-day and to-morrow thou art; or, rather, neither yesterday nor to-day nor to-morrow thou art; but simply, thou art, outside all time. For yesterday and to-day and to-morrow have no existence, except in time; but thou, although nothing exists without thee, nevertheless dost not exist in space or time, but all things exist in thee. For nothing contains thee, but thou containest all.

  CHAPTER XX

  He exists before all things and transcends all things, even the eternal things —The eternity of God is present as a whole with him, while other things have not yet that part of their eternity which is still to be, and have no longer that part which is past

  Hence, thou dost permeate and embrace all things. Thou art before all, and dost transcend all. And, of a surety, thou art before all; for before they were made, thou art. But how dost thou transcend all? In what way dost thou transcend those beings which will have no end? Is it because they cannot exist at all without thee; while thou art in no wise less, if they should return to nothingness? For so, in a certain sense, thou dost transcend them. Or, is it also because they can be conceived to have an end; but thou by no means? For so they actually have an end, in a certain sense; but thou, in no sense. And certainly, what in no sense has an end transcends what is ended in any sense. Or, in this way also dost thou transcend all things, even the eternal, because thy eternity and theirs is present as a whole with thee; while they have not yet that part of their eternity which is to come, just as they no longer have that part which is past? For so thou dost ever transcend them, since thou art ever present with thyself, and since that to which they have not yet come is ever present with thee.

  CHAPTER XXI.

  Is this the age of the age, or ages of ages?—The eternity of God contains the ages of time themselves, and can be called the age of the age or ages of ages

  Is this, then, the age of the age, or ages of ages? For, as an age of time contains all temporal things, so thy eternity contains even the ages of time themselves. And these are indeed an age, because of their indivisible unity; but ages, because of their endless immeasurability. And, although thou art so great, O Lord, that all things are full of thee, and exist in thee; yet thou art so without all space, that neither midst, nor half, nor any part, is in thee.

  CHAPTER XXII.

  He alone is what he is and who he is —All things need God for their being and their well-being

  Therefore, thou alone, O Lord, art what thou art.; and thou art he who thou art. For, what is one thing in the whole and another in the parts, and in which there is any mutable element, is not altogether what it is. And what begins from non-existence, and can be conceived not to exist, and unless it subsists through something else, returns to non-existence; and what has a past existence, which is no longer, or a future existence, which is not yet,—this does not properly and absolutely exist.

  But thou art what thou art, because, whatever thou art at any time, or in any way, thou art as a whole and forever. And thou art he who thou art, properly and simply; for thou hast neither a past existence nor a future, but only a present existence; nor canst thou be conceived as at any time non-existent. But thou art life, and light, and wisdom, and blessedness, and many goods of this nature. And yet thou art only one supreme good; thou art all-sufficient to thyself, and needest none; and thou art he whom all things need for their existence and well-being.

  CHAPTER XXIII.

  This good is equally Father, and Son, and Holy Spirit. And this is a single, necessary Being, which is every good, and wholly good, and the only good —Since the Word is true, and is truth itself, there is nothing in the Father, who utters it, which is not accomplished in the Word by which he expresses himself Neither is the love which proceeds from Father and Son unequal to the Father or the Son, for Father and Son love themselves and one another in the same degree in which what they are is good. Of supreme simplicity nothing can be born, and from it nothing can proceed, except that which is this, of which it is born, or from which it proceeds.

  This good thou art, thou, God the Father; this is thy Word, that is, thy Son. For nothing, other than what thou art, or greater or less than thou, can be in the Word by which thou dost express thyself; for thy Word is true, as thou art truthful. And hence it is truth itself, just as thou art; no other truth than thou; and thou art of so simple a nature, that of thee nothing can be born other than what thou art. This very good is the one love common to thee and to thy Son, that is, the Holy Spirit proceeding from both. For this love is not unequal to thee or to thy Son; seeing that thou dost love thyself and him, and he, thee and himself, to the whole extent of thy being and his. Nor is there aught else proceeding from thee and from him, which is not unequal to thee and to him. Nor can anything proceed from the supreme simplicity, other than what this, from which it proceeds, is.

  But what each is, separately, this is all the Trinity at once, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; seeing that each separately is none other than the supremely simple unity, and the supremely unitary simplicity. which can neither be multiplied nor varied. Moreover, there is a single necessary Being. Now, this is that single, necessary Being, in which is every good; nay, which is every good, and a single entire good, and the only good.

  CHAPTER XXIV.

  Conjecture as to the character and the magnitude of this good — If the created life is good, how good is the creative life!

  And now, my soul, arouse and lift up all thy understanding, and conceive, so far as thou canst, of what character and how great is that good. For, if individual goods are delectable, conceive in earnestness how delectable is that good which contains the pleasantness of all goods; and not such as we have experienced in created objects, but as different as the Creator from the creature. For, if the created life is good, how good is the creative life! If the salvation given is delightful, how delightful is the salvation which has given all salvation! If wisdom in the knowledge of the created world is lovely, how lovely is the wisdom which has created all things from nothing! Finally, if there are many great delights in delectable things, what and how great is the delight in him who has made these delectable things.

  CHAPTER XXV

  What goods and how great, belong to those who enjoy this good.—Joy is multiplied in the blessed from the blessedness and joy of others

  Who shall enjoy this good? And what shall belong to him, and what shall not belong to him? At any rate, whatever he shall wish shall be his, and whatever he shall not wish shall not be his. For, these goods of body and soul will be such as eye hath not seen nor ear heard, neither has the heart of man conceived (Isaiah lxiv. 4; 1 Corinthians ii. 9).

  Why, then, dost thou wander abroad, slight man, in thy search for the goods of thy soul and thy body? Love the one good in which are all goods, and it sufficeth. Desire the simple good which is every good, and it is enough. For, what dost thou love, my flesh? What dost thou desire, my soul? There, there is whatever ye love, whatever ye desire.

  If beauty delights thee, there shall the righteous shine forth as the sun (Matthew xiii. 43). If swiftness or endurance, or freedom of body, which naught can withstand, delight thee, they shall be as angels of God,—because it is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body (1 Corinthians xv. 44)—in power certainly, though not in nature. If it is a long and sound life that pleases thee, there a healthful eternity is, and an eternal health. For the righteous shall live forever (Wisdom v. 15), and the salvation of the righteous is of the Lord (Psalms xxxvii. 39). If it is satisfaction of hunger, they shall be satisfied when the glory of the Lord hath appeared (Psalms xvii. 15). If it is quenching of thirst, they shall be abundantly satisfied with the fatness of thy house (Psalms xxxvi. 8). If it is melody, there the choirs of angels sing forever, before God. If it is any not impure, but pure, pleasure, thou shalt make them drink of the river of thy pleasures, O God (Psalms xxxvi. 8).

  If it is wisdom that delights thee, the very wisdom of God will reveal itself to them. If friendship, they shall love God more than themselves, and one another as themselves. And God shall love them more than they themselves; for they love him, and themselves, and one another, through him, and he, himself and them, through himself. If concord, they shall all have a single will.

  If power, they shall have all power to fulfil their will, as God to fulfil his. For, as God will have power to do what he wills, through himself, so they will have power, through him, to do what they will. For, as they will not will aught else than he, he shall will whatever they will; and what he shall will cannot fail to be. If honor and riches, God shall make his good and faithful servants rulers over many things (Luke xii. 42); nay, they shall be called sons of God, and gods; and where his Son shall be, there they shall be also, heirs indeed of God, and joint-heirs with Christ (Romans viii. 17).

  If true security delights thee, undoubtedly they shall be as sure that those goods, or rather that good, will never and in no wise fail them; as they shall be sure that they will not lose it of their own accord; and that God, who loves them, will not take it away from those who love him against their will; and that nothing more powerful than God will separate him from them against his will and theirs.

  But what, or how great, is the joy, where such and so great is the good! Heart of man, needy heart, heart acquainted with sorrows, nay, overwhelmed with sorrows, how greatly wouldst thou rejoice, if thou didst abound in all these things! Ask thy inmost mind whether it could contain its joy over so great a blessedness of its own.

  Yet assuredly, if any other whom thou didst love altogether as thyself possessed the same blessedness, thy joy would be doubled, because thou wouldst rejoice not less for him than for thyself. But, if two, or three, or many more, had the same joy, thou wouldst rejoice as much for each one as for thyself, if thou didst love each as thyself. Hence, in that perfect love of innumerable blessed angels and sainted men, where none shall love another less than himself, every one shall rejoice for each of the others as for himself.

  If, then, the heart of man will scarce contain his joy over his own so great good, how shall it contain so many and so great joys? And doubtless, seeing that every one loves another so far as he rejoices in the other’s good, and as, in that perfect felicity, each one should love God beyond compare, more than himself and all the others with him; so he will rejoice beyond reckoning in the felicity of God, more than in his own and that of all the others with him.

  But if they shall so love God with all their heart, and all their mind, and all their soul, that still all the heart, and all the mind, and all the soul shall not suffice for the worthiness of this love; doubtless they will so rejoice with all their heart, and all their mind, and all their soul, that all the heart, and all the mind, and all the soul shall not suffice for the fulness of their joy.

  CHAPTER XXVI

  Is this joy which the Lord promises made full?—The blessed shall rejoice according as they shall love, and they shall love according as they shall know

  My God and my Lord, my hope and the joy of my heart, speak unto my soul and tell me whether this is the joy of which thou tellest us through thy Son: Ask and ye shall receive, that your joy may be full (John xvi. 24). For I have found a joy that is full, and more than full. For when heart, and mind, and soul, and all the man, are full of that joy, joy beyond measure will still remain. Hence, not all of that joy shall enter into those who rejoice; but they who rejoice shall wholly enter into that joy.

  Show me, O Lord, show thy servant in his heart whether this is the joy into which thy servants shall enter, who shall enter into the joy of their Lord. But that joy, surely, with which thy chosen ones shall rejoice, eye hath not seen nor ear heard, neither has it entered into the heart of man (Isaiah lxiv. 4; 1 Corinthians ii. 9). Not yet, then, have I told or conceived, O Lord, how greatly those blessed ones of thine shall rejoice. Doubtless they shall rejoice according as they shall love; and they shall love according as they shall know. How far they will know thee, Lord, then! and how much they will love thee! Truly, eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither has it entered into the heart of man in this life, how far they shall know thee, and how much they shall love thee in that life.

  I pray, O God, to know thee, to love thee, that I may rejoice in thee. And if I cannot attain to full joy in this life, may I at least advance from day to day, until that joy shall come to the full. Let the knowledge of thee advance in me here, and there be made full. Let the love of thee increase, and there let it be full, that here my joy may be great in hope, and there full in truth. Lord, through thy Son thou dost command, nay, thou dost counsel us to ask; and thou dost promise that we shall receive, that our joy may be full. I ask, O Lord, as thou dost counsel through our wonderful Counsellor. I will receive what thou dost promise by virtue of thy truth, that my joy may be full. Faithful God, I ask. I will receive, that my joy may be full. Meanwhile, let my mind meditate upon it; let my tongue speak of it. Let my heart love it; let my mouth talk of it. Let my soul hunger for it; let my flesh thirst for it; let my whole being desire it, until I enter into thy joy, O Lord, who art the Three and the One God, blessed for ever and ever. Amen.

  ANSELM’S MONOLOGIUM
  
  ON THE BEING OF GOD.

  PREFACE.

  In this book Anselm discusses, under the form of a meditation, the Being of God, basing his argument not on the authority of Scripture, but on the force of reason. It contains nothing that is inconsistent with the writings of the Holy Fathers, and especially nothing that is inconsistent with those of St Augustine.—The Greek terminology is employed in Chapter LXXVIII., where it is stated that the Trinity may be said to consist of three substances, that is, three persons.

  Certain brethren have often and earnestly entreated me to put in writing some thoughts that I had offered them in familiar conversation, regarding meditation on the Being of God, and on some other topics connected with this subject, under the form of a meditation on these themes. It is in accordance with their wish, rather than with my ability, that they have prescribed such a form for the writing of this meditation; in order that nothing in Scripture should be urged on the authority of Scripture itself, but that whatever the conclusion of independent investigation should declare to be true, should, in an unadorned style, with common proofs and with a simple argument, be briefly enforced by the cogency of reason, and plainly expounded in the light of truth. It was their wish also, that I should not disdain to meet such simple and almost foolish objections as occur to me.

  This task I have long refused to undertake. And, reflecting on the matter, I have tried on many grounds to excuse myself; for the more they wanted this work to be adaptable to practical use, the more was what they enjoined on me difficult of execution Overcome at last, however, both by the modest importunity of their entreaties and by the not contemptible sincerity of their zeal; and reluctant as I was because of the difficulty of my task and the weakness of my talent, I entered upon the work they asked for. But it is with pleasure inspired by their affection that, so far as I was able, I have prosecuted this work within the limits they set.

  I was led to this undertaking in the hope that whatever I might accomplish would soon be overwhelmed with contempt, as by men disgusted with some worthless thing. For I know that in this book I have not so much satisfied those who entreated me, as put an end to the entreaties that followed me so urgently. Yet, somehow it fell out, contrary to my hope, that not only the brethren mentioned above, but several others, by making copies for their own use, condemned this writing to long remembrance. And, after frequent consideration, I have not been able to find that I have made in it any statement which is inconsistent with the writings of the Catholic Fathers, or especially with those of St. Augustine. Wherefore, if it shall appear to any man that I have offered in this work any thought that is either too novel or discordant with the truth, I ask him not to denounce me at once as one who boldly seizes upon new ideas, or as a maintainer of falsehood; but let him first read diligently Augustine’s books on the Trinity, and then judge my treatise in the light of those.

  In stating that the supreme Trinity may be said to consist of three substances, I have followed the Greeks, who acknowledge three substances in one Essence, in the same faith wherein we acknowledge three persons in one Substance. For they designate by the word substance that attribute of God which we designate by the word person.

  Whatever I have said on that point, however, is put in the mouth of one debating and investigating in solitary reflection, questions to which he had given no attention before. And this method I knew to be in accordance with the wish of those whose request I was striving to fulfil. But it is my prayer and earnest entreaty, that if any shall wish to copy this work, he shall be careful to place this preface at the beginning of the book, before the body of the meditation itself. For I believe that one will be much helped in understanding the matter of this book, if he has taken note of the intention, and the method according to which it is discussed. It is my opinion, too, that one who has first seen this preface will not pronounce a rash judgment, if he shall find offered here any thought that is contrary to his own belief.

  CHAPTER I.

  There is a being which is best, and greatest, and highest of all existing beings.

  If any man, either from ignorance or unbelief, has no knowledge of the existence of one Nature which is the highest of all existing beings, which is also sufficient to itself in its eternal blessedness, and which confers upon and effects in all other beings, through its omnipotent goodness, the very fact of their existence, and the fact that in any way their existence is good; and if he has no knowledge of many other things, which we necessarily believe regarding God and his creatures, he still believes that he can at least convince himself of these truths in great part, even if his mental powers are very ordinary, by the force of reason alone.

  And, although he could do this in many ways, I shall adopt one which I consider easiest for such a man. For, since all desire to enjoy only those things which they suppose to be good, it is natural that this man should, at some time, turn his mind’s eye to the examination of that cause by which these things are good, which he does not desire, except as he judges them to be good. So that, as reason leads the way and follows up these considerations, he advances rationally to those truths of which, without reason, he has no knowledge. And if, in this discussion, I use any argument which no greater authority adduces, I wish it to be received in this way: although, on the grounds that I shall see fit to adopt, the conclusion is reached as if necessarily, yet it is not, for this reason, said to be absolutely necessary, but merely that it can appear so for the time being.

  It is easy, then, for one to say to himself: Since there are goods so innumerable, whose great diversity we experience by the bodily senses, and discern by our mental faculties, must we not believe that there is some one thing, through which all goods whatever are good? Or are they good, one through one thing, and another through another? To be sure, it is most certain and clear, for all who are willing to see, that whatsoever things are said to possess any attribute in such a way that in mutual comparison they may be said to possess it in greater, or less, or equal degree, are said to possess it by virtue of some fact, which is not understood to be one thing in one case and another in another, but to be the same in different cases, whether it is regarded as existing in these cases in equal or unequal degree. For, whatsoever things are said to be just, when compared one with another, whether equally, or more, or less, cannot be understood as just, except through the quality of justness, which is not one thing in one instance, and another in another.

  Since it is certain, then, that all goods, if mutually compared, would prove either equally or unequally good, necessarily they are all good by virtue of something which is conceived of as the same in different goods, although sometimes they seem to be called good, the one by virtue of one thing, the other by virtue of another. For, apparently it is by virtue of one quality, that a horse is called good, because he is strong, and by virtue of another, that he is called good, because he is swift. For, though he seems to be called good by virtue of his strength, and good by virtue of his swiftness, yet swiftness and strength do not appear to be the same thing.

  But if a horse, because he is strong and swift, is therefore good, how is it that a strong, swift robber is bad? Rather, then, just as a strong, swift robber is bad, because he is harmful, so a strong, swift horse is good, because he is useful. And, indeed, nothing is ordinarily regarded as good, except either for some utility—as, for instance, safety is called good, and those things which promote safety—or for some honorable character—as, for instance, beauty is reckoned to be good, and what promotes beauty.

  But, since the reasoning which we have observed is in no wise refutable, necessarily, again, all things, whether useful or honorable, if they are truly good, are good through that same being through which all goods exist, whatever that being is. But who can doubt this very being, through which all goods exist, to be a great good? This must be, then, a good through itself, since every other good is through it.

  It follows, therefore, that all other goods are good through another being than that which they themselves are, and this being alone is good through itself Hence, this alone is supremely good, which is alone good through itself. For it is supreme, in that it so surpasses other beings, that it is neither equalled nor excelled. But that which is supremely good is also supremely great. There is, therefore, some one being which is supremely good, and supremely great, that is, the highest of all existing beings.

  CHAPTER II

  The same subject continued.

  But, just as it has been proved that there is a being that is supremely good, since all goods are good through a single being, which is good through itself; so it is necessarily inferred that there is something supremely great, which is great through itself. But I do not mean physically great, as a material object is great, but that which, the greater it is, is the better or the more worthy,—wisdom, for instance. And since there can be nothing supremely great except what is supremely good, there must be a being that is greatest and best, i. e., the highest of all existing beings.

  CHAPTER III

  There is a certain Nature through which whatever is exists, and which exists through itself, and is the highest of all existing beings

  Therefore, not only are all good things such through something that is one and the same, and all great things such through something that is one and the same; but whatever is, apparently exists through something that is one and the same. For, everything that is, exists either through something, or through nothing. But nothing exists through nothing. For it is altogether inconceivable that anything should not exist by virtue of something.

  Whatever is, then, does not exist except through something. Since this is true, either there is one being, or there are more than one, through which all things that are exist. But if there are more than one, either these are themselves to be referred to some one being, through which they exist, or they exist separately, each through itself, or they exist mutually through one another.

  But, if these beings exist through one being, then all things do not exist through more than one, but rather through that one being through which these exist.

  If, however, these exist separately, each through itself, there is, at any rate, some power or property of existing through self (existendi per se), by which they are able to exist each through itself. But, there can be no doubt that, in that case, they exist through this very power, which is one, and through which they are able to exist, each through itself. More truly, then, do all things exist through this very being, which is one, than through these, which are more than one, which, without this one, cannot exist.

  But that these beings exist mutually through one another, no reason can admit; since it is an irrational conception that anything should exist through a being on which it confers existence. For not even beings of a relative nature exist thus mutually, the one through the other. For, though the terms master and servant are used with mutual reference, and the men thus designated are mentioned as having mutual relations, yet they do not at all exist mutually, the one through the other, since these relations exist through the subjects to which they are referred.

  Therefore, since truth altogether excludes the supposition that there are more beings than one, through which all things exist, that being, through which all exist, must be one. Since, then, all things that are exist through this one being, doubtless this one being exists through itself. Whatever things there are else, then, exist through something other than themselves, and this alone through itself. But whatever exists through another is less than that, through which all things are, and which alone exists through itself. Therefore, that which exists through itself exists in the greatest degree of all things.

  There is, then, some one being which alone exists in the greatest and the highest degree of all. But that which is greatest of all, and through which exists whatever is good or great, and, in short, whatever has any existence—that must be supremely good, and supremely great, and the highest of all existing beings.

  CHAPTER IV

  The same subject continued.

  Furthermore, if one observes the nature of things he perceives, whether he will or no, that not all are embraced in a single degree of dignity; but that certain among them are distinguished by inequality of degree. For, he who doubts that the horse is superior in its nature to wood, and man more excellent than the horse, assuredly does not deserve the name of man. Therefore, although it cannot be denied that some natures are superior to others, nevertheless reason convinces us that some nature is so preëminent among these, that it has no superior. For, if the distinction of degrees is infinite, so that there is among them no degree, than which no higher can be found, our course of reasoning reaches this conclusion: that the multitude of natures themselves is not limited by any bounds. But only an absurdly foolish man can fail to regard such a conclusion as absurdly foolish. There is, then, necessarily some nature which is so superior to some nature or natures, that there is none in comparison with which it is ranked as inferior.

  Now, this nature which is such, either is single, or there are more natures than one of this sort, and they are of equal degree.

  But, if they are more than one and equal, since they cannot be equal through any diverse causes, but only through some cause which is one and the same, that one cause, through which they are equally so great, either is itself what they are, that is, the very essence of these natures; or else it is another than what they are.

  But if it is nothing else than their very essence itself, just as they have not more than one essence, but a single essence, so they have not more than one nature, but a single nature. For I here understand nature as identical with essence.

  If, however, that through which these natures are so great is another than that which they are, then, certainly, they are less than that through which they are so great. For, whatever is great through something else is less than that through which it is great. Therefore, they are not so great that there is nothing else greater than they.

  But if, neither through what they are nor through anything other than themselves, can there be more such natures than one, than which nothing else shall be more excellent, then in no wise can there be more than one nature of this kind. We conclude, then, that there is some nature which is one and single, and which is so superior to others that it is inferior to none. But that which is such is the greatest and best of all existing beings. Hence, there is a certain nature which is the highest of all existing beings. This, however, it cannot be, unless it is what it is through itself, and all existing beings are what they are through it.

  For since, as our reasoning showed us not long since, that which exists through itself, and through which all other things exist, is the highest of all existing beings; either conversely, that which is the highest exists through itself, and all others through it; or, there will be more than one supreme being. But it is manifest that there cannot be more than one supreme being. There is, therefore, a certain Nature, or Substance, or Essence, which is through itself good and great, and through itself is what it is; and through which exists whatever is truly good, or great, or has any existence at all; and which is the supreme good being, the supreme great being, being or subsisting as supreme, that is, the highest of all existing beings.

  CHAPTER V.

  Just as this Nature exists through itself, and other beings through it, so it derives existence from itself, and other beings from it.

  Seeing, then, that the truth already discovered has been satisfactorily demonstrated, it is profitable to examine whether this Nature, and all things that have any existence, derive existence from no other source than it, just as they do not exist except through it.

  But it is clear that one may say, that what derives existence from something exists through the same thing; and what exists through something also derives existence from it. For instance, what derives existence from matter, and exists through the artificer, may also be said to exist through matter, and to derive existence from the artificer, since it exists through both, and derives existence from both. That is, it is endowed with existence by both, although it exists through matter and from the artificer in another sense than that in which it exists through, and from, the artificer.

  It follows, then, that just as all existing beings are what they are, through the supreme Nature, and as that Nature exists through itself, but other beings through another than themselves, so all existing beings derive existence from this supreme Nature. And therefore, this Nature derives existence from itself, but other beings from it

  CHAPTER VI

  This Nature was not brought into existence with the help of any external cause, yet it does not exist through nothing, or derive existence from nothing —How existence through self, and derived from self, is conceivable

  Since the same meaning is not always attached to the phrase, “existence through” something, or, to the phrase, “existence derived from” something, very diligent inquiry must be made, in what way all existing beings exist through the supreme Nature, or derive existence from it. For, what exists through itself, and what exists through another, do not admit the same ground of existence. Let us first consider, separately, this supreme Nature, which exists through self; then these beings which exist through another.

  Since it is evident, then, that this Nature is whatever it is, through itself, and all other beings are what they are, through it, how does it exist through itself? For, what is said to exist through anything apparently exists through an efficient agent, or through matter, or through some other external aid, as through some instrument. But, whatever exists in any of these three ways exists through another than itself, and it is of later existence, and, in some sort, less than that through which it obtains existence.

  But, in no wise does the supreme Nature exist through another, nor is it later or less than itself or anything else. Therefore, the supreme Nature could be created neither by itself, nor by another; nor could itself or any other be the matter whence it should be created; nor did it assist itself in any way; nor did anything assist it to be what it was not before.

  What is to be inferred? For that which cannot have come into existence by any creative agent, or from any matter, or with any external aids, seems either to be nothing, or, if it has any existence, to exist through nothing, and derive existence from nothing. And although, in accordance with the observations I have already made, in the light of reason, regarding the supreme Substance, I should think such propositions could in no wise be true in the case of the supreme Substance; yet, I would not neglect to give a connected demonstration of this matter.

  For, seeing that this my meditation has suddenly brought me to an important and interesting point, I am unwilling to pass over carelessly even any simple or almost foolish objection that occurs to me, in my argument; in order that by leaving no ambiguity in my discussion up to this point, I may have the better assured strength to advance toward what follows; and in order that if, perchance, I shall wish to convince any one of the truth of my speculations, even one of the slower minds, through the removal of every obstacle, however slight, may acquiesce in what it finds here.

  That this Nature, then, without which no nature exists, is nothing, is as false as it would be absurd to say that whatever is is nothing. And, moreover, it does not exist through nothing, because it is utterly inconceivable that what is something should exist through nothing. But, if in any way it derives existence from nothing, it does so through itself, or through another, or through nothing. But it is evident that in no wise does anything exist through nothing. If, then, in any way it derives existence from nothing, it does so either through itself or through another.

  But nothing can, through itself, derive existence from nothing, because if anything derives existence from nothing, through something, then that through which it exists must exist before it. Seeing that this Being, then, does not exist before itself, by no means does it derive existence from itself.

  But if it is supposed to have derived existence from some other nature, then it is not the supreme Nature, but some inferior one, nor is it what it is through itself, but through another.

  Again: if this Nature derives existence from nothing, through something, that through which it exists was a great good, since it was the cause of good. But no good can be understood as existing before that good, without which nothing is good; and it is sufficiently clear that this good, without which there is no good, is the supreme Nature which is under discussion. Therefore, it is not even conceivable that this Nature was preceded by any being, through which it derived existence from nothing.

  Hence, if it has any existence through nothing, or derives existence from nothing, there is no doubt that either, whatever it is, it does not exist through itself, or derive existence from itself, or else it is itself nothing. It is unnecessary to show that both these suppositions are false. The supreme Substance, then, does not exist through any efficient agent, and does not derive existence from any matter, and was not aided in being brought into existence by any external causes. Nevertheless, it by no means exists through nothing, or derives existence from nothing; since, through itself and from itself, it is whatever it is.

  Finally, as to how it should be understood to exist through itself, and to derive existence from itself: it did not create itself, nor did it spring up as its own matter, nor did it in any way assist itself to become what it was not before, unless, haply, it seems best to conceive of this subject in the way in which one says that the light lights or is lucent, through and from itself. For, as are the mutual relations of the light and to light and lucent (lux, lucere, lucens), such are the relations of essence, and to be and being, that is, existing or subsisting. So the supreme Being, and to be in the highest degree, and being in the highest degree, bear much the same relations, one to another, as the light and to light and lucent.

  CHAPTER VII.

  In what way all other beings exist through this Nature and derive existence from it.

  There now remains the discussion of that whole class of beings that exist through another, as to how they exist through the supreme Substance, whether because this Substance created them all, or because it was the material of all. For, there is no need to inquire whether all exist through it, for this reason, namely, that there being another creative agent, or another existing material, this supreme Substance has merely aided in bringing about the existence of all things: since it is inconsistent with what has already been shown, that whatever things are should exist secondarily, and not primarily, through it.

  First, then, it seems to me, we ought to inquire whether that whole class of beings which exist through another derive existence from any material. But I do not doubt that all this solid world, with its parts, just as we see, consists of earth, water, fire, and air. These four elements, of course, can be conceived of without these forms which we see in actual objects, so that their formless, or even confused, nature appears to be the material of all bodies, distinguished by their own forms.—I say that I do not doubt this. But I ask, whence this very material that I have mentioned, the material of the mundane mass, derives its existence. For, if there is some material of this material, then that is more truly the material of the physical universe.

  If, then, the universe of things, whether visible or invisible, derives existence from any material, certainly it not only cannot be, but it cannot even be supposed to be, from any other material than from the supreme Nature or from itself, or from some third being—but this last, at any rate, does not exist. For, indeed, nothing is even conceivable except that highest of all beings, which exists through itself, and the universe of beings which exist, not through themselves, but through this supreme Being. Hence, that which has no existence at all is not the material of anything.

  From its own nature the universe cannot derive existence, since, if this were the case, it would in some sort exist through itself and so through another than that through which all things exist. But all these suppositions are false.

  Again, everything that derives existence from material derives existence from another, and exists later than that other. Therefore, since nothing is other than itself, or later than itself, it follows that nothing derives material existence from itself.

  But if, from the material of the supreme Nature itself, any lesser being can derive existence, the supreme good is subject to change and corruption. But this it is impious to suppose. Hence, since everything that is other than this supreme Nature is less than it, it is impossible that anything other than it in this way derives existence from it.

  Furthermore: doubtless that is in no wise good, through which the supreme good is subjected to change or corruption. But, if any lesser nature derives existence from the material of the supreme good, inasmuch as nothing exists whencesoever, except through the supreme Being, the supreme good is subjected to change and corruption through the supreme Being itself. Hence, the supreme Being, which is itself the supreme good, is by no means good; which is a contradiction. There is, therefore, no lesser nature which derives existence in a material way from the supreme Nature.

  Since, then, it is evident that the essence of those things which exist through another does not derive existence as if materially, from the supreme Essence, nor from itself, nor from another, it is manifest that it derives existence from no material. Hence, seeing that whatever is exists through the supreme Being, nor can aught else exist through this Being, except by its creation, or by its existence as material, it follows, necessarily, that nothing besides it exists, except by its creation. And, since nothing else is or has been, except that supreme Being and the beings created by it, it could create nothing at all through any other instrument or aid than itself. But all that it has created, it has doubtless created either from something, as from material, or from nothing.

  Since, then, it is most patent that the essence of all beings, except the supreme Essence, was created by that supreme Essence, and derives existence from no material, doubtless nothing can be more clear than that this supreme Essence nevertheless produced from nothing, alone and through itself, the world of material things, so numerous a multitude, formed in such beauty, varied in such order, so fitly diversified.

  CHAPTER VIII

  How it is to be understood that this Nature created all things from nothing.

  But we are confronted with a doubt regarding this term nothing. For, from whatever source anything is created, that source is the cause of what is created from it, and, necessarily, every cause affords some assistance to the being of what it effects. This is so firmly believed, as a result of experience, by every one, that the belief can be wrested from no one by argument, and can scarcely be purloined by sophistry.

  Accordingly, if anything was created from nothing, this very nothing was the cause of what was created from it. But how could that which had no existence assist anything in coming into existence? If, however, no aid to the existence of anything ever had its source in nothing, who can be convinced, and how, that anything is created out of nothing?

  Moreover, nothing either means something, or does not mean something. But if nothing is something, whatever has been created from nothing has been created from something. If, however, nothing is not something; since it is inconceivable that anything should be created from what does not exist, nothing is created from nothing; just as all agree that nothing comes from nothing. Whence, it evidently follows, that whatever is created is created from something; for it is created either from something or from nothing. Whether, then, nothing is something, or nothing is not something, it apparently follows, that whatever has been created was created from something.

  But, if this is posited as a truth, then it is so posited in opposition to the whole argument propounded in the preceding chapter. Hence, since what was nothing will thus be something, that which was something in the highest degree will be nothing. For, from the discovery of a certain Substance existing in the greatest degree of all existing beings, my reasoning had brought me to this conclusion, that all other beings were so created by this Substance, that that from which they were created was nothing. Hence, if that from which they were created, which I supposed to be nothing, is something, whatever I supposed to have been ascertained regarding the supreme Being, is nothing.

  What, then, is to be our understanding of the term nothing?—For I have already determined not to neglect in this meditation any possible objection, even if it be almost foolish.—In three ways, then—and this suffices for the removal of the present obstacle—can the statement that any substance was created from nothing be explained.

  There is one way, according to which we wish it to be understood, that what is said to have been created from nothing has not been created at all; just as, to one who asks regarding a dumb man, of what he speaks, the answer is given, “of nothing,” that is, he does not speak at all. According to this interpretation, to one who enquires regarding the supreme Being, or regarding what never has existed and does not exist at all, as to whence it was created, the answer, “from nothing” may properly be given; that is, it never was created. But this answer is unintelligible in the case of any of those things that actually were created.

  There is another interpretation which is, indeed, capable of supposition, but cannot be true; namely, that if anything is said to have been created from nothing, it was created from nothing itself (de nihilo ipso), that is, from what does not exist at all, as if this very nothing were some existent being, from which something could be created. But, since this is always false, as often as it is assumed an irreconcilable contradiction follows.

  There is a third interpretation, according to which a thing is said to have been created from nothing, when we understand that it was indeed created, but that there is not anything whence it was created. Apparently it is said with a like meaning, when a man is afflicted without cause, that he is afflicted “over nothing.”

  If, then, the conclusion reached in the preceding chapter is understood in this sense, that with the exception of the supreme Being all things have been created by that Being from nothing, that is, not from anything; just as this conclusion consistently follows the preceding arguments, so, from it, nothing inconsistent is inferred; although it may be said, without inconsistency or any contradiction, that what has been created by the creative Substance was created from nothing, in the way that one frequently says a rich man has been made from a poor man, or that one has recovered health from sickness; that is, he who was poor before, is rich now, as he was not before; and he who was ill before, is well now, as he was not before.

  In this way, then, we can understand, without inconsistency, the statement that the creative Being created all things from nothing, or that all were created through it from nothing; that is, those things which before were nothing, are now something. For, indeed, from the very word that we use, saying that it created them or that they were created, we understand that when this Being created them, it created something, and that when they were created, they were created only as something. For so, beholding a man of very lowly fortunes exalted with many riches and honors by some one, we say, “Lo, he has made that man out of nothing”; that is, the man who was before reputed as nothing is now, by virtue of that other’s making, truly reckoned as something.

  CHAPTER IX.

  Those things which were created from nothing had an existence before their creation in the thought of the Creator.

  But I seem to see a truth that compels me to distinguish carefully in what sense those things which were created may be said to have been nothing before their creation. For, in no wise can anything conceivably be created by any, unless there is, in the mind of the creative agent, some example, as it were, or (as is more fittingly supposed) some model, or likeness, or rule. It is evident, then, that before the world was created, it was in the thought of the supreme Nature, what, and of what sort, and how, it should be. Hence, although it is clear that the beings that were created were nothing before their creation, to this extent, that they were not what they now are, nor was there anything whence they should be created, yet they were not nothing, so far as the creator’s thought is concerned, through which, and according to which, they were created.

  CHAPTER X

  This thought is a kind of expression of the objects created (locutio rerum), like the expression which an artisan forms in his mind for what he intends to make.

  But this model of things, which preceded their creation in the thought of the creator, what else is it than a kind of expression of these things in his thought itself; just as when an artisan is about to make something after the manner of his craft, he first expresses it to himself through a concept? But by the expression of the mind or reason I mean, here, not the conception of words signifying the objects, but the general view in the mind, by the vision of conception, of the objects themselves, whether destined to be, or already existing.

  For, from frequent usage, it is recognised that we can express the same object in three ways. For we express objects either by the sensible use of sensible signs, that is, signs which are perceptible to the bodily senses; or by thinking within ourselves insensibly of these signs which, when outwardly used, are sensible; or not by employing these signs, either sensibly or insensibly, but by expressing the things themselves inwardly in our mind, whether by the power of imagining material bodies or of understanding thought, according to the diversity of these objects themselves.

  For I express a man in one way, when I signify him by pronouncing these words, a man; in another, when I think of the same words in silence; and in another, when the mind regards the man himself, either through the image of his body, or through the reason; through the image of his body, when the mind imagines his visible form; through the reason, however, when it thinks of his universal essence, which is a rational, mortal animal.

  Now, the first two kinds of expression are in the language of one’s race. But the words of that kind of expression, which I have put third and last, when they concern objects well known, are natural, and are the same among all nations. And, since all other words owe their invention to these, where these are, no other word is necessary for the recognition of an object, and where they cannot be, no other word is of any use for the description of an object.

  For, without absurdity, they may also be said to be the truer, the more like they are to the objects to which they correspond, and the more expressively they signify these objects. For, with the exception of those objects, which we employ as their own names, in order to signify them, like certain sounds, the vowel a for instance—with the exception of these, I say, no other word appears so similar to the object to which it is applied, or expresses it as does that likeness which is expressed by the vision of the mind thinking of the object itself.

  This last, then, should be called the especially proper and primary word, corresponding to the thing. Hence, if no expression of any object whatever so nearly approaches the object as that expression which consists of this sort of words, nor can there be in the thought of any another word so like the object, whether destined to be, or already existing, not without reason it may be thought that such an expression of objects existed with (apud) the supreme Substance before their creation, that they might be created; and exists, now that they have been created, that they may be known through it.

  CHAPTER XI.

  The analogy, however, between the expression of the Creator and the expression of the artisan is very incomplete.

  But, though it is most certain that the supreme Substance expressed, as it were, within itself the whole created world, which it established according to, and through, this same most profound expression, just as an artisan first conceives in his mind what he afterwards actually executes in accordance with his mental concept, yet I see that this analogy is very incomplete.

  For the supreme Substance took absolutely nothing from any other source, whence it might either frame a model in itself, or make its creatures what they are; while the artisan is wholly unable to conceive in his imagination any bodily thing, except what he has in some way learned from external objects, whether all at once, or part by part; nor can he perform the work mentally conceived, if there is a lack of material, or of anything without which a work premeditated cannot be performed. For, though a man can, by meditation or representation, frame the idea of some sort of animal, such as has no existence; yet, by no means has he the power to do this, except by uniting in this idea the parts that he has gathered in his memory from objects known externally.

  Hence, in this respect, these inner expressions of the works they are to create differ in the creative substance and in the artisan: that the former expression, without being taken or aided from any external source, but as first and sole cause, could suffice the Artificer for the performance of his work, while the latter is neither first, nor sole, nor sufficient, cause for the inception of the artisan’s work. Therefore, whatever has been created through the former expression is only what it is through that expression, while whatever has been created through the latter would not exist at all, unless it were something that it is not through this expression itself.

  CHAPTER XII.

  This expression of the supreme Being is the supreme Being.

  But since, as our reasoning shows, it is equally certain that whatever the supreme Substance created, it created through nothing other than itself; and whatever it created, it created through its own most intimate expression, whether separately, by the utterance of separate words, or all at once, by the utterance of one word; what conclusion can be more evidently necessary, than that this expression of the supreme Being is no other than the supreme Being? Therefore, the consideration of this expression should not, in my opinion, be carelessly passed over. But before it can be discussed, I think some of the properties of this supreme Substance should be diligently and earnestly investigated.

  CHAPTER XIII

  As all things were created through the supreme Being, so all live through it.

  It is certain, then, that through the supreme Nature whatever is not identical with it has been created But no rational mind can doubt that all creatures live and continue to exist, so long as they do exist, by the sustenance afforded by that very Being through whose creative act they are endowed with the existence that they have. For, by a like course of reasoning to that by which it has been gathered that all existing beings exist through some one being, hence that being alone exists through itself, and others through another than themselves—by a like course of reasoning, I say, it can be proved that whatever things live, live through some one being; hence that being alone lives through itself, and others through another than themselves.

  But, since it cannot but be that those things which have been created live through another, and that by which they have been created lives through itself, necessarily, just as nothing has been created except through the creative, present Being, so nothing lives except through its preserving presence.

  CHAPTER XIV.

  This Being is in all things, and throughout all; and all derive existence from it and exist through and in it.

  But if this is true—rather, since this must be true, it follows that, where this Being is not, nothing is. It is, then, everywhere, and throughout all things, and in all. But seeing that it is manifestly absurd that as any created being can in no wise exceed the immeasurableness of what creates and cherishes it, so the creative and cherishing Being cannot, in any way, exceed the sum of the things it has created; it is clear that this Being itself, is what supports and surpasses, includes and permeates all other things. If we unite this truth with the truths already discovered, we find it is this same Being which is in all and through all, and from which, and through which, and in which, all exist.

  CHAPTER XV.

  What can or cannot be stated concerning the substance of this Being.

  Not without reason I am now strongly impelled to inquire as earnestly as I am able, which of all the statements that may be made regarding anything is substantially applicable to this so wonderful Nature. For, though I should be surprised if, among the names or words by which we designate things created from nothing, any should be found that could worthily be applied to the Substance which is the creator of all; yet, we must try and see to what end reason will lead this investigation.

  As to relative expressions, at any rate, no one can doubt that no such expression describes what is essential to that in regard to which it is relatively employed. Hence, if any relative predication is made regarding the supreme Nature, it is not significant of its substance.

  Therefore, it is manifest that this very expression, that this Nature, is the highest of all beings, or greater than those which have been created by it; or any other relative term that can, in like manner, be applied to it, does not describe its natural essence.

  For, if none of those things ever existed, in relation to which it is called supreme or greater, it would not be conceived as either supreme or greater, yet it would not, therefore, be less good, or suffer detriment to its essential greatness in any degree. And this truth is clearly seen from the fact that this Nature exists through no other than itself, whatever there be that is good or great. If, then, the supreme Nature can be so conceived of as not supreme, that still it shall be in no wise greater or less than when it is conceived of as the highest of all beings, it is manifest that the term supreme, taken by itself, does not describe that Being which is altogether greater and better than whatever is not what it is. But, what these considerations show regarding the term supreme or highest is found to be true, in like manner, of other similar, relative expressions.

  Passing over these relative predications, then, since none of them taken by itself represents the essence of anything, let our attention be turned to the discussion of other kinds of predication.

  Now, certainly if one deligently considers separately whatever there is that is not of a relative nature, either it is such that, to be it is in general better than not to be it, or such that, in some cases, not to be it is better than to be it. But I here understand the phrases, to be it and not to be it, in the same way in which I understand to be true and not to be true, to be bodily and not to be bodily, and the like. Indeed, to be anything is, in general, better than not to be it; as to be wise is better than not to be so; that is, it is better to be wise than not to be wise. For, though one who is just, but not wise, is apparently a better man than one who is wise, but not just, yet, taken by itself, it is not better not to be wise than to be wise. For, everything that is not wise, simply in so far as it is not wise, is less than what is wise, since evrything that is not wise would be better if it were wise. In the same way, to be true is altogether better than not to be so, that is, better than not to be true; and just is better than not just; and to live than not to live.

  But, in some cases, not to be a certain thing is better than to be it, as not to be gold may be better than to be gold. For it is better for man not to be gold, than to be gold; although it might be better for something to be gold, than not to be gold—lead, for instance. For though both, namely, man and lead are not gold, man is something as much better than gold, as he would be of inferior nature, were he gold; while lead is something as much more base than gold, as it would be more precious, were it gold.

  But, from the fact that the supreme Nature may be so conceived of as not supreme, that supreme is neither in general better than not supreme, nor not supreme better, in any case, than supreme—from this fact it is evident that there are many relative expressions which are by no means included in this classification. Whether, however, any are so included, I refrain from inquiring; since it is sufficient, for my purpose, that undoubtedly none of these, taken by itself, describes the substance of the supreme Nature.

  Since, then, it is true of whatever else there is, that, if it is taken independently, to be it is better than not to be it; as it is impious to suppose that the substance of the supreme Nature is anything, than which what is not it is in any way better, it must be true that this substance is whatever is, in general, better than what is not it. For, it alone is that, than which there is nothing better at all, and which is better than all things, which are not what it is.

  It is not a material body, then, or any of those things which the bodily senses discern. For, than all these there is something better, which is not what they themselves are. For, the rational mind, as to which no bodily sense can perceive what, or of what character, or how great, it is—the less this rational mind would be if it were any of those things that are in the scope of the bodily senses, the greater it is than any of these. For by no means should this supreme Being be said to be any of those things to which something, which they themselves are not, is superior; and it should by all means, as our reasoning shows, be said to be any of those things to which everything, which is not what they themselves are, is inferior.

  Hence, this Being must be living, wise, powerful, and all-powerful, true, just, blessed, eternal, and whatever, in like manner, is absolutely better than what is not it. Why, then, should we make any further inquiry as to what that supreme Nature is, if it is manifest which of all things it is, and which it is not?

  CHAPTER XVI.

  For this Being it is the same to be just that it is to be justice; and so with regard to attributes that can be expressed in the same way: and none of these shows of what character, or how great, but what this Being is.

  But perhaps, when this Being is called just, or great, or anything like these, it is not shown what it is, but of what character, or how great it is. For every such term seems to be used with reference to quantity or magnitude; because everything that is just is so through justness, and so with other like cases, in the same way. Hence, the supreme Nature itself is not just, except through justness.

  It seems, then, that by participation in this quality, that is, justness, the supremely good Substance is called just. But, if this is so, it is just through another, and not through itself. But this is contrary to the truth already established, that it is good, or great, or whatever it is at all, through itself and not through another. So, if it is not just, except through justness, and cannot be just, except through itself, what can be more clear than that this Nature is itself justness? And, when it is said to be just through justness, it is the same as saying that it is just through itself. And, when it is said to be just through itself, nothing else is understood than that it is just through justness. Hence, if it is inquired what the supreme Nature, which is in question, is in itself, what truer answer can be given, than Justness?

  We must observe, then, how we are to understand the statement, that the Nature which is itself justness is just. For, since a man cannot be justness, but can possess justness, we do not conceive of a just man as being justness, but as possessing justness. Since, on the other hand, it cannot properly be said of the supreme Nature that it possesses justness, but that it is justness, when it is called just it is properly conceived of as being justness, but not as possessing justness. Hence, if, when it is said to be justness, it is not said of what character it is, but what it is, it follows that, when it is called just, it is not said of what character it is, but what it is.

  Therefore, seeing that it is the same to say of the supreme Being, that it is just and that it is justness; and, when it is said that it is justness, it is nothing else than saying that it is just; it makes no difference whether it is said to be justness or to be just. Hence, when one is asked regarding the supreme Nature, what it is, the answer, Just, is not less fitting than the answer, Justness. Moreover, what we see to have been proved in the case of justness, the intellect is compelled to acknowledge as true of all attributes which are similarly predicated of this supreme Nature. Whatever such attribute is predicated of it, then, it is shown, not of what character, or how great, but what it is.

  But it is obvious that whatever good thing the supreme Nature is, it is in the highest degree. It is, therefore, supreme Being, supreme Justness, supreme Wisdom, supreme Truth, supreme Goodness, supreme Greatness, supreme Beauty, supreme Immortality, supreme Incorruptibility, supreme Immutability, supreme Blessedness, supreme Eternity, supreme Power, supreme Unity; which is nothing else than supremely being, supremely living, etc.

  CHAPTER XVII.

  It is simple in such a way that all things that can be said of its essence are one and the same in it: and nothing can be said of its substance except in terms of what it is.

  Is it to be inferred, then, that if the supreme Nature is so many goods, it will therefore be compounded of more goods than one? Or is it true, rather, that there are not more goods than one, but a single good described by many names? For, everything which is composite requires for its subsistence the things of which it is compounded, and, indeed, owes to them the fact of its existence, because, whatever it is, it is through these things; and they are not what they are through it, and therefore it is not at all supreme. If, then, that Nature is compounded of more goods than one, all these facts that are true of every composite must be applicable to it. But this impious falsehood the whole cogency of the truth that was shown above refutes and overthrows, through a clear argument.

  Since, then, that Nature is by no means composite, and yet is by all means those so many goods, necessarily all these are not more than one, but are one. Any one of them is, therefore, the same as all, whether taken all at once or separately. Therefore, just as whatever is attributed to the essence of the supreme Substance is one; so this substance is whatever it is essentially in one way, and by virtue of one consideration. For, when a man is said to be a material body, and rational, and human, these three things are not said in one way, or in virtue of one consideration. For, in accordance with one fact, he is a material body; and in accordance with another, rational; and no one of these, taken by itself, is the whole of what man is.

  That supreme Being, however, is by no means anything in such a way that it is not this same thing, according to another way, or another consideration; because, whatever it is essentially in any way, this is all of what it is. Therefore, nothing that is truly said of the supreme Being is accepted in terms of quality or quantity, but only in terms of what it is. For, whatever it is in terms of either quality or quantity would constitute still another element, in terms of what it is; hence, it would not be simple, but composite.

  CHAPTER XVIII

  It is without beginning and without end.

  From what time, then, has this so simple Nature which creates and animates all things existed, or until what time is it to exist? Or rather, let us ask neither from what time, nor to what time, it exists; but is it without beginning and without end? For, if it has a beginning, it has this either from or through itself, or from or through another, or from or through nothing.

  But it is certain, according to truths already made plain, that in no wise does it derive existence from another, or from nothing; or exist through another, or through nothing. In no wise, therefore, has it had inception through or from another, or through or from nothing.

  Moreover, it cannot have inception from or through itself, although it exists from and through itself. For it so exists from and through itself, that by no means is there one essence which exists from and through itself, and another through which, and from which, it exists. But, whatever begins to exist from or through something, is by no means identical with that from or through which it begins to exist. Therefore, the supreme Nature does not begin through or from, itself.

  Seeing, then, that it has a beginning neither through nor from itself, and neither through nor from nothing, it assuredly has no beginning at all. But neither will it have an end. For, if it is to have end, it is not supremely immortal and supremely incorruptible. But we have proved that it is supremely immortal and supremely incorruptible. Therefore, it will not have an end.

  Furthermore, if it is to have an end, it will perish either willingly or against its will. But certainly that is not a simple, unmixed good, at whose will the supreme good perishes. But this Being is itself the true and simple, unmixed good. Therefore, that very Being, which is certainly the supreme good, will not die of its own will. If, however, it is to perish against its will, it is not supremely powerful, or all-powerful. But cogent reasoning has asserted it to be powerful and all-powerful. Therefore, it will not die against its will. Hence, if neither with nor against its will the supreme Nature is to have an end, in no way will it have an end.

  Again, if the supreme nature has an end or a beginning, it is not true eternity, which it has been irrefutably proved to be above.

  Then, let him who can conceive of a time when this began to be true, or when it was not true, namely, that something was destined to be; or when this shall cease to be true, and shall not be true, namely, that something has existed. But, if neither of these suppositions is conceivable, and both these facts cannot exist without truth, it is impossible even to conceive that truth has either beginning or end. And then, if truth had a beginning, or shall have an end; before it began it was true that truth did not exist, and after it shall be ended it will be true that truth will not exist. Yet, anything that is true cannot exist without truth. Therefore, truth existed before truth existed, and truth will exist after truth shall be ended, which is a most contradictory conclusion. Whether, then, truth is said to have, or understood not to have, beginning or end, it cannot be limited by any beginning or end. Hence, the same follows as regards the supreme Nature, since it is itself the supreme Truth.

  CHAPTER XIX

  In what sense nothing existed before or will exist after this Being.

  But here we are again confronted by the term nothing, and whatever our reasoning thus far, with the concordant attestation of truth and necessity, has concluded nothing to be. For, if the propositions duly set forth above have been confirmed by the fortification of logically necessary truth, not anything existed before the supreme Being, nor will anything exist after it. Hence, nothing existed before, and nothing will exist after, it. For, either something or nothing must have preceded it; and either something or nothing must be destined to follow it.

  But, he who says that nothing existed before it appears to make this statement, “that there was before it a time when nothing existed, and that there will be after it a time when nothing will exist.” Therefore, when nothing existed, that Being did not exist, and when nothing shall exist, that Being will not exist. How is it, then, that it does not take inception from nothing or how is it that it will not come to nothing?—if that Being did not yet exist, when nothing already existed; and the same Being shall no longer exist, when nothing shall still exist. Of what avail is so weighty a mass of arguments, if this nothing so easily demolishes their structure? For, if it is established that the supreme Being succeeds nothing,1 which precedes it, and yields its place to nothing, which follows it, whatever has been posited as true above is necessarily unsettled by empty nothing.

  But, rather ought this nothing to be resisted, lest so many structures of cogent reasoning be stormed by nothing; and the supreme good, which has been sought and found by the light of truth, be lost for nothing. Let it rather be declared, then, that nothing did not exist before the supreme Being, and that nothing will not exist after it, rather than that, when a place is given before or after it to nothing, that Being which through itself brought into existence what was nothing, should be reduced through nothing to nothing.

  For this one assertion, namely, that nothing existed before the supreme Being, carries two meanings. For, one sense of this statement is that, before the supreme Being, there was a time when nothing was. But another understanding of the same statement is that, before the supreme Being, not anything existed. Just as, supposing I should say, “Nothing has taught me to fly,” I could explain this assertion either in this way, that nothing, as an entity in itself, which signifies not anything, has taught me actually to fly—which would be false; or in this way, that not anything has taught me to fly, which would be true.

  The former interpretation, therefore, which is followed by the inconsistency discussed above, is rejected by all reasoning as false. But there remains the other interpretation, which unites in perfect consistency with the foregoing arguments, and which, from the force of their whole correlation, must be true.

  Hence, the statement that nothing existed before that Being must be received in the latter sense. Nor should it be so explained, that it shall be understood that there was any time when that Being did not exist, and nothing did exist; but, so that it shall be understood that, before that Being, there was not anything. The same sort of double signification is found in the statement that nothing will exist after that Being.

  If, then, this interpretation of the term nothing, that has been given, is carefully analysed, most truly neither something nor nothing preceded or will follow the supreme Being, and the conclusion is reached, that nothing existed before or will exist after it. Yet, the solidity of the truths already established is in no wise impaired by the emptiness of nothing.

  CHAPTER XX.

  It exists in every place and at every time.

  But, although it has been concluded above that this creative Nature exists everywhere, and in all things, and through all; and from the fact that it neither began, nor will cease to be, it follows that it always has been, and is, and will be; yet, I perceive a certain secret murmur of contradiction which compels me to inquire more carefully where and when that Nature exists.

  The supreme Being, then, exists either everywhere and always, or merely at some place and time, or nowhere and never: or, as I express it, either in every place and at every time, or finitely, in some place and at some time, or in no place and at no time.

  But what can be more obviously contradictory, than that what exists most really and supremely exists nowhere and never? It is, therefore, false that it exists nowhere and never Again, since there is no good, nor anything at all without it; if this Being itself exists nowhere or never, then nowhere or never is there any good, and nowhere and never is there anything at all. But there is no need to state that this is false. Hence, the former proposition is also false, that that Being exists nowhere and never.

  It therefore exists finitely, at some time and place, or everywhere and always. But, if it exists finitely, at some place or time, there and then only, where and when it exists, can anything exist. Where and when it does not exist, moreover, there is no existence at all, because, without it, nothing exists. Whence it will follow, that there is some place and time where and when nothing at all exists. But seeing that this is false—for place and time themselves are existing things—the supreme Nature cannot exist finitely, at some place or time. But, if it is said that it of itself exists finitely, at some place and time, but that, through its power, it is wherever and whenever anything is, this is not true. For, since it is manifest that its power is nothing else than itself, by no means does its power exist without it.

  Since, then, it does not exist finitely, at some place or time, it must exist everywhere and always, that is, in every place and at every time.

  CHAPTER XXI.

  It exists in no place or time.

  But, if this is true, either it exists in every place and at every time, or else only a part of it so exists, the other part transcending every place and time.

  But, if in part it exists, and in part does not exist, in every place and at every time, it has parts; which is false. It does not, therefore, exist everywhere and always in part.

  But how does it exist as a whole, everywhere and always? For, either it is to be understood that it exists as a whole at once, in all places or at all times, and by parts in individual places and times; or, that it exists as a whole, in individual places and times as well.

  But, if it exists by parts in individual places or times, it is not exempt from composition and division of parts; which has been found to be in a high degree alien to the supreme Nature. Hence, it does not so exist, as a whole, in all places and at all times that it exists by parts in individual places and times.

  We are confronted, then, by the former alternative, that is, how the supreme Nature can exist, as a whole, in every individual place and time. This is doubtless impossible, unless it either exists at once or at different times in individual places or times. But, since the law of place and the law of time, the investigation of which it has hitherto been possible to prosecute in a single discussion, because they advanced on exactly the same lines, here separate one from another and seem to avoid debate, as if by evasion in diverse directions, let each be investigated independently in discussion directed on itself alone.

  First, then, let us see whether the supreme Nature can exist, as a whole, in individual places, either at once in all, or at different times, in different places. Then, let us make the same inquiry regarding the times at which it can exist.

  If, then, it exists as a whole in each individual place, then, for each individual place there is an individual whole. For, just as place is so distinguished from place that there are individual places, so that which exists as a whole, in one place, is so distinct from that which exists as a whole at the same time, in another place, that there are individual wholes. For, of what exists as a whole, in any place, there is no part that does not exist in that place. And that of which there is no part that does not exist in a given place, is no part of what exists at the same time outside this place.

  What exists as a whole, then, in any place, is no part of what exists at the same time outside that place. But, of that of which no part exists outside any given place, no part exists, at the same time, in another place. How, then, can what exists as a whole, in any place, exist simultaneously, as a whole, in another place, if no part of it can at that time exist in another place?

  Since, then, one whole cannot exist as a whole in different places at the same time, it follows that, for individual places, there are individual wholes, if anything is to exist as a whole in different individual places at once. Hence, if the supreme Nature exists as a whole, at one time, in every individual place, there are as many supreme Natures as there can be individual places; which it would be irrational to believe. Therefore, it does not exist, as a whole, at one time in individual places.

  If, however, at different times it exists, as a whole, in individual places, then, when it is in one place, there is in the meantime no good and no existence in other places, since without it absolutely nothing exists. But the absurdity of this supposition is proved by the existence of places themselves, which are not nothing, but something. Therefore, the supreme Nature does not exist, as a whole, in individual places at different times.

  But, if neither at the same time nor at different times does it exist, as a whole, in individual places, it is evident that it does not at all exist, as a whole, in each individual place. We must now examine, then, whether this supreme Nature exists, as a whole, at individual times, either simultaneously or at distinct times for individual times.

  But, how can anything exist, as a whole, simultaneously, at individual times, if these times are not themselves simultaneous? But, if this Being exists, as a whole, separately and at distinct times for individual times, just as a man exists as a whole yesterday, to-day, and to-morrow; it is properly said that it was and is and will be. Its age, then, which is no other than its eternity, does not exist, as a whole, simultaneously, but it is distributed in parts according to the parts of time.

  But its eternity is nothing else than itself. The supreme Being, then, will be divided into parts, according to the divisions of time. For, if its age is prolonged through periods of time, it has with this time present, past, and future. But what else is its age than its duration of existence, than its eternity? Since, then, its eternity is nothing else than its essence, as considerations set forth above irrefutably prove; if its eternity has past, present, and future, its essence also has, in consequence, past, present, and future.

  But what is past is not present or future; and what is present is not past or future; and what is future is not past or present. How, then, shall that proposition be valid, which was proved with clear and logical cogency above, namely, that that supreme Nature is in no wise composite, but is supremely simple, supremely immutable?—how shall this be so, if that Nature is one thing, at one time, and another, at another, and has parts distributed according to times? Or rather, if these earlier propositions are true, how can these latter be possible? By no means, then, is past or future attributable to the creative Being, either its age or its eternity. For why has it not a present, if it truly is? But was means past, and will be future. Therefore that Being never was, nor will be. Hence, it does not exist at distinct times, just as it does not exist, as a whole, simultaneously in different individual times.

  If, then, as our discussion has proved, it neither so exists, as a whole, in all places or times that it exists, as a whole, at one time in all, or by parts in individual places and times; nor so that it exists, as a whole, in individual times and places, it is manifest that it does not in any way exist, as a whole, in every time or place.

  And, since, in like manner, it has been demonstrated that it neither so exists in every time or place, that a part exists in every, and a part transcends every, place and time, it is impossible that it exists everywhere and always.

  For, in no way can it be conceived to exist everywhere and always, except either as a whole or in part. But if it does not at all exist everywhere and always, it will exist either finitely in some place or time, or in none. But it has already been proved, that it cannot exist finitely, in any place or time. In no place or time, that is, nowhere and never does it exist. For it cannot exist, except in every or in some place or time.

  But, on the other hand, since it is irrefutably established, not only that it exists through itself, and without beginning and without end, but that without it nothing anywhere or ever exists, it must exist everywhere and always.

  CHAPTER XXII.

  How it exists in every place and time, and in none.

  How, then, shall these propositions, that are so necessary according to our exposition, and so necessary according to our proof, be reconciled? Perhaps the supreme Nature exists in place and time in some such way, that it is not prevented from so existing simultaneously, as a whole, in different places or times, that there are not more wholes than one; and that its age, which does not exist, except as true eternity, is not distributed among past, present, and future.

  For, to this law of space and time, nothing seems to be subject, except the beings which so exist in space or time that they do not transcend extent of space or duration of time. Hence, though of beings of this class it is with all truth asserted that one and the same whole cannot exist simultaneously, as a whole, in different places or times; in the case of those beings which are not of this class, no such conclusion is necessarily reached.

  For it seems to be rightly said, that place is predicable only of objects whose magnitude place contains by including it, and includes by containing it; and that time is predicable only of objects whose duration time ends by measuring it, and measures by ending it. Hence, to any being, to whose spatial extent or duration no bound can be set, either by space or time, no place or time is properly attributed. For, seeing that place does not act upon it as place, nor time as time, it is not irrational to say, that no place is its place, and no time its time.

  But, what evidently has no place or time is doubtless by no means compelled to submit to the law of place or time. No law of place or time, then, in any way governs any nature, which no place or time limits by some kind of restraint. But what rational consideration can by any course of reasoning fail to reach the conclusion, that the Substance which creates and is supreme among all beings, which must be alien to, and free from, the nature and law of all things which itself created from nothing, is limited by no restraint of space or time; since, more truly, its power, which is nothing else than its essence, contains and includes under itself all these things which it created?

  Is it not impudently foolish, too, to say either, that space circumscribes the magnitude of truth, or, that time measures its duration—truth, which regards no greatness or smallness of spatial or temporal extent at all?

  Seeing, then, that this is the condition of place or time; that only whatever is limited by their bounds neither escapes the law of parts—such as place follows, according to magnitude, or such as time submits to, according to duration—nor can in any way be contained, as a whole, simultaneously by different places or times; but whatever is in no wise confined by the restraint of place or time, is not compelled by any law of places or times to multiplicity of parts, nor is it prevented from being present, as a whole and simultaneously, in more places or times than one—seeing, I say, that this is the condition governing place or time, no doubt the supreme Substance, which is encompassed by no restraint of place or time, is bound by none of their laws.

  Hence, since inevitable necessity requires that the supreme Being, as a whole, be lacking to no place or time, and no law of place or time prevents it from being simultaneously in every place or time; it must be simultaneously present in every individual place or time. For, because it is present in one place, it is not therefore prevented from being present at the same time, and in like manner in this, or that other, place or time.

  Nor, because it was, or is, or shall be, has any part of its eternity therefore vanished from the present, with the past, which no longer is; nor does it pass with the present, which is, for an instant; nor is it to come with the future, which is not yet.

  For, by no means is that Being compelled or forbidden by a law of space or time to exist, or not to exist, at any place or time—the Being which, in no wise, includes its own existence in space or time. For, when the supreme Being is said to exist in space or time, although the form of expression regarding it, and regarding local and temporal natures, is the same, because of the usage of language, yet the sense is different, because of the unlikeness of the objects of discussion. For in the latter case the same expression has two meanings, namely: (1) that these objects are present in those places and times in which they are said to be, and (2) that they are contained by these places and times themselves.

  But in the case of the supreme Being, the first sense only is intended, namely, that it is present; not that it is also contained. If the usage of language permitted, it would, therefore, seem to be more fittingly said, that it exists with place or time, than that it exists in place or time. For the statement that a thing exists in another implies that it is contained, more than does the statement that it exists with another.

  In no place or time, then, is this Being properly said to exist, since it is contained by no other at all. And yet it may be said, after a manner of its own, to be in every place or time, since whatever else exists is sustained by its presence, lest it lapse into nothingness. It exists in every place and time, because it is absent from none; and it exists in none, because it has no place or time, and has not taken to itself distinctions of place or time, neither here nor there, nor anywhere, nor then, nor now, nor at any time; nor does it exist in terms of this fleeting present, in which we live, nor has it existed, nor will it exist, in terms of past or future, since these are restricted to things finite and mutable, which it is not.

  And yet, these properties of time and place can, in some sort, be ascribed to it, since it is just as truly present in all finite and mutable beings as if it were circumscribed by the same places, and suffered change by the same times.

  We have sufficient evidence, then, to dispel the contradiction that threatened us; as to how the highest Being of all exists, everywhere and always, and nowhere and never, that is, in every place and time, and in no place or time, according to the consistent truth of different senses of the terms employed.

  CHAPTER XXIII.

  How it is better conceived to exist everywhere than in every place

  But, since it is plain that this supreme Nature is not more truly in all places than in all existing things, not as if it were contained by them, but as containing all, by permeating all, why should it not be said to be everywhere, in this sense, that it may be understood rather to be in all existing things, than merely in all places, since this sense is supported by the truth of the fact, and is not forbidden by the proper signification of the word of place?

  For we often quite properly apply terms of place to objects which are not places; as, when I say that the understanding is there in the soul, where rationality is. For, though there and where are adverbs of place, yet, by no local limitation, does the mind contain anything, nor is either rationality or understanding contained.

  Hence, as regards the truth of the matter, the supreme Nature is more appropriately said to be everywhere, in this sense, that it is in all existing things, than in this sense, namely that it is merely in all places. And since, as the reasons set forth above show, it cannot exist otherwise, it must so be in all existing things, that it is one and the same perfect whole in every individual thing simultaneously.

  CHAPTER XXIV

  How it is better understood to exist always than at every time.

  It is also evident that this supreme Substance is without beginning and without end; that it has neither past, nor future, nor the temporal, that is, transient present in which we live; since its age, or eternity, which is nothing else than itself, is immutable and without parts. Is not, therefore, the term which seems to mean all time more properly understood, when applied to this Substance, to signify eternity, which is never unlike itself, rather than a changing succession of times, which is ever in some sort unlike itself?

  Hence, if this Being is said to exist always; since, for it, it is the same to exist and to live, no better sense can be attached to this statement, than that it exists or lives eternally, that is, it possesses interminable life, as a perfect whole at once. For its eternity apparently is an interminable life, existing at once as a perfect whole.

  For, since it has already been shown that this Substance is nothing else than its own life and its own eternity, is in no wise terminable, and does not exist, except as at once and perfectly whole, what else is true eternity, which is consistent with the nature of that Substance alone, than an interminable life, existing as at once and perfectly whole?

  For this truth is, at any rate, clearly perceived from the single fact that true eternity belongs only to that substance which alone, as we have proved, was not created, but is the creator, since true eternity is conceived to be free from the limitations of beginning and end; and this is proved to be consistent with the nature of no created being, from the very fact that all such have been created from nothing.

  CHAPTER XXV

  It cannot suffer change by any accidents.1

  But does not this Being, which has been shown to exist as in every way substantially identical with itself, sometimes exist as different from itself, at any rate, accidentally? But how is it supremely immutable, if it can, I will not say, be, but, be conceived of, as variable by virtue of accidents? And, on the other hand, does it not partake of accident, since even this very fact that it is greater than all other natures and that it is unlike them seems to be an accident in its case (illi accidere)? But what is the inconsistency between susceptibility to certain facts, called accidents, and natural immutability, if from the undergoing of these accidents the substance undergoes no change?

  For, of all the facts, called accidents, some are understood not to be present or absent without some variation in the subject of the accident—all colors, for instance—while others are known not to effect any change in a thing either by occurring or not occurring—certain relations, for instance. For it is certain that I am neither older nor younger than a man who is not yet born, nor equal to him, nor like him. But I shall be able to sustain and to lose all these relations toward him, as soon as he shall have been born, according as he shall grow, or undergo change through divers qualities.

  It is made clear, then, that of all those facts, called accidents, a part bring some degree of mutability in their train, while a part do not impair at all the immutability of that in whose case they occur. Hence, although the supreme Nature in its simplicity has never undergone such accidents as cause mutation, yet it does not disdain occasional expression in terms of those accidents which are in no wise inconsistent with supreme immutability; and yet there is no accident respecting its essence, whence it would be conceived of, as itself variable.

  Whence this conclusion, also, may be reached, that it is susceptible of no accident; since, just as those accidents, which effect some change by their occurrence or non-occurrence, are by virtue of this very effect of theirs regarded as being true accidents, so those facts, which lack a like effect, are found to be improperly called accidents. Therefore, this Essence is always, in every way, substantially identical with itself; and it is never in any way different from itself, even accidentally. But, however it may be as to the proper signification of the term accident, this is undoubtedly true, that of the supremely immutable Nature no statement can be made, whence it shall be conceived of as mutable.

  CHAPTER XXVI.

  How this Being is said to be substance: it transcends all substance and is individually whatever it is.

  But, if what we have ascertained concerning the simplicity of this Nature is established, how is it substance? For, though every substance is susceptible of admixture of difference, or, at any rate, susceptible of mutation by accidents, the immutable purity of this Being is inaccessible to admixture or mutation, in any form.

  How, then, shall it be maintained that it is a substance of any kind, except as it is called substance for being, and so transcends, as it is above, every substance? For, as great as is the difference between that Being, which is through itself whatever it is, and which creates every other being from nothing, and a being, which is made whatever it is through another, from nothing; so much does the supreme Substance differ from these beings, which are not what it is. And, since it alone, of all natures, derives from itself, without the help of another nature, whatever existence it has, is it not whatever it is individually and apart from association with its creatures?

  Hence, if it ever shares any name with other beings, doubtless a very different signification of that name is to be understood in its case.

  CHAPTER XXVII.

  It is not included among substances as commonly treated, yet it is a substance and an indivisible spirit.

  It is, therefore, evident that in any ordinary treatment of substance, this Substance cannot be included, from sharing in whose essence every nature is excluded. Indeed, since every substance is treated either as universal, i.e., as essentially common to more than one substance, as being a man is common to individual men; or as individual, having a universal essence in common with others, as individual men have in common with individual men the fact that they are men; does any one conceive that, in the treatment of other substances, that supreme Nature is included, which neither divides itself into more substances than one, nor unites with any other, by virtue of a common essence?

  Yet, seeing that it not only most certainly exists, but exists in the highest degree of all things; and since the essence of anything is usually called its substance, doubtless if any worthy name can be given it, there is no objection to our calling it substance.

  And since no worthier essence than spirit and body is known, and of these, spirit is more worthy than body, it must certainly be maintained that this Being is spirit and not body. But, seeing that one spirit has not any parts, and there cannot be more spirits than one of this kind, it must, by all means, be an indivisible spirit. For since, as is shown above, it is neither compounded of parts, nor can be conceived of as mutable, through any differences or accidents, it is impossible that it is divisible by any form of division.

  CHAPTER XXVIII.

  This Spirit exists simply, and created beings are not comparable with him.

  It seems to follow, then, from the preceding considerations, that the Spirit which exists in so wonderfully singular and so singularly wonderful a way of its own is in some sort unique; while other beings which seem to be comparable with it are not so.

  For, by diligent attention it will be seen that that Spirit alone exists simply, and perfectly, and absolutely; while all other beings are almost non-existent, and hardly exist at all. For, seeing that of this Spirit, because of its immutable eternity, it can in no wise be said, in terms of any alteration, that it was or will be, but simply that it is; it is not now, by mutation, anything which it either was not at any time, or will not be in the future. Nor does it fail to be now what it was, or will be, at any time; but, whatever it is, it is, once for all, and simultaneously, and interminably. Seeing, I say, that its existence is of this character, it is rightly said itself to exist simply, and absolutely, and perfectly.

  But since, on the other hand, all other beings, in accordance with some cause, have at some time been, or will be, by mutation, what they are not now; or are what they were not, or will not be, at some time; and, since this former existence of theirs is no longer a fact; and that future existence is not yet a fact; and their existence in a transient, and most brief, and scarcely existing, present is hardly a fact—since, then, they exist in such mutability, it is not unreasonably denied that they exist simply, and perfectly, and absolutely; and it is asserted that they are almost non-existent, that they scarcely exist at all.

  Again, since all beings, which are other than this Spirit himself, have come from non-existence to existence, not through themselves, but through another; and, since they return from existence to non-existence, so far as their own power is concerned, unless they are sustained through another being, is it consistent with their nature to exist simply, or perfectly, or absolutely, and not rather to be almost non-existent

  And since the existence of this ineffable Spirit alone can in no way be conceived to have taken inception from non-existence, or to be capable of sustaining any deficiency rising from what is in non-existence; and since, whatever he is himself, he is not through another than himself, that is, than what he is himself, ought not his existence alone to be conceived of as simple, and perfect, and absolute?

  But what is thus simply, and on every ground, solely perfect, simple, and absolute, this may very certainly be justly said to be in some sort unique. And, on the other hand, whatever is known to exist through a higher cause, and neither simply, nor perfectly, nor absolutely, but scarcely to exist, or to be almost non-existent—this assuredly may be rightly said to be in some sort non-existent.

  According to this course of reasoning, then, the creative Spirit alone exists, and all creatures are non-existent; yet, they are not wholly non-existent, because, through that Spirit which alone exists absolutely, they have been made something from nothing.

  CHAPTER XXIX.

  His expression is identical with himself, and consubstantial with him, since there are not two spirits, but one.

  But now, having considered these questions regarding the properties of the supreme Nature, which have occurred to me in following the guidance of reason to the present point, I think it reasonable to examine this Spirit’s expression (locutio), through which all things were created.

  For, though all that has been ascertained regarding this expression above has the inflexible strength of reason, I am especially compelled to a more careful discussion of this expression by the fact that it is proved to be identical with the supreme Spirit himself. For, if this Spirit created nothing except through himself, and whatever was created by him was created through that expression, how shall that expression be anything else than what the Spirit himself is?

  Furthermore, the facts already discovered declare irrefutably that nothing at all ever could, or can, exist, except the creative Spirit and its creatures. But it is impossible that the expression of this Spirit is included among created beings; for every created being was created through that expression; but that expression could not be created through itself. For nothing can be created through itself, since every creature exists later than that through which it is created, and nothing exists later than itself.

  The alternative remaining is, then, that this expression of the supreme Spirit, since it cannot be a creature, is no other than the supreme Spirit. Therefore, this expression itself can be conceived of as nothing else than the intelligence (intelligentia) of this Spirit, by which he conceives of (intelligit) all things. For, to him, what is expressing anything, according to this kind of expression, but conceiving of it? For he does not, like man, ever fail to express what he conceives.

  If, then, the supremely simple Nature is nothing else than what its intelligence is, just as it is identical with its wisdom, necessarily, in the same way, it is nothing else than what its expression is. But, since it is already manifest that the supreme Spirit is one only, and altogether indivisible, this his expression must be so consubstantial with him, that they are not two spirits, but one.

  CHAPTER XXX.

  This expression does not consist of more words than one, but is one Word.

  Why, then, should I have any further doubt regarding that question which I dismissed above as doubtful, namely, whether this expression consists of more words than one, or of one? For, if it is so consubstantial with the supreme Nature that they are not two spirits, but one; assuredly, just as the latter is supremely simple, so is the former. It therefore does not consist of more words than one, but is one Word, through which all things were created.

  CHAPTER XXXI.

  This Word itself is not the likeness of created beings, but the reality of their being, while created beings are a kind of likeness of reality.—What natures are greater and more excellent than others.

  But here, it seems to me, there arises a question that is not easy to answer, and yet must not be left in any ambiguity. For all words of that sort by which we express any objects in our mind, that is, conceive of them, are likenesses and images of the objects to which they correspond; and every likeness or image is more or less true, according as it more or less closely imitates the object of which it is the likeness.

  What, then, is to be our position regarding the Word by which all things are expressed, and through which all were created? Will it be, or will it not be, the likeness of the things that have been created through itself? For, if it is itself the true likeness of mutable things, it is not consubstantial with supreme immutability; which is false. But, if it is not altogether true, and is merely a sort of likeness of mutable things, then the Word of supreme Truth is not altogether true; which is absurd. But if it has no likeness to mutable things, how were they created after its example?

  But perhaps nothing of this ambiguity will remain if—as the reality of a man is said to be the living man, but the likeness or image of a man in his picture—so the reality of being is conceived of as in the Word, whose essence exists so supremely that in a certain sense it alone exists; while in these things which, in comparison with that Essence, are in some sort non-existent, and yet were made something through, and according to, that Word, a kind of imitation of that supreme Essence is found.

  For, in this way the Word of supreme Truth, which is also itself supreme Truth, will experience neither gain nor loss, according as it is more or less like its creatures. But the necessary inference will rather be, that every created being exists in so much the greater degree, or is so much the more excellent, the more like it is to what exists supremely, and is supremely great.

  For on this account, perhaps,—nay, not perhaps, but certainly,—does every mind judge natures in any way alive to excel those that are not alive, the sentient to excel the non-sentient, the rational the irrational. For, since the supreme Nature, after a certain unique manner of its own, not only exists, but lives, and is sentient and rational, it is clear that, of all existing beings, that which is in some way alive is more like this supreme Nature, than that which is not alive at all; and what, in any way, even by a corporeal sense, cognises anything, is more like this Nature than what is not sentient at all; and what is rational, more than what is incapable of reasoning.

  But it is clear, for a like reason, that certain natures exist in a greater or less degree than others. For, just as that is more excellent by nature which, through its natural essence, is nearer to the most excellent Being, so certainly that nature exists in a greater degree, whose essence is more like the supreme Essence. And I think that this can easily be ascertained as follows. If we should conceive any substance that is alive, and sentient, and rational, to be deprived of its reason, then of its sentience, then of its life, and finally of the bare existence that remains, who would fail to understand that the substance that is thus destroyed, little by little, is gradually brought to smaller and smaller degrees of existence, and at last to non-existence? But the attributes which, taken each by itself, reduce an essence to less and less degrees of existence, if assumed in order, lead it to greater and greater degrees.

  It is evident, then, that a living substance exists in a greater degree than one that is not living, a sentient than a non-sentient, and a rational than a non-rational. So, there is no doubt that every substance exists in a greater degree, and is more excellent, according as it is more like that substance which exists supremely and is supremely excellent.

  It is sufficiently clear, then, that in the Word, through which all things were created, is not their likeness, but their true and simple essence; while, in the things created, there is not a simple and absolute essence, but an imperfect imitation of that true Essence. Hence, it necessarily follows, that this Word is not more nor less true, according to its likeness to the things created, but every created nature has a higher essence and dignity, the more it is seen to approach that Word.

  CHAPTER XXXII

  The supreme Spirit expresses himself by a coeternal Word.

  But since this is true, how can what is simple Truth be the Word corresponding to those objects, of which it is not the likeness? Since every word by which an object is thus mentally expressed is the likeness of that object, if this is not the word corresponding to the objects that have been created through it, how shall we be sure that it is the Word? For every word is a word corresponding to some object. Therefore, if there were no creature, there would be no word.

  Are we to conclude, then, that if there were no creature, that Word would not exist at all, which is the supreme self-sufficient Essence? Or, would the supreme Being itself, perhaps, which is the Word, still be the eternal Being, but not the Word, if nothing were ever created through that Being? For, to what has not been, and is not, and will not be, there can be no word corresponding.

  But, according to this reasoning, if there were never any being but the supreme Spirit, there would be no word at all in him. If there were no word in him, he would express nothing to himself; if he expressed nothing to himself, since, for him, expressing anything is the same with understanding or conceiving of it (intelligere), he would not understand or conceive of anything; if he understood or conceived of nothing, then the supreme Wisdom, which is nothing else than this Spirit, would understand or conceive of nothing; which is most absurd.

  What is to be inferred? For, if it conceived of nothing, how would it be the supreme Wisdom? Or, if there were in no wise anything but it, of what would it conceive? Would it not conceive of itself? But how can it be even imagined that the supreme Wisdom, at any time does not conceive of itself; since a rational mind can remember not only itself, but that supreme Wisdom, and conceive of that Wisdom and of itself? For, if the human mind could have no memory or concept of that Wisdom or of itself, it would not distinguish itself at all from irrational creatures, and that Wisdom from the whole created world, in silent meditation by itself, as my mind does now.

  Hence, that Spirit, supreme as he is eternal, is thus eternally mindful of himself, and conceives of himself after the likeness of a rational mind; nay, not after the likeness of anything; but in the first place that Spirit, and the rational mind after its likeness. But, if he conceives of himself eternally, he expresses himself eternally. If he expresses himself eternally, his Word is eternally with him. Whether, therefore, it be thought of in connection with no other existing being, or with other existing beings, the Word of that Spirit must be coeternal with him.

  CHAPTER XXXIII.

  He utters himself and what he creates by a single consubstantial Word.

  But here, in my inquiry concerning the Word, by which the Creator expresses all that he creates, is suggested the word by which he, who creates all, expresses himself. Does he express himself, then, by one word, and what he creates by another; or does he rather express whatever he creates by the same word whereby he expresses himself?

  For this Word also, by which he expresses himself, must be identical with himself, as is evidently true of the Word by which he expresses his creatures. For since, even if nothing but that supreme Spirit ever existed, urgent reason would still require the existence of that word by which he expresses himself, what is more true than that his Word is nothing else than what he himself is? Therefore, if he expresses himself and what he creates, by a Word consubstantial with himself, it is manifest that of the Word by which he expresses himself, and of the Word by which he expresses the created world, the substance is one.

  How, then, if the substance is one, are there two words? But, perhaps, identity of substance does not compel us to admit a single Word. For the Creator himself, who speaks in these words, has the same substance with them, and yet is not the Word. But, undoubtedly the word by which the supreme Wisdom expresses itself may most fitly be called its Word on the former ground, namely, that it contains the perfect likeness of that Wisdom.

  For, on no ground can it be denied that when a rational mind conceives of itself in meditation the image of itself arises in its thought, or rather the thought of the mind is itself its image, after its likeness, as if formed from its impression. For, whatever object the mind, either through representation of the body or through reason, desires to conceive of truly, it at least attempts to express its likeness, so far as it is able, in the mental concept itself. And the more truly it succeeds in this, the more truly does it think of the object itself; and, indeed, this fact is observed more clearly when it thinks of something else which it is not, and especially when it thinks of a material body. For, when I think of a man I know, in his absence, the vision of my thought forms such an image as I have acquired in memory through my ocular vision and this image is the word corresponding to the man I express by thinking of him.

  The rational mind, then, when it conceives of itself in thought, has with itself its image born of itself that is, its thought in its likeness, as if formed from its impression, although it cannot, except in thought alone, separate itself from its image, which image is its word.

  Who, then, can deny that the supreme Wisdom, when it conceives of itself by expressing itself, begets a likeness of itself consubstantial with it, namely, its Word? And this Word, although of a subject so uniquely important nothing can be said with sufficient propriety, may still not inappropriately be called the image of that Wisdom, its representation, just as it is called his likeness.

  But the Word by which the Creator expresses the created world is not at all, in the same way, a word corresponding to the created world, since it is not this world’s likeness, but its elementary essence. It therefore follows, that he does not express the created world itself by a word corresponding to the created world. To what, then, does the word belong, whereby he expresses it, if he does not express it by a word belonging to itself? For what he expresses, he expresses by a word, and a word must belong to something, that is, it is the likeness of something. But if he expresses nothing but himself or his created world he can express nothing, except by a word corresponding to himself or to something else.

  So, if he expresses nothing by a word belonging to the created world, whatever he expresses, he expresses by the Word corresponding to himself. By one and the same Word, then, he expresses himself and whatever he has made.

  CHAPTER XXXIV.

  How he can express the created world by his Word.

  But how can objects so different as the creative and the created being be expressed by one Word, especially since that Word itself is coeternal with him who expresses them, while the created world is not coeternal with him? Perhaps, because he himself is supreme Wisdom and supreme Reason, in which are all things that have been created; just as a work which is made after one of the arts, not only when it is made, but before it is made, and after it is destroyed, is always in respect of the art itself nothing else than what that art is.

  Hence, when the supreme Spirit expresses himself, he expresses all created beings. For, both before they were created, and now that they have been created, and after they are decayed or changed in any way, they are ever in him not what they are in themselves, but what this Spirit himself is. For, in themselves they are mutable beings, created according to immutable reason; while in him is the true first being, and the first reality of existence, the more like unto which those beings are in any way, the more really and excellently do they exist. Thus, it may reasonably be declared that, when the supreme Spirit expresses himself, he also expresses whatever has been created by one and the same Word.

  CHAPTER XXXV.

  Whatever has been created is in his Word and knowledge, life and truth.

  But, since it is established that his word is consubstantial with him, and perfectly like him, it necessarily follows that all things that exist in him exist also, and in the same way, in his Word. Whatever has been created, then, whether alive or not alive, or howsoever it exists in itself, is very life and truth in him.

  But, since knowing is the same to the supreme Spirit as conceiving or expressing, he must know all things that he knows in the same way in which he expresses or conceives of them. Therefore, just as all things are in his Word life and truth, so are they in his knowledge.

  CHAPTER XXXVI.

  In how incomprehensible a way he expresses or knows the objects created by him.

  Hence, it may be most clearly comprehended that how this Spirit expresses, or how he knows the created world, cannot be comprehended by human knowledge. For none can doubt that created substances exist far differently in themselves than in our knowledge. For, in themselves they exist by virtue of their own being; while in our knowledge is not their being, but their likeness.

  We conclude, then, that they exist more truly in themselves than in our knowledge, in the same degree in which they exist more truly anywhere by virtue of their own being, than by virtue of their likeness. Therefore, since this is also an established truth, that every created substance exists more truly in the Word, that is, in the intelligence of the Creator, than it does in itself, in the same degree in which the creative being exists more truly than the created; how can the human mind comprehend of what kind is that expression and that knowledge, which is so much higher and truer than created substances; if our knowledge is as far surpassed by those substances as their likeness is removed from their being?

  CHAPTER XXXVII.

  Whatever his relation to his creatures, this relation his Word also sustains: yet both do not simultaneously sustain this relation as more than one being.

  But since it has already been clearly demonstrated that the supreme Spirit created all things through his Word, did not the Word itself also create all things? For, since it is consubstantial with him, it must be the supreme essence of that of which it is the Word. But there is no supreme Essence, except one, which is the only creator and the only beginning of all things which have been created. For this Essence, through no other than itself, alone created all things from nothing. Hence, whatever the supreme Spirit creates, the same his Word also creates, and in the same way.

  Whatever relation, then, the supreme Spirit bears to what he creates, this relation his Word also bears, and in the same way. And yet, both do not bear it simultaneously, as more than one, since there are not more supreme creative essences than one. Therefore, just as he is the creator and the beginning of the world, so is his Word also; and yet there are not two, but one creator and one beginning.

  CHAPTER XXXVIII.

  It cannot be explained why they are two, although they must be so.

  Our careful attention is therefore demanded by a peculiarity which, though most unusual in other beings, seems to belong to the supreme Spirit and his Word. For, it is certain that in each of these separately and in both simultaneously, whatever they are so exists that it is separately perfected in both, and yet does not admit plurality in the two. For although, taken separately, he is perfectly supreme Truth and Creator, and his Word is supreme Truth and Creator; yet both at once are not two truths or two creators.

  But although this is true, yet it is most remarkably clear that neither he, whose is the Word, can be his own Word, nor can the Word be he, whose Word it is, although in so far as regards either what they are substantially, or what relation they bear to the created world, they ever preserve an indivisible unity. But in respect of the fact that he does not derive existence from that Word, but that Word from him, they admit an ineffable plurality, ineffable, certainly, for although necessity requires that they be two, it can in no wise be explained why they are two.

  For although they may perhaps be called two equals, or some other mutual relation may in like manner be attributed to them, yet if it were to be asked what it is in these very relative expressions with reference to which they are used, it cannot be expressed plurally, as one speaks of two equal lines, or two like men. For, neither are there two equal spirits nor two equal creators, nor is there any dual expression which indicates either their essence or their relation to the created world; and there is no dual expression which designates the peculiar relation of the one to the other, since there are neither two words nor two images.

  For the Word, by virtue of the fact that it is a word or image, bears a relation to the other, because it is Word and image only as it is the Word and image of something; and so peculiar are these attributes to the one that they are by no means predicable of the other. For he, whose is the Word and image, is neither image nor Word. It is, therefore, evident that it cannot be explained why they are two, the supreme Spirit and the Word, although by certain properties of each they are required to be two. For it is the property of the one to derive existence from the other, and the property of that other that the first derives existence from him.

  CHAPTER XXXIX.

  This Word derives existence from the supreme Spirit by birth.

  And this truth, it seems, can be expressed in no more familiar terms than when it is said to be the property of the one, to be born of the other; and of the other, that the first is born of him. For it is now clearly proved, that the Word of the supreme Spirit does not derive existence from him, as do those beings which have been created by him; but as Creator from Creator, supreme Being from supreme Being. And, to dispose of this comparison with all brevity, it is one and the same being, which derives existence from one and the same being, and on such terms, that it in no wise derives existence, except from that being.

  Since it is evident, then, that the Word of the supreme Spirit so derives existence from him alone, that it is completely analogous to the offspring of a parent; and that it does not derive existence from him, as if it were created by him, doubtless no more fitting supposition can be entertained regarding its origin, than that it derives existence from the supreme Spirit by birth (nascendo).

  For, innumerable objects are unhesitatingly said to be born of those things from which they derive existence, although they possess no such likeness to those things of which they are said to be born, as offspring to a parent.—We say, for instance, that the hair is born of the head, or the fruit of the tree, although the hair does not resemble the head, nor the fruit the tree.

  If, then, many objects of this sort are without absurdity said to be born, so much the more fittingly may the Word of the supreme Spirit be said to derive existence from him by birth, the more perfect the resemblance it bears to him, like a child’s to its parent, through deriving existence from him.

  CHAPTER XL.

  He is most truly a parent, and that Word his offspring.

  But if it is most properly said to be born, and is so like him of whom it is born, why should it be esteemed like, as a child is like his parent? why should it not rather be declared, that the Spirit is more truly a parent, and the Word his offspring, the more he alone is sufficient to effect this birth, and the more what is born expresses his likeness? For, among other beings which we know bear the relations of parent and child, none so begets as to be solely and without accessory, sufficient to the generation of offspring; and none is so begotten that without any admixture of unlikeness, it shows complete likeness to its parent.

  If, then, the Word of the supreme Spirit so derives its complete existence from the being of that Spirit himself alone, and is so uniquely like him, that no child ever so completely derives existence from its parent, and none is so like its parent, certainly the relation of parent and offspring can be ascribed to no beings so consistently as to the supreme Spirit and his Word. Hence, it is his property to be most truly parent, and its to be most truly his offspring.

  CHAPTER XLI

  He most truly begets, and it is most truly begotten

  But it will be impossible to establish this proposition, unless, in equal degree, he most truly begets, and it is most truly begotten. As the former supposition is evidently true, so the latter is necessarily most certain. Hence, it belongs to the supreme Spirit most truly to beget, and to his Word to be most truly begotten.

  CHAPTER XLII.

  It is the property of the one to be most truly progenitor and Father, and of the other to be the begotten and Son.

  I should certainly be glad, and perhaps able, now to reach the conclusion, that he is most truly the Father, while this Word is most truly his Son. But I think that even this question should not be neglected: whether it is more fitting to call them Father and Son, than mother and daughter, since in them there is no distinction of sex.

  For, if it is consistent with the nature of the one to be the Father, and of his offspring to be the Son, because both are Spirit (Spiritus, masculine); why is it not, with equal reason, consistent with the nature of the one to be the mother, and the other the daughter, since both are truth and wisdom (veritas et sapientia, feminine)?

  Or, is it because in these natures that have a difference of sex, it belongs to the superior sex to be father or son, and to the inferior to be mother or daughter? And this is certainly a natural fact in most instances, but in some the contrary is true, as among certain kinds of birds, among which the female is always larger and stronger, while the male is smaller and weaker.

  At any rate, it is more consistent to call the supreme Spirit father than mother, for this reason, that the first and principal cause of offspring is always in the father. For, if the maternal cause is ever in some way preceded by the paternal, it is exceedingly inconsistent that the name mother should be attached to that parent with which, for the generation of offspring, no other cause is associated, and which no other precedes. It is, therefore, most true that the supreme Spirit is Father of his offspring. But, if the son is always more like the father than is the daughter, while nothing is more like the supreme Father than his offspring; then it is most true that this offspring is not a daughter, but a Son.

  Hence, just as it is the property of the one most truly to beget, and of the other to be begotten, so it is the property of the one to be most truly progenitor, and of the other to be most truly begotten. And as the one is most truly the parent, and the other his offspring, so the one is most truly Father, and the other most truly Son

  CHAPTER XLIII

  Consideration of the common attributes of both and the individual properties of each.

  Now that so many and so important properties of each have been discovered, whereby a strange plurality, as ineffable as it is inevitable, is proved to exist in the supreme unity, I think it most interesting to reflect, again and again, upon so unfathomable a mystery.

  For observe: although it is so impossible that he who begets, and he who is begotten, are the same, and that parent and offspring are the same—so impossible that necessarily one must be the progenitor and the other the begotten, and one the Father, the other the Son; yet, here it is so necessary that he who begets and he who is begotten shall be the same, and also that parent and offspring shall be the same, that the progenitor cannot be any other than what the begotten is, nor the Father any other than the Son.

  And although the one is one, and the other another, so that it is altogether evident that they are two; yet that which the one and the other are is in such a way one and the same, that it is a most obscure mystery why they are two. For, in such a way is one the Father and the other the Son, that when I speak of both I perceive that I have spoken of two; and yet so identical is that which both Father and Son are, that I do not understand why they are two of whom I have spoken.

  For, although the Father separately is the perfectly supreme Spirit, and the Son separately is the perfectly supreme Spirit, yet, so are the Spirit-Father and the Spirit-Son one and the same being, that the Father and the Son are not two spirits, but one Spirit. For, just as to separate properties of separate beings, plurality is not attributed, since they are not properties of two things, so, what is common to both preserves an indivisible unity, although it belongs, as a whole, to them taken separately.

  For, as there are not two fathers or two sons, but one Father and one Son, since separate properties belong to separate beings, so there are not two spirits, but one Spirit; although it belongs both to the Father, taken separately, and to the Son, taken separately, to be the perfect Spirit. For so opposite are their relations, that the one never assumes the property of the other; so harmonious are they in nature, that the one ever contains the essence of the other. For they are so diverse by virtue of the fact that the one is the Father and the other the Son, that the Father is never called the Son, nor the Son the Father; and they are so identical, by virtue of their substance, that the essence of the Son is ever in the Father, and the essence of the Father in the Son.

  CHAPTER XLIV.

  How one is the essence of the other.

  Hence, even if one is called the essence of the other, there is no departure from truth; but the supreme simplicity and unity of their common nature is thus honored. For, not as one conceives of a man’s wisdom, through which man is wise, though he cannot be wise through himself, can we thus understand the statement that the Father is essence of the Son, and the Son the essence of the Father. We cannot understand that the Son is existent through the Father, and the Father through the Son, as if the one could not be existent except through the other, just as a man cannot be wise except through wisdom.

  For, as the supreme Wisdom is ever wise through itself, so the supreme Essence ever exists through itself. But, the perfectly supreme Essence is the Father, and the perfectly supreme Essence is the Son. Hence, the perfect Father and the perfect Son exist, each through himself, just as each is wise through himself.

  For the Son is not the less perfect essence or wisdom because he is an essence born of the essence of the Father, and a wisdom born of the wisdom of the Father; but he would be a less perfect essence or wisdom if he did not exist through himself, and were not wise through himself.

  For, there is no inconsistency between the subsistence of the Son through himself, and his deriving existence from his Father. For, as the Father has essence, and wisdom, and life in himself; so that not through another’s, but through his own, essence he exists; through his own wisdom he is wise; through his own life he lives; so, by generation, he grants to his Son the possession of essence, and wisdom, and life in himself, so that not through an extraneous essence, wisdom, and life, but through his own, he subsists, is wise, and lives; otherwise, the existence of Father and Son will not be the same, nor will the Son be equal to the Father. But it has already been clearly proved how false this supposition is.

  Hence, there is no inconsistency between the subsistence of the Son through himself, and his deriving existence from the Father, since he must have from the Father this very power of subsisting through himself. For, if a wise man should teach me his wisdom, which I formerly lacked, he might without impropriety be said to teach me by this very wisdom of his. But, although my wisdom would derive its existence and the fact of its being from his wisdom, yet when my wisdom once existed, it would be no other essence than its own, nor would it be wise except through itself.

  Much more, then, the eternal Father’s eternal Son, who so derives existence from the Father that they are not two essences, subsists, is wise, and lives through himself. Hence, it is inconceivable that the Father should be the essence of the Son, or the Son the essence of the Father, on the ground that the one could not subsist through itself, but must subsist through the other. But in order to indicate how they share in an essence supremely simple and supremely one, it may consistently be said, and conceived, that the one is so identical with the other that the one possesses the essence of the other.

  On these grounds, then, since there is obviously no difference between possessing an essence and being an essence, just as the one possesses the essence of the other, so the one is the essence of the other, that is, the one has the same existence with the other.

  CHAPTER XLV

  The Son may more appropriately be called the essence of the Father, than the Father the essence of the Son: and in like manner the Son is the virtue, wisdom, etc, of the Father.

  And although, for reasons we have noted, this is true, it is much more proper to call the Son the essence of the Father than the Father the essence of the Son. For, since the Father has his being from none other than himself, it is not wholly appropriate to say that he has the being of another than himself; while, since the Son has his being from the Father, and has the same essence with his Father, he may most appropriately be said to have the essence of his Father.

  Hence, seeing that neither has an essence, except by being an essence; as the Son is more appropriately conceived to have the essence of the Father than the Father to have the essence of the Son, so the Son may more fitly be called the essence of the Father than the Father the essence of the son. For this single explanation proves, with sufficiently emphatic brevity, that the Son not only has the same essence with the Father, but has this very essence from the Father; so that, to assert that the Son is the essence of the Father is the same as to assert that the Son is not a different essence from the essence of the Father nay, from the Father-essence.

  In like manner, therefore, the Son is the virtue of the Father, and his wisdom, and justice, and whatever is consistently attributed to the essence of the supreme Spirit.

  CHAPTER XLVI.

  How some of these truths which are thus expounded may also be conceived of in another way

  Yet, some of these truths, which may be thus expounded and conceived of, are apparently capable of another interpretation as well, not inconsistent with this same assertion. For it is proved that the Son is the true Word, that is, the perfect intelligence, conceiving of the whole substance of the Father, or perfect cognition of that substance, and knowledge of it, and wisdom regarding it; that is, it understands, and conceives of, the very essence of the Father, and cognises it, and knows it, and is wise (sapit) regarding it.

  If, then, in this sense, the Son is called the intelligence of the Father, and wisdom concerning him, and knowledge and cognition of him, and acquaintance with him; since the Son understands and conceives of the Father, is wise concerning him, knows and is acquainted with him, there is no departure from truth.

  Most properly, too, may the Son be called the truth of the Father, not only in the sense that the truth of the Son is the same with that of the Father, as we have already seen; but in this sense, also, that in him no imperfect imitation shall be conceived of, but the complete truth of the substance of the Father since he is no other than what the Father is.

  CHAPTER XLVII.

  The Son is the intelligence of intelligence and the Truth of truth

  But if the very substance of the Father is intelligence, and knowledge, and wisdom, and truth, it is consequently inferred that as the Son is the intelligence, and knowledge, and wisdom, and truth, of the paternal substance, so he is the intelligence of intelligence, the knowledge of knowledge, the wisdom of wisdom, and the truth of truth.

  CHAPTER XLVIII.

  How the Son is the intelligence or wisdom of memory or the memory of the Father and of memory.

  But what is to be our notion of memory? Is the Son to be regarded as the intelligence conceiving of memory, or as the memory of the Father, or as the memory of memory? Indeed, since it cannot be denied that the supreme Wisdom remembers itself, nothing can be more consistent than to regard the Father as memory, just as the Son is the Word; because the Word is apparently born of memory, a fact that is more clearly seen in the case of the human mind.

  For, since the human mind is not always thinking of itself, though it ever remembers itself, it is clear that, when it thinks of itself, the word corresponding to it is born of memory. Hence, it appears that, if it always thought of itself, its word would be always born of memory. For, to think of an object of which we have remembrance, this is to express it mentally; while the word corresponding to the object is the thought itself, formed after the likeness of that object from memory.

  Hence, it may be clearly apprehended in the supreme Wisdom, which always thinks of itself, just as it remembers itself, that, of the eternal remembrance of it, its coeternal Word is born. Therefore, as the Word is properly conceived of as the child, the memory most appropriately takes the name of parent. If, then, the child which is born of the supreme Spirit alone is the child of his memory, there can be no more logical conclusion than that his memory is himself. For not in respect of the fact that he remembers himself does he exist in his own memory, like ideas that exist in the human memory, without being the memory itself; but he so remembers himself that he is his own memory.

  It therefore follows that, just as the Son is the intelligence or wisdom of the Father, so he is that of the memory of the Father. But, regarding whatever the Son has wisdom or understanding, this he likewise remembers. The Son is, therefore, the memory of the Father, and the memory of memory, that is, the memory that remembers the Father, who is memory, just as he is the wisdom of the Father, and the wisdom of wisdom, that is, the wisdom wise regarding the wisdom of the Father; and the Son is indeed memory, born of memory, as he is wisdom, born of wisdom, while the Father is memory and wisdom born of none.

  CHAPTER XLIX.

  The supreme Spirit loves himself.

  But, while I am here considering with interest the individual properties and the common attributes of Father and Son, I find none in them more pleasurable to contemplate than the feeling of mutual love. For how absurd it would be to deny that the supreme Spirit loves himself, just as he remembers himself, and conceives of himself! since even the rational human mind is convinced that it can love both itself and him, because it can remember itself and him, and can conceive of itself and of him; for idle and almost useless is the memory and conception of any object, unless, so far as reason requires, the object itself is loved or condemned. The supreme Spirit, then, loves himself, just as he remembers himself and conceives of himself.

  CHAPTER L.

  The same love proceeds equally from Father and Son

  It is, at any rate, clear to the rational man that he does not remember himself or conceive of himself because he loves himself, but he loves himself because he remembers himself and conceives of himself; and that he could not love himself if he did not remember and conceive of himself. For no object is loved without remembrance or conception of it; while many things are retained in memory and conceived of that are not loved.

  It is evident, then, that the love of the supreme Spirit proceeds from the fact that he remember himself and conceives of himself (se intelligit). But if, by the memory of the supreme Spirit, we understand the Father, and by his intelligence by which he conceives of anything, the Son, it is manifest that the love of the supreme Spirit proceeds equally from Father and Son.

  CHAPTER LI.

  Each loves himself and the other with equal love.

  But if the supreme Spirit loves himself, no doubt the Father loves himself, the Son loves himself, and the one the other; since the Father separately is the supreme Spirit, and the Son separately is the supreme Spirit, and both at once one Spirit. And, since each equally remembers himself and the other, and conceives equally of himself and the other; and since what is loved, or loves in the Father, or in the Son, is altogether the same, necessarily each loves himself and the other with an equal love.

  CHAPTER LII.

  This love is as great as the supreme Spirit himself.

  How great, then, is this love of the supreme Spirit, common as it is to Father and Son! But, if he loves himself as much as he remembers and conceives of himself; and, moreover, remembers and conceives of himself in as great a degree as that in which his essence exists, since otherwise it cannot exist; undoubtedly his love is as great as he himself is.

  CHAPTER LIII.

  This love is identical with the supreme Spirit, and yet it is itself with the Father and the Son one spirit

  But what can be equal to the supreme Spirit, except the supreme Spirit? That love is, then, the supreme Spirit. Hence, if no creature, that is, if nothing other than the supreme Spirit, the Father and the Son, ever existed; nevertheless, Father and Son would love themselves and one another.

  It therefore follows that this love is nothing else than what the Father and the Son are, which is the supreme Being. But, since there cannot be more than one supreme Being, what inference can be more necessary than that Father and Son and the love of both are one supreme Being? Therefore, this love is supreme Wisdom, supreme Truth, the supreme Good, and whatsoever can be attributed to the substance of the supreme Spirit.

  CHAPTER LIV

  It proceeds as a whole from the Father, and as a whole from the Son, and yet does not exist except as one love.

  It should be carefully considered whether there are two loves, one proceeding from the Father, the other from the Son; or one, not proceeding as a whole from one, but in part from the Father, in part from the Son; or neither more than one, nor one proceeding in part from each separately, but one proceeding as a whole from each separately, and likewise as a whole from the two at once.

  But the solution of such a question can, without doubt, be apprehended from the fact that this love proceeds not from that in which Father and Son are more than one, but from that in which they are one. For, not from their relations, which are more than one, but from their essence itself, which does not admit of plurality, do Father and Son equally produce so great a good.

  Therefore, as the Father separately is the supreme Spirit, and the Son separately is the supreme Spirit, and Father and Son at once are not two, but one Spirit; so from the Father separately the love of the supreme Spirit emanates as a whole, and from the Son as a whole, and at once from Father and Son, not as two, but as one and the same whole.

  CHAPTER LV.

  This love is not their Son.

  Since this love, then, has its being equally from Father and Son, and is so like both that it is in no wise unlike them, but is altogether identical with them; is it to be regarded as their Son or offspring? But, as the Word, so soon as it is examined, declares itself to be the offspring of him from whom it derives existence, by displaying a manifold likeness to its parent; so love plainly denies that it sustains such a relation, since, so long as it is conceived to proceed from Father and Son, it does not at once show to one who contemplates it so evident a likeness to him from whom it derives existence, although deliberate reasoning teaches us that it is altogether identical with Father and Son.

  Therefore, if it is their offspring, either one of them is its father and the other its mother, or each is its father, or mother,—suppositions which apparently contradict all truth. For, since it proceeds in precisely the same way from the Father as from the Son, regard for truth does not allow the relations of Father and Son to it to be described by different words; therefore, the one is not its father, the other its mother. But that there are two beings which, taken separately, bear each the perfect relation of father or mother, differing in no respect, to some one being—of this no existing nature allows proof by any example.

  Hence, both, that is, Father and Son, are not father and mother of the love emanating from them. It therefore is apparently most inconsistent with truth that their identical love should be their son or offspring.

  CHAPTER LVI.

  Only the Father begets and is unbegotten; only the Son is begotten; only love neither begotten nor unbegotten.

  Still, it is apparent that this love can neither be said, in accordance with the usage of common speech, to be unbegotten, nor can it so properly be said to be begotten, as the Word is said to be begotten. For we often say of a thing that it is begotten of that from which it derives existence, as when we say that light or heat is begotten of fire, or any effect of its cause.

  On this ground, then, love, proceeding from the supreme Spirit, cannot be declared to be wholly unbegotten, but it cannot so properly be said to be begotten as can the Word; since the Word is the most true offspring and most true Son, while it is manifest that love is by no means offspring or son.

  He alone, therefore, may, or rather should, be called begetter and unbegotten, whose is the Word; since he alone is Father and parent, and in no wise derives existence from another; and the Word alone should be called begotten, which alone is Son and offspring. But only the love of both is neither begotten nor unbegotten, because it is neither son nor offspring, and yet does in some sort derive existence from another.

  CHAPTER LVII.

  This love is uncreated and creator, as are Father and Son; and yet it is with them not three, but one uncreated and creative being. And it may be called the Spirit of Father and Son.

  But, since this love separately is the supreme Being, as are Father and Son, and yet at once Father and Son, and the love of both are not more than one, but one supreme Being, which alone was created by none, and created all things through no other than itself; since this is true, necessarily, as the Father separately, and the Son separately, are each uncreated and creator, so, too, love separately is uncreated and creator, and yet all three at once are not more than one, but one uncreated and creative being.

  None, therefore, makes or begets or creates the Father, but the Father alone begets, but does not create, the Son; while Father and Son alike do not create or beget, but somehow, if such an expression may be used, breathe their love: for, although the supremely immutable Being does not breathe after our fashion, yet the truth that this Being sends forth this, its love, which proceeds from it, not by departing from it, but by deriving existence from it, can perhaps be no better expressed than by saying that this Being breathes its love.

  But, if this expression is admissible, as the Word of the supreme Being is its Son, so its love may fittingly enough be called its breath (Spiritus). So that, though it is itself essentially spirit, as are Father and Son, they are not regarded as the spirits of anything, since neither is the Father born of any other nor the Son of the Father, as it were, by breathing; while that love is regarded as the Breath or Spirit of both, since from both breathing in their transcendent way it mysteriously proceeds.

  And this love, too, it seems, from the fact that there is community of being between Father and Son, may, not unreasonably, take, as it were its own, some name which is common to Father and Son; if there is any exigency demanding that it should have a name proper to itself. And, indeed, if this love is actually designated by the name Spirit, as by its own name, since this name equally describes the Father and the Son: it will be useful to this effect also, that through this name it shall be signified that this love is identical with Father and Son, although it has its being from them.

  CHAPTER LVIII.

  As the Son is the essence or wisdom of the Father in the sense that he has the same essence or wisdom that the Father has: so likewise the Spirit is the essence and wisdom etc of Father and Son.

  Also, just as the Son is the substance and wisdom and virtue of the Father, in the sense that he has the same essence and wisdom and virtue with the Father; so it may be conceived that the Spirit of both is the essence or wisdom or virtue of Father and Son, since it has altogether the same essence, wisdom, and virtue with these.

  CHAPTER LIX.

  The Father and the Son and their Spirit exist equally the one in the other.

  It is a most interesting consideration that the Father, and the Son, and the Spirit of both, exist in one another with such equality that no one of them surpasses another. For, not only is each in such a way the perfectly supreme Being that, nevertheless, all three at once exist only as one supreme Being, but the same truth is no less capable of proof when each is taken separately.

  For the Father exists as a whole in the Son, and in the Spirit common to them; and the Son in the Father, and in the Spirit; and the Spirit in the Father, and in the Son; for the memory of the supreme Being exists, as a whole, in its intelligence and in its love, and the intelligence in its memory and love, and the love in its memory and intelligence. For the supreme Spirit conceives of (intelligit) its memory as a whole, and loves it, and remembers its intelligence as a whole, and loves it as a whole, and remembers its love as a whole, and conceives of it as a whole.

  But we mean by the memory, the Father; by the intelligence, the Son; by the love, the Spirit of both. In such equality, therefore, do Father and Son and Spirit embrace one another, and exist in one another, that none of them can be proved to surpass another or to exist without it.

  CHAPTER LX.

  To none of these is another necessary that he may remember, conceive, or love: since each taken by himself is memory and intelligence and love and all that is necessarily inherent in the supreme Being.

  But, while this discussion engages our attention, I think that this truth, which occurs to me as I reflect, ought to be most carefully commended to memory. The Father must be so conceived of as memory, the Son as intelligence, and the Spirit as love, that it shall also be understood that the Father does not need the Son, or the Spirit common to them, nor the Son the Father, or the same Spirit, nor the Spirit the Father, or the Son: as if the Father were able, through his own power, only to remember, but to conceive only through the Son, and to love only through the Spirit of himself and his son; and the Son could only conceive or understand (intelligere) through himself, but remembered through the Father, and loved through his Spirit; and this Spirit were able through himself alone only to love, while the Father remembers for him, and the Son conceives or understands (intelligit) for him

  For, since among these three each one taken separately is so perfectly the supreme Being and the supreme Wisdom that through himself he remembers and conceives and loves, it must be that none of these three needs another, in order either to remember or to conceive or to love. For, each taken separately is essentially memory and intelligence and love, and all that is necessarily inherent in the supreme Being.

  CHAPTER LXI.

  Yet there are not three, but one Father and one Son and one Spirit.

  And here I see a question arises. For, if the Father is intelligence and love as well as memory, and the Son is memory and love as well as intelligence, and the Spirit is no less memory and intelligence than love; how is it that the Father is not a Son and a Spirit of some being? and why is not the Son the Father and the Spirit of some being? and why is not this Spirit the Father of some being, and the Son of some being? For it was understood, that the Father was memory, the Son intelligence, and the Spirit love.

  But this question is easily answered, if we consider the truths already disclosed in our discussion. For the Father, even though he is intelligence and love, is not for that reason the Son or the Spirit of any being; since he is not intelligence, begotten of any, or love, proceeding from any, but whatever he is, he is only the begetter, and is he from whom the other proceeds.

  The Son also, even though by his own power he remembers and loves, is not, for that reason, the Father or the Spirit of any; since he is not memory as begetter, or love as proceeding from another after the likeness of his Spirit, but whatever being he has he is only begotten and is he from whom the Spirit proceeds.

  The Spirit, too, is not necessarily Father or Son, because his own memory and intelligence are sufficient to him; since he is not memory as begetter, or intelligence as begotten, but he alone, whatever he is, proceeds or emanates.

  What, then, forbids the conclusion that in the supreme Being there is only one Father, one Son, one Spirit, and not three Fathers or Sons or Spirits?

  CHAPTER LXII.

  How it seems that of these three more sons than one are born.

  But perhaps the following observation will prove inconsistent with this assertion. It should not be doubted that the Father and the Son and their Spirit each expresses himself and the other two, just as each conceives of, and understands, himself and the other two. But, if this is true, are there not in the supreme Being as many words as there are expressive beings, and as many words as there are beings who are expressed?

  For, if more men than one give expression to some one object in thought, apparently there are as many words corresponding to that object as there are thinkers; since the word corresponding to it exists in the thoughts of each separately. Again, if one man thinks of more objects than one, there are as many words in the mind of the thinker as there are objects thought of.

  But in the thought of a man, when he thinks of anything outside his own mind, the word corresponding to the object thought of is not born of the object itself, since that is absent from the view of thought, but of some likeness or image of the object which exists in the memory of the thinker, or which is perhaps called to mind through a corporeal sense from the present object itself.

  But in the supreme Being, Father and Son and their Spirit are always so present to one another—for each one, as we have already seen, exists in the others no less than in himself—that, when they express one another, the one that is expressed seems to beget his own word, just as when he is expressed by himself. How is it, then, that the Son and the Spirit of the Son and of the Father beget nothing, if each begets his own word, when he is expressed by himself or by another? Apparently as many words as can be proved to be born of the supreme Substance, so many Sons, according to our former reasoning, must there be begotten of this substance, and so many spirits proceeding from it.

  CHAPTER LXIII.

  How among them there is only one Son of one Father, that is, one Word, and that from the Father alone.

  On these grounds, therefore, there apparently are in that Being, not only many fathers and sons and beings proceeding from it, but other necessary attributes as well; or else Father and Son and their Spirit, of whom it is already certain that they truly exist, are not three expressive beings, although each taken separately is expressive, nor are there more beings than one expressed, when each one expresses himself and the other two.

  For, just as it is an inherent property of the supreme Wisdom to know and conceive, so it is assuredly natural to eternal and immutable knowledge and intelligence ever to regard as present what it knows and conceives of. For, to such a supreme Spirit expressing and beholding through conception, as it were, are the same, just as the expression of our human mind is nothing but the intuition of the thinker.

  But reasons already considered have shown most convincingly that whatever is essentially inherent in the supreme Nature is perfectly consistent with the nature of the Father and the Son and their Spirit taken separately; and that, nevertheless, this, if attributed to the three at once, does not admit of plurality. Now, it is established that as knowledge and intelligence are attributes of his being, so his knowing and conceiving is nothing else than his expression, that is, his ever beholding as present what he knows and conceives of. Necessarily, therefore, just as the Father separately, and the Son separately, and their Spirit separately, is a knowing and conceiving being, and yet the three at once are not more knowing and conceiving beings than one, but one knowing and one conceiving being: so, each taken separately is expressive, and yet there are not three expressive beings at once, but one expressive being.

  Hence, this fact may also be clearly recognised, that when these three are expressed, either by themselves or by another, there are not more beings than one expressed. For what is therein expressed except their being? If, then, that Being is one and only one, then what is expressed is one and only one; therefore, if it is in them one and only one which expresses, and one which is expressed—for it is one wisdom which expresses and one substance which is expressed—it follows that there are not more words than one, but one alone. Hence, although each one expresses himself and all express one another, nevertheless there cannot be in the supreme Being another Word than that already shown to be born of him whose is the Word, so that it may be called his true image and his Son.

  And in this truth I find a strange and inexplicable factor. For observe: although it is manifest that each one, that is, Father and Son, and the Spirit of Father and Son equally expresses himself and both the others, and that there is one Word alone among them; yet it appears that this Word itself can in no wise be called the Word of all three, but only of one.

  For it has been proved that it is the image and Son of him whose Word it is. And it is plain that it cannot properly be called either the image or son of itself, or of the Spirit proceeding from it. For, neither of itself nor of a being proceeding from it, is it born, nor does it in its existence imitate itself or a being proceeding from itself. For it does not imitate itself, or take on a like existence to itself, because imitation and likeness are impossible where only one being is concerned, but require plurality of beings; while it does not imitate the spirit, nor does it exist in his likeness, because it has not its existence from that Spirit, but the Spirit from it. It is to be concluded that this sole Word corresponds to him alone, from whom it has existence by generation, and after whose complete likeness it exists.

  One Father, then, and not more than one Father; one Son, and not more than one Son; one Spirit proceeding from them, and not more than one such Spirit, exist in the supreme Being. And, although there are three, so that the Father is never the Son or the Spirit proceeding from them, nor the Son at any time the Father or the Spirit, nor the Spirit of Father and Son ever the Father or the Son; and each separately is so perfect that he is self-sufficient, needing neither of the others; yet what they are is in such a way one that just as it cannot be attributed to them taken separately as plural, so neither can it be attributed to them as plural, when the three are taken at once. And though each one expresses himself and all express one another, yet there are not among them more words than one, but one; and this Word corresponds not to each separately, nor to all together, but to one alone.

  CHAPTER LXIV.

  Though this truth is inexplicable, it demands belief.

  It seems to me that the mystery of so sublime a subject transcends all the vision of the human intellect. And for that reason I think it best to refrain from the attempt to explain how this thing is. For it is my opinion that one who is investigating an incomprehensible object ought to be satisfied if his reasoning shall have brought him far enough to recognise that this object most certainly exists; nor ought assured belief to be the less readily given to these truths which are declared to be such by cogent proofs, and without the contradiction of any other reason, if, because of the incomprehensibility of their own natural sublimity, they do not admit of explanation.

  But what is so incomprehensible, so ineffable, as that which is above all things? Hence, if these truths, which have thus far been debated in connection with the supreme Being, have been declared on cogent grounds, even though they cannot be so examined by the human intellect as to be capable of explanation in words, their assured certainty is not therefore shaken. For, if a consideration, such as that above, rationally comprehends that it is incomprehensible in what way supreme Wisdom knows its creatures, of which we necessarily know so many; who shall explain how it knows and expresses itself, of which nothing or scarcely anything can be known by man? Hence, if it is not by virtue of the self-expression of this Wisdom that the Father begets and the Son is begotten, who shall tell his generation?

  CHAPTER LXV.

  How real truth may be reached in the discussion of an ineffable subject.

  But again, if such is the character of its ineffability,—nay, since it is such,—how shall whatever conclusion our discussion has reached regarding it in terms of Father, Son, and emanating Spirit be valid? For, if it has been explained on true grounds, how is it ineffable? Or, if it is ineffable, how can it be such as our discussion has shown? Or, could it be explained to a certain extent, and therefore nothing would disprove the truth of our argument; but since it could not be comprehended at all, for that reason it would be ineffable?

  But how shall we meet the truth that has already been established in this very discussion, namely, that the supreme Being is so above and beyond every other nature that, whenever any statement is made concerning it in words which are also applicable to other natures, the sense of these words in this case is by no means that in which they are applied to other natures.

  For what sense have I conceived of, in all these words that I have thought of, except the common and familiar sense? If, then, the familiar sense of words is alien to that Being, whatever I have inferred to be attributable to it is not its property. How, then, has any truth concerning the supreme Being been discovered, if what has been discovered is so alien to that Being? What is to be inferred?

  Or, has there in some sort been some truth discovered regarding this incomprehensible object, and in some sort has nothing been proved regarding it? For often we speak of things which we do not express with precision as they are; but by another expression we indicate what we are unwilling or unable to express with precision, as when we speak in riddles. And often we see a thing, not precisely as it is in itself, but through a likeness or image, as when we look upon a face in a mirror. And in this way, we often express and yet do not express, see and yet do not see, one and the same object; we express and see it through another; we do not express it, and do not see it by virtue of its own proper nature.

  On these grounds, then, it appears that there is nothing to disprove the truth of our discussion thus far, concerning the supreme Nature, and yet this Nature itself remains not the less ineffable, if we believe that it has never been expressed according to the peculiar nature of its own being, but somehow described through another.

  For whatever terms seem applicable to that Nature do not reveal it to me in its proper character, but rather intimate it through some likeness. For, when I think of the meanings of these terms, I more naturally conceive in my mind of what I see in created objects, than of what I conceive to transcend all human understanding. For it is something much less, nay, something far different, that their meaning suggests to my mind, than that the conception of which my mind itself attempts to achieve through this shadowy signification.

  For, neither is the term wisdom sufficient to reveal to me that Being, through which all things were created from nothing and are preserved from nothingness; nor is the term essence capable of expressing to me that Being which, through its unique elevation, is far above all things, and through its peculiar natural character greatly transcends all things.

  In this way, then, is that Nature ineffable, because it is incapable of description in words or by any other means; and, at the same time, an inference regarding it, which can be reached by the instruction of reason or in some other way, as it were in a riddle, is not therefore necessarily false.

  CHAPTER LXVI.

  Through the rational mind is the nearest approach to the supreme Being

  Since it is clear, then, that nothing can be ascertained concerning this Nature in terms of its own peculiar character, but only in terms of something else, it is certain that a nearer approach toward knowledge of it is made through that which approaches it more nearly through likeness. For the more like to it anything among created beings is proved to be, the more excellent must that created being be by nature. Hence, this being, through its greater likeness, assists the investigating mind in the approach to supreme Truth; and through its more excellent created essence, teaches the more correctly what opinion the mind itself ought to form regarding the Creator. So, undoubtedly, a greater knowledge of the creative Being is attained, the more nearly the creature through which the investigation is made approaches that Being. For that every being, in so far as it exists, is like the supreme Being, reasons already considered do not permit us to doubt.

  It is evident, then, that as the rational mind alone, among all created beings, is capable of rising to the investigation of this Being, so it is not the less this same rational mind alone, through which the mind itself can most successfully achieve the discovery of this same Being. For it has already been acknowledged that this approaches it most nearly, through likeness of natural essence. What is more obvious, then, than that the more earnestly the rational mind devotes itself to learning its own nature, the more effectively does it rise to the knowledge of that Being; and the more carelessly it contemplates itself, the farther does it descend from the contemplation of that Being?

  CHAPTER LXVII

  The mind itself is the mirror and image of that Being

  Therefore, the mind may most fitly be said to be its own mirror wherein it contemplates, so to speak, the image of what it cannot see face to face. For, if the mind itself alone among all created beings is capable of remembering and conceiving of and loving itself, I do not see why it should be denied that it is the true image of that being which, through its memory and intelligence and love, is united in an ineffable Trinity. Or, at any rate, it proves itself to be the more truly the image of that Being by its power of remembering, conceiving of, and loving, that Being. For, the greater and the more like that Being it is, the more truly it is recognised to be its image.

  But, it is utterly inconceivable that any rational creature can have been naturally endowed with any power so excellent and so like the supreme Wisdom as this power of remembering, and conceiving of, and loving, the best and greatest of all beings. Hence, no faculty has been bestowed on any creature that is so truly the image of the Creator.

  CHAPTER LXVIII.

  The rational creature was created in order that it might love this Being.

  It seems to follow, then, that the rational creature ought to devote itself to nothing so earnestly as to the expression, through voluntary performance, of this image which is impressed on it through a natural potency. For, not only does it owe its very existence to its creator; but the fact that it is known to have no power so important as that of remembering, and conceiving of, and loving, the supreme good, proves that it ought to wish nothing else so especially.

  For who can deny that whatever within the scope of one’s power is better, ought to prevail with the will? For, to the rational nature rationality is the same with the ability to distinguish the just from the not-just, the true from the not-true, the good from the not-good, the greater good from the lesser; but this power is altogether useless to it, and superfluous, unless what it distinguishes it loves or condemns, in accordance with the judgment of true discernment.

  From this, then, it seems clear enough that every rational being exists for this purpose, that according as, on the grounds of discernment, it judges a thing to be more or less good, or not good, so it may love that thing in greater or less degree, or reject it.

  It is, therefore, most obvious that the rational creature was created for this purpose, that it might love the supreme Being above all other goods, as this Being is itself the supreme good; nay, that it might love nothing except it, unless because of it; since that Being is good through itself, and nothing else is good except through it.

  But the rational being cannot love this Being, unless it has devoted itself to remembering and conceiving of it. It is clear, then, that the rational creature ought to devote its whole ability and will to remembering, and conceiving of, and loving, the supreme good, for which end it recognises that it has its very existence.

  CHAPTER LXIX.

  The soul that ever loves this Essence lives at some time in true blessedness.

  But there is no doubt that the human soul is a rational creature. Hence, it must have been created for this end, that it might love the supreme Being. It must, therefore, have been created either for this end, that it might love that Being eternally; or for this, that at some time it might either voluntarily, or by violence, lose this love.

  But it is impious to suppose that the supreme Wisdom created it for this end, that at some time, either it should despise so great a good, or, though wishing to keep it, should lose it by some violence. We infer, then, that it was created for this end, that it might love the supreme Being eternally. But this it cannot do unless it lives forever. It was so created, then, that it lives forever, if it forever wills to do that for which it was created.

  Hence, it is most incompatible with the nature of the supremely good, supremely wise, and omnipotent Creator, that what he has made to exist that it might love him, he should make not to exist, so long as it truly loves him; and that what he voluntarily gave to a non-loving being that it might ever love, he should take away; or permit to be taken away, from the loving being, so that necessarily it should not love; especially since it should by no means be doubted that he himself loves every nature that loves him. Hence, it is manifest that the human soul is never deprived of its life, if it forever devotes itself to loving the supreme life.

  How, then, shall it live? For is long life so important a matter, if it is not secure from the invasion of troubles? For whoever, while he lives, is either through fear or through actual suffering subject to troubles, or is deceived by a false security, does he not live in misery? But, if any one lives in freedom from these troubles, he lives in blessedness. But it is most absurd to suppose that any nature that forever loves him, who is supremely good and omnipotent, forever lives in misery. So, it is plain, that the human soul is of such a character that, if it diligently observes that end for which it exists, it at some time lives in blessedness, truly secure from death itself and from every other trouble.

  CHAPTER LXX.

  This Being gives itself in return to the creature that loves it, that that creature may be eternally blessed.

  Therefore it cannot be made to appear true that he who is most just and most powerful makes no return to the being that loves him perseveringly, to which although it neither existed nor loved him, he gave existence that it might be able to be a loving being. For, if he makes no return to the loving soul, the most just does not distinguish between the soul that loves, and the soul that despises what ought to be supremely loved, nor does he love the soul that loves him; or else it does not avail to be loved by him; all of which suppositions are inconsistent with his nature; hence he does make a return to every soul that perseveres in loving him.

  But what is this return? For, if he gave to what was nothing, a rational being, that it might be a loving soul, what shall he give to the loving soul, if it does not cease to love? If what waits upon love is so great, how great is the recompense given to love? And if the sustainer of love is such as we declare, of what character is the profit? For, if the rational creature, which is useless to itself without this love, is with it preëminent among all creatures, assuredly nothing can be the reward of love except what is preëminent among all natures.

  For this same good, which demands such love toward itself, also requires that it be desired by the loving soul. For, who can love justice, truth, blessedness, incorruptibility, in such a way as not to wish to enjoy them? What return, then, shall the supreme Goodness make to the being that loves and desires it, except itself? For, whatever else it grants, it does not give in return, since all such bestowals neither compensate the love, nor console the loving being, nor satisfy the soul that desires this supreme Being.

  Or, if it wishes to be loved and desired, so as to make some other return than its love, it wishes to be loved and desired, not for its own sake, but for the sake of another; and does not wish to be loved itself but wishes another to be loved; which it is impious to suppose.

  So, it is most true that every rational soul, if, as it should, it earnestly devotes itself through love to longing for supreme blessedness, shall at some time receive that blessedness to enjoy, that what it now sees as through a glass and in a riddle, it may then see face to face. But it is most foolish to doubt whether it enjoys that blessedness eternally; since, in the enjoyment of that blessedness, it will be impossible to turn the soul aside by any fear, or to deceive it by false security; nor, having once experienced the need of that blessedness, will it be able not to love it; nor will that blessedness desert the soul that loves it; nor shall there be anything powerful enough to separate them against their will. Hence, the soul that has once begun to enjoy supreme Blessedness will be eternally blessed.

  CHAPTER LXXI

  The soul that despises this being will be eternally miserable.

  From this it may be inferred, as a certain consequence, that the soul which despises the love of the supreme good will incur eternal misery. It might be said that it would be justly punished for such contempt if it lost existence or life, since it does not employ itself to the end for which it was created. But reason in no wise admits such a belief, namely, that after such great guilt it is condemned to be what it was before all its guilt.

  For, before it existed, it could neither be guilty nor feel a penalty. If, then, the soul despising that end for which it was created, dies so as to feel nothing, or so as to be nothing at all, its condition will be the same when in the greatest guilt and when without all guilt; and the supremely wise Justice will not distinguish between what is capable of no good and wills no evil, and what is capable of the greatest good and wills the greatest evil.

  But it is plain enough that this is a contradiction. Therefore, nothing can be more logical, and nothing ought to be believed more confidently than that the soul of man is so constituted that, if it scorns loving the supreme Being, it suffers eternal misery; that just as the loving soul shall rejoice in an eternal reward, so the soul despising that Being shall suffer eternal punishment; and as the former shall feel an immutable sufficiency, so the latter shall feel an inconsolable need.

  CHAPTER LXXII.

  Every human soul is immortal. And it is either forever miserable, or at some time truly blessed.

  But if the soul is mortal, of course the loving soul is not eternally blessed, nor the soul that scorns this Being eternally miserable. Whether, therefore, it loves or scorns that for the love of which it was created, it must be immortal. But if there are some rational souls which are to be judged as neither loving nor scorning, such as the souls of infants seem to be, what opinion shall be held regarding these? Are they mortal or immortal? But undoubtedly all human souls are of the same nature. Hence, since it is established that some are immortal, every human soul must be immortal. But since every living being is either never, or at some time, truly secure from all trouble; necessarily, also, every human soul is either ever miserable, or at some time truly blessed.

  CHAPTER LXXIII.

  No soul is unjustly deprived of the supreme good, and every effort must be directed toward that good.

  But, which souls are unhesitatingly to be judged as so loving that for the love of which they were created, that they deserve to enjoy it at some time, and which as so scorning it, that they deserve ever to stand in need of it; or how and on what ground those which it seems impossible to call either loving or scorning are assigned to either eternal blessedness or misery,—of all this I think it certainly most difficult or even impossible for any mortal to reach an understanding through discussion. But that no being is unjustly deprived by the supremely great and supremely good Creator of that good for which it was created, we ought most assuredly to believe. And toward this good every man ought to strive, by loving and desiring it with all his heart, and all his soul, and all his mind.

  CHAPTER LXXIV.

  The supreme Being is to be hoped for

  But the human soul will by no means be able to train itself in this purpose, if it despairs of being able to reach what it aims at. Hence, devotion to effort is not more profitable to it than hope of attainment is necessary.

  CHAPTER LXXV.

  We must believe in this Being, that is, by believing we must reach out for it.

  But what does not believe cannot love or hope. It is, therefore, profitable to this human soul to believe the supreme Being and those things without which that Being cannot be loved, that, by believing, the soul may reach out for it. And this truth can be more briefly and fitly indicated, I think, if instead of saying, “strive for” the supreme Being, we say, “believe in” the supreme Being.

  For, if one says that he believes in it, he apparently shows clearly enough both that, through the faith which he professes, he strives for the supreme Being, and that he believes those things which are proper to this aim. For it seems that either he who does not believe what is proper to striving for that Being, or he who does not strive for that Being, through what he believes, does not believe in it. And, perhaps, it is indifferent whether we say, “believe in it,” or “direct belief to it,” just as by believing to strive for it and toward it are the same, except that whoever shall have come to it by striving for (tendendo in) it, will not remain without, but within it. And this is indicated more distinctly and familiarly if we say, “striving for” (in) it, than if we say, “toward” (ad) it.

  On this ground, therefore, I think it may more fitly be said that we should believe in it, than that we should direct belief to it.

  CHAPTER LXXVI.

  We should believe in Father and Son and in their Spirit equally, and in each separately, and in the three at once.

  We should believe, then, equally in the Father and in the Son and in their Spirit, and in each separately, and in the three at once, since the Father separately, and the Son separately, and their Spirit separately is the supreme Being, and at once Father and Son with their Spirit are one and the same supreme Being, in which alone every man ought to believe; because it is the sole end which in every thought and act he ought to strive for. Hence, it is manifest that as none is able to strive for that Being, except he believe in it; so to believe it avails none, except he strive for it.

  CHAPTER LXXVII.

  What is living, and what dead faith.

  Hence, with however great confidence so important a truth is believed, the faith will be useless and, as it were, dead, unless it is strong and living through love. For, that the faith which is accompanied by sufficient love is by no means idle, if an opportunity of operation offers, but rather exercises itself in an abundance of works, as it could not do without love, may be proved from this fact alone, that, since it loves the supreme Justice, it can scorn nothing that is just, it can approve nothing that is unjust. Therefore, seeing that the fact of its operation shows that life, without which it could not operate, is inherent in it; it is not absurd to say that operative faith is alive, because it has the life of love without which it could not operate; and that idle faith is not living, because it lacks that life of love, with which it would not be idle.

  Hence, if not only he who has lost his sight is called blind, but also he who ought to have sight and has it not, why cannot, in like manner, faith without love be called dead; not because it has lost its life, that is, love; but because it has not the life which it ought always to have? As that faith, then, which operates through love is recognised as living, so that which is idle, through contempt, is proved to be dead. It may, therefore, be said with sufficient fitness that living faith believes in that in which we ought to believe; while dead faith merely believes that which ought to be believed.

  CHAPTER LXXVIII

  The supreme Being may in some sort be called Three

  And so it is evidently expedient for every man to believe in a certain ineffable trinal unity, and in one Trinity; one and a unity because of its one essence, but trinal and a trinity because of its three—what? For, although I can speak of a Trinity because of Father and Son and the Spirit of both, who are three; yet I cannot, in one word, show why they are three; as if I should call this Being a Trinity because of its three persons, just as I would call it a unity because of its one substance.

  For three persons are not to be supposed, because all persons which are more than one so subsist separately from one another, that there must be as many substances as there are persons, a fact that is recognised in the case of more men than one, when there are as many persons as there are individual substances. Hence, in the supreme Being, just as there are not more substances than one, so there are not more persons than one.

  So, if one wishes to express to any why they are three, he will say that they are Father and Son and the Spirit of both, unless perchance, compelled by the lack of a precisely appropriate term, he shall choose some one of those terms which cannot be applied in a plural sense to the supreme Being, in order to indicate what cannot be expressed in any fitting language; as if he should say, for instance, that this wonderful Trinity is one essence or nature, and three persons or substances.

  For, these two terms are more appropriately chosen to describe plurality in the supreme Being, because the word person is applied only to an individual, rational nature; and the word substance is ordinarily applied to individual beings, which especially subsist in plurality. For individual beings are especially exposed to, that is, are subject to, accidents, and for this reason they more properly receive the name sub-stance. Now, it is already manifest that the supreme Being, which is subject to no accidents, cannot properly be called a substance, except as the word substance is used in the same sense with the word Essence. Hence, on this ground, namely, of necessity, that supreme and one Trinity or trinal unity may justly be called one Essence and three Persons or three Substances.

  CHAPTER LXXIX.

  This Essence itself is God, who alone is lord and ruler of all.

  It appears, then—nay, it is unhesitatingly declared that what is called God is not nothing; and that to this supreme Essence the name God is properly given. For every one who says that a God exists, whether one or more than one, conceives of him only as of some substance which he believes to be above every nature that is not God, and that he is to be worshipped of men because of his preëminent majesty, and to be appeased for man’s own sake because of some imminent necessity.

  But what should be so worshipped in accordance with its majesty, and what should be so appeased in behalf of any object, as the supremely good and supremely powerful Spirit, who is Lord of all and who rules all? For, as it is established that through the supreme Good and its supremely wise omnipotence all things were created and live, it is most inconsistent to suppose that the Spirit himself does not rule the beings created by him, or that beings he created are governed by another less powerful or less good, or by no reason at all, but by the confused flow of events alone. For it is he alone through whom it is well with every creature, and without whom it is well with none, and from whom, and through whom, and in whom, are all things.

  Therefore, since he himself alone is not only the beneficent Creator, but the most powerful lord, and most wise ruler of all; it is clear that it is he alone whom every other nature, according to its whole ability, ought to worship in love, and to love in worship; from whom all happiness is to be hoped for; with whom refuge from adversity is to be sought; to whom supplication for all things is to be offered. Truly, therefore, he is not only God, but the only God, ineffably Three and One.

  APPENDIX.

  IN BEHALF OF THE FOOL.
  
  AN ANSWER TO THE ARGUMENT OF ANSELM IN THE PROSLOGIUM. BY GAUNILON, A MONK OF MARMOUTIER.

  1. If one doubts or denies the existence of a being of such a nature that nothing greater than it can be conceived, he receives this answer:

  The existence of this being is proved, in the first place, by the fact that he himself, in his doubt or denial regarding this being, already has it in his understanding; for in hearing it spoken of he understands what is spoken of. It is proved, therefore, by the fact that what he understands must exist not only in his understanding, but in reality also.

  And the proof of this is as follows.—It is a greater thing to exist both in the understanding and in reality than to be in the understanding alone. And if this being is in the understanding alone, whatever has even in the past existed in reality will be greater than this being. And so that which was greater than all beings will be less than some being, and will not be greater than all: which is a manifest contradiction.

  And hence, that which is greater than all, already proved to be in the understanding, must exist not only in the understanding, but also in reality: for otherwise it will not be greater than all other beings.

  2. The fool might make this reply:

  This being is said to be in my understanding already, only because I understand what is said. Now could it not with equal justice be said that I have in my understanding all manner of unreal objects, having absolutely no existence in themselves, because I understand these things if one speaks of them, whatever they may be?

  Unless indeed it is shown that this being is of such a character that it cannot be held in concept like all unreal objects, or objects whose existence is uncertain: and hence I am not able to conceive of it when I hear of it, or to hold it in concept; but I must understand it and have it in my understanding; because, it seems, I cannot conceive of it in any other way than by understanding it, that is, by comprehending in my knowledge its existence in reality.

  But if this is the case, in the first place there will be no distinction between what has precedence in time—namely, the having of an object in the understanding—and what is subsequent in time—namely, the understanding that an object exists; as in the example of the picture, which exists first in the mind of the painter, and afterwards in his work.

  Moreover, the following assertion can hardly be accepted: that this being, when it is spoken of and heard of, cannot be conceived not to exist in the way in which even God can be conceived not to exist. For if this is impossible, what was the object of this argument against one who doubts or denies the existence of such a being?

  Finally, that this being so exists that it cannot be perceived by an understanding convinced of its own indubitable existence, unless this being is afterwards conceived of—this should be proved to me by an indisputable argument, but not by that which you have advanced: namely, that what I understand, when I hear it, already is in my understanding. For thus in my understanding, as I still think, could be all sorts of things whose existence is uncertain, or which do not exist at all, if some one whose words I should understand mentioned them. And so much the more if I should be deceived, as often happens, and believe in them: though I do not yet believe in the being whose existence you would prove.

  3. Hence, your example of the painter who already has in his understanding what he is to paint cannot agree with this argument. For the picture, before it is made, is contained in the artificer’s art itself; and any such thing, existing in the art of an artificer, is nothing but a part of his understanding itself. A joiner, St. Augustine says, when he is about to make a box in fact, first has it in his art. The box which is made in fact is not life; but the box which exists in his art is life. For the artificer’s soul lives, in which all these things are, before they are produced. Why, then, are these things life in the living soul of the artificer, unless because they are nothing else than the knowledge or understanding of the soul itself?

  With the exception, however, of those facts which are known to pertain to the mental nature, whatever, on being heard and thought out by the understanding, is perceived to be real, undoubtedly that real object is one thing, and the understanding itself, by which the object is grasped, is another. Hence, even if it were true that there is a being than which a greater is inconceivable: yet to this being, when heard of and understood, the not yet created picture in the mind of the painter is not analogous.

  4. Let us notice also the point touched on above, with regard to this being which is greater than all which can be conceived, and which, it is said, can be none other than God himself. I, so far as actual knowledge of the object, either from its specific or general character, is concerned, am as little able to conceive of this being when I hear of it, or to have it in my understanding, as I am to conceive of or understand God himself: whom, indeed, for this very reason I can conceive not to exist. For I do not know that reality itself which God is, nor can I form a conjecture of that reality from some other like reality. For you yourself assert that that reality is such that there can be nothing else like it.

  For, suppose that I should hear something said of a man absolutely unknown to me, of whose very existence I was unaware. Through that special or general knowledge by which I know what man is, or what men are, I could conceive of him also, according to the reality itself, which man is. And yet it would be possible, if the person who told me of him deceived me, that the man himself, of whom I conceived, did not exist; since that reality according to which I conceived of him, though a no less indisputable fact, was not that man, but any man.

  Hence, I am not able, in the way in which I should have this unreal being in concept or in understanding, to have that being of which you speak in concept or in understanding, when I hear the word God or the words, a being greater than all other beings. For I can conceive of the man according to a fact that is real and familiar to me: but of God, or a being greater than all others, I could not conceive at all, except merely according to the word. And an object can hardly or never be conceived according to the word alone.

  For when it is so conceived, it is not so much the word itself (which is, indeed, a real thing—that is, the sound of the letters and syllables) as the signification of the word, when heard, that is conceived. But it is not conceived as by one who knows what is generally signified by the word; by whom, that is, it is conceived according to a reality and in true conception alone. It is conceived as by a man who does not know the object, and conceives of it only in accordance with the movement of his mind produced by hearing the word, the mind attempting to image for itself the signification of the word that is heard. And it would be surprising if in the reality of fact it could ever attain to this.

  Thus, it appears, and in no other way, this being is also in my understanding, when I hear and understand a person who says that there is a being greater than all conceivable beings. So much for the assertion that this supreme nature already is in my understanding.

  5. But that this being must exist, not only in the understanding but also in reality, is thus proved to me:

  If it did not so exist, whatever exists in reality would be greater than it. And so the being which has been already proved to exist in my understanding, will not be greater than all other beings.

  I still answer: if it should be said that a being which cannot be even conceived in terms of any fact, is in the understanding, I do not deny that this being is, accordingly, in my understanding. But since through this fact it can in no wise attain to real existence also, I do not yet concede to it that existence at all, until some certain proof of it shall be given.

  For he who says that this being exists, because otherwise the being which is greater than all will not be greater than all, does not attend strictly enough to what he is saying. For I do not yet say, no, I even deny or doubt that this being is greater than any real object. Nor do I concede to it any other existence than this (if it should be called existence) which it has when the mind, according to a word merely heard, tries to form the image of an object absolutely unknown to it.

  How, then, is the veritable existence of that being proved to me from the assumption, by hypothesis, that it is greater than all other beings? For I should still deny this, or doubt your demonstration of it, to this extent, that I should not admit that this being is in my understanding and concept even in the way in which many objects whose real existence is uncertain and doubtful, are in my understanding and concept. For it should be proved first that this being itself really exists somewhere; and then, from the fact that it is greater than all, we shall not hesitate to infer that it also subsists in itself.

  6. For example: it is said that somewhere in the ocean is an island, which, because of the difficulty, or rather the impossibility, of discovering what does not exist, is called the lost island. And they say that this island has an inestimable wealth of all manner of riches and delicacies in greater abundance than is told of the Islands of the Blest; and that having no owner or inhabitant, it is more excellent than all other countries, which are inhabited by mankind, in the abundance with which it is stored.

  Now if some one should tell me that there is such an island, I should easily understand his words, in which there is no difficulty. But suppose that he went on to say, as if by a logical inference: “You can no longer doubt that this island which is more excellent than all lands exists somewhere, since you have no doubt that it is in your understanding. And since it is more excellent not to be in the understanding alone, but to exist both in the understanding and in reality, for this reason it must exist. For if it does not exist, any land which really exists will be more excellent than it; and so the island already understood by you to be more excellent will not be more excellent.”

  If a man should try to prove to me by such reasoning that this island truly exists, and that its existence should no longer be doubted, either I should believe that he was jesting, or I know not which I ought to regard as the greater fool: myself, supposing that I should allow this proof; or him, if he should suppose that he had established with any certainty the existence of this island. For he ought to show first that the hypothetical excellence of this island exists as a real and indubitable fact, and in no wise as any unreal object, or one whose existence is uncertain, in my understanding.

  7. This, in the mean time, is the answer the fool could make to the arguments urged against him. When he is assured in the first place that this being is so great that its non-existence is not even conceivable, and that this in turn is proved on no other ground than the fact that otherwise it will not be greater than all things, the fool may make the same answer, and say:

  When did I say that any such being exists in reality, that is, a being greater than all others?—that on this ground it should be proved to me that it also exists in reality to such a degree that it cannot even be conceived not to exist? Whereas in the first place it should be in some way proved that a nature which is higher, that is, greater and better, than all other natures, exists; in order that from this we may then be able to prove all attributes which necessarily the being that is greater and better than all possesses.

  Moreover, it is said that the non-existence of this being is inconceivable. It might better be said, perhaps, that its non-existence, or the possibility of its non-existence, is unintelligible. For according to the true meaning of the word, unreal objects are unintelligible. Yet their existence is conceivable in the way in which the fool conceived of the non-existence of God. I am most certainly aware of my own existence; but I know, nevertheless, that my non-existence is possible. As to that supreme being, moreover, which God is, I understand without any doubt both his existence, and the impossibility of his non-existence. Whether, however, so long as I am most positively aware of my existence, I can conceive of my non-existence, I am not sure. But if I can, why can I not conceive of the non-existence of whatever else I know with the same certainty? If, however, I cannot, God will not be the only being of which it can be said, it is impossible to conceive of his non-existence.

  8. The other parts of this book are argued with such truth, such brilliancy, such grandeur; and are so replete with usefulness, so fragrant with a certain perfume of devout and holy feeling, that though there are matters in the beginning which, however rightly sensed, are weakly presented, the rest of the work should not be rejected on this account. The rather ought these earlier matters to be reasoned more cogently, and the whole to be received with great respect and honor.

  ANSELM’S APOLOGETIC.
  
  IN REPLY TO GAUNILON’S ANSWER IN BEHALF OF THE FOOL.

  It was a fool against whom the argument of my Proslogium was directed. Seeing, however, that the author of these objections is by no means a fool, and is a Catholic, speaking in behalf of the fool, I think it sufficient that I answer the Catholic.

  CHAPTER I.

  A general refutation of Gaunilon’s argument. It is shown that a being than which a greater cannot be conceived exists in reality.

  You say—whosoever you may be, who say that a fool is capable of making these statements—that a being than which a greater cannot be conceived is not in the understanding in any other sense than that in which a being that is altogether inconceivable in terms of reality, is in the understanding. You say that the inference that this being exists in reality, from the fact that it is in the understanding, is no more just than the inference that a lost island most certainly exists, from the fact that when it is described the hearer does not doubt that it is in his understanding.

  But I say: if a being than which a greater is inconceivable is not understood or conceived, and is not in the understanding or in concept, certainly either God is not a being than which a greater is inconceivable, or else he is not understood or conceived, and is not in the understanding or in concept. But I call on your faith and conscience to attest that this is most false. Hence, that than which a greater cannot be conceived is truly understood and conceived, and is in the understanding and in concept. Therefore either the grounds on which you try to controvert me are not true, or else the inference which you think to base logically on those grounds is not justified.

  But you hold, moreover, that supposing that a being than which a greater cannot be conceived is understood, it does not follow that this being is in the understanding; nor, if it is in the understanding, does it therefore exist in reality.

  In answer to this, I maintain positively: if that being can be even conceived to be, it must exist in reality. For that than which a greater is inconceivable cannot be conceived except as without beginning. But whatever can be conceived to exist, and does not exist, can be conceived to exist through a beginning. Hence what can be conceived to exist, but does not exist, is not the being than which a greater cannot be conceived. Therefore, if such a being can be conceived to exist, necessarily it does exist.

  Furthermore: if it can be conceived at all, it must exist. For no one who denies or doubts the existence of a being than which a greater is inconceivable, denies or doubts that if it did exist, its non-existence, either in reality or in the understanding, would be impossible. For otherwise it would not be a being than which a greater cannot be conceived. But as to whatever can be conceived, but does not exist—if there were such a being, its non-existence, either in reality or in the understanding, would be possible. Therefore if a being than which a greater is inconceivable can be even conceived, it cannot be non-existent.

  But let us suppose that it does not exist, even if it can be conceived. Whatever can be conceived, but does not exist, if it existed, would not be a being than which a greater is inconceivable. If, then, there were a being a greater than which is inconceivable, it would not be a being than which a greater is inconceivable: which is most absurd. Hence, it is false to deny that a being than which a greater cannot be conceived exists, if it can be even conceived; much the more, therefore, if it can be understood or can be in the understanding.

  Moreover, I will venture to make this assertion: without doubt, whatever at any place or at any time does not exist—even if it does exist at some place or at some time—can be conceived to exist nowhere and never, as at some place and at some time it does not exist. For what did not exist yesterday, and exists to-day, as it is understood not to have existed yesterday, so it can be apprehended by the intelligence that it never exists. And what is not here, and is elsewhere, can be conceived to be nowhere, just as it is not here. So with regard to an object of which the individual parts do not exist at the same places or times: all its parts and therefore its very whole can be conceived to exist nowhere or never.

  For, although time is said to exist always, and the world everywhere, yet time does not as a whole exist always, nor the world as a whole everywhere. And as individual parts of time do not exist when others exist, so they can be conceived never to exist. And so it can be apprehended by the intelligence that individual parts of the world exist nowhere, as they do not exist where other parts exist. Moreover, what is composed of parts can be dissolved in concept, and be non-existent. Therefore, whatever at any place or at any time does not exist as a whole, even if it is existent, can be conceived not to exist.

  But that than which a greater cannot be conceived, if it exists, cannot be conceived not to exist. Otherwise, it is not a being than which a greater cannot be conceived: which is inconsistent. By no means, then, does it at any place or at any time fail to exist as a whole: but it exists as a whole everywhere and always.

  Do you believe that this being can in some way be conceived or understood, or that the being with regard to which these things are understood can be in concept or in the understanding? For if it cannot, these things cannot be understood with reference to it. But if you say that it is not understood and that it is not in the understanding, because it is not thoroughly understood; you should say that a man who cannot face the direct rays of the sun does not see the light of day, which is none other than the sunlight. Assuredly a being than which a greater cannot be conceived exists, and is in the understanding, at least to this extent—that these statements regarding it are understood.

  CHAPTER II.

  The argument is continued. It is shown that a being than which a greater is inconceivable can be conceived, and also, in so far, exists

  I have said, then, in the argument which you dispute, that when the fool hears mentioned a being than which a greater is inconceivable, he understands what he hears. Certainly a man who does not understand when a familiar language is spoken, has no understanding at all, or a very dull one. Moreover, I have said that if this being is understood, it is in the understanding. Is that in no understanding which has been proved necessarily to exist in the reality of fact?

  But you will say that although it is in the understanding, it does not follow that it is understood. But observe that the fact of its being understood does necessitate its being in the understanding. For as what is conceived, is conceived by conception, and what is conceived by conception, as it is conceived, so is in conception; so what is understood, is understood by understanding, and what is understood by understanding, as it is understood, so is in the understanding. What can be more clear than this?

  After this, I have said that if it is even in the understanding alone, it can be conceived also to exist in reality, which is greater. If, then, it is in the understanding alone, obviously the very being than which a greater cannot be conceived is one than which a greater can be conceived. What is more logical? For if it exists even in the understanding alone, can it not be conceived also to exist in reality? And if it can be so conceived, does not he who conceives of this conceive of a thing greater than that being, if it exists in the understanding alone? What more consistent inference, then, can be made than this: that if a being than which a greater cannot be conceived is in the understanding alone, it is not that than which a greater cannot be conceived?

  But, assuredly, in no understanding is a being than which a greater is conceivable a being than which a greater is inconceivable. Does it not follow, then, that if a being than which a greater cannot be conceived is in any understanding, it does not exist in the understanding alone? For if it is in the understanding alone, it is a being than which a greater can be conceived, which is inconsistent with the hypothesis.

  CHAPTER III.

  A criticism of Gaunilon’s example, in which he tries to show that in this way the real existence of a lost island might be inferred from the fact of its being conceived.

  But, you say, it is as if one should suppose an island in the ocean, which surpasses all lands in its fertility, and which, because of the difficulty, or rather the impossibility, of discovering what does not exist, is called a lost island; and should say that there can be no doubt that this island truly exists in reality, for this reason, that one who hears it described easily understands what he hears.

  Now I promise confidently that if any man shall devise anything existing either in reality or in concept alone (except that than which a greater cannot be conceived) to which he can adapt the sequence of my reasoning, I will discover that thing, and will give him his lost island, not to be lost again.

  But it now appears that this being than which a greater is inconceivable cannot be conceived not to be, because it exists on so assured a ground of truth; for otherwise it would not exist at all.

  Hence, if any one says that he conceives this being not to exist, I say that at the time when he conceives of this either he conceives of a being than which a greater is inconceivable, or he does not conceive at all. If he does not conceive, he does not conceive of the non-existence of that of which he does not conceive. But if he does conceive, he certainly conceives of a being which cannot be even conceived not to exist. For if it could be conceived not to exist, it could be conceived to have a beginning and an end. But this is impossible.

  He, then, who conceives of this being conceives of a being which cannot be even conceived not to exist; but he who conceives of this being does not conceive that it does not exist; else he conceives what is inconceivable. The non-existence, then, of that than which a greater cannot be conceived is inconceivable.

  CHAPTER IV.

  The difference between the possibility of conceiving of non-existence, and understanding non-existence.

  You say, moreover, that whereas I assert that this supreme being cannot be conceived not to exist, it might better be said that its non-existence, or even the possibility of its non-existence, cannot be understood.

  But it was more proper to say, it cannot be conceived. For if I had said that the object itself cannot be understood not to exist, possibly you yourself, who say that in accordance with the true meaning of the term what is unreal cannot be understood, would offer the objection that nothing which is can be understood not to be, for the non-existence of what exists is unreal: hence God would not be the only being of which it could be said, it is impossible to understand its non-existence. For thus one of those beings which most certainly exist can be understood not to exist in the same way in which certain other real objects can be understood not to exist.

  But this objection, assuredly, cannot be urged against the term conception, if one considers the matter well. For although no objects which exist can be understood not to exist, yet all objects, except that which exists in the highest degree, can be conceived not to exist. For all those objects, and those alone, can be conceived not to exist, which have a beginning or end or composition of parts: also, as I have already said, whatever at any place or at any time does not exist as a whole.

  That being alone, on the other hand, cannot be conceived not to exist, in which any conception discovers neither beginning nor end nor composition of parts, and which any conception finds always and everywhere as a whole.

  Be assured, then, that you can conceive of your own non-existence, although you are most certain that you exist. I am surprised that you should have admitted that you are ignorant of this. For we conceive of the non-existence of many objects which we know to exist, and of the existence of many which we know not to exist; not by forming the opinion that they so exist, but by imagining that they exist as we conceive of them.

  And indeed, we can conceive of the non-existence of an object, although we know it to exist, because at the same time we can conceive of the former and know the latter. And we cannot conceive of the non-existence of an object, so long as we know it to exist, because we cannot conceive at the same time of existence and non-existence.

  If, then, one will thus distinguish these two senses of this statement, he will understand that nothing, so long as it is known to exist, can be conceived not to exist; and that whatever exists, except that being than which a greater cannot be conceived, can be conceived not to exist, even when it is known to exist.

  So, then, of God alone it can be said that it is impossible to conceive of his non-existence; and yet many objects, so long as they exist, in one sense cannot be conceived not to exist. But in what sense God is to be conceived not to exist, I think has been shown clearly enough in my book.

  CHAPTER V.

  A particular discussion of certain statements of Gaunilon’s. In the first place, he misquoted the argument which he undertook to refute.

  The nature of the other objections which you, in behalf of the fool, urge against me it is easy, even for a man of small wisdom, to detect; and I had therefore thought it unnecessary to show this. But since I hear that some readers of these objections think they have some weight against me, I will discuss them briefly.

  In the first place, you often repeat that I assert that what is greater than all other beings is in the understanding; and if it is in the understanding, it exists also in reality, for otherwise the being which is greater than all would not be greater than all.

  Nowhere in all my writings is such a demonstration found. For the real existence of a being which is said to be greater than all other beings cannot be demonstrated in the same way with the real existence of one that is said to be a being than which a greater cannot be conceived.

  If it should be said that a being than which a greater cannot be conceived has no real existence, or that it is possible that it does not exist, or even that it can be conceived not to exist, such an assertion can be easily refuted. For the non-existence of what does not exist is possible, and that whose non-existence is possible can be conceived not to exist. But whatever can be conceived not to exist, if it exists, is not a being than which a greater cannot be conceived; but if it does not exist, it would not, even if it existed, be a being than which a greater cannot be conceived. But it cannot be said that a being than which a greater is inconceivable, if it exists, is not a being than which a greater is inconceivable; or that if it existed, it would not be a being than which a greater is inconceivable.

  It is evident, then, that neither is it non-existent, nor is it possible that it does not exist, nor can it be conceived not to exist. For otherwise, if it exists, it is not that which it is said to be in the hypothesis; and if it existed, it would not be what it is said to be in the hypothesis.

  But this, it appears, cannot be so easily proved of a being which is said to be greater than all other beings. For it is not so evident that what can be conceived not to exist is not greater than all existing beings, as it is evident that it is not a being than which a greater cannot be conceived. Nor is it so indubitable that if a being greater than all other beings exists, it is no other than the being than which a greater cannot be conceived; or that if it were such a being, some other might not be this being in like manner; as it is certain with regard to a being which is hypothetically posited as one than which a greater cannot be conceived.

  For consider: if one should say that there is a being greater than all other beings, and that this being can nevertheless be conceived not to exist; and that a being greater than this, although it does not exist, can be conceived to exist: can it be so clearly inferred in this case that this being is therefore not a being greater than all other existing beings, as it would be most positively affirmed in the other case, that the being under discussion is not, therefore, a being than which a greater cannot be conceived?

  For the former conclusion requires another premise than the predication, greater than all other beings. In my argument, on the other hand, there is no need of any other than this very predication, a being than which a greater cannot be conceived.

  If the same proof cannot be applied when the being in question is predicated to be greater than all others, which can be applied when it is predicated to be a being than which a greater cannot be conceived, you have unjustly censured me for saying what I did not say; since such a predication differs so greatly from that which I actually made. If, on the other hand, the other argument is valid, you ought not to blame me so for having said what can be proved.

  Whether this can be proved, however, he will easily decide who recognises that this being than which a greater cannot be conceived is demonstrable. For by no means can this being than which a greater cannot be conceived be understood as any other than that which alone is greater than all. Hence, just as that than which a greater cannot be conceived is understood, and is in the understanding, and for that reason is asserted to exist in the reality of fact: so what is said to be greater than all other beings is understood and is in the understanding, and therefore it is necessarily inferred that it exists in reality.

  You see, then, with how much justice you have compared me with your fool, who, on the sole ground that he understands what is described to him, would affirm that a lost island exists.

  CHAPTER VI.

  A discussion of Gaunilon’s argument in his second chapter: that any unreal beings can be understood in the same way, and would, to that extent, exist.

  Another of your objections is that any unreal beings, or beings whose existence is uncertain, can be understood and be in the understanding in the same way with that being which I discussed. I am surprised that you should have conceived this objection, for I was attempting to prove what was still uncertain, and contented myself at first with showing that this being is understood in any way, and is in the understanding. It was my intention to consider, on these grounds, whether this being is in the understanding alone, like an unreal object, or whether it also exists in fact, as a real being. For if unreal objects, or objects whose existence is uncertain, in this way are understood and are in the understanding, because, when they are spoken of, the hearer understands what the speaker means, there is no reason why that being of which I spoke should not be understood and be in the understanding.

  How, moreover, can these two statements of yours be reconciled: (1) the assertion that if a man should speak of any unreal objects, whatever they might be, you would understand, and (2) the assertion that on hearing of that being which does exist, and not in that way in which even unreal objects are held in concept, you would not say that you conceive of it or have it in concept; since, as you say, you cannot conceive of it in any other way than by understanding it, that is, by comprehending in your knowledge its real existence?

  How, I ask, can these two things be reconciled: that unreal objects are understood, and that understanding an object is comprehending in knowledge its real existence? The contradiction does not concern me: do you see to it. But if unreal objects are also in some sort understood, and your definition is applicable, not to every understanding, but to a certain sort of understanding, I ought not to be blamed for saying that a being than which a greater cannot be conceived is understood and is in the understanding, even before I reached the certain conclusion that this being exists in reality.

  CHAPTER VII.

  In answer to another objection: that the supremely great being may be conceived not to exist, just as by the fool God is conceived not to exist.

  Again, you say that it can probably never be believed that this being, when it is spoken of and heard of, cannot be conceived not to exist in the same way in which even God may be conceived not to exist.

  Such an objection could be answered by those who have attained but little skill in disputation and argument. For is it compatible with reason for a man to deny the existence of what he understands, because it is said to be that being whose existence he denies because he does not understand it? Or, if at some times its existence is denied, because only to a certain extent is it understood, and that which is not at all understood is the same to him: is not what is still undetermined more easily proved of a being which exists in some understanding than of one which exists is no understanding?

  Hence it cannot be credible that any man denies the existence of a being than which a greater cannot be conceived, which, when he hears of it, he understands in a certain degree: it is incredible, I say, that any man denies the existence of this being because he denies the existence of God, the sensory perception of whom he in no wise conceives of.

  Or if the existence of another object, because it is not at all understood, is denied, yet is not the existence of what is understood in some degree more easily proved than the existence of an object which is in no wise understood?

  Not irrationally, then, has the hypothesis of a being a greater than which cannot be conceived been employed in controverting the fool, for the proof of the existence of God: since in some degree he would understand such a being, but in no wise could he understand God.

  CHAPTER VIII.

  The example of the picture, treated in Gaunilon’s third chapter, is examined —From what source a notion may be formed of the supremely great being, of which Gaunilon inquired in his fourth chapter.

  Moreover, your so careful demonstration that the being than which a greater cannot be conceived is not analogous to the not yet executed picture in the understanding of the painter, is quite unnecessary. It was not for this purpose that I suggested the preconceived picture. I had no thought of asserting that the being which I was discussing is of such a nature; but I wished to show that what is not understood to exist can be in the understanding.

  Again, you say that when you hear of a being than which a greater is inconceivable, you cannot conceive of it in terms of any real object known to you either specifically or generally, nor have it in your understanding. For, you say, you neither know such a being in itself, nor can you form an idea of it from anything like it.

  But obviously this is not true. For everything that is less good, in so far as it is good, is like the greater good. It is therefore evident to any rational mind, that by ascending from the lesser good to the greater, we can form a considerable notion of a being than which a greater is inconceivable.

  For instance, who (even if he does not believe that what he conceives of exists in reality) supposing that there is some good which has a beginning and an end, does not conceive that a good is much better, which, if it begins, does not cease to be? And that as the second good is better than the first, so that good which has neither beginning nor end, though it is ever passing from the past through the present to the future, is better than the second? And that far better than this is a being—whether any being of such a nature exists or not—which in no wise requires change or motion, nor is compelled to undergo change or motion?

  Is this inconceivable, or is some being greater than this conceivable? Or is not this to form a notion from objects than which a greater is conceivable, of the being than which a greater cannot be conceived? There is, then, a means of forming a notion of a being than which a greater is inconceivable.

  So easily, then, can the fool who does not accept sacred authority be refuted, if he denies that a notion may be formed from other objects of a being than which a greater is inconceivable. But if any Catholic would deny this, let him remember that the invisible things of God, from the creation of the world, are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead. (Romans i. 20.)

  CHAPTER IX.

  The possibility of understanding and conceiving of the supremely great being. The argument advanced against the fool is confirmed.

  But even if it were true that a being than which a greater is inconceivable cannot be conceived or understood; yet it would not be untrue that a being than which a greater cannot be conceived is conceivable and intelligible. There is nothing to prevent one’s saying ineffable, although what is said to be ineffable cannot be spoken of. Inconceivable is conceivable, although that to which the word inconceivable can be applied is not conceivable. So, when one says, that than which nothing greater is conceivable, undoubtedly what is heard is conceivable and intelligible, although that being itself, than which a greater is inconceivable, cannot be conceived or understood.

  Or, though there is a man so foolish as to say that there is no being than which a greater is inconceivable, he will not be so shameless as to say that he cannot understand or conceive of what he says. Or, if such a man is found, not only ought his words to be rejected, but he himself should be contemned.

  Whoever, then, denies the existence of a being than which a greater cannot be conceived, at least understands and conceives of the denial which he makes. But this denial he cannot understand or conceive of without its component terms; and a term of this statement is a being than which a greater cannot be conceived. Whoever, then, makes this denial, understands and conceives of that than which a greater is inconceivable.

  Moreover, it is evident that in the same way it is possible to conceive of and understand a being whose non-existence is impossible; but he who conceives of this conceives of a greater being than one whose non-existence is possible. Hence, when a being than which a greater is inconceivable is conceived, if it is a being whose non-existence is possible that is conceived, it is not a being than which a greater cannot be conceived. But an object cannot be at once conceived and not conceived. Hence he who conceives of a being than which a greater is inconceivable, does not conceive of that whose non-existence is possible, but of that whose non-existence is impossible. Therefore, what he conceives of must exist; for anything whose non-existence is possible, is not that of which he conceives.

  CHAPTER X.

  The certainty of the foregoing argument.—The conclusion of the book.

  I believe that I have shown by an argument which is not weak, but sufficiently cogent, that in my former book I proved the real existence of a being than which a greater cannot be conceived; and I believe that this argument cannot be invalidated by the validity of any objection. For so great force does the signification of this reasoning contain in itself, that this being which is the subject of discussion, is of necessity, from the very fact that it is understood or conceived, proved also to exist in reality, and to be whatever we should believe of the divine substance.

  For we attribute to the divine substance anything of which it can be conceived that it is better to be than not to be that thing. For example: it is better to be eternal than not eternal; good, than not good; nay, goodness itself, than not goodness itself. But it cannot be that anything of this nature is not a property of the being than which a greater is inconceivable. Hence, the being than which a greater is inconceivable must be whatever should be attributed to the divine essence.

  I thank you for your kindness both in your blame and in your praise for my book. For since you have commended so generously those parts of it which seem to you worthy of acceptance, it is quite evident that you have criticised in no unkind spirit those parts of it which seemed to you weak.

  CUR DEUS HOMO.

  ANSELM’S CUR DEUS HOMO.

  PREFACE.

  The first part of this book was copied without my knowledge, before the work had been completed and revised. I have therefore been obliged to finish it as best I could, more hurriedly, and so more briefly, than I wished. For had an undisturbed and adequate period been allowed me for publishing it, I should have introduced and subjoined many things about which I have been silent. For it was while suffering under great anguish of heart (the origin and reason of which are known to God), that, at the entreaty of others, I began the book in England, and finished it when an exile in Capua. From the theme on which it was published I have called it Cur Deus Homo, and have divided it into two short books. The first contains the objections of infidels, who despise the Christian faith because they deem it contrary to reason; and also the reply of believers; and, in fine, leaving Christ out of view (as if nothing had ever been known of him), it proves, by absolute reasons, the impossibility that any man should be saved without him. Again, in the second book, likewise, as if nothing were known of Christ, it is moreover shown by plain reasoning and fact that human nature was ordained for this purpose, viz., that every man should enjoy a happy immortality, both in body and in soul; and that it was necessary that this design for which man was made should be fulfilled; but that it could not be fulfilled unless God became man, and unless all things were to take place which we hold with regard to Christ. I request all who may wish to copy this book to prefix this brief preface, with the heads of the whole work, at its commencement; so that, into whosesoever hands it may fall, as he looks on the face of it, there may be nothing in the whole body of the work which shall escape his notice.

  BOOK FIRST.

  CHAPTER I

  The question on which the whole work rests.

  I have been often and most earnestly requested by many, both personally and by letter, that I would hand down in writing the proofs of a certain doctrine of our faith, which I am accustomed to give to inquirers; for they say that these proofs gratify them, and are considered sufficient. This they ask, not for the sake of attaining to faith by means of reason, but that they may be gladdened by understanding and meditating on those things which they believe; and that, as far as possible, they may be always ready to convince any one who demands of them a reason of that hope which is in us. And this question, both infidels are accustomed to bring up against us, ridiculing Christian simplicity as absurd; and many believers ponder it in their hearts; for what cause or necessity, in sooth, God became man, and by his own death, as we believe and affirm, restored life to the world; when he might have done this, by means of some other being, angelic or human, or merely by his will. Not only the learned, but also many unlearned persons interest themselves in this inquiry and seek for its solution. Therefore, since many desire to consider this subject, and, though it seem very difficult in the investigation, it is yet plain to all in the solution, and attractive for the value and beauty of the reasoning; although what ought to be sufficient has been said by the holy fathers and their successors, yet I will take pains to disclose to inquirers what God has seen fit to lay open to me. And since investigations, which are carried on by question and answer, are thus made more plain to many, and especially to less quick minds, and on that account are more gratifying, I will take to argue with me one of those persons who agitate this subject; one, who among the rest impels me more earnestly to it, so that in this way Boso may question and Anselm reply.

  CHAPTER II

  How those things which are to be said should be received.

  Boso.

  As the right order requires us to believe the deep things of Christian faith before we undertake to discuss them by reason; so to my mind it appears a neglect if, after we are established in the faith, we do not seek to understand what we believe. Therefore, since I thus consider myself to hold the faith of our redemption, by the prevenient grace of God, so that, even were I unable in any way to understand what I believe, still nothing could shake my constancy; I desire that you should discover to me, what, as you know, many besides myself ask, for what necessity and cause God, who is omnipotent, should have assumed the littleness and weakness of human nature for the sake of its renewal?

  Anselm.

  You ask of me a thing which is above me, and therefore I tremble to take in hand subjects too lofty for me, lest, when some one may have thought or even seen that I do not satisfy him, he will rather believe that I am in error with regard to the substance of the truth, than that my intellect is not able to grasp it.

  Boso.

  You ought not so much to fear this, because you should call to mind, on the other hand, that it often happens in the discussion of some question that God opens what before lay concealed; and that you should hope for the grace of God, because if you liberally impart those things which you have freely received, you will be worthy to receive higher things to which you have not yet attained.

  Anselm.

  There is also another thing on account of which I think this subject can hardly, or not at all, be discussed between us comprehensively; since, for this purpose, there is required a knowledge of Power and Necessity and Will and certain other subjects which are so related to one another that none of them can be fully examined without the rest; and so the discussion of these topics requires a separate labor, which, though not very easy, in my opinion, is by no means useless; for ignorance of these subjects makes certain things difficult, which by acquaintance with them become easy.

  Boso.

  You can speak so briefly with regard to these things, each in its place, that we may both have all that is requisite for the present object, and what remains to be said we can put off to another time.

  Anselm.

  This also much disinclines me from your request, not only that the subject is important, but as it is of a form fair above the sons of men, so is it of a wisdom fair above the intellect of men. On this account, I fear, lest, as I am wont to be incensed against sorry artists, when I see our Lord himself painted in an unseemly figure; so also it may fall out with me if I should undertake to exhibit so rich a theme in rough and vulgar diction.

  Boso.

  Even this ought not to deter you, because, as you allow any one to talk better if he can, so you preclude none from writing more elegantly if your language does not please him. But, to cut you off from all excuses, you are not to fulfil this request of mine for the learned but for me, and those asking the same thing with me.

  Anselm.

  Since I observe your earnestness and that of those who desire this thing with you, out of love and pious zeal, I will try to the best of my ability (with the assistance of God and your prayers, which, when making this request, you have often promised me), not so much to make plain what you inquire about, as to inquire with you. But I wish all that I say to be received with this understanding, that, if I shall have said anything which higher authority does not corroborate, though I appear to demonstrate it by argument, yet it is not to be received with any further confidence, than as so appearing to me for the time, until God in some way make a clearer revelation to me. But if I am in any measure able to set your inquiry at rest, it should be concluded that a wiser than I will be able to do this more fully; nay, we must understand that for all that a man can say or know still deeper grounds of so great a truth lie concealed.

  Boso.

  Suffer me, therefore, to make use of the words of infidels; for it is proper for us when we seek to investigate the reasonableness of our faith to propose the objections of those who are wholly unwilling to submit to the same faith, without the support of reason. For although they appeal to reason because they do not believe, but we, on the other hand, because we do believe; nevertheless, the thing sought is one and the same. And if you bring up anything in reply which sacred authority seems to oppose, let it be mine to urge this inconsistency until you disprove it.

  Anselm.

  Speak on according to your pleasure.

  CHAPTER III.

  Objections of infidels and replies of believers.

  Boso.

  Infidels ridiculing our simplicity charge upon us that we do injustice and dishonor to God when we affirm that he descended into the womb of a virgin, that he was born of woman, that he grew on the nourishment of milk and the food of men; and, passing over many other things which seem incompatible with Deity, that he endured fatigue, hunger, thirst, stripes and crucifixion among thieves.

  Anselm.

  We do no injustice or dishonor to God, but give him thanks with all the heart, praising and proclaiming the ineffable height of his compassion. For the more astonishing a thing it is and beyond expectation, that he has restored us from so great and deserved ills in which we were, to so great and unmerited blessings which we had forfeited; by so much the more has he shown his more exceeding love and tenderness towards us. For did they but carefully consider how fitly in this way human redemption is secured, they would not ridicule our simplicity, but would rather join with us in praising the wise beneficence of God. For, as death came upon the human race by the disobedience of man, it was fitting that by man’s obedience life should be restored. And, as sin, the cause of our condemnation, had its origin from a woman, so ought the author of our righteousness and salvation to be born of a woman. And so also was it proper that the devil, who, being man’s tempter, had conquered him in eating of the tree, should be vanquished by man in the suffering of the tree which man bore. Many other things also, if we carefully examine them, give a certain indescribable beauty to our redemption as thus procured.

  CHAPTER IV.

  How these things appear not decisive to infidels, and merely like so many pictures.

  Boso.

  These things must be admitted to be beautiful, and like so many pictures; but, if they have no solid foundation, they do not appear sufficient to infidels, as reasons why we ought to believe that God wished to suffer the things which we speak of. For when one wishes to make a picture, he selects something substantial to paint it upon, so that his picture may remain. For no one paints in water or in air, because no traces of the picture remain in them. Wherefore, when we hold up to infidels these harmonious proportions which you speak of as so many pictures of the real thing, since they do not think this belief of ours a reality, but only a fiction, they consider us, as it were, to be painting upon a cloud. Therefore the rational existence of the truth must first be shown, I mean, the necessity, which proves that God ought to or could have condescended to those things which we affirm. Afterwards, to make the body of the truth, so to speak, shine forth more clearly, these harmonious proportions, like pictures of the body, must be described.

  Anselm.

  Does not the reason why God ought to do the things we speak of seem absolute enough when we consider that the human race, that work of his so very precious, was wholly ruined, and that it was not seemly that the purpose which God had made concerning man should fall to the ground; and, moreover, that this purpose could not be carried into effect unless the human race were delivered by their Creator himself?

  CHAPTER V.

  How the redemption of man could not be effected by any other being but God.

  Boso.

  If this deliverance were said to be effected somehow by any other being than God (whether it were an angelic or a human being), the mind of man would receive it far more patiently. For God could have made some man without sin, not of a sinful substance, and not a descendant of any man, but just as he made Adam, and by this man it should seem that the work we speak of could have been done.

  Anselm.

  Do you not perceive that, if any other being should rescue man from eternal death, man would rightly be adjudged as the servant of that being? Now if this be so, he would in no wise be restored to that dignity which would have been his had he never sinned. For he, who was to be through eternity only the servant of God and an equal with the holy angels, would now be the servant of a being who was not God, and whom the angels did not serve.

  CHAPTER VI.

  How infidels find fault with us for saying that God has redeemed us by his death, and thus has shown his love towards us, and that he came to overcome the devil for us.

  Boso.

  This they greatly wonder at, because we call this redemption a release. For, say they, in what custody or imprisonment, or under whose power were you held, that God could not free you from it, without purchasing your redemption by so many sufferings, and finally by his own blood? And when we tell them that he freed us from our sins, and from his own wrath, and from hell, and from the power of the devil, whom he came to vanquish for us, because we were unable to do it, and that he purchased for us the kingdom of heaven; and that, by doing all these things, he manifested the greatness of his love towards us; they answer: If you say that God, who, as you believe, created the universe by a word, could not do all these things by a simple command, you contradict yourselves, for you make him powerless. Or, if you grant that he could have done these things in some other way, but did not wish to, how can you vindicate his wisdom, when you assert that he desired, without any reason, to suffer things so unbecoming? For these things which you bring up are all regulated by his will; for the wrath of God is nothing but his desire to punish. If, then, he does not desire to punish the sins of men, man is free from his sins, and from the wrath of God, and from hell, and from the power of the devil, all which things are the sufferings of sin; and, what he had lost by reason of these sins, he now regains. For, in whose power is hell, or the devil? Or, whose is the kingdom of heaven, if it be not his who created all things? Whatever things, therefore, you dread or hope for, all lie subject to his will, whom nothing can oppose. If, then, God were unwilling to save the human race in any other way than that you mention, when he could have done it by his simple will, observe, to say the least, how you disparage his wisdom. For, if a man without motive should do, by severe toil, a thing which he could have done in some easy way, no one would consider him a wise man. As to your statement that God has shown in this way how much he loved you, there is no argument to support this, unless it be proved that he could not otherwise have saved man. For, if he could not have done it otherwise, then it was, indeed, necessary for him to manifest his love in this way. But now, when he could have saved man differently, why is it that, for the sake of displaying his love, he does and suffers the things which you enumerate? For does he not show good angels how much he loves them, though he suffer no such things as these for them? As to what you say of his coming to vanquish the devil for you, with what meaning dare you allege this? Is not the omnipotence of God everywhere enthroned? How is it, then, that God must needs come down from heaven to vanquish the devil? These are the objections with which infidels think they can withstand us

  CHAPTER VII

  How the devil had no justice on his side against man; and why it was, that he seemed to have had it, and why God could have freed man in this way.

  Moreover, I do not see the force of that argument, which we are wont to make use of, that God, in order to save men, was bound, as it were, to try a contest with the devil in justice, before he did in strength, so that, when the devil should put to death that being in whom there was nothing worthy of death, and who was God, he should justly lose his power over sinners; and that, if it were not so, God would have used undue force against the devil, since the devil had a rightful ownership of man, for the devil had not seized man with violence, but man had freely surrendered to him. It is true that this might well enough be said, if the devil or man belonged to any other being than God, or were in the power of any but God. But since neither the devil nor man belong to any but God, and neither can exist without the exertion of Divine power, what cause ought God to try with his own creature (de suo, in suo), or what should he do but punish his servant, who had seduced his fellow-servant to desert their common Lord and come over to himself; who, a traitor, had taken to himself a fugitive; a thief, had taken to himself a fellow-thief, with what he had stolen from his Lord. For when one was stolen from his Lord by the persuasions of the other, both were thieves. For what could be more just than for God to do this? Or, should God, the judge of all, snatch man, thus held, out of the power of him who holds him so unrighteously, either for the purpose of punishing him in some other way than by means of the devil, or of sparing him, what injustice would there be in this? For, though man deserved to be tormented by the devil, yet the devil tormented him unjustly. For man merited punishment, and there was no more suitable way for him to be punished than by that being to whom he had given his consent to sin. But the infliction of punishment was nothing meritorious in the devil; on the other hand, he was even more unrighteous in this, because he was not led to it by a love of justice, but urged on by a malicious impulse. For he did not do this at the command of God, but God’s inconceivable wisdom, which happily controls even wickedness, permitted it. And, in my opinion, those who think that the devil has any right in holding man, are brought to this belief by seeing that man is justly exposed to the tormenting of the devil, and that God in justice permits this; and therefore they suppose that the devil rightly inflicts it. For the very same thing, from opposite points of view, is sometimes both just and unjust, and hence, by those who do not carefully inspect the matter, is deemed wholly just or wholly unjust. Suppose, for example, that one strikes an innocent person unjustly, and hence justly deserves to be beaten himself; if, however, the one who was beaten, though he ought not to avenge himself, yet does strike the person who beat him, then he does it unjustly. And hence this violence on the part of the man who returns the blow is unjust, because he ought not to avenge himself; but as far as he who received the blow is concerned, it is just, for since he gave a blow unjustly, he justly deserves to receive one in return. Therefore, from opposite views, the same action is both just and unjust, for it may chance that one person shall consider it only just, and another only unjust. So also the devil is said to torment men justly, because God in justice permits this, and man in justice suffers it. But when man is said to suffer justly, it is not meant that his just suffering is inflicted by the hand of justice itself, but that he is punished by the just judgment of God. But if that written decree is brought up, which the Apostle says was made against us, and cancelled by the death of Christ; and if any one thinks that it was intended by this decree that the devil, as if under the writing of a sort of compact, should justly demand sin and the punishment of sin, of man, before Christ suffered, as a debt for the first sin to which he tempted man, so that in this way he seems to prove his right over man, I do not by any means think that it is to be so understood. For that writing is not of the devil, because it is called the writing of a decree of the devil, but of God. For by the just judgment of God it was decreed, and, as it were, confirmed by writing, that, since man had sinned, he should not henceforth of himself have the power to avoid sin or the punishment of sin; for the spirit is out-going and not returning (est enim spiritus vadens et non rediens); and he who sins ought not to escape with impunity, unless pity spare the sinner, and deliver and restore him. Wherefore we ought not to believe that, on account of this writing, there can be found any justice on the part of the devil in his tormenting man. In fine, as there is never any injustice in a good angel, so in an evil angel there can be no justice at all. There was no reason, therefore, as respects the devil, why God should not make use of his own power against him for the liberation of man.

  CHAPTER VIII.

  How, although the acts of Christ’s condescension which we speak of do not belong to his divinity, it yet seems improper to infidels that these things should be said of him even as a man, and why it appears to them that this man did not suffer death of his own will.

  Anselm.

  The will of God ought to be a sufficient reason for us, when he does anything, though we cannot see why he does it. For the will of God is never irrational.

  Boso.

  That is very true, if it be granted that God does wish the thing in question; but many will never allow that God does wish anything if it be inconsistent with reason.

  Anselm.

  What do you find inconsistent with reason, in our confessing that God desired those things which make up our belief with regard to his incarnation?

  Boso.

  This in brief: that the Most High should stoop to things so lowly, that the Almighty should do a thing with such toil.

  Anselm.

  They who speak thus do not understand our belief. For we affirm that the Divine nature is beyond doubt impassible, and that God cannot at all be brought down from his exaltation, nor toil in anything which he wishes to effect. But we say that the Lord Jesus Christ is very God and very man, one person in two natures, and two natures in one person. When, therefore, we speak of God as enduring any humiliation or infirmity, we do not refer to the majesty of that nature, which cannot suffer; but to the feebleness of the human constitution which he assumed. And so there remains no ground of objection against our faith. For in this way we intend no debasement of the Divine nature, but we teach that one person is both Divine and human. In the incarnation of God there is no lowering of the Deity; but the nature of man we believe to be exalted.

  Boso.

  Be it so; let nothing be referred to the Divine nature, which is spoken of Christ after the manner of human weakness; but how will it ever be made out a just or reasonable thing that God should treat or suffer to be treated in such a manner, that man whom the Father called his beloved Son in whom he was well pleased, and whom the Son made himself? For what justice is there in his suffering death for the sinner, who was the most just of all men? What man, if he condemned the innocent to free the guilty, would not himself be judged worthy of condemnation? And so the matter seems to return to the same incongruity which is mentioned above. For if he could not save sinners in any other way than by condemning the just, where is his omnipotence? If, however, he could, but did not wish to, how shall we sustain his wisdom and justice?

  Anselm.

  God the Father did not treat that man as you seem to suppose, nor put to death the innocent for the guilty. For the Father did not compel him to suffer death, or even allow him to be slain, against his will, but of his own accord he endured death for the salvation of men.

  Boso.

  Though it were not against his will, since he agreed to the will of the Father; yet the Father seems to have bound him, as it were, by his injunction. For it is said that Christ “humbled himself, being made obedient to the Father even unto death, and that the death of the cross. For which cause God also hath highly exalted him;” and that “he learned obedience from the things which he suffered;” and that God spared not his own Son, but gave him up for us all.” And likewise the Son says: “I came not to do my own will, but the will of him that sent me.” And when about to suffer, he says; “As the Father hath given me commandment, so I do.” Again: “The cup which the Father hath given me, shall I not drink it?” And, at another time: “Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as thou wilt.” And again: “Father, if this cup may not pass from me except I drink it, thy will be done.” In all these passages it would rather appear that Christ endured death by the constraint of obedience, than by the inclination of his own free will.

  CHAPTER IX.

  How it was of his own accord that he died, and what this means: “he was made obedient even unto death;” and: “for which cause God hath highly exalted him;” and: “I came not to do my own will;” and: “he spared not his own Son;” and: “not as I will, but as thou wilt.”

  Anselm.

  It seems to me that you do not rightly understand the difference between what he did at the demand of obedience, and what he suffered, not demanded by obedience, but inflicted on him, because he kept his obedience perfect.

  Boso.

  I need to have you explain it more clearly.

  Anselm.

  Why did the Jews persecute him even unto death?

  Boso.

  For nothing else, but that, in word and in life, he invariably maintained truth and justice.

  Anselm.

  I believe that God demands this of every rational being, and every being owes this in obedience to God.

  Boso.

  We ought to acknowledge this.

  Anselm.

  That man, therefore, owed this obedience to God the Father, humanity to Deity; and the Father claimed it from him.

  Boso.

  There is no doubt of this.

  Anselm.

  Now you see what he did, under the demand of obedience.

  Boso.

  Very true, and I see also what infliction he endured, because he stood firm in obedience. For death was inflicted on him for his perseverance in obedience and he endured it; but I do not understand how it is that obedience did not demand this.

  Anselm.

  Ought man to suffer death, if he had never sinned, or should God demand this of him?

  Boso.

  It is on this account that we believe that man would not have been subject to death, and that God would not have exacted this of him; but I should like to hear the reason of the thing from you.

  Anselm.

  You acknowledge that the intelligent creature was made holy, and for this purpose, viz., to be happy in the enjoyment of God.

  Boso.

  Yes.

  Anselm.

  You surely will not think it proper for God to make his creature miserable without fault, when he had created him holy that he might enjoy a state of blessedness. For it would be a miserable thing for man to die against his will.

  Boso.

  It is plain that, if man had not sinned, God ought not to compel him to die.

  Anselm.

  God did not, therefore, compel Christ to die; but he suffered death of his own will, not yielding up his life as an act of obedience, but on account of his obedience in maintaining holiness; for he held out so firmly in this obedience that he met death on account of it. It may, indeed be said, that the Father commanded him to die, when he enjoined that upon him on account of which he met death. It was in this sense, then, that “as the Father gave him the commandment, so he did, and the cup which He gave to him, he drank; and he was made obedient to the Father, even unto death;” and thus “he learned obedience from the things which he suffered,” that is, how far obedience should be maintained. Now the word “didicit,” which is used, can be understood in two ways. For either “didicit” is written for this: he caused others to learn; or it is used, because he did learn by experience what he had an understanding of before. Again, when the Apostle had said: “he humbled himself, being made obedient even unto death, and that the death of the cross,” he added: “wherefore God also hath exalted him and given him a name, which is above every name.” And this is similar to what David said: “he drank of the brook in the way, therefore did he lift up the head.” For it is not meant that he could not have attained his exaltation in any other way but by obedience unto death; nor is it meant that his exaltation was conferred on him, only as a reward of his obedience (for he himself said before he suffered, that all things had been committed to him by the Father, and that all things belonging to the Father were his); but the expression is used because he had agreed with the Father and the Holy Spirit, that there was no other way to reveal to the world the height of his omnipotence, than by his death. For if a thing do not take place, except on condition of something else, it is not improperly said to occur by reason of that thing. For if we intend to do a thing, but mean to do something else first by means of which it may be done; when the first thing which we wish to do is done, if the result is such as we intended, it is properly said to be on account of the other; since that is now done which caused the delay; for it had been determined that the first thing should not be done without the other. If, for instance, I propose to cross a river only in a boat, though I can cross it in a boat or on horseback, and suppose that I delay crossing because the boat is gone; but if afterwards I cross, when the boat has returned, it may be properly said of me: the boat was ready, and therefore he crossed. And we not only use this form of expression, when it is by means of a thing which we desire should take place first, but also when we intend to do something else, not by means of that thing, but only after it. For if one delays taking food because he has not to-day attended the celebration of mass; when that has been done which he wished to do first, it is not improper to say to him: now take food, for you have now done that for which you delayed taking food. Far less, therefore, is the language strange, when Christ is said to be exalted on this account, because he endured death; for it was through this, and after this, that he determined to accomplish his exaltation. This may be understood also in the same way as that passage in which it is said that our Lord increased in wisdom, and in favor with God; not that this was really the case, but that he deported himself as if it were so. For he was exalted after his death, as if it were really on account of that. Moreover, that saying of his: “I came not to do mine own will, but the will of him that sent me,” is precisely like that other saying: “My doctrine is not mine;” for what one does not have of himself, but of God, he ought not to call his own, but God’s. Now no one has the truth which he teaches, or a holy will, of himself, but of God. Christ, therefore, came not to do his own will, but that of the Father; for his holy will was not derived from his humanity, but from his divinity. For that sentence: “God spared not his own Son, but gave him up for us all,” means nothing more than that he did not rescue him. For there are found in the Bible many things like this. Again, when he says: “Father, if it be passible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt;” and “If this cup may not pass from me, except I drink it, thy will be done;” he signifies by his own will the natural desire of safety, in accordance with which human nature shrank from the anguish of death. But he speaks of the will of the Father, not because the Father preferred the death of the Son to his life; but because the Father was not willing to rescue the human race, unless man were to do even as great a thing as was signified in the death of Christ. Since reason did not demand of another what he could not do, therefore, the Son says that he desires his own death. For he preferred to suffer, rather than that the human race should be lost; as if he were to say to the Father: “Since thou dost not desire the reconciliation of the world to take place in any other way, in this respect, I see that thou desirest my death; let thy will, therefore, be done, that is, let my death take place, so that the world may be reconciled to thee.” For we often say that one desires a thing, because he does not choose something else, the choice of which would preclude the existence of that which he is said to desire; for instance, when we say that he who does not choose to close the window through which the draft is admitted which puts out the light, wishes the light to be extinguished. So the Father desired the death of the Son, because he was not willing that the world should be saved in any other way, except by man’s doing so great a thing as that which I have mentioned. And this, since none other could accomplish it, availed as much with the Son, who so earnestly desired the salvation of man, as if the Father had commanded him to die; and, therefore, “as the Father gave him commandment, so he did, and the cup which the Father gave to him he drank, being obedient even unto death.”

  CHAPTER X.

  Likewise on the same topics; and how otherwise they can be correctly explained.

  It is also a fair interpretation that it was by that same holy will by which the son wished to die for the salvation of the world, that the Father gave him commandment (yet not by compulsion), and the cup of suffering, and spared him not, but gave him up for us and desired his death; and that the Son himself was obedient even unto death, and learned obedience from the things which he suffered. For as with regard to that will which led him to a holy life, he did not have it as a human being of himself, but of the Father; so also that will by which he desired to die for the accomplishment of so great good, he could not have had but from the Father of lights, from whom is every good and perfect gift. And as the Father is said to draw by imparting an inclination, so there is nothing improper in asserting that he moves man. For as the Son says of the Father: “No man cometh to me except the Father draw him,” he might as well have said, except he move him. In like manner, also, could he have declared: “No man layeth down his life for my sake, except the Father move or draw him.” For since a man is drawn or moved by his will to that which he invariably chooses, it is not improper to say that God draws or moves him when he gives him this will. And in this drawing or impelling it is not to be understood that there is any constraint, but a free and grateful clinging to the holy will which has been given. If then it cannot be denied that the Father drew or moved the Son to death by giving him that will; who does not see that, in the same manner, he gave him commandment to endure death of his own accord and to take the cup, which he freely drank. And if it is right to say that the Son spared not himself, but gave himself for us of his own will, who will deny that it is right to say that the Father, of whom he had this will, did not spare him but gave him up for us, and desired his death? In this way, also, by following the will received from the Father invariably, and of his own accord, the Son became obedient to Him, even unto death; and learned obedience from the things which he suffered; that is, he learned how great was the work to be accomplished by obedience. For this is real and sincere obedience when a rational being, not of compulsion, but freely, follows the will received from God. In other ways, also, we can properly explain the Father’s desire that the Son should die, though these would appear sufficient. For as we say that he desires a thing who causes another to desire it; so, also, we say that he desires a thing who approves of the desire of another, though he does not cause that desire. Thus when we see a man who desires to endure pain with fortitude for the accomplishment of some good design; though we acknowledge that we wish to have him endure that pain, yet we do not choose, nor take pleasure in, his suffering, but in his choice. We are, also, accustomed to say that he who can prevent a thing but does not, desires the thing which he does not prevent. Since, therefore, the will of the Son pleased the Father, and he did not prevent him from choosing, or from fulfilling his choice, it is proper to say that he wished the Son to endure death so piously and for so great an object, though he was not pleased with his suffering. Moreover, he said that the cup must not pass from him, except he drank it, not because he could not have escaped death had he chosen to; but because, as has been said, the world could not otherwise be saved; and it was his fixed choice to suffer death, rather than that the world should not be saved. It was for this reason, also, that he used those words, viz., to teach the human race that there was no other salvation for them but by his death; and not to show that he had no power at all to avoid death. For whatsoever things are said of him, similar to these which have been mentioned, they are all to be explained in accordance with the belief that he died, not by compulsion, but of free choice. For he was omnipotent, and it is said of him, when he was offered up, that he desired it. And he says himself: “I lay down my life that I may take it again; no man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself; I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again.” A man cannot, therefore, be properly said to have been driven to a thing which he does of his own power and will.

  Boso.

  But this simple fact, that God allows him to be so treated, even if he were willing, does not seem becoming for such a Father in respect to such a Son.

  Anselm.

  Yes, it is of all things most proper that such a Father should acquiesce with such a Son in his desire, if it be praiseworthy as relates to the honor of God, and useful for man’s salvation, which would not otherwise be effected.

  Boso.

  The question which still troubles us is, how the death of the Son can be proved reasonable and necessary. For otherwise, it does not seem that the Son ought to desire it, or the Father compel or permit it. For the question is, why God could not save man in some other way, and if so, why he wished to do it in this way? For it both seems unbecoming for God to have saved man in this way; and it is not clear how the death of the Son avails for the salvation of man. For it is a strange thing if God so delights in, or requires, the blood of the innocent, that he neither chooses, nor is able, to spare the guilty without the sacrifice of the innocent.

  Anselm.

  Since, in this inquiry, you take the place of those who are unwilling to believe anything not previously proved by reason, I wish to have it understood between us that we do not admit anything in the least unbecoming to be ascribed to the Deity, and that we do not reject the smallest reason if it be not opposed by a greater. For as it is impossible to attribute anything in the least unbecoming to God; so any reason, however small, if not overbalanced by a greater, has the force of necessity.

  Boso.

  In this matter, I accept nothing more willingly than that this agreement should be preserved between us in common.

  Anselm.

  The question concerns only the incarnation of God, and those things which we believe with regard to his taking human nature.

  Boso.

  It is so.

  Anselm.

  Let us suppose, then, that the incarnation of God, and the things that we affirm of him as man, had never taken place; and be it agreed between us that man was made for happiness, which cannot be attained in this life, and that no being can ever arrive at happiness, save by freedom from sin, and that no man passes this life without sin. Let us take for granted, also, the other things, the belief of which is necessary for eternal salvation.

  Boso.

  I grant it; for in these there is nothing which seems unbecoming or impossible for God.

  Anselm.

  Therefore, in order that man may attain happiness, remission of sin is necessary.

  Boso.

  We all hold this.

  CHAPTER XI.

  What it is to sin, and to make satisfaction for sin.

  Anselm.

  We must needs inquire, therefore, in what manner God puts away men’s sins; and, in order to do this more plainly, let us first consider what it is to sin, and what it is to make satisfaction for sin.

  Boso.

  It is yours to explain and mine to listen.

  Anselm.

  If man or angel always rendered to God his due, he would never sin.

  Boso.

  I cannot deny that.

  Anselm.

  Therefore to sin is nothing else than not to render to God his due.

  Boso.

  What is the debt which we owe to God?

  Anselm.

  Every wish of a rational creature should be subject to the will of God

  Boso.

  Nothing is more true

  Anselm.

  This is the debt which man and angel owe to God, and no one who pays this debt commits sin; but every one who does not pay it sins. This is justice, or uprightness of will, which makes a being just or upright in heart, that is, in will; and this is the sole and complete debt of honor which we owe to God, and which God requires of us. For it is such a will only, when it can be exercised, that does works pleasing to God; and when this will cannot be exercised, it is pleasing of itself alone, since without it no work is acceptable. He who does not render this honor which is due to God, robs God of his own and dishonors him; and this is sin. Moreover, so long as he does not restore what he has taken away, he remains in fault; and it will not suffice merely to restore what has been taken away, but, considering the contempt offered, he ought to restore more than he took away. For as one who imperils another’s safety does not enough by merely restoring his safety, without making some compensation for the anguish incurred; so he who violates another’s honor does not enough by merely rendering honor again, but must, according to the extent of the injury done, make restoration in some way satisfactory to the person whom he has dishonored. We must also observe that when any one pays what he has unjustly taken away, he ought to give something which could not have been demanded of him, had he not stolen what belonged to another. So then, every one who sins ought to pay back the honor of which he has robbed God; and this is the satisfaction which every sinner owes to God.

  Boso.

  Since we have determined to follow reason in all these things, I am unable to bring any objection against them, although you somewhat startle me.

  CHAPTER XII.

  Whether it were proper for God to put away sins by compassion alone, without any payment of debt.

  Anselm.

  Let us return and consider whether it were proper for God to put away sins by compassion alone, without any payment of the honor taken from him.

  Boso.

  I do not see why it is not proper.

  Anselm.

  To remit sin in this manner is nothing else than not to punish; and since it is not right to cancel sin without compensation or punishment; if it be not punished, then is it passed by undischarged.

  Boso.

  What you say is reasonable.

  Anselm.

  It is not fitting for God to pass over anything in his kingdom undischarged.

  Boso.

  If I wish to oppose this, I fear to sin.

  Anselm.

  It is, therefore, not proper for God thus to pass over sin unpunished.

  Boso.

  Thus it follows.

  Anselm.

  There is also another thing which follows if sin be passed by unpunished, viz., that with God there will be no difference between the guilty and the not guilty; and this is unbecoming to God.

  Boso.

  I cannot deny it.

  Anselm.

  Observe this also. Every one knows that justice to man is regulated by law, so that, according to the requirements of law, the measure of award is bestowed by God.

  Boso.

  This is our belief.

  Anselm.

  But if sin is neither paid for nor punished, it is subject to no law.

  Boso.

  I cannot conceive it to be otherwise.

  Anselm.

  Injustice, therefore, if it is cancelled by compassion alone, is more free than justice, which seems very inconsistent. And to these is also added a further incongruity, viz., that it makes injustice like God. For as God is subject to no law, so neither is injustice.

  Boso.

  I cannot withstand your reasoning. But when God commands us in every case to forgive those who trespass against us, it seems inconsistent to enjoin a thing upon us which it is not proper for him to do himself.

  Anselm.

  There is no inconsistency in God’s commanding us not to take upon ourselves what belongs to Him alone. For to execute vengeance belongs to none but Him who is Lord of all; for when the powers of the world rightly accomplish this end, God himself does it who appointed them for the purpose.

  Boso.

  You have obviated the difficulty which I thought to exist; but there is another to which I would like to have your answer. For since God is so free as to be subject to no law, and to the judgment of no one, and is so merciful as that nothing more merciful can be conceived; and nothing is right or fit save as he wills; it seems a strange thing for us to say that he is wholly unwilling or unable to put away an injury done to himself, when we are wont to apply to him for indulgence with regard to those offences which we commit against others.

  Anselm.

  What you say of God’s liberty and choice and compassion is true; but we ought so to interpret these things as that they may not seem to interfere with His dignity. For there is no liberty except as regards what is best or fitting; nor should that be called mercy which does anything improper for the Divine character. Moreover, when it is said that what God wishes is just, and that what He does not wish is unjust, we must not understand that if God wished anything improper it would be just, simply because he wished it. For if God wishes to lie, we must not conclude that it is right to lie, but rather that he is not God. For no will can ever wish to lie, unless truth in it is impaired, nay, unless the will itself be impaired by forsaking truth. When, then, it is said: “If God wishes to lie,” the meaning is simply this: “If the nature of God is such as that he wishes to lie;” and, therefore, it does not follow that falsehood is right, except it be understood in the same manner as when we speak of two impossible things: “If this be true, then that follows; because neither this nor that is true;” as if a man should say: “Supposing water to be dry, and fire to be moist;” for neither is the case. Therefore, with regard to these things, to speak the whole truth: If God desires a thing, it is right that he should desire that which involves no unfitness. For if God chooses that it should rain, it is right that it should rain; and if he desires that any man should die, then is it right that he should die. Wherefore, if it be not fitting for God to do anything unjustly, or out of course, it does not belong to his liberty or compassion or will to let the sinner go unpunished, who makes no return to God of what the sinner has defrauded him.

  Boso.

  You remove from me every possible objection which I had thought of bringing against you.

  Anselm.

  Yet observe why it is not fitting for God to do this.

  Boso.

  I listen readily to whatever you say.

  CHAPTER XIII.

  How nothing less was to be endured, in the order of things, than that the creature should take away the honor due the Creator and not restore what he takes away.

  Anselm.

  In the order of things, there is nothing less to be endured than that the creature should take away the honor due the Creator, and not restore what he has taken away.

  Boso.

  Nothing is more plain than this.

  Anselm.

  But there is no greater injustice suffered than that by which so great an evil must be endured.

  Boso.

  This, also, is plain.

  Anselm.

  I think, therefore, that you will not say that God ought to endure a thing than which no greater injustice is suffered, viz., that the creature should not restore to God what he has taken away.

  Boso.

  No; I think it should be wholly denied.

  Anselm.

  Again, if there is nothing greater or better than God, there is nothing more just than supreme justice, which maintains God’s honor in the arrangement of things, and which is nothing else but God himself.

  Boso.

  There is nothing clearer than this.

  Anselm.

  Therefore God maintains nothing with more justice than the honor of his own dignity.

  Boso.

  I must agree with you.

  Anselm.

  Does it seem to you that he wholly preserves it, if he allows himself to be so defrauded of it as that he should neither receive satisfaction nor punish the one defrauding him.

  Boso.

  I dare not say so.

  Anselm.

  Therefore the honor taken away must be repaid, or punishment must follow; otherwise, either God will not be just to himself, or he will be weak in respect to both parties; and this it is impious even to think of.

  Boso.

  I think that nothing more reasonable can be said.

  CHAPTER XIV.

  How the honor of God exists in the punishment of the wicked.

  Boso.

  But I wish to hear from you whether the punishment of the sinner is an honor to God, or how it is an honor. For if the punishment of the sinner is not for God’s honor when the sinner does not pay what he took away, but is punished, God loses his honor so that he cannot recover it. And this seems in contradiction to the things which have been said.

  Anselm.

  It is impossible for God to lose his honor; for either the sinner pays his debt of his own accord, or, if he refuse, God takes it from him. For either man renders due submission to God of his own will, by avoiding sin or making payment, or else God subjects him to himself by torments, even against man’s will, and thus shows that he is the Lord of man, though man refuses to acknowledge it of his own accord. And here we must observe that as man in sinning takes away what belongs to God, so God in punishing gets in return what pertains to man. For not only does that belong to a man which he has in present possession, but also that which it is in his power to have. Therefore, since man was so made as to be able to attain happiness by avoiding sin; if, on account of his sin, he is deprived of happiness and every good, he repays from his own inheritance what he has stolen, though he repay it against his will. For although God does not apply what he takes away to any object of his own, as man transfers the money which he has taken from another to his own use; yet what he takes away serves the purpose of his own honor, for this very reason, that it is taken away. For by this act he shows that the sinner and all that pertains to him are under his subjection.

  CHAPTER XV.

  Whether God suffers his honor to be violated even in the least degree.

  Boso.

  What you say satisfies me. But there is still another point which I should like to have you answer. For if, as you make out, God ought to sustain his own honor, why does he allow it to be violated even in the least degree? For what is in any way made liable to injury is not entirely and perfectly preserved.

  Anselm.

  Nothing can be added to or taken from the honor of God. For this honor which belongs to him is in no way subject to injury or change. But as the individual creature preserves, naturally or by reason, the condition belonging, and, as it were, allotted to him, he is said to obey and honor God; and to this, rational nature, which possesses intelligence, is especially bound. And when the being chooses what he ought, he honors God; not by bestowing anything upon him, but because he brings himself freely under God’s will and disposal, and maintains his own condition in the universe, and the beauty of the universe itself, as far as in him lies. But when he does not choose what he ought, he dishonors God, as far as the being himself is concerned, because he does not submit himself freely to God’s disposal. And he disturbs the order and beauty of the universe, as relates to himself, although he cannot injure nor tarnish the power and majesty of God. For if those things which are held together in the circuit of the heavens desire to be elsewhere than under the heavens, or to be further removed from the heavens, there is no place where they can be but under the heavens, nor can they fly from the heavens without also approaching them. For both whence and whither and in what way they go, they are still under the heavens; and if they are at a greater distance from one part of them, they are only so much nearer to the opposite part. And so, though man or evil angel refuse to submit to the Divine will and appointment, yet he cannot escape it; for if he wishes to fly from a will that commands, he falls into the power of a will that punishes. And if you ask whither he goes, it is only under the permission of that will; and even this wayward choice or action of his becomes subservient, under infinite wisdom, to the order and beauty of the universe before spoken of. For when it is understood that God brings good out of many forms of evil, then the satisfaction for sin freely given, or if this be not given, the exaction of punishment, hold their own place and orderly beauty in the same universe. For if Divine wisdom were not to insist upon these things, when wickedness tries to disturb the right appointment, there would be, in the very universe which God ought to control, an unseemliness springing from the violation of the beauty of arrangement, and God would appear to be deficient in his management. And these two things are not only unfitting, but consequently impossible; so that satisfaction or punishment must needs follow every sin.

  Boso.

  You have relieved my objection.

  Anselm.

  It is then plain that no one can honor or dishonor God, as he is in himself; but the creature, as far as he is concerned, appears to do this when he submits or opposes his will to the will of God.

  Boso.

  I know of nothing which can be said against this.

  Anselm.

  Let me add something to it.

  Boso.

  Go on, until I am weary of listening.

  CHAPTER XVI.

  The reason why the number of angels who fell must be made up from men.

  Anselm.

  It was proper that God should design to make up for the number of angels that fell, from human nature which he created without sin.

  Boso.

  This is a part of our belief, but still I should like to have some reason for it.

  Anselm.

  You mistake me, for we intended to discuss only the incarnation of the Deity, and here you are bringing in other questions.

  Boso.

  Be not angry with me; “for the Lord loveth a cheerful giver;” and no one shows better how cheerfully he gives what he promises, than he who gives more than he promises; therefore, tell me freely what I ask.

  Anselm.

  There is no question that intelligent nature, which finds its happiness, both now and forever, in the contemplation of God, was foreseen by him in a certain reasonable and complete number, so that there would be an unfitness in its being either less or greater. For either God did not know in what number it was best to create rational beings, which is false; or, if he did know, then he appointed such a number as he perceived was most fitting. Wherefore, either the angels who fell were made so as to be within that number; or, since they were out of that number, they could not continue to exist, and so fell of necessity. But this last is an absurd idea.

  Boso.

  The truth which you set forth is plain.

  Anselm.

  Therefore, since they ought to be of that number, either their number should of necessity be made up, or else rational nature, which was foreseen as perfect in number, will remain incomplete. But this cannot be.

  Boso.

  Doubtless, then, the number must be restored.

  Anselm.

  But this restoration can only be made from human beings, since there is no other source.

  CHAPTER XVII.

  How other angels cannot take the place of those who fell.

  Boso.

  Why could not they themselves be restored, or other angels substituted for them?

  Anselm.

  When you shall see the difficulty of our restoration, you will understand the impossibility of theirs. But other angels cannot be substituted for them on this account (to pass over its apparent inconsistency with the completeness of the first creation), because they ought to be such as the former angels would have been, had they never sinned. But the first angels in that case would have persevered without ever witnessing the punishment of sin; which, in respect to the others who were substituted for them after their fall, was impossible. For two beings who stand firm in truth are not equally deserving of praise, if one has never seen the punishment of sin, and the other forever witnesses its eternal reward. For it must not for a moment be supposed that good angels are upheld by the fall of evil angels, but by their own virtue. For, as they would have been condemned together, had the good sinned with the bad, so, had the unholy stood firm with the holy, they would have been likewise upheld. For, if, without the fall of a part, the rest could not be upheld, it would follow, either that none could ever be upheld, or else that it was necessary for some one to fall, in order by his punishment to uphold the rest; but either of these suppositions is absurd. Therefore, had all stood, all would have been upheld in the same manner as those who stood; and this manner I explained, as well as I could, when treating of the reason why God did not bestow perseverance upon the devil.

  Boso.

  You have proved that the evil angels must be restored from the human race; and from this reasoning it appears that the number of men chosen will not be less than that of fallen angels. But show, if you can, whether it will be greater.

  CHAPTER XVIII.

  Whether there will be more holy men than evil angels.

  Anselm.

  If the angels, before any of them fell, existed in that perfect number of which we have spoken, then men were only made to supply the place of the lost angels; and it is plain that their number will not be greater. But if that number were not found in all the angels together, then both the loss and the original deficiency must be made up from men, and more men will be chosen than there were fallen angels. And so we shall say that men were made not only to restore the diminished number, but also to complete the imperfect number.

  Boso.

  Which is the better theory, that angels were originally made perfect in number or that they were not?

  Anselm.

  I will state my views.

  Boso.

  I cannot ask more of you.

  Anselm.

  If man was created after the fall of evil angels, as some understand the account in Genesis, I do not think that I can prove from this either of these suppositions positively. For it is possible, I think, that the angels should have been created perfect in number, and that afterwards man was created to complete theirn umber when it had been lessened; and it is also possible that they were not perfect in number, because God deferred completing the number, as he does even now, determining in his own time to create man. Wherefore, either God would only complete that which was not yet perfect, or, if it were also diminished, He would restore it. But if the whole creation took place at once, and those days in which Moses appears to describe a successive creation are not to be understood like such days as ours, I cannot see how angels could have been created perfect in number. Since, if it were so, it seems to me that some, either men or angels, would fall immediately, else in heaven’s empire there would be more than the complete number required. If, therefore, all things were created at one and the same time, it should seem that angels, and the first two human beings, formed an incomplete number, so that, if no angel fell, the deficiency alone should be made up, but if any fell, the lost part should be restored; and that human nature, which had stood firm, though weaker than that of angels, might, as it were, justify God, and put the devil to silence, if he were to attribute his fall to weakness. And in case human nature fell, much more would it justify God against the devil, and even against itself, because, though made far weaker and of a mortal race, yet, in the elect, it would rise from its weakness to an estate exalted above that from which the devil was fallen, as far as good angels, to whom it should be equal, were advanced after the overthrow of the evil, because they persevered. From these reasons, I am rather inclined to the belief that there was not, originally, that complete number of angels necessary to perfect the celestial state; since, supposing that man and angels were not created at the same time, this is possible; and it would follow of necessity, if they were created at the same time, which is the opinion of the majority, because we read: “He, who liveth forever, created all things at once.” But if the perfection of the created universe is to be understood as consisting, not so much in the number of beings, as in the number of natures; it follows that human nature was either made to consummate this perfection, or that it was superfluous, which we should not dare affirm of the nature of the smallest reptile. Wherefore, then, it was made for itself, and not merely to restore the number of beings possessing another nature. From which it is plain that, even had no angel fallen, men would yet have had their place in the celestial kingdom. And hence it follows that there was not a perfect number of angels, even before a part fell; otherwise, of necessity some men or angels must fall, because it would be impossible that any should continue beyond the perfect number.

  Boso.

  You have not labored in vain.

  Anselm.

  There is, also, as I think, another reason which supports, in no small degree, the opinion that angels were not created perfect in number.

  Boso.

  Let us hear it.

  Anselm.

  Had a perfect number of angels been created, and had man been made only to fill the place of the lost angels, it is plain that, had not some angels fallen from their happiness, man would never have been exalted to it.

  Boso.

  We are agreed.

  Anselm.

  But if any one shall ask: “Since the elect rejoice as much over the fall of angels as over their own exaltation, because the one can never take place without the other; how can they be justified in this unholy joy, or how shall we say that angels are restored by the substitution of men, if they (the angels) would have remained free from this fault, had they not fallen, viz., from rejoicing over the fall of others?” We reply: Cannot men be made free from this fault? nay, how ought they to be happy with this fault? With what temerity, then, do we say that God neither wishes nor is able to make this substitution without this fault!

  Boso.

  Is not the case similar to that of the Gentiles who were called unto faith, because the Jews rejected it?

  Anselm.

  No; for had the Jews all believed, yet the Gentiles would have been called; for “in every nation he that feareth God and worketh righteousness is accepted of him.” But since the Jews despised the apostles, this was the immediate occasion of their turning to the Gentiles.

  Boso.

  I see no way of opposing you.

  Anselm.

  Whence does that joy which one has over another’s fall seem to arise?

  Boso.

  Whence, to be sure, but from the fact that each individual will be certain that, had not another fallen, he would never have attained the place where he now is?

  Anselm.

  If, then, no one had this certainty, there would be no cause for one to rejoice over the doom of another.

  Boso.

  So it appears.

  Anselm.

  Think you that any one of them can have this certainty, if their number shall far exceed that of those who fell?

  Boso.

  I certainly cannot think that any one would or ought to have it. For how can any one know whether he were created to restore the part diminished, or to make up that which was not yet complete in the number necessary to constitute the state? But all are sure that they were made with a view to the perfection of that kingdom.

  Anselm.

  If, then, there shall be a larger number than that of the fallen angels, no one can or ought to know that he would not have attained this height but for another’s fall.

  Boso.

  That is true.

  Anselm.

  No one, therefore, will have cause to rejoice over the perdition of another.

  Boso.

  So it appears.

  Anselm.

  Since, then, we see that if there are more men elected than the number of fallen angels, the incongruity will not follow which must follow if there are not more men elected; and since it is impossible that there should be anything incongruous in that celestial state, it becomes a necessary fact that angels were not made perfect in number, and that there will be more happy men than doomed angels.

  Boso.

  I see not how this can be denied.

  Anselm.

  I think that another reason can be brought to support this opinion.

  Boso.

  You ought then to present it.

  Anselm.

  We believe that the material substance of the world must be renewed, and that this will not take place until the number of the elect is accomplished, and that happy kingdom made perfect, and that after its completion there will be no change. Whence it may be reasoned that God planned to perfect both at the same time, in order that the inferior nature, which knew not God, might not be perfected before the superior nature which ought to enjoy God; and that the inferior, being renewed at the same time with the superior, might, as it were, rejoice in its own way; yes, that every creature having so glorious and excellent a consummation, might delight in its Creator and in itself, in turn, rejoicing always after its own manner, so that what the will effects in the rational nature of its own accord, this also the irrational creature naturally shows by the arrangement of God. For we are wont to rejoice in the fame of our ancestors, as when on the birthdays of the saints we delight with festive triumph, rejoicing in their honor. And this opinion derives support from the fact that, had not Adam sinned, God might yet put off the completion of that state until the number of men which he designed should be made out, and men themselves be transferred, so to speak, to an immortal state of bodily existence. For they had in paradise a kind of immortality, that is, a power not to die, but since it was possible for them to die, this power was not immortal, as if, indeed, they had not been capable of death. But if God determined to bring to perfection, at one and the same time, that intelligent and happy state and this earthly and irrational nature; it follows that either that state was not complete in the number of angels before the destruction of the wicked, but God was waiting to complete it by men, when he should renovate the material nature of the world; or that, if that kingdom were perfect in number, it was not in confirmation, and its confirmation must be deferred, even had no one sinned, until that renewal of the world to which we look forward; or that, if that confirmation could not be deferred so long, the renewal of the world must be hastened that both events might take place at the same time. But that God should determine to renew the world immediately after it was made, and to destroy in the very beginning those things which after this renewal would not exist, before any reason appeared for their creation, is simply absurd. It therefore follows that, since angels were not complete in number, their confirmation will not be long deferred on this account, because the renewal of a world just created ought soon to take place, for this is not fitting. But that God should wish to put off their confirmation to the future renewing of the world seems improper, since he so quickly accomplished it in some, and since we know that in regard to our first parents, if they had not sinned as they did, he would have confirmed them, as well as the angels who persevered. For, although not yet advanced to that equality with angels to which men were to attain, when the number taken from among them was complete; yet, had they preserved their original holiness, so as not to have sinned though tempted, they would have been confirmed, with all their offspring, so as never more to sin; just as when they were conquered by sin, they were so weakened as to be unable, in themselves, to live afterwards without sinning. For who dares affirm that wickedness is more powerful to bind a man in servitude, after he has yielded to it at the first persuasion, than holiness to confirm him in liberty when he has adhered to it in the original trial? For as human nature, being included in the person of our first parents, was in them wholly won over to sin (with the single exception of that man whom God being able to create from a virgin was equally able to save from the sin of Adam), so had they not sinned, human nature would have wholly conquered. It therefore remains that the celestial state was not complete in its original number, but must be completed from among men.

  Boso.

  What you say seems very reasonable to me. But what shall we think of that which is said respecting God: “He hath appointed the bounds of the people according to the number of the children of Israel;” which some, because for the expression “children of Israel” is found sometimes “angels of God,” explain in this way, that the number of elect men taken should be understood as equal to that of good angels?

  Anselm.

  This is not discordant with the previous opinion, if it be not certain that the number of angels who fell is the same as that of those who stood. For if there be more elect than evil angels, and elect men must needs be substituted for the evil angels, and it is possible for them to equal the number of the good angels, in that case there will be more holy men than evil angels. But remember with what condition I undertook to answer your inquiry, viz., that if I say anything not upheld by greater authority, though I appear to demonstrate it, yet it should be received with no further certainty than as my opinion for the present, until God makes some clearer revelation to me. For I am sure that, if I say anything which plainly opposes the Holy Scriptures, it is false; and if I am aware of it, I will no longer hold it. But if, with regard to subjects in which opposite opinions may be held without hazard, as that, for instance, which we now discuss; for if we know not whether there are to be more men elected than the number of the lost angels, and incline to either of these opinions rather than the other, I think the soul is not in danger; if, I say, in questions like this, we explain the Divine words so as to make them favor different sides, and there is nowhere found anything to decide, beyond doubt, the opinion that should be held, I think there is no censure to be given. As to the passage which you spoke of: “He hath determined the bounds of the people (or tribes) according to the number of the angels of God;” or as another translation has it: “according to the number of the children of Israel;” since both translations either mean the same thing, or are different, without contradicting each other, we may understand that good angels only are intended by both expressions, “angels of God,” and “children of Israel,” or that elect men only are meant, or that both angels and elect men are included, even the whole celestial kingdom. Or by angels of God may be understood holy angels only, and by children of Israel, holy men only; or, by children of Israel, angels only, and by angels of God, holy men. If good angels are intended in both expressions, it is the same as if only “angels of God” had been used; but if the whole heavenly kingdom were included, the meaning is, that a people, that is, the throng of elect men, is to be taken, or that there will be a people in this stage of existence, until the appointed number of that kingdom, not yet completed, shall be made up from among men. But I do not now see why angels only, or even angels and holy men together, are meant by the expression “children of Israel”; for it is not improper to call holy men “children of Israel,” as they are called “sons of Abraham.” And they can also properly be called “angels of God,” because they imitate the life of angels, and they are promised in heaven a likeness to and equality with angels, and all who live holy lives are angels of God. Therefore the confessors or martyrs are so called; for he who declares and bears witness to the truth, he is a messenger of God, that is, his angel. And if a wicked man is called a devil, as our Lord says of Judas, because they are alike in malice; why should not a good man be called an angel, because he follows holiness? Wherefore I think we may say that God hath appointed the bounds of the people according to the number of elect men, because men will exist and there will be a natural increase among them, until the number of elect men is accomplished; and when that occurs, the birth of men, which takes place in this life, will cease. But if by “angels of God” we only understand holy angels, and by “children of Israel” only holy men; it may be explained in two ways: that “God hath appointed the bounds of the people according to the number of the angels of God,” viz., either that so great a people, that is, so many men, will be taken as there are holy angels of God, or that a people will continue to exist upon earth, until the number of angels is completed from among men. And I think there is no other possible method of explanation: “he hath appointed the bounds of the people according to the number of the children of Israel,” that is, that there will continue to be a people in this stage of existence, as I said above, until the number of holy men is completed. And we infer from either translation that as many men will be taken as there were angels who remained steadfast. Yet, although lost angels must have their ranks filled by men, it does not follow that the number of lost angels was equal to that of those who persevered. But if any one affirms this, he will have to find means of invalidating the reasons given above, which prove, I think, that there was not among angels, before the fall, that perfect number before mentioned, and that there are more men to be saved than the number of evil angels.

  Boso.

  I by no means regret that I urged you to these remarks about the angels, for it has not been for nought. Now let us return from our digression.

  CHAPTER XIX.

  How man cannot be saved without satisfaction for sin.

  Anselm.

  It was fitting for God to fill the places of the fallen angels from among men.

  Boso.

  That is certain.

  Anselm.

  Therefore there ought to be in the heavenly empire as many men taken as substitutes for the angels as would correspond with the number whose place they shall take, that is, as many as there are good angels now; otherwise they who fell will not be restored, and it will follow that God either could not accomplish the good which he begun, or he will repent of having undertaken it; either of which is absurd.

  Boso.

  Truly it is fitting that men should be equal with good angels.

  Anselm.

  Have good angels ever sinned?

  Boso.

  No.

  Anselm.

  Can you think that man, who has sinned, and never made satisfaction to God for his sin, but only been suffered to go unpunished, may become the equal of an angel who has never sinned?

  Boso.

  These words I can both think of and utter, but can no more perceive their meaning than I can make truth out of falsehood.

  Anselm.

  Therefore it is not fitting that God should take sinful man without an atonement, in substitution for lost angels; for truth will not suffer man thus to be raised to an equality with holy beings.

  Boso.

  Reason shows this.

  Anselm.

  Consider, also, leaving out the question of equality with the angels, whether God ought, under such circumstances, to raise man to the same or a similar kind of happiness as that which he had before he sinned.

  Boso.

  Tell your opinion, and I will attend to it as well as I can.

  Anselm.

  Suppose a rich man possessed a choice pearl which had never been defiled, and which could not be taken from his hands without his permission; and that he determined to commit it to the treasury of his dearest and most valuable possessions.

  Boso.

  I accept your supposition.

  Anselm.

  What if he should allow it to be struck from his hand and cast in the mire, though he might have prevented it; and afterwards taking it all soiled by the mire and unwashed, should commit it again to his beautiful and loved casket; will you consider him a wise man?

  Boso.

  How can I? for would it not be far better to keep and preserve his pearl pure, than to have it polluted?

  Anselm.

  Would not God be acting like this, who held man in paradise, as it were in his own hand, without sin, and destined to the society of angels, and allowed the devil, inflamed with envy, to cast him into the mire of sin, though truly with man’s consent? For, had God chosen to restrain the devil, the devil could not have tempted man. Now I say, would not God be acting like this, should he restore man, stained with the defilement of sin, unwashed, that is, without any satisfaction, and always to remain so; should He restore him at once to paradise, from which he had been thrust out?

  Boso.

  I dare not deny the aptness of your comparison, were God to do this, and therefore do not admit that he can do this. For it should seem either that he could not accomplish what he designed, or else that he repented of his good intent, neither of which things is possible with God.

  Anselm.

  Therefore, consider it settled that, without satisfaction, that is, without voluntary payment of the debt, God can neither pass by the sin unpunished, nor can the sinner attain that happiness, or happiness like that, which he had before he sinned; for man cannot in this way be restored, or become such as he was before he sinned.

  Boso.

  I am wholly unable to refute your reasoning. But what say you to this: that we pray God, “put away our sins from us,” and every nation prays the God of its faith to put away its sins. For, if we pay our debt, why do we pray God to put it away? Is not God unjust to demand what has already been paid? But if we do not make payment, why do we supplicate in vain that he will do what he cannot do, because it is unbecoming?

  Anselm.

  He who does not pay says in vain: “Pardon”; but he who pays makes supplication, because prayer is properly connected with the payment; for God owes no man anything, but every creature owes God; and, therefore, it does not become man to treat with God as with an equal. But of this it is not now needful for me to answer you. For when you think why Christ died, I think you will see yourself the answer to your question.

  Boso.

  Your reply with regard to this matter suffices me for the present. And, moreover, you have so clearly shown that no man can attain happiness in sin, or be freed from sin without satisfaction for the trespass, that, even were I so disposed, I could not doubt it.

  CHAPTER XX.

  That satisfaction ought to be proportionate to guilt; and that man is of himself unable to accomplish this

  Anselm.

  Neither, I think, will you doubt this, that satisfaction should be proportionate to guilt.

  Boso.

  Otherwise sin would remain in a manner exempt from control (inordinatum), which cannot be, for God leaves nothing uncontrolled in his kingdom. But this is determined, that even the smallest unfitness is impossible with God.

  Anselm.

  Tell me, then, what payment you make God for your sin?

  Boso.

  Repentance, a broken and contrite heart, self-denial, various bodily sufferings, pity in giving and forgiving, and obedience.

  Anselm.

  What do you give to God in all these?

  Boso.

  Do I not honor God, when, for his love and fear, in heartfelt contrition I give up worldly joy, and despise, amid abstinence and toils, the delights and ease of this life, and submit obediently to him, freely bestowing my possessions in giving to and releasing others?

  Anselm.

  When you render anything to God which you owe him, irrespective of your past sin, you should not reckon this as the debt which you owe for sin. But you owe God every one of those things which you have mentioned. For, in this mortal state, there should be such love and such desire of attaining the true end of your being, which is the meaning of prayer, and such grief that you have not yet reached this object, and such fear lest you fail of it, that you should find joy in nothing which does not help you or give encouragement of your success. For you do not deserve to have a thing which you do not love and desire for its own sake, and the want of which at present, together with the great danger of never getting it, causes you no grief. This also requires one to avoid ease and worldly pleasures such as seduce the mind from real rest and pleasure, except so far as you think suffices for the accomplishment of that object. But you ought to view the gifts which you bestow as a part of your debt, since you know that what you give comes not from yourself, but from his whose servant both you are and he also to whom you give. And nature herself teaches you to do to your fellow servant, man to man, as you would be done by; and that he who will not bestow what he has ought not to receive what he has not. Of forgiveness, indeed, I speak briefly, for, as we said above, vengeance in no sense belongs to you, since you are not your own, nor is he who injures you yours or his, but you are both the servants of one Lord, made by him out of nothing. And if you avenge yourself upon your fellow servant, you proudly assume judgment over him when it is the peculiar right of God, the judge of all. But what do you give to God by your obedience, which is not owed him already, since he demands from you all that you are and have and can become?

  Boso.

  Truly I dare not say that in all these things I pay any portion of my debt to God.

  Anselm.

  How then do you pay God for your transgression?

  Boso.

  If in justice I owe God myself and all my powers, even when I do not sin, I have nothing left to render to him for my sin.

  Anselm.

  What will become of you then? How will you be saved?

  Boso.

  Merely looking at your arguments, I see no way of escape. But, turning to my belief, I hope through Christian faith, “which works by love,” that I may be saved, and the more, since we read that if the sinner turns from his inquity and does what is right, all his transgressions shall be forgotten.

  Anselm.

  This is only said of those who either looked for Christ before his coming, or who believe in him since he has appeared. But we set aside Christ and his religion as if they did not exist, when we proposed to inquire whether his coming were necessary to man—s salvation.

  Boso.

  We did so.

  Anselm.

  Let us then proceed by reason simply.

  Boso.

  Though you bring me into straits, yet I very much wish you to proceed as you have begun.

  CHAPTER XXI.

  How great a burden sin is.

  Anselm.

  Suppose that you did not owe any of those things which you have brought up as possible payment for your sin, let us inquire whether they can satisfy for a sin so small as one look contrary to the will of God.

  Boso.

  Did I not hear you question the thing, I should suppose that a single repentant feeling on my part would blot out this sin.

  Anselm.

  You have not as yet estimated the great burden of sin.

  Boso.

  Show it me then.

  Anselm.

  If you should find yourself in the sight of God, and one said to you: “Look thither;” and God, on the other hand, should say: “It is not my will that you should look;” ask your own heart what there is in all existing things which would make it right for you to give that look contrary to the will of God.

  Boso.

  I can find no motive which would make it right; unless, indeed I am so situated as to make it necessary for me either to do this, or some greater sin.

  Anselm.

  Put away all such necessity, and ask with regard to this sin only whether you can do it even for your own salvation.

  Boso.

  I see plainly that I cannot.

  Anselm.

  Not to detain you too long; what if it were necessary either that the whole universe, except God himself, should perish and fall back into nothing, or else that you should do so small a thing against the will of God?

  Boso.

  When I consider the action itself, it appears very slight; but when I view it as contrary to the will of God, I know of nothing so grievous, and of no loss that will compare with it; but sometimes we oppose another’s will without blame in order to preserve his property, so that afterwards he is glad that we opposed him.

  Anselm.

  This is in the case of man, who often does not know what is useful for him, or cannot make up his loss; but God is in want of nothing, and, should all things perish, can restore them as easily as he created them.

  Boso.

  I must confess that I ought not to oppose the will of God even to preserve the whole creation.

  Anselm.

  What if there were more worlds as full of beings as this?

  Boso.

  Were they increased to an infinite extent, and held before me in like manner, my reply would be the same.

  Anselm.

  You cannot answer more correctly, but consider, also, should it happen that you gave the look contrary to God—s will, what payment you can make for this sin?

  Boso.

  I can only repeat what I said before.

  Anselm.

  So heinous is our sin whenever we knowingly oppose the will of God even in the slightest thing; since we are always in his sight, and he always enjoins it upon us not to sin.

  Boso.

  I cannot deny it.

  Anselm.

  Therefore you make no satisfaction unless you restore something greater than the amount of that obligation, which should restrain you from committing the sin.

  Boso.

  Reason seems to demand this, and to make the contrary wholly impossible.

  Anselm.

  Even God cannot raise to happiness any being bound at all by the debt of sin, because He ought not to.

  Boso.

  This decision is most weighty.

  Anselm.

  Listen to an additional reason which makes it no less difficult for man to be reconciled to God.

  Boso.

  This alone would drive me to despair, were it not for the consolation of faith.

  Anselm.

  But listen.

  Boso.

  Say on.

  CHAPTER XXII.

  What contempt man brought upon God, when he allowed himself to be conquered by the devil; for which he can make no satisfaction.

  Anselm.

  Man being made holy was placed in paradise, as it were in the place of God, between God and the devil, to conquer the devil by not yielding to his temptation, and so to vindicate the honor of God and put the devil to shame, because that man, though weaker and dwelling upon earth, should not sin though tempted by the devil, while the devil, though stronger and in heaven, sinned without any to tempt him. And when man could have easily effected this, he, without compulsion and of his own accord, allowed himself to be brought over to the will of the devil, contrary to the will and honor of God.

  Boso.

  To what would you bring me?

  Anselm.

  Decide for yourself if it be not contrary to the honor of God for man to be reconciled to Him, with this calumnious reproach still heaped upon God; unless man first shall have honored God by overcoming the devil, as he dishonored him in yielding to the devil. Now the victory ought to be of this kind, that, as in strength and immortal vigor, he freely yielded to the devil to sin, and on this account justly incurred the penalty of death; so, in his weakness and mortality, which he had brought upon himself, he should conquer the devil by the pain of death, while wholly avoiding sin. But this cannot be done, so long as from the deadly effect of the first transgression, man is conceived and born in sin.

  Boso.

  Again I say that the thing is impossible, and reason approves what you say.

  Anselm.

  Let me mention one thing more, without which man’s reconciliation cannot be justly effected, and the impossibility is the same.

  Boso.

  You have already presented so many obligations which we ought to fulfil, that nothing which you can add will alarm me more.

  Anselm.

  Yet listen

  Boso.

  I will.

  CHAPTER XXIII.

  What man took from God by his sin, which he has no power to repay.

  Anselm.

  What did man take from God, when he allowed himself to be overcome by the devil?

  Boso.

  Go on to mention, as you have begun, the evil things which can be added to those already shown for I am ignorant of them.

  Anselm.

  Did not man take from God whatever He had purposed to do for human nature?

  Boso.

  There is no denying that.

  Anselm.

  Listen to the voice of strict justice; and judge according to that whether man makes to God a real satisfaction for his sin, unless, by overcoming the devil, man restore to God what he took from God in allowing himself to be conquered by the devil; so that, as by this conquest over man the devil took what belonged to God, and God was the loser, so in man’s victory the devil may be despoiled, and God recover his right.

  Boso.

  Surely nothing can be more exactly or justly conceived.

  Anselm.

  Think you that supreme justice can violate this justice?

  Boso.

  I dare not think it.

  Anselm.

  Therefore man cannot and ought not by any means to receive from God what God designed to give him, unless he return to God everything which he took from him; so that, as by man God suffered loss, by man, also, He might recover His loss. But this cannot be effected except in this way: that, as in the fall of man all human nature was corrupted, and, as it were, tainted with sin, and God will not choose one of such a race to fill up the number in his heavenly kingdom; so, by man’s victory, as many men may be justified from sin as are needed to complete the number which man was made to fill. But a sinful man can by no means do this, for a sinner cannot justify a sinner.

  Boso.

  There is nothing more just or necessary; but, from all these things, the compassion of God and the hope of man seems to fail, as far as regards that happiness for which man was made.

  Anselm.

  Yet wait a little.

  Boso.

  Have you anything further?

  CHAPTER XXIV.

  How, as long as man does not restore what he owes God, he cannot be happy, nor is he excused by want of power.

  Anselm.

  If a man is called unjust who does not pay his fellow-man a debt, much more is he unjust who does not restore what he owes God.

  Boso.

  If he can pay and yet does not, he is certainly unjust. But if he be not able, wherein is he unjust?

  Anselm.

  Indeed, if the origin of his inability were not in himself, there might be some excuse for him. But if in this very impotence lies the fault, as it does not lessen the sin, neither does it excuse him from paying what is due. Suppose one should assign his slave a certain piece of work, and should command him not to throw himself into a ditch, which he points out to him and from which he could not extricate himself; and suppose that the slave, despising his master—s command and warning, throws himself into the ditch before pointed out, so as to be utterly unable to accomplish the work assigned; think you that his inability will at all excuse him for not doing his appointed work?

  Boso.

  By no means, but will rather increase his crime, since he brought his inability upon himself. For doubly hath he sinned, in not doing what he was commanded to do and in doing what he was forewarned not to do.

  Anselm.

  Just so inexcusable is man, who has voluntarily brought upon himself a debt which he cannot pay, and by his own fault disabled himself, so that he can neither escape his previous obligation not to sin, nor pay the debt which he has incurred by sin. For his very inability is guilt, because he ought not to have it; nay, he ought to be free from it; for as it is a crime not to have what he ought, it is also a crime to have what he ought not. Therefore, as it is a crime in man not to have that power which he received to avoid sin, it is also a crime to have that inability by which he can neither do right and avoid sin, nor restore the debt which he owes on account of his sin. For it is by his own free action that he loses that power, and falls into this inability. For not to have the power which one ought to have, is the same thing as to have the inability which one ought not to have. Therefore man—s inability to restore what he owes to God, an inability brought upon himself for that very purpose, does not excuse man from paying; for the result of sin cannot excuse the sin itself.

  Boso.

  This argument is exceedingly weighty, and must be true.

  Anselm.

  Man, then, is unjust in not paying what he owes to God.

  Boso.

  This is very true; for he is unjust, both in not paying, and in not being able to pay.

  Anselm.

  But no unjust person shall be admitted to happiness; for as that happiness is complete in which there is nothing wanting, so it can belong to no one who is not so pure as to have no injustice found in him.

  Boso.

  I dare not think otherwise.

  Anselm.

  He, then, who does not pay God what he owes can never be happy.

  Boso.

  I cannot deny that this is so.

  Anselm.

  But if you choose to say that a merciful God remits to the suppliant his debt, because he cannot pay; God must be said to dispense with one of two things, viz., either this which man ought voluntarily to render but cannot, that is, an equivalent for his sin, a thing which ought not to be given up even to save the whole universe besides God; or else this, which, as I have before said, God was about to take away from man by punishment, even against man’s will, viz., happiness. But if God gives up what man ought freely to render, for the reason that man cannot repay it, what is this but saying that God gives up what he is unable to obtain? But it is mockery to ascribe such compassion to God. But if God gives up what he was about to take from unwilling man, because man is unable to restore what he ought to restore freely, He abates the punishment and makes man happy on account of his sin, because he has what he ought not to have. For he ought not to have this inability, and therefore as long as he has it without atonement it is his sin. And truly such compassion on the part of God is wholly contrary to the Divine justice, which allows nothing but punishment as the recompense of sin. Therefore, as God cannot be inconsistent with himself, his compassion cannot be of this nature.

  Boso.

  I think, then, we must look for another mercy than this.

  Anselm.

  But suppose it were true that God pardons the man who does not pay his debt because he cannot.

  Boso.

  I could wish it were so.

  Anselm.

  But while man does not make payment, he either wishes to restore, or else he does not wish to. Now, if he wishes to do what he cannot, he will be needy, and if he does not wish to, he will be unjust.

  Boso.

  Nothing can be plainer.

  Anselm.

  But whether needy or unjust, he will not be happy.

  Boso.

  This also is plain.

  Anselm.

  So long, then, as he does not restore, he will not be happy.

  Boso.

  If God follows the method of justice, there is no escape for the miserable wretch, and God—s compassion seems to fail.

  Anselm.

  You have demanded an explanation; now hear it. I do not deny that God is merciful, who preserveth man and beast, according to the multitude of his mercies. But we are speaking of that exceeding pity by which he makes man happy after this life. And I think that I have amply proved, by the reasons given above, that happiness ought not to be bestowed upon any one whose sins have not been wholly put away; and that this remission ought not to take place, save by the payment of the debt incurred by sin, according to the extent of sin. And if you think that any objections can be brought against these proofs, you ought to mention them.

  Boso.

  I see not how your reasons can be at all invalidated.

  Anselm.

  Nor do I, if rightly understood. But even if one of the whole number be confirmed by impregnable truth, that should be sufficient. For truth is equally secured against all doubt, if it be demonstrably proved by one argument as by many.

  Boso.

  Surely this is so. But how, then, shall man be saved, if he neither pays what he owes, and ought not to be saved without paying? Or, with what face shall we declare that God, who is rich in mercy above human conception, cannot exercise this compassion?

  Anselm.

  This is the question which you ought to ask of those in whose behalf you are speaking, who have no faith in the need of Christ for man’s salvation, and you should also request them to tell how man can be saved without Christ. But, if they are utterly unable to do it, let them cease from mocking us, and let them hasten to unite themselves with us, who do not doubt that man can be saved through Christ; else let them despair of being saved at all. And if this terrifies them, let them believe in Christ as we do, that they may be saved.

  Boso.

  Let me ask you, as I have begun, to show me how a man is saved by Christ.

  CHAPTER XXV.

  How man’s salvation by Christ is necessarily possible.

  Anselm.

  Is it not sufficiently proved that man can be saved by Christ, when even infidels do not deny that man can be happy somehow, and it has been sufficiently shown that, leaving Christ out of view, no salvation can be found for man? For, either by Christ or by some one else can man be saved, or else not at all. If, then, it is false that man cannot be saved at all, or that he can be saved in any other way, his salvation must necessarily be by Christ.

  Boso.

  But what reply will you make to a person who perceives that man cannot be saved in any other way, and yet, not understanding how he can be saved by Christ, sees fit to declare that there cannot be any salvation either by Christ or in any other way?

  Anselm.

  What reply ought to be made to one who ascribes impossibility to a necessary truth, because he does not understand how it can be?

  Boso.

  That he is a fool.

  Anselm.

  Then what he says must be despised.

  Boso.

  Very true; but we ought to show him in what way the thing is true which he holds to be impossible.

  Anselm.

  Do you not perceive, from what we have said above, that it is necessary for some men to attain to felicity? For, if it is unfitting for God to elevate man with any stain upon him, to that for which he made him free from all stain, lest it should seem that God had repented of his good intent, or was unable to accomplish his designs; far more is it impossible, on account of the same unfitness, that no man should be exalted to that state for which he was made. Therefore, a satisfaction such as we have above proved necessary for sin, must be found apart from the Christian faith, which no reason can show; or else we must accept the Christian doctrine. For what is clearly made out by absolute reasoning ought by no means to be questioned, even though the method of it be not understood.

  Boso.

  What you say is true.

  Anselm.

  Why, then, do you question further?

  Boso.

  I come not for this purpose, to have you remove doubts from my faith, but to have you show me the reason for my confidence. Therefore, as you have brought me thus far by your reasoning, so that I perceive that man as a sinner owes God for his sin what he is unable to pay, and cannot be saved without paying; I wish you would go further with me, and enable me to understand, by force of reasoning, the fitness of all those things which the Catholic faith enjoins upon us with regard to Christ, if we hope to be saved; and how they avail for the salvation of man, and how God saves man by compassion; when he never remits his sin, unless man shall have rendered what was due on account of his sin. And, to make your reasoning the clearer, begin at the beginning, so as to rest it upon a strong foundation.

  Anselm.

  Now God help me, for you do not spare me in the least, nor consider the weakness of my skill, when you enjoin so great a work upon me. Yet I will attempt it, as I have begun, not trusting in myself but in God, and will do what I can with his help. But let us separate the things which remain to be said from those which have been said, by a new introduction, lest by their unbroken length, these things become tedious to one who wishes to read them.

  BOOK SECOND.

  CHAPTER I.

  How man was made holy by God, so as to be happy in the enjoyment of God.

  Anselm.

  It ought not to be disputed that rational nature was made holy by God, in order to be happy in enjoying Him. For to this end is it rational, in order to discern justice and injustice, good and evil, and between the greater and the lesser good. Otherwise it was made rational in vain. But God made it not rational in vain. Wherefore, doubtless, it was made rational for this end. In like manner is it proved that the intelligent creature received the power of discernment for this purpose, that he might hate and shun evil, and love and choose good, and especially the greater good. For else in vain would God have given him that power of discernment, since man’s discretion would be useless unless he loved and avoided according to it. But it does not befit God to give such power in vain. It is, therefore, established that rational nature was created for this end, viz., to love and choose the highest good supremely, for its own sake and nothing else; for if the highest good were chosen for any other reason, then something else and not itself would be the thing loved. But intelligent nature cannot fulfil this purpose without being holy. Therefore that it might not in vain be made rational, it was made, in order to fulfil this purpose, both rational and holy. Now, if it was made holy in order to choose and love the highest good, then it was made such in order to follow sometimes what it loved and chose, or else it was not. But if it were not made holy for this end, that it might follow what it loves and chooses, then in vain was it made to love and choose holiness; and there can be no reason why it should be ever bound to follow holiness. Therefore, as long as it will be holy in loving and choosing the supreme good, for which it was made, it will be miserable; because it will be impotent despite of its will, inasmuch as it does not have what it desires. But this is utterly absurd. Wherefore rational nature was made holy, in order to be happy in enjoying the supreme good, which is God. Therefore man, whose nature is rational, was made holy for this end, that he might be happy in enjoying God.

  CHAPTER II.

  How man would never have died, unless he had sinned

  Anselm.

  Moreover, it is easily proved that man was so made as not to be necessarily subject to death; for, as we have already said, it is inconsistent with God’s wisdom and justice to compel man to suffer death without fault, when he made him holy to enjoy eternal blessedness. It therefore follows that had man never sinned he never would have died.

  CHAPTER III.

  How man will rise with the same body which he has in this world.

  Anselm.

  From this the future resurrection of the dead is clearly proved. For if man is to be perfectly restored, the restoration should make him such as he would have been had he never sinned.

  Boso.

  It must be so.

  Anselm.

  Therefore, as man, had he not sinned, was to have been transferred with the same body to an immortal state, so when he shall be restored, it must properly be with his own body as he lived in this world.

  Boso.

  But what shall we say to one who tells us that this is right enough with regard to those in whom humanity shall be perfectly restored, but is not necessary as respects the reprobate?

  Anselm.

  We know of nothing more just or proper than this, that as man, had he continued in holiness, would have been perfectly happy for eternity, both in body and in soul; so, if he persevere in wickedness, he shall be likewise completely miserable forever.

  Boso.

  You have promptly satisfied me in these matters.

  CHAPTER IV.

  How God will complete, in respect to human nature, what he has begun

  Anselm.

  From these things, we can easily see that God will either complete what he has begun with regard to human nature, or else he has made to no end so lofty a nature, capable of so great good. Now if it be understood that God has made nothing more valuable than rational existence capable of enjoying him; it is altogether foreign from his character to suppose that he will suffer that rational existence utterly to perish.

  Boso.

  No reasonable being can think otherwise.

  Anselm.

  Therefore is it necessary for him to perfect in human nature what he has begun. But this, as we have already said, cannot be accomplished save by a complete expiation of sin, which no sinner can effect for himself.

  Boso.

  I now understand it to be necessary for God to complete what he has begun, lest there be an unseemly falling off from his design.

  CHAPTER V.

  How, although the thing may be necessary, God may not do it by a compulsory necessity; and what is the nature of that necessity which removes or lessens gratitude, and what necessity increases it.

  Boso.

  But if it be so, then God seems as it were compelled, for the sake of avoiding what is unbecoming, to secure the salvation of man. How, then, can it be denied that he does it more on his own account than on ours? But if it be so, what thanks do we owe him for what he does for himself? How shall we attribute our salvation to his grace, if he saves us from necessity?

  Anselm.

  There is a necessity which takes away or lessens our gratitude to a benefactor, and there is also a necessity by which the favor deserves still greater thanks. For when one does a benefit from a necessity to which he is unwillingly subjected, less thanks are due him, or none at all. But when he freely places himself under the necessity of benefiting another, and sustains that necessity without reluctance, then he certainly deserves greater thanks for the favor. For this should not be called necessity but grace, inasmuch as he undertook or maintains it, not with any constraint, but freely. For if that which to-day you promise of your own accord you will give to-morrow, you do give to-morrow with the same willingness; though it be necessary for you, if possible, to redeem your promise, or make yourself a liar; notwithstanding, the recipient of your favor is as much indebted for your precious gift as if you had not promised it, for you were not obliged to make yourself his debtor before the time of giving it: just so is it when one undertakes, by a vow, a design of holy living. For though after his vow he ought necessarily to perform, lest he suffer the judgment of an apostate, and, although he may be compelled to keep it even unwillingly, yet, if he keep his vow cheerfully, he is not less but more pleasing to God than if he had not vowed. For he has not only given up the life of the world, but also his personal liberty, for the sake of God; and he cannot be said to live a holy life of necessity, but with the same freedom with which he took the vow. Much more, therefore, do we owe all thanks to God for completing his intended favor to man; though, indeed, it would not be proper for him to fail in his good design, because wanting nothing in himself he begun it for our sake and not his own. For what man was about to do was not hidden from God at his creation; and yet by freely creating man, God as it were bound himself to complete the good which he had begun. In fine, God does nothing by necessity, since he is not compelled or restrained in anything. And when we say that God does anything to avoid dishonor, which he certainly does not fear, we must mean that God does this from the necessity of maintaining his honor; which necessity is after all no more than this, viz., the immutability of his honor, which belongs to him in himself, and is not derived from another; and therefore it is not properly called necessity. Yet we may say, although the whole work which God does for man is of grace, that it is necessary for God, on account of his unchangeable goodness, to complete the work which he has begun.

  Boso.

  I grant it.

  CHAPTER VI.

  How no being, except the God-man, can make the atonement by which man is saved.

  Anselm.

  But this cannot be effected, except the price paid to God for the sin of man be something greater than all the universe besides God.

  Boso.

  So it appears.

  Anselm.

  Moreover, it is necessary that he who can give God anything of his own which is more valuable than all things in the possession of God, must be greater than all else but God himself.

  Boso.

  I cannot deny it.

  Anselm.

  Therefore none but God can make this satisfaction.

  Boso.

  So it appears.

  Anselm.

  But none but a man ought to do this, other wise man does not make the satisfaction.

  Boso.

  Nothing seems more just.

  Anselm.

  If it be necessary, therefore, as it appears, that the heavenly kingdom be made up of men, and this cannot be effected unless the aforesaid satisfaction be made, which none but God can make and none but man ought to make, it is necessary for the Godman to make it.

  Boso.

  Now blessed be God! we have made a great discovery with regard to our question. Go on, therefore, as you have begun. For I hope that God will assist you.

  Anselm.

  Now must we inquire how God can become man.

  CHAPTER VII.

  How necessary it is for the same being to be perfect God and perfect man.

  Anselm.

  The Divine and human natures cannot alternate, so that the Divine should become human or the human Divine; nor can they be so commingled as that a third should be produced from the two which is neither wholly Divine nor wholly human. For, granting that it were possible for either to be changed into the other, it would in that case be only God and not man, or man only and not God. Or, if they were so commingled that a third nature sprung from the combination of the two (as from two animals, a male and a female of different species, a third is produced, which does not preserve entire the species of either parent, but has a mixed nature derived from both), it would neither be God nor man. Therefore the Godman, whom we require to be of a nature both human and Divine, cannot be produced by a change from one into the other, nor by an imperfect commingling of both in a third; since these things cannot be, or, if they could be, would avail nothing to our purpose. Moreover, if these two complete natures are said to be joined somehow, in such a way that one may be Divine while the other is human, and yet that which is God not be the same with that which is man, it is impossible for both to do the work necessary to be accomplished. For God will not do it, because he has no debt to pay; and man will not do it, because he cannot. Therefore, in order that the God-man may perform this, it is necessary that the same being should be perfect God and perfect man, in order to make this atonement. For he cannot and ought not to do it, unless he be very God and very man. Since, then, it is necessary that the God-man preserve the completeness of each nature, it is no less necessary that these two natures be united entire in one person, just as a body and a reasonable soul exist together in every human being; for otherwise it is impossible that the same being should be very God and very man.

  Boso.

  All that you say is satisfactory to me.

  CHAPTER VIII

  How it behoved God to take a man of the race of Adam, and born of a woman

  Anselm.

  It now remains to inquire whence and how God shall assume human nature. For he will either take it from Adam, or else he will make a new man, as he made Adam originally. But, if he makes a new man, not of Adam’s race, then this man will not belong to the human family, which descended from Adam, and therefore ought not to make atonement for it, because he never belonged to it. For, as it is right for man to make atonement for the sin of man, it is also necessary that he who makes the atonement should be the very being who has sinned, or else one of the same race. Otherwise, neither Adam nor his race would make satisfaction for themselves. Therefore, as through Adam and Eve sin was propagated among all men, so none but themselves, or one born of them, ought to make atonement for the sin of men. And, since they cannot, one born of them must fulfil this work. Moreover, as Adam and his whole race, had he not sinned, would have stood firm without the support of any other being, so, after the fall, the same race must rise and be exalted by means of itself. For, whoever restores the race to its place, it will certainly stand by that being who has made this restoration. Also, when God created human nature in Adam alone, and would only make woman out of man, that by the union of both sexes there might be increase, in this he showed plainly that he wished to produce all that he intended with regard to human nature from man alone. Wherefore, if the race of Adam be reinstated by any being not of the same race, it will not be restored to that dignity which it would have had, had not Adam sinned, and so will not be completely restored; and, besides, God will seem to have failed of his purpose, both which suppositions are incongruous. It is, therefore, necessary that the man by whom Adam—s race shall be restored be taken from Adam.

  Boso.

  If we follow reason, as we proposed to do, this is the necessary result.

  Anselm.

  Let us now examine the question, whether the human nature taken by God must be produced from a father and mother, as other men are, or from man alone, or from woman alone. For, in whichever of these three modes it be, it will be produced from Adam and Eve, for from these two is every person of either sex descended. And of these three modes, no one is easier for God than another, that it should be selected on this account.

  Boso.

  So far, it is well.

  Anselm.

  It is no great toil to show that that man will be brought into existence in a nobler and purer manner, if produced from man alone, or woman alone, than if springing from the union of both, as do all other men.

  Boso.

  I agree with you.

  Anselm.

  Therefore must he be taken either from man alone, or woman alone.

  Boso.

  There is no other source.

  Anselm.

  In four ways can God create man, viz., either of man and woman, in the common way; or neither of man nor woman, as he created Adam; or of man without woman, as he made Eve; or of woman without man, which thus far he has never done. Wherefore, in order to show that this last mode is also under his power, and was reserved for this very purpose, what more fitting than that he should take that man whose origin we are seeking from a woman without a man? Now whether it be more worthy that he be born of a virgin, or one not a virgin, we need not discuss, but must affirm, beyond all doubt, that the God-man should be born of a virgin.

  Boso.

  Your speech gratifies my heart.

  Anselm.

  Does what we have said appear sound, or is it unsubstantial as a cloud, as you have said infidels declare?

  Boso.

  Nothing can be more sound.

  Anselm.

  Paint not, therefore, upon baseless emptiness, but upon solid truth, and tell how clearly fitting it is that, as man’s sin and the cause of our condemnation sprung from a woman, so the cure of sin and the source of our salvation should also be found in a woman. And that women may not despair of attaining the inheritance of the blessed, because that so dire an evil arose from woman, it is proper that from woman also so great a blessing should arise, that their hopes may be revived. Take also this view. If it was a virgin which brought all evil upon the human race, it is much more appropriate that a virgin should be the occasion of all good. And this also. If woman, whom God made from man alone, was made of a virgin (de virgine), it is peculiarly fitting for that man also, who shall spring from a woman, to be born of a woman without man. Of the pictures which can be superadded to this, showing that the God-man ought to be born of a virgin, we will say nothing. These are sufficient.

  Boso.

  They are certainly very beautiful and reasonable.

  CHAPTER IX.

  How of necessity the Word only can unite in one person with man.

  Anselm.

  Now must we inquire further, in what person God, who exists in three persons, shall take upon himself the nature of man. For a plurality of persons cannot take one and the same man into a unity of person. Wherefore in one person only can this be done. But, as respects this personal unity of God and man, and in which of the Divine persons this ought to be effected, I have expressed myself, as far as I think needful for the present inquiry, in a letter on the Incarnation of the Word, addressed to my lord, the Pope Urban.

  Boso.

  Yet briefly glance at this matter, why the person of the Son should be incarnated rather than that of the Father or the Holy Spirit.

  Anselm.

  If one of the other persons be incarnated, there will be two sons in the Trinity, viz., the Son of God, who is the Son before the incarnation, and he also who, by the incarnation, will be the son of the virgin; and among the persons which ought always to be equal there will be an inequality as respects the dignity of birth. For the one born of God will have a nobler birth than he who is born of the virgin. Likewise, if the Father become incarnate, there will be two grandsons in the Trinity; for the Father, by assuming humanity, will be the grandson of the parents of the virgin, and the Word, though having nothing to do with man, will yet be the grandson of the virgin, since he will be the son of her son. But all these things are incongruous and do not pertain to the incarnation of the Word. And there is yet another reason which renders it more fitting for the Son to become incarnate than the other persons. It is, that for the Son to pray to the Father is more proper than for any other person of the Trinity to supplicate his fellow. Moreover, man, for whom he was to pray, and the devil, whom he was to vanquish, have both put on a false likeness to God by their own will. Wherefore they have sinned, as it were, especially against the person of the Son, who is believed to be the very image of God. Wherefore the punishment or pardon of guilt is with peculiar propriety ascribed to him upon whom chiefly the injury was inflicted. Since, therefore, infallible reason has brought us to this necessary conclusion, that the Divine and human natures must unite in one person, and that this is evidently more fitting in respect to the person of the Word than the other persons, we determine that God the Word must unite with man in one person.

  Boso.

  The way by which you lead me is so guarded by reason that I cannot deviate from it to the right or left.

  Anselm.

  It is not I who lead you, but he of whom we are speaking, without whose guidance we have no power to keep the way of truth.

  CHAPTER X.

  How this man dies not of debt; and in what sense he can or cannot sin; and how neither he nor an angel deserves praise for their holiness, if it is impossible for them to sin.

  Anselm.

  We ought not to question whether this man was about to die as a debt, as all other men do. For, if Adam would not have died had he not committed sin, much less should this man suffer death, in whom there can be no sin, for he is God.

  Boso.

  Let me delay you a little on this point. For in either case it is no slight question with me whether it be said that he can sin or that he cannot. For if it be said that he cannot sin, it should seem hard to be believed. For to say a word concerning him, not as of one who never existed in the manner we have spoken hitherto, but as of one whom we know and whose deeds we know; who, I say, will deny that he could have done many things which we call sinful? For, to say nothing of other things, how shall we say that it was not possible for him to commit the sin of lying? For, when he says to the Jews, of his Father: “If I say that I know him not, I shall be a liar, like unto you,” and, in this sentence, makes use of the words: “I know him not,” who says that he could not have uttered these same four words, or expressing the same thing differently, have declared, “I know him not?” Now had he done so, he would have been a liar, as he himself says, and therefore a sinner. Therefore, since he could do this, he could sin.

  Anselm.

  It is true that he could say this, and also that he could not sin.

  Boso.

  How is that?

  Anselm.

  All power follows the will. For, when I say that I can speak or walk, it is understood, if I choose. For, if the will be not implied as acting, there is no power, but only necessity. For, when I say that I can be dragged or bound unwillingly, this is not my power, but necessity and the power of another; since I am able to be dragged or bound in no other sense than this, that another can drag or bind me. So we can say of Christ, that he could lie, so long as we understand, if he chose to do so. And, since he could not lie unwillingly and could not wish to lie, none the less can it be said that he could not lie. So in this way it is both true that he could and could not lie.

  Boso.

  Now let us return to our original inquiry with regard to that man, as if nothing were known of him. I say, then, if he were unable to sin, because, according to you, he could not wish to sin, he maintains holiness of necessity, and therefore he will not be holy from free will. What thanks, then, will he deserve for his holiness? For we are accustomed to say that God made man and angel capable of sinning on this account, that, when of their own free will they maintained holiness, though they might have abandoned it, they might deserve commendation and reward, which they would not have done had they been necessarily holy.

  Anselm.

  Are not the angels worthy of praise, though unable to commit sin?

  Boso.

  Doubtless they are, because they deserved this present inability to sin from the fact that when they could sin they refused to do so.

  Anselm.

  What say you with respect to God, who cannot sin, and yet has not deserved this, by refusing to sin when he had the power? Must not he be praised for his holiness?

  Boso.

  I should like to have you answer that question for me; for if I say that he deserves no praise, I know that I speak falsely. If, on the other hand, I say that he does deserve praise, I am afraid of invalidating my reasoning with respect to the angels.

  Anselm.

  The angels are not to be praised for their holiness because they could sin, but because it is owing to themselves, in a certain sense, that now they cannot sin. And in this respect are they in a measure like God, who has, from himself, whatever he possesses. For a person is said to give a thing, who does not take it away when he can; and to do a thing is but the same as not to prevent it, when that is in one—s power. When, therefore, the angel could depart from holiness and yet did not, and could make himself unholy yet did not, we say with propriety that he conferred virtue upon himself and made himself holy. In this sense, therefore, has he holiness of himself (for the creature cannot have it of himself in any other way), and, therefore, should be praised for his holiness, because he is not holy of necessity but freely; for that is improperly called necessity which involves neither compulsion nor restraint. Wherefore, since whatever God has he has perfectly of himself, he is most of all to be praised for the good things which he possesses and maintains not by any necessity, but, as before said, by his own infinite unchangeableness. Therefore, likewise, that man who will be also God, since every good thing which he possesses comes from himself, will be holy not of necessity but voluntarily, and, therefore, will deserve praise. For, though human nature will have what it has from the Divine nature, yet it will likewise have it from itself, since the two natures will be united in one person.

  Boso.

  You have satisfied me on this point; and I see clearly that it is both true that he could not sin, and yet that he deserves praise for his holiness. But now I think the question arises, since God could make such a man, why he did not create angels and our first parents so as to be incapable of sin, and yet praiseworthy for their holiness?

  Anselm.

  Do you know what you are saying?

  Boso.

  I think I understand, and it is therefore I ask why he did not make them so.

  Anselm.

  Because it was neither possible nor right for any one of them to be the same with God, as we say that man was. And if you ask why he did not bring the three persons, or at least the Word, into unity with men at that time, I answer: Because reason did not at all demand any such thing then, but wholly forbade it, for God does nothing without reason.

  Boso.

  I blush to have asked the question. Go on with what you have to say.

  Anselm.

  We must conclude, then, that he should not be subject to death, inasmuch as he will not be a sinner.

  Boso.

  I must agree with you.

  CHAPTER XI.

  How Christ dies of his own power, and how mortality does not inhere in the essential nature of man.

  Anselm.

  Now, also, it remains to inquire whether, as man’s nature is, it is possible for that man to die?

  Boso.

  We need hardly dispute with regard to this, since he will be really man, and every man is by nature mortal.

  Anselm.

  I do not think mortality inheres in the essential nature of man, but only as corrupted. Since, had man never sinned, and had his immortality been unchangeably confirmed, he would have been as really man; and, when the dying rise again, incorruptible, they will no less be really men. For, if mortality was an essential attribute of human nature, then he who was immortal could not be man. Wherefore, neither corruption nor incorruption belong essentially to human nature, for neither makes nor destroys a man; but happiness accrues to him from the one, and misery from the other. But since all men die, mortality is included in the definition of man, as given by philosophers, for they have never even believed in the possibility of man’s being immortal in all respects. And so it is not enough to prove that that man ought to be subject to death, for us to say that he will be in all respects a man.

  Boso.

  Seek then for some other reason, since I know of none, if you do not, by which we may prove that he can die.

  Anselm.

  We may not doubt that, as he will be God, he will possess omnipotence.

  Boso.

  Certainly.

  Anselm.

  He can, then, if he chooses, lay down his life and take it again.

  Boso.

  If not, he would scarcely seem to be omnipotent.

  Anselm.

  Therefore is he able to avoid death if he chooses, and also to die and rise again. Moreover, whether he lays down his life by the intervention of no other person, or another causes this, so that he lays it down by permitting it to be taken, it makes no difference as far as regards his power.

  Boso.

  There is no doubt about it.

  Anselm.

  If, then, he chooses to allow it, he could be slain; and if he were unwilling to allow it, he could not be slain.

  Boso.

  To this we are unavoidably brought by reason.

  Anselm.

  Reason has also taught us that the gift which he presents to God, not of debt but freely, ought to be something greater than anything in the possession of God.

  Boso.

  Yes.

  Anselm.

  Now this can neither be found beneath him nor above him.

  Boso.

  Very true.

  Anselm.

  In himself, therefore, must it be found.

  Boso.

  So it appears.

  Anselm.

  Therefore will he give himself, or something pertaining to himself.

  Boso.

  I cannot see how it should be otherwise.

  Anselm.

  Now must we inquire what sort of a gift this should be? For he may not give himself to God, or anything of his, as if God did not have what was his own. For every creature belongs to God.

  Boso.

  This is so.

  Anselm.

  Therefore must this gift be understood in this way, that he somehow gives up himself, or something of his, to the honor of God, which he did not owe as a debtor.

  Boso.

  So it seems from what has been already said.

  Anselm.

  If we say that he will give himself to God by obedience, so as, by steadily maintaining holiness, to render himself subject to his will, this will not be giving a thing not demanded of him by God as his due. For every reasonable being owes his obedience to God.

  Boso.

  This cannot be denied.

  Anselm.

  Therefore must it be in some other way that he gives himself, or something belonging to him, to God.

  Boso.

  Reason urges us to this conclusion.

  Anslem.

  Let us see whether, perchance, this may be to give up his life or to lay down his life, or to deliver himself up to death for God’s honor. For God will not demand this of him as a debt; for, as no sin will be found, he ought not to die, as we have already said.

  Boso.

  Else I cannot understand it.

  Anselm.

  But let us further observe whether this is according to reason.

  Boso.

  Speak you, and I will listen with pleasure.

  Anselm.

  If man sinned with ease, is it not fitting for him to atone with difficulty? And if he was overcome by the devil in the easiest manner possible, so as to dishonor God by sinning against him, is it not right that man, in making satisfaction for his sin, should honor God by conquering the devil with the greatest possible difficulty? Is it not proper that, since man has departed from God as far as possible in his sin, he should make to God the greatest possible satisfaction?

  Boso.

  Surely, there is nothing more reasonable.

  Anselm.

  Now, nothing can be more severe or difficult for man to do for God’s honor, than to suffer death voluntarily when not bound by obligation; and man cannot give himself to God in any way more truly than by surrendering himself to death for God’s honor.

  Boso.

  All these things are true.

  Anselm.

  Therefore, he who wishes to make atonement for man—s sin should be one who can die if he chooses.

  Boso.

  I think it is plain that the man whom we seek for should not only be one who is not necessarily subject to death on account of his omnipotence, and one who does not deserve death on account of his sin, but also one who can die of his own free will, for this will be necessary.

  Anselm.

  There are also many other reasons why it is peculiarly fitting for that man to enter into the common intercourse of men, and maintain a likeness to them, only without sin. And these things are more easily and clearly manifest in his life and actions than they can possibly be shown to be by mere reason without experience. For who can say how necessary and wise a thing it was for him who was to redeem mankind, and lead them back by his teaching from the way of death and destruction into the path of life and eternal happiness, when he conversed with men, and when he taught them by personal intercourse, to set them an example himself of the way in which they ought to live? But how could he have given this example to weak and dying men, that they should not deviate from holiness because of injuries, or scorn, or tortures, or even death, had they not been able to recognise all these virtues in himself?

  CHAPTER XII.

  How, though he share in our weakness, he is not therefore miserable.

  Boso.

  All these things plainly show that he ought to be mortal and to partake of our weaknesses. But all these things are our miseries. Will he then be miserable?

  Anselm.

  No, indeed! For as no advantage which one has apart from his choice constitutes happiness, so there is no misery in choosing to bear a loss, when the choice is a wise one and made without compulsion.

  Boso.

  Certainly, this must be allowed.

  CHAPTER XIII.

  How, along with our other weaknesses, he does not partake of our ignorance.

  Boso.

  But tell me whether, in this likeness to men which he ought to have, he will inherit also our ignorance, as he does our other infirmities?

  Anselm.

  Do you doubt the omnipotence of God?

  Boso.

  No! but, although this man be immortal in respect to his Divine nature, yet will he be mortal in his human nature. For why will he not be like them in their ignorance, as he is in their mortality?

  Anselm.

  That union of humanity with the Divine person will not be effected except in accordance with the highest wisdom; and, therefore, God will not take anything belonging to man which is only useless, but even a hindrance to the work which that man must accomplish. For ignorance is in no respect useful, but very prejudicial. How can he perform works, so many and so great, without the highest wisdom? Or, how will men believe him if they find him ignorant? And if he be ignorant, what will it avail him? If nothing is loved except as it is known, and there be no good thing which he does not love, then there can be no good thing of which he is ignorant. But no one perfectly understands good, save he who can distinguish it from evil; and no one can make this distinction who does not know what evil is. Therefore, as he of whom we are speaking perfectly comprehends what is good, so there can be no evil with which he is unacquainted. Therefore must he have all knowledge, though he do not openly show it in his intercourse with men.

  Boso.

  In his more mature years, this should seem to be as you say; but, in infancy, as it will not be a fit time to discover wisdom, so there will be no need, and therefore no propriety, in his having it.

  Anselm.

  Did not I say that the incarnation will be made in wisdom? But God will in wisdom assume that mortality, which he makes use of so widely, because for so great an object. But he could not wisely assume ignorance, for this is never useful, but always injurious, except when an evil will is deterred from acting, on account of it. But, in him an evil desire never existed. For if ignorance did no harm in any other respect, yet does it in this, that it takes away the good of knowing. And to answer your question in a word: that man, from the essential nature of his being, will be always full of God; and, therefore, will never want the power, the firmness or the wisdom of God.

  Boso.

  Though wholly unable to doubt the truth of this with respect to Christ, yet, on this very account, have I asked for the reason of it. For we are often certain about a thing, and yet cannot prove it by reason.

  CHAPTER XIV.

  How his death outweighs the number and greatness of our sins.

  Boso.

  Now I ask you to tell me how his death can outweigh the number and magnitude of our sins, when the least sin we can think of you have shown to be so monstrous that, were there an infinite number of worlds as full of created existence as this, they could not stand, but would fall back into nothing, sooner than one look should be made contrary to the just will of God.

  Anselm.

  Were that man here before you, and you knew who he was, and it were told you that, if you did not kill him, the whole universe, except God, would perish, would you do it to preserve the rest of creation?

  Boso.

  No! not even were an infinite number of worlds displayed before me.

  Anselm.

  But suppose you were told: “If you do not kill him, all the sins of the world will be heaped upon you.”

  Boso.

  I should answer, that I would far rather bear all other sins, not only those of this world, past and future, but also all others that can be conceived of, than this alone. And I think I ought to say this, not only with regard to killing him, but even as to the slightest injury which could be inflicted on him.

  Anselm.

  You judge correctly; but tell me why it is that your heart recoils from one injury inflicted upon him as more heinous than all other sins that can be thought of, inasmuch as all sins whatsoever are committed against him?

  Boso.

  A sin committed upon his person exceeds beyond comparison all the sins which can be thought of, that do not affect his person.

  Anselm.

  What say you to this, that one often suffers freely certain evils in his person, in order not to suffer greater ones in his property?

  Boso.

  God has no need of such patience, for all things lie in subjection to his power, as you answered a certain question of mine above.

  Anselm.

  You say well; and hence we see that no enormity or multitude of sins, apart from the Divine person, can for a moment be compared with a bodily injury inflicted upon that man.

  Boso.

  This is most plain

  Anselm.

  How great does this good seem to you, if the destruction of it is such an evil?

  Boso.

  If its existence is as great a good as its destruction is an evil, then is it far more a good than those sins are evils which its destruction so far surpasses.

  Anselm.

  Very true. Consider, also, that sins are as hateful as they are evil, and that life is only amiable in proportion as it is good. And, therefore, it follows that that life is more lovely than sins are odious.

  Boso.

  I cannot help seeing this.

  Anselm.

  And do you not think that so great a good in itself so lovely, can avail to pay what is due for the sins of the whole world?

  Boso.

  Yes! it has even infinite value.

  Anselm.

  Do you see, then, how this life conquers all sins, if it be given for them?

  Boso.

  Plainly.

  Anselm.

  If, then, to lay down life is the same as to suffer death, as the gift of his life surpasses all the sins of men, so will also the suffering of death.

  CHAPTER XV.

  How this death removes even the sins of his murderers.

  Boso.

  This is properly so with regard to all sins not affecting the person of the Deity. But let me ask you one thing more. If it be as great an evil to slay him as his life is a good, how can his death overcome and destroy the sins of those who slew him? Or, if it destroys the sin of any one of them, how can it not also destroy any sin committed by other men? For we believe that many men will be saved, and a vast many will not be saved.

  Anselm.

  The Apostle answers the question when he says: “Had they known it, they would never have crucified the Lord of glory.” For a sin knowingly committed and a sin done ignorantly are so different that an evil which they could never do, were its full extent known, may be pardonable when done in ignorance. For no man could ever, knowingly at least, slay the Lord; and, therefore, those who did it in ignorance did not rush into that transcendental crime with which none others can be compared. For this crime, the magnitude of which we have been considering as equal to the worth of his life, we have not looked at as having been ignorantly done, but knowingly; a thing which no man ever did or could do.

  Boso.

  You have reasonably shown that the murderers of Christ can obtain pardon for their sin.

  Anselm.

  What more do you ask? For now you see how reason of necessity shows that the celestial state must be made up from men, and that this can only be by the forgiveness of sins, which man can never have but by man, who must be at the same time Divine, and reconcile sinners to God by his own death. Therefore have we clearly found that Christ, whom we confess to be both God and man, died for us; and, when this is known beyond all doubt, all things which he says of himself must be acknowledged as true, for God cannot lie, and all he does must be received as wisely done, though we do not understand the reason of it.

  Boso.

  What you say is true; and I do not for a moment doubt that his words are true, and all that he does reasonable. But I ask this in order that you may disclose to me, in their true rationality, those things in Christian faith which seem to infidels improper or impossible; and this, not to strengthen me in the faith, but to gratify one already confirmed by the knowledge of the truth itself

  CHAPTER XVI

  How God took that man from a sinful substance, and yet without sin; and of the salvation of Adam and Eve.

  Boso.

  As, therefore, you have disclosed the reason of those things mentioned above, I beg you will also explain what I am now about to ask. First, then, how does God, from a sinful substance, that is, of human species, which was wholly tainted by sin, take a man without sin, as an unleavened lump from that which is leavened? For, though the conception of this man be pure, and free from the sin of fleshly gratification, yet the virgin herself, from whom he sprang, was conceived in iniquity, and in sin did her mother bear her, since she herself sinned in Adam, in whom all men sinned.

  Anselm.

  Since it is fitting for that man to be God, and also the restorer of sinners, we doubt not that he is wholly without sin; yet will this avail nothing, unless he be taken without sin and yet of a sinful substance. But if we cannot comprehend in what manner the wisdom of God effects this, we should be surprised, but with reverence should allow of a thing of so great magnitude to remain hidden from us. For the restoring of human nature by God is more wonderful than its creation; for either was equally easy for God; but before man was made he had not sinned, so that he ought not to be denied existence. But after man was made he deserved, by his sin, to lose his existence together with its design; though he never has wholly lost this, viz., that he should be one capable of being punished, or of receiving God—s compassion. For neither of these things could take effect if he were annihilated. Therefore God—s restoring man is more wonderful than his creating man, inasmuch as it is done for the sinner contrary to his deserts; while the act of creation was not for the sinner, and was not in opposition to man—s deserts. How great a thing it is, also, for God and man to unite in one person, that, while the perfection of each nature is preserved, the same being may be both God and man! Who, then, will dare to think that the human mind can discover how wisely, how wonderfully, so incomprehensible a work has been accomplished?

  Boso.

  I allow that no man can wholly discover so great a mystery in this life, and I do not desire you to do what no man can do, but only to explain it according to your ability. For you will sooner convince me that deeper reasons lie concealed in this matter, by showing some one that you know of, than if, by saying nothing, you make it appear that you do not understand any reason.

  Anselm.

  I see that I cannot escape your importunity; but if I have any power to explain what you wish, let us thank God for it. But if not, let the things above said suffice. For, since it is agreed that God ought to become man, no doubt He will not lack the wisdom or the power to effect this without sin.

  Boso.

  This I readily allow.

  Anselm.

  It was certainly proper that that atonement which Christ made should benefit not only those who lived at that time but also others. For, suppose there were a king against whom all the people of his provinces had rebelled, with but a single exception of those belonging to their race, and that all the rest were irretrievably under condemnation. And suppose that he who alone is blameless had so great favor with the king, and so deep love for us, as to be both able and willing to save all those who trusted in his guidance; and this because of a certain very pleasing service which he was about to do for the king, according to his desire; and, inasmuch as those who are to be pardoned cannot all assemble upon that day, the king grants, on account of the greatness of the service performed, that whoever, either before or after the day appointed, acknowledged that he wished to obtain pardon by the work that day accomplished, and to subscribe to the condition there laid down, should be freed from all past guilt; and, if they sinned after this pardon, and yet wished to render atonement and to be set right again by the efficacy of this plan, they should again be pardoned, only provided that no one enter his mansion until this thing be accomplished by which his sins are removed. In like manner, since all who are to be saved cannot be present at the sacrifice of Christ, yet such virtue is there in his death that its power is extended even to those far remote in place or time. But that it ought to benefit not merely those present is plainly evident, because there could not be so many living at the time of his death as are necessary to complete the heavenly state, even if all who were upon the earth at that time were admitted to the benefits of redemption. For the number of evil angels which must be made up from men is greater than the number of men at that time living. Nor may we believe that, since man was created, there was ever a time when the world, with the creatures made for the use of man, was so unprofitable as to contain no human being who had gained the object for which he was made. For it seems unfitting that God should even for a moment allow the human race, made to complete the heavenly state, and those creatures which he made for their use, to exist in vain.

  Boso.

  You show by correct reasoning, such as nothing can oppose, that there never was a time since man was created when there has not been some one who was gaining that reconciliation without which every man was made in vain. So that we rest upon this as not only proper but also necessary. For if this is more fit and reasonable than that at any time there should be no one found fulfilling the design for which God made man, and there is no further objection that can be made to this view, then it is necessary that there always be some person partaking of this promised pardon. And, therefore, we must not doubt that Adam and Eve obtained part in that forgiveness, though Divine authority makes no mention of this.

  Anselm.

  It is also incredible that God created them, and unchangeably determined to make all men from them, as many as were needed for the celestial state, and yet should exclude these two from this design.

  Boso.

  Nay, undoubtedly we ought to believe that God made them for this purpose, viz., to belong to the number of those for whose sake they were created.

  Anselm.

  You understand it well. But no soul, before the death of Christ, could enter the heavenly kingdom, as I said above, with regard to the palace of the king.

  Boso.

  So we believe.

  Anselm.

  Moreover, the virgin, from whom that man was taken of whom we are speaking, was of the number of those who were cleansed from their sins before his birth, and he was born of her in her purity.

  Boso.

  What you say would satisfy me, were it not that he ought to be pure of himself, whereas he appears to have his purity from his mother and not from himself.

  Anselm.

  Not so. But as the mother—s purity, which he partakes, was only derived from him, he also was pure by and of himself.

  CHAPTER XVII.

  How he did not die of necessity, though he could not be born, except as destined to suffer death.

  Boso.

  Thus far it is well. But there is yet another matter that needs to be looked into. For we have said before that his death was not to be a matter of necessity; yet now we see that his mother was purified by the power of his death, when without this he could not have been born of her. How, then, was not his death necessary, when he could not have been, except in view of future death? For if he were not to die, the virgin of whom he was born could not be pure, since this could only be effected by true faith in his death, and, if she were not pure, he could not be born of her. If, therefore, his death be not a necessary consequence of his being born of the virgin, he never could have been born of her at all; but this is an absurdity.

  Anselm.

  If you had carefully noted the remarks made above, you would easily have discovered in them, I think, the answer to your question.

  Boso.

  I see not how.

  Anselm.

  Did we not find, when considering the question whether he would lie, that there were two senses of the word power in regard to it, the one referring to his disposition, the other to the act itself; and that, though having the power to lie, he was so constituted by nature as not to wish to lie, and, therefore, deserved praise for his holiness in maintaining the truth?

  Boso.

  It is so.

  Anselm.

  In like manner, with regard to the preservation of his life, there is the power of preserving and the power of wishing to preserve it. And when the question is asked whether the same God-man could preserve his life, so as never to die, we must not doubt that he always had the power to preserve his life, though he could not wish to do so for the purpose of escaping death. And since this disposition, which forever prevents him from wishing this, arises from himself, he lays down his life not of necessity, but of free authority.

  Boso.

  But those powers were not in all respects similar, the power to lie and the power to preserve his life. For, if he wished to lie, he would of course be able to; but, if he wished to avoid the other, he could no more do it than he could avoid being what he is. For he became man for this purpose, and it was on the faith of his coming death that he could receive birth from a virgin, as you said above.

  Anselm.

  As you think that he could not lie, or that his death was necessary, because he could not avoid being what he was, so you can assert that he could not wish to avoid death, or that he wished to die of necessity, because he could not change the constitution of his being; for he did not become man in order that he should die, any more than for this purpose, that he should wish to die. Wherefore, as you ought not to say that he could not help wishing to die, or that it was of necessity that he wished to die, it is equally improper to say that he could not avoid death, or that he died of necessity.

  Boso.

  Yes, since dying and wishing to die are included in the same mode of reasoning, both would seem to fall under a like necessity.

  Anselm.

  Who freely wished to become man, that by the same unchanging desire he should suffer death, and that the virgin from whom that man should be born might be pure, through confidence in the certainty of this?

  Boso.

  God, the Son of God.

  Anselm.

  Was it not above shown, that no desire of God is at all constrained; but that it freely maintains itself in his own unchangeableness, as often as it is said that he does anything necessarily?

  Boso.

  It has been clearly shown. But we see, on the other hand, that what God unchangeably wishes cannot avoid being so, but takes place of necessity. Wherefore, if God wished that man to die, he could but die.

  Anselm.

  Because the Son of God took the nature of man with this desire, viz., that he should suffer death, you prove it necessary that this man should not be able to avoid death.

  Boso.

  So I perceive.

  Anselm.

  Has it not in like manner appeared from the things which we have spoken that the Son of God and the man whose person he took were so united that the same being should be both God and man, the Son of God and the son of the virgin?

  Boso.

  It is so.

  Anselm.

  Therefore the same man could possibly both die and avoid death.

  Boso

  I cannot deny it.

  Anselm.

  Since, then, the will of God does nothing by any necessity, but of his own power, and the will of that man was the same as the will of God, he died not necessarily, but only of his own power.

  Boso.

  To your arguments I cannot object; for neither your propositions nor your inferences can I invalidate in the least. But yet this thing which I have mentioned always recurs to my mind: that, if he wished to avoid death, he could no more do it than he could escape existence. For it must have been fixed that he was to die, for had it not been true that he was about to die, faith in his coming death would not have existed, by which the virgin who gave him birth and many others also were cleansed from their sin. Wherefore, if he could avoid death, he could make untrue what was true.

  Anselm.

  Why was it true, before he died, that he was certainly to die?

  Boso.

  Because this was his free and unchangeable desire.

  Anselm.

  If, then, as you say, he could not avoid death because he was certainly to die, and was on this account certainly to die because it was his free and unchangeable desire, it is clear that his inability to avoid death is nothing else but his fixed choice to die.

  Boso.

  This is so; but whatever be the reason, it still remains certain that he could not avoid death, but that it was a necessary thing for him to die.

  Anselm.

  You make a great ado about nothing, or, as the saying is, you stumble at a straw.

  Boso.

  Are you not forgetting my reply to the excuses you made at the beginning of our discussion, viz., that you should explain the subject, not as to learned men, but to me and my fellow inquirers? Suffer me, then, to question you as my slowness and dullness require, so that, as you have begun thus far, you may go on to settle all our childish doubts.

  CHAPTER XVIII (a).1

  How, with God there is neither necessity nor impossibility, and what is a coercive necessity, and what one that is not so.

  Anselm.

  We have already said that it is improper to affirm of God that he does anything, or that he cannot do it, of necessity. For all necessity and impossibility is under his control. But his choice is subject to no necessity nor impossibility For nothing is necessary or impossible save as He wishes it. Nay, the very choosing or refusing anything as a necessity or an impossibility is contrary to truth. Since, then, he does what he chooses and nothing else, as no necessity or impossibility exists before his choice or refusal, so neither do they interfere with his acting or not acting, though it be true that his choice and action are immutable. And as, when God does a thing, since it has been done it cannot be undone, but must remain an actual fact, still, we are not correct in saying that it is impossible for God to prevent a past action from being what it is. For there is no necessity or impossibility in the case whatever but the simple will of God, which chooses that truth should be eternally the same, for he himself is truth. Also, if he has a fixed determination to do anything, though his design must be destined to an accomplishment before it comes to pass, yet there is no coercion as far as he is concerned, either to do it or not to do it, for his will is the sole agent in the case. For when we say that God cannot do a thing, we do not deny his power; on the contrary, we imply that he has invincible authority and strength. For we mean simply this, that nothing can compel God to do the thing which is said to be impossible for him. We often use an expression of this kind, that a thing can be when the power is not in itself, but in something else; and that it cannot be when the weakness does not pertain to the thing itself, but to something else. Thus we say. “Such a man can be bound,” instead of saying, “Somebody can bind him,” and, “He cannot be bound,” instead of, “Nobody can bind him.” For to be able to be overcome is not power but weakness, and not to be able to be overcome is not weakness but power. Nor do we say that God does anything by necessity, because there is any such thing pertaining to him, but because it exists in something else, precisely as I said with regard to the affirmation that he cannot do anything. For necessity is always either compulsion or restraint; and these two kinds of necessity operate variously by turn, so that the same thing is both necessary and impossible. For whatever is obliged to exist is also prevented from non-existence; and that which is compelled not to exist is prevented from existence. So that whatever exists from necessity cannot avoid existence, and it is impossible for a thing to exist which is under a necessity of non-existence, and vice versa. But when we say with regard to God, that anything is necessary or not necessary, we do not mean that, as far as he is concerned, there is any necessity either coercive or prohibitory, but we mean that there is a necessity in everything else, restraining or driving them in a particular way. Whereas we say the very opposite of God. For, when we affirm that it is necessary for God to utter truth, and never to lie, we only mean that such is his unwavering disposition to maintain the truth that of necessity nothing can avail to make him deviate from the truth, or utter a lie. When, then, we say that that man (who, by the union of persons, is also God, the Son of God) could not avoid death, or the choice of death, after he was born of the virgin, we do not imply that there was in him any weakness with regard to preserving or choosing to preserve his life, but we refer to the unchangeableness of his purpose, by which he freely became man for this design, viz., that by persevering in his wish he should suffer death. And this desire nothing could shake. For it would be rather weakness than power if he could wish to lie, or deceive, or change his disposition, when before he had chosen that it should remain unchanged And, as I said before, when one has freely determined to do some good action, and afterwards goes on to complete it, though, if unwilling to pay his vow, he could be compelled to do so, yet we must not say that he does it of necessity, but with the same freedom with which he made the resolution. For we ought not to say that anything is done, or not done, by necessity or weakness, when free choice is the only agent in the case. And, if this is so with regard to man, much less can we speak of necessity or weakness in reference to God; for he does nothing except according to his choice, and his will no force can drive or restrain. For this end was accomplished by the united natures of Christ, viz., that the Divine nature should perform that part of the work needful for man—s restoration which the human nature could not do; and that in the human should be manifested what was inappropriate to the Divine. Finally, the virgin herself, who was made pure by faith in him, so that he might be born of her, even she, I say, never believed that he was to die, save of his own choice. For she knew the words of the prophet, who said of him: “He was offered of his own will.” Therefore, since her faith was well founded, it must necessarily turn out as she believed. And, if it perplexes you to have me say that it is necessary, remember that the reality of the virgin—s faith was not the cause of his dying by his own free will; but, because this was destined to take place, therefore her faith was real. If, then, it be said that it was necessary for him to die of his single choice, because the antecedent faith and prophecy were true, this is no more than saying that it must be because it was to be. But such a necessity as this does not compel a thing to be, but only implies a necessity of its existence. There is an antecedent necessity which is the cause of a thing, and there is also a subsequent necessity arising from the thing itself. Thus, when the heavens are said to revolve, it is an antecedent and efficient necessity, for they must revolve. But when I say that you speak of necessity, because you are speaking, this is nothing but a subsequent and inoperative necessity. For I only mean that it is impossible for you to speak and not to speak at the same time, and not that some one compels you to speak. For the force of its own nature makes the heaven revolve; but no necessity obliges you to speak. But wherever there is an antecedent necessity, there is also a subsequent one; but not vice versa. For we can say that the heaven revolves of necessity, because it revolves; but it is not likewise true that, because you speak, you do it of necessity. This subsequent necessity pertains to everything, so that we say: Whatever has been, necessarily has been. Whatever is, must be. Whatever is to be, of necessity will be. This is that necessity which Aristotle treats of (“de propositionibus singularibus et futuris”), and which seems to destroy any alternative and to ascribe a necessity to all things. By this subsequent and imperative necessity, was it necessary (since the belief and prophecy concerning Christ were true, that he would die of his own free will), that it should be so. For this he became man; for this he did and suffered all things undertaken by him; for this he chose as he did. For therefore were they necessary, because they were to be, and they were to be because they were, and they were because they were; and, if you wish to know the real necessity of all things which he did and suffered, know that they were of necessity, because he wished them to be. But no necessity preceded his will. Wherefore if they were not save by his will, then, had he not willed they would not have existed. So then, no one took his life from him, but he laid it down of himself and took it again; for he had power to lay it down and to take it again, as he himself said.

  Boso.

  You have satisfied me that it cannot be proved that he was subjected to death by any necessity; and I cannot regret my importunity in urging you to make this explanation.

  Anselm.

  I think we have shown with sufficient clearness how it was that God took a man without sin from a sinful substance; but I would on no account deny that there is no other explanation than this which we have given, for God can certainly do what human reason cannot grasp. But since this appears adequate, and since in search of other arguments we should involve ourselves in such questions as that of original sin, and how it was transmitted by our first parents to all mankind, except this man of whom we are speaking; and since, also, we should be drawn into various other questions, each demanding its own separate consideration; let us be satisfied with this account of the matter, and go on to complete our intended work.

  Boso.

  As you choose; but with this condition that, by the help of God, you will sometime give this other explanation, which you owe me, as it were, but which now you avoid discussing.

  Anselm.

  Inasmuch as I entertain this desire myself, I will not refuse you; but because of the uncertainty of future events, I dare not promise you, but commend it to the will of God. But say now, what remains to be unravelled with regard to the question which you proposed in the first place, and which involves many others with it?

  Boso.

  The substance of the inquiry was this, why God became man, for the purpose of saving men by his death, when he could have done it in some other way. And you, by numerous and positive reasons, have shown that the restoring of mankind ought not to take place, and could not, without man paid the debt which he owed God for his sin. And this debt was so great that, while none but man must solve the debt, none but God was able to do it; so that he who does it must be both God and man. And hence arises a necessity that God should take man into unity with his own person; so that he who in his own nature was bound to pay the debt, but could not, might be able to do it in the person of God. In fine, you have shown that that man, who was also God, must be formed from the virgin, and from the person of the Son of God, and that he could be taken without sin, though from a sinful substance. Moreover, you have clearly shown the life of this man to have been so excellent and so glorious as to make ample satisfaction for the sins of the whole world, and even infinitely more. It now, therefore, remains to be shown how that payment is made to God for the sins of men.

  CHAPTER XVIII (b )

  How Christ—s life is paid to God for the sins of men, and in what sense Christ ought, and in what sense he ought not, or was not bound, to suffer.

  Anselm.

  If he allowed himself to be slain for the sake of justice, he did not give his life for the honor of God?

  Boso.

  It should seem so, but I cannot understand, although I do not doubt it, how he could do this reasonably. If I saw how he could be perfectly holy, and yet forever preserve his life, I would acknowledge that he freely gave, for the honor of God, such a gift as surpasses all things else but God himself, and is able to atone for all the sins of men.

  Anselm.

  Do you not perceive that when he bore with gentle patience the insults put upon him, violence and even crucifixion among thieves that he might maintain strict holiness; by this he set men an example that they should never turn aside from the holiness due to God on account of personal sacrifice? But how could he have done this, had he, as he might have done, avoided the death brought upon him for such a reason?

  Boso.

  But surely there was no need of this, for many persons before his coming, and John the Baptist after his coming but before his death, had sufficiently enforced this example by nobly dying for the sake of the truth.

  Anselm.

  No man except this one ever gave to God what he was not obliged to lose, or paid a debt he did not owe. But he freely offered to the Father what there was no need of his ever losing, and paid for sinners what he owed not for himself. Therefore he set a much nobler example, that each one should not hesitate to give to God, for himself, what he must at any rate lose before long, since it was the voice of reason; for he, when not in want of anything for himself and not compelled by others, who deserved nothing of him but punishment, gave so precious a life, even the life of so illustrious a personage, with such willingness.

  Boso

  You very nearly meet my wishes; but suffer me to make one inquiry, which you may think foolish, but which, nevertheless, I find no easy thing to answer. You say that when he died he gave what he did not owe. But no one will deny that it was better for him, or that so doing he pleased God more than if he had not done it. Nor will any one say that he was not bound to do what was best to be done, and what he knew would be more pleasing to God. How then can we affirm that he did not owe God the thing which he did, that is, the thing which he knew to be best and most pleasing to God, and especially since every creature owes God all that he is and all that he knows and all that he is capable of?

  Anselm.

  Though the creature has nothing of himself, yet when God grants him the liberty of doing or not doing a thing, he leaves the alternative with him, so that, though one is better than the other, yet neither is positively demanded. And, whichever he does, it may be said that he ought to do it; and if he takes the better choice, he deserves a reward; because he renders freely what is his own. For, though celibacy be better than marriage, yet neither is absolutely enjoined upon man; so that both he who chooses marriage and he who prefers celibacy, may be said to do as they ought. For no one says that either celibacy or marriage ought not to be chosen; but we say that what a man esteems best before taking action upon any of these things, this he ought to do. And if a man preserves his celibacy as a free gift offered to God, he looks for a reward. When you say that the creature owes God what he knows to be the better choice, and what he is able to do, if you mean that he owes it as a debt, without implying any command on the part of God, it is not always true. Thus, as I have already said, a man is not bound to celibacy as a debt, but ought to marry if he prefers it. And if you are unable to understand the use of this word “debere,” when no debt is implied, let me inform you that we use the word “debere” precisely as we sometimes do the words “posse,” and “non posse,” and also “necessitas,” when the ability, etc., is not in the things themselves, but in something else. When, for instance, we say that the poor ought to receive alms from the rich, we mean that the rich ought to bestow alms upon the poor. For this is a debt not owed by the poor but by the rich. We also say that God ought to be exalted over all, not because there is any obligation resting upon him, but because all things ought to be subject to him. And he wishes that all creatures should be what they ought; for what God wishes to be ought to be. And, in like manner, when any creature wishes to do a thing that is left entirely at his own disposal, we say that he ought to do it, for what he wishes to be ought to be. So our Lord Jesus, when he wished, as we have said, to suffer death, ought to have done precisely what he did; because he ought to be what he wished, and was not bound to do anything as a debt. As he is both God and man, in connection with his human nature, which made him a man, he must also have received from the Divine nature that control over himself which freed him from all obligation, except to do as he chose. In like manner, as one person of the Trinity, he must have had whatever he possessed of his own right, so as to be complete in himself, and could not have been under obligations to another, nor have need of giving anything in order to be repaid himself.

  Boso.

  Now I see clearly that he did not give himself up to die for the honor of God, as a debt; for this my own reason proves, and yet he ought to have done what he did.

  Anselm.

  That honor certainly belongs to the whole Trinity; and, since he is very God, the Son of God, he offered himself for his own honor, as well as for that of the Father and the Holy Spirit; that is, he gave his humanity to his divinity, which is one person of the Triune God. But, though we express our idea more definitely by clinging to the precise truth, yet we may say, according to our custom, that the Son freely gave himself to the Father. For thus we plainly affirm that in speaking of one person we understand the whole Deity, to whom as man he offered himself. And, by the names of Father and Son, a wondrous depth of devotion is excited in the hearts of the hearers, when it is said that the Son supplicates the Father on our behalf.

  Boso.

  This I readily acknowledge.

  CHAPTER XIX.

  How human salvation follows upon his death.

  Anselm.

  Let us now observe, if we can, how the salvation of men rests on this.

  Boso.

  This is the very wish of my heart. For, although I think I understand you, yet I wish to get from you the close chain of argument.

  Anselm.

  There is no need of explaining how precious was the gift which the Son freely gave.

  Boso.

  That is clear enough already.

  Anselm.

  But you surely will not think that he deserves no reward, who freely gave so great a gift to God.

  Boso.

  I see that it is necessary for the Father to reward the Son; else he is either unjust in not wishing to do it, or weak in not being able to do it; but neither of these things can be attributed to God.

  Anselm.

  He who rewards another either gives him something which he does not have, or else remits some rightful claim upon him. But anterior to the great offering of the Son, all things belonging to the Father were his, nor did he ever owe anything which could be forgiven him. How then can a reward be bestowed on one who needs nothing, and to whom no gift or release can be made?

  Boso.

  I see on the one hand a necessity for a reward, and on the other it appears impossible; for God must necessarily render payment for what he owes, and yet there is no one to receive it.

  Anselm.

  But if a reward so large and so deserved is not given to him or any one else, then it will almost appear as if the Son had done this great work in vain.

  Boso.

  Such a supposition is impious.

  Anselm.

  The reward then must be bestowed upon some one else, for it cannot be upon him.

  Boso.

  This is necessarily so.

  Anselm.

  Had the Son wished to give some one else what was due to him, could the Father rightfully prevent it, or refuse to give it to the other person?

  Boso.

  No! but I think it would be both just and necessary that the gift should be given by the Father to whomsoever the Son wished; because the Son should be allowed to give away what is his own, and the Father cannot bestow it at all except upon some other person.

  Anselm.

  Upon whom would he more properly bestow the reward accruing from his death, than upon those for whose salvation, as right reason teaches, he became man; and for whose sake, as we have already said, he left an example of suffering death to preserve holiness? For surely in vain will men imitate him, if they be not also partakers of his reward. Or whom could he more justly make heirs of the inheritance, which he does not need, and of the superfluity of his possessions, than his parents and brethren? What more proper than that, when he beholds so many of them weighed down by so heavy a debt, and wasting through poverty, in the depth of their miseries, he should remit the debt incurred by their sins, and give them what their transgressions had forfeited?

  Boso.

  The universe can hear of nothing more reasonable, more sweet, more desirable. And I receive such confidence from this that I cannot describe the joy with which my heart exults. For it seems to me that God can reject none who come to him in his name.

  Anselm.

  Certainly not, if he come aright. And the Scriptures, which rest on solid truth as on a firm foundation, and which, by the help of God, we have somewhat examined,—the Scriptures, I say, show us how to approach in order to share such favor, and how we ought to live under it.

  Boso.

  And whatever is built on this foundation is founded on an immovable rock.

  Anselm.

  I think I have nearly enough answered your inquiry, though I might do it still more fully, and there are doubtless many reasons which are beyond me and which mortal ken does not reach. It is also plain that God had no need of doing the thing spoken of, but eternal truth demanded it. For though God is said to have done what that man did, on account of the personal union made; yet God was in no need of descending from heaven to conquer the devil, nor of contending against him in holiness to free mankind. But God demanded that man should conquer the devil, so that he who had offended by sin should atone by holiness. As God owed nothing to the devil but punishment, so man must only make amends by conquering the devil as man had already been conquered by him. But whatever was demanded of man, he owed to God and not to the devil.

  CHAPTER XX.

  How great and how just is God—s compassion.

  Now we have found the compassion of God which appeared lost to you when we were considering God—s holiness and man—s sin; we have found it, I say, so great and so consistent with his holiness, as to be incomparably above anything that can be conceived. For what compassion can excel these words of the Father, addressed to the sinner doomed to eternal torments and having no way of escape: “Take my only begotten Son and make him an offering for yourself;” or these words of the Son: “Take me, and ransom your souls.” For these are the voices they utter, when inviting and leading us to faith in the Gospel. Or can anything be more just than for him to remit all debt since he has earned a reward greater than all debt, if given with the love which he deserves.

  CHAPTER XXI.

  How it is impossible for the devil to be reconciled.

  If you carefully consider the scheme of human salvation, you will perceive the reconciliation of the devil, of which you made inquiry, to be impossible. For, as man could not be reconciled but by the death of the God-man, by whose holiness the loss occasioned by man—s sin should be made up; so fallen angels cannot be saved but by the death of a God-angel who by his holiness may repair the evil occasioned by the sins of his companions. And as man must not be restored by a man of a different race, though of the same nature, so no angel ought to be saved by any other angel, though all were of the same nature, for they are not like men, all of the same race. For all angels were not sprung from one, as all men were. And there is another objection to their restoration, viz, that, as they fell with none to plot their fall, so they must rise with none to aid them; but this is impossible. But otherwise they cannot be restored to their original dignity. For, had they not sinned, they would have been confirmed in virtue without any foreign aid, simply by the power given to them from the first. And, therefore, if any one thinks that the redemption of our Lord ought to be extended even to the fallen angels, he is convinced by reason, for by reason he has been deceived. And I do not say this as if to deny that the virtue of his death far exceeds all the sins of men and angels, but because infallible reason rejects the reconciliation of the fallen angels.

  CHAPTER XXII.

  How the truth of the Old and New Testament is shown in the things which have been said.

  Boso.

  All things which you have said seem to me reasonable and incontrovertible. And by the solution of the single question proposed do I see the truth of all that is contained in the Old and New Testament. For, in proving that God became man by necessity, leaving out what was taken from the Bible, viz., the remarks on the persons of the Trinity, and on Adam, you convince both Jews and Pagans by the mere force of reason. And the God-man himself originates the New Testament and approves the Old. And, as we must acknowledge him to be true, so no one can dissent from anything contained in these books.

  Anselm.

  If we have said anything that needs correction, I am willing to make the correction if it be a reasonable one. But, if the conclusions which we have arrived at by reason seem confirmed by the testimony of the truth, then ought we to attribute it, not to ourselves, but to God, who is blessed forever.—Amen.

  [1 ]From Weber’s History of Philosophy. Trans. by F. Thilly. New York Scribner’s. Price, $2 50.

  [1 ]The Philosophy of Descartes in Extracts from His Writings. H. A. P. Torrey. New York, 1892. P. 161 et seq.

  [1 ]The Chief Works of Benedict de Spinoza. Translated by R. H. M. Elwes. London, 1848. Vol. II., p. 51 et seq.

  [1 ]An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. London: Ward, Lock, & Co. P. 529 et seq.

  [1 ]New Essays Concerning Human Understanding. Translated by A. G. Langley. New York, 1896. P. 502 et seq.

  [1 ]Critique of Pure Reason. Translated by F. Max Müller. New York, 1896. P. 483 et seq.

  [1 ]Lectures on the History of Philosophy Translated by E. S Haldane and F. H. Simson. London, 1896. Vol. III., p. 62 et seq.

  [1 ]A System of Christian Doctrine. Translated by A. Cave and J. S. Banks, Edinburgh, 1880. Vol I., p. 216 et seq

  [1 ]Microcosmus. Translated by E. Hamilton and E. E. C. Jones. Edinburgh, 1887. Vol. II., p. 669 et seq.

  [2 ]Theism. New York, 1893. Seventh edition P. 278 et seq.

  [1 ]Ueberweg gives the titles of German and Latin dissertations on Anselm not included in this list.

  [1 ]Nothing is here treated as an entity, supposed actually to precede the supreme Being in existence. The fallacy involved is shown below.—Tr.

  [1 ]Accidents, as Anselm uses the term, are facts external to the essence of a being, which may yet be conceived to produce changes in a mutable being.

  [1 ]This and the succeeding chapter are numbered differently in the different editions of Anselm—s texts.

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  3: 3. Saint Francis of Assisi, Writings

  Saint Francis of Assisi (1181-1226) founded the Franciscan order and was an important participant in the religious revival of the late Middle Ages. He was born Francesco di Pietro di Bernardone in the duchy of Spoleto into the family of a prominent cloth merchant, and was fairly well educated for a youth of the upper middle class. As a young man he hungered after military adventure in the service of his prince and his church, and he was wounded in the war between Assisi and Perugia. After recovering, he was determined to enlist in the papal army of Count Gentile against Frederick II (1194-1250, H.R.E. 1220-1250) in Apulia, but changed his mind after experiencing a dream that appeared to be heaven-sent. He gave himself over to solitude and prayer so that he might determine the will of God, and while praying in a grotto near Assisi had a vision of Christ. Other visions followed quickly thereafter, and from these he determined that the Lord wanted him to be an example of Christian service and charity. It was the Gospel of Matthew that inspired the life of Saint Francis and the order he founded:

  Preach as you go, saying, `The Kingdom of God is at hand.’ … You received without paying, give without pay. Take no gold, nor silver, nor copper in your belts, no bag for your journey, nor two tunics, nor sandals, nor a staff; for the laborer deserves his food.

  See the entry about Saint Francis of Assisi in the Goodrich Seminar Room.

  Saint Francis of Assisi, The Writings of Saint Francis of Assisi, newly translated into English with an Introduction and Notes by Father Paschal Robinson (Philadelphia: The Dolphin Press, 1906).

  Accessed from oll.libertyfund.org/title/1172 on 2007-12-03

  The text is in the public domain.

  ---

  THE WRITINGS of ST. FRANCIS OF ASSISI

  

  Statue of St Francis By Andrea della Robbia at S. Maria degli Angeli Assisi.

  to the most reverend Father Denis Schuler the one hundred and fifth successor of saint francis as minister general of the friars minor

  INTRODUCTION.

  I.

  THE writings of St. Francis may, as is obvious, be considered from more than one point of view. Premising this, we are afforded a clue to the difficulty which has led students of Franciscan sources to divide themselves into two camps as to the objective value of these writings. Indeed, one writer1 goes so far as to compare the attitude of modern scholars toward them to that of the “Spiritual” and Conventual Friars respectively in the first century of Franciscan history. For while one party, led by M. Paul Sabatier,2 attaches what some regard as almost undue weight to the writings of St. Francis as a source of our knowledge of him, the other party, following Mgr. Faloci Pulignani,3 displays, we are told, a tendency to belittle their importance. The truth is, as Professor Muller long ago pointed out,4 that these writings afford us little if any information as to the life of their author, a fact which may perhaps account for their comparative neglect by so many of the Saint’s biographers, but it is not less true that they bear the stamp of his personality and reflect his spirit even more faithfully than the Legends written down on the very morrow of his death by those who had known him the best of all.1 For this reason they are well worth all the serious study that scholars outside the Franciscan Order are now beginning to give to them.

  To say that the writings of St. Francis reflect his personality and his spirit is but another way of saying that they are at once formidably mystic and exquisitely human; that they combine great elevation of thought with much picturesqueness of expression. This twofold element, which found its development later on in the prose of mystics like St Bonaventure and in the verse of poets like Jacopone da Todi, and which has ever been a marked characteristic of Franciscan ascetic literature, leads back to the writings of the Founder as to the humble upper waters of a mighty stream. St. Francis had the soul of an ascetic and the heart of a poet. His unbounded faith had an almost lyric sweetness about it; his deep sense of the spiritual is often clothed with the character of romance. This intimate union of the supernatural and the natural is nowhere more strikingly manifested than in the writings of St. Francis, which, after the vicissitudes of well nigh seven hundred winters, are still fragrant with the fragrance of the Seraphic springtide

  Important as the doctrinal aspect of St. Francis’ writings must of necessity be to all who would understand his life—since “the springs of action are to be found in belief, and conduct ultimately rests upon conviction”—it is foreign to the object of the present volume. I am here concerned with the literary and historical aspect of these writings. Suffice it to say that St. Francis’ doctrine,1 which received, so to speak, the Divine Imprimatur upon the heights of La Verna two years before his death,2 is nothing more or less than a paraphrase of the Sermon on the Mount. Nowhere can there be found a simpler literalness in the following of the “poverty, humility, and holy Gospel of the Lord Jesus” than in the writings of St. Francis, and any attempt to read into them the peculiar doctrines of the Abbot Joachim of Flora, the Humiliati, the Poor Men of Lyons, or any of their nameless followers, is as unjust as it is unjustifiable. Needless to add that St. Francis’ writings contain no new message. Indeed, the frequency with which certain very old and familiar aspects of the eternal truths are insisted upon by St. Francis in season and out of season, is not unlikely to weary the average reader who does not pause to look between the lines. This tendency to repeat himself, which is habitual with St. Francis, does not necessarily bespeak any dearth of ideas. On the contrary. His simple, childlike nature fastened upon three or four leading thoughts “taken from the words of the Lord,” which seemed to him all-sufficing, and these he works into his writings over and over, tempering them to the needs of the different classes he addresses as he understood them. If then we recall the circumstances under which St. Francis wrote and the condition of those for whom his writings were intended in the first instance, far from being bored, we may gain something from each new repetition.

  Because St. Francis loved Jesus and His Eucharistic Passion, ardently, enthusiastically, almost desperately—to borrow Bossuet’s adjectives—his sympathy extended to every creature that suffered or rejoiced. His writings are eloquent witnesses to this far-reaching, all-embracing solicitude. They may be said to run over the whole gamut. Witness the soft note touched in the letter to Brother Leo and the deep masculine tone in which the Testament is pitched. On the whole, however, his writings fall naturally under three heads:1 those, like the Rules, which represent St. Francis as legislator; those, like the Letter to a Minister, which show us St. Francis as a spiritual father; and those, like the Praises and Salutations, in which we see St Francis as his earliest biographer saw him—“not so much a man praying as prayer itself.”2

  It was Matthew Arnold, I believe, who first held St. Francis up to English readers as a literary type3 —a type withal as distinct and formal as the author of the Divine Comedy. But however true a poet—and without St. Francis no Dante—it is certain that the Poverello was in no sense a man of letters. He was too little acquainted with the laws of composition to advance very far in that direction. His early years had been a bad preparation for study, and he ever remained a comparative stranger to the ecclesiastical and classical learning of his time, though probably his culture was larger than we might be led to conclude from his repeated professions of ignorance and the disparaging remarks of some of his early biographers. Through his mother he seems to have got some acquaintance with French;1 he received elementary instruction in reading and writing from the priests at San Giorgio, who also taught him enough Latin to enable him to write it in later years after a fashion,2 and to understand the ritual of the Church and its hymns, which he was wont to sing by the wayside. But in considering St. Francis’ literary formation, we must reckon largely with the education he picked up in the school of the Troubadours, who at the close of the twelfth century were making for refinement in Italy3 The imagery of the chansons de gestes seems to have exercised an abiding influence upon St. Francis’ life and writings, as is evident from his own tale of the Lady Poverty, which later inspired the pen of Dante and the brush of Giotto. Witness, too, his frequent allusions to the Knights of the Round Table; his desire that his Friars should become “the Lord’s Jongleurs,” and his habit of courtesy extended even to Sister Death.4 On the other hand St. Francis was nothing if not original. His writings abound not only in allegory and personification, but also in quaint concepts and naive deductions. His final argument is often a text of Holy Scripture, which he uses with a familiarity and freedom altogether remarkable. Indeed there are parts of his writings in which the interweaving of Scriptural phrases is so intricate as almost to defy any attempt to indicate them by references, the more so since the Biblical language adopted by St. Francis is not always taken from the Bible, but often from the Liturgy, Missal, and Breviary.1 For the rest, as Celano puts it, “he left empty ornaments and roundabout methods of speech and everything belonging to pomp and to display to those who are ready to perish; for his part he cared not for the bark, but for the pith; not for the shell, but for the nut; not for the multiple, but for the one only sovereign good.”2

  If we may judge from the two solitary autographic fragments of his that have come down to us,3 St. Francis was not by any means a skilful penman. Be this as it may, St. Bonaventure clearly implies that he had a secretary,4 to whom he dictated notes, and affirms with Celano that the Saint signed such documents as called for his signature with the “sign thau,” or capital T.1 Whether or not St. Francis’ practice of signing his name thus has any connection with Brother Pacifico’s vision of the large T,2 is a matter of conjecture and of small import. What is certain is that St. Francis wrote little The most characteristic of his extant writings are very short, extremely simple in style, and without any trace of pedantry. If some of the longer pieces seem to show the touch of a more skilful hand than that of St. Francis, idiota et simplex, we need not on this account feel any misgivings as to their authenticity. Whatever assistance he may have received in pruning and embellishing certain of his later compositions from Cæsar of Spires or another, no one who examines these writings carefully can doubt but that they are the work of the great Saint himself.

  From a literary standpoint perhaps the most carefully composed bit of St. Francis’ writing that has come down to us is the realistic picture of the miser’s death in the letter “To all the Faithful.” More interesting, however, to the student is the “Canticle of the Sun,” not only as an example of the simple, spontaneous Umbrian dialect rhyme which St. Francis taught his poet followers to substitute for the artificial versification of courtly Latin and Provençal poets, but also because of the light it throws on St. Francis’ literary method,—if method it may be called. His piecemeal fashion of composing as the spirit moved him, is also manifest in a very different work, the First Rule, as is evident from the modification and additions this strange piece of legislation suffered during the fourteen years it was in force.1 St. Francis’ practice of returning to his old writings, retouching and remoulding them, working them over and inserting parts of them in his new ones, goes far toward explaining difficulties which would otherwise arise from the resemblance between his different compositions.

  For the rest, even though St. Francis’ literary culture was incomplete, his constant contemplation of the “things that are above” and the perfect purity of his life whetted alike his understanding of supernatural truth and of the human heart, and so it comes to pass that his simple words, written down in the far-off thirteenth century and with a fashion of speech different from ours, yet work wonders to this day, while the tomes of many a learned doctor “leave all things as they were before.”

  It remains to say a few words concerning the history of St. Francis’ writings before coming to the writings themselves.

  II.

  The history of the writings of St. Francis, from the time of their composition in the far-off thirteenth century down to our own day, opens up a most interesting field for speculation. Who, it may be asked, first gathered these writings together? In answer to this question nothing definite can be said, for the early Legends and Chronicles of the Order are silent on the subject, and we must rest content to begin our inquiry with the oldest MS. collections containing the writings of St. Francis. Many such collections exist in mediæval codices, but any attempt to classify these MSS. is, in the present state of our documentation, beset by peculiar difficulties. Not the least of these difficulties arises from the fact that even as in the Legends or Lives of St. Francis we can distinguish a double current;1 so, too, in the early MS. collections two distinct families or categories are found representing or rather illustrating the twofold tradition and observance which date from the very beginnings of Franciscan history.2

  The first place among these collections belongs to the MS. numbered 338, formerly in the Sacro Convento, but now in the municipal library at Assisi. Critics who have studied this early codex are not in accord as to its age.1 But it dates at least from the beginning of the fourteenth century. It includes eleven of the nineteen works here translated. They are contained in three parchment books in the following order: fol 12-16, The Second Rule of the Friars Minor;2 fol. 16-18, The Testament;3 fol. 18-23, Admonitions;4 fol. 23-28, The Letter to All the Faithful;5 fol. 28-31, The Letter to the General Chapter;6 fol. 31-32, Instruction to Clerics on the Holy Eucharist;7 fol. 32, Salutation of the Virtues;8 fol. 33, The Canticle of the Sun;9 fol. 34, Paraphrase of the Lord’s Prayer;10 fol. 34-43, The Office of the Passion;11 and fol. 43, The Regulation for Hermitages.12

  

  page of the assisi ms 338 containing conclusion of the “salutation of the virtues” and commencement of the “canticle of the sun” (See page xviii)

  The same collection either wholly or in part is given in the well-known fourteenth century compilation of materia seraphica known as Fac secundum exemplar from the opening words of its prologue, and which may be found in the Vatican MS. 4354, the Berlin MS. 196, the Lemberg MS. 131,1 and the Liegnitz MS. 122 The Mazarin MSS. 989 and 1743,3 as well as the Dusseldorf MS 132,4 may also be said to belong to this family of codices which present the writings of St. Francis in practically the same number and order as Mariano of Florence adopts in his Chronicle, composed about 15005

  We now come to the second collection of St Francis’ writings, which is often found along with the traditional Legenda Trium Sociorum, and the Speculum Perfectionis. It is represented by the celebrated Florentine codex at Ognissanti,6 the codex 1/25 at St. Isidore’s, Rome,7 the Vatican MS. 7650,8 and the codex of the Capuchin convent at Foligno,1 all of which contain St. Francis’ works in almost the same order as that given by Bartholomew of Pisa, in his Liber Conformitatum.2

  This second collection of the writings of St. Francis differs from the first one in several details. In the first place it omits the Instruction to Clerics on the Holy Eucharist and adds the letter To a Certain Minister3 Again, the Assisi and Liegnitz MSS., which are typical examples of the first collection, place the prayer, “O Almighty Eternal God,” etc.,4 at the end of the letter to the General Chapter, whereas in the Ognissanti MS. and others of the same family this prayer is found elsewhere. So, too, in the Assisi and Liegnitz MSS. the Salutation of the Virtues is inscribed “Salutation of the Virtues which adorned the Soul of the Blessed Virgin Mary and which ought to adorn the holy soul,” while in the Ognissanti and kindred MSS. the title of this piece reads: “Salutation of the Virtues and of their efficacy in confounding Vices.” These examples suffice to indicate that this twofold family of MSS. includes also a twofold reading, as becomes more evident from the variants noted elsewhere in the course of this work. Meanwhile, let us pass on from the MS. collections of St. Francis’ writings to the

  Printed Editions

  Two diverse compilations, each containing part of the Opuscula, were published at the beginning of the sixteenth century. The first of these, known as the Speculum Vitae B. Francisci et Sociorum ejus,1 and quarried largely from the Actus Beati Francisci, contains (fol. 126-127) among various legends and other narrations some of St. Francis’ prayers, and (fol. 189) also the First Rule The second compilation, which is of a much more polemic character,2 and which contains a larger number of the Opuscula, appeared successively with some variations in form at Rouen in 1509 as the Speculum Minorum,3 at Salamanca in 1511 as the Monumenta Ordinis Minorum,4 and at Paris in 1512 as the Firmamentatrium Ordinum B. Francisci.1 The seventeenth century saw the appearance of

  Wadding’s Edition.

  The honor of making the first serious attempt to collect all the writings of St. Francis belongs to the renowned Annalist of the Order, Father Luke Wadding.2 His celebrated edition of the Opuscula3 is distributed in three parts: Part I contains the Letters, Prayers, and the Testament; Part II, the Rules; and Part III, the Monastic Conferences, the Office of the Passion and Canticles, followed by Apophthegms, Colloquies, Prophecies, Parables, Examples, Benedictions, etc.

  Wadding’s edition of the Opuscula differs mainly from all preceding collections in this, that whereas the latter contained only those pieces which as regards both matter and form were the handiwork of St. Francis, Wadding felt justified in including among St. Francis’ writings many dicta of the Saint found in the early Legends. For example, St. Bonaventure4 relates of St. Francis “Non enim securum esse putabat earum formarum introrsus haurire imagines.” Wadding, in his sixth Conference, by changing putabat into puto, gives this passage as the ipsissima verba of St. Francis Again, in the seventeenth Conference, he entirely changes the form of what St. Bonaventure elsewhere1 relates of St. Francis when he substitutes “Officium praedicationis Patri misericordiarum omni sacrificio est acceptius” for “Istius Miserationis officium Patri misericordiarum omni sacrificio firmabat acceptius.”

  Thus it comes to pass that in Wadding’s edition, side by side with the undisputed writings of St. Francis, we find doubtful, even spurious, extracts from different sources attributed to the Seraphic Father. It must ever remain a matter of regret that Wadding, instead of following the oldest MSS. that he had at hand, was content to transcribe the incomplete and often interpolated parts of them he found in second-hand compilations, like that of Mark of Lisbon. His work from our standpoint is vitiated by imperfect research and unreliable criticism. But if Wadding was more profuse than prudent in his attribution of Franciscan fragments to the Founder, it must be remembered that he wrote at a time when even the highest minds troubled themselves little enough about literary exactness. For what we now glorify as “scientific criticism” had not yet become the fashion. The faults therefore of Wadding’s edition of the Opuscula are largely the faults of his time; and considering the difficulties to be overcome, the result of his labors was very creditable. And if he had never undertaken the task of collecting St. Francis’ writings, any attempt of ours to that end would be surely more arduous, and perhaps not so fruitful.

  Several editions of St. Francis’ writings have appeared since Wadding’s day, notably those published by de la Haye,1 Von der Burg,2 and Horoy.3 But these editions are very imperfect. Their authors, in spite of the advance made in historical criticism since Wadding’s day, have merely reproduced and rejuvenated the edition of the great annalist. The same is true of the various translations of the Opuscula,—they are simply Wadding in Italian,4 English,5 French,6 German,7 or Spanish,8 as the case may be.

  On the other hand, M. Sabatier’s strictures on the “numerous ecclesiastics” who have edited the writings of St. Francis, for not reprinting Wadding’s comments on them, are a trifle wide of the mark, seeing that their editions were prepared mainly for a class of readers whose point of view is practical and devotional, rather than theoretical and speculative, who read the writings of the saints not merely as historical or literary documents, but as words of spirit and of life. For such a clientele critical notes would be caviare indeed.

  The remarkable upgrowth of interest in the sources of early Franciscan history that has characterized the literature of the past decade accentuated the need of a more perfect edition of St. Francis’ writings. The matter was soon taken in hand by the Friars Minor at Quaracchi—already famous in the literary history of the Order—and in 1904 they issued the

  First Critical Edition

  of the Opuscula.1 Without overlooking the internal character of each document, the Quaracchi editors based their edition upon the early MS. tradition, weighing by this standard all the various writings contained in the stereotyped editions of St. Francis’ works, with the result that many a familiar page that had come down to us on the good faith of Wadding was found wanting. Thus the seventeen letters commonly ascribed to St. Francis have been reduced to six, the Rules of the Second and Third Orders have been eliminated, only one of the twenty-eight monastic conferences, and one of the seven blessings, are left; most of the prayers have gone, and all the colloquies, prophecies, parables, etc, have likewise disappeared. Most likely the doubtful and suppositious works thus excluded often embody the doctrine and ideas of St. Francis; to a greater or lesser extent some of them may even be his in substance, but as there is no good reason to believe they are his own composition they are not entitled to a place among his writings.

  The authentic works of St Francis left to us then, according to the Quaracchi edition, are the Admonitions, Salutation of the Virtues, Instruction on the Blessed Sacrament, the First and Second Rules of the Friars Minor, the Testament and Regulation for Hermitages, some fragments from the Rule of the Clares, Six Letters, the Praises of God, the Salutation of the Blessed Virgin, the Chartula containing the Laudes and Benediction for Brother Leo, the prayer Absorbeat, and the Office of the Passion.

  The Quaracchi edition does not therefore embody any new matter, but it contains for the first time in any edition of St. Francis’ works the letter “To a Minister” in its entirety. For the rest, while purging the text of St. Francis’ writings of the many doubtful and apocryphal pieces with which they had come to be burdened in the course of time, the Quaracchi editors have perfected the text of the authentic writings by their emendations and collations, notes and comments, thus conferring the freedom of no small city upon the students of Franciscan sources.

  The year 1904 also saw the publication, almost simultaneously, of two other works dealing with the Opuscula of St. Francis, written by well known professors at Bonn1 and Munich,2 and both of real value.3 It would be foreign to our present purpose to examine either of these works in detail. Suffice it to say that they accord in substance almost completely with the conclusions of the Quaracchi editors. If anything, they lean more on the side of kindliness toward certain doubtful writings. Thanks to this trilogy of works, and to certain learned criticisms which they have called forth from Fr. Van Ortroy,1 M. Sabatier,2 and Mr. Carmichael3 among others, we are now in a position to form a fairly accurate estimate of what St. Francis really wrote.

  It is obvious, however, that in dealing with writings like those of St. Francis we are left largely to the probabilities of criticism; and criticism has by no means said the last word as to the authenticity of certain pieces. It may yet take away from St. Francis some writings now commonly ascribed to him; it may even give back to him others at present with seemingly greater likelihood made over to one or another of his immediate followers. But in the long run, to whatever criticism St. Francis’ writings may be subjected, the main lines will always remain the same. It may well be true as a recent writer4 has remarked, that it is not yet the time to essay a complete English edition of St. Francis’ writings, yet withal the lack of any translation of these writings in English which aims at fulfilling the requirements of modern criticism has led me to think that English students of Franciscan literature might be glad to have some such translation of them, however imperfect. To this end I have ventured to prepare this humble volume, which may perhaps be suffered tentatively, at least, to stand in the gap which it is not worthy permanently to fill.

  My first object, then, is to give a literal and, I hope, accurate translation of the Latin text of the authentic writings of St. Francis as it stands in the critical Quaracchi edition. The present volume, however, represents something more than a mere translation of the Quaracchi text. In the first place it is not restricted to the Latin works of St. Francis, and as a consequence the “Canticle of the Sun,” which does not figure in the Quaracchi edition, finds a place here. I have often deviated from the order of the Quaracchi edition and have distributed the critical notes throughout the book instead of relegating them to the end. I have added an Introduction, Appendix, Bibliography and Index, besides much original matter collected at Quaracchi and elsewhere in Italy, when I was afforded an opportunity of consulting the original MS. authorities. I should state that I have not translated all the variants in the Latin text, but only such as change the sense. A table I had made for the purpose of indicating the probable date of each piece, I have omitted, since it remains a matter of pure conjecture when many were written.

  I am glad of this opportunity to record my sincere thanks to all those who have assisted me in any way in the preparation of this volume. Not only have I profited by the labors of the Fathers at Quaracchi, but I have enjoyed the rare advantage of Fr. Leonard Lemmens’ personal interest in the work. To him, therefore, my grateful recognition is first due. I wish further to acknowledge my indebtedness to Mr. Montgomery Carmichael, who, amid his own literary labors, made time to assist me with many helpful suggestions. Moreover, by placing at my disposal all the references to Holy Scripture which occur in the Office of the Passion, which he had looked up and translated, he has afforded me very substantial aid. My thanks are also due to Father Stephen Donovan, O.F.M., for his kind cooperation in collating the text of the “Canticle of the Sun,” in the Assisi MS., with other versions, and for contributing the translation of it. For the generous loan of books of reference I am under obligation to Mgr. O’Hare, Father John J. Wynne, S.J., Fathers Ludger Beck, and Bede Oldegeering, O.F.M., and Mr. John A. Tennant; for the gift of their own writings to Father Cuthbert, O.S.F.C., Luigi Suttina, and Prof. A. G. Little; and for the photographs here reproduced to Mgr. Faloci Pulignani, M. Paul Sabatier and Signor Lunghi. I may perhaps be permitted to take this occasion to thank the Guardians at the Portiuncula, La Verna, St. Damian’s, and the Carceri, as well as the Friars at St. Antony’s and St. Isidore’s at Rome, at Ognissanti, Florence, and the Mother Abbess at Santa Chiara, for their courtesy and hospitality.

  For the rest, it is with a clear sense of its many shortcomings and not without some diffidence that I offer this volume to the public. I shall be more than repaid for any labor its preparation may have entailed if its publication conduces ever so little toward making St. Francis better known and better loved. To this end I ask the reader to forget all that may be mine within these pages, and to remember only the words of him who, “saintlier than any among the saints, among sinners was as one of themselves.”1

  Fr. Paschal Robinson, o.f.m.,

  • Franciscan Convent, Paterson, N.J.

  Feast of St. Agnes of Asissi, 1905.

  PART I

  ADMONITIONS, RULES, ETC

  I.

  Words of Admonition of our Holy Father St. Francis.

  UNDER this title a precious series of spiritual counsels on the religious life has come down to us from the pen of St Francis The early Legends afford no indication of the time or circumstances of the composition of these Admonitions; nor is it possible to determine by whom they were collected. But they accord so completely with the Saint’s genuine works and are so redolent of his spirit that their authenticity is admitted by all.1 Moreover, the various codices in which these Admonitions may be found are unanimous in attributing them to St. Francis, while the number of the Admonitions2 and the order in which they are given in the different codices are almost the same as in the Laurentian codex at Florence, dating from the thirteenth century.

  Codices containing the Admonitions of St. Francis are to be found at the following places 1. Assist (Munic. lib. cod. 338, fol. 18),—2. Berlin (Royal lib. cod. lat. 196, fol. 101);—3. Florence (Laurentian lib. cod. X. Plut XIX dextr., fol. 448),—4. Florence (cod. of the Convent of Ognissanti, fol. 5);—5. St. Floriano (monast lib. cod XI 148, fol 38);—6. Foligno (cod. of Capuchin Conv., fol. 21),—7. Lemberg (Univ. lib. cod. 131, fol 331),—8 Liegnitz1 (lib. of SS Peter and Paul cod. 12, fol 131),—9. Luttich (Munic. lib. cod. 343, fol. 154),—10. Munich (Royal lib. cod. lat. 11354, fol 25, number 1 only);—11. Naples (Nation lib. cod XII. F. 32, folio antepaen. numbers 6-27),—12 Oxford2 (Bodl. lib. cod. Canon miscell. 525, fol. 93);—13 Paris (Nat. lib. cod 18327, fol. 154),—14, 15. Paris (Mazarin lib. cod 1743, fol. 134, and cod. 989, fol 191),—16. Paris (codex at lib. of the Prot. theol faculty, fol. 86);—17. Prague (Metrop. lib. cod B XC., fol. 244),—18. Rome (codex at St. Antony’s Coll.,3 fol. 77),—19, 20. Rome (archiv. of St Isidore’s College, cod. 1/25, fol. 14, and cod. 1/78, fol 11);—21, 22. Rome (Vatic. lib. cod. 4354, fol. 39, and cod. 7650, fol. 10);—23. Toledo (capit. lib. cod. Cai. 25, no. 11, fol. 65) and—24 Volterra (Guarnacci lib. cod 225, fol. 141).

  Of the foregoing codices that in the Laurentian Library at Florence dates from the thirteenth century; those at Ognissanti, Florence, at Assisi, Berlin, St Floriano, Oxford, Rome (St. Antony’s, St. Isidore’s, and the Vatican codex 4354), Toledo, and Volterra date from the fourteenth, and the others from the fifteenth century.

  For the Quaracchi edition of the Admonitions, upon which the present translation is based, the two oldest of all these codices, to wit, those of the Laurentian Library at Florence and of the Municipal Library at Assisi,1 have been used Those at St Isidore’s, Rome, and Ognissanti, Florence, have also been consulted, besides the editions of the Admonitions found in the Monumenta Ordinis Minorum (Salamanca, 1511, tract. 11, fol. 276 r), the Firmamenta Trium Ordinum2 (Paris, 1512, P. I, fol. 19 r), and the Liber Conformitatum of Bartholomew of Pisa (Milan, 1510, fruct. XII, P. 11). But for the titles and paragraphing, which differ more or less in different codices, the Laurentian codex has been followed3

  So much by way of preface to the

  ADMONITIONS.

  1.

  Of the Lord’s Body.

  The Lord Jesus said to His disciples: “I am the Way, and the Truth, and the Life. No man cometh to the Father, but by Me. If you had known Me you would, without doubt, have known My Father also: and from henceforth you shall know Him, and you have seen Him. Philip saith to Him: Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough for us. Jesus saith to him: Have I been so long a time with you and have you not known Me? Philip, he that seeth Me seeth [My] Father also. How sayest thou, Shew us the Father?”1 The Father “inhabiteth light inaccessible,”2 and “God is a spirit,”3 and “no man hath seen God at any time.”4 Because God is a spirit, therefore it is only by the spirit He can be seen, for “it is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing.”5 For neither is the Son, inasmuch as He is equal to the Father, seen by any one other than by the Father, other than by the Holy Ghost. Wherefore, all those who saw the Lord Jesus Christ according to humanity and did not see and believe according to the Spirit and the Divinity, that He was the Son of God, were condemned. In like manner, all those who behold the Sacrament of the Body of Christ which is sanctified by the word of the Lord upon the altar by the hands of the priest in the form of bread and wine, and who do not see and believe according to the Spirit and Divinity that It is really the most holy Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, are condemned, He the Most High having declared it when He said, “This is My Body, and the Blood of the New Testament,”6 and “he that eateth My Flesh and drinketh My Blood hath everlasting life.”1

  Wherefore [he who has]2 the Spirit of the Lord which dwells in His faithful, he it is who receives the most holy Body and Blood of the Lord: all others who do not have this same Spirit and who presume to receive Him, eat and drink judgment to themselves.3 Wherefore, “O ye sons of men, how long will you be dull of heart?”4 Why will you not know the truth and “believe in the Son of God?”5 Behold daily He humbles Himself as when from His “royal throne”6 He came into the womb of the Virgin; daily He Himself comes to us with like humility; daily He descends from the bosom of His Father upon the altar in the hands of the priest. And as He appeared in true flesh to the Holy Apostles, so now He shows Himself to us in the sacred Bread; and as they by means of their fleshly eyes saw only His flesh, yet contemplating Him with their spiritual eyes, believed Him to be God, so we, seeing bread and wine with bodily eyes, see and firmly believe it to be His most holy Body and true and living Blood And in this way our Lord is ever with His faithful, as He Himself says: “Behold I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the world.”7

  2.

  The Evil of Self-will.

  The Lord God said to Adam: “Of every tree of paradise thou shalt eat. But of the tree of knowledge of good and evil thou shalt not eat.”1 Adam therefore might eat of every tree of paradise and so long as he did not offend against obedience he did not sin. For one eats of the tree of knowledge of good who appropriates to himself his own will2 and prides himself upon the goods which the Lord publishes and works in him and thus, through the suggestion of the devil and transgression of the commandment, he finds the apple of the knowledge of evil; wherefore, it behooves that he suffer punishment.

  3.

  Of Perfect and Imperfect Obedience.

  The Lord says in the Gospel: he “that doth not renounce all that he possesseth cannot be” a “disciple”3 and “he that will save his life, shall lose it.”4 That man leaves all he possesses and loses his body and his soul who abandons himself wholly to obedience in the hands of his superior, and whatever he does and says—provided he himself knows that what he does is good and not contrary to his [the superior’s] will—is true obedience. And if at times a subject sees things which would be better or more useful to his soul than those which the superior commands him, let him sacrifice his will to God, let him strive to fulfil the work enjoined by the superior. This is true and charitable obedience which is pleasing to God and to one’s neighbor.

  If, however, a superior command anything to a subject that is against his soul it is permissible for him to disobey, but he must not leave him [the superior], and if in consequence he suffer persecution from some, he should love them the more for God’s sake. For he who would rather suffer persecution than wish to be separated from his brethren, truly abides in perfect obedience because he lays down his life for his brothers.1 For there are many religious who, under pretext of seeing better things than those which their superiors command, look back2 and return to the vomit of their own will.3 These are homicides and by their bad example cause the loss of many souls.

  4.

  That no one should take Superiorship upon himself.

  I did “not come to be ministered unto, but to minister,” says the Lord.4 Let those who are set above others glory in this superiority only as much as if they had been deputed to wash the feet of the brothers; and if they are more perturbed by the loss of their superiorship than they would be by losing the office of washing feet, so much the more do they lay up treasures to the peril of their own soul.

  5.

  That no one should glory save in the Cross of the Lord.

  Consider, O man, how great the excellence in which the Lord has placed you because He has created and formed you to the image of His beloved Son according to the body and to His own likeness according to the spirit.1 And all the creatures that are under heaven serve and know and obey their Creator in their own way better than you And even the demons did not crucify Him, but you together with them crucified Him and still crucify Him by taking delight in vices and sins. Wherefore then can you glory? For if you were so clever and wise that you possessed all science, and if you knew how to interpret every form of language and to investigate heavenly things minutely, you could not glory in all this, because one demon has known more of heavenly things and still knows more of earthly things than all men, although there may be some man who has received from the Lord a special knowledge of sovereign wisdom. In like manner, if you were handsomer and richer than all others, and even if you could work wonders and put the demons to flight, all these things are hurtful to you and in nowise belong to you, and in them you cannot glory; that, however, in which we may glory is in our infirmities,2 and in bearing daily the holy cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.

  6.

  Of the Imitation of the Lord.

  Let us all, brothers, consider the Good Shepherd who to save His sheep bore the suffering of the Cross. The sheep of the Lord followed Him in tribulation and persecution and shame, in hunger and thirst, in infirmity and temptations and in all other ways;1 and for these things they have received everlasting life from the Lord. Wherefore it is a great shame for us, the servants of God, that, whereas the Saints have practised works, we should expect to receive honor and glory for reading and preaching the same.

  7.

  That Good Works should accompany Knowledge.

  The Apostle says, “the letter killeth, but the spirit quickeneth.”2 They are killed by the letter who seek only to know the words that they may be esteemed more learned among others and that they may acquire great riches to leave to their relations and friends. And those religious are killed by the letter who will not follow the spirit of the Holy Scriptures, but who seek rather to know the words only and to interpret them to others. And they are quickened by the spirit of the Holy Scriptures who do not interpret materially every text they know or wish to know, but who by word and example give them back to God from whom is all good.

  8.

  Of avoiding the Sin of Envy.

  The Apostle affirms that “no man can say the Lord Jesus but by the Holy Ghost,”1 and “there is none that doth good, no not one.”2 Whosoever, therefore, envies his brother on account of the good which the Lord says or does in him, commits a sin akin to blasphemy, because he envies the Most High Himself who says and does all that is good.

  9.

  Of Love.

  The Lord says in the Gospel, “Love your enemies,” etc.3 He truly loves his enemy who does not grieve because of the wrong done to himself, but who is afflicted for love of God because of the sin on his [brother’s] soul and who shows his love by his works.

  10.

  Of Bodily Mortification.

  There are many who if they commit sin or suffer wrong often blame their enemy or their neighbor. But this is not right, for each one has his enemy in his power,—to wit, the body by which he sins. Wherefore blessed is that servant who always holds captive the enemy thus given into his power and wisely guards himself from it, for so long as he acts thus no other enemy visible or invisible can do him harm.

  11.

  That one must not be seduced by Bad Crample.1

  To the servant of God nothing should be displeasing save sin. And no matter in what way any one may sin, if the servant of God is troubled or angered—except this be through charity—he treasures up guilt to himself.2 The servant of God who does not trouble himself or get angry about anything lives uprightly and without sin. And blessed is he who keeps nothing for himself, rendering “to Cæsar the things that are Cæsar’s and to God the things that are God’s.”3

  12.

  Of Knowing the Spirit of God.

  Thus may the servant of God know if he has the Spirit of God: if when the Lord works some good through him, his body—since it is ever at variance with all that is good—is not therefore puffed up; but if he rather becomes viler in his own sight and if he esteems himself less than other men.4

  13.

  Of Patience.

  How much interior patience and humility a servant of God may have cannot be known so long as he is contented1 But when the time comes that those who ought to please him go against him, as much patience and humility as he then shows, so much has he and no more.

  14.

  Of Poverty of Spirit.

  “Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven”2 Many apply themselves to prayers and offices, and practise much abstinence and bodily mortification, but because of a single word which seems to be hurtful to their bodies or because of something being taken from them, they are forthwith scandalized and troubled. These are not poor in spirit: for he who is truly poor in spirit, hates himself and loves those who strike him on the cheek.3

  15.

  Of Peacemakers.

  “Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.”4 They are truly peacemakers who amidst all they suffer in this world maintain peace in soul and body for the love of our Lord Jesus Christ.

  16.

  Of Cleanness of Heart.

  “Blessed are the clean of heart: for they shall see God.”1 They are clean of heart who despise earthly things and always seek those of heaven, and who never cease to adore and contemplate the Lord God Living and True, with a pure heart and mind.

  17.

  Of the Humble Servant of God.

  Blessed is that servant who is not more puffed up because of the good the Lord says and works through him than because of that which He says and works through others. A man sins who wishes to receive more from his neighbor than he is himself willing to give to the Lord God.

  18.

  Of Compassion toward one’s Neighbor.

  Blessed is the man who bears with his neighbor according to the frailty of his nature as much as he would wish to be borne with by him if he should be in a like case.

  19.

  Of the Happy and Unhappy Servant.

  Blessed is the servant who gives up all his goods to the Lord God, for he who retains anything for himself hides “his Lord’s money,”2 and that “which he thinketh he hath shall be taken away from him.”3

  20.

  Of the Good and Humble Religious.

  Blessed is the servant who does not regard himself as better when he is esteemed and extolled by men than when he is reputed as mean, simple, and despicable: for what a man is in the sight of God, so much he is, and no more.1 Woe to that religious who is elevated in dignity by others, and who of his own will is not ready to descend. And blessed is that servant who is raised in dignity not by his own will and who always desires to be beneath the feet of others.

  21.

  Of the Happy and the Vain Religious.

  Blessed is that religious who feels no pleasure or joy save in most holy conversation and the works of the Lord, and who by these means leads men2 to the love of God in joy and gladness. And woe to that religious who takes delight in idle and vain words and by this means provokes men to laughter.

  22.

  Of the Frivolous and Talkative Religious.3

  Blessed is that servant who does not speak through hope of reward and who does not manifest everything and is not “hasty to speak,”4 but who wisely foresees what he ought to say and answer. Woe to that religious who not concealing in his heart the good things which the Lord has disclosed to him and who not manifesting them to others by his work, seeks rather through hope of reward to make them known to men by words: for now he receives his recompense and his hearers bear away little fruit.

  23.

  Of True Correction.

  Blessed is the servant who bears discipline, accusation, and blame from others as patiently as if they came from himself. Blessed is the servant who, when reproved, mildly submits, modestly obeys, humbly confesses, and willingly satisfies. Blessed is the servant who is not prompt to excuse himself and who humbly bears shame and reproof for sin when he is without fault.

  24.

  Of True Humility.1

  Blessed is he2 who shall be found as humble among his subjects as if he were among his masters. Blessed is the servant who always continues under the rod of correction. He is “a faithful and wise servant”3 who does not delay to punish himself for all his offences, interiorly by contrition and exteriorly by confession and by works of satisfaction.

  25.

  Of True Love.

  Blessed is that brother who would love his brother as much when he is ill and not able to assist him as he loves him when he is well and able to assist him. Blessed is the brother who would love and fear his brother as much when he is far from him as he would when with him, and who would not say anything about him behind his back that he could not with charity say in his presence.

  26.

  That the Servants of God should honor Clerics.

  Blessed is the servant of God who exhibits confidence in clerics who live uprightly according to the form of the holy Roman Church. And woe to those who despise them: for even though they [the clerics] may be sinners, nevertheless no one ought to judge them, because the Lord Himself reserves to Himself alone the right of judging them. For as the administration with which they are charged, to wit, of the most holy Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, which they receive and which they alone administer to others—is greater than all others, even so the sin of those who offend against them is greater than any against all the other men in this world.

  27.

  Of the Virtues putting Vices to flight.

  Where there is charity and wisdom there is neither fear nor ignorance Where there is patience and humility there is neither anger nor worry.1 Where there is poverty and joy there is neither cupidity nor avarice. Where there is quiet and meditation there is neither solicitude nor dissipation. Where there is the fear of the Lord to guard the house the enemy cannot find a way to enter. Where there is mercy and discretion there is neither superfluity nor hard-heartedness.

  28.

  Of hiding Good lest it be lost.

  Blessed is the servant who treasures up in heaven2 the good things which the Lord shows him and who does not wish to manifest them to men through the hope of reward, for the Most High will Himself manifest his works to whomsoever He may please. Blessed is the servant who keeps the secrets of the Lord in his heart.3

  II.

  Salutation of the Virtues.

  Thomas of Celano, St. Francis’ earliest biographer, bears witness to the authenticity of this exquisite Salutation in his Second Life, written about 12471 It is found in the codices of Assisi, Berlin, Florence (Ognissanti MS.), Foligno, Liegnitz, Naples, Paris (Mazarin MSS. and MS. of Prot. theol. fac.), and Rome (Vatican MSS.), above mentioned,2 as well as at Düsseldorf (Royal arch. cod B. 132), and is given by Bartholomew of Pisa in his Liber Conformitatum3 (fruct. XII, P. 11, Cap. 38). This Salutation was also published in the Speculum Vitae B. Francisci et Sociorum Ejus (fol. 126 v)4 and by Wadding,5 who followed the Assisian codex. This codex, which is the oldest one containing the Salutation, has been used for the Quaracchi edition, which I have here followed, as well as the Ognissanti MS. and the version given in the Conformities.

  Now follows the

  SALUTATION OF THE VIRTUES.6

  Hail,7 queen wisdom! May the Lord save thee with thy sister holy pure simplicity! O Lady, holy poverty, may the Lord save thee with thy sister holy humility! O Lady, holy charity, may the Lord save thee with thy sister holy obedience! O all ye most holy virtues, may the Lord, from whom you proceed and come, save you! There is absolutely no man in the whole world who can possess one among you unless he first die. He who possesses one and does not offend the others, possesses all; and he who offends one, possesses none and offends all; and every one [of them] confounds vices and sins. Holy wisdom confounds Satan and all his wickednesses. Pure holy simplicity confounds all the wisdom of this world and the wisdom of the flesh. Holy poverty confounds cupidity and avarice and the cares of this world. Holy humility confounds pride and all the men of this world and all things that are in the world Holy charity confounds all diabolical and fleshly temptations and all fleshly fears. Holy obedience confounds all bodily and fleshly desires and keeps the body mortified to the obedience of the spirit and to the obedience of one’s brother and makes a man subject to all the men of this world and not to men alone, but also to all beasts and wild animals, so that they may do with him whatsoever they will, in so far as it may be granted to them from above by the Lord.

  III.

  On Reverence for the Lord’s Body and on the Cleanliness of the Altar.

  The arguments already adduced to establish the authenticity of the Admonitions may also be used in behalf of this instruction addressed “to all clerics.” It is found in eight of the codices above mentioned—to wit, those of Assisi, Liegnitz, Paris (both Mazarin MSS. and at lib of Prot. theol. fac), Rome (St. Antony’s and St. Isidore’s MS. 1/73), and Dusseldorf. In Wadding’s edition of the Opuscula this instruction on the Blessed Sacrament is placed among the letters of St. Francis1 (No. XIII), but the early codices do not give it in an epistolary form,2 but rather as it is printed here without address or salutation. For the present edition the Assisian codex3 has been used as well as the codices of St. Antony’s and St. Isidore’s at Rome. The text is as follows

  ON REVERENCE FOR THE LORD’S BODY AND ON THE CLEANLINESS OF THE ALTAR.

  Let us all consider, O clerics, the great sin and ignorance of which some are guilty regarding the most holy Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ and His most holy Name and the written words of consecration. For we know that the Body cannot exist until after these words of consecration. For we have nothing and we see nothing of the Most High Himself in this world except [His] Body and Blood, names and words by which we have been created and redeemed from death to life.

  But let all those who administer such most holy mysteries, especially those who do so indifferently, consider among themselves how poor the chalices, corporals, and linens may be where the Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ is sacrificed. And by many It is left in wretched places and carried by the way disrespectfully, received unworthily and administered to others indiscriminately. Again His Names and written words are sometimes trampled under foot, for the sensual man perceiveth not these things that are of God.1 Shall we not by all these things be moved with a sense of duty when the good Lord Himself places Himself in our hands and we handle Him and receive Him daily? Are we unmindful that we must needs fall into His hands?

  Let us then at once and resolutely correct these faults and others; and wheresoever the most holy Body of our Lord Jesus Christ may be improperly reserved and abandoned, let It be removed thence and let It be put and enclosed in a precious place In like manner wheresoever the Names and written words of the Lord may be found in unclean places they ought to be collected and put away in a decent place. And we know that we are bound above all to observe all these things by the commandments of the Lord and the constitutions of holy Mother Church And let him who does not act thus know that he shall have to render an account therefor before our Lord Jesus Christ on the day of judgment. And let him who may cause copies of this writing to be made, to the end that it may be the better observed, know that he is blessed by the Lord.

  IV.

  Rules of the Friars Minor.

  The early history of the Seraphic legislation, to wit, the Rules of the Friars Minor, the Poor Ladies and the Brothers and Sisters of Penance, is intricate beyond measure, as those at all conversant with the subject are but too well aware. Withal, as regards the Rule of the Friars Minor, with which we are now more particularly concerned, St Francis seems, on the whole, to have written it twice. We have the formal testimony of St Bonaventure and other trustworthy authorities to this effect Suffice it to say that in the third year after he underwent the great spiritual crisis we call conversion, “the servant of Christ, seeing that the number of his Friars was gradually increasing, wrote for himself and for them a form of life in simple words, laying as its irremovable foundation the observance of the holy Gospel and adding a few other things which seemed necessary for uniformity of life.”1 It was this “form of life,” which has become known as the first Rule, that Innocent III approved viva voce, April 23, 1209.2 Some fourteen years later on, when the Order had greatly increased, Francis “desiring to bring into a shorter form the Rule handed down in which the words of the Gospel were scattered somewhat diffusely . . . caused a Rule to be written. . . . And this Rule. he committed to the keeping of his Vicar, who, after a few days had elapsed, declared that he had carelessly lost it. Once more the holy man . . . rewrote the Rule as at the first . . . and by Pope Honorius obtained its confirmation”1 on November 29, 1223. Such in briefest outline is the genesis of the first and second Rules written by St. Francis for the Friars Minor.

  To these two Rules Prof Karl Muller2 and M Paul Sabatier3 would fain add a third, written, as they aver, in 1221 Their opinion, however, seems to rest upon a misconception, for the Rule which they describe as dating from 1221, is not a new one, but the same that Innocent III approved, not indeed in its original form, which has not come down to us,4 but rather in the form it had assumed in the course of twelve years, as a consequence of many changes and additions.5

  Early expositors of the Rule, such as Hugo de Digne1 and Angelo Clareno,2 in their works always represent the Rule of which we are now speaking as the first and original one Moreover, none of the thirteenth century writers make mention of any third rule; they speak only of the changes and accretions which the first Rule suffered between 1209 and 1223.3

  For example Jordan a Giano tells us that St. Francis chose Brother Cæsar of Spires, a profound student of Scripture and a devoted friend, to assist him in putting this Rule into shape,1 and Jacques de Vitry, writing about 1217, relates that the Friars “meet once a year . . . and then with the help of good men adopt and promulgate holy institutions approved by the Pope”2 One of these institutions has been recorded for us by Thomas of Celano in his Second Life. It appears that “on account of a general commotion in a certain chapter, St. Francis caused these words to be written ‘Let the friars take care not to appear gloomy and sad like hypocrites, but let them be jovial and merry, showing that they rejoice in the Lord, and becomingly courteous,’ ”3 words which may be found in the seventh chapter of the first Rule.4 Honorius III, on September 22, 1220, issued a decree forbidding the Friars to leave the Order after having made profession, or to roam about “beyond the bounds of obedience,” and this ordinance was added to the second chapter of the Rule.5

  All permanent and powerful rules grow, as a recent writer6 has justly remarked, and it was thuswise that the first Rule of the Friars Minor received constant additions in the form of constitutions enacted at the Chapters held at Portiuncula after 1212 or otherwise—it is necessary to insist on this point1 —during the fourteen years it was in force. It is not hard therefore to understand why the texts we have of this Rule do not always agree, since these changes and additions did not come to the knowledge of all through the same channel. For example, in the tenth chapter, which deals with “the sick brothers,” we have two different readings the one followed in the present translation is that found in the majority of the codices;2 the other, which has been incorporated by Celano in his Second Life,3 has been used by Hugo de Digne in his exposition of the Rule4 So too in the twelfth chapter, which prescribes that the friars should avoid the company of women, we find the following addition in the exposition of Angelo Clareno5 and the Speculum Vitae B Francisci.6 “Let no one walk abroad with them alone or eat out of the same plate with them at table,”—words not to be found in the more common form of the Rule

  It remains to say a word about the relation of this first Rule to the second and definitive one approved in 1223. In treating of the difference between these two Rules, M. Sabatier errs still more strangely They had little in common, he avers, except the name, the second being the very antithesis of the first, which alone was truly Franciscan.7 To say the truth this assertion is less conformable to reality than it is to the theories and prejudices of the French writer. In so far as the first and second Rules written by St. Francis for the Friars Minor may be said to differ, the difference lies in this that the second Rule is shorter, more precise, and more orderly;1 but essentially and in substance it is clearly and truly the same as the first Rule. Indeed, the very wording of the second Rule already exists in great part in the first one, as any one must observe who makes an unbiassed comparison of the two So true is this agreement between the two Rules that they are often regarded as one and the same. Thus Pope Honorius III himself in his bull of 1223 confirming the second Rule makes no distinction between the two. “We confirm,” he says, “the Rule of your Order approved by Pope Innocent, our predecessor, of happy memory.”2 And Brother Elias, in a letter addressed to the friars “living near Valenciennes,” exhorts them to observe purely, inviolably, unweariedly the “holy Rule approved by Pope Innocent and confirmed by Pope Honorius.”3 Rightly then does Hugo de Digne (“spiritualis homo ultra modum”) describe the difference between the two Rules in his Exposition,4 when he says: “Some things were afterwards omitted for the sake of brevity from the Rule approved by Pope Innocent before it was confirmed by the bull of Pope Honorius.”1

  For the rest, M Sabatier’s assertion that the “Spiritual” friars at the beginning of the fourteenth century did not dream of using the first Rule2 can hardly be admitted. To refute it, it suffices to cite Angelo Clareno, the leader of the “Spiritual” friars, who so very often mentions the first Rule in his exposition and whose citations prove that in the first quarter of the fourteenth century there was no memory of any other Rule, even in the camp of the rigorists. In a word, “the opposition which the distinguished French critic would fain set up between the two Rules, does not exist, and Chapter XV of his Life of St. Francis is not at all consonant with history.” Such is the assertion of the Quaracchi editors. Its truth will be best demonstrated by an examination of the text of both Rules, which now follow:

  FIRST RULE OF THE FRIARS MINOR
  Which St. Francis made and which Pope Innocent III confirmed without a Bull.3

  In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen. This is the life that Brother Francis begged might be conceded to him and confirmed by the Lord Pope Innocent. And he [the Pope] has conceded and confirmed it to him and to his brothers present and future.

  Brother Francis, and whoever may be at the head of this religion, promises obedience and reverence to our Lord Pope Innocent and to his successors. And the other brothers shall be bound to obey Brother Francis and his successors.1

  1.—

  That the Brothers ought to live in Obedience, without Property and in Chastity.

  The Rule and life of these brothers is this: namely, to live in obedience and chastity, and without property, and to follow the doctrine and footsteps of our Lord Jesus Christ, who says: “If thou wilt be perfect, go sell what thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven, and come, follow Me.”2 And: “If any man will come after Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow Me;”3 in like manner: “If any man come to Me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be My disciple”1 “And everyone that hath left father or mother, brothers or sisters, or wife, or children or lands, for My sake, shall receive an hundredfold, and shall possess life everlasting.”2

  2.—

  Of the Reception and Clothing of the Brothers.

  If any one, wishing by divine inspiration to embrace this manner of life, comes to our brothers, let him be kindly received by them. And if he be firmly resolved to undertake our life, let the brothers take great care not to meddle with his temporal affairs, but let them present him as soon as possible to their minister. Let the minister receive him kindly, and encourage him, and diligently explain to him the tenor of our life. This being done, if he be willing and able, with safety of conscience and without impediment, let him sell all his goods and endeavor to distribute them to the poor. But let the brothers and the ministers of the brothers be careful not to interfere in any way in his affairs, and let them not receive any money, either themselves or through any person acting as intermediary; if however they should be in want, the brothers may accept other necessaries for the body, money excepted, by reason of their necessity, like other poor. And when he [the candidate] shall have returned, let the minister grant him the habit of probation for a year; that is to say, two tunics without a hood and cord and breeches and a chaperon1 reaching to the girdle. The year of probation being finished, let him be received to obedience. Afterwards it shall not be lawful for him to pass to another Order, nor to “wander about beyond obedience,” according to the commandment of the Lord Pope.2 For according to the Gospel “no man putting his hand to the plough, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God.”3 If, however, anyone should present himself who cannot without difficulty give away his goods, but has the spiritual will to relinquish them, it shall suffice. No one shall be received contrary to the form and institution of the holy Church.

  But the other brothers who have promised obedience may have one tunic with a hood, and another without a hood, if necessity require it, and a cord and breeches. And let all the brothers be clothed with mean garments, and they may mend them with sackcloth and other pieces, with the blessing of God, for the Lord says in the Gospel: they that are in costly apparel and live delicately and they that are clothed in soft garments are in the houses of kings.4 And although they should be called hypocrites, let them not cease to do good; let them not desire rich clothes in this world, that they may possess a garment in the kingdom of heaven.

  3.—

  Of the Divine Office and of the Fast.

  The Lord says: “This kind [of devil] can go out by nothing but by fasting and prayer”;1 and again: “When you fast be not as the hypocrites, sad.”2 For this reason let all the brothers, whether clerics or laics, say the Divine Office, the praises and prayers which they ought to say. The clerics shall say the Office, and say it for the living and the dead, according to the custom of clerics; but to satisfy for the defect and negligence of the brothers, let them say every day Miserere mei, with the Pater noster; for the deceased brothers let them say De profundis, with Pater noster. And they may have only the books necessary to perform their Office; and the lay-brothers who know how to read the Psalter may also have one; but the others who do not know how to read may not have a book. The lay-brothers however shall say: Credo in Deum, and twenty-four Paternosters with Gloria Patri for Matins, but for Lauds, five; for Prime, Tierce, Sext, and Nones, for each, seven Paternosters with Gloria Patri; for Vespers, twelve; for Compline, Credo in Deum and seven Paternosters with Gloria Patri; for the dead, seven Paternosters with Requiem aeternam; and for the defect and negligence of the brothers, three Paternosters every day.

  And all the brothers shall likewise fast from the feast of All Saints until the Nativity of our Lord, and from Epiphany, when our Lord Jesus Christ began to fast, until Easter; but at other times let them not be bound to fast according to this life except on Fridays. And they may eat of all foods which are placed before them, according to the Gospel.1

  4.—

  Of the Ministers and the other Brothers: how they shall be ranged.

  In the Name of the Lord let all the brothers who are appointed ministers and servants of the other brothers place their brothers in the provinces or places where they may be, and let them often visit and spiritually admonish and console them. And let all my other blessed brothers diligently obey them in those things which look to the salvation of the soul and are not contrary to our life. Let them observe among themselves what the Lord says: “Whatsoever you would that men should do to you, do you also to them,”2 and “what you do not wish done to you, do it not to others”3 And let the ministers and servants remember that the Lord says: I have not “come to be ministered unto, but to minister,”4 and that to them is committed the care of the souls of their brothers, of whom, if any should be lost through their fault and bad example, they will have to give an account before the Lord Jesus Christ in the day of judgment.

  5.—

  Of the Correction of the Brothers who offend.

  Therefore take care of your souls and of those of your brothers, for “it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.”1 If however one of the ministers should command some one of the brothers anything contrary to our life or against his soul, the brother is not bound to obey him, because that is not obedience in which a fault or sin is committed. Nevertheless, let all the brothers who are subject to the ministers and servants consider reasonably and carefully the deeds of the ministers and servants. And if they should see any one of them walking according to the flesh and not according to the spirit, according to the right way of our life, after the third admonition, if he will not amend, let him be reported to the minister and servant of the whole fraternity in the Whitsun Chapter, in spite of any obstacle that may stand in the way. If however among the brothers, wherever they may be, there should be some brother who desires to live according to the flesh, and not according to the spirit, let the brothers with whom he is admonish, instruct, and correct him humbly and diligently. And if after the third admonition he will not amend, let them as soon as possible send him, or make the matter known to his minister and servant, and let the minister and servant do with him what may seem to him most expedient before God.

  And let all the brothers, the ministers and servants as well as the others, take care not to be troubled or angered because of the fault or bad example of another, for the devil desires to corrupt many through the sin of one; but let them spiritually help him who has sinned, as best they can; for he that is whole needs not a physician, but he that is sick.1

  In like manner let not all the brothers have power and authority, especially among themselves, for as the Lord says in the Gospel: “The princes of the Gentiles lord it over them: and they that are the greater exercise power upon them.”2 It shall not be thus among the brothers, but whosoever will be the greater among them, let him be their minister and servant,3 and he that is the greater among them let him be as the younger,4 and he who is the first, let him be as the last. Let not any brother do evil or speak evil to another; let them rather in the spirit of charity willingly serve and obey each other: and this is the true and holy obedience of our Lord Jesus Christ. And let all the brothers as often soever as they may have declined from the commandments of God, and wandered from obedience, know that, as the prophet says,5 they are cursed out of obedience as long as they continue consciously in such a sin. And when they persevere in the commandments of the Lord, which they have promised by the holy Gospel and their life, let them know that they abide in true obedience, and are blessed by God.

  6—

  Of the Recourse of the Brothers to their Ministers and that no Brother may be called Prior

  Let the brothers, in whatsoever places they may be, if they cannot observe our life, have recourse as soon as possible to their minister, making this known to him. But let the minister endeavor to provide for them in such a way as he would wish to be dealt with himself if he were in the like case. And let no one be called Prior, but let all in general be called Friars Minor. And let one wash the feet of the other.

  7.—

  Of the Manner of serving and working.

  Let the brothers in whatever places they may be among others to serve or to work, not be chamberlains, nor cellarers, nor overseers in the houses of those whom they serve, and let them not accept any employment which might cause scandal, or be injurious to their soul,1 but let them be inferior and subject to all who are in the same house.

  And let the brothers who know how to work, labor and exercise themselves in that art they may understand, if it be not contrary to the salvation of their soul, and they can exercise it becomingly For the prophet says: “For thou shalt eat the labors of thy hands; blessed art thou, and it shall be well with thee”;1 and the Apostle: “If any man will not work, neither let him eat.”2 And let every man abide in the art or employment wherein he was called.3 And for their labor they may receive all necessary things, except money. And if they be in want, let them seek for alms like other brothers. And they may have the tools and implements necessary for their work. Let all the brothers apply themselves with diligence to good works, for it is written: “Be always busy in some good work, that the devil may find thee occupied;”4 and again: “Idleness is an enemy to the soul.”5 Therefore the servants of God ought always to continue in prayer or in some other good work.

  Let the brothers take care that wherever they may be, whether in hermitages or in other places, they never appropriate any place to themselves, or maintain it against another. And whoever may come to them, either a friend or a foe, a thief or a robber, let them receive him kindly. And wherever the brothers are and in whatsoever place they may find themselves, let them spiritually and diligently show reverence and honor toward one another without murmuring.1 And let them take care not to appear exteriorly sad and gloomy like hypocrites, but let them show themselves to be joyful and contented in the Lord, merry and becomingly courteous.2

  8.—

  That the Brothers must not receive Money.

  The Lord commands in the Gospel: “Take heed, beware of all malice and avarice and guard yourselves from the solicitudes of this world, and the cares of this life.”3 Therefore let none of the brothers, wherever he may be or whithersoever he may go, carry or receive money or coin in any manner, or cause it to be received, either for clothing, or for books, or as the price of any labor, or indeed for any reason, except on account of the manifest necessity of the sick brothers. For we ought not to have more use and esteem of money and coin than of stones. And the devil seeks to blind those who desire or value it more than stones. Let us therefore take care lest after having left all things we lose the kingdom of heaven for such a trifle. And if we should chance to find money in any place, let us no more regard it than the dust we tread under our feet,4 for it is “vanity of vanities, and all is vanity.”5 And if perchance, which God forbid, it should happen that any brother should collect or have money or coin, except only because of the aforesaid necessity of the sick, let all the brothers hold him for a false brother, a thief, a robber, and one having a purse, unless he should become truly penitent. And let the brothers in nowise receive money for alms1 or cause it to be received, seek it or cause it to be sought, or money for other houses or places; nor let them go with any person seeking money or coin for such places. But the brothers may perform all other services which are not contrary to our life, with the blessing of God. The brothers may however for the manifest necessity of the lepers ask alms for them But let them be very wary of money. But let all the brothers likewise take great heed not to search the world for any filthy lucre.

  9—

  Of asking for Alms.

  Let all the brothers strive to follow the humility and poverty of our Lord Jesus Christ, and let them remember that we ought to have nothing else in the whole world, except as the Apostle says: “Having food and wherewith to be covered, with these we are content.2 ” And they ought to rejoice when they converse with mean and despised persons, with the poor and the weak, with the infirm and lepers, and with those who beg in the streets. And when it may be necessary, let them go for alms. And let them not be ashamed thereof, but rather remember that our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of the Living and Omnipotent God, set His face “as a hard rock,”1 and was not ashamed, and was poor, and a stranger, and lived on alms, He Himself and the Blessed Virgin and His disciples. And when men may treat them with contempt, and refuse to give them an alms, let them give thanks for this to God, because for these shames they shall receive great honor before the tribunal of our Lord Jesus Christ. And let them know that the injuries shall not be imputed to those who suffer them, but to those who offer them. And alms is an inheritance and a right which is due to the poor, which our Lord Jesus Christ purchased for us. And the brothers who labor in seeking it will have a great recompense, and they will procure and acquire a reward for those who give; for all that men leave in this world shall perish, but for the charity and alms-deeds they have done they will receive a reward from God.

  And let one make known clearly his wants to another, in order that he may find and receive what are necessary for him. And let everyone love and nourish his brother as a mother loves and nourishes her son, in so far as God gives them grace. And “let not him that eateth despise him that eateth not; and he that eateth not, let him not judge him that eateth.”1 And whensoever a necessity shall arise, it is lawful for all the brothers, wherever they may be, to eat of all food that men can eat, as our Lord said of David, who “did eat the loaves of proposition, which was not lawful to eat but for the priests.”2 And let them remember what the Lord says: “and take heed to yourselves, lest perhaps your hearts be overcharged with surfeiting and drunkenness, and the cares of this life: and that they come upon you suddenly. For as a snare shall it come upon all that sit upon the face of the whole earth.”3 And in like manner in time of manifest necessity let all the brothers act in their needs, as our Lord shall give them grace, for necessity has no law.

  10.—

  Of the sick Brothers.

  If any of the brothers fall into sickness, wherever he may be, let the others not leave him, unless one of the brothers, or more if it be necessary, be appointed to serve him as they would wish to be served themselves; but in urgent necessity they may commit him to some person who will take care of him in his infirmity. And I ask the sick brother that he give thanks to the Creator for all things, and that he desire to be as God wills him to be, whether sick or well; for all whom the Lord has predestined to eternal life1 are disciplined by the rod of afflictions and infirmities, and the spirit of compunction; as the Lord says: “Such as I love I rebuke and chastise.”2 If, however, he be disquieted and angry, either against God or against the brothers, or perhaps ask eagerly for remedies, desiring too much to deliver his body which is soon to die, which is an enemy to the soul, this comes to him from evil and he is fleshly, and seems not to be of the brothers, because he loves his body more than his soul.3

  11.—

  That the Brothers ought not to speak evil or detract, but ought to love one another.

  And let all the brothers take care not to calumniate anyone, nor to contend in words;4 let them indeed study to maintain silence as far as God gives them grace. Let them also not dispute among themselves or with others, but let them be ready to answer with humility, saying: “we are unprofitable servants.”5 And let them not be angry, for “whosoever is angry with his brother shall be in danger of the judgment. And whosoever shall say to his brother, Raca, shall be in danger of the council. And whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire.”6 And let them love one another, as the Lord says: “This is My commandment, that you love one another, as I have loved you.1 ” And let them show their love by the works2 they do for each other, according as the Apostle says: “let us not love in word or in tongue, but in deed and in truth.”3 Let them “speak evil of no man,”4 nor murmur, nor detract others, for it is written: “Whisperers and detractors are hateful to God.”5 And let them be “gentle, showing all mildness toward all men.”6 Let them not judge and not condemn, and, as the Lord says, let them not pay attention to the least sins of others, but rather let them recount their own in the bitterness of their soul.7 And let them “strive to enter by the narrow gate,”8 for the Lord says: “How narrow is the gate, and strait is the way that leadeth to life, and few there are that find it!”9

  12.—

  Of avoiding unbecoming Looks and the Company of Women.

  Let all the brothers, wherever they are or may go, carefully avoid unbecoming looks, and company of women, and let no one converse with them alone.10 Let the priests speak to them honestly, giving them penance or some spiritual counsel. And let no woman whatsoever be received to obedience by any brother,1 but spiritual counsel being given to her let her do penance where she wills. Let us all carefully watch over ourselves, and hold all our members in subjection, for the Lord says: “Whosoever shall look on a woman to lust after her, hath already committed adultery with her in his heart.”2

  13.—

  Of the Punishment of Fornicators.

  If any brother by the instigation of the devil should commit fornication, let him be deprived of the habit of the Order which he has lost by his base iniquity and let him put it aside wholly, and let him be altogether expelled from our religion. And let him afterwards do penance for his sins.

  14.—

  How the Brothers should go through the World.

  When the brothers travel through the world, let them carry nothing by the way, neither bag, nor purse, nor bread, nor money, nor a staff. And whatsoever house they shall enter, let them first say, “Peace be to this house,” and remaining in the same house, let them eat and drink what things they have.3 Let them not resist evil,4 but if anyone should strike them on the cheek, let them turn to him the other; and if anyone take away their garment, let them not forbid him the tunic also. Let them give to everyone that asketh them, and if anyone take away their goods, let them not ask them again.1

  15—

  That the Brothers may not keep Beasts nor ride.

  I enjoin all the brothers, both clerics and laics, that when they travel through the world, or reside in places, they in no wise, either with them or with others or in any other way, have any kind of beast of burden. Nor is it lawful for them to ride on horseback unless they are compelled by infirmity or great necessity.

  16.—

  Of those who go among the Saracens and other Infidels.

  The Lord says: “Behold, I send you as sheep in the midst of wolves. Be ye therefore wise as serpents and simple as doves.”2 Wherefore, whoever of the brothers may wish, by divine inspiration, to go among the Saracens and other infidels, let them go with the permission of their minister and servant. But let the minister give them leave and not refuse them, if he sees they are fit to be sent; he will be held to render an account to the Lord if in this or in other things he acts indiscreetly. The brothers, however, who go may conduct themselves in two ways spiritually among them. One way is not to make disputes or contentions; but let them be “subject to every human creature for God’s sake,”1 yet confessing themselves to be Christians. The other way is that when they see it is pleasing to God, they announce the Word of God, that they may believe in Almighty God,—Father, and Son, and Holy Ghost, the Creater of all, our Lord the Redeemer and Saviour the Son, and that they should be baptized and be made Christians, because, “unless a man be born again of water and the Holy Ghost, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.”2

  These and other things which please God they may say to them, for the Lord says in the Gospel: “Everyone that shall confess Me before men, I will also confess him before My Father who is in heaven;”3 and “he that shall be ashamed of Me and My words, of him the Son of Man shall be ashamed, when He shall come in His majesty and that of His Father, and of the holy angels.”4

  And let all the brothers, wherever they may be, remember that they have given themselves, and have relinquished their bodies to our Lord Jesus Christ; and for love of Him they ought to expose themselves to enemies both visible and invisible, for the Lord says: “Whosoever shall lose his life for My sake, shall save it”5 in eternal life. “Blessed are they that suffer persecution for justice’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”1 “If they have persecuted Me, they will also persecute you.”2 If however they should persecute you in one city, flee to another.3 “Blessed are ye when they shall revile you, and persecute you, and speak all that is evil against you, untruly, for My sake.”4 “Be glad in that day and rejoice, for your reward is great in heaven.”5 “I say to you, my friends, be not afraid of them who kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do.”6 “See that ye are not troubled.”7 “In your patience you shall possess your souls.”8 “But he that shall persevere unto the end, he shall be saved.”9

  17.—

  Of Preachers.

  Let none of the brothers preach contrary to the form and institution of the holy Roman Church, and unless this has been conceded to him by his minister. But let the minister take care that he does not grant this leave indiscreetly to anyone. Nevertheless, let all the brothers preach by their works. And let no minister or preacher appropriate to himself the ministry of brothers or the office of preaching, but let him give up his office without any contradiction at whatever hour it may be enjoined him. Wherefore I beseech in the charity which God is10 all my brothers, preachers, prayers, or laborers, both clerics and laics, that they study to humble themselves in all things and that they glory not, nor rejoice, nor inwardly exalt themselves on account of good words and works, nor indeed for any good which God may sometimes say or do and operate in them or by them, according to what the Lord says: “But yet rejoice not, in this that spirits are subject unto you”1 And let us know for certain that nothing belongs to us but vices and sins. And we ought rather to rejoice when we “fall into divers temptations,”2 and when we bear some afflictions or sorrows of soul or body in this world for the sake of eternal life Let us then all, brothers, avoid all pride and vainglory. Let us keep ourselves from the wisdom of this world, and the prudence of the flesh; for the spirit of the world wishes and cares much for words, but little for work; and it seeks not religion and interior sanctity of spirit, but wishes and desires a religion and sanctity appearing from without to men. And these are they of whom the Lord says: “Amen, I say unto you, they have received their reward.”3 But the spirit of the Lord wishes the flesh to be mortified and despised, and to be considered vile, abject, and contemptible; and it studies humility and patience, pure simplicity, and true peace of mind, and always desires above all things divine fear and divine wisdom, and the divine love of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost.

  And let us refer all good to the Lord God most High and Supreme; let us acknowledge that all good belongs to Him, and let us give thanks for all to Him from whom all good proceeds And may He, the most High and Supreme, only True God, have, and may there be rendered to Him and may He receive, all honors and reverences, all praises and benedictions, all thanks and all glory, to whom all good belongs, who alone is good.1 And when we see or hear evil said or God blasphemed, let us bless and thank and praise the Lord who is blessed for ever. Amen.

  18.—

  How the Ministers should meet together.

  Each minister may assemble with his brothers every year wherever he may please on the Feast of St. Michael the Archangel, to treat of those things which belong to God. And let all the ministers who are in parts beyond the sea and beyond the mountains come once in three years, and the other ministers once every year to the chapter on Whit Sunday, at the Church of St. Mary of the Portiuncula, unless it be otherwise ordered by the minister and servant of the whole brotherhood.

  19—

  That all the Brothers must live in a Catholic way.

  Let all the brothers be Catholics, and live and speak in a Catholic manner. But if anyone should err from the Catholic faith and life in word or in deed, and will not amend, let him be altogether expelled from our fraternity. And let us hold all clerics and religious as our masters in those things which regard the salvation of souls, if they do not deviate from our religion, and let us reverence their office and order and administration in the Lord.

  20—

  Of the Confession of the Brothers and of the Reception of the Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ.

  Let my blessed brothers, both clerics and laics, confess their sins to priests of our religion. And if they cannot do this, let them confess to other discreet and Catholic priests, knowing firmly and hoping that from whatever Catholic priests they may receive penance and absolution, they will undoubtedly be absolved from these sins if they take care to observe humbly and faithfully the penance enjoined them. If however they cannot then have a priest, let them confess to their brother, as the Apostle James says: “Confess your sins to one another;”1 but let them not on this account fail to have recourse to priests, for to priests alone the power of binding and loosing has been given. And thus contrite and having confessed, let them receive the Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ with great humility and veneration, calling to mind what the Lord Himself says: “He that eateth My Flesh and drinketh My Blood hath everlasting life,”1 and “Do this for a commemoration of Me.”2

  21—

  Of the Praise and Exhortation which all the Brothers may make.

  And this or the like exhortation and praise all my brothers may announce with the blessing of God, whenever it may please them among whatever men they may be: Fear and honor, praise and bless God, give thanks3 and adore the Lord God Almighty in Trinity and Unity, Father, and Son, and Holy Ghost, the Creator of all. “Do penance,”4 bring forth fruits worthy of penance,5 for know that we must soon die. “Give and it shall be given to you;”6 “Forgive, and you shall be forgiven.”7 And if you do not forgive men their sins, the Lord will not forgive you your sins.8 Confess all your sins.9 Blessed are they who shall die in penitence, for they shall be in the kingdom of heaven. Woe to those who do not die in penitence, for they shall be the children of the devil, whose works they do,10 and they shall go into eternal fire Beware and abstain from all evil, and persevere in good until the end.

  22—

  Of the Admonition of the Brothers.

  Let us all, brothers, give heed to what the Lord says: “Love your enemies, and do good to them that hate you.”1 For our Lord Jesus, whose footsteps we ought to follow,2 called His betrayer friend,3 and offered Himself willingly to His crucifiers. Therefore all those who unjustly inflict upon us tribulations and anguishes, shames and injuries, sorrows and torments, martyrdom and death, are our friends whom we ought to love much, because we gain eternal life by that which they make us suffer. And let us hate our body with its vices and sins, because by living carnally it wishes to deprive us of the love of our Lord Jesus Christ and eternal life, and to lose itself with all else in hell; for we by our own fault are corrupt, miserable, and averse to good, but prompt and willing to evil; because, as the Lord says in the Gospel: from the heart of men proceed and come evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye, false testimonies, blasphemy, foolishness.4 All these evils come from within, from the heart of man, and these are what defile a man.

  But now, after having renounced the world, we have nothing else to do but to be solicitous, to follow the will of God, and to please Him. Let us take much care that we be not the wayside, or the stony or thorny ground, according to what the Lord says in the Gospel: The seed is the word of God. And that which fell by the wayside and was trampled under foot are they that hear the word and do not understand, then the devil cometh, and snatcheth that which has been sown in their hearts and taketh the word out of their hearts, lest believing they should be saved. But that which fell upon the rock are they who, when they hear the word, at once receive it with joy; but when tribulation and persecution arise on account of the word, they are immediately scandalized, and these have no roots in themselves, but are for a while, for they believe for a while, and in time of temptation fall away But that which fell among thorns are they who hear the word of God, and the solicitude and cares of this world, the fallacies of riches, and the desire of other things entering in choke the word, and it becomes unfruitful. But that sown on good ground are they who, in a good and best heart, hearing the word understand and keep it, and bring forth fruit in patience.1

  And for this reason, brothers, let us, as the Lord says, “let the dead bury their dead.”2 And let us be much on our guard against the malice and cunning of Satan, who desires that man should not give his heart and mind to the Lord God, and who going about seeks to seduce the heart of man under pretext of some reward or benefit, to smother the words and precepts of the Lord from memory, and who wishes to blind the heart of man by wordly business and cares, and to dwell there, as the Lord says: “When an unclean spirit is gone out of a man, he walketh through dry places seeking rest and findeth none; then he saith: ‘I will return into my house whence I came out.’ And coming he findeth it empty, swept, and garnished. Then he goeth and taketh with him seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and they enter in, and dwell there; and the last state of that man is made worse than the first.”1 Wherefore let us all, brothers, watch much, lest under pretext of some reward or labor or aid we lose or separate our mind and heart from the Lord. But I beseech all the brothers, both the ministers and others, in the charity which God is,2 that, overcoming all obstacles and putting aside all care and solicitude, they strive in the best manner they are able, to serve, love, and honor the Lord God with a clean heart and a pure mind, which He seeks above all. And let us always make in us a tabernacle and dwelling-place for Him, who is the Lord God Omnipotent, Father, and Son, and Holy Ghost, who says: “Watch, therefore, praying at all times, that you may be accounted worthy to escape” all the evils “that are to come, and to stand before the Son of Man.”1 And when you stand to pray,2 say, “Our Father, who art in heaven.” And let us adore Him with a pure heart, for “we ought always to pray, and not to faint,”3 for the Father seeks such adorers. “God is a Spirit, and they that adore Him, must adore Him in spirit and in truth”4 And let us have recourse to Him as the “Shepherd and Bishop of our souls,”5 who says: “I am the Good Shepherd,” who feed My sheep, “and I lay down My life for My flock.”6 But all you are brothers. “And call none your father upon earth; for one is your Father who is in heaven. Neither be ye called masters, for one is your master, who is in heaven, Christ.”7 “If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, you shall ask whatever you will, and it shall be done unto you”8 “Where there are two or three gathered together in My Name, there am I in the midst of them.”9 “Behold, I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the world.”10 “The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life.”11 “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.”12

  Let us therefore hold fast the words, the life and doctrine and holy Gospel of Him who deigned for us to ask His Father to manifest to us His Name, saying: Father, I have manifested Thy Name to the men whom Thou hast given Me because the words which Thou gavest Me I have given to them, and they have received them, and have known in very deed that I came forth out of Thee, and they have believed that Thou didst send Me. I pray for them, I pray not for the world, but for them whom Thou hast given Me, because they are Thine and all My things are Thine. Holy Father, keep them in Thy Name whom Thou hast given Me, that they may be one, as We also are. These things I speak in the world that they may have joy filled in themselves. I have given them Thy word, and the world hath hated them, because they are not of the world, as I also am not of the world. I pray not that Thou shouldst take them out of the world, but that Thou shouldst keep them from evil. Sanctify them in truth. Thy word is truth As Thou hast sent Me into the world, I have sent them into the world. And for them I do sanctify Myself, that they may be sanctified in truth. Not for them only do I pray, but for them also who through their word shall believe in Me, that they may be consummated in one, and that the world may know that Thou hast sent Me, and hast loved them, as Thou hast also loved Me. And I have made known Thy Name to them, that the love wherewith Thou hast loved Me may be in them, and I in them. Father, I will that where I am, they also whom Thou hast given Me may be with Me, that they may see Thy glory in Thy kingdom.1

  23—

  Prayer, Praise, and Thanksgiving2

  Almighty, most Holy, most High and Supreme God, Holy and Just Father, Lord King of heaven and earth, for Thyself we give thanks to Thee because by Thy holy will, and by Thine only Son, Thou hast created all things spiritual and corporal in the Holy Ghost and didst place us made to Thine image and likeness3 in paradise, whence we fell by our own fault. And we give Thee thanks because, as by Thy Son Thou didst create us, so by the true and holy love with which Thou hast loved us,4 Thou didst cause Him, true God and true Man, to be born of the glorious and ever-Virgin, most Blessed holy Mary, and didst will that He should redeem us captives by His Cross and Blood and Death. And we give thanks to Thee because Thy Son Himself is to come again in the glory of His Majesty to put the wicked who have not done penance for their sins, and have not known Thee, in eternal fire, and to say to all who have known Thee and adored Thee, and served Thee in penance: “Come, ye blessed of My Father, possess the kingdom prepared for you from the beginning of the world.”5

  And since all we wretches and sinners are not worthy to name Thee, we humbly beseech Thee, that our Lord Jesus Christ, Thy beloved Son, in whom Thou art well pleased,1 together with the Holy Ghost, the Paraclete, may give thanks to Thee as it is pleasing to Thee and Them, for all; He suffices Thee always for all through whom Thou hast done so much for us. Alleluia. And we earnestly beg the glorious Mother, the most Blessed Mary ever-Virgin, Blessed Michael, Gabriel, Raphael, and all the choirs of the blessed spirits, seraphim, cherubim, and thrones, dominations, principalities and powers, virtues, angels and archangels, blessed John the Baptist, John the Evangelist, Peter, Paul, the blessed patriarchs and prophets, innocents, apostles, evangelists, disciples, martyrs, confessors, virgins, blessed Elias and Enoch, and all the Saints who have been and are, and shall be, for Thy love, that they may, as it is pleasing to Thee, give thanks for these things to the most high, true God, eternal and living, with Thy most dear Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, and the Holy Ghost, the Paraclete, for ever and ever. Amen. Alleluia.

  And all we, brothers minor, useless servants, humbly entreat and beseech all those within the holy Catholic and Apostolic Church wishing to serve God, and all ecclesiastical Orders, priests, deacons, subdeacons, acolytes, exorcists, lectors, door-keepers, and all clerics; all religious men and women, all boys and children, poor and needy, kings and princes, laborers, husbandmen, servants and masters, all virgins, continent, and married people, laics, men and women, all infants, youths, young men and old, healthy and sick, all small and great, and all peoples, clans, tribes, and tongues, all nations and all men in all the earth, who are and shall be, that we may persevere in the true faith and in doing penance, for otherwise no one can be saved. Let us all love with all our heart, with all our soul, with all our mind, with all our strength and fortitude, with all our understanding and with all our powers,1 with our whole might and whole affection, with our innermost parts, our whole desires, and wills, the Lord God, who has given, and gives to us all, the whole body, the whole soul, and our life; who has created and redeemed us, and by His mercy alone will save us; who has done and does all good to us, miserable and wretched, vile, unclean, ungrateful, and evil.

  Let us therefore desire nothing else, wish for nothing else, and let nothing please and delight us except our Creator and Redeemer, and Saviour, the only true God, who is full of good, all good, entire good, the true and supreme good, who alone is good,2 merciful and kind, gentle and sweet, who alone is holy, just, true, and upright, who alone is benign, pure, and clean, from whom, and through whom, and in whom is all mercy, all grace, all glory of all penitents and of the just, and of all the blessed rejoicing in heaven. Let nothing therefore hinder us, let nothing separate us, let nothing come between us. Let us all, everywhere, in every place, at every hour, and at all times, daily and continually believe, truly and humbly, and let us hold in our hearts, and love, honor, adore, serve, praise and bless, glorify and exalt, magnify and give thanks to the most High and Supreme, Eternal God, in Trinity and Unity, to the Father, and Son, and Holy Ghost, to the Creator of all, to the Saviour of all who believe and hope in Him, and love Him, who, without beginning or end, is inmutable, invisible, unerring, ineffable, incomprehensible, unfathomable, blessed, praiseworthy, glorious, exalted, sublime, most high, sweet, amiable, lovable, and always wholly desirable above all forever and ever.

  In the Name of the Lord, I beseech all the brothers that they learn the tenor and sense of those things that are written in this life for the salvation of our souls, and frequently recall them to mind. And I pray God that He who is Almighty, Three in One, may bless all who teach, learn, hold, remember, and fulfil those things as often as they repeat and do what is there written for our salvation. And I entreat all, kissing their feet, to love greatly, keep and treasure up these things. And on the part of Almighty God and of the Lord Pope, and by obedience, I, Brother Francis, strictly command and enjoin that no one subtract from those things that are written in this life, or add anything written to it over and above, and that the brothers have no other Rule.

  Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.

  SECOND RULE OF THE FRIARS MINOR.1

  1—

  In the Name of the Lord begins the life of the Minor Brothers.

  The Rule and life of the Minor Brothers is this, namely, to observe the holy Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, by living in obedience, without property and in chastity. Brother Francis promises obedience and reverence to the Lord Pope Honorius and to his successors canonically elected and to the Roman Church. And let the other brothers be bound to obey Brother Francis and his successors.

  2.—

  Of those who wish to embrace this Life and how they ought to be received.

  If any wish to embrace this life and come to our brothers, let them send them to their provincial ministers, to whom alone and not to others is accorded the power of receiving brothers. But let the ministers diligently examine them regarding the Catholic faith and the Sacraments of the Church. And if they believe all these things, and if they will confess them faithfully and observe them firmly to the end, and if they have no wives, or, if they have and their wives have already entered a monastery, or have, with the authority of the diocesan bishop, given them permission after having made a vow of continence, and if the wives be of such an age that no suspicion may arise concerning them, let them [the ministers] say to them the word of the holy Gospel,1 that they go and sell all their goods and strive to distribute them to the poor. If they should not be able to do this, their good will suffices. And the brothers and their ministers must take care not to be solicitous about their temporal affairs, that they may freely do with their affairs whatsoever the Lord may inspire them. If, however, counsel should be required, the ministers shall have power of sending them to some God-fearing men by whose advice their goods may be distributed to the poor. Afterwards, let them give them clothes of probation, to wit, two tunics without a hood and a cord and breeches and a chaperon reaching to the cord, unless at some time the same ministers may decide otherwise according to God. The year of probation being finished, they shall be received to obedience, promising to observe always this life and rule. And according to the command of the Lord Pope1 in no wise shall it be allowed them to go out of this religion, because, according to the holy Gospel: “No man putting his hand to the plough and looking back is fit for the kingdom of God.”2 And let those who have already promised obedience have one tunic with a hood, and if they wish it another without a hood. And those who are obliged by necessity may wear shoes. And let all the brothers be clothed in poor garments and they may patch them with pieces of sackcloth and other things, with the blessing of God. I admonish and exhort them not to despise or judge men whom they see clothed in fine and showy garments using dainty meats and drinks, but rather let each one judge and despise himself.

  3.—

  Of the Divine Office, and of Fasting; and how the Brothers must go through the world.

  Let the clerics perform the Divine Office according to the order of the holy Roman Church, with the exception of the Psalter; wherefore they may have breviaries.3 But let the laics say twenty-four Paternosters for Matins; five for Lauds; for Prime, Tierce, Sext and Nones,—for each of these, seven; for Vespers, however, twelve, for Compline seven; and let them pray for the dead.

  And let them fast from the feast of All Saints until the Nativity of the Lord. But the holy Lent which begins from Epiphany and continues for forty days, which the Lord has consecrated by His holy fast,1 —may those who keep it voluntarily be blessed by the Lord and those who do not wish may not be constrained. But they must fast during the other one until the Resurrection of the Lord. At other times, however, they shall not be obliged to fast, except on Fridays. But in time of manifest necessity the brothers shall not be bound to corporal fasting.

  I indeed counsel, warn, and exhort my brothers in the Lord Jesus Christ that when they go through the world they be not litigious nor contend in words,2 nor judge others; but that they be gentle, peaceful, and modest, meek and humble, speaking honestly to all as is fitting. And they must not ride on horseback unless compelled by manifest necessity or infirmity. Into whatsoever house they may enter let them first say: Peace be to this house! And, according to the holy Gospel, it is lawful to eat of all foods which are set before them.3

  4—

  That the Brothers must not receive money.

  I strictly enjoin on all the brothers that in no wise they receive coins or money, either themselves or through an interposed person. Nevertheless, for the necessities of the sick and for clothing the other brothers, let the ministers and custodes alone take watchful care through spiritual friends, according to places and times and cold climates, as they shall see expedient in the necessity, saving always that, as has been said, they shall not receive coins or money.

  5.—

  Of the manner of working.

  Let those brothers to whom the Lord has given the grace of working labor faithfully and devoutly, so that in banishing idleness, the enemy of the soul, they do not extinguish the spirit of holy prayer and devotion, to which all temporal things must be subservient. They may, however, receive as the reward of their labor, the things needful for the body for themselves and their brothers, with the exception of coins or money, and that humbly, as befits the servants of God and the followers of most holy poverty

  6.—

  That the Brothers shall appropriate nothing to themselves: and of seeking Alms and of the Sick Brothers.

  The brothers shall appropriate nothing to themselves, neither a house nor place nor anything. And as pilgrims and strangers1 in this world, serving the Lord in poverty and humility, let them go confidently in quest of alms, nor ought they to be ashamed, because the Lord made Himself poor for us in this world. This, my dearest brothers, is the height of the most sublime poverty which has made you heirs and kings of the kingdom of heaven: poor in goods, but exalted in virtue. Let that be your portion, for it leads to the land of the living;2 cleaving to it unreservedly, my best beloved brothers, for the Name of our Lord Jesus Christ, never desire to possess anything else under heaven.

  And wheresoever the brothers are and may find themselves, let them mutually show among themselves that they are of one household. And let one make known his needs with confidence to the other, for, if a mother nourishes and loves her carnal son, how much more earnestly ought one to love and nourish his spiritual brother! And if any of them should fall into illness, the other brothers must serve him as they would wish to be served themselves.

  7.—

  Of the Penance to be imposed on Brothers who sin.

  If any of the brothers, at the instigation of the enemy, sin mortally by those sins for which it has been ordained among the brothers that recourse should be had to the provincial ministers alone, the aforesaid brothers are bound to have recourse to them as soon as possible, without delay. But let the ministers themselves, if they are priests, impose penance on them with mercy; if however they are not priests, let them have it imposed by other priests of the Order, as it may seem to them most expedient, according to God. And they must beware lest they be angry or troubled on account of the sins of others, because anger and trouble impede charity’ in themselves and in others.

  8.—

  Of the Election of the Minister General of this Brotherhood, and of the Whitsun Chapter.

  All the brothers are bound always to have one of the brothers of this religion as minister general and servant of the whole brotherhood, and they are strictly bound to obey him. At his death the election of a successor must be made by the provincial ministers and custodes in the Whitsun Chapter, in which the provincial ministers are always bound to convene at the same time, wheresoever it may be appointed by the minister general, and that once in three years or at a longer or shorter interval as may be ordained by the said minister And if at any time it should be apparent to the whole of the provincial ministers that the aforesaid minister general is not sufficient for the service and the common welfare of the brothers, let the aforesaid ministers, to whom the election has been committed, be bound to elect for themselves another as custos in the name of the Lord. But after the Whitsun Chapter the ministers and custodes may each, if they wish and it seem expedient to them, convoke their brothers to a chapter in their custodies once in the same year.

  9.—

  Of Preachers.

  The brothers must not preach in the diocese of any bishop when their doing so may be opposed by him. And let no one of the brothers dare to preach in any way to the people, unless he has been examined and approved by the minister general of this brotherhood, and the office of preaching conceded to him by the latter. I also warn and exhort the same brothers that in the preaching they do their words be fire-tried and pure1 for the utility and edification of the people, announcing to them vices and virtues, punishment and glory, with brevity of speech because the Lord made His word short upon earth.2

  10.—

  Of the Admonition and Correction of the Brothers.

  Those brothers who are ministers and servants of the other brothers, shall visit and admonish their brothers, and shall humbly and charitably correct them, not commanding them anything against their souls and our Rule. The brothers however who are subject must remember that, for God, they have renounced their own will. Wherefore I order them strictly to obey their ministers in all things which they have promised the Lord to observe and are not against their souls and our Rule. And wheresoever there are brothers who see and know that they are not able to observe the rule spiritually, they ought to and can recur to their ministers. And let the ministers receive them charitably and kindly and show so great familiarity toward them that they [the culprits] may speak and act with them as masters with their servants, for thus it ought to be, since the ministers are the servants of all the brothers.

  I also warn and exhort the brothers in the Lord Jesus Christ that they beware of all pride, vainglory, envy, covetousness,1 the cares and solicitudes of this world, of detraction and murmuring. Let not those who are ignorant of letters care to learn letters, but let them consider that, beyond all, they should desire to possess the spirit of the Lord and His holy operation, to pray always to Him with a pure heart and to have humility, patience in persecution and in infirmity and to love those who persecute, reprove, and accuse us, because the Lord has said: “Love your enemies . . . and pray for them that persecute and calumniate you”2 “Blessed are they that suffer persecution for justice’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”1 “But he that shall persevere to the end, he shall be saved.”2

  11.—

  That the Brothers must not enter the Monasteries of Nuns.

  I strictly command all the brothers not to have suspicious intimacy, or conferences with women, and let none enter the monasteries of nuns except those to whom special permission has been granted by the Apostolic See. And let them not be godfathers of men or women, that3 scandal may not arise on this account among the brothers or concerning the brothers.

  12.—

  Of those who go among the Saracens and other Infidels.

  Let all of the brothers who by divine inspiration desire to go amongst the Saracens or other infidels, ask leave therefor from their provincial ministers. But the ministers must give permission to go to none except to those whom they see are fitted to be sent.

  Moreover, I enjoin on the ministers, by obedience, that they ask of the Lord Pope one of the Cardinals of the holy Roman Church to be governor, protector, and corrector of this brotherhood, so that being always subject and submissive at the feet of the same holy Church, grounded in the Catholic faith,1 we may observe poverty and humility and the holy Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, which we have firmly promised.

  V.

  Fragments from the Rule of the Sisters of St Clare.

  Of the “many writings”1 left by St. Francis to the Poor Ladies at St Damian’s, only two fragments are known to exist, and these have been preserved to us through St. Clare herself, in so far as she incorporated them in the sixth chapter of her Rule. We have it on the authority of Pope Gregory IX that St Francis wrote for St. Clare and her first companions a formula vitae, or “little rule,” at the beginning of their religious life.2 But it was this same Pope Gregory IX, then known as Cardinal Ugolino, who about 1219 composed a Rule for the Poor Ladies, which was accepted by St. Francis and confirmed by Honorius III3 This Rule, as the Pontiff himself declares, was solemnly professed by Clare and her Sisters and observed by them for many years in a praiseworthy manner.4 Pope Innocent IV bears witness to the same effect. Writing to Blessed Agnes, Princess of Bohemia (who had founded a house of the Second Order at Prague), of this Rule, written by Cardinal Ugolino, he says “The Sisters of the Monastery of St. Damian and all others of your Order have laudably observed it from the time of its profession until now.”1 These words were written on November 13, 1243

  In view of such testimony it is obviously a mistake to assert, as Wadding and some other writers do, that St Clare abandoned this Rule in 1224, and professed another one written by St. Francis. It is also erroneous to suppose that St. Francis ever wrote a Rule for the Poor Ladies.2 The one written about 1219, by Cardinal Ugolino, was recast by St Clare herself toward the close of her life, and made to conform as far as possible to the Second Rule written by St. Francis for the Friars Minor. The Rule of the Poor Ladies, thus recast by St Clare in a new form, was confirmed by Innocent IV, August 9, 1253, just two days before the death of the holy abbess3

  In the sixth chapter of this Rule, St Clare describes the circumstances under which the two fragments of St Francis’ writings here given were composed. “After the Most High Heavenly Father deigned by His grace to enlighten my heart,” St. Clare tells us, “to do penance after the example and teaching of our most blessed father, St. Francis, a little while after his own conversion, I, together with my sisters, voluntarily promised him obedience. But, seeing that we feared no poverty, toil, sorrow, abasement and contempt of the world, nay rather that we held them in great delight, the blessed father, moved by compassion, wrote us a rule of life1 in this form . . . .” Then follows the first of the two fragments given below. Further on in the same chapter of her Rule, the holy abbess adds: “To the end that we and also those who might come after us should never fall away from the most holy poverty which we had undertaken, he again wrote to us shortly before his death2 his last wish, saying . . . .”3 Then follows the second of the two fragments here given.

  Both these pieces, which Wadding took for letters4 addressed to St. Clare, are here translated according to the text of the Rule contained in the original bull of Innocent IV5 They are as follows

  1.

  FORM OF LIFE WHICH ST. FRANCIS WROTE FOR ST. CLARE.6

  Since, by divine inspiration, you have made yourselves daughters and handmaids of the Most High Sovereign King, the Heavenly Father, and have espoused yourselves to the Holy Ghost, choosing to live according to the perfection of the holy Gospel, I will, and I promise to have always, by myself and my brothers, a diligent care and special solicitude for you, as for them.1

  2

  LAST WISH WHICH ST. FRANCIS WROTE TO ST CLARE.

  I, little brother Francis, wish to follow the life and poverty of Jesus Christ our Most High Lord and of His Most Holy Mother and to persevere therein until the end. And I beseech you all, my ladies, and counsel you, to live always in this most holy life and poverty. And watch yourselves well that you in no wise depart from it through the teaching or advice of any one.

  VI.

  Testament of the Holy Father St Francis.

  The opuscule which St Francis called his Testament is a precious document of the highest authority. Renan forsooth denied its authenticity, but rashly, for, as M Sabatier rightly remarks,1 this is not to be questioned.2 The Testament corresponds throughout with the other writings of St Francis, and moreover reveals his character and spirit in every line. But we are not reduced to internal proofs for its genuinity All the historians, including Thomas of Celano,3 and St. Bonaventure,4 mention it,5 while Gregory IX cites it textually in his bull Quo elongati of September 28, 1230. We know from this bull that the Saint’s Testament was published a few days only before his death6 Everything seems to point to its having been written at the hermitage of the Celle near Cortona, during St Francis’ last visit there (summer of 1226), though some think it was dictated to Angelo Tancredi, one of the Three Companions, in the little hut nearest the Portiuncula which served as an infirmary and in which St. Francis died.

  According to M. Sabatier, St. Francis wrote more than one testament. Indeed, the French critic goes so far as to say that at the end of each of his crises the Saint made his will anew,7 and in support of this assertion cites Chapter 87 of his own edition of the Speculum Perfectionis, in which we read that during an illness (seemingly in April, 1226), St. Francis caused Brother Benedict of Prato to write down a blessing and some words of advice “in token of memory and benediction and testament.” But surely from this narration we may not deduce the general proposition that St. Francis wrote “several testaments.” The early Legends are silent except as to the one Testament here given, and all the passages which different writers quote “from the Testament” may be found in this one,—if we except two passages in M. Sabatier’s edition of the Speculum Perfectionis But it is not difficult to see that in both these places the Speculum is in error. In the ninth chapter it repeats incorrectly what Brother Leo elsewhere1 relates, and in the fifty-fifth chapter the compiler of the Speculum is still more astray, as a comparison of this chapter with chapter twenty-seventh of Father Lemmens’ edition of the Speculum clearly indicates. Both editions of the Speculum tell in almost the same words of St. Francis’ love for the Church of the Portiuncula. M Sabatier’s edition says “At his death he caused it to be written in the Testament that all the brothers should do likewise;” whereas Father Lemmens’ edition reads as follows. “Toward his death he bequeathed this Church to the brothers as a testament.”2

  The Testament is to be found among St. Francis’ works in twelve of the codices above described,3 to wit, those at Assisi,1 Berlin, Florence (Ognissanti MSS), St. Floriano, Liegnitz, Paris (Nat. lib and Mazarin MSS. 989), Prague and Rome (St. Antony’s and both Vatican MSS), as well as in a fifteenth century MS at the Hague (Municip. lib cod. K. 54, fol 3 v). The text here translated is that of the Assisi codex collated with those of Ognissanti, Florence, and St Antony’s, Rome, and with the versions of the Testament contained in the Monumenta (fol. 274 v) and Firmamenta2 (fol. 16 v). Here begins the.

  TESTAMENT OF THE HOLY FATHER ST. FRANCIS.

  The Lord gave to me, Brother Francis, thus to begin to do penance; for when I was in sin it seemed to me very bitter to see lepers, and the Lord Himself led me amongst them and I showed mercy to them3 And when I left them, that which had seemed to me bitter was changed for me into sweetness of body and soul. And afterwards I remained a little and I left the world. And the Lord gave me so much4 faith in churches that I would simply pray and say thus: “We adore Thee Lord Jesus Christ here1 and in all Thy churches which are in the whole world, and we bless Thee because by Thy holy cross Thou hast redeemed the world.”

  After that the Lord gave me, and gives me, so much faith in priests who live according to the form of the holy Roman Church, on account of their order,2 that if they should persecute me, I would have recourse to them. And if I had as much wisdom as Solomon had, and if I should find poor priests of this world,3 I would not preach against their will in the parishes in which they live. And I desire to fear, love, and honor them and all others as my masters; and I do not wish to consider sin in them, for in them I see the Son of God and they are my masters. And I do this because in this world, I see nothing corporally of the most high Son of God Himself except His most holy Body and Blood, which they receive and they alone administer to others. And I will that these most holy mysteries be honored and revered above all things and that they be placed in precious places. Wheresoever I find His most holy Names and written words in unseemly places, I wish to collect them, and I ask that they may be collected and put in a becoming place. And we ought to honor and venerate all theologians and those who minister to us the most holy Divine Words as those who minister to us spirit and life.1

  And when the Lord gave me some brothers, no one showed me what I ought to do, but the Most High Himself revealed to me that I should live according to the form of the holy Gospel.2 And I caused it to be written in few words and simply, and the Lord Pope confirmed it for me. And those who came to take this life upon themselves gave to the poor all that they might have and they3 were content with one tunic, patched within and without, by those who wished,4 with a cord and breeches, and we wished for no more.

  We clerics said the Office like other clerics; the laics said the Paternoster, and we remained in the churches5 willingly enough. And we were simple and subject to all. And I worked with my hands and I wish to work and I wish firmly that all the other brothers should work at some labor which is compatible with honesty. Let those who know not [how to work] learn, not through desire to receive the price of labor but for the sake of example and to repel idleness. And when the price of labor is not given to us, let us have recourse to the table of the Lord, begging alms from door to door.

  The Lord revealed to me this salutation, that we should say: “The Lord give thee peace.”1 Let the brothers take care not to receive on any account churches, poor dwelling-places, and all other things2 that are constructed for them, unless they are as is becoming the holy poverty which we have promised in the Rule, always dwelling there as strangers and pilgrims.3

  I strictly enjoin by obedience4 on all the brothers that, wherever they may be, they should not dare, either themselves or by means of some interposed person,5 to ask any letter in the Roman curia either for a church6 or for any other place, nor under pretext of preaching, nor on account of their bodily persecution; but, wherever they are not received let them flee to another land to do penance, with the blessing of God. And I wish to obey the minister general of this brotherhood strictly and the guardian whom it may please him to give me. And I wish to be so captive in his hands that I cannot go or act beyond his obedience and his will because he is my master. And although I am simple and infirm, I desire withal always to have a cleric who will perform the office with me as it is contained in the Rule.

  And let all the other brothers be bound to obey their guardian and to perform the office according to the Rule. And those who may be found not performing the office according to the Rule and wishing to change it in some way, or who are not Catholics, let all the brothers wherever they may be, if they find one of these, be bound by obedience to present him to the custos who is nearest to the place where they have found him. And the custos shall be strictly bound, by obedience, to guard him strongly day and night as a prisoner so that he cannot be snatched from his hands until he shall personally place him in the hands of his minister. And the minister shall be firmly bound by obedience to send him by such brothers as shall watch him day and night like a prisoner until they shall present him to the Lord of Ostia, who is master protector, and corrector of this brotherhood.1

  And let not the brothers say: This is another Rule; for this is a remembrance, a warning, and an exhortation and my Testament which I, little Brother Francis, make for you, my blessed brothers, in order that we may observe in a more Catholic way the Rule which we have promised to the Lord. And let the minister general and all the other ministers and custodes be bound by obedience not to add to these words or to take from them. And let them always have this writing with them beside the Rule. And in all the Chapters they hold, when they read the Rule let them read these words also. And I strictly enjoin on all my brothers, clerics and laics, by obedience, not to put glosses on the Rule or on these words saying: Thus they ought to be understood; but as the Lord has given me to speak and to write the Rule and these words simply and purely, so shall you understand them simply and purely1 and with holy operation observe them until the end.

  And whoever shall observe these things2 may he be filled in heaven with the blessing of the Most High Father and may he be filled on earth with blessing of His Beloved Son together with the Holy Ghost, the Paraclete, and all the Powers of heaven and all the saints. And I, Brother Francis, your little one and servant, in so far as I am able, I confirm to you within and without this most holy blessing.3 Amen.4

  VII

  Of Living Religiously in a Hermitage

  We learn from St Bonaventure1 and the Fioretti2 that as companions began to flock to St. Francis, the man of God hesitated for a while between adopting a life of prayer or of preaching. Although, as we know, he finally decided in favor of the apostolate, yet withal he never altogether separated the contemplative from the active life. A precious witness to this fact is found in the Regulation for the brothers during their sojourn in hermitages with which we are now concerned. To understand the scope of this peculiar piece of legislation, it must be borne in mind that at the beginning of the Franciscan movement the friars had no settled domicile.3 The wide world was their cloister.4 Possessing nothing they wandered about like children careless of the day, teaching or preaching, passing the night in hay-lofts or under church porches, in lazarettos, or deserted huts and grottoes1 The need of having some kind of permanent retreat where they might retire at times to pray or rest, resulted in the institution of hermitages. These little solitudes, to which Francis loved to withdraw, may be found wherever the Saint went. The Celle near Cortona, the Carceri on Mount Subasio, Greccio in the valley of Rieti, and the more solitary hermitages, like Lo Speco, form, as some one has said, a series of documents, about St Francis’ life, quite as important as the written ones. And not a little of his spirit still lingers in such of these hermitages as yet remain. It was for the government of small loci2 like these that the present special little Rule was written. Its attribution to St. Francis has not been questioned. The quaint simplicity of its conception proclaims its authenticity, and in none of the codices does it bear the name of any other author than St. Francis. It may have been written about 1217; its composition certainly belongs to the first decade of the Order.

  In the ancient collections of St. Francis’ writings found in the codices at Florence (Ognissanti), Foligno, Rome (St. Isidore’s MS. 1/25 and the Vatican MS. 7650), as well as in copies of the compilation which begins Fac secundum exemplar, this Instruction is found at the end of the Admonitions. But in the greater number of the early codices the Admonitions close as in the present translation, and the opuscule on hermitages is preferably separated from them, as it is in the Assisian codex and that of St. Isidore’s, Rome (MS. 1/73). The text which follows is based on the Assisi MS, which has been collated with that of Ognissanti and those at St. Isidore’s and with the version of this Regulation given by Bartholomew of Pisa in his Conformities.1 Here is the text

  OF LIVING RELIGIOUSLY IN A HERMITAGE

  Let those who wish to live religiously in hermitages, be three brothers or four at most. Let two of them be mothers and have two sons, or at least one. Let the two former lead the life of Martha and the other two the life of Mary Magdalene.2

  Let those who lead the life of Mary have one cloister3 and each his own place, so that they may not live or sleep together. And let them always say Compline of the day toward sunset,4 and let them be careful to keep silence and to say their Hours and to rise for Matins, and let them seek first “the kingdom of God and His justice.”1 And let them say Prime and Tierce at the proper time, and, after the hour of Tierce, they may break silence and may speak and, when it is pleasing to them, they may go to their mothers and may ask an alms from them for the love of the Lord God, like little poor ones.2 And after that, let them say Sext and Nones and Vespers at the appointed time

  And they must not allow any3 person to enter into the cloister where they live, or let them eat there. Let those brothers who are mothers endeavor to keep apart from every person and, by the obedience of their custos, let them guard their sons from every person, so that no one may speak with them. And let these sons not speak with any person except with their mothers and with their custos, when it shall please him to visit them with the blessing of God.4 But the sons must sometimes in turn assume the office of mothers, for a time, according as it may seem to them to dispose Let them strive to observe all the above diligently and earnestly.5

  PART II.

  SIX LETTERS OF ST. FRANCIS

  The Letters of St. Francis.

  Or the seventeen letters attributed to St. Francis in Wadding’s edition of the Opuscula, five cannot be admitted as genuine, at least in the form given in that work, and the rest need, with two exceptions, to be reclassified

  In the first category, we must place the familiar letter in which St. Francis gives St. Antony permission to teach theology (Epistle III, in Wadding’s edition), and which has been excluded by the Quaracchi editors as doubtful on the ground that it exists in too many different forms.1 The letters to Brother Elias, to the Provincial Ministers, and to the Custodes (Epistles VII, IX, and XIV, in Wadding’s edition), were translated by Wadding into Latin from a Spanish text,2 and have not come down to us in their original form. Hence they do not figure in the Quaracchi edition. Neither does the letter (Epis. XVII, in Wadding’s edition) to “Brother” Giacoma dei Settisoli, which is clearly an extract from Chapter XVIII of the Actus B. Francisci et Sociorum ejus.3 Following the Quaracchi editors, I have excluded these five letters from the present work.

  As regards the reclassification of the other letters attributed to St. Francis by Wadding, Epistles IV, V, and XIII in his edition are without doubt genuine writings of St. Francis, but they are not letters; at least, the oldest MSS. do not give them in epistolary form. The two former are fragments of a “rule of life” and a “last wish,” written by St. Francis for St. Clare; No. XIII is an Instruction on the Blessed Sacrament. All three are given elsewhere in the present volume in their proper form.1 For the rest, the Epistles numbered I and II by Wadding form the text of one and the same letter “To all the Faithful,” those numbered VI and VIII seem to be a summary of the genuine letter “To a Minister,” and No. X is part of the letter “To the General Chapter” also given below, while Epistles XI and XII form but one letter in the oldest codices and belong to this same letter to the General Chapter. The only two letters, then, of St. Francis which, both as regards matter and form, may be accepted as Wadding gives them, are numbers VIII and XV, addressed to the Rulers and to Brother Leo respectively. In a word, as a result of this process of elimination and reclassification, only five of the seventeen letters ascribed to St Francis by Wadding remain to us, namely —

  1. Letter to all the Faithful (Ep I and II of Wadding).

  2. Letter to the General Chapter (Ep. X, XI, and XII of Wadding).

  3 Letter to a Minister (Ep. VI and VIII of Wadding).

  4. Letter to the Rulers (Ep. XV of Wadding).

  5. Letter to Brother Leo (Ep. XVI of Wadding).

  To these five letters, the Quaracchi editors have added the undoubtedly authentic letter of St Francis to the Custodes,1 making six in all Such are the six letters which I have here rendered into English. Let us now consider each of them in order

  I.

  Letter to all the Faithful.

  The authenticity of this letter has never been called into question. The text itself and the consensus of codices alike bespeak its genuineness. Its inspiration is, as the Quaracchi editors have pointed out, kindred to that of St. Francis’ other writings. Moreover, many of the sentiments contained in this letter, written in great part in the words of the Gospel, are expressed by the Saint in almost the self-same language in the Rules and elsewhere.1

  In the spring of 1215, St. Francis suffered again from an attack of fever similar to that which had prostrated him in Spain. It was then, his biographers tell us,2 that the Saint, unable as he was to preach, was moved by the zeal that devoured him, to put his message into writing. As a result we have this the first and longest of his letters, addressed to all the Faithful,—a precious example of his far-reaching solicitude and all embracing sympathy. There is a simplicity in the superscription and opening words of this letter characteristic of the Middle Ages. Then was the time when men believed that if they had a good idea or a deep feeling on any subject, the world at large had but to learn of this idea or feeling and it would immediately adopt it. It was thus that some bishops of the south of France, having established the Truce of God, wrote “to all the archbishops, bishops, priests and clerics inhabiting all Italy” to recommend to them “this new method come from heaven” of reestablishing and fixing peace among men. Even so Dante, in the excess of his grief, wrote “to all the princes of the earth” to make known to them that, in losing Beatrice, “the earth had lost its spring and the future of the world was threatened”1 Thus too St. Francis undertook in the present letter to recall “to all the Christians who are in the whole world,” those eternal truths which are ever old and ever new, convinced as he was that the world must needs walk in their light if it only realized them more. For the rest, as has been remarked, the description it contains of the death of a rich man is, from a literary point of view, rightly considered the most carefully composed bit of St. Francis’ writing that has come down to us.

  A fragment containing this realistic picture was published in 1900 by M. Sabatier,2 who believed it to be a new and complete opuscule of St. Francis. But the very Incipit of the piece, “The body grows feeble, death approaches . . .” and the Explicit, “dies a bitter death,” clearly show that, with the exception of a few words at the opening, this “nouveau opuscule” is nothing more or less than an extract from St. Francis’ letter to all the Faithful.

  Wadding, as I have already noted, following the lead of Rodolfo di Tossignano,3 unskilfully divided this letter into two distinct epistles (I and II in his edition). He has also distributed the letter into twelve chapters with separate titles. No doubt he was justified in doing so by the example of some codices, but the Quaracchi editors, following the best MSS, have omitted this division and it will not be found in the present translation.1

  The letter to all the Faithful may be found entire in seventeen of the codices mentioned above, to wit, those at Assisi (fol 23), Berlin (fol 105); Florence (Ognissanti MS., fol. 7), St. Floriano (fol. 36); Foligno (fol 25), Lemberg (fol 341); Liegnitz (fol. 136), Munich (fol. 31), Oxford (fol 98), Paris (Maz. MS. 1743, fol. 137; Maz. MS 989, fol 193, Prot. theol. fac MS., fol. 88); Rome (St Isidore’s MSS 1/25, fol. 18 and 1/7, fol. 15; Vatican MSS. 4354, fol 43, and 7650, fol 16), and at Dusseldorf (cod. B 132, fol. not numbered).

  Fragments of the letter may also be found in the codices at Luttich (fol 158); Naples (F. 24, fol. 107), and Volterra (fol. 148)2 For the text contained in the Quaracchi edition, the editors took as a basis the MSS. of Assisi and Ognissanti, collating these with the codices at St Isidore’s and with the versions of the letter given in the Monumenta (tract II, fol. 278 r) and the Conformities (fruct. XII, P. 11).3 It is the Quaracchi text that I have here translated as follows:

  I.—

  LETTER TO ALL THE FAITHFUL.

  To all Christians, religious, clerics, and laics, men and women, to all who dwell in the whole world, Brother Francis, their servant and subject, presents reverent homage, wishing true peace from heaven and sincere charity in the Lord.

  Being the servant of all, I am bound to serve all and to administer the balm-bearing words of my Lord.1 Wherefore, considering in my mind that, because of the infirmity and weakness of my body, I cannot visit each one personally, I propose by this present letter and message2 to offer you the words of our Lord Jesus Christ who is the Word of the Father and the words of the Holy Ghost which are “spirit and life”3

  This Word of the Father, so worthy, so holy and glorious, whose coming the most High Father announced from heaven by His holy archangel Gabriel to the holy and glorious Virgin Mary4 in whose womb He received the true flesh of our humanity and frailty, He, being rich5 above all, willed, nevertheless, with His most Blessed Mother, to choose poverty.

  And when His Passion was nigh, He celebrated the Pasch with His disciples and, taking bread, He gave thanks and blessed and broke saying: Take ye and eat: this is My Body. And, taking the chalice, He said: This is My Blood of the New Testament, which shall be shed for you and for many unto remission of sins.1 After that He prayed to the Father, saying: “Father, if it be possible, let this chalice pass from Me.”2 “And His sweat became as drops of blood, trickling down upon the ground.”3 But withal, He gave up His will to the will of the Father, saying: Father, Thy will be done: not as I will, but as Thou wilt.4 Such was the will of the Father that His Son, Blessed and Glorious, whom He gave to us, and who was born for us,5 should by His own Blood, sacrifice, and oblation, offer Himself on the altar of the Cross, not for Himself, by whom “all things were made,”6 but for our sins, leaving us an example that we should follow His steps.7 And He wishes that we should all be saved by Him8 and that we should receive Him with a pure heart and a chaste body. But there are few who wish to receive Him and to be saved by Him, although His yoke is sweet and His burden light9

  Those who will not taste how sweet the Lord is10 and who love darkness rather than the light,11 not wishing to fulfil the commandments of God are cursed: of them it is said by the prophet: “They are cursed who decline from Thy commandments.”12 But, O how happy and blessed are those who love the Lord, who do as the Lord Himself says in the Gospel: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart and with thy whole soul and . . . thy neighbor as thyself.”1 Let us therefore love God and adore Him with a pure heart and a pure mind because He Himself, seeking that above all, says: “The true adorers shall adore the Father in spirit and in truth.”2 For all who “adore Him, must adore Him in spirit and in truth.”3 And let us offer Him praises and prayers day and night, saying: “Our Father who art in heaven,” for “we ought always to pray, and not to faint.”4

  We ought indeed to confess all our sins to a priest and receive from him the Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ.5 He who does not eat His Flesh and does not drink His Blood cannot enter into the Kingdom of God.6 Let him, however, eat and drink worthily, because he who receives unworthily “eateth and drinketh judgment to himself, not discerning the Body of the Lord,”7 —that is, not discerning it from other foods.

  Let us, moreover, “bring forth fruits worthy of penance.”8 And let us love our neighbors as ourselves, and, if any one does not wish to love them as himself or cannot,1 let him at least do them not harm, but let him do good to them.

  Let those who have received the power of judging others, exercise judgment with mercy,2 as they hope to obtain mercy from the Lord For let judgment without mercy be shown to him that doth not mercy.3 Let us then have charity and humility and let us give alms because they wash souls from the foulness of sins.4 For men lose all which they leave in this world; they carry with them, however, the reward of charity and alms which they have given, for which they shall receive a recompense and worthy remuneration from the Lord.

  We ought also to fast and to abstain from vices and sins5 and from superfluity of food and drink, and to be Catholics. We ought also to visit Churches frequently and to reverence clerics not only for themselves, if they are sinners, but on account of their office and administration of the most holy Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, which they sacrifice on the altar and receive and administer to others. And let us all know for certain that no one can be saved except by the Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ and by the holy words of the Lord which clerics say and announce and distribute and they alone administer and not others. But religious especially, who have renounced the world, are bound to do more and greater things, but “not to leave the other undone.”1

  We ought to hate our bodies with [their] vices and sins, because the Lord says in the Gospel that all vices and sins come forth from the heart.2 We ought to love our enemies and do good to them that hate us.3 We ought to observe the precepts and counsels of our Lord Jesus Christ. We ought also to deny ourselves and to put our bodies beneath the yoke of servitude and holy obedience as each one has promised to the Lord. And let no man be bound by obedience to obey any one in that where sin or offence is committed.

  But let him to whom obedience has been entrusted and who is considered greater become as the lesser4 and the servant of the other brothers, and let him show and have the mercy toward each of his brothers that he would wish to be shown to himself if he were in the like situation. And let him not be angry with a brother on account of his offence, but let him advise him kindly and encourage him with all patience and humility.

  We ought not to be “wise according to the flesh”5 and prudent, but we ought rather to be simple, humble, and pure. And let us hold our bodies in dishonor and contempt because through our fault we are all wretched and corrupt, foul and worms, as the Lord says by the prophet: “I am a worm and no man, the reproach of men and the outcast of the people.”1 We should never desire to be above others, but ought rather to be servants and subject “to every human creature for God’s sake.”2 And the spirit of the Lord3 shall rest upon all those who do these things and who shall persevere to the end, and He shall make His abode and dwelling in them,4 and they shall be children of the heavenly Father5 whose works they do, and they are the spouses, brothers and mothers of our Lord Jesus Christ. We are spouses when by the Holy Ghost the faithful soul is united to Jesus Christ. We are His brothers when we do the will of His Father who is in heaven.6 We are His mothers when we bear Him in our heart and in our body through pure love and a clean conscience and we bring Him forth by holy work which ought to shine as an example to others.

  O how glorious and holy and great to have a Father in heaven! O how holy, fair, and lovable to have a spouse in heaven!7 O how holy and how beloved, well pleasing and humble, peaceful and sweet and desirable above all to have such a brother who has laid down His life for His sheep,8 and who has prayed for us to the Father, saying: Father, keep them in Thy Name whom Thou hast given Me. Father, all those whom Thou hast given Me in the world were Thine, and Thou hast given them to Me. And the words which Thou gavest Me I have given to them; and they have received them, and have known in very deed that I came forth from Thee, and they have believed that Thou didst send Me. I pray for them: not for the world: bless and sanctify them. And for them I sanctify Myself that they may be sanctified in one as We also are. And I will, Father, that where I am, they also may be with Me, that they may see My glory in My kingdom.1

  And since He has suffered so many things for us and has done and will do so much good to us, let every creature which is in heaven and on earth and in the sea and in the abysses render praise to God and glory and honor and benediction;2 for He is our strength and power who alone is good,3 alone most high, alone almighty and admirable, glorious and alone holy, praiseworthy and blessed without end forever and ever. Amen.

  But all those who do not do penance and who do not receive the Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, but who give themselves to vices and sins and walk after evil concupiscence and bad desires and who do not observe what they have promised, corporally they serve the world and its fleshly desires and cares and solicitudes for this life, but mentally they serve the devil, deceived by him whose sons they are and whose works they do; blind they are because they see not the true light,—our Lord Jesus Christ. They have no spiritual wisdom, for they have not in them the Son of God who is the true wisdom of the Father: of these it is said: “their wisdom was swallowed up”1 They know, understand, and do evil and wittingly lose their souls. Beware, ye blind, deceived by your enemies—to wit, by the world, the flesh and by the devil—for it is sweet to the body to commit sin and bitter to serve God because all vices and sins come forth and proceed from the heart of man, as it is said in the Gospel2

  And you have nothing of good in this world or in the future. You think to possess for long the vanities of this world, but you are deceived; for a day and an hour will come of which you think not and do not know and are ignorant of. The body grows feeble, death approaches, neighbors and friends come saying: “Put your affairs in order.” And his wife and his children, neighbors and friends, make believe to weep. And looking, he sees them weeping and is moved by a bad emotion, and thinking within himself he says: “Behold, I place my soul and body and my all in your hands.” Verily, that man is cursed who confides and exposes his soul and body and his all in such hands. Wherefore, the Lord says by the prophet: “Cursed be the man that trusteth in man.”1 And at once they cause a priest to come and the priest says to him: “Wilt thou do penance for all thy sins?” He answers: “I will” “Wilt thou from thy substance, as far as thou canst, satisfy for what thou hast done and for the things in which thou hast defrauded and deceived men.”2 He answers. “No.”—And the priest says: “Why not?”—“Because I have put everything into the hands of my relatives and friends” And he begins to lose the power of speech and thus this miserable man dies a bitter death.3

  But let all know that wheresoever or howsoever a man may die in criminal sin, without satisfaction—when he could satisfy and did not satisfy—the devil snatches his soul from his body with such violence and anguish as no one can know except him who suffers it. And all talent and power, learning and wisdom4 that he thought to possess are taken from him5 And his relatives and friends take to themselves his substance and divide it and say afterwards: “Cursed be his soul because he could have acquired and given us more than he did, and did not acquire it.” But the worms eat his body. And thus he loses soul and body in this short life and goes into hell, where he shall be tormented without end.

  In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.1 All to whom this letter may come, I, Brother Francis, your little servant, pray and conjure you by the charity which God is,2 and with the will to kiss your feet, to receive these balm-bearing words3 of our Lord Jesus Christ with humility and charity and to put them in practice kindly and to observe them perfectly.4 And let those who do not know how to read have them read often and let them keep them by them with holy operation unto the end, for they are spirit and life.5 And those who do not do this shall render an account on the day of Judgment before the tribunal of Christ. And all those who shall receive them kindly and understand them and send them to others as example, if they persevere in them unto the end,6 may the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost bless them. Amen.

  II.

  Letter to all the Friars.

  It was at the end of his days1 when he was ill,2 that St. Francis wrote this letter to the Minister General and to all the Friars. In it he confesses all his sins to God, to the Saints and to the Friars, and in weighty words urges once again what was ever uppermost in his mind and heart reverence toward the Blessed Sacrament, observance of the Rule and the Divine Office. The same desires and counsels contained in this letter may also be found in the Testament, and there is little doubt that both works were composed about the same time.

  This letter, like the preceding one, was wrongly divided by Rodolfo di Tossignano.3 Wadding following suit, made three separate epistles out of it,4 an error all the more remarkable since Bartholomew of Pisa in his Conformities (fruct. xii, P. 11, n. 47) and before him Ubertino da Casale in the Arbor Vitae (l. v, c. vii, fol. 224) had edited the text correctly. Moreover, this useless division, which is not called for by the context of the letter but is rather in conflict with it, is not found in any of the early MS. collections containing St. Francis’ writings.

  The letter to all the Friars may be found in fourteen of the MSS. mentioned above as containing the letter to all the Faithful, to wit, those of Assisi, Dusseldorf, Florence (Ognissanti), St Floriano, Foligno, Liegnitz, Munich, Oxford, Paris (all three MSS), and Rome (both MSS at St. Isidore’s and cod. 4354 of the Vatican library) It is also contained in eight other codices (1) Capistran (munic lib. cod xxii, fol 85 r); (2) Freiburg in Switzerland (lib. ad Conventual Conv, cod. 23, l 60); (3) Paris (nat lib. cod 18327, fol. 159 v); (4-5) Subiaco (monast. lib cod. 120, fol. 325 and 212, fol. 184), (6-7) Rome (St Antony’s cod, fol. 61 r and 80 r, and Vatic lib, cod B 82, fol 147 v), (8) Volterra (Guarnacci lib, cod 225, fol 151 r). Of these last named codices, the two Roman MSS and that of Volterra date from the fourteenth century, the other five from the fifteenth.

  For the Quaracchi text of the letter, which is here translated, the MSS. of Assisi,1 St Antony’s, Ognissanti, and St Isidore’s, were collated with the versions of it given in the Arbor Vitae (l v, cap vii, fol. 224 v), Monumenta (fol 281 v) and Firmamenta (fol. 21 r).2 It may be noted that in placing the prayer, “Almighty, Eternal God,” etc., at the end of the letter, the Quaracchi editors have followed the order of the Assisian, Antonian, Liegnitz, and both Mazarin MSS.3 But enough by the way of introduction to Letter II, which St. Francis addressed —

  TO ALL THE FRIARS.

  In the name of the Highest Trinity and Holy Unity of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.1

  To all the reverend and much beloved brothers, to2 the minister general of the Order of Minors, its lord, and to the other ministers general who shall come after him, and to all the ministers and custodes and priests of the same brotherhood, humble in Christ, and to all the simple and obedient brothers, the first and the last, Brother Francis, a mean and fallen man, your little servant, gives greeting in Him who has redeemed and washed us in His Precious Blood,3 and whom when you hear His Name adore ye with fear and reverence, prostrate on the ground;4 the Lord Jesus Christ, such is the Name5 of the most High Son, blessed forever. Amen

  Hear, my lords, my sons and my brothers, and with your ears receive my words.1 Incline the ear2 of your heart and obey the voice of the Son of God. Keep His commandments with all your heart and fulfil His counsels with a perfect mind. Praise Him for He is good3 and extol Him in your works,4 for therefore He has sent you through all the world that by word and deed you may bear witness to His voice,5 and you may make known to all that there is no other Almighty besides Him.6 Persevere under discipline7 and obedience and with a good and firm purpose fulfil what you have promised Him. The Lord God offers Himself to you as to His sons.8

  Wherefore, brothers, kissing your feet and with the charity of which I am capable, I conjure you all to show all reverence and all honor possible to the most holy Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, in whom the things that are in heaven and the things that are on earth are pacified and reconciled to Almighty God.9 I also beseech in the Lord all my brothers who are and shall be and desire to be priests10 of the Most High that, when they wish to celebrate Mass, being pure, they offer the true Sacrifice of the Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ purely, with reverence, with a holy and clean intention, not for any earthly thing or fear or for the love of any man, as it were pleasing men.1 But let every will, in so far as the grace of the Almighty helps, be directed to Him,2 desiring thence to please the High Lord Himself alone because He alone works there [in the Holy Sacrifice] as it may please Him, for He Himself says: “Do this for a commemoration of Me;”3 if any one doth otherwise he becomes the traitor Judas4 and is made guilty of the Body and Blood of the Lord.5

  Call to mind, priests, my brothers, what is written in the law of Moses: how those transgressing even materially died by the decree of the Lord without any mercy.6 How much more and worse punishments he deserves to suffer “who hath trodden under foot the Son of God and hath esteemed the Blood of the testament unclean by which he was sanctified and hath offered an affront to the spirit of grace.”7 For man despises, soils, and treads under foot the Lamb of God when, as the Apostle says,8 not discerning and distinguishing the holy bread of Christ from other nourishments or works, he either eats unworthily or, if he be worthy, he eats in vain and unbecomingly since the Lord has said by the prophet: Cursed be the man that doth the work of the Lord deceitfully1 And He condemns the priests who will not take this to heart saying: “I will curse your blessings.”2

  Hear ye, my brothers: If the Blessed Virgin Mary is so honored, as is meet, because she bore Him in [her] most holy womb; if the blessed Baptist trembled and did not dare to touch the holy forehead of God; if the sepulchre in which He lay for some time, is venerated, how holy, just, and worthy ought he to be who touches with his hands, who receives with his heart and his mouth, and proffers to be received by others Him who is now no more to die but to triumph in a glorified eternity. on whom the angels desire to look.3

  Consider your dignity, brothers, priests, and be holy because He Himself is holy.4 And as the Lord God has honored you above all through this mystery, even so do you also love and reverence and honor Him above all. It is a great misery and a deplorable weakness when you have Him thus present to care for anything else in the whole world. Let the entire man be seized with fear; let the whole world tremble; let heaven exult when Christ, the Son of the Living God, is on the altar in the hands of the priest. O admirable height and stupendous condescension! O humble sublimity! O sublime humility! that the Lord of the universe, God and the Son of God, so humbles Himself that for our salvation He hides Himself under a morsel of bread. Consider, brothers, the humility of God and “pour out your hearts before Him,”1 and be ye humbled that ye may be exalted by Him.2 Do not therefore keep back anything for yourselves that He may receive you entirely who gives Himself up entirely to you

  Wherefore I admonish and exhort in the Lord, that, in the places in which the brothers live, only one Mass be celebrated in the day, according to the form of holy Church.3 If, however, there be many priests in the place, let one be contented, through love of charity, by hearing the celebration of another priest, for the Lord Jesus Christ replenishes those who are worthy of it, present and absent. He, although He may seem to be present in many places, nevertheless remains undivided and suffers no change; but One everywhere He works as it may please Him with the Lord God the Father, and the Holy Ghost the Paraclete, world without end. Amen.

  And since “he that is of God heareth the words of God,”1 we who have been more specially destined for the divine offices, ought, in consequence, not only to hear and do what God says, but also—in order to impress upon ourselves the greatness of our Creator and our subjection to Him—to watch the vessels and other objects which contain His holy words. On that account I warn all my brothers and I strengthen them in Christ, wheresoever they may find the divine written words to venerate them so far as they are able, and if they are not well preserved or if they lie scattered disgracefully in any place, let them, in so far as it concerns them, collect and preserve them, honoring in the words the Lord who has spoken. For many things are sanctified by the word of God,2 and by the power of the words of Christ the Sacrament of the Altar is effected

  Moreover I confess all my sins to God the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Ghost and to the Blessed Mary ever Virgin and to all the Saints in heaven and on earth and to the minister general of this our religion as to my venerable Lord, and to all the priests of our order and to all my other blessed brothers. I have offended in many ways through my grievous fault, especially because I have not observed the Rule which I have promised to the Lord and I have not said the office as prescribed by the Rule either by reason of my negligence or weakness or because I am ignorant and simple Wherefore, by all means as far as I am able, I beseech my lord, the general minister, to cause the Rule to be inviolably observed by all, and let the clerics say the office with devotion before God, not attending to melody of voice but to harmony of mind, so that the voice may be in accord with the mind and the mind in accord with God, so that they may please God by purity of mind and not coax the ears of the people by voluptuousness of voice. As for myself I promise to keep these things strictly, as the Lord may give me grace, and I leave them to the brothers who are with me to be observed in the office and in the other appointed regulations. But whosoever of the brothers will not observe them, I do not hold them as Catholics or as my brothers and I do not wish either to see them or speak [with them], until they have done penance. I say this also of all others who setting aside the discipline of the Rule, go wandering about; for our Lord Jesus Christ gave His life lest He might lose the obedience of the most Holy Father.1

  I, Brother Francis, a useless man and unworthy creature of the Lord God, say to Brother Elias, the minister of our whole religion, by our Lord Jesus Christ, and to all the ministers general who shall be after him and to the other custodes and guardians of the brothers, who are and shall be, that they have this writing with them, put it in practice and seduously preserve it. And I entreat them to guard jealously those things which are written in it and to cause them to be carefully observed according to the good pleasure of the Almighty God now and ever as long as this world may last.

  Blessed be you by the Lord who shall have done these things and may the Lord be with you forever. Amen.

  Almighty, eternal, just, and merciful God, give to us wretches to do for Thee what we know Thee to will and to will always that which is pleasing to Thee; so that inwardly purified, inwardly illumined and kindled by the flame of the Holy Ghost, we may be able to follow in the footsteps of Thy Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, and by Thy grace alone come to Thee the Most High, who in perfect Trinity and simple Unity livest and reignest and gloriest God Almighty forever and ever Amen.1

  III

  To a Certain Minister.

  The tenor of this letter seems to indicate that it was written before the confirmation of the Second Rule by Pope Honorius,1 and very likely in the early part of 1223. All the early MSS attribute it to St Francis and, as regards both matter and form, it closely resembles the Saint’s other writings There is, however, no small diversity of opinion as to whom it was addressed. But from the wording of the last paragraph of the letter, referring to the chapter “thou wilt be there with thy brothers,” it would appear to have been sent to some provincial minister rather than to the minister general. Moreover, as Professor Goetz rightly remarks,2 the beginning of the letter implies that this minister had proposed some doubts or difficulties as to the manner of dealing with brothers who had fallen into sin. Hence the abrupt opening of the letter, “I speak to thee on the subject of thy soul,” etc., refers to some question which the letter is intended to answer, and from the fact that patience is commended “more than a hermitage,” the Quaracchi editors think we might infer that the minister in question was desirous of embracing a solitary life Be this as it may, I am unable to agree with M. Sabatier in so far as he finds in this letter “more objurgations and reproaches than counsels”15

  The letter exists in the Vatican MS 7650, St. Isidore’s MS. 1/25 and the Ognissanti and St. Floriano codices above described. The first part of it may also be found in the National Library at Naples (Cod. XII, F. 32). An abridgment of the Letter is given by Rodolfo,2 a different abstract is found in the Conformities.3 In the more complete summary furnished by Wadding,4 it might be possible with M. Sabatier, and Dr. Lempp,6 owing to the omission of a large piece of the letter, to read into St. Francis’ words the precept that a brother guilty of mortal sin should be absolved without any penance But with the full text of the letter before us, any such attempt is, needless to say, impossible, as Mr. Carmichael has clearly shown.7

  The complete text of this important letter was first published by Fr. Edouard d’Alençon, Archivist General of the Capuchins, in his Spicilegium Franciscanum,1 next by M Sabatier in his edition of Bartholi,2 and again by Dr. Lempp in his monograph on Elias.3 Besides these we have now the versions of Professor Boehmer and the Quaracchi edition The latter text, which I have here rendered into English, is based on the MSS of Ognissanti and St Isidore’s (cod 1/25) which have been collated with the Neapolitan MS. already referred to and the editions of the letter published by Fr. Edouard d’Alençon and M. Sabatier.

  Now for the text of the letter

  TO A CERTAIN MINISTER.4

  To Brother N. . . Minister; may the Lord bless thee.

  I speak to thee as best I can on the subject of thy soul; that those things which impede thee in loving the Lord God and whosoever may be a hindrance to thee, whether brothers or others, even though they were to strike thee,—all these things thou oughtest to reckon as a favor And so thou shouldst desire and not otherwise. And let this be to thee for true obedience from the Lord God and from me, for this I know surely to be true obedience. And love those that do such things to thee and wish not other from them, save in so far as the Lord may grant to thee; and in this thing love them,—by wishing that they may be better Christians.1 And let this be to thee more than a hermitage.2 And by this I wish to know if thou lovest God and me His servant and thine, to wit: that there be no brother in the world who has sinned, how great soever his sin may be, who after he has seen thy face shall ever go away without thy mercy, if he seek mercy,3 and, if he seek not mercy, ask thou him if he desires mercy. And if he afterwards appears1 before thy face a thousand times, love him more than me, to the end that thou mayest draw him to the Lord, and on such ones always have mercy And this thou shouldst declare to the guardians, when thou canst, that thou art determined of thyself to do thus.

  Concerning all the chapters that are in the Rule that speak of mortal sins2 we shall at the chapter of Whitsuntide, God helping, with the counsel of the brothers, make such a chapter as this: If any brother, at the instigation of the enemy, sin mortally, let him be bound by obedience to have recourse to his guardian. And let all the brothers who know him to have sinned, not cause him shame or slander him, but let them have great mercy on him and keep very secret the sin of their brother, for they that are healthy need not a physician, but they that are ill.3 And let them be likewise bound by obedience to send him to his custos with a companion. And let the custos himself care for him mercifully as he himself would wish to be cared for by others if he were in a like situation.

  [And if he should fall into any4 venial sin, let him confess to his brother priest, and if there be no priest there let him confess to his brother, until he shall find a priest who shall absolve him canonically, as has been said,]1 and let them have absolutely no power of enjoining other penance save only this: go and sin no more.2

  In order that this writing may be able to be better observed, have it by thee until Whitsuntide: thou wilt be there with thy brothers. And these and all other things which are less in the Rule, thou shalt, the Lord God helping, take care to fulfil.

  IV.

  To the Rulers of the People.

  This letter is known to us only by the testimony of the Ven Francis Gonzaga, O.F.M.,1 who speaking of the Province of Aragon in his work on the origin of the Seraphic Order,2 mentions that Bl John Parenti, first Minister General after St. Francis (1227—1232), brought a copy of the letter into Spain. On the good faith of Gonzaga, Wadding included this letter in his edition of the Opuscula, where it figures as Epist. XV. As the style of the letter and the ideas it embodies corresponded so admirably with the writings of St. Francis, the Quaracchi editors and Professor Goetz,3 have not hesitated to accept it as genuine. No copy of the letter other than that transcribed by Wadding has so far been found, and it is according to his text of 1623 that it is here translated —

  TO THE RULERS OF THE PEOPLE.

  To all podestas, and consuls, judges and governors, in whatever part of the world, and to all others to whom this letter may come, Brother Francis, your little and contemptible servant, wishes health and peace to you.

  Consider and see that the day of death draws nigh.4 I ask you, therefore, with such reverence as I can, not to forget the Lord on account of the cares and solicitudes of this world and not to turn aside from His commandments, for all those who forget Him and decline from His commandments are cursed1 and they shall be forgotten by Him.2 And when the day of death comes, all that which they think they have shall be taken away from them.3 And the wiser and more powerful they may have been in this world, so much the greater torments shall they endure in hell.4

  Wherefore, I strongly advise you, my lords, to put aside all care and solicitude and to receive readily the most holy Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ in holy commemoration of Him. And cause so great honor to be rendered the Lord by the people committed to you, that every evening it may be announced by a crier or by another sign to the end that praises and thanks shall resound to the Lord God Almighty from all the people. And if you do not do this, know that you are beholden to render an account before your Lord God Jesus Christ on the day of Judgment. Let those who keep this writing with them and observe it know that they are blessed by the Lord God.

  V.

  To all the Custodes

  Wadding seems to have known of this letter indirectly. At least he gives us a shorter letter addressed to the custodes The beginning of the epistle he numbers XIV is similar to the one which is translated here and seems to be an incomplete summary of the latter. It is difficult, however, to decide conclusively, since the original form of the letter, which Wadding translated from the Spanish, is wanting. The solution of the question would be to ascertain from what source this Spanish letter was drawn.

  The letter was first published in its present form by M Sabatier in 1900 from a fourteenth century MS in the Guarnacci library at Volterra1 The Quaracchi text is also based on this codex, than which no other version of the letter is known to exist Internal arguments might, however, be adduced to establish the authenticity of the letter, which is as follows —

  TO ALL THE CUSTODES

  To all the custodes of the Brothers Minor to whom this letter shall come, Brother Francis, your servant and little one in the Lord God, sends greeting with new signs of heaven and earth2 which on the part of the Lord are great and most excellent and which are accounted least of all by many religious and by other men.

  I entreat you more than if it were a question of myself that, when it is becoming and it may seem to be expedient, you humbly beseech the clerics to venerate above all the most holy Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ and His Holy Name and written words which sanctify the body.1 They ought to hold as precious the chalices, corporals, ornaments of the altar, and all that pertain to the Sacrifice And if the most holy Body of the Lord be lodged very poorly in any place, let It according to the command of the Church be placed by them and left in a precious place, and let It be carried with great veneration and administered to others with discretion. The Names also and written words of the Lord, wheresoever they may be found in unclean places, let them be collected, and they ought to be put in a proper place.

  And in all the preaching you do, admonish the people concerning penance and that no one can be saved except he that receives the most sacred Body and Blood of the Lord.2 And while It is being sacrificed by the priest on the altar and It is being carried to any place, let all the people on bended knees render praise, honor, and glory to the Lord God Living and True.

  And you shall so announce and preach His praise to all peoples that at every hour and when the bells are rung praise and thanks shall always be given to the Almighty God by all the people through the whole earth.

  And to whomsoever of my brothers, custodes, this writing shall come, let them copy it and keep it with them and cause it to be copied for the brothers who have the office of preaching and the care of brothers, and let them unto the end preach all those things that are contained in this writing: let them know they have the blessing of the Lord God and mine. And let these be for them through true and holy obedience.

  VI.

  To Brother Leo.

  The authenticity of this letter cannot be challenged The original autograph is jealously preserved at the Cathedral of Spoleto In Wadding’s time it was kept at the Conventual church in that place, but subsequently disappeared in some way and there was no trace of it until 1895, when Father Cardinali, a priest of Spoleto, placed it in the hands of Mgr. Faloci. The latter presented it to Pope Leo XIII and, after reposing for some three years in the Vatican, it was, at the request of Mgr. Serafini, Archbishop of Spoleto, returned to the cathedral there.1 Only one other autograph of St. Francis is known to exist.2 The scope of the letter is obvious: it is a word of tender encouragement and counsel to the Frate pecorello de Dio, St. Francis’ most intimate companion and friend, who at the time was harassed with doubts and fears. The form of the letter seems to present some difficulties to certain critics. For example, St Francis at the outset uses the words. F Leo F Francisco tuo salutem et pacem. It is, of course, clear that this superscription cannot be interpreted in such a way as to make Brother Leo the author of the letter; in that case it would be Francisco suo, and no one, so far as I know, has ever attempted this violence to the text. But there have been some who, thinking St. Francis did not know the difference between a dative and a nominative, have not hesitated to tamper with the text so as to bring the Latin of the Poverello into conformity with what they think to be better grammar.1 I confess that I find no difficulty in translating the superscription as it stands in the original autograph. As a general rule, no doubt, it is the sender of a letter that greets the one to whom it is sent But, in this case, the humility of St Francis has led him to change parts and he appeals for a blessing instead of bestowing one. I find myself therefore in thorough accord with Mr. Carmichael’s clever solution of this question and agree with him that St. Francis, always imaginative, meant what he wrote, and that “there is really a deep, sweet, and most pathetic meaning in the Saint’s peculiar mode of address.” Accordingly, the superscription ought to read “Brother Leo, wish thy brother Francis health and peace.” It is thus, following Mr. Carmichael, that I have translated it here

  

  letter of st. francis to brother leo, preserved at spoi eto (See page 130)

  As regards the use of the plural (faciatis) in the body of the note which perplexed Wadding, since the singular seems to be called for, some think with the Quaracchi editors that the Saint, writing so familiarly to Leo, adopts the Italian form; others, with M. Sabatier,2 that Brother Leo had spoken in the name of a group. Perhaps it may not be amiss to recall in this connection, what Celano tells us of St. Francis’ method of composition3 as well as of the letter of the Saint mentioned by Eccleston, in which there was faulty Latin.1 A French critic2 thinks we might perhaps be justified in identifying the letter referred to by Eccleston with the one to Brother Leo now under consideration Be this as it may, the context of the present letter leads one to suppose that at the time it was written Brother Leo was not yet habitually with St Francis In this hypothesis, we must fix the date of its composition not later than 12203 It need not be wondered at if, after nearly seven centuries, some words in the autograph letter preserved at Spoleto are difficult to read Hence some trifling variants occur in the texts published by Wadding4 and Faloci.5 The Quaracchi text which I have here translated is edited after the original:—

  TO BROTHER LEO.

  Brother Leo, wish thy brother Francis health and peace!

  I say to thee: Yes, my son, and as a mother; for in this word and counsel I sum up briefly all the words we said on the way, and if afterwards thou hast need to come to me for advice, thus I advise you: In whatever way it seemeth best to thee to please the Lord God and to follow His footsteps and poverty, so do with the blessing of the Lord God and in my obedience. And if it be necessary for thee on account of thy soul or other consolation and thou wishest, Leo, to come to me, come!1

  PART III

  PRAYERS OF ST. FRANCIS

  I.

  The Praises.

  This opuscule is composed of two parts a paraphrase of the Lord’s Prayer and the Praises properly socalled. It is contained in all the early MS. collections of St Francis’ works1 either in its entirety as it is given here, or in part—that is, the Paraphrase without the Praises or vice versa. With the exception of a single codex which attributes the paternity of this paraphrase to the Blessed Brother Giles,2 the third companion of St. Francis, the MSS. authorities are unanimous in ascribing the entire work to St. Francis. This fact, taken in conjunction with the internal argument in its favor, puts the authority of the Praises beyond doubt, in the opinion of the Quaracchi editors. M. Sabatier is of like mind and even expresses regret3 that Professor Boehmer4 should have been misled into classing the Praises as doubtful or unauthentic. Those who accept the French critic’s views as to the value of his Speculum Perfectionis will find in that remarkable work an additional argument in favor of the genuinity of the complete opuscule now engaging our attention. In particular M. Sabatier applies to the present Praises what is said in the Speculum of the penance imposed by St Francis on the brothers at Portiuncula for speaking idle words.1

  The Quaracchi Fathers have edited the text of the Praises according to the Assisian, Antonian, and Isidorean (1/25) MSS. and have collated these early versions with the editions of the Praises given in the Monumenta (fol 275 v), Firmamenta (fol. 18 v), and the Liber Conformitatum (fruct. xii, P. II, c.vi).2 The result of their labors is here translated as follows:—

  PRAISES.

  Here are begun the Praises which the most blessed Father Francis composed; and he said them at all the Hours of the day and night and before the Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary, beginning thus: “Our Father, most holy, who art in heaven,” etc., with “Glory be to the Father.” Then the Praises, Holy, Holy, etc., are to be said.1

  Our Father, most holy, our Creator, Redeemer, and Comforter.

  Who art in heaven, in the angels and in the saints illuminating them unto knowledge, for Thou, O Lord, art light; inflaming them unto love, for Thou, O Lord, art Love; dwelling in them and filling them with blessedness, for Thou, O Lord, art the highest Good, the eternal Good from whom is all good and without whom is no good.

  Hallowed be Thy Name: may Thy knowledge shine in us that we may know the breadth of Thy benefits, the length of Thy promises, the height of Thy majesty, and the depth of Thy judgments.2

  Thy Kingdom come, that Thou mayest reign in us by grace and mayest make us come to Thy Kingdom, where there is the clear vision of Thee, the perfect love of Thee, the blessed company of Thee, the eternal enjoyment of Thee.

  Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven, that we may love Thee with the whole heart by always thinking of Thee; with the whole soul by always desiring Thee; with the whole mind by directing all our intentions to Thee and seeking Thy honor in all things and with all our strength, by spending all the powers and senses of body and soul in the service of Thy love and not in anything else; and that we may love our neighbors even as ourselves, drawing to the best of our power all to Thy love; rejoicing in the good of others as in our own and compassionating [them] in troubles and giving offence to no one.

  Give us this day, through memory and understanding and reverence for the love which He had for us and for those things which He said, did, and suffered, for us,—our daily bread, Thy Beloved Son, our Lord Jesus Christ.

  And forgive us our trespasses, by Thy ineffable mercy in virtue of the Passion of Thy Beloved Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, and through the merits and intercession of the most Blessed Virgin Mary and of all Thy elect.

  As we forgive them that trespass against us, and what we do not fully forgive, do Thou, O Lord, make us fully forgive, that for Thy sake we may truly love our enemies and devoutly intercede for them with Thee; that we may render no evil for evil, but in Thee may strive to do good to all.

  And lead us not into temptation, hidden or visible, sudden or continuous.

  But deliver us from evil, past, present, and to come. Amen.

  Glory be to the Father, etc.

  Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty, who is and who was and who is to come1 Let us praise and exalt Him above all forever.2

  Worthy art Thou, O Lord, our God, to receive praise, glory and honor and benediction.3 Let us praise and exalt Him above all forever.

  The Lamb that was slain is worthy to receive power and divinity and wisdom and strength and honor and benediction.4 Let us praise and exalt Him above all forever.

  Let us bless the Father and the Son with the Holy Ghost. Let us praise and exalt Him above all forever.

  All ye works of the Lord, bless ye the Lord.5 Let us praise and exalt Him above all forever.

  Give praise to God all ye His servants and you that fear Him, little and great.6 Let us praise and exalt Him above all forever.

  Let the heavens and the earth praise Him, the Glorious, and every creature which is in heaven and on earth and under the earth, in the seas and all that are in them.7 Let us praise and exalt Him above all forever.

  Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost. Let us praise and exalt Him above all forever.

  As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be world without end. Amen. Let us praise and exalt Him above all forever.

  Prayer.

  Almighty, most holy, most high, and supreme God, highest good, all good, wholly good, who alone art good. To Thee we render all praise, all glory, all thanks, all honor, all blessing, and we shall always refer all good to Thee. Amen.

  II.

  Salutation of the Blessed Virgin.

  This little prayer enjoys the same title to authenticity as the preceding opuscule, and Professor Boehmer1 and M Sabatier2 are in complete accord with the Quaracchi editors as to its genuinity. With the exception of the Assisi codex, it is found in all the early MS. collections containing the Praises. The text here translated is based on the MS. at Ognissanti and St. Isidore’s (1/25), which were collated by the Quaracchi editors with the versions given in the Conformities (fruct. xii, P. 11, c. v) and the Speculum B. Francisci (ed. 1 and 2, fol. 127 r).

  SALUTATION OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN.3

  Hail, holy Lady, most holy Queen, Mother of God, Mary who art ever Virgin, chosen from Heaven by the most Holy Father, whom He has consecrated with the most holy beloved Son and the Ghostly Paraclete, in whom was and is all the fulness of grace and all good. Hail thou His palace!4 Hail thou His tabernacle.!5 Hail thou His house. Hail thou His garment! Hail thou His handmaid! Hail thou His Mother and all ye holy virtues which by the grace and illumination of the Holy Ghost thou infusest in the heart of the faithful, that from infidels ye mayest make them faithful to God.1

  III.

  Prayer to Obtain Divine Love.

  The authenticity of this prayer, accepted by the Quaracchi editors, rests on the authority of St. Bernardine of Siena1 and Ubertino da Casale,2 both of whom are quoted in its behalf by Wadding. The prayer is here translated according to the text given by Ubertino in his Arbor Vitae Crucifixae composed on La Verna in 1305.3 It follows.—

  PRAYER.

  I beseech Thee, O Lord, that the fiery and sweet strength of Thy love may absorb my soul from all things that are under heaven, that I may die for love of Thy love as Thou didst deign to die for love of my love.

  IV.

  The Sheet which St. Francis gave Brother Leo.

  The earliest witness to this document is Thomas of Celano, who in his Second Life (written about 1247) records that “while the Saint was remaining secluded in his cell on Mount La Verna, one of the companions conceived a great desire to have some memorial from words of the Lord written by the hand of St. Francis and briefly annotated by him. . . . One day Blessed Francis called him, saying, ‘Bring me paper and ink, for I wish to write the words of God and His praises which I have been meditating in my heart.’ What he asked for being straightway brought, he writes with his own hand the praises of God and the words which he [his companion] wished, and lastly a blessing of the brother, saying. ‘Take this sheet (chartulam) for thyself and until the day of thy death guard it carefully.’ All temptation was at once driven away; the letter is kept and worked wonders for the time to come.”1

  The original autograph of the sheet here described by Celano is reverently preserved in the sacristy of the Sacro Convento at Assisi.2 It has been mentioned in the archives of the convent since 1348 and is borne in procession annually at the opening of the feast of the “Perdono” or Portiuncula Indulgence. Many pages have been consecrated by scholars3 to this small, crumpled piece of parchment and as they are easily accessible it would be superfluous to touch here upon the controversial minutiae connected with it. Suffice it to say that on the reverse side of the sheet containing the Praises is found the Biblical blessing. The latter was dictated to Brother Leo, but at the bottom St. Francis himself wrote the personal blessing, adding what Wadding described as a “large and mysterious thau or letter T” which he was wont to use as his signature, as both Celano1 and St. Bonaventure2 inform us.

  To authenticate this relic Brother Leo himself added to it three notes; the first reads: “Blessed Francis wrote with his own hand this blessing for me, Brother Leo,” and the second. “In like manner he made this sign thau together with the head with his own hand.” More valuable still is the third annotation, since it fixes the date of this precious document. I give it in full: “Blessed Francis two years before his death kept a Lent in the place of Mount La Verna in honor of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Mother of the Lord, and of the blessed Michael the Archangel, from the feast of the Assumption of the holy Virgin Mary until the September feast of St. Michael. And the hand of the Lord was laid upon him; after the vision and speech of the Seraph and the impression of the Stigmata of Christ in his body he made and wrote with his own hand the Praises written on the other side of the sheet, giving thanks to the Lord for the benefits conferred on him.”

  An examination of the original autograph shows that, while the side of the sheet containing the Blessing is excellently preserved, the other one on which the Praises are written, is, for the most part, illegible and in consequence some variants are to be found in different MS. versions of it After a careful collation of these MSS. with the autograph, the Quaracchi editors found the Assisi codex 344 more conformable to the original than any other It is after this fourteenth century MS. of the library of the Sacro Convento and which appears to have been copied from the autograph, that the Quaracchi editors published the text which I now translate:—

  PRAISES OF GOD.

  Thou art holy, Lord God, who alone workest wonders. Thou art strong. Thou art great. Thou art most high. Thou art the Almighty King, Thou, holy Father, King of heaven and earth. Thou art the Lord God Triune and One; all good. Thou art good, all good, highest good, Lord God living and true. Thou art charity, love.1 Thou art wisdom. Thou art humility. Thou art patience. Thou art security. Thou art quietude. Thou art joy and gladness. Thou art justice and temperance. Thou art all riches to sufficiency.1 Thou art beauty. Thou art meekness. Thou art protector. Thou art guardian and defender. Thou art strength. Thou art refreshment. Thou art our hope. Thou art our faith. Thou art our great sweetness. Thou art our eternal life, great and admirable Lord, God Almighty, merciful Saviour.

  

  AUTOGRAPH BLESSING GIVEN BY ST FRANCIS TO BROTHER LEO, PRESERVED IN THE SACRO CONVENTO AT ASSISI (See page 146)

  After this expression of the mystical ardors which consumed the Poverello comes —

  THE BLESSING OF BROTHER LEO.

  May the Lord bless thee and keep thee. May He shew His face to thee and have mercy on thee. May He turn His countenance to thee and give thee peace.2 Brother LeTo3 may the Lord bless thee.

  V.

  The Canticle of the Sun

  Of the several “cantica in vulgari” which St. Francis composed, the only one that has come down to us, as far as is known, is the “Praises of the Creatures,” or, as it is now more commonly called, “The Canticle of the Sun.” Celano, who alludes to this laud, says of St. Francis that he was of the race of Ananias, Azarias and Misael, inviting all creatures with him to glorify Him who made them.1 It is this side of St. Francis’ thoughts which finds expression in the Canticle; and in this particular order of ideas modern religious poetry has never produced anything comparable to this sublime improvisation into which have passed alike “all the wealth of the Saint’s imagination and all the boldness of his genius.”2 Tradition tells us that Fra Pacifico had a hand in the embellishment of this laud,3 about which a whole controversial literature has grown4 Some light may perhaps be thrown on this delicate question in the new critical edition of the Canticle promised by Luigi Suttina.

  The Canticle appears to have been composed toward the close of the year 1225 in a poor little hut near the Monastery of San Damiano, whither St. Francis had retired on account of his infirmities, and, if we may believe the tradition which finds formal expression in the Speculum Perfectionis, two strophes were subsequently added by the Saint to the original composition, — the eighth strophe upon the occasion of a feud between the Bishop and the magistrates of Assisi, and the ninth one when the Saint recognized the approach of death. M. Renan, with what Canon Knox Little1 calls “his characteristic inaccuracy,” asserts that we do not possess the Italian original of the Canticle, but have only an Italian translation from the Portuguese, which was in turn translated from the Spanish.2 And yet the original Italian text exists, as M. Sabatier notes,3 not only in numerous MSS in Italy and France, notably in the Assisi MS. 3384 and at the Mazarin Library,5 but also in the Book of the Conformities.

  The Canticle is accepted as authentic by Professors Boehmer and Goetz in their recent works on the Opuscula of St. Francis If it does not figure in the Quaracchi edition, the reason is that the Bibliotheca Franciscana Ascetica Medii Ævi, of which the Opuscula forms part, is confined to works written in Latin, and hence M. Sabatier’s animadversions on the “theological preoccupations” of the Quaracchi editors are altogether aside the mark.

  The text of the Canticle here translated is that of the Assisi MS. 338 (fol 33), from which the version given in the Conformities (pars. 2, fol ii)1 differs only by some unimportant variants. The following is an attempt to render literally into English the naif rhythm of the original Italian, which necessarily disappears in any formal rhymed translation.

  here begin the praises of the creatures which the blessed francis made to the praise and honor of god while he was ill at st. damian’s:

  Most high, omnipotent, good Lord,

  Praise, glory and honor and benediction all, are Thine.

  To Thee alone do they belong, most High,

  And there is no man fit to mention Thee.

  Praise be to Thee, my Lord, with all Thy creatures,

  Especially to my worshipful brother sun,

  The which lights up the day, and through him dost Thou brightness give;

  And beautiful is he and radiant with splendor great;

  Of Thee, most High, signification gives.

  Praised be my Lord, for sister moon and for the stars,

  In heaven Thou hast formed them clear and precious and fair.

  Praised be my Lord for brother wind

  And for the air and clouds and fair and every kind of weather,

  By the which Thou givest to Thy creatures nourishment.

  Praised be my Lord for sister water,

  The which is greatly helpful and humble and precious and pure.

  Praised be my Lord for brother fire,

  By the which Thou lightest up the dark.

  And fair is he and gay and mighty and strong.

  Praised be my Lord for our sister, mother earth,

  The which sustains and keeps us

  And brings forth diverse fruits with grass and flowers bright.

  Praised be my Lord for those who for Thy love forgive

  And weakness bear and tribulation.

  Blessed those who shall in peace endure,

  For by Thee, most High, shall they be crowned.

  Praised be my Lord for our sister, the bodily death,

  From the which no living man can flee.

  Woe to them who die in mortal sin;

  Blessed those who shall find themselves in Thy most holy will,

  For the second death shall do them no ill.

  Praise ye and bless ye my Lord, and give Him thanks,

  And be subject unto Him with great humility.

  VI.

  The Office of the Passion.

  Although the early biographies of St Francis are silent as to this opuscule, its authenticity is guaranteed by the Legend of St. Clare written by Thomas of Celano toward the end of his life.1 In reference to the holy abbess’ devotion to the Passion we are told by Celano that she “learned and frequently recited with attachment the Office of the Cross which Francis, the lover of the Cross, had instituted.”2 This passage was rightly understood by Wadding as referring to the Office of the Passion which many early MSS attribute to St. Francis, and the character of which altogether squares with the Saint’s writings. Composed, as it is, of a simple and devout combination of Scriptural texts, this document is at once a witness to St. Francis’ ardent devotion to the Crucified and a precious example of his method of prayer. It comprises five parts:

  1. For the three last days of Holy Week and for week-days throughout the year.

  2. For the Paschal season.

  3. For Sundays and feast-days throughout the year.

  4 For Advent.

  5 For Christmas and the days following, to the close of the Epiphany octave.

  The text of the Office given in the Quaracchi edition is that of the Assisi MS. 338, only a few rubrical notes having been omitted. The Office may also be found in MSS. at Oxford,1 Berlin,2 and Liegnitz3 already described4 It has never before, so far as I know, been translated into English. Here it is:—

  OFFICE OF THE PASSION OF THE LORD

  Here begin the Psalms which our most blessed Father Francis arranged to reverence and recall and praise the Passion of the Lord. And they begin from Compline on Maundy Thursday because on that night our Lord Jesus Christ was betrayed and taken captive. And note that the Blessed Francis was wont to say this office thus: First he said the Prayer which the Lord and Master taught us: Our Father most holy,5 with the Praises, to wit, Holy, Holy, Holy.6 When he had finished the Praises with the Prayer he began this antiphon, namely. Holy Mary First he said the Psalms of the holy Virgin; besides he said other Psalms which he had selected, and at the end of all the Psalms which he said, he said the Psalms of the Passion, the Psalm being finished he said the antiphon, namely, Holy Virgin Mary When this antiphon was finished, the office was completed.

  I.—

  AT COMPLINE.
  Ant. Holy Virgin Mary.

  Psalm.
  Ps. 55: 9.	O God, I have declared to Thee my life; Thou hast set my tears in Thy sight.

  Ps. 40: 8.	All my enemies devised evils against me.
  Ps 70: 10.	They have consulted together.
  Ps 108: 5.	And they have repaid me evil for good and hatred for my love
  Ps 108: 4.	Instead of making me a return of love they detracted me; but I gave myself to prayer.
  Ps. 21: 12.	My holy Father, King of heaven and earth, depart not from me; for tribulation is near and there is none to help.
  Ps 55: 10.	When I cry unto Thee, then shall mine enemies be turned back; behold I know that thou art my God.
  Ps. 37: 12.	My friends and my neighbors have drawn near and stood against me; and they that were near me stood afar off.
  Ps. 87: 9.	Thou hast put away my acquaintance far from me; they have set me an abomination to them; I was delivered up and came not forth
  Ps 21: 20.	Holy Father, remove not Thy help far from me: My God, look toward my help.

  Ps. 37: 23.

  Attend unto my help, O Lord, the God of my salvation,—Glory be. Holy Virgin Mary, there is none like unto Thee born in the world among women, daughter and handmaid of the most high King, the heavenly Father! Mother of our most holy Lord Jesus Christ, Spouse of the Holy Ghost; pray for us, with St Michael Archangel, and all the Virtues of heaven, and all the Saints, to thy most holy, beloved Son, our Lord and Master. Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Ghost As it was in the beginning is now and ever shall be world without end. Amen.

  Note that the foregoing antiphon is said at all the Hours and it is said for antiphon, chapter, hymn, versicle, and prayer, and at Matins and at all the Hours likewise. He said nothing else in them except this antiphon with its Psalms. At the completion of the office Blessed Francis always said: Let us bless the Lord God living and true; let us refer praise, glory, honor, blessing and all praise to Him, always. Amen. Amen. Fiat. Fiat.

  AT MATINS.
  Ant. Holy Virgin Mary.

  Psalm.
  Ps. 87: 2.	O Lord, the God of my salvation, I have cried in the day and night before Thee.
  Ps. 87: 3.	Let my prayer come in before Thee; incline Thy ear to my petition.
  Ps. 68: 19.	Attend to my soul and deliver it: save me because of my enemies.

  Ps. 21: 10	For Thou art He that hast drawn me out of the womb; my hope from the breasts of my mother;
  Ps. 21: 11.	I was cast upon Thee from the womb. From my mother’s womb Thou art my God;
  Ps. 21: 12	Depart not from me.
  Ps. 68: 20.	Thou knowest my reproach and my confusion and my shame.
  Ps. 68: 21.	In Thy sight are all they that afflict me: my heart hath expected reproach and misery.
  	And I looked for one that would grieve together with me, but there was none, and for one that would comfort me and I found none.
  Ps. 85: 14.	O God, the wicked are risen up against me and the assembly of the mighty have sought my soul; and they have not set Thee before their eyes.
  Ps. 87: 5.	I am counted among them that go down to the pit; I am become as a man without help,
  Ps. 87: 6.	free among the dead.
  	Thou art my Father, most holy, my king and my God.
  Ps. 37: 23.	Attend unto my help, O Lord God of my salvation.

  AT PRIME.
  Ant. Holy Mary.

  Psalm.
  Ps. 56: 1.	Have mercy on me, O God, have mercy on me; for my soul trusteth in Thee.
  Ps. 56: 2.	And in the shadow of Thy wings will I hope, until iniquity pass away.
  Ps. 56: 3.	I will cry to my most holy Father, the Most High: to God, who hath done good to me;
  Ps. 56: 4.	He hath sent from heaven and delivered me; He hath made them a reproach that trod upon me.
  	God hath sent His power and His truth.
  Ps. 17: 18.	He delivered me from my strongest enemies and from them that hated me; for they were too strong for me.
  Ps. 56: 7.	They prepared a snare for my feet; and they bowed down my soul; they dug a pit before my face; and they are fallen into it.
  Ps. 56: 8.	My heart is ready, O God, my heart is ready; I will sing, and rehearse a psalm.
  Ps. 56: 9.	Arise, O my glory, arise psaltery and harp;
  	I will arise early.

  Ps. 56: 10.	I will give praise to Thee, O Lord, among the people; I will sing a psalm to Thee among the nations;
  Ps. 56: 11.	For Thy mercy is magnified even to the heavens; and Thy truth unto the clouds.
  Ps. 56: 12	Be Thou exalted, O God, above the heavens; and Thy glory above all the earth

  AT TIERCE.
  Ant. Holy Mary.

  Psalm.
  Ps. 55: 2.	Have mercy on me, O God, for man hath trodden me under foot; all the day long he hath afflicted me, fighting against me.
  Ps. 55: 3.	My enemies have trodden on me all the day long; for they are many that make war against me.
  Ps. 40: 8.	All my enemies devised evil against me;
  Ps. 70: 10.	they have taken counsel together.
  Ps. 40: 7.	They went out and spoke to the same purpose.
  Ps. 21: 8.	All they that saw me have laughed me to scorn; they have spoken with the lips and wagged the head.
  Ps. 21: 7.	But I am a worm and no man, a reproach of men and outcast of the people.

  Ps. 30: 12.	I am become a reproach among all my enemies and very much to my neighbors; and a fear to my acquaintance.
  Ps. 21: 20.	Holy Father, remove not Thy help far from me; my God, look toward my defense
  Ps. 37: 23.	Attend unto my help, O Lord God of my salvation. Glory be, etc

  AT SEXT.
  Ant Holy Mary.

  Psalm.
  Ps. 141: 2.	I cried to the Lord, with my voice; with my voice I made my supplication to the Lord.
  Ps. 141: 3	I pour out my prayer in His sight; and before Him I declare my trouble.
  Ps. 141: 4.	When my spirit failed me, then Thou knewest my paths. In this way wherein I walked, they have hidden a snare for me.
  Ps. 141: 5.	I looked on my right-hand, and beheld, and there was no one that would know me. Flight hath failed me; and there is no one that hath regard to my soul.

  Ps. 68: 8.	Because for Thy sake I have borne reproach; shame hath covered my face.
  Ps. 68: 9.	I am become a stranger to my brethren; and an alien to the sons of my mother.
  Ps. 68: 10.	Holy Father, the zeal of Thy house hath eaten me up; and the reproaches of them that reproached Thee are fallen upon me.
  Ps. 34: 15.	And they rejoiced against me and gathered together; scourges were gathered together upon me and I knew not.
  Ps. 68: 5.	They are multiplied above the hairs of my head who hate me without cause
  	My enemies are grown strong who have wrongfully persecuted me; then did pay I that which I took not away.
  Ps. 34: 11.	Unjust witnesses rising up, have asked me things I knew not.
  Ps. 34: 12.	They repaid me evil for good and
  Ps. 37: 21.	detracted me; because I followed goodness.
  	Thou art my Father, most holy; my King and my God.
  Ps. 37: 23.	Attend unto my help, O Lord God of my salvation.

  AT NONES.
  Ant. Holy Mary.

  Psalm.
  Lam. 1: 12.	O all ye that pass by, attend and see if there be any sorrow like to my sorrow.
  Ps. 21: 17.	For many dogs have encompassed me; the council of the malignant hath besieged me.
  Ps. 21: 18.	They looked and stared upon me;
  Ps. 21: 19.	they parted my garments among them and upon my vesture cast lots.
  Ps. 21: 17.	They have dug my hands and my feet;
  Ps. 21: 18.	they numbered all my bones.
  Ps. 21: 14.	They have opened their mouth against me: as a lion ravening and roaring.
  Ps. 21: 15.	I am poured out like water and all my bones are scattered.
  	And my heart is become like melting wax in the midst of my bowels.
  Ps. 21: 16.	My strength is dried up like a potsherd; and my tongue hath cleaved to my jaws.
  Ps. 68: 22.	And they gave me gall for my food: and in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink.
  Ps. 21: 16.	And Thou hast brought me into the dust of death;

  Ps. 68: 27.	and they have added to the grief of my wounds.
  	I slept and rose again; and my most holy Father received me with glory.
  Ps. 72: 24.	Holy Father, Thou hast held my right hand; and by Thy will Thou hast conducted me and hast received me with glory.
  Ps. 72: 25.	For what have I in heaven; and besides Thee what do I desire upon earth?
  Ps. 45: 11.	Be still and see that I am God, saith the Lord; I will be exalted among the nations and I will be exalted in the earth.
  	Blessed is the Lord God of Israel,
  Ps. 33: 23	who has redeemed the souls of His servants with His own most holy Blood; and none of them that trust in Him shall offend.
  Ps. 95: 13.	And we know that He cometh; for He will come to judge justice.

  AT VESPERS.
  Ant. Holy Mary.

  Psalm.
  Ps. 46: 2.	O clap your hands, all ye nations, shout unto God with the voice of joy.

  Ps 46: 3.	For the Lord is high, terrible: He is a great king over all the earth.
  	For the most holy Father of heaven, our King, before ages sent His beloved Son from on high:
  Ps. 73: 12	and hath wrought salvation in the midst of the earth.
  Ps. 95: 11.	Let the heavens rejoice and let the earth be glad, let the sea be moved and the fulness thereof:
  Ps. 95: 12.	the fields and all that are in them shall be joyful.
  Ps. 95: 1.	Sing unto Him a new canticle; sing unto the Lord, all the earth.
  Ps. 95: 4.	For the Lord is great and exceedingly to be praised;
  	He is to be feared above all gods.
  Ps. 95: 7.	Bring to the Lord, O ye kindreds of the gentiles, bring to the Lord glory and honor.
  Ps. 95: 8	Bring to the Lord glory unto His Name.
  	Bring your own bodies and bear His holy cross; and follow His most holy precepts even unto the end.
  Ps. 95: 9.	Let all the earth be moved at His presence;
  Ps. 95: 10.	say among the gentiles that the Lord hath reigned.

  It is said up to this place daily from Good Friday until the feast of the Ascension On the feast of the Ascension, however, these versicles are added over and above:

  	And He ascended unto heaven; and sitteth on the right-hand of the most Holy Father in heaven.
  Ps. 56: 12.	Be Thou exalted, O God, above the heavens; and Thy glory above all the earth.
  Ps. 95: 13.	And we know that He cometh: for He will come to judge justice.

  And note that from the Ascension until the Advent of the Lord this Psalm is said daily in the same manner, namely: “O clap your hands,” with the foregoing versicles, “Glory be to the Father” being said where the Psalm ends, namely, “for He will come to judge with justice.”

  Note that the foregoing Psalms are said from Good Friday until Easter Sunday: they are said in the same manner from the octave of Whitsunday until the Advent of the Lord and from the octave of the Epiphany until Maundy Thursday,1 except on Sundays, and the principal feasts, on which they are not said: on the other days however they are said daily.

  HOLY SATURDAY AT COMPLINE.
  Ant. Holy Mary.

  Psalm.
  Ps. 69: 2.	O God, etc. (Ps. 69), as in the Psalter.

  It is said daily at Compline until the octave of Pentecost.

  EASTER SUNDAY AT MATINS.
  Ant. Holy Mary.

  Psalm.
  Ps. 97: 1.	Sing ye to the Lord a new canticle: for He hath done wonderful things. His right hand hath sanctified His Son; and His arm is holy.
  Ps. 97: 2.	The Lord hath made known His salvation; He hath revealed His justice in the sight of the gentiles.
  Ps. 41: 9.	In the day time the Lord hath commanded His mercy: and a canticle to Him in the night.
  Ps. 117: 24	This is the day which the Lord hath made: let us rejoice and be glad in it.
  Ps. 117: 26.	Blessed be He that cometh in the name of the Lord.
  Ps. 117: 27.	The Lord is God and He hath shone upon us.
  Ps. 95: 11	Let the heavens rejoice and let the earth be glad: let the sea be moved and the fulness thereof.
  Ps. 95: 12.	The fields shall rejoice and all that are in them.
  Ps. 95: 7.	Bring to the Lord, O ye kindreds of the gentiles, bring to the Lord glory and honor:
  Ps. 95: 8.	bring to the Lord glory unto His Name.

  It is said up to this place daily from Easter Sunday to the feast of the Ascension at all the Hours except at Vespers and Compline and Prime. On the night of the Ascension these verses are added:—

  Ps. 67: 33.	Sing ye to God, ye kingdoms of the earth: sing ye to the Lord: sing ye to God,
  Ps. 67: 34.	who mounteth above the heaven of heavens to the east. Behold He will give to His voice the voice of power:
  Ps. 67: 35.	give ye glory to God for Israel: His magnificence and His power is in the clouds.
  Ps 67: 36.	God is wonderful in His saints: the God of Israel is He who will give power and strength to His people. Blessed be God.

  And note that this Psalm is said daily from the Ascension of the Lord until the octave of Whitsunday with the foregoing versicles at Matins and Tierce and Sext and Nones. “Glory be to the Father,” being said where “Blessed be God” is said, and not elsewhere. Also note that it is said in the same manner only at Matins on Sundays and the principal feasts, from the octave of Whitsunday until Maundy Thursday because on that day the Lord ate the Pasch with His disciples, or the other Psalm may be said at Matins or at Vespers when one wishes, to wit, “I will extol Thee, O Lord,” as it is in the Psalter, and this from Easter Sunday to the feast of the Ascension and not longer.

  AT PRIME.
  Ant. Holy Mary.

  Psalm. Have mercy on me, etc.—as above, p. 159.

  AT TIERCE, SEXT AND NONES

  Psalm. Sing ye to the Lord, etc.—as above, p. 167

  AT VESPERS.

  Psalm O clap your hands, etc.—as above, p. 164.

  Here begin the other psalms which our most blessed Father Francis likewise arranged which are to be said in place of the foregoing psalms of the Passion of the Lord on Sunday and the principal festivities from the octave of Whitsunday until Advent and from the octave of the Epiphany until Maundy Thursday.

  AT COMPLINE.
  Ant. Holy Mary.

  Psalm. O God, etc. (Ps 69),—as it is in the Psalter.

  AT MATINS.
  Ant. Holy Mary.

  Psalm. Sing ye to the Lord, etc.,—as above, p. 167.

  AT PRIME.
  Ant. Holy Mary.

  Psalm. Have mercy on me, etc.,—as above, p. 159.

  AT TIERCE.
  Ant. Holy Mary.

  Psalm.
  Ps. 65: 1.	Shout with joy to God, all the earth.
  Ps. 65: 2.	Sing ye a Psalm to His name: give glory to His praise.
  Ps. 65: 3.	Say unto God, How terrible are Thy works, O Lord: in the multitude of Thy strength Thy enemies shall lie to Thee.

  Ps. 65: 4.	Let all the earth adore Thee and sing to Thee: let it sing a psalm to Thy Name.
  Ps. 65: 16	Come and hear, all ye that fear God, and I will tell you what great things He hath done for my soul.
  Ps. 65: 17	I cried to Him with my mouth: and I extolled Him with my tongue.
  Ps. 17: 7.	And He heard my voice from His holy temple: and my cry came before Him.
  Ps. 65: 8	O bless our God, ye gentiles: and make the voice of His praise to be heard.
  Ps. 71: 17	And in him shall all the tribes of the earth be blessed: all nations shall magnify Him.
  Ps. 71: 18	Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, who only doth wonderful things.
  Ps. 71: 19.	And blessed be the Name of His majesty forever: and the whole earth shall be filled with His majesty. Amen. Amen.

  AT SEXT.
  Ant. Holy Mary.

  Psalm.
  Ps. 19: 2.	May the Lord hear thee in the day of tribulation: may the Name of the God of Jacob protect thee: may He

  Ps. 19: 3.	send thee help from the sanctuary and defend thee out of Sion:
  Ps. 19: 4.	be mindful of all thy sacrifices, and may thy whole burnt-offering be made fat;
  Ps. 19: 5.	Give thee according to thy own heart, and confirm all thy counsels.
  Ps. 19: 6.	We will rejoice in thy salvation, and in the Name of our God we shall be exalted.
  Ps. 19: 7.	The Lord fulfil all thy petitions: now I know that the Lord hath sent Jesus Christ His Son,
  Ps. 9: 9.	and will judge the people with justice.
  Ps. 9: 10.	And the Lord is become a refuge for the poor: a helper in due time of tribulation.
  Ps. 9: 11.	And let them trust in Thee who know Thy Name.
  Ps. 143: 1.	Blessed be the Lord my God:
  Ps. 58: 17.	for Thou art become my support and refuge in the day of my trouble.
  Ps. 58: 18.	Unto Thee, O my helper, will I sing: for God is my defence, my God, my mercy.

  AT NONES.
  Ant. Holy Mary.

  Psalm.
  Ps. 70: 1.	In Thee, O Lord, have I hoped, let me never be put to confusion.

  Ps. 70: 2.	Deliver me in Thy justice and rescue me: incline Thine ear unto and save me.
  Ps. 70: 3.	Be Thou unto me, O God, a protector and a place of strength: that Thou mayest make me safe.
  Ps. 70: 5.	For Thou art my patience, O Lord; my hope, O Lord, from my youth.
  Ps. 70: 6.	By Thee have I been confirmed from the womb, from my mother’s womb Thou art my protector: of Thee I shall continually sing.
  Ps. 70: 8.	Let my mouth be filled with praise, that I may sing Thy glory; Thy greatness all the day long.
  Ps. 68: 17.	Hear me, O Lord, for Thy mercy is kind; look upon me according to the multitude of Thy tender mercies.
  Ps. 68: 18.	And turn not away Thy face from Thy servant; for I am in trouble, hear me speedily.
  Ps. 143: 1.	Blessed be the Lord my God.
  Ps. 58: 17.	For Thou art become my support and refuge in the day of my trouble.
  Ps. 58: 18.	Unto Thee, O my helper, will I sing; for God is my defence, my God, my mercy.

  AT VESPERS.
  Ant. Holy Mary.

  Psalm. O clap your hands. . . as above, p. 164.

  Here begin other Psalms which our most blessed Father Francis likewise arranged, which are to be said in place of the foregoing Psalms of the Passion of the Lord from the Advent of the Lord until Christmas eve and not longer.

  AT COMPLINE.
  Ant. Holy Mary.

  Psalm. How long, O Lord (Ps. 12), as it is found in the Psalter.

  AT MATINS.
  Ant. Holy Mary.

  Psalm.
  Ps. 85: 12.	I will praise Thee, O Lord, most Holy Father, King of heaven and earth; because
  Ps. 85: 17.	Thou hast comforted me.
  Ps. 24: 5.	Thou art God my Saviour.
  Ps. 11: 6.	I will deal confidently and will not fear.
  Ps. 117: 14.	The Lord is my strength and my praise; and is become my salvation.
  Exod. 15: 6.	Thy right hand, O Lord, is magnified in strength;
  	Thy right hand, O Lord, hath slain the enemy:
  Exod. 15: 7	And in the multitude of Thy glory Thou hast put down Thy adversaries.
  Ps. 68: 33.	Let the poor see and rejoice: seek ye God and your soul shall live.

  Ps. 68: 35.	Let the heavens and the earth praise Him: the sea and everything that creepeth therein.
  Ps. 68: 36.	For God will save Sion and the cities of Juda shall be built up.
  	And they shall dwell there: and acquire it by inheritance.
  Ps. 68: 37	And the seed of His servants shall possess it: and they that love His Name shall dwell therein.

  AT PRIME.
  Ant. Holy Mary.

  Psalm Have mercy on me, etc.—as above, p. 159.

  AT TIERCE.
  Ant. Holy Mary.

  Psalm. Shout with joy, etc.—as above, p. 169.

  AT SEXT.
  Ant. Holy Mary.

  Psalm. May the Lord hear thee in the day, etc.—as above, p. 170.

  AT NONES.
  Ant. Holy Mary.

  Psalm. In Thee, O Lord, have I hoped—as above, p. 171.

  AT VESPERS.
  Ant. Holy Mary.

  Psalm. O clap your hands, etc.—as above, p. 164.

  Also note that the whole Psalm is not said but up to the verse, “Let all the earth be moved”; understand however that the whole verse “Bring your own bodies” must be said. At the end of this verse “Glory be to the Father” is said. And thus it is said daily at Vespers from Advent until Christmas eve.

  CHRISTMAS DAY AT VESPERS.
  Ant. Holy Mary.

  Psalm.
  Ps. 80: 2.	Rejoice to God our helper.
  Ps. 46: 2.	Shout unto God, living and true, with the voice of triumph.
  Ps. 46: 3.	For the Lord is high, terrible: a great king over all the earth.
  	For the most holy Father of heaven, our king, before ages sent His Beloved Son from on high and He was born of the Blessed Virgin, holy Mary.
  Ps. 88: 27.	He shall cry out to me: Thou art my Father;
  Ps. 88: 28.	And I will make Him My First-born, high above the kings of the earth.
  Ps. 41: 9.	In the day time the Lord hath commanded His mercy: and a canticle to Him in the night.
  Ps. 117: 24.	This is the day which the Lord-hath made: let us rejoice and be glad in it.
  	For the beloved and most holy Child has been given to us and born for us by the wayside.

  Luke 2: 7.	And laid in a manger because He had no room in the inn.
  Luke 2: 14	Glory to God in the highest; and on earth peace to men of good will.
  Ps 95: 11.	Let the heavens rejoice and the earth be glad, and let the sea be moved and the fulness thereof.
  Ps. 95: 12	The fields shall rejoice and all that are in them.
  Ps 95: 1	Sing to Him a new canticle; sing to the Lord, all the earth.
  Ps 95: 4.	For the Lord is great and exceedingly to be praised: He is to be feared above all gods.
  Ps. 95: 7.	Bring to the Lord, O ye kindreds of the gentiles, bring to the Lord glory and honor.
  Ps. 95: 8.	Bring to the Lord glory unto His Name. Bring your own bodies and bear His holy cross and follow His most holy precepts even unto the end.

  And note that this Psalm is said from Christmas until the octave of the Epiphany at all the Hours.

  APPENDIX
  SOME LOST, DOUBTFUL, AND SPURIOUS WRITINGS

  DOUBTLESS we should have expected every fragment of St. Francis’ writings to have been preserved with loving care throughout the ages. But when we consider the conditions under which some of them were composed and the vicissitudes they afterwards passed through, we need not be surprised if all of them have not come down to us. On the contrary. For if we may believe such writers as Ubertino da Casale, serious attempts were made in certain quarters toward the close of the thirteenth century to suppress altogether part of the Saint’s writings.1 Be this as it may, it is certain that several of these precious documents disappeared in the course of time. Among such lost treasures we must reckon the primitive Rule of the Friars in the form approved by Innocent III in 1209.2 Again only two fragments seem to have survived of the “many writings” which, as has been already mentioned, St. Francis addressed to the Poor Ladies at St. Damian’s.1 Whether or not either of these fragments is to be identified with a letter written by St. Francis to console the Clares, of which we read in the Speculum and the Conformities, it is well nigh impossible to determine.2 Celano speaks3 of a letter to St. Antony of Padua, different apparently from the one known to us, and of others to Cardinal Ugolino.4 So, too, Eccleston5 tells of letters written to the brothers in France and at Bologna.6

  As to the famous letter of St. Francis to St. Antony commissioning the latter to teach theology, there is no small diversity of opinion. It is given for the first time in the Liber Miraculorum,7 and also in the Chron XXIV Generalium.8 M Sabatier, who was, I believe, the first to call the authenticity of this letter into question,9 now seems less inclined to reject it.1 Professor Goetz2 has decided for, and Professor Boehmer3 against it. The Quaracchi editors, in excluding this letter from their edition of the Opuscula, by no means intended to deny that St. Francis wrote to fratri Antonio,4 but they were unable to determine which if any of the three different forms of this letter now in circulation might be the genuine one. Since the matter is sub judice,5 so to say, I think, with Mr. Carmichael, this letter might find a place among the “Doubtful Works” of St. Francis.6

  Apropos of the Saint’s doubtful works it seems proper to say a word as to the Rule of the Brothers and Sisters of Penance. Although this Rule—like that of the Clares—is wanting in all the early MS. collections of St. Francis’ writings, we know from Bernard of Besse7 that St. Francis, with the cooperation of Cardinal Ugolino, wrote a Rule for these Tertiaries. What became of this document? It is generally conceded that the Rule of this Third Order as it stands in the Bull Supra montem of Nicholas IV in 12891 is not the handiwork of St. Francis; and for the rest the early history of the Third Order is uncertain, as all Franciscan students are aware2 But what are we to think of the much older text of this Rule published by M. Sabatier in 1901, after MS. XX of the convent at Capistran in the Abruzzi?3 Father Mandonnet, O.P., has tried to prove that the first twelve of the thirteen chapters comprising this document discovered by M. Sabatier, represent the Rule of 1221 in its primitive state.4 I would fain share the opinion of the learned Dominican on this head, but the objection raised against it by the Quaracchi editors seems to me insuperable. It amounts to this: In Chapter VI, § 4, of this Regula Antiqua there is a clear allusion to a Bull of March 30, 1228,1 which it is difficult to regard as an interpolation. Moreover, as Fr. Ubald d’Alençon points out,2 the mention of coin in circulation at Ravenna is also hard to explain in an Umbrian writer. Perhaps this document may prove to be St Francis’ Rule for Tertiaries put into legislative form, with the addition of a few minor regulations. Meanwhile, following the example of the Quaracchi editors, I have abstained from including it among the authentic writings of St. Francis.3

  Coming next to St Francis’ poems, although he doubtless wrote some few canticles besides the Canticle of the Sun, the two others given by Wadding can hardly be accepted as his, at least in their present form. I refer to the Amor de caritade4 and In foco l’amor mi misc.5 True, they are both attributed to St. Francis by St. Bernardine of Siena,6 but they are also found among the works of Jacopone da Todi,7 although Ozanam thinks that at most they were only retouched by the latter.8 The tendency nowadays is to ascribe all the early Franciscan poetry to Jacopone. When the critical edition of this extraordinary man’s works is published at Quaracchi, some needed light will no doubt be thrown on this delicate question; then too, perhaps, Pacifico, the “King of Verses,” and “most courtly doctor of singers,” may at length come into his own. Meanwhile a number of poems found in a fifteenth century manuscript at the National Library at Naples, once at the convent of Aquila in the Abruzzi, and lately ascribed to St. Francis, are clearly apocryphal, as Professor Ildebrando della Giovanna has sufficiently demonstrated

  Wadding himself regarded the seven sermons of St Francis he gives as of doubtful authenticity. And rightly, for they are from the work of Fr. Louis Rebolledo, already mentioned1 The twenty-eight Collationes are, pace Fr. Mandonnet, who regards them as genuine,2 rightly rejected by Professor Goetz, who points out how Wadding compiled them from various sources.3 Many are translated from an Italian MS. at Fano in the Marches of which we know neither the age nor the parentage.4 But they seem to be mere transcripts from the early legends. Thus Collatio I is an adaptation of Celano (1, 2) and Collatio XIV is taken almost verbatim from St. Bonaventure, while Collatio V is an accommodation of Celano and St. Bonaventure, XXVI and XXVIII are abridged from the Speculum, XXIV is found in the Chron. XXIV Gen, and so on. It is therefore to the authors of these works and not to St. Francis that these conferences are to be ascribed.

  At the end of his edition of the Opuscula Wadding has collected several “Prayers of St Francis” of which the text is more than doubtful. Let us see why. Take for example the prayers said to have been used by St. Francis “at the beginning of his conversion” or “in time of sickness” or “at the elevation” One searches in vain among the early MS. collections for any trace of these prayers, nor is mention of them to be found1 elsewhere. As regards the prayer “to obtain Poverty,” it has long been known that it was not written by St. Francis himself. Wadding found it in the Arbor Vitae (l. v., cap. iii), but Ubertino da Casale is there quoting from the Sacrum Commercium B. Francisci cum Domina Paupertate.2 The latter work is not an historical narrative, but an exquisite allegory in which St Francis’ own tale of his mystic espousals with the Lady Poverty is most poetically expanded by one of his followers,1 and consequently Ubertino did not pretend in citing such a work to give this prayer as the actual composition of Francis.2

  In some MS. collections and library catalogues certain works may be found ascribed to St. Francis which are obviously spurious. For example, the Epistola B. Francisci ad Fr. Bernardum, found in at least two fifteenth century codices,3 is nothing else but the letter of St. Bonaventure continens XXV memoralia.4

  Sbaralea5 mentions copies of a book of the “Sayings” of St Francis as existing at Assisi and Ferrara,6 but a careful search has failed to reveal any trace of them. He also refers to a MS. (B. 31) in the Vallicellian Library at Rome in which “the sayings of St. Francis are found with the Rule,”7 but this codex is also missing. In this library, however, there is a codex (B. 82, fol. 141 r) which contains a “Sermon delivered by St. Francis at the end of his life.”8 The number of patristic citations this work contains is alone sufficient to demonstrate its spuriousness.

  The Francisci Collationes cum fratribus, catalogued among the Latin MSS of the Royal Library at Munich1 as being contained in a fifteenth century MS. at that library (cod. 11354), are a selection from the Dicta of the Blessed Brother Giles, as is evident from the Incipit of the prologue and the text of the first collation.2 Their attribution to St. Francis is therefore an error of the catalogue. The Verba S. Francisci de Paupertate, mentioned in the same catalogue as contained in Cod. 5998, fol. 189, are an excerpt from Chap. VI of the Second Rule of the Friars Minor.3

  This attribution of writings to St. Francis which clearly do not belong to him is rarely intentional; it is often the result of error. For the rest, it was easiest for compilers and librarians unacquainted with the authorship of certain Franciscan works, and not eager to undertake deep researches as to their origin, to ascribe them to the common father of all Franciscan literature and the source of its inspiration.

  Since every new revelation of St. Francis must be a priceless gain, it is devoutly to be wished that the present energetic research work among the sources of Franciscan history may happily bring to light some of St. Francis’ writings not known to us save through the formal attestation of the early legends and chronicles, or at least put us in possession of complete copies of such as have come down to us only in frag mentary form

  Meanwhile I conclude this volume by wishing its readers their full share in the blessing which St. Francis himself has promised to those who receive his words kindly: Omnes illi et illac, qui ea benigne recipient, benedicat eis Pater et Filius et Spiritus Sanctus. Amen.

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  The following list of works is intentionally limited. Its aim is to give collectively and in alphabetical order a fuller reference to the principal and most accessible sources of information cited in the course of the present volume.

  Acta Sanctorum quotquot toto orbe coluntur, collegit Joannes Bollandus, etc. (ed. 3).

  Actus B. Francisci et Sociorum ejus. Ed Sabatier, Paris, 1902.

  Prof. Alessandri: Inventario dei Manoscritti della biblioteca del conv. di S. Francesco di Assisi. Forli, 1894.

  Analecta Bollandiana.1 Brussels.

  Analecta Franciscana. Quaracchi.

  Matthew Arnold: Essays in Criticism. Macmillan, 1875.

  Reginald Balfour: The Seraphic Keepsake. Burns & Oates, 1905.

  Fr. Francisci Bartholi, O.F.M.: Tractatus de Indulgentia S. Mariae de Portiuncula. Ed. Sabatier, Paris, 1900.

  Fr. Bartholomaeus Pisanus, O.F.M.: De Conformitate Vitae B. Francisci ad vitam D. N. Jesu Christi. Milan, 1510.2

  Fr Bernardus de Bessa, O.F.M.: Liber de Laudibus B. Francisci. In Anal. Franc., t. III.

  Fr. Bernardo da Fivizzano, O.M.Cap.: Oposcoli di S. Francesco. Florence, 1880.

  Bibliotheca Hagiographica Latina antiquae et mediae aetatis. Ed. Socii Bollandiani. Brussels.

  Prof. H. Boehmer: Analekten zur Geschichte des Franciscus von Assisi. Tubingen and Leipzig (Mohr), 1904

  Bullettino Critico di Cose Francescane. Florence

  S. Bonaventura. Legendae duae de Vita S. Francisci. Quaracchi, 1898. (English translation by Miss Lockhart. Washbourne, 1898.)

  Bullarium Franciscanum. Ed. F. F. Hyacinth Sbaralea and Conrad Eubel, O.M.Conv. 1759 and 1898.

  Montgomery Carmichael: La Benedizione di San Francesco. Livorno, 1900. “The Origin of the Rule of St. Francis,” in Dublin Review, Vol CXXXIV, 1904, pp. 357-385. “The Writings of St. Francis,” in the Month, January, 1904, t. CIII, pp. 156-164. See also under Sacrum Commercium.

  Fr. Thomas de Celano, O.F.M.: Vita Prima S. Francisci. Ed. Suyskens, S.J., in Acta S.S., Oct., II.

  Vita Secunda S. Francisci. Ed. Amoni. Rome, 1880.

  Tractatus de Miraculis. Ed. Van Ortroy, S.J., in Anal. Boll., t. XVIII, 1899.

  Vita S. Clarae. Ed. Sedulius, O.F.M. Antwerp, 1613.

  Fr. Leopold de Chérancé: S. François d’Assise. Paris, 1892. (English translation by R. F. O’Connor: Burns & Oates, 1901.)

  Fr. Bernard Christen, O M Cap.: Leben des hl. Franciscus von Assisi. Innsbruck, 1899.

  Chronica XXIV Generalium in Anal. Francis., t. III.

  Fr. Cuthbert, O.S.F.C. See under Eccleston.

  G. Cozza-Luzi: Chiara di Assisi ed Innocenzo IV. Rome, 1887.

  Lina Duff Gordon: The Story of Assisi. Dent, 1901.

  Fr. Thomas Eccleston, O.F.M.: De Adventu Fratrum Minorum in Angliam in Anal. Franc., t. I; see Monumenta Franc. Ed. Brewer. Rolls series. (English translation by Fr. Cuthbert, O.S.F.C.: The Friars and how they came to England. Sands, 1903.)

  Fr. Edouard d’Alençon, O.M.Cap:1Epistola S. Francisci ad Ministrum Generalem in sua forma authentica. Rome, 1899. La Benediction de S. François. Paris, 1896. See also Sacrum Commercium.

  Fr. Ehrle, S.J.: “Die Historischen Handschriften von S. Francesco in Assisi” in the Archiv furLitteratur und Kirchengeschichte des Mittelalters, t. I, pp 484 seq. “Controversen uber die Anfange des Minoritenordens” in Zeitschrift fur Katholische Theologie, t. XI, pp 725 seq.

  Mgr. Faloci-Pulignani: “Tre Autografi di S. Francesco” in Misc. Francescana, t. VI, pp 33 seq., and “La Calligrafia di S. Francesco,” l. c., t. VII, pp 67 seq.

  Floretum S. Francisci Assisiensis. Ed. Sabatier. Paris, 1902. A satisfactory Italian version of the Fioretti is that of Barbere, Florence, 1902. An excellent English translation, The Little Flowers of St. Francis, is published by Kegan Paul, 1905.

  Etudes Franciscaines. Namur.

  Joseph Gorres: Der hl. Franciscus von Assisi, ein Troubadour. Ratisbon, 1879.

  Prof. Walter Goetz: Die Quellen zur Geschichte des hl. Franz von Assisi. Gotha, 1904.

  Prof. John Herkless: Francis and Dominic and the Mendicant Orders. Scribner, 1901.

  Fr. Jordani a Jano, O.F.M.: Chronica, in Anal. Franc., t. I.

  Leon de Kerval: Sancti Antonii de Padua Vitae duae. Paris, 1904.

  Fr. Leonard Lemmens, O.F.M.: “Die Anfänge des Clarissenordens” in Romische Quartalschrift, t. XVI, pp. 93 seq. Scripta Fratris Leonis, Quaracchi, 1901. See also under Speculum Perfectionis.

  Abbé Leon Le Monnier: Histoire de S. Françoisd’Assise. (English translation by a Franciscan Tertiary. Kegan Paul, 1894.)

  Prof. A. G. Little: Description de MS. Can. Misc. 525, de la Bibliothèque Bodleienne. Paris, 1903.

  Canon Knox Little: St. Francis of Assisi: His Times, Life, and Work Isbister, 1904.

  Anne Macdonnell: The Words of St. Francis. Dent, 1905.

  Fr P. Mandonnet, O.P.: Les Origines de l’Ordo de Poenitentia (Freiburg, 1898). Les Regles et le Gouvernement de l’Ordo de Poenitentia au XIIIe Siècle (Paris, 1902).

  Miscellanea Francescana di Storia di Lettere, di Arti. Foligno.

  Monumenta Germaniae Historica. Berlin.

  Prof. Karl Muller: Anfange des Minoritenordens und der Bussbruderschaften. Freiburg, 1885.

  A. F. Ozanam: Les Poètes Franciscains en Italie au Treizième Siècle. Paris, 1882, 6th ed.

  Opuscula S. P. Francisci Assisiensis. Edita a PP. Collegii S. Bonaventurae, Quaracchi, 1904.

  Fr. Panfilo da Magliano, O.F.M.: Storia Compendiosa di San Francesco. Rome, 1874-1876.

  Paul Sabatier: Vie de S. François d’Assise. Paris, 1894. (English translation by L. S. Houghton.) Regula antiqua Fratrum et Sororum de Poenitentia. Paris. (English translation in Adderley and Marsons’ Third Orders. Mowbray, 1902) Description du MS. Franciscain de Liegnitz. Paris, 1901. Examen de quelquesTravaux recents sur les Opuscules de Saint François. Paris, 1904 See also under Actus, Bartholi, and Speculum.

  Fr. Hyacinth. Sbaralea, O M.Conv.: Supplementum et Castigatio ad Scriptores Trium Ordinum S. Francisci. Rome, 1806

  Sacrum Commercium Beati Francisci cum Domina Paupertate. Ed. Fr. Ed. d’Alençon, O.M.Cap Rome, 1900. (English translation by Montgomery Carmichael, The Lady Poverty; Murray, 1901)

  Emma Gurney Salter: Franciscan Legends in Italian Art. Dent, 1905.

  Seraphicae Legislationis Textus Originales. Quaracchi, 1897.

  Speculum Perfectionis. Ed. Lemmens: Quaracchi, 1901.

  Speculum Perfectionis. Ed. Sabatier. Paris, 1898. (English translation of the text only, by the Countess de la Warr: The Mirror of Perfection. Burns & Oates, 1902.)

  Luigi Suttina: Appunti Bibliografici di Studi Francescani. Padua, 1904.

  H. Thode: Franz von Assisi und die Anfänge der Kunst der Renaissance in Italien. Berlin, 1885 and 1904.

  Trium Sociorum, Legenda S. Francisci Assis. Ed. Faloci. Foligno, 1898. (English translation by E. Gurney Salter: The Legend of the Three Companions. Dent, 1902.)

  Fr. Ubald d’Alençon, O.M.Cap.: Les Opuscules de S. François d’Assise. Paris, 1905.

  Fr. Van Ortroy, S.J. For his article on the Opuscula of St. Francis, see Analecta Bollandiana, t xxiv, fasc. iii (1905), p. 411 seq.

  Fr. Luke Wadding, O.F.M.: Annales Minorum.1B. P. Francisci Assisiatis Opuscula. Antwerp, 1623. Scriptores Ordinis Minorum. Rome, 1650.

  

  [1 ]Prof A G Little See English Historical Review, Oct, 1902, p 652

  [2 ]M Sabatier’s views on this point are summarized in his Vie de S. François, Paris, 1904 See Études des Sources, p. xxxvi.

  [3 ]Mgr Faloci’s opinion may be found in his Miscellanea Francescana, Foligno, t VII, p 115 seq

  [4 ]Die Anfänge des Minoritenordens, Freiburg, 1885, p 3.

  [1 ]See Opuscula Ed Quaracchi, p vi

  [1 ]See on this subject the long study of Cardinal Gabriel de Treio, given by Wadding in the Opuscula The full title is “Gabriel, divina miseratione S R E Tituli S Pacratii prebyter cardinalis de Treio, in epistola missa ad R admodum P Lucam Wadingum” It is given in substance by Fr. Apollinaris, O F M, in his Doctrine Spirituelle de S François (Paris, 1878) See also the Bibliotheca Veterum Patrum (Cologne, 1618), which ranks St Francis among the Fathers

  [2]

  • “ nel crudo sasso, intra Tevere ed Arno,
  • Da Cristo prese l’ultimo sigillo,
  • Che le sue membra due anni portarno”
  • Paradiso, XI—114

  [1 ]See Boehmer, Analekten, p xlv

  [2 ]“Non tam orans quam oratio factus” 2 Cel 3, 51.

  [3 ]See his chapter on “Pagan and Mediæval Religious Sentiment” in the Essays on Criticism Third edition, Macmillan, 1875, pp 243-248

  [1 ]See Leg III Soc, 10

  [2 ]Eccleston speaks of his “false Latin” See below, p 132

  [3 ]Some of the greatest troubadours of Provence were then sojourning in Italy On their journeys and influence there see Fauriel, Histoire de la poésie Provençale, t II, and three articles by the same author in the “Bibliothèque de l’École des Chartes,” t III and IV Fragments of their poems are given by Monaci Testi antichi provenzali (Rome, 1889).

  [4 ]See Görres Der hl Franciscus von Assisi, ein Troubadour (Ratisbon, 1879)

  [1 ]I have rendered all Scripture phrases by the corresponding Douay Version, not, indeed, that I wish to raise any vexatious question as to the relative merits of the Douay and the English Authorized Version from a literary point of view, but because, as every student of Franciscan literature must be aware, the Biblical passages in the early documents are quoted from the Vulgate, and the English Authorized Version is not and does not profess to be a translation of the Vulgate See Franciscan Annals, January, 1905, p 8

  [2 ]1 Cel 1.

  [3 ]See below, p 130

  [4 ]M. Sabatier (Vie de S François, p 5) suggests that Brother Leo may have acted in this capacity, and invokes the authority of Bernard of Besse to prove it

  [1 ]For the testimony of St. Bonaventure and Celano see below, p 147.

  [2 ]See Tract de Miraculis, Anal Bol, t xviii, p 115

  [1 ]See below, p 27.

  [1 ]See Lemmens De duobus generibus vitarum S P Francisci in Doct Ant Franc, P II, p 9, and de Kerval, Les Sources de l’histoire de S François in Bullettino Critico, fasc i, p 3

  [2 ]See Sabatier: Opuscules, fasc x, p 133, also Boehmer Analekten, p vi

  [1 ]See Ehrle, S J Die historischen Handschriften des Klosters San Francesco in Assisi in Archiv fur Litteratur, etc, t I, p 484; Mgr Faloci Pulignant in the Miscell Francescana, t VI, p 46, M Sabatier, Vie de S François, I, p 370, and Professor Alessandri Inventario dei manoscritti della biblioteca del conv de S Francesco di Assisi, p 57

  [2 ]See page 64

  [3 ]See page 81

  [4 ]See page 5

  [5 ]See page 98

  [6 ]See page 111.

  [7 ]See page 23

  [8 ]See page 20

  [9 ]See page 152

  [10 ]See page 139

  [11 ]See page 155

  [12 ]See page 89

  [1 ]See Speculum Perfectionis (ed Sabatier), p clxxvi, for description of these three MSS

  [2 ]See Sabatier Le Manuscrit de Liegnitz, in Opuscules, t I, p 33 This codex adds the Salutation of the Blessed Virgin and the letter to Brother Leo

  [3 ]On these MSS see Spec Perf (ed Sabatier), p clxiv

  [4 ]This MS adds the example Fuit quidam miles, etc. See Actus B Francisci (ed Sabatier), cap 66

  [5 ]The Chronicle of Mariano, so often quoted by Wadding, is now lost It comprised five large volumes in folio In the first of these he gives the catalogue of St Francis’ writings above referred to, and which is reproduced in the Quaracchi edition after Wadding I have not deemed it necessary to translate it here On Mariano and his works, see Sabatier Bartholi, p 137

  [6 ]On this MS see Minocchi “La Legenda trium Sociorum,” p 13, also his “Nuovi Studii” in the Archiv Storico Ital, t XXIV, p 266, see also Sabatier Bartholi, p cxxxv

  [7 ]On this MS see Lemmens Doct Ant Franc, P III, p 52

  [8 ]On this MS see Sabatier Bartholi, p cxlvi

  [1 ]On this MS see Faloci Misc Frances, t VII, p 45; and Sabatier Opuscules, t I, p. 359 It may be noted that the Foligno MS conforms more to that of St Isidore’s and the Vatican MS rather to that of Ognissanti

  [2 ]My references to the Conformities are to the Milan edition of 1510 The edition published in 1590, especially in the historical part, is mutilated and corrupted at almost every page, as I can personally attest after a comparison of it with several old MS. versions

  [3 ]See below, p 121

  [4 ]See below, p. 118

  [1 ]It was printed at Venice “expensis domini Jordani de Dinslaken per Simonem de Luere” in 1504, and at Metz “per Jasparem Hochffeder” in 1509 Both these editions are identical It was republished by Spoelberch at Antwerp in 1620

  [2 ]It is largely a collection of declarations and expositions of the Rule, and of statutes, decrees, and privileges concerning the Order

  [3 ]The Speculum Morin, as it is called from the printer, Martin Morin, is now very rare In a copy at the National Library, at Paris, it is ascribed to Fr John Argomanez, a Spanish provincial See Études Franc, t. XIII, p 317

  [4 ]Also at Barcelona, in 1523. See Sbaralea Supplementum, p 51

  [1 ]On the edition published at Venice, in 1513, see Sbaralea Supplem, p 196

  [2 ]See The Life of Father Luke Wadding, by Fr Joseph O’Shea, O F.M

  [3 ]See Wadding B P Francisci Assisiatis Opuscula, Antwerp, 1623 See also his Scriptores Ordinis Minorum, p 112, and Sbaralea Supplem, p 244

  [4 ]Leg Maj, V, 5

  [1 ]Leg Maj, VIII, 1.

  [1 ]Opera Omnia S Francisci, Paris, 1641

  [2 ]Opera B P Francisci, Cologne, 1849

  [3 ]Sti Francisci Assisiensis Opera Omnia, Paris 1880 (vol VI of Bibliotheca Patristica)

  [4 ]Oposculi di S Francesco, by Fr Bernardo da Fivizzano, O M Cap, Florence, 1880 The Latin text is also given in this edition

  [5 ]Works of St Francis Translated by a Religious of the Order London, 1890

  [6 ]Œuvres de S François Trans of Berthaumier Paris, 1864

  [7 ]Leben, Regel, und Werke des h Franziskus von Assisi By Hereneus Haid Ratisbon, 1856

  [8 ]Obras Completas del B P S Francisco de Asis segun la coleccion del P Wadingo. Ternel, 1902

  [1 ]“Opuscula Sancti Patris Francisci Assisiensis sec. Codices MSS emendata et denuo edita a PP. Collegii S. Bonaventurae. Ad Claras Aquas (Quaracchi), 1904”

  [1 ]H Boehmer Analekten zur Geschichte des Franciscus von Assisi S Francisci Opuscula Tubingen and Leipzig, 1904

  [2 ]W Goetz Die Quellen zur Geschichte des hl Franciscus von Assisi Gotha, 1904 The part of this work dealing with the Opuscula already appeared in the Zeitschrift fur Kirchengeschichte As there is some difference between the reprint and the original, I have quoted sometimes from one and sometimes from the other

  [3 ]There is also an excellent new French translation by Fr Ubald d’Alençon, O M Cap,—Les Opuscules de Saint François d’Assise (Paris, Poussielgue, 1905) I have quoted from it elsewhere A critical Italian edition is in preparation by Fr Nicolò Dal-Gal, O F M, already well known for his contributions to Franciscan history

  [1 ]See Analecia Bollandiana, fasc III, p 411

  [2 ]Examen de quelques travaux recents sur les Opuscules de Saint François, in Opuscules, fasc X

  [3 ]“The Writings of St Francis,” by Montgomery Carmichael, in the Month, January, 1904

  [4 ]See The Words of St Francis, by Anne Macdonell, p 7, London, 1904

  [1 ]1 Cel 29

  [1 ]See Goetz Quellen zur Geschichte des hl Franz von Assisi, in Zeitschrift fur Kirchengeschichte, t xxii, p 551, and Van Ortroy, S J., in Anal. Bolland, t xxiv, fasc. iii (1905), p 411.

  [2 ]The codex of St Antony’s College, Rome, omits the Admonitions numbered 11 and 22 It may be noted, however, that both these numbers are found at the end of the Speculum Perfectionis, ed Lemmens. See Documenta Antiqua Franciscana, P. II, p 84

  [1 ]On this MS see Sabatier, Opuscules, fasc. ii.

  [2 ]On this MS. see Little, Opuscules, fasc. v.

  [3 ]As to this codex see Lemmens Documenta Antiqua Franciscana, P. III, p 72.

  [1 ]Mgr. Faloci has edited the first of the Admonitions from this codex in his Miscellanea Francescana, t. vi, p 96

  [2 ]In this edition, which Wadding has followed (fol 21 v.), nos 20, 21, and 23 are repeated.

  [3 ]In places where variants are noted at the foot of the page the following abbreviations will be used.

  L	Laurentian Codex
  As.	Assisian Codex
  O.	Ognissanti Codex
  An	Codex at St Antony’s College.
  Is.	Codex at St Isidore’s College.
  Mon.	Version of the Monumenta
  Firm.	Version of the Firmamenta.
  Pis.	Version given by Bartholomew of Pisa in his Conformities.

  [1 ]John 14. 6-9

  [2 ]I Tim 6. 16.

  [3 ]John 4 24.

  [4 ]John 1 18

  [5 ]John 6 64.

  [6 ]Mark 14. 22-24.

  [1 ]John 6. 55.

  [2 ]These words are added in the text given by Pis. and Wadd.

  [3 ]See I Cor. 11 29

  [4 ]Ps 4 3.

  [5 ]John 9. 35.

  [6 ]Wis. 18. 15.

  [7 ]Matt. 28 20.

  [1 ]Gen. 2. 16-17.

  [2 ]To which, namely, he has no right after religious profession, having relinquished his will by the vow of obedience.

  [3 ]Luke 14 33.

  [4 ]Matt. 16 25.

  [1 ]See John 15. 13.

  [2 ]See Luke 9. 62

  [3 ]See Prov. 26 11.

  [4 ]Matt. 20 28.

  [1 ]See Gen. 1. 26.

  [2 ]See II Cor. 12. 5.

  [1 ]See John 10. 11, Heb. 12. 2, John 10 4, Rom. 8 35

  [2 ]II Cor. 3. 6

  [1 ]I Cor. 12 3.

  [2 ]Ps 52 4

  [3 ]Matt 5. 44.

  [1 ]This Admonition is wanting in codex An., but is found in the Speculum Perfectionis, ed Lemmens. See Documenta Antiqua Franciscana, P. II, p. 84

  [2 ]See Rom. 2. 5

  [3 ]Matt. 22: 21.

  [4 ]Cod O and Is. read “If therefore his body is puffed up, he has not the Spirit of God. If, however, he becomes rather viler in his own sight, then he truly has the Spirit of God.”

  [1 ]Cod O. reads “so long as he enjoys everything according to his wish and necessity.”

  [2 ]Matt 5. 3

  [3 ]See Matt. 5. 39

  [4 ]Matt. 5. 9.

  [1 ]Matt. 5 8.

  [2 ]See Matt 25 18

  [3 ]Luke 8 18.

  [1 ]See Bonav Leg Maj, VI, 1. “And he had these words continually in his mouth ‘what a man is in the eyes of God, so much he is, and no more’ ” See also Imitation of Christ, Bk III, Chap L, where the same saying of St Francis is quoted

  [2 ]See Speculum Perfectionis, ed. Sabatier, p 189

  [3 ]This Admonition (like No 11) is wanting in Cod An, but is found in the Speculum Perfectionis, ed Lemmens See Doc Ant. Franc, P II, p 84.

  [4 ]Prov 29 20

  [1 ]In Cod. O. numbers 23 and 24 are not divided

  [2 ]Cod An reads “Blessed is that superior . . . ”

  [3 ]Matt 24 45.

  [1 ]Cod. O omits this sentence.

  [2 ]See Matt 6 20

  [3 ]St Francis would often say to his brethren “When a servant of God receives any divine inspiration in prayer, he ought to say, ‘This consolation, O Lord, Thou hast sent from heaven to me, a most unworthy sinner, and I commit it to Thy care, for I know that I should be but a thief of Thy treasure.’ And when he returns to prayer, he ought to bear himself as a little one and a sinner, as if he had received no new grace from God”—St Bonaventure, Leg Maj., X, 4

  [1 ]“Wherefore,” he writes of St. Francis, “in the praises of the virtues which he composed he says ‘Hall! queen wisdom, God save Thee with Thy sister pure, holy simplicity’ ” See 2 Cel 3, 119, for this Incipit

  [2 ]See page 3.

  [3 ]In the text of the Conformities (which for the most part agrees with that of the Ognissanti MS.) the Salutation is preceded by No 27 of the Admonitions and begins with the words “There is absolutely no man,” etc.

  [4 ]Ed of Venice, 1504, and of Metz, 1509.

  [5 ]Opuscula, Antwerp, 1623.

  [6 ]In the Assisi codex (as in that of Liegnitz) the title reads “Of the virtues with which the Blessed Virgin Mary was adorned and with which a holy soul ought also to be adorned,” whereas in the Ognissanti codex and others of the same class, the title is “Salutation of the Virtues and of their efficacy in confounding Vice.” (See Introduction.)

  [7 ]Cod. As omits “Hail.”

  [1 ]Wadding, following Mariano of Florence, prefaces the letter with the following Salutation “To my reverend masters in Christ, to all the clerics who are in the world and live conformably to the rules of the Catholic faith brother Francis, their least one and unworthy servant, sends greeting with the greatest respect and kissing their feet. Since I am become the servant of all, but cannot, on account of my infirmities, address you personally and viva voce, I beg you to receive, with all love and charity, this remembrance of me and exhortation which I write briefly” Wadding also (p 45) adds at the end of this instruction the following words “May our Lord Jesus Christ fill all my masters with His holy grace and comfort them”

  [2 ]Father Ubald d’Alençon (Opuscules de Saint François, p 21) is inclined, with M Sabatier, to regard this instruction as a kind of postscript to St Francis’ letter to the General Chapter and to all the Friars (See Speculum Perfections, ed. Sabatier, p clxvi)

  [3 ]Mgr. Faloci has edited the Instruction after this codex, see Misc Francescana, t VI, p 95.

  [1 ]See I Cor. 2 14.

  [1 ]See Bonav Leg Maj, III, 8 See also 1 Cel. 1, 5, and the Vita S Francisci, by Julian of Spires, cap iv.

  [2 ]Although M Sabatier (Vie de S François, p 100), following Wadding (Annales ad an 1210, n 220 seq.), fixes this event in the summer of 1210, it is far more probable that the approbation of the Rule took place on April 23, 1209, the date given by the Bollandists and the Seraphic Breviary This latter date is not only more conformable to the ancient tradition of the Order (see Anal Franciscana, t. III, p 713) but involves no historic difficulties (see Appunti critici sulla cronologia della Vita di S Francesco, by Father Leo Patrem, O F M, in the Oriente Serafico, Assisi, 1895, Vol. vii, nn. 4-12.

  [1 ]See Bonav Leg Maj, IV, 11

  [2 ]Muller Anfange des Minoriten-Ordens und der Bussbruderschaften (Freiburg, 1885), p 4, seq

  [3 ]Sabatier Vie de S François d’Assise (Paris, 1894), p 288, seq

  [4 ]More than a century ago—in 1768—Fr Suyskens demonstrated that the lengthy Rule of twenty-three chapters could not have been presented to Pope Innocent by St Francis in its present form (See Acta S. S, t ii, Oct) All agree that the first Rule in its original form was, very short and simple

  [5 ]Prof Müller was therefore right in attempting to reconstruct the Rule in its original form out of this longer one He has almost conclusively demonstrated that the opening words of this original Rule were. “Regula et vita istorum fratrum haec est” (See Anfange, pp 14-25, 185-188.) Prof Boehmer has also attempted to reconstruct it from various writings See his Analekten, p 27 See also 2 Cel. 3, 110, Speculum Perfectionis (ed. Sabatier), c. 4, n 42

  [1 ]His exposition of the Rule may be found in the Monumenta Ordinis Minorum (Salamanca, 1511, tract 11, fol 46 v) and in the Firmamenta (Paris, 1512, p iv, fol 34 v) In chapter 6 (Mon, fol 67v, Firm, fol 48r) he says “This he lays down at greater length in the original rule as follows ‘When it may be necessary let the friars go for alms,’ ” etc (see below, p 43) On Hugo de Digne see Sbaralea, Supplemenium, p 360; also Salimbene, Chron Parmensis, 1857, passim

  [2 ]His exposition of the Rule has never been published, although a critical edition is promised by Fr Van Ortroy, S.J (See Anal Bolland, t xxi, p 441 seq) Meanwhile it may be found at St Isidore’s, Rome, in the codex 1/92, at the Vatican lib, in cod Ottob 522 (in part only) and Ottob 666, and at the Royal lib of Munich in cod 23648. In this exposition Clareno says (cod Ottob 666, fol 50 v) “In the Rule which Pope Innocent conceded to him and approved . . . it was written thus ‘The Lord commands in the Gospel,’ ” etc (see below, p. 41) Clareno died in 1337 On his writings see Fr Ehrle, S J, in the Archiv, vol I (1885), pp 509-69

  [3 ]To be sure, the traditional Legend of the Three Companions says of St Francis “He made many rules and tried them, before he made that which at the last he left to the brothers” (See Legenda III Sociorum, n 35.) But unless these words are understood as referring to different versions of the same Rule, they only raise a new difficulty against the authenticity of this Legend

  [1 ]“And the Blessed Francis seeing Brother Cæsar learned in the Scriptures commissioned him to embellish with evangelical language the Rule which he himself had put together in simple words.” Chron Fr Jordani a Jano Analecta Franc, t I, page 6, n 15 Brother Jordan also notes “that according to the first Rule the Friars fasted on Wednesday and Friday” (L. c, p. 4, n 11)

  [2 ]See Speculum Perfectionis (ed Sabatier), Appendix, p 300, also Les Nouveaux mémoires de l’Académie de Bruxelles, t XXIII, pp 29-33 Jacques de Vitry died as Cardinal Bishop of Frascati in 1244, leaving a number of writings in which St Francis figures prominently

  [3 ]2 Cel, 3, 90

  [4 ]See below, p 41

  [5 ]See below, p 34

  [6 ]Canon Knox Little. St. Francis of Assisi (1904), Appendix, p. 321.

  [1 ]See Van Ortroy, S J, Annal Bolland, t. xxiv, fasc iii, 1905, p 413.

  [2 ]See below, p 44

  [3 ]See 2 Cel, 3, 110

  [4 ]See Mon, fol 68 v, Firm, fol 49 r.

  [5 ]See Cod Ottob 666, fol. 99 v.

  [6 ]See Speculum, fol. 193 v.

  [7 ]“Celle de 1210 et celle qui fut approuvée par le pape le 29 Novembre, 1223,” he writes, “n’avaient guère de commun que le nom” . . . “Celle de 1210 seule est vraiment franciscaine Celle de 1223 est indirectement l’œuvre de l’Église”—Vie de S François, p 289

  [1 ]See Le Monnier. History of St Francis, p 337

  [2 ]See Seraphicæ Legislationis Textus Originales (Quarachi, 1897), p 35

  [3 ]This letter, which is dated “in the tenth year of the Pontificate of Pope Honorius,” may be found in the Annalibus Hannoniæ Fr Jacobi de Guisia, lib. XXI, cap. xvii; see Monumenta Germaniæ Historica, Scriptores, t. XXX, P. I, p 294

  [4 ]See Mon, fol 46 v, Firm, fol 34 v.

  [1 ]See Ehrle “Controversen uber die Anfange des Minoritenordens” in the Zeitschrift fur Katholische Theologie, t XI, p 725, seq

  [2 ]“À partir de Bonaventure,” he writes, “la règle primitive tombe dans l’oubli Les Franciscaines Spirituels du commencement du XIV siècle ne songèrent pas à l’en tirer” See Spec Perf. (ed Sab), p ix

  [3 ]In preparing the Quaracchi text, which is the one I translate here, the codices at St Antony’s and St Isidore’s, and the Florentine codex at Ognissanti were used, besides the versions of this Rule found in the Speculum, Minorum, Monumenta, and Firmamenta (see Introduction for description of these codices and editions) The expositions of the Rule by Hugo de Digne and Angelo Clareno, already mentioned, have often been consulted, as well as the Conformities of Bartholomew of Pisa The text of the first Rule, given in part in the Conformities, often agrees with the MSS of Ognissanti and St Isidore’s

  [1 ]This last sentence is omitted in Mon. and Firm, also by Wadding

  [2 ]Matt 19 21

  [3 ]Matt. 16 24.

  [1 ]Luke 14. 26.

  [2 ]See Matt. 19. 29.

  [1 ]From the Latin caparo. See Du Cange, Glossar latin

  [2 ]See the bull Cum secundum of Honorius III, dated September 22, 1220 (Bullarium Franciscanum, t 1, p 6)

  [3 ]Luke 9: 62

  [4 ]See Matt. 11 8, Luke 7. 25

  [1 ]See Mark 9. 28.

  [2 ]Matt 6 16.

  [1 ]See Luke 10 8

  [2 ]Matt 7 12

  [3 ]See Tob 4 6

  [4 ]Matt 20 28.

  [1 ]Heb 10 31

  [1 ]See Matt. 9 12

  [2 ]Matt. 20. 25

  [3 ]See Matt 23 11

  [4 ]See Luke 22 26

  [5 ]See Ps 118. 21

  [1 ]See Mark 8 36

  [1 ]Ps 127 2

  [2 ]II Thess 3. 10

  [3 ]See I Cor 7. 24.

  [4 ]St Jerome says “Semper facito aliquid boni operis, ut diabolus te inveniat occupatum.” Epis. 125 (alias 4), n. 11.

  [5 ]St Anselm says, “Otiositas inimica est animae.” Epist. 49.

  [1 ]See I Peter 4 9.

  [2 ]See above, page 28.

  [3 ]See Luke 12. 15, and 21. 34

  [4 ]See Leg III Soc., n 35.

  [5 ]Eccle 1 2

  [1 ]O, Is and Pis read “money for alms,” Clar and Spec read “alms of money,” An, Mon and Wadding read “money or alms”

  [2 ]I Tim 6. 8

  [1 ]Is 50. 7.

  [1 ]Rom. 14 3

  [2 ]Mark 2 26

  [3 ]Luke 21 34-35.

  [1 ]See Acts 13. 48

  [2 ]Apoc 3 19

  [3 ]See 2 Cel 3, 110, also Hugo de Digne, l [Editor: illegible word] fol 68 v and Spec Perf (ed Sabatier), chap 42

  [4 ]See II Tim 2. 14

  [5 ]Luke 17 10

  [6 ]Matt 5 22

  [1 ]John 15 12

  [2 ]Jas 2 18

  [3 ]I John 3 18

  [4 ]Tit 3 2

  [5 ]Rom 1 29-30

  [6 ]Tit 3 2

  [7 ]Is 38 15

  [8 ]Luke 13 24

  [9 ]Matt 7 14

  [10 ]See above, p 29

  [1 ]This prohibition refers to a vow of obedience made by a woman to her spiritual director, as Fr Van Ortroy points out See Anal Boll, t xxiv, fasc iv, p 523

  [2 ]Matt 5 28

  [3 ]See Luke 9. 3, 10 4-8

  [4 ]See Matt. 5. 39.

  [1 ]See Luke 6: 29-30.

  [2 ]Matt 10. 16.

  [1 ]I Pet 2 13

  [2 ]John 3 5

  [3 ]Matt 10 32

  [4 ]Luke 9 26

  [5 ]Mark 8 35, Luke 9 24

  [1 ]Matt 5 10

  [2 ]John 15 20

  [3 ]See Matt 10 23

  [4 ]Matt 5 11-12

  [5 ]Luke 6 23

  [6 ]Luke 12. 4

  [7 ]Matt 24 6

  [8 ]Luke 21 19

  [9 ]Matt 10 22

  [10 ]See I John 4 8

  [1 ]Luke 10 20

  [2 ]James 1 2

  [3 ]Matt 6 2

  [1 ]See Luke 18 19

  [1 ]James 5. 16

  [1 ]John 6 55

  [2 ]Luke 22 19

  [3 ]I Thess 5 18

  [4 ]Matt 3 2

  [5 ]Luke 3 8

  [6 ]Luke 6 38.

  [7 ]Luke 6 37

  [8 ]See Mark 11. 26.

  [9 ]See James 5 16

  [10 ]See John 8. 44

  [1 ]Matt 5: 44

  [2 ]See I Peter 2 21.

  [3 ]See Matt. 26. 50

  [4 ]See Matt 15 19, and Mark 7 21-22

  [1 ]See Matt 13 19-23, Mark 4 15-20, Luke 8 11-15.

  [2 ]Matt 8 22.

  [1 ]Matt 12 43-45; see Luke 11. 24-26.

  [2 ]See I John 4 16

  [1 ]Luke 21 36

  [2 ]See Mark 11 25.

  [3 ]Luke 18 1

  [4 ]John 4. 24

  [5 ]I Peter 2 25

  [6 ]See John 10 11 and 15.

  [7 ]See Matt. 23 8-10.

  [8 ]John 15. 7.

  [9 ]Matt. 18 20

  [10 ]Matt. 28 20.

  [11 ]John 6 64.

  [12 ]John 14 6.

  [1 ]See John 17 6-26.

  [2 ]The Speculum Minorum condenses this chapter.

  [3 ]See Gen. 1 26; 2 15.

  [4 ]See John 17 26.

  [5 ]Matt. 25 34.

  [1 ]See Matt. 17: 5.

  [1 ]See Deut 6. 5; Mark 12: 30 and 33; Luke 10: 27.

  [2 ]See Luke 18 19.

  [1 ]This is the text of 1223 and represents the Rule at present observed throughout the first Franciscan Order It is here translated according to the text of the original Bull which is preserved at the Sacro Convento in Assisi A duplicate of this document, contained in the Pontifical Register at the Vatican Library, has been consulted for certain passages less legible in the original.

  [1 ]See Matt. 19. 21.

  [1 ]See above, page 34, note 2.

  [2 ]Luke 9. 62.

  [3 ]This passage ex quo habere poterunt breviaria, may also be rendered “as soon as they can have breviaries” (See Wadding, Opusc, p 179.) But the latter translation has less foundation.

  [1 ]See Matt 4 2.

  [2 ]See Tit 3 2 and II Tim 2 14.

  [3 ]See Luke 10 5 and 8.

  [1 ]See I Peter 2 11

  [2 ]See Ps. 141 6 It was this Psalm that St Francis recited at the hour of death

  [1 ]See Ps 11 7 and 17 31.

  [2 ]See Rom 9. 28.

  [1 ]See Luke 12 15

  [2 ]Matt 5 44

  [1 ]Matt. 5 10.

  [2 ]Matt 10 22

  [3 ]This is comformable to the original bull, which reads nec hac occasione, but most of the printed texts give ne, “lest scandal arise,” instead of nec.

  [1 ]See Col. 1 23

  [1 ]“Plura scripta tradidit nobis,” Test B Clarae See Seraphicae Legislationis textus originales, p 276.

  [2 ]“When Clare,” he says, “and some other devout women in the Lord chose to serve under the same observance of religion, Blessed Francis gave them a little rule of life” (formulam vitae tradidit) See the bull Angelis gaudium of May 11, 1238 (Bullar Franc., t I, p 242)

  [3 ]See Bullar, I, 11 and 13: the letters Prudentibus Virginibus Ann. Min I, 312 Gubernatis, Orb Seraph. II, 603. also Bullar. I, 4, n. (a) The Rule may be found in the bull Cum omnis vera of Gregory IX, of May 24, 1239 See Bullar., t I, p 263

  [4 ]See Bullar., t. I, p. 242.

  [1 ]See Bullar., t. I, p 315

  [2 ]On the origin of the Second Order and the early Rule, see Lemmens “Die Anfange des Clarissenordens” in the Romische Quartalschrift, t XVI, 1902, pp 93-124, which is in the nature of a rejoinder to Dr. Lempp’s article with the same title, published in Brieger’s Zeitschrift fur Kirchengeschichte, XIII, 181-245

  [3 ]This Rule is contained in the bull Solet annuere, of Innocent IV. See Seraphicae Legislationis textus originales, page 49 seq. See also Bullar, I, 167, Ann. Min., III, 287

  [1 ]Forma vivendi. See Seraph. Legislat, p. 62.

  [2 ]The biographers place the writing of this fragment in the autumn of 1220, after St. Francis returned from the East.

  [3 ]See Seraph. Legislat., p. 63

  [4 ]They are numbered IV and V among the Epistolae in his edition of the Opuscula

  [5 ]This bull, which had been lost for several centuries, was brought to light early in 1893, after a protracted search in different countries, it was found wrapped within an old mantle of Saint Clare, preserved in the Monastery of Santa Chiara, at Assisi See Seraph. Legislat, pp 2, seq See also G Cozza-Luzi: Un autografo di Innocenzo IV e Memorie di S Chiara, ed 2da, Rome, 1895

  [6 ]Some critics regard this fragment as a promise or engagement accompanying the formula vitae or as the beginning of the formula itself, and believe that the text of the latter, now lost, was also inserted originally in the sixth chapter of St Clare’s Rule. Be this as it may, it is certain that this chapter has been completely changed in several editions In the vernacular versions of it, based on Wadding, the two fragments here given do not appear at all See Fr Van Ortroy, S J, in Anal Boll, t xxiv, fasc iii, p 412

  [1 ]See 2 Cel. 3, 132

  [1 ]Sabatier. Vie de S François, Étude des Sources

  [2 ]See also Goetz, l. c, t XXII, pp. 372 seq.

  [3 ]See 1 Cel 17, 2 Cel 3, 99

  [4 ]See Bonav, Leg. Maj, III, 2

  [5 ]It is also expressly cited in the Leg III Soc 11 and 29

  [6 ]“Circa ultimum vitae suae,” etc See Bullarium Franc, t I, p 68

  [7 ]“À la fin de chacune de ces crises, il faisait de nouveau son testament” Speculum Perf (ed. Sabatier), p. xxxiii, note 2. See also Speculum (ed Lemmens), No. 30.

  [1 ]See S Francisci Intentio regulae, nn. 14 and 15, in the Documenta Antiqua Franciscana, P. I, p 97.

  [2 ]See Documenta Antiqua Franciscana, P. II, p 60

  [3 ]See page 3.

  [1 ]The text of the Testament given by M. Sabatier in his edition of the Speculum Perf. is that of this Assisi MS.

  [2 ]It may also be found in the Speculum Minorum (Tract. III, 8 r) and in the Annales of Wadding (ad an. 1226, 35).

  [3 ]See 1 Cel. 17, where this passage of the Testament is quoted. See also Bonav. Leg. Maj, II, 6, and Leg III Soc. 11 Some texts instead of “feci misericordiam cum illis” give “feci moram cum illis” “I made a sojourn with them” See Miscell. Franc, III (1888), p 70. It is interesting to note here how St Francis on the eve of his death, casting a backward glance over the ways by which he had been led, dwells on this incident which had marked a new era in his life.

  [4 ]Cod. As. reads “talem fidem,” “such faith”

  [1 ]Cod As. and O omit “here.” (See 1 Cel 45, and Bonav. Leg. Maj. 43, where this prayer may be found) Cod. An. Firm and Wadd. insert “here.”

  [2 ]Order, i e, sacerdotal character.

  [3 ]Priests of the world, i. e, secular priests

  [1 ]See 2 Cel 3, 99, where this passage of the Testament is quoted, see also Bonav. Epis. de tribus quaestionibus in which it is also referred to (Opera Omnia, t. VIII, p 335.)

  [2 ]See Leg. III Soc. 29, for reference to this passage

  [3 ]Cod O. reads: eramus “we were content”

  [4 ]Cod As omits qui volebant, “by those who wished.”

  [5 ]Firm. and Wadd add: “poor and neglected churches”

  [1 ]See Bonav Leg Maj, III, 2

  [2 ]Cod As. omits “other things,” and O. omits “all other things”

  [3 ]See Documenta antiqua Franciscana, P. I, page 98, n. 15, where this passage is cited among the Verba quae scripsit Frater Leo

  [4 ]Cod O. omits “by obedience.”

  [5 ]Cod An omits this clause.

  [6 ]Cod. O omits “either for a church.”

  [1 ]Cardinal Ugolino, afterward Gregory IX, was then Bishop of Ostia, and Protector of the Order.

  [1 ]Cod As and Mon. for “purely” read “without gloss,” Firm and Wadd add “without gloss”

  [2 ]Cod. An and O. read “this” for “these things”

  [3 ]Cod. O adds “to him who caused these words to be written, be all honor, all praise and glory forever and ever”

  [4 ]See 1 Cel. 38, for the blessing given by St. Francis on his deathbed to Elias and the Order.

  [1 ]See Bonav Leg. Maj., XII, 1, where the Saint is represented as discoursing on the relative merits and advantages of the active and contemplative life. Wadding gives this discourse among the Monastic Conferences he attributes to St Francis. See Opuscula, Coll XIV, p 318

  [2 ]See Floretum S. Francisci, ed Sabatier, cap 16, p 60 This chapter, which is one of the most interesting from a critical point of view, represents St. Francis as consulting St Clare and Brother Sylvester on the subject of his doubt.

  [3 ]See First Rule, chap vii (above, p. 40), also Speculum Perf., ed. Sabatier, pp. 25-26

  [4 ]As is most poetically described by the author of the Sacrum Commercium. Show me your cloister, asks the Lady Poverty of the friars And they, leading her to the summit of a hill, showed her the wide world, saying. This is our cloister, O Lady Poverty (See The Lady Poverty, by M. Carmichael, p. 128.)

  [1 ]See 1 Cel 1, 17, and Leg. III Soc 55. Such grottoes may still be seen in St Francis’ country, they serve as a shelter for beggars and gypsies.

  [2 ]St Francis habitually uses the word locus or place to designate the habitations of the friars (see above, Rule II, chap. vi, p. 68).

  [1 ]See “Franciscus in admonitionibus suis” (fruct xii, P. 11, cap 30). It was from this text that Wadding took the Regulation for his edition of the Opuscula in which it figures under the heading Collationes Monasticae III

  [2 ]The figure which presents Mary and Martha as types of the contemplative and active life was already a familiar one. See Gregor, VI Moral., c. 37, n 61. “Quid per Mariam, quae verba Domini residens audiebat, nisi contemplativa vita exprimitur? Quid per Martham exterioribus obsequiis occupatam nisi activa vita signatur?”

  [3 ]Cod. As. after cloister reads: “in which each one shall have his own cell.”

  [4 ]Cod. As. reads. “immediately after sunset”

  [1 ]Luke 12 31

  [2 ]This is the reading of the Cod As and Is, other texts read the “poorest beggars”

  [3 ]Cod O adds. “any woman or person whatsoever.”

  [4 ]The text in Cod. As ends here.

  [5 ]See 2 Cel 3 113.

  [1 ]On this letter see Appendix

  [2 ]Wadding drew on the Spanish text of Rebolledo (Chron, P I, l II, c. xxvii) and himself appears to have had misgivings, at least as regards the authenticity of Epistle VII.

  [3 ]See Actus B. Francisci, etc, ed. Sabatier, p. 63. M Sabatier attributes the authorship of this compilation (which contains, as is now known, among other matters, the original Latin text of the traditional Fioretti) to Fra Ugolino di Monte Giorgio, and believes its date to be between 1280 and 1320. It is, however, from Thomas of Celano that we know St Francis to have written a letter to the Lady Giacoma (See Tr de Miraculis in Anal. Bolland, t. xviii). See also Spec. Perf (ed. Sabatier), c. XII, for reference to this letter The narrative of Celano renders the text of the letter given in the Actus very doubtful The fact that the expression “St. Mary of the Angels” is used in it to designate the Portiuncula is in itself sufficient to militate against its authenticity. Neither St Francis nor his companions ever employed this term, they invariably said “St. Mary of the Portiuncula.” Any document, therefore, containing the former expression bespeaks a fourteenth century origin at earliest See Frère Jacqueline Recherches Historiques, by Fr. Edouard d’Alençon, Paris, 1899

  [1 ]See above, pp. 23, 77, 78

  [1 ]The letter which Wadding translated from the Spanish, under this title and numbered XIV, appears to have been an incomplete version of the letter here given in full.

  [1 ]Compare for example the passage on p 101, beginning “Let us therefore love God,” etc., with Chapter XXII of the First Rule (p 58); and the prayer of Christ given on p 105, with the conclusion of the same chapter (p 59).

  [2 ]See Le Monnier, l c, p 202, and Knox Little, l c, p 164 Wadding, Annales, ad an. 1213, places the writing of this letter two or three years earlier, which seems less probable

  [1 ]See Le Monnier, l c, p 203 To him I am indebted for these quotations

  [2 ]See his edition of Bartholi, Tractatus, Appendix, p 132 seq

  [3 ]See Historiarum Seraphicae Religionis libri tres (Venice, 1586), fol. 174 r, for that part of the letter which Wadding gives as Epistola I.

  [1 ]It has been adopted in the new French edition of St Francis’ works See Opuscules, pp 122-135

  [2 ]It was from this fourteenth century MS that M Sabatier edited as a new opuscule the fragment above mentioned

  [3 ]Bartholomew of Pisa here inserts the greater part of the letter passim

  [1 ]Cod O reads. “all the words of the Lord”

  [2 ]Cod O. reads “by this present letter and now”

  [3 ]John 6 64

  [4 ]See Luke 1 31

  [5 ]See II Cor 8 9

  [1 ]See Matt 26 26-28, Luke 22 19-20, I Cor 11. 24-25

  [2 ]Matt 26 39

  [3 ]Luke 22 44

  [4 ]See Matt 26 42 and 39

  [5 ]Cod O omits “and was born for us”

  [6 ]John 1 3

  [7 ]See I Peter 2 21

  [8 ]Cod O omits “And He wishes that we should all be saved by Him”

  [9 ]See Matt 11 30

  [10 ]See Ps 33. 9

  [11 ]See John 3 19

  [12 ]Ps. 118 21

  [1 ]Matt 22. 37-39

  [2 ]John 4 23

  [3 ]John 4: 24.

  [4 ]Luke 18 1

  [5 ]Cod O adds “For the Lord says, who does not eat,” etc.

  [6 ]See John 6 54

  [7 ]I Cor. 11 29

  [8 ]Luke 3 8

  [1 ]Cod As and editions omit “or cannot”

  [2 ]Cod O reads “judgment and mercy”

  [3 ]See Jas 2. 13

  [4 ]See Tob 4 11

  [5 ]See Eccli 3 32

  [1 ]Luke 11 42

  [2 ]See Matt 15 18-19

  [3 ]See Luke 6 27

  [4 ]See Luke 22 26

  [5 ]I Cor 1 26

  [1 ]Ps 21 7

  [2 ]I Peter 2 13

  [3 ]See Is 11 2

  [4 ]See John 14. 23.

  [5 ]See Matt 5 45

  [6 ]See Matt 12 50.

  [7 ]Cod As and that of Volterra with the Mon add “the Paraclete”

  [8 ]See John 10 15

  [1 ]See John 17 6-24

  [2 ]See Apoc 5 13

  [3 ]See Luke 18. 19

  [1 ]Ps 106. 27

  [2 ]See Matt 15. 19

  [1 ]Jer 17 5

  [2 ]Cod O and Pis read “Wilt thou satisfy for the things taken unjustly,—that is, those things by which thou hast cheated thy neighbor”

  [3 ]Cod As and Mon omit “a bitter death” Cod Pis and Volterra omit “miserable man”

  [4 ]Cod As. and Mon omit “wisdom”

  [5 ]See Luke 8 18

  [1 ]These words are not found except in Cod As, which omits the following sentence “All to whom this letter may come”

  [2 ]See I John 4 16

  [3 ]Cod As. and Mon read “that these words and others”

  [4 ]Cod As and Mon omit what follows up to “And all those”

  [5 ]See John 6 64

  [6 ]See Matt 10 22

  [1 ]So Ubertino da Casale tells us in his Arbor Vitae, finished on Mount La Verna, September 28, 1305 (l v, cap vii).

  [2 ]As we learn from the rubric in the Assisi MS 338 “De lictera et ammonitione beatissimi patris nostri Francisci quam misit fratribus ad capitulum quando erat infirmus”

  [3 ]Hist Seraph, fol. 173 v.

  [4 ]Epistles X, XI, and XII in his edition.

  [1 ]Following this MS, Mgr Faloci edited the first part of the letter (to “world without end Amen,”—see page 116) in his Miss Frances, t VI, p 94

  [2 ]The Mon and Firm, like Rodolfo (fol 173 v), give only the first part of the letter, which Wadding makes Epis XII

  [3 ]It is placed immediately before the letter in the other family of MSS mentioned in the Introduction, to which the Ognissanti MS belongs

  [1 ]Cod As omits this invocation

  [2 ]Cod As adds “to Brother A, minister general” It has been surmised that St Francis wished this letter to be read at the opening of all subsequent chapters, with a view to perpetuating his spiritual presence among the brothers In this hypothesis, the copyist was supposed to fill in here the initial of the minister general governing the order at the time he wrote The fact that A is the initial given at the head of the Assisian MS may afford a clue to the date of its composition (Albert of Pisa governed the order 1239-40, and Aymon of Faversham, 1240-44), but in the body of the letter (see below, p 117) the minister general is referred to as Brother H [Helias (?) 1232-39] Cod An at the head of the letter reads Brother T [Thomas of Farignano (?), 1367-73]

  [3 ]See Apoc 1 5

  [4 ]See Gen 19 1 and elsewhere

  [5 ]See Luke 1 32

  [1 ]See Acts 2 14

  [2 ]See Isa 55 3

  [3 ]See Ps 135 1

  [4 ]See Tob 13 6

  [5 ]Cod An reads “you may make all stand dumbfounded who oppose Him in word or deed”

  [6 ]See Tob 13 4

  [7 ]See Heb. 12. 7.

  [8 ]See Heb 12 7

  [9 ]See Col 1. 20.

  [10 ]The word priests is added in Cod As, and by Ubertino

  [1 ]See Eph 6 6, and Col 3 22

  [2 ]Cod As reads “to the Lord”

  [3 ]Luke 22 19

  [4 ]Cod O., Mon, and Firm, with Ubertino, omit the rest of this sentence

  [5 ]See I Cor 11 27

  [6 ]See Heb 10 28.

  [7 ]Heb 10 29

  [8 ]See I Cor. 11 29

  [1 ]See Jerem 48 10

  [2 ]Mal 2 2.

  [3 ]See I Pet. 1 12

  [4 ]See Levit 11 44

  [1 ]See Ps 61 9

  [2 ]See 1 Pet 5 6

  [3 ]Philip Melanchthon in his Apology (Augsburg Confession, art on the Mass) usurped these words of St Francis to defend his erroneous teaching against private Masses But there is nothing in this letter or elsewhere to show that St Francis reprehended such Masses in any way On the contrary, as the Bollandists point out, the words “according to the form of holy Church” refer to the rite of the Roman Church to be followed in the celebration of Mass and not to the one Mass to be celebrated daily (See Acta S S, t II, Oct, pp 998-999)

  [1 ]John 8 47

  [2 ]See 1 Tim 4: 5

  [1 ]See Philip. 2. 8.

  [1 ]This prayer, which, as I have said, is found in some MSS at the head and in others at the foot of the present letter, is separated from it altogether by Wadding, who (p 101) places it immediately after the sheet given by St Francis to Brother Leo There it is also found in the new French edition of the Opuscula (p 25)

  [1 ]It refers to “the chapters which speak of mortal sin” which are only found in the First Rule (see pp 37, 47, 53), and speaks of proposed changes in the Rule which could not, as is clear, have been made after November, 1223 In particular the subject of the tenth chapter of the new Rule discussed in the Chapter held at Portiuncula, June 11th of that year (see Spec Perf, ed Sabatier, c 1), is mentioned as not yet definitely settled

  [2 ]See Quellen, etc, t XXII, p 547

  [1 ]“ plus des objurgations et des reproches que des conseils”—Sabatier, Bartholi, p 120

  [5 ]See his edition of Bartholi, pp 113-131.

  [2 ]Hist Seraph, fol 177 v

  [3 ]Fruct XXII, P 11, n 46 The part here given is that which Wadding exhibits as Epis VI M Sabatier is clearly mistaken in regarding these different abstracts of the letter published separately as so many complete epistles He says “ Frère Elie ne se corrigeant pas, le saint ne cessa pas de lui faire des recommendations identiques,” l. c., p. 119

  [4 ]See Epis VIII This is a different and longer version than that given in the Conformities Wadding gives yet another abstract of the letter as Epis VII This he translated from the Spanish, though he confesses misgivings as to the authenticity of its form

  [6 ]See Frère Elie de Cortone, p 51, where the idea of abolishing penances is described as “so Franciscan”

  [7 ]See “The Writings of St Francis,” in the Month, January, 1904, pp 161-164

  [1 ]In 1899, after the Vatican MS 7650, and the Foligno codex See Epistola S Francisci ad ministrum generalem in sua forma authentica cum appendice de Fr Petro Catanii

  [2 ]In 1900, after the Ognissanti MS See his Bartholi, p 113

  [3 ]In 1900 See his Frère Elie de Cortone, p 50 seq

  [4 ]This is the superscription of the Neapolitan MS According to the greater number of codices the letter is addressed “To Brother N Minister” The MSS of Foligno and St Isidore’s read “To Brother N Minister General,” and some Italian versions cited by M Sabatier (see Bartholi, p 121, note 1) add the name of Brother Elias (see also Rodolfo, l c, fol 177 v) The rubric in the second family of MSS already described (See Introd) reads simply “Letter which St Francis sent to the Minister General as to the way to be followed regarding brother subjects sinning mortally or venially” Wadding (Opusc, p 25, n 1) thinks the letter was addressed to Peter of Catana See Speculum Minorum, fol 218 v

  [1 ]For the rendering of this doubtful passage et in hoc dilige cos ut velis quod sint meliores Christiani, I have translated the Latin text as given in the Isidorean MS 1/25, in the Conformities (fol 132, v), in Wadding’s edition (Epis VIII), and in that of Quaracchi (p 108) In the Ognissanti MS, however, this passage reads et non velis “and do not desire that they be better Christians” This reading has been followed by Fr Edouard d’Alençon and M Sabatier The latter thinks St Francis is here referring to ungrateful and recalcitrant lepers whom he was wont to call Christians But in that hypothesis the passage might be translated “and do not desire to make them better lepers!”

  [2 ]Cod O for eremitorium reads meritorium But may not this very improbable reading be that most common thing in early MSS,—the slip of a copyist?

  [3 ]Cod O omits the remainder of this sentence

  [1 ]The Neapolitan MS for “appears” reads “sins”

  [2 ]Chaps V, XIII, and XX of the first Rule (See above, pp 37, 47, and 53)

  [3 ]See Matt 9 12

  [4 ]Cod O. reads “another”

  [1 ]In chap XX of the First Rule (see above, p 53) The passage enclosed in brackets is the part omitted by Wadding and those who have followed him

  [2 ]See John 8 11

  [1 ]Minister General of the Order, 1579-1587, afterwards Bishop of Mantua (see Acta Ordinis Minorum, 1904, p 265)

  [2 ]De Origine Seraphicae Religionis Franciscanae (Venice 1603), p 806

  [3 ]See Quellen, etc, p. 535

  [4 ]See Gen 47 39

  [1 ]See Ps 118 21

  [2 ]See Ezech 33 12

  [3 ]See Luke 8 18

  [4 ]See Wis 6 7

  [1 ]Cod 225, mentioned above (p 110) See Sabatier’s Bartholi, p 135

  [2 ]Seemingly an allusion to the mysteries of the Eucharist

  [1 ]An obvious reference to the formula of consecration

  [2 ]See John 6 54

  [1 ]See Gli Autografi di Francesco, by Mgr Faloci (Misc Franc, t VI, p 33), and La Calligrafia di S Francesco, by the same author (Misc. Franc., t VII, p 67)

  [2 ]The Blessing given to Brother Leo (see below, Part III).

  [1 ]See, for example, the parallel Latin and Italian text given by Father Bernardo da Fivizzano, O M Cap, in his edition of the Oposculi (Florence, 1880), which reads. “F Leo Frater Franciscus tuus salutem et pacem”

  [2 ]“Ce pluriel montre bien que Frère Léon avait parlé au nom d’un groupe”—Sabatier Vie de S François, p. 301.

  [3 ]When he caused any letters to be written by way of salutation or admonition, he would not suffer any letter or syllable in them to be erased, though they were often superfluous or unsuitably placed (See 1 Cel 82)

  [1 ]See Eccleston De Adventu Minorum in Angliam (Mon Germ hist, Scriptores, t XXVIII, p 563), although another reading is given in the Anal Franc, t I, p 232, and by Fr Cuthbert, O S F C, The Friars, etc, p 167

  [2 ]Fr Ubald d’Alençon, Opuscules, p 23

  [3 ]See Spec Perf (ed Sabatier), p lxiv, note 3

  [4 ]Opuscula, Epist XVI

  [5 ]Misc Franc, t VI, p 39

  [1 ]It is interesting to compare with this letter the somewhat similar expressions of encouragement used by St Francis to Brother Richer See 1 Cel. 1, 49, Spec Perf (ed Sabatier), c 2 and 16, Actus B Francisci, c 36 and 37

  [1 ]It is found in the Assisi MS 338 and in the compilation beginning Fac secundum exemplar contained in the Berlin, Lemberg, Liegnitz MSS and the Vatican codex 4354, as well as in the other family of MSS represented by the Ognissanti and Foligno MSS. and the codices of St Isidore’s (1/25) and the Vatican 7650

  [2 ]A fourteenth century codex at St Isidore’s Rome (MS 1/73, fol 10 v) But I have not found it in any of the collections of Brother Giles’ Dicta which I have had occasion to consult in preparing the new English version of the same I hope soon to publish

  [3 ]See Opuscules, fasc x, pp 136-137 As a postscript to his Examen M Sabatier gives the text of the paraphrase of the Our Father after the rare edition of the Speculum (Morin)

  [4 ]See Analekten, p 71.

  [1 ]“He also ordained and ordered it to be strictly observed that any friar who either when doing nothing or at work with the others, uttered idle words, shall say one Our Father, praising God at the beginning and end of the prayer, and if conscious of his fault he accuse himself, he shall say the one Our Father and the Praises of the Lord for his own soul . . . And if on reliable testimony he is shown to have used idle words, he shall repeat the Praises of the Lord at the beginning and at the end aloud so as to be heard and understood by the surrounding friars,” etc Further on we read “The Praises of the Lord the most Blessed Father always said himself, and with ardent desire taught and impressed upon the friars that they should carefully and devotedly say the same.” See Spec Perf (ed Sabatier), c 82 I have quoted this passage from Lady de la Warr’s translation, pp. 121-122 See also Opuscules, fasc x, p 137, where M Sabatier, speaking of the relation of the Speculum to the Praises, says, “Les deux documents se correspondent, se corroborent et se garantissent l’un l’autre”

  [2 ]The Conformities, edition of 1510, gives the complete text as the handiwork of St Francis

  [1 ]Such is the rubric which precedes the Praises in the Assisian MS

  [2 ]See Eph 3 18.

  [1 ]See Apoc 4 8

  [2 ]See Dan. 3 57

  [3 ]See Apoc 4 11

  [4 ]See Apoc 5 12

  [5 ]See Dan 3 57

  [6 ]See Apoc 19 5

  [7 ]See Apoc 5 13

  [1 ]Analekten, p xxvii

  [2 ]Opuscules, fasc x, p 134

  [3 ]The text given by Wadding (Opusc, p 105) was copied by him from an Irish MS at Salamanca

  [4 ]Cod Is omits from “Hail thou His tabernacle” to “Hail thou His handmaid,” inclusive

  [5 ]Wadding omits from “Hail thou His house” to “Hail thou His handmaid,” inclusive.

  [1 ]The text of the Conformities and Wadding here add the second part of the antiphon given below in the Office of the Passion beginning “Mother of our most Holy Lord Jesus Christ,” etc In the Speculum (ed Morin, 1509) this Salutation is followed by another prayer to the Blessed Virgin (see Sabatier, Opuscules, fasc x, p 164), but from the beginning of the seventeenth century, the second prayer is no longer found in the text of the Speculum (see the edition of Spoelberch, P I, pp 176-178, and Wadding, Opusi, p 107) In the opinion of Professor Boehmer this Salutation ought to follow immediately after the Salutation of the Virtues given above (p. 20) See his Analekten, pp vi and xxviii They are found in this order in the Spec Vitae of 1504 and the Vatican MS 4354

  [1 ]St Bernardine died in 1444 See his Opera Omnia, t II, sermo 60, art 11, c ii

  [2 ]See Arbor Vitae, l v, c iv

  [3 ]See Ehrle, Archiv, etc, vol II, pp 374-416, as to the writings of Ubertino

  [1 ]2 Cel 2, 18, see also Bonav Leg Maj, XI, 9, where the narration is clearly borrowed from Celano

  [2 ]A photograph of the reliquary containing it is here reproduced

  [3 ]For example Papini La Storia di S Francesco, t I, p 130, n 8, Grisar, see Civilta Cattolicà, fasc 1098 (1896), p 723, Mgr Faloci Pulignani, Misc. Franc, t VI (1895), p 34, Fr. Edouard d’Alençon, La Benediction de St François, M Sabatier, Spec Perf., pp lxvii-lxx, Reginald Balfour, The Seraphic Keepsake, and Montgomery Carmichael, La Benedizione di San Francesco See also Fr Saturnino da Caprese, O F M, Guida Illustrata della Verna (Prato, 1902), p 93 On the testimony of three leading German palæographers, Wattenbach, Dziatzko and Meyer, see Theol Literatur-Zeitung, Leipzig, 1895, pp 404 and 627

  [1 ]Says Celano “The sign thau was more familiar to him than other signs With it only he signed sheets for despatch and he painted it on the walls of the cells anywhere” See Tr. de Miraculis, in Anal Boll, t xviii, pp 114-115

  [2 ]“He signed it upon all the letters he directed” See Bonav Leg Maj, IV, 3

  [1 ]These words seem to be transposed in the autograph.

  [1 ]From this point to the end of the Praises the autograph is illegible

  [2 ]See Num 6 24-26

  [3 ]Mr Balfour points out that the position of Leo’s name in relation to the thau is intentional and that the thau thus becomes a cross of blessing, St. Francis, following the practice of all old Missals and Breviaries, having placed it so as to divide the name of the person blessed See The Seraphic Keepsake, p 106

  [1 ]See 2 Cel. 3, 138-139, and 1 Cel 80.

  [2 ]See Cherancé, Life of St Francis, p 260

  [3 ]See on this head Ozanam, Les Poètes Franciscains, p 82, and Matthew Arnold, Essays on Criticism, pp 243-248 Mr Arnold’s translation of the Canticle is well known

  [4 ]For a list of the more important studies on it, see Speculum Perfectionis (ed Sabatier), p 289, L Suttina, Appunti bibliografici di studi francescani, p 19, also Gasparry’s Italian Literature to the death of Dante, p 358

  [1 ]See his St Francis of Assisi, p 235, note 2

  [2 ]See Nouvelles Etudes d’histoire religieuse, p 331

  [3 ]Vie de S François, p xxxiv and chap xviii

  [4 ]This text was published by Fr Panfilo da Magliano, O F M, in his Storia Compendiosa, also by M Sabatier in his Vie de S François and later in his Speculum, pp 334-35

  [5 ]Professor Boehmer published the text of the Maz MS 1350 in his Sonnengesang v Fr d’A, in 1871

  [1 ]I have had the advantage of studying two of the oldest MSS of this work known,—those of the convents of La Verna and Portiuncula

  [1 ]It was soon after the canonization of St Clare, about 1256, that Celano undertook the task of compiling this legend by order of Alexander IV

  [2 ]See Acta S S, t II, Aug., p 761

  [1 ]See Little in Opuscules, t I, p 276

  [2 ]See Spec Perf (ed Sabatier), p cxcvi

  [3 ]See Opuscules, t I, p 55 This MS contains only the first part of the Office, it ends with the words the “Lord hath reigned”

  [4 ]See above, p 3-4 Other MSS containing the Office are enumerated by Wadding See also Boehmer’s Analekten

  [5 ]See above, p 139

  [6 ]See above, p 141

  [1 ]The Oxford Codex here reads “until Easter Sunday”

  [1 ]“Et toto conatu fuerunt solliciti annulare scripta beati patris nostri Francisci, in quibus sua intentio de observantia regulae declaratur”—See Archiv, III, pp 168-169

  [2 ]See above, p 26

  [1 ]We need not despair of finding others, the Clares’ archives have mostly escaped spoliation

  [2 ]See Spec Perf (ed Sabatier), c 108, and ed Lemmens, c 18 See also the Conformities (I, fol 185), and above, p 75

  [3 ]See 2 Cel 3, 99

  [4 ]See 1 Cel 82 See also Leg III Soc, 67, where the Incipit of the letters is given

  [5 ]De Adventu Minorum in Angliam See Mon Germ Hist, Script, t XXVIII, p 563, and Anal Franc, t I, p 232, note 4 See also Fr Cuthbert’s translation of Eccleston, p 64

  [6 ]Prof Herkless in his Francis and Dominic, p 54, cites some passages from a letter which St Francis “wrote to his friends at Bologna” in 1228 One searches in vain for any trace of such a letter among the early collections of St Francis’ writings

  [7 ]See ed Acta S S, no 20

  [8 ]See Anal Franc., t III, p 132

  [9 ]Vie de S François, p 322

  [1 ]See Opuscules, fasc x, p 128, note 1

  [2 ]Die Quellen, etc, p 20. He places its composition between 1222 and 1225

  [3 ]Analekten, p vii

  [4 ]In the Liegnitz MS and the Vatican Codex 4354 the present letter is addressed fratri Antonio episcopo meo, which corresponds with the direction given by Celano (2 Cel 3, 99)

  [5 ]On this letter see also Papini (Storia, t I, p 118, n 1), Muller (Anfange, p. 103), Lempp (Zeitschrift, t. XII, pp 425, 438), Lepitre (S Antoine, p 73), and de Kerval (S Antonii, etc, p 259, n 1)

  [6 ]Another less well known letter to St Antony, giving him permission “to build a church near the city wall of Patti,” is sometimes attributed to St Francis. But the text is most improbable and gives rise to colossal historic difficulties See Lepitre, S. Antoine, p. 120, note, and Fr Edouard d Alençon, Etudes Franc., t. XII, p 361.

  [7 ]Liber de Laudibus in Anal Franc, t. III, p 686

  [1 ]The text of this Rule (which was the one in force for Franciscan Tertiaries until the promulgation of the Apostolic Constitution Misericors Dei Filius, by Leo XIII, May 30, 1883) may be found in Seraph Legisl, pp 77-94 For the new Rule substituted by Leo XIII, see Acta ad Tertium Franciscalem Ordinem spectantia (Quaracchi, 1901), pp 72-87

  [2 ]See Anal Boll, t xviii, p 294

  [3 ]Regula Antiqua Fratrum et Sororum de Poenitentia See Opuscules, t. I, p 17 Boehmer also gives the text in his Analekten

  [4 ]“La règle donnée en 1221 dans son état primitif” See his Les Règles et le gouvernement de l’ordo de poenitentia au XIIIe Siècle in Opuscules, t I, p 175.

  [1 ]The Bull Detestanda humani generis of Gregory IX

  [2 ]Opuscules de S François, p 28

  [3 ]There is an English translation of it See Third Orders, etc., by Adderley and Marson (Mowbray, 1902)

  [4 ]Rosetti translated part of this poem in his Dante and his Circle, attributing it to St. Francis

  [5 ]See Misc. Franc., 1888, pp 96 and 190, for two interesting texts of this poem.

  [6 ]Opera omnia, t IV, sermo 16 and 4 (see Acta S S, t II, Oct, p 1003)

  [7 ]Jacopone, lib VI, chap XVI, and lib VII, chap VI.

  [8 ]Les Poètes Franciscains, p 90

  [1 ]See Wadding, Opusc, p 508 ff

  [2 ]See his Les Origines de l’ordo de Poenitentia, see also the Révue Thomiste, pp 295-314

  [3 ]Quellen, etc, XXII, 362 But see above, p 89, n 1 also

  [4 ]“Codiculus quidam vestustus MS Italico idiomati exaratus mihi à Fano Piceni urbe, ad Metaurum amnem extructa, transmissus” See Wadding, Opusc, p 285

  [1 ]The text of the prayer “in time of sickness” is given by Bonav Leg Maj, XIV, 2

  [2 ]Latin text published in 1900 by Fr Ed d’Alençon, and English translation by Montgomery Carmichael (The Lady Poverty) in 1901

  [1 ]See Chron XXIV Generalium in Anal Franc, t III, p 283

  [2 ]It is none the less a pearl of Franciscan literature. See the beautiful rendering of it which forms the appendix to Mr Carmichael’s translation of the Sacrum Commercium.

  [3 ]At Vicenza (Bertol lib cod G I 10 24, fol 89 r), also the Capistran MS XXI, fol 180 r

  [4 ]See Bonav Opera omnia, t. VIII, p 491.

  [5 ]Supplementum, p 244

  [6 ]Liber Dictorum cujus initium Quid faciet homo et finis Oratio semper est praemittenda

  [7 ]“Dicta S Francisci, cum regula extant,” he says

  [8 ]It is entitled “Praedicatio quaedam quam fecit B Franciscus Fratribus suis circa finem mortis sui corporis.” It abounds in quotations from SS Basil, Chrysostom, Augustine, Isidore, Gregory, and Bernard.

  [1 ]See Catal codicum latinorum, t II, P II, p 17, n 214

  [2 ]See Dicta B Ægidii (Quaracchi, 1905), pp 1-51

  [3 ]As to the “Perfectiones S Francisci, quas dedit fratri Junipero,” found at Paris (nat lib., cod. 18327, fol 158 r), see Monumenta, tr II, fol. 281 r.

  [1 ]The space devoted by Fr Van Ortroy, S J, to Franciscan history in this periodical assumes larger proportions each year

  [2 ]A critical edition of this work will form Vol IV of the Anal Franc

  [1 ]When this volume is almost through the press, I learn of the publication of Fr Edouard’s long-promised edition of Celano’s works—S Francisci Assisiensis vita et miracula additis opusculis liturgicis auctore Fr Thoma de Celano Hanc editionem novam ad fidem mss recensuit P Eduardus Alenconiensis, Rome. Desclée, 1905.

  [1 ]Wadding’s Annales appeared at Lyons in 8 vols in fol 1625-54 Fr Jos Man Fonseca published a new edition and a continuation of the Annales in 19 vols at Rome, 1731-45 The official Annalists of the Friars Minor have since added 6 vols (tom 20-25), which were issued at Naples, Ancona, and Quaracchi The last vol (t 25) edited by Fr Eusebius Fernandzin († 1899) extends to the year 1622 The Quaracchi Friars are now engaged on the 26th volume

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  4: 4. Magna Carta

  Magna Carta, or “great charter,” is the charter of English liberties granted by King John (r. 1199-1216) in 1215 and modified during the reign of Henry III (r. 1216-72) in 1216, 1217, and 1225. This document is the first systematic elaboration of the fundamental idea of rule by law, and one of the first examples in western Europe of an appeal to written law as opposed to custom. Magna Carta is the first modern statement of the idea that a ruler is bound by the rule of law. Many of the traditions and customs associated with Germanic kingship, which rulers often ignored, were positively established as law by Magna Carta. Germanic custom, for instance, called for a group of barons to advise the king, but Magna Carta ensured this process by binding the king and lords in an explicit and written contract.

  See the entry about Magna Carta in the Goodrich Seminar Room.

  William Sharp McKechnie, Magna Carta: A Commentary on the Great Charter of King John, with an Historical Introduction, by William Sharp McKechnie (Glasgow: Maclehose, 1914).

  Accessed from oll.libertyfund.org/title/338 on 2007-12-03

  The text is in the public domain.

  ---

  PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION.

  The numerous and weighty criticisms upon the first edition of this Commentary (published in 1905 and now out of print) were doubly welcome to the author as showing a widespread interest in the subjects discussed, and as enabling him to profit from the collaboration of eminent specialists in the elucidation of Magna Carta and of the age that gave it birth. The last eight years have been fertile in discussions on the form and contents, the historical setting, and the constitutional value of the Great Charter. Monographs and contributions to periodical literature, devoted exclusively to Magna Carta, have been published in France, Germany and the United States of America, as well as in Great Britain; while few books have appeared on English medieval history or on the development of English law without throwing light incidentally on one or more of the Charter’s various aspects.

  An endeavour has been made, by severe condensation, to find room in this new edition for whatever seemed relevant and of permanent value in this mass of new material, without sacrificing anything of importance contained in the first edition. Effect has been given, so far as space permitted, to the suggestions cordially offered by critics and fellow–workers, both privately and in published books and articles; while the author’s own recent researches have supplied additional illustrations, and have led him to modify several of his earlier impressions. Although no reason has been found for altering fundamental propositions, the whole work has been recast; hardly a page, either of Commentary or of Historical Introduction, remains as originally written; and care has been taken to supply the reader with references to the most recent authorities on the various topics discussed or referred to.

  The new material will be found mainly (1) in the portions of the Introduction treating respectively of scutages, the Coronation Charter of Henry I., the juridical nature of Magna Carta, its contemporary and permanent effects on constitutional development, its reissues by Henry III., and the nature of the so–called “unknown charter” of John; and (2) in chapters 12, 13, 14, 18, 20, 25, 27, 34, 38, 39 and 61 of the Commentary. In the Appendix, Professor Liebermann’s amended text of Henry I.’s Charter of Liberties has been adopted, and the Great Charter of 1225 substituted for that of 1217; while an attempt has been made, by means of italics and foot–notes, to show at a glance the chief points in which the three reissues by Henry III. differ from one another and from the Charter as originally granted by John.

  Latin Charters, of which the full text is given in the Appendix or elsewhere, have been printed literatim as in the authorities cited in each case; but for detached Latin words or phrases, whether occurring in the Historical Introduction or the Commentary, a uniform spelling has been adopted, in which the “ae” diphthong, where appropriate, has been substituted for the less familiar “e.”

  The author’s grateful acknowledgments are due to the Trustees of the Carnegie Foundation, for a grant towards the expenses of this edition; to Professor Vinogradoff, for help courteously given in solving problems affecting the interpretation of chapter 34; and to Mr. David B. Mungo, LL.B., formerly the author’s assistant in the University of Glasgow, for his services in reading the proof–sheets and for many useful suggestions.

  • The University, Glasgow,

  December, 1913.

  FROM PREFACE TO FIRST EDITION.

  No Commentary upon Magna Carta has hitherto been written from the standpoint of modern research. No serious attempt has yet been made to supersede, or even adequately to supplement, the works of Coke and Richard Thomson, published respectively in 1642 and 1829, and now hopelessly out of date. That this conspicuous gap in our historical and legal literature should have remained so long unfilled is the more remarkable in view of the great advance, amounting almost to a revolution, which has been effected since Coke and Thomson wrote. Within the last twenty years, in especial, a wealth of new material has been explored with notable results. Discoveries have been made, profoundly affecting our views of every branch of law, every organ of government, and every aspect of social and individual life in medieval England. Nothing, however, has hitherto been done towards applying to the systematic elucidation of Magna Carta the new stores of knowledge thus accumulated.

  With this object in view, I have endeavoured, throughout several years of hard, but congenial work, to collect, sift, and arrange the mass of evidence, drawn from many scattered sources, capable of throwing light upon John’s Great Charter. The results have now been condensed into the Commentary which fills two–thirds of the present volume. This attempt to explain, point by point, the sixty–three chapters of Magna Carta, embracing, as these do, every topic—legal, political, economic and social—in which John and his barons felt a vital interest, has involved an analysis in some detail of the whole public and private life of England during the thirteenth century. The Commentary is preceded by a Historical Introduction, which describes the events leading to the crisis of 1215, analyzes the grievances which stirred the barons to revolt, discusses the contents and characteristics of the Charter, traces its connection with the subsequent course of English history, and gives some account of previous editions and commentaries.

  February, 1905.

  HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION

  PART I.

  EVENTS LEADING TO MAGNA CARTA.

  The Great Charter is too often treated as the outcome of accidental causes; its sources are traced no deeper than the personal tyrannies and blunders of King John. That monarch’s misdeeds are held to have goaded into action a widespread opposition that never rested until it had achieved success; and the outcome of this success was the Great Charter of Liberties. The moving causes of events of tremendous moment are thus sought in the characteristics and vices of one man. If John had never lived and sinned, so it would appear, the foundations of English freedom would never have been laid.

  Such shallow views of history fail to comprehend the magnitude and inevitable nature of the sequence of causes and effects upon which great issues depend. The compelling logic of events forces a way for its fulfilment, independent of the caprices, aims and ambitions of individual men. The incidents of John’s career are the occasions, not the causes, of the movement that laid the foundations of English liberties. The origin of Magna Carta lies too deep to be determined by any purely contingent phenomena. It is as unwise as it is unnecessary to suppose that the course of constitutional development in England was violently wrested into a new channel, merely because of the incapacity or cruelties of the temporary occupant of the throne. The source of the discontent fanned to flame by John’s oppressions must be sought in earlier reigns. The genesis of the Charter cannot be understood apart from its historical antecedents.

  It is thus necessary briefly to narrate how the scattered Anglo–Saxon and Danish tribes and territories, originally unconnected, were slowly welded together and grew into England; how this fusion was made permanent by the growth of a strong centralized government which crushed out local independence, and threatened to become the most absolute despotism in Europe; how, finally, the Crown, because of the very plenitude of its power, called into play opposing forces, which set limits to royal prerogatives and laid the foundations of the reign of law. Such a survey of the early history of England reveals two leading movements; the establishment of a strong Monarchy able to bring order out of anarchy, and the establishment of safeguards to prevent this source of order from degenerating into an unrestrained tyranny, and so crushing out not merely anarchy but legitimate freedom as well. The later movement, in favour of liberty and the Great Charter, was the natural complement, and, in part, the consequence of the earlier movement in the direction of a strong government able to enforce peace. In historical sequence, order precedes freedom.

  These two problems, mutually complementary, arise in the history of every nation, and in every age: the problem of order, or how to found a central government strong enough to suppress anarchy, and the problem of freedom, or how to set limits to an autocracy threatening to overshadow individual liberty. Deep political insight may still be acknowledged in Æsop’s fable of Jupiter and the frogs. King Log proves as ineffective against foreign invasion as he is void of offence to domestic freedom; King Stork secures the triumph of his subjects in time of war, but devours them in time of peace. All nations in their early efforts to obtain an efficient government have to choose between these two types of ruler—between an executive, harmless but weak; and one powerful to direct the business of government at home and abroad, but ready to use powers entrusted to him for the good of all, for his own selfish aims and the trampling out of his subjects’ liberties.

  On the whole, the miseries of the long centuries of Anglo–Saxon rule were the outcome of the Crown’s weakness; while, at the Norman Conquest, England escaped from the mild sceptre of inefficiency, only to fall under the cruel sceptre of selfish strength. Yet the able kings of the new dynasty, powerful as they were, had to struggle to maintain their mastery; for the unruly barons fought vigorously to shake off the royal yoke.

  During a century of Norman rule, constant warfare was waged between two great principles—the monarchic, standing on the whole for order, seeking to crush anarchy, and the oligarchic or baronial, standing on the whole for local autonomy, protesting against the tyranny of autocratic power. Sometimes one of these gained the ascendant; sometimes the other. The history of medieval England is the swing of the pendulum between.

  The main plot, then, of early English history, centres in the attempt to found a strong monarchy, and yet to set limits to its strength. With this main plot subordinate plots are interwoven. Chief among these must be reckoned the necessity of defining the relations of the central to the local government, and the need of an acknowledged frontier between the domains of Church and State. On the other hand, all that interesting group of problems connected with the ideal form of government, much discussed in the days of Aristotle as in our own, is notably absent, never having been forced by the logic of events upon the mind of medieval Europe. Monarchy was accepted as the only possible scheme of government; the merits of aristocracy and democracy, or of the much–vaunted constitution known as “mixed” were not discussed, since these forms of constitution did not lie within the sphere of practical politics. The student of history will do well to begin by concentrating his attention on the main problem, to which the others are subsidiary.

  I.

  William I. to Henry II.—Main Problem: the Monarchy.

  The difficulties that surrounded the English nation in its early struggles for existence were formidable. The great problem was, first, how to get itself into being, and thereafter how to guard against the forces of disintegration, which strove without rest to tear it to pieces again. The dawn of English history shows the beginning of that long slow process of consolidation in which unconscious reason played a deeper part than human will, whereby many discordant tribes and races, many independent provinces, were crushed together into something bearing a rude likeness to a united nation. Many forces converged to the achievement of this result. The coercion of strong tribes over weaker neighbours, the pressure of outside foes, the growth of a body of law, and of public opinion, the influence of religion as the friend of peace, all helped to weld together a chaos of incongruous and warring elements.

  It is notable that each of the three influences, destined ultimately to aid in this process of unification, threatened at one time a contrary effect. Thus the rivalries of the smaller kingdoms tended towards disruption before Wessex gained undisputed supremacy; the Christianizing of England, partly by Celtic missionaries from the north and partly by emissaries from Rome, threatened to split the country into two, until mutual rivalries were stilled after the Synod of Whitby in 664; and one effect of the settlements of the Danes was to create a barrier between the lands that lay on either side of Watling Street, before the whole country succumbed to the unifying pressure of Canute and his sons.

  The stern discipline of foreign conquest was required to make national unity possible; and, with the restoration of the old Wessex dynasty in the person of Edward Confessor, the forces of disintegration again made headway. England threatened once more to fall to pieces, but the iron rule of the Normans came to complete what the Danes had begun half a century before. As the weakness of the Anglo–Saxon kings and the disruption of the country had gone hand in hand; so the complete unification of England was the result of the Norman despotism.

  Thereafter, it was the strength of its monarchy that rendered England unique in medieval Europe. Three kings in particular contributed to this result—William the Conqueror, Henry Beauclerk, and Henry Plantagenet. In a sense, the work of all three was the same; to build up the central authority against the disintegrating effects of feudal anarchy. But the policy of each was modified by changing times and needs. The foundations of the edifice were laid by the Conqueror, whose character and circumstances combined to afford him an opportunity unparalleled in history. The difficulties of his task, and the methods by which he secured a successful issue, are best understood in relation to the nature of the obstacles to be overcome. Feudalism was the great current of the age—a tide formed by many converging streams, all flowing in the same direction, unreasoning like the blind powers of Nature, carrying away or submerging every obstacle in its path. In other parts of Europe—in Germany, France, and Italy, as in Scotland—the ablest monarchs found their thrones endangered by this feudal current. In England alone the monarchy stood firm. William I. refrained from any attempt to stay the torrent; but, while accepting it, he made it serve his own purposes. He watched and modified the tendencies making for feudalism, which he found in England, and he profoundly altered the feudal usages and rights transplanted from Norman soil. The special expedients used by him for this purpose are well known, and are all closely connected with his crafty policy of balancing Anglo–Saxon against Norman elements, and of selecting what suited him in either. He encouraged the adoption in England of feudalism, considered as a system of land tenure and of social distinctions based on the possession of land; but he successfully checked the evils of its unrestrained growth as a system of local government and jurisdiction.

  William’s policy was one of balancing. Not content to depend entirely on the right of conquest, he insisted on having his title confirmed by a body claiming to represent the Witenagemot, and alleged that he had been named successor by his kinsman, Edward Confessor, a nomination strengthened by the renunciation of Harold in his favour. Thus, to Norman followers claiming to have set him by force of arms on his throne, William might point to the election by the Witan, while for his English subjects, claiming to have elected him, the presence of foreign troops was an effective argument. Throughout his reign, he played off the old English laws and institutions against the new Norman ones, with himself as umpire over all. He retained, too, the popular moots or meetings of the shire and hundred as a counterpoise to the feudal jurisdictions; the fyrd or militia of all free men as a set–off to the feudal levy; and whatever incidents of the Anglo–Saxon land tenures he thought fit.

  Thus the Norman feudal superstructure was built on a basis of Anglo–Saxon usage and tradition. William, however, did not shrink from innovations where these suited his purpose. The great earldoms into which England had been divided, even down to the Norman Conquest, were abolished. New earldoms were indeed created, but on a different basis. Even the great officers subsequently known as Earls Palatine, always few in number, never attained to the independence of the Anglo–Saxon Ealdormen. William was chary of creating even ordinary Earls, and such as he did create soon became mere holders of empty titles of honour, ousted from all real power by the Norman vicecomites or sheriffs. No English earl was a “Count” in the continental sense of a real ruler of a “County.” No earl was allowed to hold too large an estate within his titular shire.

  Ingenious devices were used for checking the feudal excesses so prevalent on the Continent. Rights of private war, coinage, and castle–building, were jealously circumscribed; while private jurisdictions, although tolerated as a necessary evil, were kept within bounds. The manor was in England the normal unit of seignorial jurisdiction; the higher courts of Honours were exceptional. No appeal lay from the manorial court of one magnate to that of his over–lord, while, in later reigns at least, appeals were encouraged to the Curia Regis. The results of this policy have been aptly summarized as “a strong monarchy, a relatively weak baronage, and a homogeneous people.”

  During the reign of William II. (1087–1100) the Constitution made no conspicuous advance. The foundations had been laid; but Rufus was more intent on his hunting and enjoyments, than on the deeper matters of statecraft. Minor details of feudal organization were doubtless settled by the King’s Treasurer, Ralph Flambard; but the extent to which he innovated on the practice of the elder William is matter of dispute. On the whole, the reign must be reckoned a time of comparative rest between two periods of advance.

  Henry I. (1100–35) took up, with far–seeing statesmanship and much vigour, the work of consolidation. His policy shows an advance upon that of his father. William had been content to curb the main vices of feudalism. Henry introduced within the Curia Regis itself a new class of men, representing a new principle of government. The great offices of state, previously filled by holders of baronies, were now given to creatures of Henry’s own, men of humble birth, whose merit had raised them to his favour, and whose only title to power lay in his goodwill. Henry’s other great achievement was the organization of the Exchequer, as a source of royal revenue, and as an instrument for making his will felt in every corner of England. For this great work he was fortunate to secure in Roger, Bishop of Salisbury, the help of a minister who combined genius with painstaking ability. At the Exchequer, as organized by the King and his minister, the sheriff of each county twice a year, at Easter and at Michaelmas, rendered account of every payment that had passed through his hands. His balance was adjusted before all the great officers of the King’s household, who subjected his accounts to close scrutiny. Official records were drawn up, one of which—the famous Pipe Roll of 1130—is extant at the present day. As the sums received by the sheriff affected every class of society in town and country, these half–yearly audits enabled the King’s advisers to scrutinize the lives and conduct of high and low. These half–yearly investigations were rendered more effective by the existence at the Exchequer of a great record of every landed estate in England. With this the sheriffs’ returns could be compared and checked. Henry’s Exchequer thus found one of its most powerful weapons in the great Domesday Survey, the most enduring proof of the statesmanship of the Conqueror, by whose orders and under whose direction it had been compiled.

  The central scrutiny conducted within the Exchequer was supplemented by occasional inspections conducted in each county. The King’s representatives, including among them the officers who presided over the half–yearly audit, visited, at intervals still irregular, the various shires. These Eyres, as they were called, were at first undertaken chiefly for financial purposes. The sheriffs’ accounts rendered at Westminster were checked locally on the scene of their labours. These investigations necessarily involved the trial of pleas. Complaints of oppression at the hands of the local tyrant were made and determined on the spot; gradually, but not until a later reign, the judicial business became equally important with the financial, and ultimately even more important.

  Henry, before his death in 1135, seemed to have carried to completion the congenial task of building a strong monarchy on the foundations laid by William. Much of his work was, however, for a time undone, while all of it seemed in imminent danger of perishing for ever, because he left no male heir of his body to succeed him. His daughter’s claims were set aside by Stephen, son of the Conqueror’s daughter, and a cadet of the House of Blois, to whom Henry had played the indulgent uncle, and who repaid his benefactor’s generosity by constituting himself his heir. Stephen proved unequal to the task of preserving the monarchy intact from the forces that beat around the throne. His failure is attributed by some to personal characteristics; by others, to the defective nature of his title, combined with the presence of a rival in the field in the person of his cousin, Henry’s daughter, the ex–Empress Matilda. The nineteen years of anarchy which nominally formed his reign did nothing—and worse than nothing—to continue the work of his great ancestors. The power of the Crown was humbled: England was almost torn in fragments by the claims of rival magnates to local independence.

  With the accession of Henry II. (1154) the tide quickly turned, and turned for good. Of the numerous steps taken by him to complete the work of the earlier master–builders of the English Monarchy, only a few need here be mentioned. Ascending the throne in early manhood, he brought with him a statesman’s instinct peculiar to himself, together with the unconquerable energy common to his race. He rapidly overhauled every institution and every branch of administration. The permanent Curia Regis was not only restored to working order, but improved in each of its many aspects—as the King’s household, as a financial bureau, as the administrative centre of the kingdom, and as the vehicle of royal justice. The Exchequer, which was originally merely the Curia in its financial aspect, received the re–organization so urgently needed after the terrible strains to which it had been subjected. The Pipe Rolls were revived and financial reforms effected. The old popular courts of hundred and county, and the feudal jurisdictions were brought under more effective control of the central government by the restoration of the system of Eyres with their travelling justices, whose visits were now placed on a more systematic basis. Equally important were the King’s care in the selection of fit men for the duties of Sheriff, the frequent punishment and removal from office of offenders, and the restored control over all in authority. Henry was strong enough to employ more substantial men than the novi homines of his grandfather without suffering them to get out of hand. Another expedient for controlling local courts was the calling up of cases to his own central feudal Curia, or before those benches of professional judges, the future King’s Bench and Common Pleas, that formed as yet merely committees of the Curia as a whole.

  Closely connected with these innovations was the new system of procedure instituted by Henry. The chief feature was that each litigation must commence with an appropriate royal writ issued from the Chancery. Soon for each class of action was devised a special writ, and the system came to be known as “the writ system.” A striking feature of Henry’s policy was the bold manner in which he threw open the doors of his royal Courts of Law to allcomers (excepting villeins), and provided there—always in return for hard cash, be it said—a better article in name of justice than could be procured elsewhere in England, or, for that matter, elsewhere in Europe. Thus, not only was the Exchequer filled with fines and fees, but, insidiously and without the danger involved in a frontal attack, Henry sapped the strength of the great feudal magnates, and diverted the stream of litigants from manorial courts to his own. The same policy had a further result in facilitating the growth of a body of common law, uniform throughout the length and breadth of England, opposed to the varying usages of localities and individual baronial courts.

  The reorganization of the army was another reform that helped to strengthen the throne of Henry and his sons. This was effected in various ways: partly by the revival and more strict enforcement of obligations connected with the Anglo–Saxon fyrd, under the Assize of Arms (1181), which compelled every freeman to maintain at his own expense weapons and warlike equipment suited to his station in life; partly by the ingenious method of increasing the amount of feudal service due from Crown tenants, based upon an investigation instituted by the Crown and upon the written replies returned by the barons, known to historians as “the Cartae of 1166”; and partly by the development of the principle of scutage, a means whereby unwilling military service, limited as it was by annoying restrictions as to time and place, might be exchanged at the option of the Crown for money, with which a more flexible army of mercenaries might be hired.

  By these expedients and many others, Henry raised the English monarchy, always in the ascendant since the Conquest, to the very zenith of its power, and left to his sons the entire machinery of government in perfect working order, combining high administrative efficiency with great strength. Full of bitter strifes and troubles as his reign of thirty–five years had been, nothing had interfered with the vigour and success of the policy whereby he tightened his hold on England. Neither the long struggle with Becket, ending as it did in Henry’s personal humiliation, nor the unnatural warfare with his sons, which hastened his death in 1189, was allowed to interfere with his projects of reform in England.

  The last twenty years of life had been darkened for him, and proved troubled and anarchic in the extreme to his continental dominions; but in England profound peace reigned. The last serious revolt of the powers of feudal anarchy had been suppressed in 1174 with characteristic thoroughness and moderation. After that date, the English monarchy retained its supremacy almost without an effort.

  II.

  William I. to Henry II.—Problem of Local Government.

  It is necessary to retrace our steps in order to consider the subsidiary problem of local government. The failure of the Princes of the House of Wessex to devise adequate machinery for keeping the Danish and Anglian provinces in subjection to their will was one main source of the weakness of their monarchy. When Duke William solved this problem, he took an enormous stride towards establishing his throne on a securer basis.

  Every age has to face, in its own way, a group of difficulties essentially the same, although assuming different names as Home Rule, Local Government, or Federation. Problems as to the proper nature of the local authority, the extent of its powers, and its relation to the central government, require constantly to be re–stated and solved anew. The difficulties involved, always great, were unspeakably greater in an age when no proper administrative machinery existed, and when rapid communication and serviceable roads were unknown. Lively sympathy is excited by consideration of the difficulties that beset the path of King Edgar or King Ethelred, endeavouring to rule from Winchester the distant and alien races of North–umbria, Mercia, and East Anglia. If a weakling governed a distant province, anarchy would result and the King’s authority might suffer with that of his inefficient representative; while a powerful viceroy might consolidate his own authority and then defy his King. The two horns of this dilemma are amply illustrated by the course of early English history. The West–Saxon Princes vacillated between two lines of policy: spasmodic attempts at centralization alternated with periods of local autonomy. The scheme of Edgar and Dunstan has sometimes been described as a federal or home–rule policy—as a frank surrender of the attempt to control exclusively from one centre the mixed populations of Northern and Midland England. Their solution was to relax rather than tighten the bond; to entrust with wide powers the local viceroy in each district, and to aim at a loose federal empire—a union of hearts, rather than a centralized despotism founded on coercion. The dangers of such a system are obvious, where each ealdorman commanded the troops of his province.

  Canute’s consolidating policy has been the subject of much discussion, and has sometimes been misunderstood. The better opinion is that, with his Danish troops behind him, he felt strong enough to reverse Dunstan’s tactics by decisive action in the direction of centralization. His provincial viceroys (jarls or earls, as they were now called) were appointed on a new basis: England was mapped out into new administrative districts under viceroys having no hereditary connection with the provinces they governed. In this way Canute sought to arrest the process by which England was breaking up into a number of petty kingdoms. If these viceroys were a source of strength to the powerful Canute, they proved a source of weakness to the saintly Confessor, who was forced to submit to the control of his provincial rulers, such as Godwin and Leofric, as each in turn gained the upper–hand in the field or among the Witan. The process of disintegration continued until the coming of the Conqueror changed the relations between the monarchy and the other factors in the national life.

  Among the expedients adopted by the Norman Duke for curbing his feudatories in England, one of the most important was the reorganization of the system of provincial rulers. The real representative of the King in each group of counties was now the sheriff, not the earl. His Latin name of vicecomes is misleading, since that officer in no sense represented the earl or comes, but acted as the direct agent of the Crown. The name “viceroy” more accurately describes his actual position and functions.

  The problem of local government, however, was not eradicated: it only took a different form. The sheriffs themselves, relieved from the earl’s rivalry, tended to become too powerful. If they never dreamed of openly defying the royal authority, they thwarted its exercise, appropriated to their private uses items of revenue, pushed their own interests, and punished their own enemies, while acting in the King’s name. The office threatened to become territorial and hereditary,1 and its holders aimed at independence. Safeguards were found against the sheriffs’ growing powers, partly in the organization of the Exchequer and partly in the itinerant justices, who took precedence of the sheriff and heard complaints against his misdeeds in his own county. By such measures, Henry I. seemed almost to have solved these problems before his death; but his success was apparent rather than real.

  The incompleteness of Henry’s solution became evident under Stephen, when the leading noble of each locality tried, generally with success, to capture both offices for himself: great earls like Ralph of Chester and Geoffrey of Essex compelled the King not only to confirm them as sheriffs in their own titular counties, but also to confer on them exclusive right to act as justices.

  With the accession of Henry II. some advance was made towards a permanent solution. That great ruler was strong enough to prevent the growth of the hereditary principle as applied to offices either of the Household or of local magistrates. The sheriffs were frequently changed, not only by the drastic and unique measure known as the Inquest of Sheriffs, but systematically, and as a matter of routine. Their power tended in the thirteenth century to decrease, chiefly because they found important rivals not only in the itinerant judges, but also in two new officers first heard of in the reign of Richard I., the forerunners of the modern Coroner and Justice of the Peace respectively. All fear that the sheriffs as administrative heads of districts might defy the Crown was thus ended. Yet each of them remained a petty tyrant over the inhabitants of his own bailiwick. While the Crown was able and willing to avenge neglect of its own interests, it was not always sufficiently alert to punish wrongs inflicted upon its humble subjects. The problem of local government, then, was fast taking a new form, namely, how best to protect the weak from unjust fines and oppressions inflicted on them by local magistrates. The sheriff’s local power was no longer a source of danger to the monarch, but had become an effective part of the machinery which enabled the Crown to levy with impunity its always increasing taxation.

  III.

  William I. to Henry II.—Problem of Church and State.

  The Church had been, from an early date, in tacit alliance with the Crown. The friendly aid of a line of statesman–prelates from Dunstan downwards had given to the Anglo–Saxon monarchy much of the little strength it possessed. Before the Conquest the connection between Church and State had been exceedingly close, so much so that no one thought of drawing a sharp dividing line between. What afterwards became two separate entities were at first merely two aspects of one society, which comprehended all classes of the people. Change came with the Norman Conquest; for the English Church was brought into closer contact with Rome, and with the ecclesiastical ideals prevailing on the Continent. Yet no fundamental alteration resulted; the friendly relations that bound the prelates to the English throne remained intact, while English Churchmen continued to look to Canterbury, rather than to Rome, for guidance.

  Gratitude to the Pope for moral support in effecting the Conquest never modified William’s determination to allow no unwarranted papal interference in his new domains. His letter, both outspoken and courteous, in reply to papal demands is still extant:—“I refuse to do fealty nor will I, because neither have I promised it, nor do I find that my predecessors did it to your predecessors.” Peter’s pence he was willing to pay at the rate recognized by his Saxon predecessors; but all encroachments would be politely repelled.

  In settling the country newly reduced to his domination, the Duke of Normandy found his most valuable adviser in a former prior of the Norman Abbey of Bec, whom he raised to be Primate of all England. No record has come down to us of any serious dispute between William and Lanfranc. Friendly relations between King and Archbishop continued, notwithstanding Anselm’s condemnation of the evil deeds of Rufus. Anselm supported that King’s authority over the Norman magnates, even while he resented his evil practices towards the Church. He contented himself with a dignified protest (made emphatic by a withdrawal of his presence from England) against unfair exactions from English prelates, and against the long intervals during which vacancies remained unfilled.

  Returning at Rufus’s death from a sort of honourable banishment at Rome, Anselm found himself compelled, by his conscience and the recent decrees of a Lateran Council, to enter on the great struggle of the investitures.

  In many respects, the spiritual and temporal powers were still indissolubly locked together. Each bishop was a vassal of the king, holder of a Crown barony, as well as a prelate of Holy Church. By whom, then, should a bishop be appointed, by the spiritual or by the temporal power? Could he without sin perform homage for the estates of his See? Who ought to invest him with ring and crozier? Anselm adopted one view; Henry the other. A happy compromise, suggested by the King’s statesmanship, or possibly by Bishop Ivo of Chartres,1 healed the breach for the time being. The symbols of spiritual authority were to be conferred by the Church, but each prelate must perform fealty to the King before receiving them, and do homage thereafter, but before he was actually anointed as bishop. This compromise of 1106 did not embrace, it would appear, any final understanding as to the method of appointing bishops: “Canonical election” formed no part of Henry’s express concessions.1

  Henry, however, does not seem to have rejected openly the claims of the capitular clergy, but only to have taken steps to render them nugatory in practice. Some of the leading prelates, administrative officials on whom the Monarch could depend, took part in the election of bishops and were usually able to secure the appointment of a candidate acceptable to the King.

  The Church gained in power during Stephen’s reign, and deserved the power it gained, since it remained the only stable centre of good government, while other institutions crumbled around it. It was not unnatural that Churchmen should advance new claims, and we find them adopting the watchword, afterwards so famous, “that the Church should be free,” a vague phrase, destined to be embodied in Magna Carta. The extent of immunity thus claimed was never defined: an elastic phrase might be expanded with the ever–growing pretensions of the Church. Churchmen made it clear, however, that they meant it to include at least two principles—“benefit of clergy,” and “canonical election.”

  Henry II. attempted to define the position in the Constitutions of Clarendon (1164), clause 12 of which provided that in filling vacant Sees the King should summon potiores personas ecclesiae and that the “election” should take place in the King’s chapel with consent of the King and consilio personarum regni, vague words which seem to reserve to Henry the decision as to who constituted “the more influential persons of the church,” whom he ought to summon, thus enabling him to control elections (as his grandfather had done) by means of ecclesiastics whose loyalty to the Crown was undoubted. Henry, in consequence of his humiliation following on Becket’s murder, had to release the bishops from their oath to observe the Constitutions. In 1173 he gave a definite promise to allow greater liberty in elections, and it was part of a new agreement with Rome in 1176, that in normal circumstances vacant sees should not be kept in the King’s hands for more than a year.1 Yet, in practice, he continued to exercise a control not inferior to that enjoyed by his grandfather. On the whole, the rights of the Church at the close of the reign of Henry Plantagenet were not far different from what had been set down in the Constitutions of Clarendon. A new definition of the frontier between the spiritual and temporal powers was the outcome of John’s need of allies on the eve of Magna Carta.

  IV.

  Richard I. and John.

  Henry II., before his death, had fulfilled the task of restoring order: to effect this, he had brought to perfection machinery of rare excellence, equally adapted for purposes of taxation, of dispensing justice, and of general administration. Great as was the power for good of this new instrument in the hands of a wise and justice–loving king, it was equally powerful for evil in the hands of an arrogant, or even of a careless monarch. All the old enemies of the Crown had been crushed. Local government, now systematized, formed a source of strength, not of weakness; while the Church, whose highest offices were filled with officials trained in Henry’s own Exchequer (differing widely from the type of saintly monks like Anselm), still remained the fast friend of the Crown. The monarchy was strong enough to defy any one section of the nation.

  The very thoroughness with which the monarchy had surmounted its early difficulties, induced in Henry’s successors an exaggerated feeling of security. The very abjectness of the various factors of the nation, now prostrate beneath the heel of the Crown, prepared them to sink their mutual suspicions and to form a tacit alliance in order to join issue with their common oppressor. Powers used moderately and on the whole for national ends by Henry, were abused for selfish ends by both his sons. Richard’s heavy taxation and contemptuous indifference to English interests reconciled men’s minds to thoughts of change, and prepared the basis of a combined opposition to a power that threatened to grind all other powers to powder.

  In no direction were these abuses felt so severely as in taxation. Financial machinery had been elaborated to perfection, and large additional sums could be squeezed from every class by an extra turn of the screw. Richard did not even require to incur the odium, since ministers, his instruments, shielded him from the unpopularity of his measures, while he pursued his own good pleasure abroad in war and tournament without visiting the subjects he oppressed. Twice only, for a few months in either case, did Richard visit England during a reign of ten years.

  In his absence new methods of taxation were devised, affecting new classes of property; in particular, personal effects—merchandise and other chattels—only once before (in 1187, for the Saladin tithe) placed under contribution—now became a regular source of royal revenue. The isolated precedent of Henry’s reign was followed when an extraordinarily heavy levy was required for Richard’s ransom. The very heartiness with which England made sacrifices to succour the Monarch in his hour of need was turned against the tax–payers. Richard showed no gratitude; and, being devoid of kindly interest in his subjects, he argued that what had been paid once might equally well be paid again. With exaggerated notions of the revenue to be extracted from England, he sent from abroad demand after demand to his overworked justiciars for ever–increasing sums of money. The chief lessons of the reign are connected with this excessive taxation; the consequent discontent prepared the way for a new grouping of political forces under John.

  Some minor lessons may be noted:

  (1) In Richard’s absence the odium for his exactions fell upon his ministers at home, who bore the burden meet for his own callous shoulders, while he enjoyed an undeserved popularity by reason of his bravery and achievements, exaggerated as these were by the halo of romance which surrounds a distant hero. Thus may be traced some dim foreshadowing of the doctrine of ministerial responsibility, although analogies with modern politics must not be pushed too far.

  (2) Throughout the reign, parts of Henry’s system, technical details of taxation and reforms in the administration of justice, were elaborated by Archbishop Hubert Walter, connected with trial by jury on the one hand and with election on the other.

  (3) Richard is sometimes said to have inaugurated the golden age of municipalities. Many Charters, still extant, bear witness to the lavish hand with which he granted, on paper at least, privileges to the nascent towns. John Richard Green finds the true interest of the reign not in the King’s Crusade and French wars, so much as in his supposed fostering care over the growth of municipal enterprise.

  The death of Richard on 6th April, 1199, brought with it at least one important change; England was no longer to be governed by an absentee. John endeavoured to shake himself free from the restraints of powerful ministers, and conduct the work of government in his own way. The result was an abrupt end to the progress made in the previous reign towards ministerial responsibility. The odium formerly exhausting itself on the justiciars of Richard was now expended on John. While, previously, men had sought redress in a change of minister, such expectations could no longer deceive. A new element of bitterness was added to injuries long resented, and the nobles who felt the pinch of heavy taxation were compelled to seek redress in a new direction. All the forces of discontent played openly around the throne.

  As is usual at the opening of a reign, the discontented hoped that a change of sovereign would bring relief. Heavy taxation had been the result of exceptional circumstances: the new king would revert to the less burdensome scale of his father’s exactions. Such hopes were quickly disappointed. John’s needs proved as great as Richard’s: the excessive demands, both for money and for service, coupled with the unpopular uses to which these were put, form the keynote of the reign: they form also the background of Magna Carta.

  The reign falls naturally into three periods; the years in which John waged a losing war with the King of France (1199–1206), the quarrel with the Pope (1206–13), the great struggle with the barons (1213–16).

  The first seven years were for England comparatively uneventful, except in the gradual deepening of disgust with the King and all his ways. The continental dominions were ripe for losing, and John precipitated the catastrophe by injustice and dilatoriness. The ease with which Normandy was lost showed something more than the incapacity of the King as a ruler and leader—John Softsword as contemporary writers call him. It showed that the feudal army of Normandy had come to regard the English Sovereign as an alien. The unwillingness of the English nobles to succour John has also its significance. The descendants of the men who helped William I. to conquer England had now a less vital interest in the land from which they came. The estates of many of the original Norman baronage, not unequally divided on both sides of the Channel, had been split up by inheritance or escheat. Some of John’s barons were purely English landowners with no interest at stake in France.

  By his arbitrary and selfish home policy, the King had alienated their sympathies. Some of his father’s innovations had been unpopular from the first, and became the objects of bitter opposition in John’s tactless hands. The whole administration of justice, along with the entire feudal system of land–tenure, with its military obligations, aids and incidents, were degraded into instruments of extortion, of which details will be given under appropriate chapters of the subjoined commentary. English discontent contributed to the loss of Normandy, and that in turn left English barons more free to attend to insular matters, and so prepared the way for Magna Carta.

  The death of Archbishop Hubert Walter on 13th July, 1205, deprived John of the services of the most experienced statesman in England. It did more, for it marked the termination of the long friendship between the English Crown and the English Church: its immediate effect was to create a vacancy, the filling of which led to a quarrel with Rome.

  John failed, as usual, to recognize the merits of abler men, and saw in the death of his great Minister merely the removal of an unwelcome restraint, and the opening to the Crown of a desirable piece of patronage. He prepared to strain to the utmost his rights in the election of a successor to the See of Canterbury, in favour of one of his own creatures, John de Grey, already by royal influence Bishop of Norwich. Unexpected opposition to his will was offered by the canons of the Cathedral Church, who determined to appoint their own nominee, without waiting either for the King’s approval or the co–operation of the suffragan bishops of the Province, who, in the three last vacancies, had participated in the election, and had invariably used their influence on behalf of the King’s nominee. Reginald, the sub–prior, was secretly elected by the monks, and hurried abroad to obtain confirmation at Rome before the appointment was made public. Reginald’s vanity prevented his keeping his pledge of secrecy, and a rumour reached the ear of John, who brought pressure to bear on a section of the monks, now frightened at their own temerity, and secured de Grey’s appointment in a second election. The Bishop of Norwich was enthroned at Canterbury, and invested by the King with the temporalities of the See. All parties now sent representatives to Rome. This somewhat petty squabble benefited none of the original disputants; for Innocent III. was quick to seize his opportunity. Both elections were set aside by decree of the Papal Curia, in favour of the Pope’s own nominee, a certain Cardinal, English–born, but hitherto little known in England, Stephen Langton by name, destined to play an important part in the history of the land of his birth.

  John refused to view this triumph of papal arrogance in the light of a compromise—the view diplomatically suggested by Innocent. The King, with the hot blood common to his race, and the bad judgment peculiar to himself, rushed headlong into a quarrel with Rome which he was incapable of carrying to a successful issue. Full details of the struggle, the interdicts and excommunications hurled by the Pope, and John’s measures of retaliation against the unfortunate English clergy, need not be here discussed; but it should be noted that Innocent, in 1211, released the English people from allegiance to their King.1

  John was one day to reap the fruits of this quarrel in bitter humiliation and in the defeat of his most cherished aims; but, for the moment, the breach with Rome seemed to lead to a triumph for the King. The papal encroachments furnished him with a pretext for confiscating the property of the clergy. Thus his Exchequer was amply replenished, while he was able for a time to conciliate his most inveterate opponents, the northern barons, by remitting during several years the hated burden of a scutage. John had no intention, however, to forego his right to resume the practice of annual scutages: on the contrary, he executed a measure intended to make them more remunerative. This was the Inquest of Service, ordered on 1st June, 1212.2

  During these years, however, John temporarily relaxed the pressure on his feudal tenants. His doing so failed to gain back their goodwill, while he broadened the basis of future resistance by shifting his oppressions to the clergy and through them to the poor. Meanwhile, his power was great. Speaking of 1210, a contemporary chronicler declares: “All men bore witness that never since the time of Arthur was there a King who was so greatly feared in England, in Wales, in Scotland, or in Ireland.”3

  Some incidents of the autumn of 1212 require brief notice, as well from their inherent interest as because they find an echo in Magna Carta. Serious trouble had arisen with Wales. Llywelyn (who had married John’s natural daughter Joan, and had consolidated his power under protection of the English King) now seized the occasion to cross the border, while John was preparing for a new continental expedition. The King changed his plans, and prepared to lead his troops to Wales instead of France. A muster was summoned for September at Nottingham, and John went thither to meet his troops. Before tasting meat, in Roger of Wendover’s graphic narrative, he hanged twenty–eight Welsh hostages, boys of noble family, whom he held as sureties that Llywelyn would keep the peace.1

  Almost immediately thereafter, two messengers arrived simultaneously from Scotland and from Wales with unexpected tidings. John’s daughter, Joan, and the King of Scots, each independently warned him that his English barons were prepared to revolt, under shelter of the Pope’s absolution from their allegiance, and either to slay him or betray him to the Welsh. In a panic he disbanded the feudal levies; and, accompanied only by his mercenaries, moved slowly back to London.2

  Two of the barons, Robert Fitz–Walter, afterwards the Marshal of the army which opposed John at Runnymede, and Eustace de Vesci, showed their knowledge of John’s suspicions by withdrawing secretly from his Court and taking to flight. The King caused them to be outlawed in their absence, and thereafter seized their estates and demolished their castles.3

  These events of September, 1212, rudely shook John out of the false sense of security in which he had wrapped himself. In the spring of the same year, he had still seemed to enjoy the full tide of prosperity; and he must have been a bold prophet who dared, like Peter of Wakefield, to foretell the speedy downfall of the King.1

  John’s apparent security was deceptive; he had underestimated the powers arrayed against him. In January, 1213, by Innocent’s command, formal sentence of excommunication was passed on John, and Philip of France was appointed as its executor. The chance had come for which the barons, particularly the eager spirits of the North, had long been waiting. The King, on his part, realised that the time had arrived to make his peace with Rome.

  On 13th May, 1213, John met Pandulf, the papal legate, and accepted unconditionally the same demands which he had refused contemptuously some months before. Full reparation was to be made to the Church. Stephen Langton was to be received as archbishop in all honour with his banished bishops, friends and kinsmen. All church property was to be restored, with compensation for damage done. One of the minor conditions of John’s absolution was the restoration to Eustace de Vesci and Robert Fitz–Walter of the estates which, they persuaded Innocent, had been forfeited because of their loyalty to Rome.2

  Two days later, apparently on his own initiative, he resigned the Crowns of England and Ireland, and received them again as the Pope’s feudatory, promising to perform personal homage should occasion allow. John hoped thus to be free to avenge himself on his baronial enemies. The surrender was embodied in a formal document which bears to be made by John, “with the common council of our barons.” Were these merely words of form? They may have been so when first used; yet two years later the envoys of the barons claimed at Rome that the credit (so they now represented it) for the whole transaction lay with them. In any case, no protest seems to have been raised at the time of the surrender. This step, so repugnant to later writers, seems not to have been regarded by contemporaries as a disgrace. Matthew Paris, indeed, writing in the next generation, describes it as “a thing to be detested for all time”; but events had ripened in Matthew’s day, and he was a keen politician rather than an impartial onlooker.1

  Stephen Langton, now assured of a welcome to the high office into which he had been thrust against John’s will, landed at Dover and was received by the King at Winchester on 20th July, 1213. John swore on the Gospels to cherish and defend Holy Church, to restore the good laws of Edward, and to render to all men their rights, repeating practically the words of the coronation oath. He agreed further to make reparation of all property taken from the Church or churchmen.

  V.

  The Years of Crisis, 1213–15.

  Once more the short–sighted character of John’s abilities was illustrated: a brief triumph led to a deeper fall. For a season, however, after he had made his peace with Rome, he seemed to enjoy substantial fruits of his diplomacy. Philip’s threatened invasion had to be abandoned; the people renewed their allegiance on the removal of the papal sentence; the barons had to make their peace as best they could, awaiting a better opportunity to rebel. If John had confined himself to home affairs, he might have postponed the final explosion: he could not, however, reconcile himself to the loss of the continental heritage of his ancestors. His attempts to recover Normandy and Anjou led to new exactions and new murmurings, while their complete failure left him, discredited and penniless, at the mercy of the malcontents at home.

  His projected campaign in Poitou required all the levies he could raise. More than once John demanded, and his barons refused, their feudal service. Many excuses were put forward. At first they declined to follow a King who had not yet been fully absolved. After 20th July, 1213, their new plea was that the tenure on which they held their lands did not compel them to serve abroad: they added that they were already exhausted by expeditions within England.1 John took this as defiance, and determined, with troops at his back (per vim et arma), to compel obedience. Before his preparations were completed, an important assembly met at St. Albans on 4th August, to make sworn inquest as to the extent of damage inflicted on church property during John’s quarrel with Rome.2 From this Council directions were issued in the King’s name commanding sheriffs, foresters, and others to observe the laws of Henry I. and to abstain from unjust exactions, as they valued their lives and limbs.3

  On 25th August, after John had set out with his mercenaries to punish his northern magnates, Stephen Langton held a meeting with the great men of the south. Many bishops, abbots, priors and deans, together with some lay magnates of the southern counties, met him at St. Paul’s, London, ostensibly to determine what use the Archbishop should make of his power to grant partial relaxation of the interdict, still casting its blight over England. In the King’s absence, Stephen reminded the magnates that John’s absolution had been conditional on a promise of good government. He showed them Henry I.’s coronation charter: “by which, if you desire, you can recall your long lost liberties to their pristine state.”4 All present swore to “fight for those liberties, if it were needful, even unto death.” The Archbishop promised his help, “and a confederacy being thus made between them, the conference was dissolved.”5

  Stephen Langton desired a peaceable solution. We find him, accordingly, at Northampton, on the 28th of August, striving to avert civil war. His line of argument is worthy of note: the King must not levy war on his subjects before he had obtained a legal judgment against them (absque judicio curiae suae). These words should be compared with the “unknown charter”1 and with chapter 39 of Magna Carta.

  John continued his march to Nottingham, bidding the archbishop not to meddle in affairs of state; but threats of excommunication caused him to consent to substitute legal process for violence, and to appoint a day for the trial of defaulters before the Curia Regis—a trial which never took place.2 John apparently continued his journey as far north as Durham, but returned to meet the new papal legate Nicholas, to whom he performed the promised homage and repeated the act of surrender in St. Paul’s on 3rd October.3 Having completed his alliance with Rome, he was confident of worsting his enemies in France and England.

  Yet most, if not all, of the magnates were against him, and this fact may possibly explain John’s issue of writs, on 9th November, 1213, inviting four discreet men of each county to discuss with him affairs of the Kingdom.4 This has sometimes been interpreted as a deliberate design to broaden the basis of the commune concilium by adding to it representatives of classes other than Crown–tenants.5 Miss Norgate, indeed, lays stress on the fact that these writs were issued after the death of the great Justiciar, Geoffrey Fitz–Peter, and before any successor had been appointed. John, she argues, acted on his own initiative, and is thus entitled to the credit of being the first statesman to introduce representatives of the counties into the national assembly. Knights who were tenants of mesne lords (Miss Norgate says “yeomen”) were invited to act as a counterpoise to the barons. This innovation is held to have anticipated the line of progress afterwards followed by de Montfort and Edward I.: compared with it, the often–praised provisions of chapter 14 of Magna Carta are regarded as antiquated and even reactionary.

  Recent research and criticism, however, have tended to throw doubts on the authenticity and purport of these writs, and to postpone the introduction of the representative principle into the central council to a considerably later date. It would be unwise to build far–reaching inferences on the supposed participation of county representatives in the debates of November, 1213.1

  In the early spring of 1214, John considered his home troubles ended, and that he was now free to use against France the coalition formed by his diplomacy. He went abroad early in February, leaving Peter de Roches, the unpopular Bishop of Winchester, as Justiciar, to guard his interests, in concert with the papal legate.2 Deserted by the northern barons, John relied partly on his mercenaries, but chiefly on the Emperor Otto and his other powerful allies. Fortune favoured him at first, only to ruin him more completely in the end. On 2nd July, 1214, John had hastily to abandon the siege of Roches au Moine, leaving his baggage to the enemy. The final crash came on Sunday, 27th July, when the King of France triumphed over John’s allies at the decisive battle of Bouvines. On 18th September, John was compelled to sign a five years’ truce with Philip, abandoning all pretensions to his continental dominions.

  He had left even more dangerous enemies at home, to watch with trembling eagerness the vicissitudes of his fortunes abroad. His earlier successes struck dismay into the malcontents in England, apprehensive of the probable sequel to his triumphant return home. They waited with anxiety, but not in idleness, the culmination of his campaign, wisely refraining from open rebellion until news reached them of his failure or success. Meanwhile, they quietly organized their programme of reform and their measures of resistance. John’s strenuous endeavours to exact money and service, while failing to fill his Exchequer, had ripened dormant hostility into an active confederacy organized for resistance. The English barons felt that the moment for action had arrived when news came of the disaster at Bouvines.

  Even while abroad, John had not relaxed his efforts to wring exactions from England. Without consent or warning, he had imposed a scutage at the unprecedented rate of three marks on the knight’s fee. Writs for its collection had been issued on 26th May, 1214, an exception being indeed allowed for tenants personally present in the King’s army in Poitou. The northern barons, who had already refused to serve in person, now refused likewise to pay the scutage. This repudiation was couched in words peculiarly bold and sweeping; they denied liability to follow the King not merely to Poitou, but to any part of the Continent.1

  When John returned, vanquished and humiliated, on 15th October, 1214, he found himself confronted with a crisis unique in English history. During his absence, the opponents of his misrule had drawn together, formulated their grievances, and matured their plans. The embarrassments on the Continent which weakened the King, heartened the opposition. The northern barons took the lead. Their cup of wrath, which had long been filling, overflowed when the scutage of three marks was imposed. Within three weeks of his landing, John held parley with the malcontents at Bury St. Edmunds (on 4th November).2 No compromise was possible: John pressed for payment, and the barons refused.

  It seems probable that, after John’s retiral, a conference of a more private nature was held at which, under cloak of attending the Abbey for worship, a conspiracy against John was sworn. Roger of Wendover gives a graphic account: the magnates came together “as if for prayers; but there was something else in the matter, for after they had held much secret discourse, there was brought forth in their midst the charter of King Henry I., which the same barons had received in London . . . from Archbishop Stephen of Canterbury.”1 A solemn oath was taken to withdraw their fealty (a threat carried into effect on 5th May of the following year), and to wage war on the King, unless he granted their liberties. A date—soon after Christmas—was fixed for making their formal demands. Meanwhile they separated to prepare for war. The King also realized that a resort to arms was imminent. While collecting mercenaries, he tried to sow dissension among his opponents: he hoped to buy off the hostility of the Church by a charter, issued on 21st November, professing to be granted “of the common consent of our barons.” Its object was to gain the Church’s support by granting freedom of election to vacant sees. The appointment of prelates should henceforth really lie with the canons of the various cathedral or conventual churches and monasteries, saving, however, to the Crown the right of wardship during vacancies. John promised never to deny or delay his consent to an election, and conferred powers on the electors, if he should do so, to proceed without him. The King was bitterly disappointed in his hope that by this bribe he would bring over the Church from the barons’ side to his own.

  John held what must have been an anxious Christmas at Worcester, but tarried only for a day, hastening to the Temple, London, where the proximity of the Tower gave him a feeling of security. There, on 6th January, 1215, a deputation from the insurgents met him without disguising that their demands were backed by force. These demands, they told him, included the confirmation of the laws of Edward, with the liberties set forth in Henry’s Charter. On the advice of the Archbishop and the Marshal, who acted as mediators, John asked a truce till Easter, which was granted on his promise that he would then give reasonable satisfaction. The Archbishop, the Marshal, and the Bishop of Ely were named as the King’s sureties.

  John was in desperate straits for money: “the pleas of the exchequer and the counties ceased throughout England, for nobody was found who would pay tax to the King, or obey him in anything.”1 On 15th January, he reissued the Charter to the Church, and demanded a renewal of homage. The sheriffs in each county were instructed to administer the oath in a stringent form; all Englishmen must now swear to “stand by him against all men.” Meanwhile, emissaries were dispatched by both sides to Rome. Eustace de Vesci, as spokesman of the malcontents, asked Innocent, as overlord of England, to compel John to restore the ancient liberties, and claimed consideration on the ground that John’s surrender to the Pope had been made under pressure put on the King by them—all to no effect. John thought to propitiate the Pope by swearing to go upon Crusade, a politic oath which would serve to protect him from personal violence, and which afforded him, as is well illustrated by several chapters of Magna Carta, a fertile excuse for delay in remedying abuses. In April, the northern barons met in arms at Stamford, and after Easter (when the truce had expired) marched southward to Brackley, in Northampton. There they were met, on 27th April, by the Archbishop and the Marshal, as emissaries from the King, to enquire as to their demands. They received in reply, and took back with them to John, a certain schedule, which, so Roger of Wendover informs us, consisted for the most part of ancient laws and customs of the realm, with an added threat that, if the King did not immediately adhibit his seal, the rebels would constrain him by seizing his castles, lands, and goods.2

  John’s answer when he read these demands, was emphatic. “Why do not the barons, with these unjust exactions, ask my kingdom?” Then furious, he declared with an oath that he would never grant them liberties which would make him a slave.3

  A metrical chronicle4 records the threat to depose the King, unless he fully amended the law and furnished undoubted guarantees for a lasting peace. On 5th May, the barons went through the ceremony of diffidatio, or formal renunciation of allegiance,1 a recognised feudal right, and not involving treason if justified by events and properly intimated to the overlord.2 They chose as their commander, Robert Fitz–Walter, who, as though conducting a Crusade, styled himself piously and grandiloquently, “Marshal of the army of God and Holy Church.”

  The insurgents, still shivering on the brink of civil war, delayed to march southwards. Much would depend on the attitude of London, with its wealth and central position; and John bade high for the support of its citizens. On 9th May a new charter3 was granted to the Londoners, who now received a long–coveted privilege, the right to elect their mayor annually and to remove him at the year’s end. This marked the culmination of a long series of progressive grants in their favour. Previously the mayor had held office for life, and Henry Fitz–Aylwin, the earliest holder of the office (appointed perhaps in 1191), had died in 1212.

  Apparently no price was paid for this charter; but John doubtless expected in return the grateful support of the Londoners, exactly as he had expected the support of churchmen when he twice granted a charter in their favour. In both instances he was disappointed. Next day he made, probably as a measure of delay, an offer of arbitration to the barons. In the full tide of military preparations, he issued a writ in these words: “Know that we have conceded to our barons who are against us that we shall not take or disseise them or their men, nor go against them per vim vel per arma, unless by the law of our land, or by the judgment of their peers in curia nostra. until consideration shall have been had by four whom we shall choose on our part and four whom they shall choose on their part, and the lord Pope who shall be oversman over them”— words worthy of careful comparison with chapter 39 of Magna Carta. The offer could not be taken seriously, since it left the decision of every vital issue virtually to the Pope, whom the barons distrusted.1

  Another royal writ, of two days later, shows a rapid change of policy, doubtless due to the contemptuous rejection of arbitration. On 12th May, John ordered the sheriffs to do precisely what he had offered not to do. They were told to take violent measures against the rebels without waiting for a “judgment of peers.” Lands, goods, and chattels of the King’s enemies were to be seized and applied to his benefit.2 The barons, rejecting all offers, marched by Northampton, Bedford, and Ware, towards the capital. London opened its gates on 17th May.3 The example was quickly followed by other towns and by many hesitating magnates. The confederates felt strong enough to issue letters to all who still adhered to John, bidding them forsake him on pain of forfeiture.

  John found himself, for the moment, without power of effective resistance; and, probably with a view of gaining time rather than of committing himself irretrievably to any abatement of his prerogatives, agreed to a conference. As a preliminary, he issued, on 8th June, a safe–conduct for the barons’ representatives to meet him at Staines within the three days following. This was too short notice: on 10th June, John, now at Windsor, granted an extension of the safe–conduct till Monday, 15th June. William Marshal and other envoys were dispatched from Windsor to the barons in London with a message of surrender: John “would freely accede to the laws and liberties which they asked,” if they would appoint a place and day of meeting. The intermediaries, in the words of Roger of Wendover,4 “without guile carried back to the barons the message which had been guilefully imposed on them.” The barons, immenso fluctuantes gaudio, fixed as the time of meeting, the last day of the extended truce, Monday, 15th June, at a certain meadow between Staines and Windsor, known as Runnymede.

  VI.

  Runnymede, and after.

  On 15th June, 1215, a five days’ conference between King and Barons began. On the side of the insurgents appeared a great host; on the monarch’s, a small band of magnates, loyal to the person of the King, but only half–hearted, at the best, in his support. Their names may be read in the preamble to the Charter: the chief among them, Stephen Langton, still nominally neutral, was known to be in full sympathy with the rebels.

  Dr. Stubbs,1 maintaining that the whole baronage of England was implicated in these stirring events, analyses its more conspicuous members into four groups: (1) the Northumbrani or Norenses of the chroniclers, the first to raise the standard of revolt; (2) other barons from various parts of England, who had shown themselves ready to co–operate with the Northerners—“the great baronial families that had been wise enough to cast away the feudal aspirations of their forefathers, and the rising houses which had sprung from the ministerial nobility”; (3) the moderate party, who followed the lead of London, including even the King’s half–brother (the Earl of Salisbury), the loyal Marshal, Hubert de Burgh, and other Ministers of the Crown, whose names may be read in the preamble to the Charter; and (4) the tools of John’s misgovernment, mostly men of foreign birth, tied to John by interest as well as loyalty, since their differences with the baronial leaders lay too deep for reconciliation, a few of whom are branded by name in Magna Carta as for ever incapable of holding office. These men of desperate fortunes alone remained whole–hearted on John’s side when the crisis came.2

  When the conference began, the fourth group was in command of castle garrisons or of troops actually in the field; the third group, a small one, was with John; the first and second groups were, in their imposing strength, arrayed against him.

  Unfortunately, the vagueness of contemporary accounts prevents us from reproducing with certainty the progress of negotiations on that eventful 15th of June and the few following days. Some inferences, however, may be drawn from the words of the completed Charter and of several closely related documents. One of these, the Articles of the Barons,1 is sometimes supposed to be identical in its terms with the schedule which had been already presented to the King’s emissaries at Brackley, on 27th April. It is more probable that during seven eventful weeks the original demands had been somewhat modified. The schedule of April was probably only a rough outline of the Articles as we now know them, and these formed in turn the draft on which the Charter was based. Articles and Charter are alike authenticated by the impress of the King’s seal. There is thus a strong presumption that an interval elapsed between the King’s acceptance of the first and the completion of the second; since it would have been absurd to seal a superseded draft at the same time as the principal instrument. The probability of such an interval must not be lost sight of in any attempt to reconstruct the stages of negotiations at Runnymede.

  A few undoubted facts form a starting–point on which inferences may be based. John’s headquarters were at Windsor from Monday, 15th June, to the afternoon of Tuesday the 23rd. On each of these nine days (with the possible exception of the 16th and 17th) he visited Runnymede to confer with the barons.2 Two crucial stages were reached on Monday the 15th (the date borne by Magna Carta itself) and on Friday the 19th (the day on which John in more than one writ stated that peace had been concluded). What happened exactly on each of these two days is matter of conjecture. It is here maintained, with some confidence, that on Monday the substance of the barons’ demands was provisionally accepted and that the Articles were then sealed; while on Friday this arrangement was confirmed and Magna Carta itself, in several duplicates, was sealed.

  To justify these inferences, a more detailed examination of the evidence available is required. The earliest meeting between John and the baronial leaders, all authorities are agreed, took place on Monday, 15th June, probably in the early morning. The barons undoubtedly brought to the conference a list of grievances they were determined to redress. On the previous 27th of April the rebels had sent a written schedule to the King;1 they are not likely to have been less fully prepared on 15th June.

  John, on his part, would naturally try a policy of evasions and delays; and, when these were clearly useless, would then endeavour to secure modifications of the terms offered. These tactics met with no success. His opponents asked a plain acceptance of their plainly expressed demands. Before nightfall, John, overawed by their firmness and by the numbers of the armed force behind them, was constrained to surrender, and signified his acceptance of the barons’ demands, as contained in a list of 49 Articles (apparently drawn out on the spot), by imprinting his great seal on the wax of its label, where it may still be seen.2 Ralph of Coggeshall’s brief account gives the contemporary opinion: “By intervention of the archbishop of Canterbury, with several of his fellow–bishops and some barons, a sort of peace was made.”3 The document bears traces of the discussions that preceded it. The first article postpones a definition of the customary “relief,” leaving this to be expressed “in carta.”4 Articles 45 and 46 (less vital to the barons as affecting their allies, not themselves) are joined by a rude bracket; and their suggested modification in favour of John is referred to Stephen Langton’s decision.1 The last article, or forma securitatis, the dregs of John’s cup of humiliation, is separated by a blank space from the rest.2

  The document is in a running hand and appears to have been rapidly though carefully written: a diligent copyist would be able to complete his task within a few hours. There are thus ample reasons for holding that it was not the identical schedule of the preceding April, but that it was written out between two conferences on Monday, 15th June, by one of the clerks of the royal Chancery. This is in keeping with the contemporary heading: “Ista sunt capitula quae barones petunt et dominus rex concedit.”

  Comparison with the final Charter suggests that further conferences led to alterations in regard to various details:3 thus, chapter 14 contains provisions not contained in the Articuli, though forming a necessary supplement to the substance of article 32. New influences would seem to have been at work, favourable to the claims of the English Church; effecting some slight modifications in favour of the Crown;4 and apparently not too careful of the interests of the towns or of native traders.5

  It is not difficult to infer the nature of the forces at work. John was fighting for his own hand; the barons merely demanded a fair statement of their just rights, and had no desire to take undue advantage of the King; the towns found the barons more ready to meet the King by sacrificing their allies’ rights than their own; Stephen Langton, while acting as mediator, looked well after the interests of the Church.

  Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday were probably consumed in adjusting these matters of detail; in reducing the heads of agreement to the more binding form of a feudal Charter; and in engrossing several copies for greater security. Everything was ready for settlement on Friday, the 19th. On that day, the final concord probably included several steps; the nomination by the opposition, with the King’s acquiescence, of twenty–five barons to act as “Executors” under chapter 61,1 the solemn sealing and delivery of several originals of the Charter in its final form, the taking of an oath by all parties to abide by its provisions, and the issue of the first batch of writs of instructions to the sheriffs.

  The barons on that day renewed their oaths of fealty and homage: this was the stipulated price of “the liberties.” They promised a guarantee in any form John wished, except the delivery of hostages or the surrender of strongholds—a promise they failed to keep.2

  The statement that Friday, 19th June, was the day on which peace was finally concluded rests on unmistakable evidence. On 21st June, John wrote from Windsor to William of Cantilupe, one of his captains, instructing him not to enforce payment of any unpaid balances of “ten–series”3 demanded since the preceding Friday, “on which day peace was made between the King and his barons.”4

  It has been usually assumed that peace was concluded, and the Charter sealed on the 15th. The fact that all four copies of Magna Carta still extant bear this date seems to have been regarded as conclusive. Elaborate charters, however, which occupied time in preparation, usually bore the date, not of their actual execution, but of the day on which occurred the transactions they record. Thus it is far from safe to infer from Magna Carta’s mention of its own date that the seal was actually adhibited on 15th June.

  Such presumption as exists is all the other way. The Great Charter is a lengthy document, and it is barely possible that any one of the four originals known to us could have been engrossed (to say nothing of the adjustment of substance and form) within one day. Not only is it much longer than the Articles on which it is founded; but even the most casual comparison will convince any unbiassed mind of the slower rate of engrossment of the Charter. All four copies show marks of deliberation, while those at Lincoln and Salisbury are models of leisurely and exquisite penmanship. The highly finished initial letters of the first line and other ornamental features may be instructively compared with the plain, business–like, rapid hand of the Articles. How many additional copies, now lost, were once in existence bearing the same date, it is impossible to say; but each of those still extant may well have occupied more than one day in the writing.1

  In addition to the various originals of the Charter issued under the great seal, chapter 62 provides that authenticated copies should be made and certified as correct by “Letters Testimonial,” under the seals of the two archbishops with the legate and the bishops.2 These were intended for the sheriffs, whose writs of instructions dated 19th to 27th June, to publish the terms of the charters, are preserved in the Patent Rolls. Each sheriff was instructed to cause all in his bailiwick to make oath, according to the form of the Charter, to the twenty–five barons or their attorneys, and further, to see to the appointment of twelve knights of the county in full County Court, to declare upon oath all evil practices as well of sheriffs as of their servants, foresters, and others.1 This was held to apply chiefly to the redress of forest grievances.

  A week elapsed before these writs, with copies of the Charter, could be sent to every sheriff. During the same few days, orders were sent to military commanders to stop hostilities. A few writs, dated mostly 25th June, show that some obnoxious sheriffs had made way for better men; while Hubert de Burgh became Justiciar in room of Peter des Roches. On 27th June, new writs directed the sheriffs and the elected knights to punish, by forfeiture of lands and chattels, all who refused to swear to the twenty–five Executors within a fortnight.

  The barons were still unsatisfied as to the King’s sincerity, and demanded further securities. The interesting question thus arises, how far they were justified in doubting John’s intentions. Prof. Petit–Dutaillis, founding mainly on the writs dispatched to sheriffs and constables, credits John with perfect though perhaps short–lived good faith.2 He rightly refuses to believe Wendover’s unlikely story of John’s immediate retiral to the Isle of Wight, and of the war preparations he made there in a delirium of fury.3 Proof of John’s sincerity is sought in the reputed quarrel with his Flemish mercenaries, for whom the King’s “villain peace” meant that his purse would be closed to them and led them to desert his cause.1

  In brief, according to M. Petit–Dutaillis, John’s conduct was above reproach during June and July, and until the bad faith of his opponents forced him to protect himself.2

  Yet John’s punctilious observance, for a short space, of the letter of his bargain may be equally consistent with studied duplicity, dictated by urgent need of gaining time, as with any loyal intention to submit permanently to restraints which, in his own words, “made him a slave,” and were to be enforced by “five–and–twenty over kings”;3 while his negotiations with Rome are difficult to reconcile with any intention of permanently keeping faith.

  Justified or not, the barons demanded that the City and Tower of London should be placed in their hands as pledges of good–faith until 15th August, or until the reforms were completely carried out. John had to surrender the city to the rebels, but the Tower was placed in the neutral custody of Stephen Langton. These terms may be read in a supplementary treaty headed: “Conventio facta inter Regem Angliae et barones ejusdem regni.”4 John, equally distrustful on his side, demanded the security promised at the renewal of allegiance; but the barons refused to embody the terms of their homage in a formal Charter. The Archbishops of Canterbury and Dublin, with several suffragans, appealed to as umpires by the King, recorded a protest narrating the barons’ breach of faith.5

  The same prelates, alarmed apparently lest drastic measures of reform should lead to the total abolition of the forests, entered a second protest. As mediators, bound to see fair–play, they declared in writing that the words of the Charter must be read in a restricted sense: customs needful for preserving the forests should remain in force.6 The provisions referred to were, as is now well known, chapters 47, 48, and 53 of Magna Carta itself, and not, as Roger of Wendover states, a separate Forest Charter.1 That writer was led into error by confusing John’s Charter with its reissue by his son. Sir William Blackstone was the first commentator to correct this mistake.2

  These are not the only pieces of evidence that point to lack of moderation on the barons’ part, revealed even before the four days’ conference was ended. Matthew Paris narrates how it was found necessary to curb the excesses of the twenty–five Executors of the Charter by the nomination of a second body of thirty–eight barons, drawn from both parties.3

  From a contemporary chronicler there comes a strange tale of the arrogance of the twenty–five: one day when they went to the King’s court “to make a judgment,” John, ill in bed, asked them to come to his chamber as he was unable to go to them; but they curtly refused, demanding that the King, unable to walk, should be carried into their presence.4

  John looked for aid to Rome. Three weeks before granting the Charter, he had begun his preparations for its repudiation. In a letter of 29th May, addressed to the Pope, there may still be read his own explanation of the causes of quarrel, and how he urged, with low cunning, that the rebels prevented fulfilment of his vow of crusade. In conclusion, he expressed his willingness to abide by the Pope’s decision on all matters at issue. He followed up this letter, shortly after 19th June, by dispatching Richard de Marais to plead his cause at Rome.5 Delay was doubly in his favour; since the combination formed against him was certain, in a short time, to break up. It was, in the happy phrase of Dr. Stubbs,6 a mere “coalition,” not an “organic union”—a coalition, too, in momentary danger of dissolving into its original factors. The barons were without sufficient sinews of war to carry a protracted struggle to a successful issue.

  Soon, both sides to the treaty of peace were preparing for war. The northern barons, anticipating the King in direct breach of the compact, began to fortify their castles, and maltreated the royal officials.1 John, in equally bad faith, wrote for foreign allies, whilst he anxiously awaited the Pope’s answer to his appeal. Langton and the bishops still struggled to restore harmony. The 16th July was fixed for a new conference. John did not attend; but it was probably at this Council that in his absence a papal bull was read conferring upon a commission of three—the Bishop of Winchester, the Abbot of Reading, and the legate Pandulf—full powers to excommunicate all “disturbers of the King and Kingdom.” No names were mentioned, but these powers might clearly be used against Langton and his friends. The execution of this sentence was delayed, in the groundless hope of a compromise, till the middle of September, when two of the commissioners, Pandulf and Peter of Winchester, demanded that the archbishop should publish it; and, on his refusal, they forthwith suspended him from office (a sentence confirmed by the Pope on 4th November).2

  Stephen left for Rome, and his absence at a critical juncture proved a national misfortune. The insurgents lost in him, not only their bond of union, but also a wholesome restraint. After his departure, a papal bull arrived (in the end of September) dated 24th August. This is an important document in which Innocent, in the plainest terms, annuls and abrogates the Charter, after adopting all the facts and reproducing all the arguments furnished by the King. Beginning with a full description of John’s wickedness and repentance, his surrender of England and Ireland, his Crusader’s oath, his quarrel with the barons; it goes on to describe Magna Carta as the result of a conspiracy, and concludes, “We utterly reprobate and condemn any agreement of this kind, forbidding, under ban of our anathema, the foresaid king to presume to observe it, and the barons and their accomplices to exact its performance, declaring void and entirely abolishing both the Charter itself and the obligations and safeguards made, either for its enforcement or in accordance with it, so that they shall have no validity at any time whatsoever.”1

  A supplementary bull, of one day’s later date, reminded the barons that the suzerainty of England belonged to Rome, and that therefore nothing could be done in the kingdom without papal consent.2 Thereafter, at a Lateran Council, Innocent excommunicated the English barons who had persecuted “John, King of England, crusader and vassal of the Church of Rome, by endeavouring to take from him his kingdom, a fief of the Holy See.”3

  Meanwhile, the points in dispute had been submitted to the rude arbitrament of civil war, in which the first notable success fell to John, who took Rochester Castle by assault on 30th November. The barons had already made overtures to Louis, the French King’s son, offering him the crown of England. Towards the end of November, seven thousand French troops arrived in London, where they spent the winter, while John marched from place to place, meeting, on the whole, with success, especially in the east of England. John’s best ally was once more the Pope, who did not intend to allow a French Prince to usurp his vassal’s throne. Gualo was dispatched from Rome to Philip, King of France, forbidding his son’s invasion, and asking protection and assistance for John. Philip, anxious to break the force of the Pope’s arguments by proving some right to intervene, endeavoured to find defects in John’s title as King of England, and to argue that therefore John was not in titulo to grant to the Pope the rights of an overlord; John had been convicted of treason while Richard was King, and this involved forfeiture of all rights of succession. Thus the Pope’s claim of intervention was invalid, while Prince Louis justified his own interference by some imagined right which, he ingeniously argued, had passed to him through the mother of his wife.

  John had not relied solely on papal protection; but the fleet, collected at Dover to block Louis with his smaller vessels in Calais harbour, was wrecked on 18th May, 1216. The French Prince, setting sail on the night of the 20th May, landed next morning unopposed. John, reduced to dependence on mercenaries, dared not risk an engagement. Gualo, now in England, on 28th May excommunicated Louis by name, and laid London under interdict. On 2nd June, the French Prince entered London, received homage from the Mayor and others, and took oath to uphold good laws and restore invaded rights.1 It was probably on this occasion that Louis confirmed the Charter.2 Into the vicissitudes of the war and the royalist reaction, to which the arrogance of the French troops contributed, it is unnecessary here to enter. At a critical juncture, when fortune still trembled in the balance, John’s death at Newark Castle, on the morning of 19th October, 1216, altered the situation, rendering possible, and indeed inevitable, a new arrangement of parties and forces in England. The heir to the throne was an infant, whose advisers found it prudent to reissue voluntarily, and to accept as their rule of government, the essential principles of the Charter that had been extorted from the unwilling John.

  PART II.

  FEUDAL GRIEVANCES AND MAGNA CARTA.

  I.

  The Immediate Causes of the Crisis.

  Many attempts have been made to show why the storm, long brewing, broke at last in 1214, and culminated precisely in June of the following year. Sir William Blackstone1 shows how carefully historians have sought for some one specific feature or event, occurring in these years, of such moment as by itself to account for the rebellion crowned with success at Runnymede. Matthew Paris, he tells us, attributes the whole movement to the sudden discovery of Henry I.’s Charter, and most of the chroniclers assign John’s inordinate debauchery as the cause of the dissensions, dwelling on his personal misdeeds, real and imaginary.2 “Sordida foedatur foedante Johanne, gehenna.”3 Blackstone himself suggests a third cause, the appointment as Regent in John’s absence of the hated alien and upstart, Peter des Roches, and his misconduct in that office.

  Of John’s arrogance and cruelty there is abundant testimony;4 but the causes from which Magna Carta took its rise were more deeply rooted in the past. The very success of Henry Plantagenet in restoring order in England, for effecting which special powers had been allowed to him, made the continuance of these powers unnecessary. From the day of Henry’s death, if not earlier, forces were at work which only required to be combined in order to control the licence of the Crown. When the battle of order had been won—the complete overthrow of the rebellion of 1173–4 may here be taken as the crucial date—the battle of liberty had, almost necessarily, to be begun.

  The wonder is that the crisis was so long delayed. Events, however, were not ripe for rebellion before John’s accession, and a favourable occasion did not occur previous to 1215. The doctrine of momentum accounts in politics for the long continuance of old institutions in a condition even of unstable equilibrium; an entirely rotten system of government may remain for ages until at the destined moment comes the final shock. John conferred a boon on future generations, when by his arrogance and his misfortunes he combined against him all classes and interests in the community.

  The chief factor in the coalition that ultimately triumphed over John was the baronial party, led by those strenuous nobles of the north, who were goaded into opposition by their own personal and class wrongs, not by any altruistic promptings to sacrifice themselves for the common good. Their complaints, as they appear in the imperishable record of Magna Carta, are grounded on technical rules of feudal usage, not upon any broad basis of constitutional principle.

  The grievances most bitterly resented may be ranged under one or other of two heads—increase in the weight of feudal obligations and infringement of feudal jurisdictions: the Crown, while it exacted the fullest measure of services legally exigible, curtailed those rights and privileges which had originally balanced the obligations. The barons were compelled to give more, while they received less. Each of these heads calls for separate and detailed treatment.1

  The grievances of the barons, however, were not the only wrongs calling for redress. It is probable that the baronial party, if they had acted in isolation, would have failed in 1215 as they had already failed in 1173. If the Crown had retained the active sympathy of Church and common people, the King might have successfully defied the baronage as his father had done before him. John had, on the contrary, broadened the basis of opposition by oppressing the mercantile classes and the peasantry. The order–loving townsmen had been willing to purchase protection from Henry at the price of heavy taxation: John continued to exact the price, but failed to furnish good government in return. Far from protecting the humble from oppression, he was himself the chief oppressor; and he let loose his foreign favourites as deputy oppressors in all the numerous offices of sheriff, castellan, and bailiff. Far from using the perfected machinery of Exchequer, Curia, and local administration in the interests of good government, John valued them merely as instruments of extortion and outrage—as ministers to his lust and greed.

  The lower orders were by no means exempt from the increased taxation which proved so galling to the feudal tenants. When John, during his quarrel with Rome, repaid each new anathema of the Pope by fresh acts of spoliation against the English Church, the sufferings of the clergy were shared by the poor. In confiscating the goods of monasteries, he destroyed the chief provision for poor–relief known to the thirteenth century. The alienation of the affections of the great masses of lower–class Englishmen thus effected was never wholly undone, even after the reconciliation of John with the Holy See. Notwithstanding the completeness and even abjectness of John’s surrender, he took no special pains to reinstate himself in the good graces of the Church at home. Innocent, secure at the Lateran, had issued his thunderbolts; and John’s counterstrokes had fallen, not on him, but on the English clergy. The measures taken, in 1213 and afterwards, to make good to these victims some part of the heavy losses sustained, were inadequate.

  After 1213, John’s alliance with Rome brought new dangers in its train. The united action of two autocrats, each claiming supreme powers, lay and spiritual respectively, threatened to annihilate the freedom of the English nation and the English Church. “The country saw that the submission of John to Innocent placed its liberty, temporally and spiritually, at his mercy; and immediately demanded safeguards.”1

  This union of tyrants led to another union which checkmated it, for the baronial opposition allied itself with the ecclesiastical opposition. The urgency of their common need brought prelates and barons into line—for the moment. A leader was found in Stephen Langton, who succeeded in preventing the somewhat divergent interests of the two estates from splitting them asunder.

  All things were thus ripe for rebellion, and even for united rebellion; an opportunity only was required. Such an opportunity came in a tempting form in 1214; for the King had then lost prestige and power by his failure in the wars with France. He had lost the friendship of the English Church. His unpopularity and vacillating nature had been thoroughly demonstrated. Further, he had himself, in 1191, when plotting against his absent brother Richard, successfully ousted the Regent Longchamp from office, thus furnishing an example of successfully concerted action against the central government.

  The result was that, when the barons began active operations, not only had they no opposition to dread from churchman or merchant, from yeoman or peasant, but they might count on the sympathy of all and the active co–operation of many. Further, John’s policy of misrule had combined against him two interests usually opposed to each other, the party of progress and the party of reaction. The influence of each of these may be clearly read in various chapters of Magna Carta.

  The progressive party consisted mainly of the heads of the more recently created baronial houses, men trained in the administrative methods of Henry II., who desired that his system of government should be properly enforced. They demanded that the King should conduct the business of Exchequer and Curia according to the rules laid down by Henry. Routine and order under the new system were what this party desired, and not a return to the unruly days of Stephen. Many of the innovations of the great Angevin had now been loyally accepted by all classes of the nation; and these accordingly found a permanent resting–place in the provisions of the Charter. In temporary co–operation with this party, the usually rival party of reaction was willing to combine for the moment against the common enemy. There still existed, in John’s reign, magnates of the old feudal school, who hoped to wrest from the King’s weakened hand some measure of feudal independence. They had accepted such reforms as suited them, but still bitterly opposed many others. In particular, they resisted the encroachments of the royal courts of law which were gradually superseding their private jurisdictions. For the moment, John’s crafty policy, so well devised to gain immediate ends, and so unwise in the light of subsequent history, combined these two streams, usually ready to thwart each other, into a united opposition to his throne. Attacked at the same moment by the votaries of traditional usage and by the votaries of reform, by the barons, the trading classes, and the clergy, he had no course left him but to surrender at discretion. The movement which culminated at Runnymede may thus best be understood as the resultant of a number of different but converging forces, some of which were progressive and some reactionary.

  II.

  The Crown and Feudal Obligations.

  Among the evils calling loudly for redress in England at the commencement of the thirteenth century, none spoke with more insistent voice than those connected with feudal abuses. The refusal of the northern barons to pay the scutage demanded on 26th May, 1214, was the spark that fired the mine. The most prominent feature of the Charter is its solicitude to define the exact extent of feudal services and dues, and so to prevent these from being arbitrarily increased. A detailed knowledge of feudal obligations forms a necessary preliminary to the study of Magna Carta.

  The precise relations of the Norman Conquest to the growth of feudalism in England are complicated, and have formed the subject of much controversy. The view now generally accepted, and with reason, is that the policy of the Conqueror accelerated the process in one direction, but retarded it in another. Feudalism, regarded as a system of government, had its worst tendencies checked by the great upheaval that followed the coming of Duke William; feudalism, considered as a system of land tenure, and as a social system, was, on the contrary, formulated and developed. It is mainly as a system of land tenure that it falls here to be considered. Originally, the relationship between lord and tenant, dependent upon the double ownership of land (of which each was, in a different sense, proprietor), implied obligations on both sides: the lord gave protection, while the tenant owed services of various sorts. It so happened, however, that, with the changes wrought by time, the legal obligations of the lord ceased to be of much importance, while those of the vassal became more and more burdensome. The tenant’s services varied in kind and in extent with the nature of the tenure. It is difficult to frame an exact list of the various tenures formerly recognized as distinct in English law: partly because the classical authors of different epochs, from Bracton to Blackstone, contradict each other; and partly because of the obscurity of the process by which these tenures were gradually differentiated. Sir William Blackstone,1 after explaining the dependent nature of all real property in England, thus proceeds: “The thing holden is therefore styled a tenement, the possessors thereof tenants, and the manner of their possession a tenure.” Tenure thus comes to mean the conditions on which a tenant holds real estate under his lord.

  The ancient classification differs materially from that in use at the present day. The modern English lawyer (unless of an antiquarian turn of mind) concerns himself only with three tenures: freehold (now practically identical with socage), copyhold and leasehold. The two last–mentioned may be rapidly dismissed, as they were of little importance in the eyes of Littleton, or of Coke: leasehold embraces only temporary interests, such as those of a tenant–at–will or for a limited term of years; while copyhold is the modern form of tenure into which the old unfree villeinage has slowly ripened. The ancient writers were, on the contrary, chiefly concerned with holdings both permanent and free. Of these, seven at least may be distinguished in the thirteenth century, all of which have now come to be represented by the modern freehold or socage. These seven are knight’s service, free socage, fee–farm, frankalmoin, grand serjeanty, petty serjeanty, and burgage.

  (1) Knight’s Service. Medieval feudalism had many aspects; it was almost as essentially an engine of war as it was a system of land–holding. The normal return for which an estate was granted consisted of the service in the field of a specific number of knights. Thus the normal feudal tenure was known as knight’s service, or tenure in chivalry—the conditions of which must be constantly kept in view, since by them the relations between John and his recalcitrant vassals fell to be determined. When finally abolished at the Restoration, there fell with knight’s service, it is not too much to say, the feudal system of land tenure in England. “Tenure by barony” is sometimes spoken of as a separate species, but may be more correctly viewed as a variety of tenure in chivalry.1

  (2) Free Socage. The early history of socage, with its division into ordinary and privileged, is involved in obscurities which do not require to be here unravelled. The services returned for both varieties were not military but agricultural, and their exact nature and amount varied considerably. Although not so honourable as chivalry, free socage was less burdensome, in respect that two of the most irksome of the feudal incidents, wardship and marriage, did not apply. When knight’s service was abolished those who had previously held their lands by it, whether of the Crown or of a mesne lord, were henceforward to hold in free socage, which thus came to be the normal holding throughout England after the Restoration.1

  (3) Fee–farm was the name applied to lands held in return for services which were neither military nor agricultural, but consisted only of an annual payment in money. The “farm” thus indicates the rent paid, which apparently might vary without limit, although it was long maintained that a fee–farm rent must amount at least to one quarter of the annual value. This error seems to have been founded on a misconstruction of the Statute of Gloucester.2 Some authorities3 reject the claims of fee–farm to rank as a tenure separate from socage; although chapter 37 of Magna Carta seems to recognize the distinction.

  (4) Frankalmoin was a favourite tenure with founders of religious houses. It was also the tenure on which much of the glebe lands of England was held by the village priests. The grant was made in liberam eleemosinam or “free alms” (that is, no temporal services were to be rendered).4 In Scots charters the return formally stipulated was preces et lacrymae.

  (5) Grand serjeanty was a highly honourable tenure, sharing the distinctions and the burdensome incidents of knight’s service, but distinct in this, that the tenant, in place of ordinary military duties, performed some specific service, such as carrying the King’s banner or lance, or filled some important office at the coronation.5 An often–quoted example of a serjeanty is that of Sir John Dymoke and his family, who have acted as the Sovereign’s champions at successive coronations from Richard II. to William IV., ready to defend the Monarch’s title to the throne by battle in the ancient form.

  Grand serjeanties were liable to wardship and marriage, as well as to relief, but not to payment of scutage.6 William Aguilon, we are told by Madox,1 “was charged at the Exchequer with several escuages. But when it was found by Inquest of twelve Knights of Surrey that he did not hold his lands in that county by military tenure, but by serjeanty of finding a Cook at the King’s coronation to dress victuals in the King’s kitchen, he was acquitted of the escuages.”

  (6) Petty serjeanty may be described in the words of Littleton as “where a man holds his lands of our lord the king to yield to him yearly a bow or sword, or a dagger or a knife . . . or to yield such other small things belonging to war.”2 The grant of lands on such privileged tenures was frequently made in early days on account of some great service rendered at a critical juncture to the King’s person or interests. Serjeanties, Miss Bateson tells us, “were neither always military nor always agricultural, but might approach very closely the service of knights or the service of farmers. . . . The serjeanty of holding the King’s head when he made a rough passage across the Channel, of pulling a rope when his vessel landed, of counting his chessmen on Christmas Day, of bringing fuel to his castle, of doing his carpentry, of finding his potherbs, of forging his irons for his ploughs, of tending his garden, of nursing the hounds gored and injured in the hunt, of serving as veterinary to his sick falcons, such and many other might be the ceremonial or menial services due from a given serjeanty.”3

  The line between grand and petty serjeanties, like that between the greater and smaller baronies of chapter 14 of Magna Carta, was at first vaguely drawn. The distinction, which Dr. Horace Round considers an illustration of “nontechnical classification,”4 may possibly have originated in the Great Charter. At a later date, however, petty serjeanties, while liable for “relief,” escaped the onerous incidents of wardship and marriage which grand serjeanties shared with lands held in chivalry.1 The way was thus prepared for the ultimate amalgamation of petty serjeanty with ordinary socage.

  (7) Burgage, confined to lands within free boroughs, is mentioned as a separate tenure by Littleton,2 and his authority receives support from chapter 37 of Magna Carta. Our highest modern authorities,3 however, treat it rather as a variety of socage. In Scotland, where several of the English tenures have failed to obtain recognition, burgage has established itself beyond a doubt. Even the levelling process consummated by the Act of 1874 has not abolished its separate existence.4

  Of these tenures, originally six or seven, frankalmoin and grand serjeanty still exist, but rather as ghosts than realities; the others have been swallowed up in socage, which has thus become identical with “freehold.”5 This triumph of socage is the result of a long process: fee–farm, burgage, and petty serjeanty, always with features in common, were gradually assimilated in almost all respects, while a statute (12 Charles II. c. 24) transformed tenure in chivalry also into socage. The once humble socage has thus risen high, and now embraces most of the land of England.6

  The interest of historians centres in tenure by knight’s service, which is the very kernel of the feudal system. Lack of definition in the middle ages was a fruitful source of quarrel: for a century and more after the Norman Conquest, the exact amount and nature of military services due by a tenant to his lord were vague and undetermined. Each Crown tenant (except favoured foundations like Battle Abbey) held his lands on condition of furnishing a certain number of fully armed and mounted soldiers in the event of war. High authorities differ as to when and by whom the amount of each vassal’s service was fixed. The common view (promulgated by Professor Freeman1 ) attributes the allocation of specific service to Ranulf Flambard, the unscrupulous tool of Rufus. Mr. J. H. Round2 urges convincing reasons in support of the older view which attributes the innovation to William I. Two facts, apparently, are certain: that within half a century from the Conquest each military tenant was burdened with a definite amount of service; and that no written record of the amount was made at the time of granting: there were, as yet, no written charters, and thus disputes arose. Probably, such grants were made in full Curia, and the only record of the conditions would lie in the memory of the Court.

  Long before Magna Carta, the various obligations had been grouped into three classes, which may be arranged in order of importance, as services, incidents, and aids. Under each of these three heads, disputes continually arose.3 The essence of the feudal tie consisted in the liability to render “suit and service,” that is, to follow the lord’s banner in time of war, and attend his court in time of peace. It will be more convenient, however, to reserve full consideration of these services until the comparatively uncomplicated obligations, known as incidents and aids, have been first discussed.

  I. Feudal Incidents. In addition to “suit and service,” the lord reaped, at the expense of his tenants, a number of casual profits, which thus formed irregular supplements to his revenue. These profits, accruing, not annually, but on the occurrence of exceptional events, came to be known as “feudal incidents.” They were gradually defined with more or less accuracy, and their number may be given as six: reliefs, escheats, wardships, marriages, primer seisins, and fines for alienation.1

  (a) Relief is easily explained. The fee, or feudum, or hereditary feudal estate, seems to have been the result of a gradual evolution from the old beneficium (or estate held for one lifetime), and that again from the older precarium (or estate held during the lord’s will). Grants originally subject to revocation, gradually attained fixity of tenure for the life of the original grantee, and, later on, became transmissible to descendants: the Capitulary of Kiersey (a.d. 877) is said to be the first authoritative recognition of the heir’s absolute right to succeed. It would seem that even after the Norman Conquest, this rule of hereditary descent was not established beyond possibility of dispute.2 The heir’s right to succeed remained subject to one condition, namely, the payment of a sum known as a “relief.” This was an acknowledgment that the new tenant’s right to ownership was incomplete, until recognized by his superior—a reminiscence of the earlier precarium from which the feudum had developed. The amount remained long undefined, and the lord frequently asked exorbitant sums.3

  (b) Escheat, it has been said, “signifies the return of an estate to a lord, either on failure of issue from the tenant or upon account of such tenant’s felony.”1 This lucid description conveys a good general conception of escheat; but it is inaccurate in at least two respects. It does not exhaust the occasions on which escheat occurs, and it errs in speaking of “the return” of an estate to a lord, when more accurately, that estate had always remained his property, subject only to a burden, which was now removed. In theory, the feudal grant of lands was always conditional: when the condition was broken, the grant fell, and the lord found himself, automatically as it were, once more the absolute proprietor, as he had been before the grant was made. Thereafter, he held the land in demesne, unless he chose to make a new grant to another tenant. The word “escheat” was applied indifferently to the lord’s right to such reversions, and to the actual lands which had reverted. In warlike times the right was valuable, for whole families might become rapidly extinct. Further, when a landholder was convicted of felony, his blood became, in the phrase of a later day, attainted, and no one could succeed to any estate through him. If a man failed in the ordeal of water provided by the Assize of Clarendon in 1166 for those accused of heinous crimes, his estates escheated to his lord. A complication arose when treason was the crime of which the tenant had been convicted; for the king, as the injured party, had prior rights which excluded those of the lord: the lands of traitors were forfeited to the Crown. Even over the lands of ordinary felons the king had rights during a period which was defined by Magna Carta.2

  Felony and failure of issue were two main grounds of escheat, but not the only ones; the goods of fugitives from justice and of those who had been formally outlawed also escheated, and Glanvill adds another case,3 namely, female wards guilty of unchastity (an offence which spoiled the king’s market). Failure to obey the royal summons in time of war or to pay scutage in lieu thereof might also be a ground of forfeiture.4

  Escheat was thus a valuable right both to the Crown and to mesne lords. Its effect was simply this: one link in the chain was struck out, and the links on either side were fitted together. If the defaulter was a Crown tenant, all his former sub–tenants, whether freeholders or villeins, moved up one rung in the feudal ladder and held henceforward directly of the king, who took over the entire complexus of legal rights previously enjoyed by the defaulter: rents, crops, timber, casual profits, and advowsons of churches falling vacant; jurisdictions and their profits; services of villeins; reliefs, wardships, and marriages of freeholders, as these became exigible.

  The Crown, however, while taking everything the defaulter might have taken before default, must take nothing more—so Magna Carta1 provides. The rights and status of innocent sub–tenants must not be prejudiced by the misdeeds of defaulting lords.

  (c) Wardships are described in the Dialogus de Scaccario as “escheats along with the heir” (escaeta cum herede).2 This expression does not occur elsewhere, but it would be impossible to find any description of wardship which throws more light on its nature and consequences. When the heir of a deceased tenant was unfitted to bear arms by reason of his tender years, the lands were, during his minority, without an effective owner: the lord treated them as temporarily escheated, entered into possession, drew the revenues, and applied them to his own purposes, subject only to the obligation of maintaining the heir in a manner suited to his station in life. Considerable sums might thus be spent: the Pipe Roll of the seventeenth year of Henry II. shows how out of a total revenue of £50 6s. 8d. from the Honour of “Belveeir,” £18 5s. had been expended on the children of the late tenant.3 Wardship came to an end with the full age of the ward, that is, in the case of a military tenant, on the completion of his twenty–first year, “in that of a holder in socage on the completion of the fifteenth, and in the case of a burgess when the boy can count money, measure cloth, and so forth.”1 Wardship of females normally ended at the age of fourteen, “because that a woman of such age may have a husband able to do knight’s service.” An heiress who did not succeed to the estate until she was fourteen thus escaped wardship altogether, but if she became a ward at a younger age, the wardship continued till she attained sixteen years unless she married earlier.2

  All the remunerative consequences flowing from escheat flowed also from wardship—rents, casual profits, advowsons, services of villeins, and reliefs. Unlike escheats, however, the right of the Crown here was only temporary, and Magna Carta sought3 to provide that the implied conditions should be respected by the Crown’s bailiffs or nominees: the lands must not be wasted or exhausted, but restored to the son when he came of age, in as good condition as when his father died.

  One important aspect ought to be emphasized: Wardship affected bishoprics as well as lay baronies, extending over the temporalities of a See between the death of one prelate and the instalment of his successor. It was to the king’s interest to keep sees vacant, while his Exchequer drew the revenues and casual profits.4 This right was carefully reserved, even in the comprehensive charter in which John granted freedom of election.5

  (d) Marriage as a feudal incident is difficult to define; for its meaning changed. Originally it seems to have implied little more than the right of a lord to forbid an heiress to marry his personal enemy. Such veto was reasonable, since the husband of the heiress would become the tenant of the lord. The claim to concur in the choice of a husband gradually expanded into an absolute right to dispose of the lands and person of the female ward: the prize might be a bribe to any unscrupulous gentleman of fortune who placed his sword at the King’s disposal, or it might go to the highest bidder. The lady passed as a mere adjunct to her own estates. At fourteen she might be sent to market, and the only way in which she could protect herself against an obnoxious husband was by out–bidding her various suitors.

  This right seems, at some uncertain date, to have been extended from females to males, and instances of sums thus paid occur in the Pipe Rolls. It is difficult at first sight to imagine how the Crown found a market for such wares as male wards; but probably wealthy fathers were ready to purchase desirable husbands for their daughters. Thus in 1206 a certain Henry of Redeman paid forty marks for the hand and lands of the heir of Roger of Hedon, “ad opus filiae suae,”1 while Thomas Basset secured a prize in the person of the young heir of Walerand, Earl of Warwick, to the use of any one of his daughters.2 This extension to male heirs is usually explained as founded on a strained construction of chapter 6 of Magna Carta; but the beginnings of the practice can be traced before 1215.3 The lords’ right to sell their wards was recognized and defined by the Statute of Merton, chapter 6. The attempts made to remedy some of the most serious abuses may be read in Magna Carta.4 Hallam5 considers that “the rights, or feudal incidents, of wardship and marriage were nearly peculiar to England and Normandy,” and that the French kings never “turned this attribute of sovereignty into a means of revenue.”6

  (e) Primer Seisin, which is usually regarded as a separate incident, and figures as such in Blackstone’s list, is perhaps better understood, not as an incident at all, but as a special procedure—effective and summary—whereby the Crown could enforce the four incidents already described. It was an exclusive prerogative of the Crown, denied to mesne lords.1 When a Crown tenant died, the King’s officers had the right to enter into immediate possession, and to exclude the heir, who could not touch his father’s lands without permission from the Crown: he had first to prove his title by inquest, give security for any balance of relief or other debts, and perform homage.2 It will be readily seen what a strong strategic position all this assured to the King in any disputes with the heir of a dead vassal. If the Exchequer had doubtful claims against the deceased, its officials could satisfy themselves before admitting the heir to possession. If the heir showed any tendency to evade payment of feudal incidents, the Crown could checkmate his moves. If the succession was disputed, the King might favour the claimant who pleased or paid him most; or, under colour of the dispute, refuse to disgorge the estate—holding it in custody analogous to wardship, and meanwhile drawing the profits. If the son happened to be abroad when his father died, he would experience difficulty in forcing the Crown to restore the estates. Such was the experience of William Fitz–Odo on returning from Scotland in 1201 to claim his father’s carucate of land in Bamborough.3 Primer seisin was thus not so much a separate incident, as a right peculiar to the Crown to take summary measures for the satisfaction of all claims against a deceased tenant or his heir. Magna Carta contains no direct reference to it, but chapters 37 and 53, providing against the abuse of prerogative wardship, have a bearing on the subject.1

  (f) Fines for alienation occupy a place by themselves. Unlike the incidents already discussed, they became exigible not on the tenant’s death, but on his parting with his estate during his lifetime, either as a gift or in return for a price. How far could he effect this without consent of his lord? This was, for many centuries, a subject of heated disputes, often settled by compromises, under which the new tenant paid a fine to the lord for recognition of his title. Such fines are payable at the present day in Scotland (under the name of “compositions”) from feus granted prior to 1874; and, where no sum has been mentioned in the Feu Charter, the law of Scotland defines the amount exigible as one year’s rent. Magna Carta contains no provisions on this subject. Disputes, long and bitter, took place in the thirteenth century; but their history is irrelevant to the present inquiry.2

  II. Feudal Aids. The feudal tenant was expected to come to the aid of his lord in any special crisis or emergency. At first, the occasions on which these “aids” might be demanded were varied and undefined. Gradually they were limited to three. Glanvill,3 indeed, mentions only two: the knighting of the overlord’s eldest son, and the marriage of his eldest daughter; but he intends these, perhaps, as illustrations rather than as an exhaustive list. Before the beginning of the thirteenth century the recognized aids were the ransoming of the King and the two already mentioned.4 This understanding was embodied in Magna Carta.5

  A tradition has been handed down from an early date, that these aids were voluntary offerings made as a mark of affection.1 Long before John’s reign, however, the obligation had become fixed by law; the tenant dared not refuse to pay the recognized three. But, when the Crown exacted contributions for any other reason, it required consent of the commune concilium.

  The Great Charter, while confirming this tacit compromise, left the amount of aids undefined, merely stipulating that they should be “reasonable.” Examples of such payments, both before and after the Charter, are readily found in the Exchequer Rolls. Thus, in his fourteenth year Henry II. took one mark per knight’s fee for his daughter’s marriage; Henry III. took 20s., and Edward I. 40s. for a similar purpose. For Richard’s ransom, 20s. had been exacted from each knight’s fee (save those owned by men actually serving in the field); and Henry III. took 40s. in his thirty–eighth year at the knighting of his son. The Statute of Westminster I.2 fixed the “reasonable” aid payable to mesne lords at 20s. per knight’s fee, and 20s. for every estate in socage of £20 annual value. This rate, it will be observed, is one–fifth of the knight’s relief.3 The Crown, in thus enforcing “reason” on mesne lords, seems never to have intended that the same limit should hamper its own dealings with Crown tenants, but continued to exact larger sums whenever it thought fit.4 Thus £2 per fee was taken in 1346 at the knighting of the Black Prince.

  A statute of Edward III.5 at last extended to the Crown the same measure of “reasonableness” as had been applied three–quarters of a century earlier to mesne lords. The last instances of the exaction of aids in England occur as late as the reign of James I., who, in 1609, demanded one for the knighting of the ill–fated Prince Henry, and in 1613 another for the marriage of his daughter Elizabeth.

  III. Suit and Service. This phrase expresses the essential obligations inherent in the very nature of the feudal tie. It may be expanded (as regards tenure in chivalry) into the duty of attendance at the lord’s court, whether met for administrative or judicial purposes, or for reasons of mere display, and the further duty of military service under that lord’s banner in the field. Suit had ceased to be an urgent question before the reign of John. Indeed, the barons were gradually approaching the modern conception, which regards it as a privilege rather than a burden to attend the commune concilium—the embryo Parliament—of the King.

  It was otherwise with the duties of military service, which were rendered every year more unwillingly, partly because of the increased frequency of warlike expeditions, partly because of the greater cost of campaigning in distant lands like Poitou, partly because the English barons were completely out of sympathy with John’s foreign policy and with him. We have seen that the want of definition in the Conqueror’s reign left to future ages a legacy of strife. William and his barons lived in the present; and the present did not urgently call for definition. Therefore, the duration of the military service, and the conditions on which exemption could be claimed, were originally vague; but the return due (servitium debitum) for each knight’s fee was gradually fixed by custom at the service of one fully armed horseman during forty days. There were still, however, innumerable minor points on which disputes might arise, and these remained even in 1215. Indeed, although several chapters of the Charter attempted to settle certain of these disputed points, others were left as bones of contention to subsequent reigns: for example, the exact equipment of a knight; the liability to serve for more than forty days on receiving pay for the extra time; what exemption might be claimed by churchmen; how far a tenant might compromise for actual service by tendering money; whether attendance and money might not both be withheld, if the King did not lead his forces in person; and whether service was due for foreign wars equally as for home ones.1

  Difficulties increased as time went on. The Conqueror’s followers had estates on both sides of the Channel: his wars were theirs. Before John’s reign, these simple relations had become complicated by two considerations. By forfeitures and the division of inheritances, holders of English and of Norman fiefs had become distinct. On the other hand, the expansion of the dominions of the English kings increased the number of their wars, and the expense of each expedition. The small wars with Wales and Scotland formed sufficient drain on the resources of English magnates without their being summoned to fight in Maine or Gascony.

  Were the barons bound to follow John in a forlorn attempt, of which they disapproved, to recover his lost fiefs from the French Crown? Or were they bound to support him only in his legitimate schemes as King of England? Or were they, by way of compromise, liable for services in the identical possessions held by William the Conqueror at the date when their ancestors first got their fiefs—that is, for wars in England and Normandy alone? So early as 1198 the Knights of St. Edmunds refused to serve in Normandy, while offering to pay scutage.2 The northern barons in 1213 declared that they owed no service whatsoever out of England.3 This extreme claim put them clearly in the wrong, since John could produce precedents to the contrary. When, on his return from the unfortunate expedition of 1214, he demanded a scutage from all who had not followed him to Poitou, the malcontents declared that they had no obligation either to follow him out of the kingdom, or to pay a scutage in lieu thereof.1 Pope Innocent was probably correct in condemning this contention as founded neither on English law nor on feudal custom.2 There is some ground for believing that a compromise was mooted on the basis that the barons should agree to serve in Normandy and Brittany, as well as in England, on being exempted from fighting elsewhere abroad.3

  A definite understanding was never arrived at: chapter 16 of Magna Carta provided that existing services were not to be increased, without defining what these were. This was to shelve the difficulty: the dispute went on under varying forms and led to an unseemly wrangle between Edward I. and his Constable and Marshal, dramatized in a classic passage by Walter of Hemingburgh.4 Strangely enough, the Confirmatio Cartarum of 1297, which was, in part, the outcome of this later quarrel, omits (like Magna Carta itself)5 all reference to foreign service. The omission from both charters of all mention of the chief cause of dispute is noteworthy. It must be remembered, however, that the question of liability to serve abroad had practically resolved itself into that of liability to scutage, and that chapters 12 and 14 of the Charter of 1215 provided an adequate check on the levy of all scutages; but this is a subject that requires separate and detailed treatment.

  IV. Scutage. The Crown did not always insist on personal service, but was frequently willing to accept a commutation in the form of a money payment. The subject of scutage is one of the most vexed of questions, all received opinions of yesterday having to–day been thrown into the melting pot. The theories of Stubbs and Freeman, once universally accepted, require substantial modifications. Four propositions may be stated with some confidence: (1) that scutage is an ambiguous term with a vague general meaning as well as a narrow technical meaning; (2) that the importance of the changes introduced by Henry II. in 1156 and 1159 has been much exaggerated; (3) that scutage was always in the option of the King, never of the barons, his tenants; and (4) that at a later time, probably during John’s reign, scutage changed its character, and became, partly through altered circumstances and partly by the King’s deliberate policy, a much more burdensome exaction. Each of these propositions requires explanations:

  (1) The proper technical meaning of scutagium or “shield–money” is a money payment of so much per “shield” (that is, per knight’s fee) by a tenant in lieu of actual attendance in the army of his feudal lord: it is, as Dr. Stubbs explains,1 “an honourable commutation for personal service.” The word, however, is also more loosely used for any exaction assessed on a feudal basis, irrespective of the occasion of its levy; and, in this wider sense, includes feudal aids and other payments as well.2

  (2) Professor Freeman, Dr. Stubbs, and their adherents held that one of Henry’s most important reforms was the invention of scutage; that he allowed his Crown tenants at their discretion to substitute payments in money for the old obligation of personal service in the field—this option being granted to ecclesiastics in 1156, and to lay barons in 1159. Such a theory had a priori much to recommend it. A measure of this nature, while giving volume and elasticity to the resources of the Crown, was calculated subtly to undermine the basis of the feudal tie; but Henry, far–seeing statesman as he was, could not discard the ideals of his own generation: no evidence that he made any sweeping change is forthcoming. On the contrary, his grandfather, Henry I., is shown by the evidence of extant charters to have accepted money in place of the services of knights when it suited him (notably from church fiefs in 1109),3 and there is no evidence (direct or indirect) to show that the grandson accepted such commutation when it did not suit him. Scutage was thus known in England half a century before 1156—the traditional date of its introduction.

  (3) Further, neither before nor after the reign of Henry II. had the individual baron any option of tendering at his discretion money in place of personal service. The conclusions on this subject formulated by Dr. Horace Round lie implicitly in the examples from the Pipe Rolls stored in the famous work of Madox. From these it would appear that the procedure of the Exchequer of the great Angevin and his two sons might be explained in some such propositions as these:

  (a) The option to convert service into scutage lay with the Crown; not with the tenants, either individually or as a body. When the King summoned his army, no baron could (as Professor Freeman would have us believe) simply stay away under obligation of paying a small fixed sum to the Exchequer. On the contrary, Henry and his sons jealously preserved the right to insist on personal service whenever it suited them; efficient substitutes were not always accepted, much less money payments.

  (b) If the individual wished to stay at home he required to make a special bargain with the King, paying such sum as the King thought fit to demand and sometimes having to find a substitute in addition. Exorbitant sums (not properly “scutages” at all) might thus be extorted from stay–at–homes ne transfretent or pro remanendo ab exercitu—phrases which appear in the Pipe Rolls of Richard. A Crown vassal in John’s twelfth year made fine “that he might send two knights to serve for him in the army of Ireland.”1 In such cases, each baron made his own bargain with the Crown: a scutage, on the contrary, “when it ran in the land” was at a uniform rate.

  (c) The tenant–in–chivalry who stayed at home without first making his bargain was in much worse plight. He had broken faith, and in strict feudal theory had forfeited his fief by failing to perform the service for which he held it. He was “in mercy,” and might be glad to accept such terms of pardon as a gracious king might offer him.1 Sometimes, quite small amercements were inflicted: the Abbot of Pershore in 1196 escaped with 40s:2 But the Crown sometimes insisted on total forfeiture.3

  It was the duty of the Barons of Exchequer to determine whether lands had thus escheated by default, and also to determine the amount of “forfeit” to be taken where confiscation was not justified or insisted on. The barons wished to refer such questions to the judicium parium.4

  (4) Scutage tended continually to become more burdensome:

  (a) With new inventions and more complicated fashions in arms and armour for man and horse, and increased rates payable for the hire of mercenaries, the expenses of a campaign steadily increased. It was not unnatural that the normal rate of scutage should increase in sympathy. Under Henry the recognized maximum had been two marks, the exact equivalent of 40 days’ wages at the normal rate of 8d. per diem.5 Usually he was content with a smaller sum per knight’s fee: 20s., 13s. 4d. or even 10s. being sometimes taken.

  (b) A second method of increasing the yield of scutage was to readjust the assessment on which it was based, by increasing the number of contributory knights’ fees. Henry II. in 1166 had invited his unsuspecting barons to furnish him with details of the number of knights actually enfeoffed on their lands both before and after the death of his grandfather; and then treated the latter as a sort of unearned increment, the benefit of which should be shared by the Crown. The amount of servitium debitum as previously reckoned was increased by the addition of the number of knights of the novum feoffamentum, that is, of those created subsequent to the death of Henry I.1 The basis of assessment thus fixed in 1166 remained unaltered at John’s accession.

  (c) The third respect in which scutages tended to become more burdensome was in their increased frequency. This was, in part, a consequence of the growth of the Empire of the Kings of England, bringing with it a widening of interests and ambitions, and an increase in the number and expense of wars. Much depended, however, on the spirit in which this feudal prerogative was used, on the amount of consideration given to the needs and interests of the barons. Neither Henry nor Richard seems to have regarded it as other than an expedient to be reserved for special emergencies, not as a permanent source of revenue in normal times.

  Henry II. seems to have levied money in name of scutage only when actually at war—on seven occasions in all during a reign of thirty–five years; and only once at a rate exceeding 20s., if we may trust Mr. Round,2 and that when he was putting forth a special effort against Toulouse. Richard I., rapacious as he was, levied, apparently, only four scutages during ten years, and the rate of 20s. was never exceeded even in the King’s hour of urgent need,—in 1194, when the arrears of his ransom had to be paid and preparations simultaneously made for war in Normandy.

  If it can be shown that John altered established usages under every one of these heads, breaking away from all restraints, and that too in the teeth of the keen opposition of a high–spirited baronage whose members felt that their pride and prestige as well as their money–bags were attacked, a distinct step is taken towards understanding the crisis of 1215. Such knowledge would explain why a storm, long brewing, burst in John’s reign, neither sooner nor later; and even why some of the disreputable stories told by the chroniclers and accepted by Blackstone and others, found inventors and believers.

  It is here maintained that John did make changes in all of these directions; and, further, that the incidence of this increase in feudal burdens was rendered even more unendurable by two considerations:—because at his accession there remained unpaid (particularly from the fiefs of the northern knights) large arrears of the scutages imposed in his brother’s reign,1 and because in June, 1212, he drew the feudal chain tight by a drastic and galling measure.

  That John elevated scutage from a weapon reserved for emergencies into a regular source of revenue, and that he raised the rate demanded beyond the recognized maximum of two marks, becomes apparent from a glance at the table2 of scutages extorted during his reign:

  First scutage of reign—	1198–9 — 2 marks per knight’s fee.
  Second scutage of reign—	1200–1 2 marks per knight’s fee.
  Third scutage of reign—	1201–2 2 marks per knight’s fee.
  Fourth scutage of reign—	1202–3 2 marks per knight’s fee.
  Fifth scutage of reign—	1203–4 2 marks per knight’s fee.
  Sixth scutage of reign—	1204–5 2 marks per knight’s fee.
  Seventh scutage of reign—	1205–6 20s. marks per knight’s fee.
  Eighth scutage of reign—	1209–10 2 marks per knight’s fee.
  Ninth scutage of reign—	1210–11 2 marks per knight’s fee.
  Tenth scutage of reign—	1210–11 20s. marks per knight’s fee.
  Eleventh scutage of reign—	1213–14 3 marks per knight’s fee.

  It will be seen that, in his very first year, John took a scutage at two marks per scutum. Next year he wisely allowed a breathing space; then without a break in each of the third, fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh years of his reign, scutages were extorted in quick succession at the same high rate. Fines, in addition to this scutage of two marks, were exacted from those who had not made the necessary compromise for personal service in due time.3

  These scutages were collected with increasing difficulty, and arrears accumulated; but the spirit of opposition increased even more rapidly. In 1206, apparently, the breaking point was almost reached.1 Accordingly, in that year, some slight relaxation was allowed—the annual scutage was reduced from two marks to 20s. John’s needs, however, were as great as ever, and would prevent further concessions, unless something untoward happened. Something untoward did happen in the summer of 1207, when John quarrelled with the Pope. This postponed his quarrel with the baronage. John had, for the time being, the whole of the confiscated property of the clergy in his clutches. The day of reckoning for this luxury was still far distant, and the King could meanwhile enjoy a full exchequer without goading his Crown tenants to rebellion. For three years no scutage was imposed. In 1209, however, financial needs again closed in on John, and a new scutage of two marks was levied; followed in the next year actually by two scutages, the first of two marks against Wales, and the second of 20s. against Scotland. John had no sense of moderation. These three levies, amounting to a total of five–and–a–half marks per fee within two years, strained the tension almost to breaking point.

  During the two years following (Michaelmas, 1211, to Michaelmas, 1213) no scutage was imposed. John, however, although he thus a second time relaxed the tension, had no intention to do so for long. On the contrary, he determined to ascertain if scutages could not be made to yield more in the future. By writs, dated 1st June, 1212, he instituted a strict Inquest into the amount of service exigible from every estate in England. Commissioners were appointed to take the sworn verdicts of local juries as to the amount of liability due by each Crown vassal. Mr. Round2 considers that previous writers have unaccountably ignored the importance of this measure, “an Inquest worthy to be named in future by historians in conjunction with those of 1086 and 1166,”3 and describes it as an effort “to revive rights of the Crown alleged to have lapsed.” John intended by this Inquest, the returns to which were due on the 25th June, to prepare the necessary machinery for wringing the uttermost penny out of the next scutage when occasion for one again arose. That occasion came in 1214.

  Up to this date, even John had not dared to exact a rate of more than two marks per knight’s fee; but the weight of his constant scutages had been increased by the fact that he sometimes exacted personal services in addition, and that he inflicted crushing fines upon those who neither went nor arranged beforehand terms of composition with the King.1

  Thus insidiously throughout the entire reign, the stream of feudal obligations steadily rose until the barons feared that nothing of their property would be saved from the torrent. The normal rate of scutage had been raised, the frequency of its imposition had been increased, the conditions of foreign service had become more burdensome, and the objects of foreign expeditions more unpopular; while attempts were sometimes made to exact both service and scutage in the same year. The limit of the barons’ endurance was reached when, under circumstances peculiarly inauspicious, John, in May, 1214, demanded a new scutage at the unprecedented rate of three marks on every fee, grounded doubtless on the searching inquest of 1212.2

  This outline of the history of scutage makes plain that grievances connected with its abuse formed one of the chief incentives to the insurrection that resulted in the winning of the Great Charter.

  III.

  Royal Justice and Feudal Justice.

  A well–known aphorism describes the King as “the sole fountain of justice.” It would be an anachronism to transport this metaphor into the thirteenth century. In John’s reign there still were, not one, but many competing jurisdictions. It was by no means certain that the King’s Courts were the proper tribunals to which a wronged individual must repair. On the contrary, the great bulk of the rural population, the villeins, had no locus standi except in the court of the manor to which they belonged; while the doors of the royal Courts had been opened to the ordinary freeman no earlier than the reign of Henry II. Royal justice was still the exception, not the rule. Each man must seek redress, in the ordinary case, in his own locality. To dispense justice to the nation at large was no part of the normal business of a medieval King.

  I. Rival systems of Law Courts. In the thirteenth century, there existed not one source of justice, but many. Rival courts, eagerly competing to extend their own sphere of usefulness and to increase their own fees, existed in a bewildering multitude. Putting aside for the moment the Courts Christian, the Borough Courts, the Forest Courts, and all exceptional or peculiar tribunals, there existed three great rival systems of jurisdiction which may be named in the order in which they became in turn prominent in England.1

  (1) Local or District Courts. Justice was originally a local product, administered in rude tribunals which partook more or less of a popular character. Each shire had its assembly for hearing pleas, known as a “shire–moot” in Anglo–Saxon days, and as a “comitatus” after the Norman Conquest; while each of the smaller districts subdividing the shire, and forming units of administration for purposes of taxation, defence, justice, and police, had a moot or council of its own, serving as a court of law, to which the inhabitants of the villages brought their pleas in the first instance. These smaller districts were known as hundreds in the south, and as wapentakes (a name of Danish derivation) in the north.

  The theory generally received is that all freemen were originally suitors in the courts of shire and hundred, and that the whole body of those present, the ordinary peasant (“ceorl”) equally with the man of noble blood (“eorl”), took an active part in the proceedings, pronouncing (or, at least, concurring in) the judgments or dooms there declared; but that, as time progressed, the majority of the Anglo–Saxon ceorls sank to the half–servile position of villeins—men tied for life to the soil of the manor, and passing, like property, from father to son. These villeins, although still subjected to the burden of attendance, and to some of the other duties of their former free estate, were deprived of those rights which had once formed the counterpart of the obligations. Another school of historians, it is true, denies that the mass of the population, even in very early times, ever enjoyed an active share in the dispensation of justice. It is unnecessary here to attempt a solution of the intricate problems of the courts of shire and hundred; or to discuss the still more vexed question how far the small assembly of each township is worthy to be reckoned a formal Court of Law.1

  (2) Feudal Courts. Centuries before the Norman Conquest, the system of popular or district justice found itself confronted with a rival scheme of jurisdictions—the innumerable private courts belonging to the feudal lords. These private tribunals, known as feudal, manorial, or seignorial courts, slowly gained ground on the older public courts of shire, hundred, and wapentake.2

  Practically every holder of land in England came to be also the holder of a court for the inhabitants of that land. The double meaning of the word “dominus” illustrates the double position of the man who was thus both owner and lord.1 In the struggle between two schemes of justice, the tribunals of the feudal magnates triumphed over, but never abolished their rivals. The earlier popular courts lived on; but the system of district justice, which had once embraced the whole of England, was honeycombed by the growth of feudal courts. As each village passed under the domination of a lord, the village–moot became a manorial court endowed with wider powers and more effective sanctions for enforcing them. Further, as complete hundreds fell under control of powerful magnates, the courts of these hundreds were also transformed into feudal courts: franchises thus took the place of many of the old popular moots. Still, the older system retained part of the disputed ground, thanks to the protection of the Crown. Many hundreds never bowed to the exclusive domination of any one lord, and the courts of the shires were guarded by the Norman Kings against the encroachment of even the most powerful barons.

  Although it was the policy of the Norman Kings to prevent their barons from gaining excessive powers of jurisdiction, it was by no means their policy to suppress these jurisdictions altogether. The Conqueror and his sons were glad that justice should be administered, even in a rough–and–ready manner, in those districts whither the Crown’s arm was not long enough to reach, and where the popular courts were likely to prove inefficient. The old system and the new existed side by side; it was to the interest of the central government to play off the one against the other.

  In later days (but not till long after Magna Carta), each manorial court had three distinct aspects, according to the class of pleas it was called upon to try. Later writers distinguish absolutely from each other, the Court Baron, settling civil disputes between freeholders of the manor; the Court Customary, deciding non–criminal cases among the villeins; and the Court Leet, a petty criminal court enforcing order and punishing small offences. The powers of these courts might vary, and in many districts the jurisdiction over misdemeanours belonged not to the steward of the manor, but to the sheriff in his half–yearly Circuits or “Tourns” through the county. In imperfectly feudalized districts the Tourn of the sheriff performed the same functions as the Court Leet did within a franchise.

  (3) Royal Courts. Originally, the King’s Court had been merely one among many feudal courts—differing in degree rather than in kind from those of the great earls or barons. The King, as feudal lord, dispensed justice among his tenants, just as any baron or freeman dispensed justice among his tenants, bond or free. No one dreamed, in the time of the Norman Kings, that the Curia Regis could undertake the labour of dispensing justice for the whole nation. The monarchy had no machinery at command for a task which no Anglo–Saxon King, nor even William I., could have undertaken. No attempt in this direction was made until the reign of Henry II., who was placed in a position of unprecedented power, partly by circumstances, but chiefly by his great abilities. Even he, born reformer as he was, would never have increased so greatly the labours of government, if he had not seen that the change would enhance the security of his throne and the revenue of his exchequer.

  From an early date, however, the business of the Monarch was wider than the business of any other lord. In a dim way, too, it must have been apparent from the first, that offences against the established order were offences also against the King, and that to redress these was the King’s business competent in the King’s Courts. The Crown, further, asserted a right to investigate pleas of special importance, whether civil or criminal. Still, under William and his sons, royal justice had made no deliberate attempt to become national justice, or to supersede feudal justice: the struggle came with the reforms of Henry II.1

  Thus the three great systems of jurisdiction, popular justice, feudal justice, and royal justice succeeded each other, on the whole, in the order in which they are here named. Yet the sequence is in some ways logical rather than chronological. No absolute line can be drawn, showing where one system ended and the next began. The germs of manorial jurisdiction may have been present from an early date. Shire–courts and hundred courts alike were continually in danger of falling under the domination of powerful local magnates. Yet, the shire–courts were successful in maintaining till the last (thanks to royal favour) their independence of the manorial jurisdictions; while only a proportion of the hundred courts fell into bondage. The royal courts, again, from an early date, withdrew causes from the Shire Courts and interfered with manorial franchises. The Courts Baron were silently undermined, until they sank into decrepitude without ceasing to exist. With these caveats, the three systems may be regarded, in some measure, as following one another in the order named:—popular justice, feudal justice, royal justice.

  II. Legal Procedure. The procedure adopted in litigation in Anglo–Saxon and Norman times was similar in essentials in all three classes of tribunals, and differed materially from the practice of courts of law at the present day. Some knowledge of the more glaring contrasts between ancient and modern procedure will conduce to an understanding of several obscure provisions of Magna Carta.

  Avoiding technical language, and eliminating special procedure peculiar to any one court or country, the principal stages in a litigation in a modern court of law may be given briefly as follows: (1) On the complaint of the party aggrieved a summons, or writ, is issued by an officer of the Court. Proceedings are opened by the command addressed to the defendant to appear in Court and answer what is alleged against him.

  (2) In the usual case each party lodges written statements of his facts and pleas—that is, of the circumstances as they appear to him (or such of them as he hopes to bring evidence to prove)—on which he founds his claim or his defence, and of the legal principles he intends to deduce from these circumstances. When these statements of facts and pleas have been revised and adjusted, the complete data are before the Court; each party has stated what he considers essential to his case.

  (3) Proof is, in due course, led; that is, each party is afforded an opportunity of proving such facts as he has alleged (and as require proof through the denial of his opponent). This he may do by documents, witnesses, or oath. Each party has the further privilege of shaking his opponent’s evidence by cross–examination.

  (4) The next important stage is the debate, the main object of which is to establish by legal arguments the pleas founded on; to deduce the legal consequences inherent in the facts which have been proved.

  (5) Finally, the Judge gives his decision. He has to determine, after weighing the evidence led by either party, what facts have really been established, and how far the various pleas of plaintiff and defendant respectively are implied in these facts. Reasoning of such a kind as can be successfully performed only by a trained legal mind is thus necessary before the final decree or sentence can be pronounced by a Judge in a modern court of law.

  A trial in Anglo–Saxon and early Norman times stands in notable contrast to all this in its stages and procedure, and even more in the spirit which pervades the whole. Thus, the proceedings, from first to last, were purely oral, there being no original writ or summons, no written pleadings, no record kept of the decision except in the memories of those present. The functions of “the Judges” were entirely different, and called for no previous training, since they were not required either to weigh a mass of evidence or to determine the bearing of subtle legal arguments, but merely to see fairplay, and to decide, according to simple rules, well established by centuries of custom, by what test the allegations of plaintiff and defendant were respectively to stand or fall. Finally, the arrangement of the stages of the litigation was entirely different: it is with something of a shock that the modern lawyer learns that in civil and criminal causes alike “judgment” invariably preceded “trial.” Reflection will convince him that each of these words had in the Middle Ages a meaning different from what it bears to–day. That this is so can be best understood by following the stages of the old procedure.

  (1) The initial difficulty was to obtain the presence of the defendant in Court, since there existed a strange reluctance either to compel his attendance or to allow judgment to pass against him by default. No initial writ was issued commanding him to appear; almost endless delays were allowed.

  (2) When both parties had been, after many adjournments, actually brought face to face before the Court, the statements alike of the claim and of the defence were made verbally and in set formulae, the slightest slip or stumble in the words of which involved complete failure. This is merely one illustration of the tremendously formal and technical nature of early legal procedure, a trait common to all primitive systems of jurisprudence.

  (3) Before the plaintiff could put the defendant on his defence, he required to show some presumption of the probability or bona fides of his case. This he usually did by producing two friends ready to substantiate his claim, known sometimes as his “suit” (Latin secta), or his “fore–witnesses.” Their testimony had no reference to the particular facts of the case; it was not weighed against the “proof” afterwards led by the defendant; its object was merely to warrant the Court in demanding “proof” from the latter at all.1

  (4) Then came the judgment or “doom,” which partook in no respect of the nature of the judgment of a modern tribunal. It came before the proof or trial, not after it, and was therefore called a “medial” judgment. It consisted in decreeing whether or no, on the strength of the previous procedure, the defendant should be put to his proof at all; and if so, what “proof” should be demanded.

  Now, the exact test to be appointed by the court varied somewhat, according to circumstances, but long–established custom had laid down with some exactitude a rule applicable to every case likely to occur; and, further, the possible modes of proof were limited to some four or five at the outside. In Anglo–Saxon times, these were mainly compurgation, ordeal, witnesses (whose functions were, however, widely different from those of witnesses in modern law), and charters. The Norman Conquest introduced for the new–comers, a form of proof previously unknown in England—“trial by combat”—which tended, for the upper classes at least, to supersede all earlier procedures. The “proof,” of whatever kind it might be, thus appointed by the “judges” for the defendant’s performance was technically known as a “law” (Latin lex) in the sense of a “test” or “trial” or “task,” according to success or failure in which his case should stand or fall.1 To pronounce a “judgment” in this sense was a simple affair, a mere formality in the ordinary case, where room for dubiety could hardly be admitted: thus it was possible for “judgment” to be delivered by all the members of a feudal court, or all the suitors present at the hundred or shire–moot.

  (5) The crucial stage, this “trial” which thus came after “judgment,” consisted in one party (usually the defendant) essaying, on the day appointed, to satisfy the court as to the truth of his allegations by performing the task or “law” which had been set or “doomed” to him. When this consisted in the production of a charter, or of “transaction witnesses” (that is, the testimony of those officials appointed in each market–town to certify the conclusion of such bargains as the sale of cattle), it commends itself readily to modern approval. More frequently it took the form of “an oath with oath–helpers,” the plaintiff bringing with him eleven or twelve of his trusty friends or dependents to swear after him the words of a long and cumbrous oath, under risk of being punished as perjurers for any slip in the formula. Sometimes the decision was referred to the intervention of Providence by appealing to the ordeal of the red–hot iron or the more dreaded ordeal of water. After the Norman Conquest, the trial in all litigations between men of high rank, took the form of duellum or legally regulated combat between the parties. The defendant gained his case if he caused the plaintiff to own himself a “craven,” or if he held out till nightfall against the plaintiff’s attempts to force him to utter that fateful word.1

  This earlier form of “lex” or trial (which is referred to in several clauses of Magna Carta)2 was thus entirely different from the modern “trial.” It may be said without exaggeration that there was no “trial” at all in the current meaning of the word—no balancing of the testimony of one set of witnesses against another, no open proof and cross–examination, no debate on the legal principles involved. The ancient “trial” was merely a formal test, which was, except in the case of battle, entirely one–sided. The phrase “burden of proof” was inapplicable. The litigant to whom “a law” was appointed had rather the “privilege of proof,” and usually won his case—especially in compurgation, and even in ordeal if he had arranged matters properly with the priest who presided. In one sense, the final “trial” was determined by the parties themselves, or by one of them; in another and higher sense the facts at issue were left to Providence; a miracle, if necessary, would attest the just claim of the innocent.3

  The essentials of this procedure1 were the same in Norman as in Anglo–Saxon England, and that in all three classes of tribunals—popular, manorial, and royal courts. Two innovations the Normans did make; they introduced trial by combat and “inquisitio.” Among the prerogatives of the Norman Dukes was this right to compel the sworn evidence of reliable men of any district—men specially picked for the purpose, and put on oath before answering the questions asked of them. This procedure was known as inquisitio (or the seeking of information) from the point of view of the government making the inquiry, and as recognitio (or the giving of information) from the point of view of those supplying it. This device was capable of endless extension to new uses in the deft hands of the Norman Kings. William employed it in compiling Domesday Book; while his successors made it the instrument of experiments in the science of taxation. It has a double claim to the interest of the constitutional historian, because it was one of the influences that helped to mould our Parliamentary institutions; and because several of the new uses to which it came to be put had a close connection with the origin of trial by jury. The recognitors, indeed, were simply local jurors in a rude or elementary form.2

  III. Reforms of Henry II. in Law Courts and Legal Procedure. It was reserved for Henry of Anjou to inaugurate a new era in the relations of the three classes of courts. He was the first king deliberately to plan the overthrow of the feudal jurisdictions by insidiously undermining them, if not yet by open attack. He was the first king to reduce the old district courts so thoroughly under the control of royal officials as to turn them practically into royal courts. He was the first king also to throw open the doors of his own courts of law to all–comers, to all freemen, that is to say, for the villein had for centuries still to seek redress in the Court of that very lord of the manor who was too often his oppressor.1

  In brief, then, Henry’s policy was twofold: to convert the County Courts completely into Royal Courts, since in them royal officials now dispensed royal justice according to the same rules as prevailed at the King’s Curia; and to reduce all manorial or private Courts to insignificance by diverting pleas to his own Curia, and leaving the rival tribunals to die gradually from inanition. Both branches of this policy met ultimately with success, although the event hung in the balance until long after his death. The barons, though partially deceived by the insidious nature of Henry’s reforms, did what they could to thwart him; but the current was with the Crown. Royal justice steadily encroached upon feudal justice. One of the last stands made by the barons has left its traces in several chapters of Magna Carta.2 These contain what seem, at first sight, to be merely trivial alterations of technical points of court procedure; but inextricably bound up with them are principles of wide constitutional importance. It was Henry’s good fortune or policy to disguise radical reforms until they looked like small changes of procedure; it follows that the framers of Magna Carta, while appearing merely to seek the reversal of these trivial points, were really seeking to return to the totally different conditions which had prevailed prior to the reforms of Henry.

  The short account of that monarch’s system of procedure, necessary to a comprehension of Magna Carta, falls naturally into two divisions.

  (1) Criminal Justice. (a) By his Assizes of Clarendon and Northampton, Henry reserved important crimes for the exclusive consideration of his own judges either on circuit or at his court; and he demanded entry for these judges into all franchises for that purpose. In this part of his policy, the King was completely successful; heinous crimes were, in the beginning of the thirteenth century, admitted on all hands to be “pleas of the Crown” (that is, cases reserved exclusively for royal jurisdiction); and Magna Carta made no attempt to reverse this part of the Crown’s policy: all that was attempted in 1215 was to obtain a promise that these functions, now surrendered to the Crown forever, should be discharged by the Crown’s officials in a proper manner.1

  (b) Henry’s usual good sense, in this matter stimulated by some notable miscarriages of justice, led him to question the equity of the procedure usually adopted in criminal pleas: for private “appeal” (or accusation by the injured party or his nearest surviving relative), he substituted, whenever possible, communal accusation; that is, the duty of indicting suspected criminals before the King’s Justices was no longer left to private initiative, but was laid on a body of neighbours—the predecessors of the Grand Jury of later days. Appeals were discouraged and rules laid down restricting the right of accusation.2

  (c) A necessary complement was the discouragement of “trial by combat.” An ingenious device was invented and extended to an increasing number of cases; an accused individual might apply for a writ known as de odio et atia, and evade the duellum by a reference to what was practically a jury of neighbours.1

  (2) Civil Justice. Henry’s innovations under this head were equally important. In his reign justice, it is sometimes said, was pigeon–holed. Much attention was bestowed on the formalities of litigation; while pleas began to be classified into stereotyped groups, each form of grievance having its appropriate remedy, to be obtained only by means of the appropriate writ.

  (a) The Writ System. An unflinching rule was established that no case could be brought before the royal court until a writ had been obtained from chancery. This had to be paid for, sometimes at a fixed rate, and sometimes at whatever sum the Crown demanded. The whole procedure in the royal courts, which followed the issuing of such a writ, came to be known as “the writ system.” From an early date, much attention was directed to the devising of forms of writ applicable to various cases. The system, somewhat inflexible from the first, had become absolutely rigid long before the close of the thirteenth century. If a proper writ was not selected, or if no such writ had been invented, the wronged individual had no remedy in the King’s courts of common law. Registers of writs were drawn up, copied and enlarged, and transmitted from one generation to another.2

  (b) Control of Feudal Courts. Whether devised for that purpose or not, this writ system proved a useful instrument for diverting the stream of litigation from the barons’ courts to the curia regis. Henry, if we may credit Glanvill, succeeded in establishing the somewhat astounding rule that no plea concerning land could be commenced in any court without the authority of a royal writ.3 Even if such writs were issued as matter of course, the mere need of asking for them would supply Henry with information doubly valuable in relation to certain other expedients still to be explained. That King, applying to his own needs procedure known to the Carolingian Kings, secured an effective means of evoking suits regarding freehold from the seignorial courts to his own. This was done by procedure initiated by two types of writs: “writs of right” addressed to the holder of a court, bidding him do justice under penalty of interference by the royal court; and “writs praecipe” addressed to the sheriff, bidding him require the holder of a piece of land to hand it over to a claimant or explain to the King why he has not done so.1

  It is probable that even in 1215 the Crown had not fully developed the consequences afterwards seen to be involved in the writ of right, properly so called; but Henry II. and his sons seem freely to have used the writ praecipe in such a manner as to cause their barons to lose their jurisdiction—an abuse struck at by chapter 34 of Magna Carta.

  (c) Royal Pleas and Common Pleas. The mass of new business made it necessary to increase the staff of judges and apportion the work. A natural division was that between ordinary (or common) pleas and pleas of the Crown. This distinction is recognized in many separate chapters.2 Thus two groups of judges were formed which, in later years, developed into separate courts—the Court of Common Pleas (known as “the Bench,” that is, the ordinary Bench), and the King’s Bench (known earlier as the court Coram Rege, supposed to be held in the King’s presence).

  (d) The Petty Assizes. Special procedure for determining titles to land or rights of possession was also invented by Henry to supersede trial by battle. These Assizes, as they were called, are fully discussed elsewhere.3 While the Grand Assize is not mentioned in Magna Carta, its abuse was indirectly struck at by the clause concerning writs praecipe in chapter 34: the Petty Assizes, however, would seem to have won favour with the barons, who in chapter 18 demanded that regular sessions for hearing them should be held four times a year.

  These were the chief innovations that enabled Henry II. to effect a revolution in the relations of royal to feudal justice. As time went on, new writs were continually devised to meet new types of cases; and litigants flocked readily to the King’s Courts, leaving the seignorial courts empty of business and of fees. Nor was this the only grievance of the barons. When one of their own number was amerced or accused of any offence involving loss of liberty or lands, he might be compelled by the Crown, under Henry and his sons, to submit to have the amercement assessed, or the criminal proceedings conducted, by one of the new Benches (by a tribunal composed of some four or five of the King’s officials), in place of the time–honoured judgment of his peers assembled in the Commune Concilium (the predecessor of the modern Parliament).

  Can we wonder that the barons objected to be amerced and judged by their inferiors?1 Can we wonder that they resented the complete though gradual supersession of their own profitable jurisdictions by the royal courts?2 or that they looked with suspicion on every new development of the royal justice? Can we wonder that, when they seemed to have King John for the moment in their power, they demanded redress of these grievances, as well as of those connected with increase of feudal burdens? The cause for wonder rather is that their demands were not more sweeping: the barons, in their hour of triumph, accepted cordially one half of the royal innovations.

  The chapters bearing on jurisdiction may be arranged in two groups, some reactionary, and some favourable to Henry’s reforms. On the one hand, no lord of a manor shall be robbed of his Court by the King evoking before the royal courts pleas between two freeholders of the lord’s manor;3 no freeman shall be judged or condemned by the King’s officials, but only before the full body of his peers;1 earls and barons must be amerced only by their equals.2 On the other hand, in prescribing remedies for abuses connected with numerous branches of legal procedure, the barons accepted by implication this new procedure itself and the royal encroachments implied therein. For example, the Crown’s right to hold “Common Pleas” was impliedly admitted, when the barons asked and obtained that these should be tried in some certain place (that is, at Westminster).3 Yet these very pleas must have included many cases which, prior to Henry II.’s reforms, would have been tried in a seignorial court. Again, in regulating the petty assizes, chapters 18 and 19 admit the Crown’s right to hold them. Here, as in chapter 40, the ground of complaint is not that there is too much royal justice, but rather that there is too little of it: henceforth it must be neither delayed nor denied. Further, the encroachments made by Henry II. in 1166 on the private franchises in the matter of criminal jurisdiction are tacitly accepted by the acquiescence in the King’s definition of “Pleas of the Crown” implied in chapter 24.

  These, then, are the two groups into which the innovations made by Henry and his sons naturally fell, as viewed by John’s opponents in 1215: some of them had come to be warmly welcomed; while others, it was insisted, must be swept away.

  PART III.

  MAGNA CARTA: ITS FORM AND CONTENTS.

  I.

  Its Prototypes: Earlier Charters.

  The traditional view makes Magna Carta the direct descendant of Henry Beauclerk’s Coronation Charter, which is, in turn, regarded as merely an amplification of the old coronation oath sworn by the Conqueror and his sons, in terms borrowed from a long line of Anglo–Saxon kings, stretching back from Edward Confessor to Edgar, Alfred and Egbert, until its origin is lost in the mists of antiquity. According to this time–honoured view, which insists on an exclusively Anglo–Saxon pedigree for the charters of Norman and Angevin kings, the charters of Henry I. and John were regarded as confirmations to the nation at large of the essential principles of the old laws of Alfred and of Edward, thus bridging over, alike in form and substance, the gulf of the Norman Conquest.

  The accuracy of these preconceptions has of late years been rudely questioned. The simple formula for solving all problems of English constitutional origins by assuming an unmixed Anglo–Saxon ancestry, has been challenged from more sides than one. Magna Carta, like the Constitution itself, is of mixed parentage, tracing its descent not entirely from Teutonic, but partly from Norman, and even Danish and Celtic sources. In the first place, John’s Charter derives some of its vital clauses from documents not couched in charter form. The Constitutions of Clarendon of 1164 and the Forma Procedendi of 1194 are as undoubtedly antecedents of Magna Carta as is the Coronation Charter of Henry itself. The same is true of many grants made by successive kings of England to the Church, to London and other cities, and to individual prelates and barons. (In a sense, the whole previous history of England went to the making of Magna Carta.)

  Then, again, the exclusively Anglo–Saxon origin of the antecedents of Henry’s Charter is by no means left unchallenged. A recent American writer, attacking the older theories as advanced by Bishop Stubbs, has formulated these three propositions: that Henry’s charter was feudal in character rather than constitutional or national, promising “a regulated feudal government” purged of Rufus’ misdeeds rather than a return to a “national” type of government; that its substance was derived from Norman innovations rather than from the Confessor’s or Canute’s laws; and that its form was founded on continental models, possibly on some Norman borough charter, and by no means on the old coronation oath.1

  These iconoclastic theories require to be modified: the claims of Magna Carta, on its formal side, at least, to an Anglo–Saxon ancestry have found a powerful advocate in Mr. W. H. Stevenson,2 who holds that the Anglo–Norman charters of liberties “are developments of the Anglo–Norman writ charter, and that in its turn is . . . merely the Anglo–Saxon writ translated into Latin.”3

  Looking both to the contents and the formalities of execution of John’s Great Charter, the safer opinion would seem to be, that, like the English Constitution, it is of mixed origin, deriving elements from ancestors of more races than one; but that the traditional line of descent from the oaths and writs of Anglo–Saxon kings, through the Charter of Henry I., is one that cannot be neglected.

  The promises of good government that connect King John with the old kings of Wessex are thus the outcome of an essential feature of the ancient monarchy, and of the rules that regulated succession to the Crown. Two rival principles, the elective and the hereditary, from an early date, had struggled for the mastery. In an unsettled state of society, nations cannot allow the sceptre to pass to an infant or a weakling. When a king died, leaving a son of tender age and a brother of mature ability, the magnates of the kingdom, the so–called Witan, claimed the right to choose a fitting successor. The exact relations between the elective and the hereditary principles were never laid down with absolute precision: the practice usually followed by the Witenagemot was to select some near kinsman of the late king competent for the post. The king–elect had still to be solemnly anointed, and this gave to the Church an important share in deciding who should be king. Not later than the days of Edgar, it became the practice for the officiating archbishop to exact an oath of good government from the new sovereign before his final coronation. The terms of this oath became stereotyped; and, as administered by Dunstan to King Ethelred, they are still extant.1

  This may be analyzed into three promises—peace to God’s Church and people; repression of violence in men of every rank; justice and mercy in all judgments. When William I., anxious in all things to fortify the legality of his title, took the oath in solemn form, he created a precedent of tremendous importance, although he may have regarded it at the moment as an empty formality.2 The quasi–elective character of the kingship, the need for coronation by the Church, and this tripartite oath were all preserved.

  This was of vital moment, because limits were thereby placed, in theory at least, to prerogatives that threatened to become absolute. The power of the Norman kings might almost be described as irresponsible despotism, tempered by fear of rebellion. Three forces, indeed, acted as curbs: the necessity for consulting the Curia Regis; the restraining influence of the Church; the growth of a body of public opinion, confined as yet to the upper classes.

  These elements counted for something, but failed to restrain sufficiently even an average king; while they were powerless against a strong ruler, like William I. The moment at which the Crown might be taken at disadvantage was during the interregnum that followed a king’s death. Thus, William Rufus, anxious to prevent his elder brother Robert from making good his claim to the English throne, succeeded chiefly through the friendship of Lanfranc. To gain this, he was compelled to make promises of good government, taking oath in the ancient form. In the same reign, began the practice of supplementing verbal promises by sealed charters. No such charter was indeed issued either by Rufus or his father when they were crowned; but the younger William, at a critical period in his reign, granted a short Charter of Liberties, the text of which has not come down to us. By a treaty made at Caen in 1091, Duke Robert and Rufus agreed that each should constitute the other his heir. Thus, at Rufus’ death, Henry was, in a sense, a usurper, and this made it necessary for him to bid high for influential support.1 It is to this doubtful title that Englishmen owe the first Charter of Liberties that has come down to us.2

  Roger of Wendover relates how “as many charters were made as there are counties in England, and by the King’s command they were deposited in the abbeys of every county as a memorial,” and this is confirmed by an analysis of the copies still preserved.1

  Henry’s coronation charter was the price paid for support in his candidature for the Crown. Its terms contain, however unconsciously, an indictment of his brother Rufus’ government and, perhaps, in part also of his father’s. The new king was merely “playing to the gallery”: when his purpose was served, his promises were broken.2 On the bearing of these promises there is room for diversity of opinion. Dr. Stubbs’ contention that Henry “definitely commits himself to the duties of a national king”3 has been rejected, as already explained, by recent critics. The more modern view is strengthened by an analysis of the Charter, revealing important concessions to the barons and the Church, while those to the people at large were few and vague. Of the fourteen chapters into which it is usually divided, chapter one proceeds on the narrative that the kingdom had been oppressed by unjust exactions. Henry, in the first place, makes free the holy Church of God, “so that I shall neither sell nor farm out nor, on the death of archbishop, or bishop or abbot, accept anything from the demesne of the church or from its feudal–tenants until a successor has been inducted to it.”

  It seems doubtful whether the regrettably vague phraseology of the qualifying clause is intended merely to apply the generalities of the church’s “freedom” to specific instances, or whether it must be taken as a deliberate restriction. The prohibition of selling has been read as referring to the simoniacal practice of taking money from aspirants to episcopal preferments; but more probably it was meant to prohibit the alienation of the property of a vacant see, a practice that must have been often resorted to, if we judge from the efforts at recovery made by successive archbishops, notably by Becket. This reading is the more probable from the fact that “selling” is here coupled with “farming out,” an expedient clearly inapplicable to prelatical appointments and referring to the Crown’s practice of granting leases of the lands of vacant sees for nominal annual returns in consideration of a heavy grassum paid to the Treasury at the commencement of the lease. The rest of the clause is best interpreted as a renunciation of the claim to exact either a “relief” from a prelate on his appointment or payments in lieu of relief from tenants of a vacant see or royal abbey.1

  The last clause of the chapter abrogates evil customs whereby the kingdom was unjustly oppressed, and then proceeds to define them—a process that occupies the remaining thirteen chapters of the document. Chapter 2 promises that reliefs of feudal tenants should be “just and legitimate.”2 Chapters 3 and 4 guard against abuse of the feudal incidents of marriage and wardship.3 Chapter 5 abolishes as an innovation “the common mintage” (an exaction levied by the mints when the coinage was altered),4 and enjoined the punishment of any one taken with false money—provisions finding no echo in John’s Charter.

  Chapter 6 remits a number of arrears, reliefs, and penalties due to Rufus at his death. Chapter 7 confirms crown–tenants in the right to dispose of their personal estate by will, and provides for the division of the property of intestates among their wives, children, relations, and vassals, and for the good of their own souls.5 Chapter 8 seems to promise the total abolition of the Norman system of forfeitures and amercements (in respect of petty offences, as opposed to treasons and crimes) and a return to the Anglo–Saxon system of a fixed tariff of bots and wites.6

  Chapter 9 is concerned with the “murdrum” fine—a payment exacted by the Norman kings from all the inhabitants of a hundred in which a corpse had been found, where the slayer remained undiscovered and the dead man’s identity as a person of English birth could not be proved. “Murder” was thus primarily secret slaying, in the sense that the perpetrator was not known, and, secondarily, the fine exacted on that account. This heavy fine, whose original amount is variously given as 40 or 46 marks, was intended as a protection to Normans against the native Englishry they oppressed.

  Henry remitted all “murder–fines” incurred before his coronation, and promised that those incurred after that date should be “justly” paid for “in accordance with the law of King Edward”—a clause difficult to reconcile with the recognized opinion that the murdrum was unknown in England prior to 1066, unless on the supposition that the draftsman of the Charter of 1100 was strangely ignorant of the usages of thirty–four years earlier. Perhaps the “murder–fine” was not an invention of the Conqueror and his sons, but an old English institution put by the Normans to new uses. An alternative suggestion may be hazarded that here (as perhaps elsewhere in the charter) the reference to the good laws of Edward was a mere tag or “common form,” meant to please his subjects without committing the King to anything in particular.

  Chapter 10 contains no concession (unless it be an implied renunciation of Rufus’ encroachments), but, on the contrary, a blunt intimation that Henry, with his barons’ consent, would retain the forests as his father had had them. The barons’ consent may be partly explained by their expectation to enjoy, as more or less habitually in attendance upon Henry, a share in the pleasures of the hunt of which the King was “master.” By chapter II., Henry concedes “proprio dono meo to knights holding their lands per loricas [that is, by knight’s service] to have the lands of their demesne ploughs quit of all gelds and of every [non–military] service, in order that, as being relieved by so great a relief, so they might effectually provide themselves with horses and arms for my service and the defence of my kingdom.” In thus exempting Crown–tenants holding by the “hauberk” (that is to say his “barons,” in the wider sense of the word) from Danegeld, on the distinct understanding that they should keep in readiness an efficient military equipment, Henry aimed at making hard–and–fast an old and fluctuating rule that prohibited Crown–tenants from being subjected to a double set of burdens. The lands of knights and churchmen, who already served the King in other ways, were not expected to contribute Danegeld in respect of their home–farms. Holders of knight’s fees, however, must keep proper weapons and armour for themselves and their horses—an obligation involving an expenditure constantly increasing with every advance in the art of war. The chapter thus recognizes a contrast between land subject to military service and land subject to geld; “the inland and warland of old English fiscal arrangements, the dominium and terra geldabilis respectively of the Geld Roll of 1084.”1 The fact that Henry’s Charter draws so sharp a line between the two, suggests that the barons may have made this a condition of their support of his claims against those of Robert. Henry’s promise, however, was never strictly carried out: the practice continued to fluctuate. Under Henry II., only the barons of the Exchequer and a few privileged religious persons enjoyed exemption.2 Gradually the distinction between inland and warland became extinct.

  The remaining clauses of the Charter of Henry I. are mainly of a formal character. Chapter 12 declares a firm peace for the future throughout his kingdom—thus marking the end of the interregnum consequent on his brother’s death. Chapter 13, on the strength of which wide–reaching theories have sometimes been built, seems to be merely an amplification of the purely formal chapter that precedes it: it restores the law of Edward, with the reforms his father had effected with the barons’ consent. The old law was vague; the innovations definite and well known. Chapter 14 proclaims terms and conditions of indemnity, extended to those guilty of acts of spoliation during the interregnum now brought to an end.

  These provisions, taken as a whole, contain little to justify Henry’s claim to rank as a constitutional or national sovereign. The bulk of the concessions are made to the barons. The Church, it is true, obtains a definite promise in chapter one: but the individuals who would chiefly benefit were newly–appointed prelates, who became feudal vassals on entering upon the lands of their sees. Chapters 2 and 4 confine their benefits to Crown–tenants and sub–tenants, and are therefore purely feudal and not “national” in their range. They may be compared with the clauses of John’s Charter that extend some of its provisions to sub–tenants. Chapters 12 and 13, with their vague affirmation of a firm peace, and of the old English law, now half–forgotten (undefined and declared valid only so far as unaltered by William I.), are the only grants “to the people at large.” The baronial element clearly triumphs over the “national,” in the tenor and outlook of the famous coronation charter.1

  There are three intermediate links in the chain of charters connecting those of Henry I. and John, namely, the two charters of Stephen and that of Henry II.2 The circumstances of the accession of the earlier King were peculiar. Henry I. had nominated his only child Matilda as his heir: his nephew, Stephen, and all the English barons had done homage to her as their future liege lady. Stephen, however, taking advantage of Matilda’s absence and unpopularity, and of the barons’ reluctance to be ruled by a woman, made a bold dash for the Crown. From the moment of the old King’s death, “the Norman barons treated the succession as an open question”: in these words of Stubbs,1 Dr. Round finds2 the keynote of the reign. Stephen was prepared to bid higher for support than Henry had felt compelled to do: like William of Orange, five centuries later, he agreed to become “king upon conditions.” A Charter of Liberties and a solemn oath securing “the liberty of the Church” together formed the price of Stephen’s consecration; and this price was not perhaps too high when we remember that “election was a matter of opinion, coronation a matter of fact.”3 The process by which he built up a title to the Crown culminated in the Easter of 1136, when he secured the support of Matilda’s half–brother Robert, Earl of Gloucester, whose lead was quickly followed by influential nobles who, however, performed homage under an important reservation; their future loyalty would be strictly conditional on the treatment extended to them by Stephen.

  These transactions took place at Oxford;4 at the same time the King issued his second or Oxford Charter, which combined the provisions of the oath to the Church and of the vague earlier charter, with the conditions extorted by Earl Robert and his followers. The opening words contain a laboured attempt to set forth a valid title to the throne. All reference to predecessors is avoided, and Stephen declares himself king “by appointment of the clergy and people, by consecration of the Archbishop and papal legate, and by the Pope’s confirmation.5

  Perhaps its chief provisions are those in favour of the Church, supplementing a vague declaration that the Church should be “free” by specific promises that the bishops should have exclusive jurisdiction and power over ecclesiastics and their goods, with the sole right to superintend their distribution after death. Here was a clear confirmation of the right of the Courts Christian to a monopoly of all pleas affecting the clergy or their property. Stephen also renounced wardship over church lands during vacancies—a surrender never dreamt of by Henry I. or Henry II. Grants to the people at large followed. A general clause promising peace and justice was supplemented by specific concessions of more practical value, namely, a promise to extirpate all exactions, unjust practices, and “miskennings” by sheriffs and others, and to observe good, ancient, and just customs in respect of murder–fines, pleas, and other causes.

  Strangely enough, there is only one provision specially benefiting feudal magnates, the King’s renunciation of all tracts of land afforested since the time of the two Williams. The omission of further feudal concessions must not be attributed either to Stephen’s strength, or to any spirit of moderation or self–sacrifice in the magnates. Each baron of sufficient importance had already extorted a private charter, more valued than a general provision in favour of all and sundry. Such grants often included the right to maintain a feudal stronghold, whose owner would enjoy a position of practical independence.

  It is instructive to compare these wide promises of Stephen with the meagre words of the charter granted by Henry of Anjou at or soon after his coronation.1 Henry II. omits all mention of Stephen and his charters, not because he did not wish to acknowledge a usurper, but because of that usurper’s lavish grants to the Church. Henry had no intention to confirm “benefit of clergy” in so sweeping a form, or to renounce wardship over vacant sees.

  To the Church, as to the barons, Henry confirms only what his grandfather had already conceded. Even compared with the charter of Henry I., that of the younger Henry is shorter and less explicit—features that justified Stephen Langton in his preference for the older document. If Henry II. granted a short and grudging charter, neither of his sons, at their coronations, granted any charter at all. Reasons for the omission readily suggest themselves; the Crown had grown strong enough to dispense with this unwelcome formality, partly because of the absence of rival competitors for the throne, and partly because of the perfection to which the machinery of government had been brought. The utmost the Church could extract from Richard and John, as the price of their consecration, was the renewal of the three vague promises contained in the oath, now taken as a pure formality. John, however, was not to be allowed to shake himself free from the obligations of his oath. Stephen Langton, before absolving him in 1213, compelled him to swear it anew.1

  Not only were the terms of the ancient oath riveted anew on John’s conscience, but, as has been shown, the coronation Charter of Henry I., exhibited by the Primate in times of crisis to the nobles, and used in preparing the schedules that formed the rough drafts of the Articuli Baronum, was made a curb for royal caprice. It is thus impossible to neglect the importance of the sequence of coronation oaths and charters as contributors both to the form and substance of Magna Carta, although that is only one of the many lines of descent through which the Great Charter can trace its ancestry.

  II.

  Magna Carta: its Form and Juridical Nature.

  The juridical nature of the document to which John set his seal at Runnymede will be differently estimated according as it is judged by present–day or by medieval standards.

  (1) The Modern Point of View. Much ingenuity has been expended in the effort to discover which particular category of modern jurisprudence most accurately describes the Great Charter. Is it an enacted law, or a treaty; the royal answer to a petition; or a declaration of rights? Is it a simple pact, bargain, or agreement between contracting parties? Or is it a combination of two or more of these? Something has been said in favour of almost every possible view, perhaps more to the bewilderment than to the enlightenment of students of history uninterested in legal subtleties.

  The claim of Magna Carta to rank as a formal act of legislation has been supported on the ground that it was promulgated in what was practically a commune concilium. King John, it is maintained, met in a national assembly all the estates of his realm who had any political rights, and these concurred with him in the grant. The consent of all who claimed a share in the making of laws—archbishops, bishops, abbots, earls, and crown–tenants, great and small—entitles the Charter to rank as a statute.

  Against this view, however, technical informalities may be urged. Both the composition of the Council and the procedure adopted there, were irregular. No formal writs of summons had been issued, and, therefore, the meeting was never properly constituted. Further, the whole proceedings were tumultuary; the barons, assembled in military array, compelled the consent of John by show of force. On these grounds, modern jurisprudence, if appealed to, would reject the claim of the Charter to be enrolled as an ordinary statute. It may be argued also that Magna Carta, while something less than a law, is also something more. A law made by the king in one national assembly might be repealed by the king in another; whereas the Great Charter was intended by the barons to be unchangeable. It was granted to them and their heirs for ever; and, in return, a price had been paid, namely, the renewal of their allegiance.1

  Magna Carta has also been described as a treaty. Such is the verdict of Dr. Stubbs.2 “The Great Charter, although drawn up in the form of a royal grant, was really a treaty between the King and his subjects. . . . It is the collective people who really form the other high contracting party in the great capitulation.”3 This view receives some support from words contained in chapter 63 of the Charter: “Juratum est autem tam ex parte nostra quam ex parte baronum, quod haec omnia supradicta bona fide et sine malo ingenio observabuntur.” There is, however, a radical objection. A treaty is a public act between two contracting powers, who must, to meet the requirements of modern jurisprudence, be independent States or their accredited agents; while John and his opponents were fragments of one State, torn asunder by mutual jealousies.

  For other authorities, Magna Carta is a contract, pact, or private agreement. M. Emile Boutmy is of this opinion:—“Le caractère de cet acte est aisé à définir. Ce n’est pas précisément un traité, puisqu’il n’y a pas ici deux souverainetés légitimes ni deux nations en présence; ce n’est pas non plus une loi; elle serait entachée d’irrégularité et de violence; c’est un compromis ou un pacte.”1 Thus considered, the proudest act of the national drama would take its place in the legal category which includes the hire of a waggon or the sale of a load of corn. There are, however, objections to this theory also. It is difficult to see how the plea of “force,” if sufficient (as M. Boutmy urges) to render null the enactment of a public law, would not be even more effective in reducing a private agreement. If Magna Carta has no other basis than the consent of the contracting parties, it seems safer to describe it as a public treaty than a private pact.

  Other theories also are possible; as, for example, that the Great Charter is of the nature of a Declaration of Rights, such as have played so prominent a part in France and the United States; while a recent American writer on English constitutional development regards it as a code, creating a formal constitution for England—in a rude and embryonic form, it is true:—“If a constitution has for its chief object the prevention of encroachments and the harmonizing of governmental institutions, Magna Carta answers to that description, at least in part.”2 It would be easy to cite compromises between these competing theories. Thus, a high authority declares that “the Great Charter is partly a declaration of rights, partly a treaty between Crown and people.”1

  The essential nature of what took place at Runnymede, in June, 1215, is plain, when stripped of legal subtleties. A bargain was struck, between the King and his rebel magnates, that, in return for a renewal of fealty and homage, John would grant “to the freemen of England and their heirs for ever” the liberties enumerated in sixty–three chapters. No one thought of asking whether the transaction thus concluded was a “treaty” or a private “contract.” The terms had to be drawn up in legal form, so as to bear record to the exact nature of the provisions, and also to the authenticity of John’s consent. It was, therefore, reduced to writing, and the resulting document was naturally couched in the form invariably used for all irrevocable grants intended to descend from father to son, namely, a feudal charter, authenticated by the impression of the granter’s seal—just as in the case of a grant of land, and with many of the clauses appropriate to such a grant.2

  John grants to the freemen of England and their heirs certain specified rights and liberties, as though these were so many hides of land.3 The legal effect of such a grant is hard to determine; and insuperable difficulties beset any attempt to expound its legal consequences in terms of modern law.4 In truth, the form and substance of Magna Carta are badly mated. Its substance consists of a number of legal enactments and political and civil rights; its form is borrowed from the feudal lawyer’s book of styles for conferring a title to landed estate.1

  The results of this part of the inquiry seem, then, to be mainly negative. It is misleading to describe phenomena of the thirteenth century in modern phraseology which would have been unintelligible to contemporaries. Yet, if it is necessary to make the attempt, Magna Carta may perhaps be regarded as an agreement partaking of the natures alike of a statute and a royal grant, of a public treaty and a private contract, yet identical with no one of these, but (in any view) enacting or proclaiming a number of rules and customs as binding in England, and reducing them to writing in the unsuitable form of a feudal charter granted by King John to the freemen of England and their heirs.2

  (2) The Contemporary Standpoint. It is perhaps more profitable to enquire under what category of medieval jurisprudence Magna Carta would have fallen, if its contemporaries had consciously attempted its classification. In Dr. Vinogradoff’s phrase: “The best way to solve these problems is perhaps to locate our document in the pigeon–holes of medieval and not of modern rubrication.”3

  Answering his own question, he proceeds to range it, partly as a unilateral grant by John to his subjects and partly as of the nature of the medieval expedient known to the continent of Europe as an “establishment” (stabilimentum or établissement). No exact definition of a stabilimentum need be expected from an age accustomed to a vague use of words; but its essence seems to have been a legislative act, more or less of an institutional and exceptional nature, affecting the general welfare of the country, and thus requiring collective action by all classes or estates. The elements of authority dispersed among the various participants in legislative or sovereign power had to be concentrated round the King, somewhat as the consent of all first–class States has to be obtained at the present day for effecting a change in the rules of International Law observed by civilized nations.1

  Legislative acts similar to the établissements of Capetian Kings were not unknown in England. The main purport of the Statute of York (1322), for instance, according to its latest interpreter,2 would seem to be that consent of “the community” (or “commonalty,” as it is usually rendered), as well as of the prelates, earls and barons, should be needed for any change of the nature of an “establishment,” which thus means an alteration in the framework of government. Magna Carta contemplated in chapter 61 an institutional innovation, parallels to which may be found in the more or less oligarchical schemes of 1244, 1258, 1264 and 1311. The historical importance of such restrictions upon the method of legislation required for changing the framework of government, lies in their bearing on the development of a system of Estates and of the future Parliament of the three Estates.3

  III.

  Magna Carta: its Contents and Characteristics.

  The rights enumerated in the sixty–three chapters of the Charter, representing the price paid by John for renewed allegiance, are fully discussed in the main part of the present volume: a brief description of their more prominent characteristics, when viewed as a collective whole, is, therefore, all that is here required.

  As to externals, the want of orderly, logical arrangement has often been noted. As John Reeves4 says: “The whole is strung together in a disorderly manner, with very little regard to the subject matter”; while a recent writer maintains that “no portion of this famous document can possibly be described as a good piece of drafting.”1 Thirteenth–century standards, however, were different from our own; and the lengthy document, with its specific remedies for many abuses, contains evidence of a carefully weighed scheme and of a deep–rooted conviction of the need of reform. The barons and royal officials who helped in framing it were ignorant of the abstract principles of political science. Their ideas, it has been truly said,2 “seem to have been concrete and practical, and in their remedies they went no further than the correction of the specific abuses from which they suffered.” The framers of the document observed (with few exceptions) great legal accuracy in defining the traditional rights of the Crown, proceeding with praiseworthy moderation and scrupulous fairness towards John.3

  Three closely connected characteristics of the document, as a whole, will be brought out in the succeeding analysis: Magna Carta is feudal, contractual, and (in parts, at least) reactionary in tone. Professor Adams of Yale, giving voice to opinions now widely admitted by historians, emphasizes the crucial place occupied by “the feudal contract” as the basis alike of Magna Carta and of the medieval English constitution;4 and maintains that, from the narrower point of view of 1215, the essence of John’s Charter “in spirit, in method, and in principle,” was reaction.5

  In the attempt to analyze the leading provisions, various principles of classification have been adopted: the chapters may be arranged according to the functions of the central government they were intended to limit; according to their own nature as progressive, reactionary, or declaratory; and, finally, according to the classes of the community which reaped the greatest benefit.

  I. Provisions classified according to the prerogatives affected.

  Dr. Gneist1 arranges the chapters in five groups according as they place restraints (1) on the military power of the Crown, (2) on its judicial power, (3) on its police power, (4) on its financial power, or (5) furnish a legal sanction for the enforcement of the whole. In spite of Dr. Gneist’s high authority, it is doubtful whether an analysis of Magna Carta upon these somewhat arbitrary lines throws much light on its main objects or results. Such a division is founded on distinctions not clearly formulated in the thirteenth century, when the various functions of government were still undifferentiated.2

  II. Provisions classified according as they are of a progressive, reactionary, or declaratory nature.

  Blackstone,3 writing in 1759, expresses the generally accepted views: “It is agreed by all our historians that the Great Charter of King John was for the most part compiled from the ancient customs of the realm, or the laws of King Edward the Confessor, by which they usually mean the common law, which was established under our Saxon princes, before the rigours of feudal tenures and other hardships were imported from the continent.” Substantially the same doctrine has been enunciated only the other day, by our highest authority. “On the whole, the charter contains little that is absolutely new. It is restorative. John in these last years has been breaking the law; therefore the law must be defined and set in writing.”4 This view seems, on the whole, a correct one: the insurgents in 1215 professed to be demanding nothing new. Yet the Great Charter contained much that was unknown to the days of the Confessor and had no place in the promises of Henry I.

  Thus it is not sufficient to describe Magna Carta merely as a declaratory enactment: it is necessary to distinguish between the different sources of what it declared. A fourfold division may be suggested. (1) Magna Carta handed on some of the usages of the old English law unchanged by the Conqueror or his successors, now confirmed and purified from abuses. (2) In defining feudal incidents and services, it confirmed many rules of the feudal law brought into England by the Normans after 1066. (3) It also embodied many provisions of which William I. and even Henry I. knew no more than did the Anglo–Saxon kings—innovations introduced for his own purposes by Henry of Anjou, but, after half a century of experience, now accepted loyally even by the most bitter opponents of the Crown. In the words of Mr. Prothero, “We find . . . the judicial and administrative system established by Henry II. preserved almost intact in Magna Carta, though its abuse was carefully guarded against.”1 Finally, (4) in some few points, the Charter aimed at going farther than Henry II. had intended to go: to mention only two particulars, the petty assizes are to be taken four times a year, while sheriffs are prohibited from holding pleas of the Crown.

  History, indeed, has proved that a purely declaratory enactment is impossible: the mere lapse of time, by producing an altered context, changes the purport of any statute re–enacted in a later age. It is no unusual device for innovators to render their reforms more palatable by presenting them disguised as returns to the past. Further, it is important to bear in mind the nature of the provisions confirmed. A re–statement of some of the reforms of Henry II. leads logically to progress rather than to mere stability; while the confirmation of Anglo–Saxon usages or of ancient feudal customs, fast disappearing under the new régime, may imply retrogression rather than standing still. Chapters 34 and 39 of Magna Carta, for example, really demand a return to the system in vogue prior to the innovations of Henry of Anjou, when they favour feudal jurisdictions. Thus, some of the provisions of the Great Charter which, at a casual glance, appear declaratory, are, in reality, innovations; while others tend towards reaction.

  III. Provisions classified according to the estates of the community in whose favour they were conceived.

  Here we are face to face with a fundamental question of immense importance: Does the Great Charter really, as the orthodox view so vehemently asserts, protect the rights of the whole mass of humble Englishmen equally with those of the proudest noble? Or is it rather a series of concessions to feudal selfishness wrung from the King by a handful of powerful aristocrats? On such questions, learned opinion is sharply divided, although an overwhelming majority of authorities range themselves on the popular side, from Coke down to writers of the present day. Lord Chatham, in one of his great orations,1 insisted that the barons who wrested the Charter from John established claims to the gratitude of posterity because they “did not confine it to themselves alone, but delivered it as a common blessing to the whole people”; and Sir Edward Creasy2 caps these words with more ecstatic words of his own, declaring that one effect of the Charter was “to give and to guarantee full protection for property and person to every human being that breathes English air.” Staid lawyers and historians like Blackstone and Hallam use similar expressions. “An equal distribution of civil rights to all classes of freemen forms the peculiar beauty of the charter”; so we are told by Hallam.3 Bishop Stubbs unequivocally enunciated the same doctrine. “Clause by clause the rights of the commons are provided for as well as the rights of the nobles. . . . This proves, if any proof were wanted, that the demands of the barons were no selfish exactions of privilege for themselves.”4 “The rights which the barons claimed for themselves,” says John Richard Green,5 “they claimed for the nation at large.” It would be easy to add to this “cloud of witnesses,” but enough has been said to prove that it has been a common boast of Englishmen, for many centuries, that the provisions of the Great Charter were intended to secure, and did secure, the liberties of every class and individual, not merely those of the feudal magnates.

  It is a usual corollary to this theory, to attribute credit to Stephen Langton for broad–minded statesmanship: the so–called “Articles of the Barons” are really, it would seem, articles of the archbishop. In Miss Norgate’s words, the original articles “are obviously not the composition of the barons mustered under Robert Fitz–Walter,” who could never have risen to “the lofty conception embodied in the Charter—the conception of a contract between King and people which should secure equal rights to every class and every individual in the nation.”1

  It is not safe, however, to accept, without a careful consideration of the evidence, opinions cited even from such high authorities. “Equality” is essentially a modern ideal: for many centuries after the thirteenth, class legislation maintained its prominent place on the Statute Rolls, and the interests of the various classes were by no means always identical. A vigorous minority has always protested against the popular view of Magna Carta. “It has been lately the fashion,” Hallam confesses, “to depreciate the value of Magna Charta, as if it had sprung from the private ambition of a few selfish barons, and redressed only some feudal abuses.”2

  Two different parts of the Charter have a bearing on this question: chapter 1, which explains to whom the rights were granted; and chapter 61, which declares by whom they were to be enforced. The liberties were confirmed “to all freemen of my kingdom and their heirs for ever.” This opens the question—who were freemen in 1215? An enthusiasm that seeks to enhance the merits of Magna Carta by extending its provisions as widely as possible, has led commentators to stretch the meaning of “freeman” to embrace the entire population of England, including not only churchmen, merchants, and yeomen, but even villeins.

  Now, homo in medieval law–Latin, was originally synonymous with baro—all feudal vassals being described as “men” or “barons.” Magna Carta is a feudal grant, and the presumption is in favour of the technical feudal meaning. The word, indeed, occasionally bore a looser, wider sense; but any room for ambiguity seems to be precluded by the use of the qualifying word “free.” No villein was fully a “liber homo.” In chapter 34, for example, the “liber homo” is assumed to be a landowner with a manorial court. Even a burgess might not be reckoned for all purposes as “free”; for the Dialogus de Scaccario discusses how far a miles or other liber homo might lose his status by engaging in commerce in order to make money.1 The word “freeman,” it would appear, as used in the Charter is synonymous with “freeholder”; and therefore only a limited class could, as grantees or the heirs of such, make good a legal claim to share in the liberties secured by it.2 To the question, who had authority to enforce its provisions, the Great Charter has likewise a definite answer, namely, a quasi–committee of twenty–five barons. It is clear that no support for democratic interpretations of Magna Carta can be founded on the choice of executors; since these formed a distinctly aristocratic body.

  Magna Carta, indeed, contains positive evidences which point to the existence of class legislation. At the beginning and end of the Charter, clauses are inserted to secure to the Church its “freedom” and privileges. Many chapters, again, have no value except to landowners; a few affect tradesmen and townsmen exclusively; while chapters 20 to 22 adopt distinct sets of rules for the amercement of the ordinary freeman, the churchman, and the earl or baron respectively. A distinction is made (for example, in chapter 20) between the freeman and the villein, and the latter was carefully excluded from many of the benefits conferred on others by Magna Carta.1

  (1) The Feudal Aristocracy. A casual glance at the clauses of the Great Charter shows how prominently feudal rights and obligations bulked in the eyes of its promoters. Provisions of this type must be considered chiefly as concessions to the feudal aristocracy—although the relief, primarily intended for them, indirectly benefited other classes as well.

  (2) Ecclesiastics. The position of the Church is easily understood when we neglect the privileges enjoyed by its great men quâ barons rather than quâ prelates. The special Church clauses found no place whatsoever in the Articles of the Barons, but bear every appearace of having been added as an after–thought, due probably to the influence of Stephen Langton.2 Further, they are mainly confirmatory of the separate Charter already twice granted within the few preceding months.

  (3) Tenants and Mesne Lords. When compelling John to grant Magna Carta by parade of armed might, the barons were obliged to rely on the support of their own freeholders. It was necessary that these under–tenants should receive some recognition of their claims, and concessions in their favour are contained in two clauses (couched apparently in no generous spirit), chapters 15 and 60. The former limits the number of occasions on which aids might be extorted from sub–tenants to the same three as were recognized in the Crown’s case. Chapter 60 provides generally that all customs and liberties which John agrees to observe towards his vassals shall be observed by mesne lords, whether prelates or laymen, towards their sub–vassals. This provision has met with a chorus of applause from modern writers. Dr. Hannis Taylor1 declares that, “animated by a broad spirit of generous patriotism, the barons stipulated in the treaty that every limitation imposed for their protection upon the feudal rights of the king should also be imposed upon their rights as mesne lords in favour of the under–tenants who held of them.”2 A vague general clause, however, affords little protection in a rude age and might readily be infringed when occasion arose. The barons were compelled to do something, or to pretend to do something, for their under–tenants. Apparently they did as little as they, with safety or decency, could.

  (4) Something was also done for the merchant and trading classes. The existing privileges of London were confirmed in the Articles of the Barons; and some slight additions were made. An attentive examination suggests, however, that these privileges were refined away in the final form of Magna Carta. The right to tallage London and other towns was reserved to the Crown, while the rights of trading granted to foreigners were inconsistent with the policy of monopoly dear to the hearts of the Londoners. A mere confirmation of existing customs, already bought and paid for at a great price, seems a poor return for support given to the movement of insurrection at a critical moment, when their adherence was sufficient to turn the scale. The marvel is that so little was done for them.3

  (5) The relation of the villein to the benefits of the Charter has been hotly discussed. Coke claims for him, in regard to chapter 39 at least, that he must be regarded as a liber homo, and therefore as a participant in the advantages of the clause.1 This contention, it has been already shown, is not well founded. Yet the villein, it may be argued, though excluded from participating in the rights of freemen, has certain rights secured to him in his own name. For example, in chapter 20, John promises that he will not so cruelly amerce villeins—other people’s villeins at least—as to leave them utterly destitute.

  The villein was protected, however, not as the acknowledged subject of legal rights, but because he formed a valuable asset of his lord.2 This attitude is illustrated by a somewhat peculiar expression used in chapter 4, which prohibited injury to the estate of a ward by “waste of men or things.” For a guardian to raise a villein to the status of a freeman was to benefit the enfranchised peasant at the expense of his young master.3

  Other clauses of John’s Charter and of the various reissues show scrupulous care to avoid infringing the rights of property enjoyed by manorial lords over their villeins. The King could not amerce other people’s villeins harshly, although those on his own farms might be amerced at his discretion. Chapter 16, while carefully prohibiting any arbitrary increase of service from freehold property, leaves by inference all villein holdings unprotected. The “farms” or rents of ancient demesne might be raised by the Crown,4 and tallages might be arbitrarily taken (measures likely to press hardly on the villein class). The villein was deliberately left exposed to the worst forms of purveyance, from which chapters 28 and 30 rescued his betters. The horses and implements of the villanus were still at the mercy of the Crown’s purveyors. The reissue of 1217 confirms this view: while demesne waggons were protected, those of villeins were left exposed.1 Again, the chapter that takes the place of the famous chapter 39 of 12152 makes it clear that lands held in villeinage are not to be protected from arbitrary disseisin or dispossession. The villein was left by the common law merely a tenant–at–will—subject to arbitrary ejectment by his lord—whatever meagre measure of protection he might obtain under the “custom of the manor” as interpreted by the court of the lord who oppressed him.

  When taken together, the significance of these somewhat trivial points is clear. The bulk of the English peasantry were protected by Magna Carta merely because they formed valuable assets of their lords. The Charter viewed them as “villeins regardant”—as chattels attached to a manor, not as members of an English commonwealth.3

  The conclusion derived from this survey is that the baronial leaders are scarcely entitled to the excessive laudation they have sometimes received. The rude beginnings of features prominent later on (such as the conceptions of patriotism, nationality, equality before the law, and tender regard for the rights of the humble) may possibly be found in germ in parts of the completed Charter; but the Articles of the Barons were what their name implies, a baronial manifesto, seeking chiefly to redress the private grievances of the promoters, and mainly selfish in motive.

  Yet, when all deductions have been made, the Great Charter stands out as a prominent landmark in the sequence of events that have led, in an unbroken chain, to the consolidation of the English nation, and to the establishment of a free and constitutional form of polity upon a basis so enduring that, after many centuries of growth, it still retains—or, until a few years ago, did retain—the vigour and buoyancy of youth.

  IV.

  Magna Carta: an Estimate of its Value.

  The importance of the Charter for the men of 1215 did not lie in what forms its main value for the constitutional theorists of to–day. To the barons at Runnymede its merit was that it was something definite and utilitarian—a legal document with specific remedies for current evils. To English lawyers and historians of a later age it became something intangible and ideal, a symbol for the essential principles of the English Constitution, a palladium of English liberties.

  To trace the growth of these modern estimates lies outside the scope of the present treatise; but it should be noted that admiration for John’s Charter and its numerous reissues and confirmations was more measured among contemporaries than among its votaries of the seventeenth or nineteenth centuries; and that, for a long interventing period, it suffered almost complete neglect.

  There is some reason to suppose that the Carta Libertatum or Carta Baronum (as it is usually cited by contemporary authorities) was first described as “great” in the reign of Henry III., and that it was then “great” mainly in a material sense, a “large” charter as contrasted with a certain parva carta granted by Henry in 1237.1

  When, after many confirmations, the Charter had established itself as a permanent part of the law of the land, it seems to have fallen into the background of men’s thoughts. It played no conscious or conspicuous part in the “constitutional experiments” of the Yorkist kings; and friends of popular liberties under the Tudors seem to have made few appeals to its authority; Shakespeare’s King John has nothing to say of Runnymede or what happened there.2 It was during the struggles of Parliament with the first two Stewart Kings and in part through the influence of Coke, with his strange combination of black–letter lore and enthusiasm for the old Constitution as interpreted by him, that the Charter, now “great” in a sense higher than material, took hold of the popular imagination. Thereafter estimates of its worth steadily expanded. In many a time of national crisis, Magna Carta has been appealed to as a fundamental law too sacred to be altered—as a talisman containing some magic spell, capable of averting national calamity.

  Are these modern estimates of its value justified by facts, or are they gross exaggerations? Did it really create an epoch in English history? If so, wherein did its importance exactly lie?

  The numerous factors which contributed towards the worth of Magna Carta may be distinguished as of two kinds, inherent and accidental. (a) Its intrinsic value depends on the nature of its own provisions. The reforms demanded by the barons were just and moderate: avoidance of extremes tended towards a permanent settlement. Its aims were practical as well as moderate; the language in which they were framed, clear and straightforward. A high authority has described the Charter as “an intensely practical document.”1 This practicability is an English characteristic, and strikes the key–note of almost every great movement for reform which has succeeded in English history. Closely connected with this is another feature, the markedly legal nature of the Charter. As Magna Carta, after Coke’s day, was rarely absent from the thoughts of statesmen, a practical and legal direction was thus given to the efforts of Englishmen in many ages.2 Therein lies another English characteristic. While democratic enthusiasts in France and America have often sought to found their liberties on a lofty but unstable basis of philosophical theory embodied in Declarations of Rights; Englishmen have occupied lower but surer ground, aiming at practical remedies for actual wrongs, rather than enunciating theoretical platitudes with no realities to correspond.

  Further, the nature of the provisions bears witness to the broad basis on which the edifice was intended to be built. The Charter, notwithstanding the prominence given to feudal grievances, redressed other grievances as well. Another intrinsic merit was that it made definite what had been vague before. Definition is a valuable protection for the weak against the strong: vagueness favours the tyrant who can interpret while he enforces the law. Misty rights were now reduced to a tangible form, and could no longer be broken with impunity. Where previously the vagueness of the law lent itself to evasion, its clear re–statement in 1215 pinned down the King to a definite issue. He could no longer plead that he sinned in ignorance; he must either keep the law, or openly defy it—no middle course was possible.

  (b) Part of the value of Magna Carta may be traced to extrinsic causes; to its vivid historical setting. The importance of its provisions is emphasized by the object–lessons that accompanied its inauguration. Christendom was amazed by the spectacle of a King obliged to surrender at discretion to his subjects. The fact that John was compelled to accept the Charter meant a loss of royal prestige, and great encouragement to future rebels. What once had happened, might happen again: the King’s humiliation was stamped as a powerful image on the minds of future generations.

  A separate treatise would be required for any serious attempt to discuss the various estimates formed of Magna Carta as viewed in successive centuries and in different aspects. Some commentators have concerned themselves mainly with individual clauses; others have treated it as one whole. Historians look mainly to its immediate effects; lawyers and publicists to its ultimate consequences, as it affected the development of the English law and Constitution.

  (1) Value of Individual Provisions. To judge from the reforms that attracted the notice of the only contemporary chronicler1 whose opinion has come down to us, the clauses considered of most importance in his day were those treating of the “disparagement” of women, loss of life or member for killing beasts of the forest, reliefs, the restoration of seignorial jurisdiction (“hautes justices”) and the appointment and powers of the twenty–five barons over the King’s government and over the appointment of bailiffs.

  Some at least of these clauses are among those usually considered reactionary, and there seems little doubt that the barons in 1215 were deeply interested in the restoration of their feudal franchises, which Henry and his sons were taking away from them. In the words of the French historian, who was perhaps the first to sound the reaction from the “traditional” view of Magna Carta: “The barons had no suspicion that they would one day be called the founders of English liberty. . . . They were guided by a crowd of small and very practical motives in extorting this form of security from John Lackland.”2

  Of modern writers’ estimates of the relative importance of particular clauses it seems unnecessary to speak, as their number and variety are great.3

  (2) Its Legal Value. The value of the Charter as a whole, however, is more than a mere sum of the values of its separate parts. Its great importance lay, not in the exact terms of any or all of its provisions, but in the fact that it enunciated a definite body of law, claiming to be above the King’s will and admitted as such by John. As our supreme authorities say of Magna Carta: “For in brief it means this, that the King is, and shall be below the law.”4 The King, by granting the Charter, admitted that he was not an absolute ruler—that he had a master in the laws he had often violated, but which he now swore to obey. Magna Carta has thus been truly said to enunciate “the reign of law” or “rule of law” in the phrase made famous by Professor Dicey.1

  This conception of the existence of a definite body of clearly formulated rights (now set down in the Charter in black and white under John’s seal), which the King was bound to observe, was supplemented by the King’s acceptance of the barons’ claim to a right of compulsion. This was a principle of abiding value, apart from any or all of the clauses redressing specific grievances. “In the slowly developing crisis of Henry III.’s reign, what men saw in the charter in its bearing on their differences with the King was not a body of specific law, but that the King’s action was bound and limited, and that the community possessed the right to coerce him.”2

  (3) Its Value for the future Development of the Constitution. Magna Carta marks the commencement of a new grouping of political forces in England; indeed, without such a rearrangement, the winning of the Charter would have been impossible. Throughout the reign of Richard I. the unity of interests between King and lower classes had been endangered by the heavy drain of taxation; but the actual break–up of the old tacit alliance only came in the crisis of John’s reign. Henceforward can be traced a change in the balance of parties in the commonwealth. No longer are Crown and people united, in the name of law and order, against the baronage, standing for feudal disintegration. The mass of humble freemen and the Church form a league with the barons, in the name of law and order, against the Crown, now the chief law–breaker.

  Such an alliance involved the adoption of a new baronial policy. Hitherto each great baron had aimed at his own independence, striving to gain new franchises for himself, and to keep the King outside. This policy, which succeeded both in France and Scotland, had before John’s reign already failed in England; and the English barons, now admitting the hopelessness of the struggle for feudal independence, substituted a more progressive policy. The King, whose interference they could no longer hope completely to shake off, must at least be taught to interfere justly and according to rule; he must walk by law and custom, not by the caprices of his evil heart. The barons sought to control henceforward the royal power they could not exclude: they desired some share in the national councils, if they could no longer hope to create little nations of their own within the four corners of their fiefs. Magna Carta was the fruit of this new policy.

  It has been often repeated, and with truth, that the Great Charter marks also a stage in the growth of national unity or nationality. Here, however, it is necessary to guard against exaggeration. It marks merely a stage in a process, rather than a final achievement. It is necessary somewhat to discount the Charter’s claims to be “the first documentary proof of the existence of a united English nation” and the often–quoted words of Dr. Stubbs, that “the Great Charter is the first great public act of the nation, after it has realised its own identity.”1

  A united English nation, whether conscious or unconscious of its identity, cannot be said to have existed in 1215, except under several qualifications. The conception of “nationality,” in the modern sense, is of recent origin, and requires that the lower as well as the higher classes should be comprehended within its bounds. Further, the coalition which wrested the Charter from the royal tyrant was essentially of a temporary nature, and quickly fell to pieces. Even while the alliance continued, the interests of the various classes, as has been already shown, were far from identical. Political rights were treated as the monopoly of the few;1 and civil rights were far from universally distributed. The leaders of the “national” movement gave no political rights to the despised villeins, who comprised more than three quarters of the population of England; while their civil rights were almost completely ignored in the provisions of the Charter. Magna Carta marked an important step, in the process by which England became a nation; but that step was neither the first nor yet the final one.2

  In treating of the juridical nature of Magna Carta as partly of the type of legislation known on the Continent as an établissement, requiring all participants in political power to be assembled round the King in order that they might give consent, it has already been suggested that what took place at Runnymede may have had an influence on the development of the conception of a series of estates and therefore on the genesis of the modern Parliament.3 The Charter’s greatest contribution, however, to constitutional advance lay undoubtedly in its admission (tacitly implied in its every clause) that the royal prerogative was limited by the customary feudal rights of the barons (if not of other classes as well).

  In a sense there was nothing new in this: the feudal relation, with its inherent conceptions of mutual, contractual obligations and the rights of diffidatio and rebellion, needed no official proclamation: it was known to all. But the formal embodiment of a great mass of feudal custom in a document, destined to be consulted and reinterpreted in future ages, created, as it were, a bridge between the older monarchy, limited by medieval, feudal restraints, and the modern, constitutional monarchy, limited by a national law enforced by Parliament. This is the main thesis upon which Professor Adams so emphatically insists, “the unintended result” of Magna Carta.1 In light of it, he claims to have located the origin of the English Constitution in Magna Carta, and in these two principles of it which assert the limitations of the King’s prerogative and the barons’ right to compel him to respect the rights of others.

  These estimates of the rôle played by Magna Carta would seem to be somewhat excessive and to attempt to find too simple an origin for a system of which complexity and compromise between conflicting elements are the very essence. On the one hand, there is more in the English Constitution than the mere principle of limited monarchy: on the other, the main line by which that monarchy has progressed from medieval to modern ideals has not been by the method, unsuccessfully attempted in 1215, 1244, 1258, 1265 and 1311 (to name only the best–known instances), of subjecting the King to the dictation of a Committee of his adversaries; but rather the method of using the counsellors of his own appointment to curb his own caprice, while making it progressively difficult for him to appoint any minister of whom the national council did not approve. The revolutionary expedient of the Committee of twenty–five was not destined to be on the direct line of development that led, through the doctrine of ministerial responsibility, to the Cabinet system of government that reached and perhaps passed its highest point of achievement in the nineteenth century.

  (4) Its Moral or Sentimental Value. After every allowance has been made for the great and beneficent influence of Magna Carta, it may still be doubted whether the belief of enthusiasts in its excessive importance has been fully justified. Many other triumphs, almost equally important, have been won in the cause of liberty; and statutes have been passed embodying them. Why then should Magna Carta be extolled as the palladium of English liberties? Is not, when all is said, the extreme merit attributed to it mainly of a sentimental or imaginative nature? Such questions must be answered partly in the affirmative. Much of its value does depend on sentiment. Yet all government is, in a sense, founded upon sentiment—sometimes affection, sometimes fear: psychological considerations are all–powerful in the practical affairs of life. Intangible and even unreal phenomena have played an important part in the history of nations. The tie that binds the British colonies at the present day to the Mother Country is largely one of sentiment; yet the troopers from Canada and New Zealand who responded to the call of Britain in her hour of need produced practical results of an obvious nature. The element of sentiment in politics can never be ignored.

  It is no disparagement of Magna Carta, then, to confess that part of its power has been read into it by later generations, and lies in the halo, almost of romance, that has gathered round it in the course of centuries. It became a battle cry for future ages, a banner, a rallying point, a stimulus to the imagination. For a King, thereafter, openly to infringe the promises contained in the Great Charter, was to challenge public opinion—to put himself palpably in the wrong. For an aggrieved man, however humble, to base his rights upon its terms was to enlist the sympathy of all. Time and again, from the Barons’ War against Henry III. to the days of John Hampden and Oliver Cromwell, the possibility of appealing to the words of Magna Carta has afforded a practical ground for opposition; an easily intelligible principle to fight for; a fortified position to hold against the enemies of national freedom. To explain the exact way in which this particular document—dry as its details at first sight may seem—has fired the popular imagination, is a task that lies rather within the sphere of psychology than of history, as usually conceived. However difficult it may be to explain this phenomenon, there is no doubt of its existence. The importance of the Great Charter has increased, as traditions, associations, and aspirations have clustered more thickly round it.

  Thus Magna Carta, in addition to its legal and political value, has a moral value of an equally emphatic kind. Apart from and beyond the salutary effect of the useful laws it contains, its moral influence has contributed to an advance in the national spirit, and therefore in the national liberties. Such considerations justify enthusiasts, who hold that the granting of Magna Carta was the turning–point in English history.

  V.

  Magna Carta. Its defects.

  The great weakness of the Charter was the absence of an adequate sanction. The only expedient for compelling the King to keep his promises was clumsy and revolutionary; quite worthless as a working scheme of government. Indeed, it was devised not so much to prevent the King from breaking faith as to punish him when he had done so. In other words, instead of constitutional machinery to turn the theories of Magna Carta into realities, “a right of legalized rebellion” was conferred on an executive committee of twenty–five of the King’s enemies.1

  This is the chief defect, but not the only one. Many minor faults and omissions may be traced to a similar root. Constitutional principles are conspicuously absent. The importance of a council or embryo parliament, framed on national lines; the right of such a body to influence the King’s policy in normal times as well as in times of crisis; the doctrine of ministerial responsibility; the need of distinguishing the various functions of government, legislative, judicial, and administrative—all these cardinal principles are completely ignored. Only five of the sixty–three chapters can be said to bear directly on the subject of constitutional (as opposed to purely legal) machinery, and these do so only incidentally, namely, chapters 14, 21, 39, 52, and 61.

  The Commune Concilium is indeed mentioned; and its composition and mode of summons are defined in chapter 14. But this chapter appears as an afterthought—an appendix to chapter 12: it has no counterpart in the Articles of the Barons. The rebel magnates were interested in the narrow question of scutage, not in the wide possibilities involved in the existence of a national council. The Commune Concilium was dragged into the Charter, not on its own merits, but merely as a convenient method of preventing arbitrary increase of feudal exactions. This is further proved by the omission of the Council from the reissue of 1217, when an alternative way of checking the increase of scutage had been devised.

  If the framers of John’s Magna Carta had possessed the grasp of constitutional principles, with which they have been sometimes credited, they would have seized the opportunity afforded them by the mention of the Common Council, in chapters 12 and 14, to define carefully the powers they claimed for it. On the contrary, no list of its functions is drawn up; nor do the words of the Charter contain anything to suggest that it exercised powers other than that of consenting to scutages and aids. Not a word is said of any right to a share in legislation, to control or even to advise the Executive, or to concur in choosing the great ministers of the Crown. Neither deliberative, administrative, nor legislative powers are secured to it, while its control over taxation is strictly limited to scutages and aids—that is to say, it only extends over the exactions that affected the military tenants of the Crown. It is true that chapters 21 and 39 may possibly be read as confirming the judicial power of the Council in a certain limited group of cases. Earls and barons are not to be amerced except by their peers (per pares suos), and the natural place for these “equals” of a Crown vassal to assemble for this purpose would be the Commune Concilium. This, however, is matter of inference; chapter 21 makes no mention of the Council; and it is equally possible that its requirements would be met by the presence among the officials of the Exchequer of a few Crown tenants.1 Similar reasoning applies to the provisions of chapter 39 (protecting persons and property of freemen, by insisting on the necessity of a “trial by peers”) so far as they affect earls and barons.

  It is clear that the leaders of the opposition in 1215 did not consider the constitutional powers of a national Parliament to be the best safeguard of the rights and liberties theoretically guaranteed by the Charter. They relied rather on the revolutionary powers of the twenty–five barons to be appointed under chapter 61.

  The same inability to devise practical remedies may be traced in minor clauses of the Charter.1 When John promised in chapter 16 that no one should be compelled to do greater service than was due, no attempt was made to provide machinery to define such service; while chapter 45, providing that only men who knew the law and meant to keep it, should be made justiciars, sheriffs and bailiffs, laid down no criterion of fitness, and contained no suggestion of the way in which so laudable an ambition might be realized.

  Thoughtful and statesmanlike as were many of the provisions of Magna Carta, and wide as was the ground they covered, important omissions can be pointed out. Some crucial questions seem not to have been foreseen; others, for example the liability to foreign service, were deliberately shelved2 —thus leaving room for future misunderstandings. The praise, justly earned, by its framers for the care and precision with which they defined a long list of the more crying abuses, must be qualified in view of the failure to provide procedure to prevent their recurrence. Men had not yet learned the force of the maxim, so closely identified with all later reform movements in England, that a right is valueless without an appropriate remedy to enforce it.3

  V.

  Magna Carta: Value of Traditional Interpretations.

  The Great Charter has formed a favourite theme for orators and politicians, partly from its intrinsic merit, partly from its dramatic background, but chiefly because it has been, from the time of its inception to the present day, a rallying cry and a bulwark in every crisis that threatened to endanger the national liberties.

  The uses to which it has been put, and the interpretations read into it, are so numerous and varied, that they would require a separate treatise to describe them all. Not only was Magna Carta frequently reissued and confirmed, but its provisions have been asserted and reasserted times without number in Parliament, in the courts of justice, and in institutional works on jurisprudence. Its influence has thus been threefold; and any attempt to explain its bearing on the subsequent history of English liberties would require to distinguish between these three separate and equally important aspects:—(1) It proved a powerful weapon in the hands of politicians, especially of the parliamentary leaders in the seventeenth century, when waging the battle of constitutional freedom against the Stewart dynasty. (2) Its legal aspect has been equally important as its political one: in the course of legal debate and in judicial opinions, it has been the subject of many and conflicting interpretations, some of them accurate and some erroneous.1 (3) Finally, it has been discussed in many commentaries either exclusively devoted to its elucidation or treating of it incidentally in the course of general expositions of the law of England.

  In light of the part played by Magna Carta throughout centuries of English history, it is not surprising that an increasing veneration has tended at times to overstep all bounds. It is unfortunate, however, that it has been more frequently described in terms of inflated rhetoric than of sober methodical analysis.2 Nor has this tendency to unthinking adulation been confined to popular writers; judges and institutional authors, even Sir Edward Coke, have too often lost the faculty of critical and exact scholarship when confronted with the virtues of the Great Charter. There is scarcely one great principle of the modern English constitution calculated to win the esteem of mankind, which has not been read by commentators into Magna Carta. The political leaders of the seventeenth century discovered among its chapters every reform they desired to introduce into England, disguising revolutionary projects by dressing them in the garb of the past.

  Instances of constitutional principles and institutions erroneously credited to the Great Charter will be expounded under appropriate chapters of the sequel. It will be sufficient, in the meantime, to enumerate trial by jury; Habeas Corpus; abolition of arbitrary imprisonment; prohibition of monopolies; the close tie between taxation and representation; equality before the law; a matured conception of nationality: all these, and more, have been discovered in various clauses of the Great Charter.1

  If these tendencies to excessive and sometimes ignorant praise have been unfortunate from one point of view, they have been most fortunate from another. The legal and political aspects must be sharply contrasted. If the vague and inaccurate words of Coke have obscured the bearing of many chapters, and diffused false notions of the development of English law, the service these very errors have done to the cause of constitutional progress is measureless. If political bias has coloured interpretation, the ensuing benefit has accrued to the cause of national progress in its widest and best developments.

  Thus the historian of Magna Carta, while bound to correct errors, cannot afford to despise traditional interpretations. The meanings read into it by learned men have had a potent effect whether they were historically well or ill founded. The stigma of being banned by the Great Charter was something to excite dread. If the belief prevailed that an abuse was really prohibited by Magna Carta, the most arbitrary king had difficulty in finding judges to declare it legal, or ministers to enforce it. The prevalence of such a belief was the main point; whether it was well or ill founded was, for political purposes, immaterial. The greatness of Magna Carta lies not so much in what it was to its framers in 1215, as in what it afterwards became to the political leaders, to the judges and lawyers, and to the entire mass of the men of England in later ages.

  VII.

  Magna Carta. Its traditional relation to Trial by Jury.

  One persistent error, adopted for many centuries, and even now hard to dispel, is that the Great Charter guaranteed trial by jury.1 This belief is now held by all competent authorities to be unfounded. Not one of the three forms of a modern jury trial had taken definite shape in 1215, although the root principle from which all three subsequently grew had been in use since the Norman Conquest.2

  Jury trial in each of the three forms in which it is known to modern English law (the grand jury, the petty criminal jury, and the jury of civil pleas) is able to trace an unbroken pedigree (though by three distinct lines of descent) from the same ancestor, that principle known as recognitio or inquisitio, which was introduced into England by the Normans, and was simply the practice whereby the Crown obtained information on local affairs from the sworn testimony of local men. While thus postulating a foreign origin, we are afforded some consolation by remembrance of a fact which modern authorities are inclined to neglect, namely, that the soil was prepared by Anglo–Saxon labour for its planting.1

  The old English institution of frithborh—the practice of binding together little groups of neighbours for preservation of the peace—and the custom of sending representatives of the villages to the Hundred Courts, had accustomed the natives to corporate action, and formed precedents for asking them to give evidence on local matters jointly and on oath. Further, one form of the jury—the jury of accusation—is clearly foreshadowed by the directions given to the twelve senior thegns of each Wapentake by a well–known law of Ethelred. Yet the credit of establishing the jury system as a fundamental institution in England is undoubtedly due to the Norman and Angevin kings, although they had no clear vision of the consequences of what they did. The uses to which Inquisitio was put by William and his sons in framing Domesday Book, collecting information, and dispensing justice, have already been discussed.2 It was reserved for Henry II. to start the institution on a further career of development: he thus laid the foundations of the modern jury system not merely in one of its forms, but in all three of them.

  (1) In reorganizing machinery for the suppression and punishment of crime by the Assizes of Clarendon and Northampton, he established the principle that criminal trials should (in the normal case) begin with indictment of the accused by a representative body of neighbours sworn to speak the truth.1 This was merely a systematic enforcement of one of the many forms of inquisitio already in use: criminal prosecution was not to be begun on mere suspicion or irresponsible complaints. The jury of accusation (or presentment), instituted in 1166, has continued in use ever since, passing by an unbroken development into the grand jury of the present day.2

  (2) By insisting that ordeal should supersede compurgation as the test of guilt or innocence, Henry unconsciously prepared the way for a second form of jury. When the fourth Lateran Council in the very year of Magna Carta forbade priests to countenance ordeal by their presence or blessing, a death–blow was dealt to that form of procedure or “test,” since it depended for its authority on superstition. A canon of the Church had struck away the pivot on which Henry had made his criminal system to revolve. Some substitute was urgently required and so the petty jury (or its rude antecedent) came into existence. The man publicly accused as presumably guilty was asked if he would stand or fall by reference to the verdict of a second jury of neighbours. This second verdict, then, was the new “test” or “law” substituted, if the accused man agreed, for his old right of proving himself innocent by ordeal. By obscure steps, on which those best entitled to speak with authority are not yet agreed, this jury, giving a second and final verdict, gradually developed into the criminal jury of twelve, the petty jury of to–day, which has had so important an influence on the development of constitutional liberties in England, and even on the national character. Another expedient of Henry’s invention aided the movement towards the criminal jury, namely, the writ de odio et atia by applying for which a man “appealed” of a crime might substitute what was practically a jury’s verdict for the “battle” which had previously followed “appeal” as matter of course.1

  (3) The Civil Jury owes its origin to quite a different set of reforms, though inaugurated by the same reformer. Among the evil legacies from Stephen’s reign, not the least troublesome were the claims advanced by rival magnates to estates and franchises which had been bestowed with lavish prodigality by Matilda and Stephen. Henry realized the urgent need of protecting vested interests by a more rational expedient than trial by combat. Here again he had recourse to a new development of “inquisition.” In such cases an option was given to the tenant (the man in possession) to refer the question at issue to the verdict of local recognitors.

  This new expedient was applied at first only to a few special cases. It was used to settle claims of ultimate title—the out–and–out ownership of land—and then it was known as the Grand Assize; it was also used to settle a few well–defined groups of pleas of disputed possession, and then it was known as a Petty Assize (of which there were three distinct varieties).2 The King by a high–handed act of power deprived the demandant of that remedy which was his right by feudal law, the resort to the legal duel. It was because the new procedure was founded on a royal Ordinance, that the name “Assize” was applied to it.

  By consent of both parties, however, disputes of almost every description might be similarly determined; being referred (under supervision of the King’s judges) to the verdict of local recognitors, usually twelve in number, who were then known as a jurata (not an assisa). While the assisa was narrowly confined to a few types of cases, the jurata was a flexible remedy capable of indefinite expansion, and thus soon became the more popular and the more important of the two. Sometimes the twelve recognitors, summoned as an assisa by the King’s command, were by consent of both litigants turned into a jurata to try a broader issue that had unexpectedly arisen. This explains the phrase, assisa vertitur ad juratam. The assisa and jurata, always closely connected and resembling each other in essential features, can both claim to be ancestors of the modern civil “jury,”—the name of the more popular institution having survived. Magna Carta, in providing for the frequent holding of the three petty assizes, marked a stage in the development of the Civil Jury; while, by enforcing the criminal procedure of Henry Plantagenet, and guarding it from abuse, the Charter had also a vital bearing on the genesis of the Grand Jury and the Petty Jury alike.

  These tentative measures, however, still vague and unconsolidated, must not be identified with the definite procedure into which at a later date they coalesced: Magna Carta did not promise “trial by jury” to anyone.

  PART IV.

  HISTORICAL SEQUEL TO MAGNA CARTA.

  I.

  Reissues and Confirmations of the Great Charter.

  King John had accepted the reforms contained in Magna Carta unwillingly and insincerely; but the advisers of his son accepted them in good faith. Three reissues of the Charter were granted in 1216, in 1217, and in 1225, and these were followed by many confirmations. The scheme of this Historical Introduction is restricted to such facts as have direct bearing on the genesis and contents of John’s Charter. Yet no account of Magna Carta would be complete without some notice of the more important alterations effected in its text during the reigns of later kings.

  (I.) Reissue of 1216. On 28th October, 1216, Henry of Winchester was crowned at Gloucester before a small assemblage.1 The young King took the usual oath as directed by the Bishop of Bath, and he also performed homage to the Pope’s representative Gualo; for the King of England was now a vassal of Rome.2 At a Council held at Bristol, on 11th November, William Marshal, Earl of Pembroke, was appointed Rector regis et regni; and, next day, the Charter was reissued in the King’s name. This was a step of extreme importance, marking the acceptance by those in power for the time being of the programme of the baronial opposition.

  The Charter in its new provisional form was really a manifesto issued by the moderate men who rallied round the throne of the young King; it may be viewed in two aspects, as a declaration by the Regent and his co–adjutors of the policy on which they accepted office, and as a bid for the support of the barons who still adhered to the faction of the French prince. Its issue was, indeed, dictated by the crucial situation created by the presence in England of Prince Louis of France, supported by a foreign army and by a large faction of the English barons who had sworn homage to him as King. It was, therefore, framed in terms meant to conciliate such of the opposition as were still open to conciliation.

  Yet the new Charter could not be a verbatim repetition of the old one. Vital alterations were required by altered circumstances.1 It was no longer an expression of reluctant consent by the government of the day to the demands of its enemies, but a set of rules deliberately accepted by that government for its own guidance. The chief tyrant against whom the original provisions had been directed was dead, and certain forms of tyranny, it was confidently hoped, had died with him. Restraints now placed on the Crown’s prerogatives would only hamper the free action of the men who framed them, not of their political opponents. The Regent, while willing to do much for the cause of conciliation, could not afford to paralyze his own efficiency at a time when foreign invaders were in possession of one–half of England, from which it would require a supreme effort to dislodge them. It was imperative that the government should retain a free hand in exacting feudal services and levying scutages.

  Miss Norgate argues,2 somewhat unconvincingly, that the omission of chapters 12 and 14 was a concession to Gualo and the Holy See. Rome had regarded these provisions as dangerous innovations of so marked a kind as to justify the annulling of the Charter of 1215, and papal sanction could be obtained in 1216 only by their jettison. William Marshal, however, is not likely to have required external pressure: he naturally preferred to leave his own hands untied.

  Yet the issue of the Charter under papal sanction, however obtained, was of material value to Henry’s cause. It had the immediate effect of bringing over eleven bishops to the young King’s side. M. Petit–Dutaillis1 sums up the situation in two propositions: the French invasion saved the Great Charter, and then papal support saved England from Louis.2

  The Charter of 12163 is notable for its omissions, which may be arranged under five groups.4 (1) Restraints placed in 1215 on the taxing power of the Crown now disappeared. The chapters which forbade the King to increase the “farms” or fixed rents of the counties and hundreds, those which defined the King’s relations with the Jews, and those which restricted the lucrative rights derived from the rigorous enforcement of the forest laws, were discarded. An even more important omission was that of chapter 12, which abolished the Crown’s rights to increase feudal contributions arbitrarily, without consent of the Common Council.5

  (2) No reference is made to John’s charter of May, 1215 to the Church, granting liberty of elections, although the vague declaration that “the English Church should be free” was retained. Chapter 42, allowing liberty to leave the kingdom, and to return without the King’s consent (a privilege chiefly valuable to the clergy in their intercourse with Rome) was entirely omitted: and the same is true of chapter 27, which had placed in the church’s hands the supervision of all distributions of chattels of men who had died intestate.1

  (3) A great number of provisions of purely temporary interest disappeared, among them those providing for disbandment of mercenary troops and dismissal from office of obnoxious individuals.

  (4) A number of omissions of a miscellaneous nature may be grouped together; for example, chapter 45, by which the Crown restricted itself in the choice of justiciars and other officers; the latter half of chapter 47, relating to the banks of rivers and their guardians; and some of the provisions affecting the forest laws.

  (5) These alterations implied, incidentally rather than deliberately, the omission of such constitutional machinery as had found a place in John’s Great Charter. The twenty–five Executors fell with the other temporary provisions; while chapter 14, which defined the composition and mode of summons of the Commune Concilium, was omitted with chapter 12, to which it had formed a supplement.2

  Magna Carta as granted by Henry is thus concerned with matters which lie within the sphere of private law, and contains no attempt to devise machinery of government or to construct safeguards for national liberties. The King’s minority implied a constitutional check, in the necessary existence of guardians, but when Henry III. attained majority, Magna Carta, deprived of its original sanctions, would, with the disappearance of the Regency, tend to become an empty record of royal promises. The machinery of government remained exclusively monarchic; the King, once out of leading–strings, would be restrained only by his own sense of honour and by the fear of armed resistance—by moral forces rather than legal or constitutional. The logical outcome was the Barons’ War.

  The importance of the omissions is minimized by two considerations. (a) Many of the original provisions were declaratory, and their omission in 1216 by no means implied that they were then abolished. The common law remained what it had been previously, although it was not deemed advisable to emphasize those particular parts of it in black and white. In particular, throughout the reign of Henry, the Commune Concilium was always consulted before a levy was made of any scutage or aid. (b) It is stated in the new charter that the omitted clauses were reserved for further consideration. In the so–called “respiting clause” (chapter 42) six topics were thus reserved because of their “grave and doubtful” import: levying of scutages and aids; rights of Jews and other creditors; the liberty of going from and returning to England; the forest laws; the “farms” of counties; and the customs relating to banks of rivers and their guardians. This respiting clause amounts to a definite engagement by the King to consider at some future time (probably as soon as peace had been restored) how far it would be possible to re–enact the omitted provisions.1

  A practical difficulty confronted the advisers of the young King. Neither law nor custom afforded precedents for the execution of documents during a king’s minority. The seal of a king was not available for his heir: the custom was to destroy the matrix when a death occurred, to prevent its being put to improper uses.1 Henry was made to explain that, in the absence of a seal of his own, the Charter had been sealed with the seals of Cardinal Gualo and of William Marshal, Earl of Pembroke, “rectoris nostri et regni nostri.”

  In the Red Book of the Dublin Court of Exchequer there is a copy of an Irish version of this Charter,2 bearing to be executed at the same place and date as the English one (Bristol, 12th November, 1216). It is possible that it was not issued till some months later. After the coronation, the Marshal wrote to Geoffrey de Marsh, Justiciar of Ireland, promising to send a confirmation to the Irish of the liberties just granted to Henry’s English subjects.3 It was not till 6th February, 1217, that this promise was fulfilled by the sending of an Irish version of the Charter, in the King’s name, as a reward to his Irish subjects for their fidelity.4 If this is the original transcribed into the Red Book, it would seem to have been antedated by nearly three months; while its terms suggest that little trouble was taken to adapt the purport of the English Charter to Irish needs: four perfunctory alterations substitute the freedom of the Irish Church for that of the English Church; the liberties of Dublin for those of London; prohibit weirs in the Liffey, instead of the Thames and Medway; and make the “quarter of Dublin,” not of London, the measure of corn. The value of the grant must have lain rather in the principle involved than in the phraseology of particular clauses.

  (II.) Reissue of 1217. The effect of the new Charter in England was disappointing: apart from the bishops, only four submissions were made to Henry in three months.1 The vicissitudes of the war need not be traced: on 19th May, 1217, the royalists gained a decisive victory at the battle known as the “Fair of Lincoln”; and, on 24th August following, Hubert de Burgh destroyed the fleet on which Louis depended. The French prince was glad to accept honourable terms. Negotiations, beginning on the 8th, resulted, on 12th September, 1217, in the Treaty of Lambeth or Kingston. “The treaty of Lambeth is, in practical importance, scarcely inferior to the charter itself.”2 It marked the final acceptance by the advisers of the Crown of the substance of Magna Carta as the permanent basis of government for England in time of peace, not merely as a provisional expedient in time of war. Its terms were equally honourable to both parties: to the Regent and his supporters, because of the moderation they displayed; and to Louis who, while renouncing all claim to the English Crown, did so only on condition of a full pardon to his lay allies, and a guarantee of the principles they fought for. He strove in vain to make better terms for the clergy, who were left exposed to Gualo’s vindictive greed.3

  It must have been an impressive scene when, on 12th September, at an eyot in the Thames near Kingston, between rival armies lining opposite banks, Louis (who had already granted a confirmation of the substance of John’s Charter) and Henry, laying their hands on the Gospels, swore with the Legate and the Marshal to restore to the barons of England and all other men of the realm their rights and heritages, with the liberties formerly demanded.4 Henry promised to pay to Louis 10,000 marks nominally as an indemnity for his expenses, an amount partly raised by a scutage of two marks “ad Angliam deliberandam de Francis.”1 Louis, on his side, restored all cities, lands and property taken by him in England. One version of the treaty mentions particularly the Rolls of Exchequer, charters of the Jews, charters of liberties made in the time of King John, and all other exchequer writings.2 The restoration of rights and liberties by Henry was the main provision of the treaty, and this was fulfilled on 6th November, 1217, by the issue of a revised Charter of Liberties and a separate Forest Charter.3

  The issue of these two Charters put the coping stone to the general pacification. After the havoc wrought by two years of civil war, the moment had come for a declaration by the Regent of his policy for ruling an England once more at peace. Not only was he bound in honour to this course by the Treaty of Lambeth, but the opportunity was a good one for fulfilling the promise made in chapter 42 of the Charter of 1216. Accordingly the respiting clause of that document disappeared, and some new clauses took its place. The matters then reserved for further discussion as “gravia et dubitabilia” had now been reconsidered and were either finally abandoned, or accepted with or without amendment. Of the six topics “respited” in 1216, one (concerning forests and warrens) was dealt with in the Forest Charter which took the place of chapters 36 and 38 of 1216 and of the omitted provisions of 1215; two others (concerning scutage and enclosure of rivers) formed the subjects of special chapters (44 and 20 respectively); while the remaining three (the rights of Jews, free egress from and ingress to England, and the “farms” of shires) were not mentioned, although some of the grievances involved may have been indirectly affected by certain newly added chapters (e.g. that which regulated the times of meeting of shire and hundred courts) or by the “saving clause” in chapter 42.

  To take the chief alterations in the order in which they occur,1 chapter 7 of 1217 defines further a widow’s rights of dower; chapters 13, 14 and 15 alter the procedure for taking the three petty assizes; chapter 16 makes it clear that the King’s villeins do not share in the protection from harsh amercement; chapter 20, as already mentioned, treats of river enclosures; chapters 23 and 26 treat of purveyance, the former extending the term of payment allowed to Crown officials, the latter exempting entirely the carts of people of the better classes—“parsons,” knights and ladies. The two provisions, taken together, speak eloquently against the “democratic” interpretation of the Charter. Chapter 34 further limits or defines Crown bailiffs’ rights in regard to legal tests or “trials” where there is no evidence except their own unsupported testimony; chapter 38 makes clear a previously doubtful point concerning the King’s rights over escheats. Chapters 39, 42, 43, 44 and 46 will immediately receive separate discussion; while chapter 47 ordains “of common counsel” the demolition of all “unlicensed” strongholds built or rebuilt since the outbreak of the war between John and his barons.

  Chapter 44, generally regarded as replacing chapter 12 of 1215, declares that scutages should be taken in future as they had been wont to be taken under Henry II. If, as has already been suggested, the scutage question was the immediate cause of the revolt of 1215, the importance and difficulty of this subject are obvious. Professor Adams1 thinks that the leaders in 1217, at their wits’ end for a solution, fell back on a vague, non–committal formula as “an effort of despair.” Yet the old rates of scutage could still be read in the Exchequer Rolls, and the practice of a reign that had closed only twenty–six years before must have been familiar to many others besides the aged Marshal who set seal to the Charter. In reality John’s innovations were now swept away; these included the habit of making an annual tax of what was meant for special emergencies, the assessment under the Inquest of 1212, the demand for scutage and service cumulatively, and, above all, the high rate of three marks per knight’s fee.2

  The essence of the barons’ demands in 1217 must undoubtedly have been the return to the normal maximum rate of 2 marks. The substitution of this reference to the usage of Henry for the discarded chapters 12 and 14 of John’s Charter (which made “common consent” necessary for all scutages, whatever the rate) was a natural compromise; and the barons in agreeing to it were justified in thinking, from their own medieval point of view, that they were neither submitting to unfair abridgments of their rights, nor yet countenancing reactionary measures hurtful to the growth of liberty.3 Yet when this alteration is viewed by modern eyes, in the light cast by the intervening centuries of constitutional progress, the conclusion suggests itself that, unconsciously, retrograde tendencies were at work. All mention of the Commune Concilium—that predecessor of the modern Parliament, that germ of all that has made England famous in the realm of constitutional laws and liberties—disappears. If (as it was once the fashion to maintain) the control of taxation by a national assembly, the conception of representation, and the indissoluble connection of these two principles with each other, really found place in Magna Carta in 1215, they were ejected in 1216, and failed to find a champion in 1217 to demand their restoration.

  A modern statesman, with a grasp of constitutional principles, would have seized the occasion of the revision of the Charter, to define the functions of the Great Council with precision and emphasis. He would not lightly have thrown away the written acknowledgment implied in chapters 12 and 14 of 1215—in the germ, at least—of the right of a national council to control the levying of taxes. The magnates in 1217 were content, however, to abandon abstract principles; they were selling, not indeed their birthright, but their best means of gaining new rights from the Crown, for “a mess of pottage.”

  Such considerations, however, must not be pressed too far: no one seriously thought in 1217, any more than in 1216, of dispensing with future meetings of the feudal tenants in Commune Concilium. Great Councils continued to meet with increasing frequency throughout the reign of Henry III., and the consent of the magnates was habitually asked to scutages even at a lower rate than that which had been normal in Henry II.’s reign. Sometimes such consent was given unconditionally: sometimes in return for a new confirmation of the Charters; sometimes a demand was met by absolute refusal—the first distinct instance of which seems to have occurred in January, 1242.1

  Chapters 39, 42 and 43, treating of topics not mentioned in John’s Charter, fall (strictly considered) outside the scope of this treatise, but a short account of their main provisions may prove useful here. Chapter 42, from its possible connection with the omitted chapter 25 of 1215, may be taken first. The shire court is not to meet oftener than once a month; less often, where local custom so ruled it. No sheriff or bailiff is to make his tourn through the hundreds oftener than twice a year—after Easter and after Michaelmas respectively—and only in the accustomed places. Careful provision is made for holding view of frankpledge at Michaelmas, with due regard to “liberties” upon the one hand, and to the King’s peace and keeping the tithings full upon the other. Finally, the sheriff is not to make “occasions,” but shall content himself with what he used to have for holding view of frankpledge in Henry of Anjou’s time—a reference, it would seem, to that “Sheriff’s aid” which was the cause of a famous quarrel in 1163 between Henry and his recently appointed Archbishop, Thomas à Becket.1

  Chapters 39 and 43 link themselves rather with the future than the past, showing that new problems were thrusting themselves to the front since the days of John—topics round which much controversy was to rage. These chapters anticipate the principles underlying two famous measures of Edward’s reign: the statutes of Quia Emptores2 and of Mortmain.3 Chapter 39 forbade for the future that any freeman should give away or sell so much of his land as would not leave sufficient to furnish the service due from the fief to the feudal lord.

  Chapter 43 marks the growing hostility against the accumulation by the monasteries of wealth in the form of landed estates. The times were not ripe for a final solution of this problem, and the charter only attempted to remedy one of the subsidiary abuses of the system, not to abolish the main evil. An ingenious expedient had been devised by lawyers to enable tenants to cheat their lords out of some of the lawful feudal incidents. Religious houses made bad tenants, since, as they never died, the lord of the fief was deprived of wardship, relief, and escheat. This was not unfair, provided the transaction was bona fide. Sometimes, however, collusive agreements were made, whereby a freeholder bestowed his lands on a particular house, which then subinfeudated the same subjects to the original tenant, who thus got his lands back, but now became tenant of the church, not of his former lord. The lord was left with a corporation for his tenant; and all the profitable incidents would, under the new arrangement, accrue to the church. Such expedients were prohibited, under pain of forfeiture, by chapter 43 of the reissue of 1217; and this prohibition was interpreted liberally by the lords in their own favour.1

  The only remaining provision that calls for comment is the “saving clause” in chapter 46, intended, perhaps, to cover the gaps left in the Charter as conceived in 1215, by the decision not to restore some of the dubitabilia of 1216: this chapter reserves to archbishops, bishops, abbots, priors, templars, hospitallers, earls, barons, and all other persons, cleric and lay, the liberties and free customs they previously had. The vagueness of this provision deprived it of value.

  These were the main alterations made in 1217 in the tenor of the Great Charter. This reissue is of great importance, since it represents practically the final form taken by the Charter. On 22nd February, 1218, copies of the Great Charter, in this new form, were sent to the sheriffs to be published and enforced. In the writs accompanying them, the special attention directed to the clause against unlicensed castles shows the importance attached to their demolition.2 These remained in 1217, as in 1154, a result of past civil war, and a menace to good government in the future. It was the aim of every efficient ruler to abolish all fortified castles—practically impregnable in the thirteenth century when artillery was unknown—except those of the King, and to see that royal castles were under command of castellans of approved loyalty. John had placed his own strongholds under creatures of his own, who, after his death, refused to give them up to his son’s Regent. The attempt to dislodge these soldiers of fortune, two years later, led to new disturbances in which the famous Falkes de Breauté played a leading part.1 The destruction of “adulterine” castles and the resumption of royal ones were both necessary accompaniments of any real pacification.

  Attempts have been made to estimate the motives and forces at work in these considerable changes in the text of the revised Charter. Attention to minute points of detail in practice and phraseology are rightly held to indicate a return towards more normal conditions under which “problems of everyday government” and the more accurate statement of the law receive attention.2 The new Charter, in its desire to profit by the actual experience of the past two years, has some analogy to a modern amending statute. Other alterations, however, of a more fundamental nature would seem to have been deliberately made; and, as changing the old customs of the realm, they are of a legislative character in the strictest sense. Evidence of pressure from the baronage, in pursuance of their own selfish interests, can be traced in some at least of these innovations; but, on the other hand, the destruction of their “adulterine” castles shows that there were limits to their power.

  The sincerity with which Magna Carta, thus amended, had been accepted by those in power is shown by the issue, seven months later, of letters to the sheriffs ordering them to publish the Charter in their shires and see that it was put in force; while orders were also given to respect the franchises of the city of London.3

  (III.) Reissue of 1225.4 Henry’s second Charter, like his first, had been authenticated by the seals of the Legate and the “Rector.” The objection to providing a seal of Henry’s own was that it might be used to prejudice the royal prerogatives by alienating Crown lands and franchises during the King’s minority. But, shortly before Gualo left England, his task as Legate well done, instructions were given to a goldsmith to prepare a royal seal of silver, 5 marks in weight. Apparently the first use to which it was put was to attest letters patent, issued after Michaelmas, 1218, warning all men that no grant in perpetuity was to be sealed with it till the King came of age.1

  The full twenty–one years would not be completed until 1st October, 1228; but by letters dated 13th April, 1223, Pope Honorius declared his ward to be of full age under certain reservations. A few months earlier (30th January, 1223) consternation had been created by writs issued in the King’s name to the sheriffs for a sworn inquest as to the customs and liberties enjoyed by John in the various shires, before the war; and Henry’s advisers thought it prudent to issue second writs on 9th April ordering that the results of the inquest should be held back till 25th June, and disclaiming all intention of raising up “evil customs.”2

  It was not, apparently, until December, 1223, that the Pope’s declaration of the partial ending of Henry’s nonage was given effect to, with consent of the Council; and on 13th January, 1224, Henry was asked by Stephen Langton for a new confirmation of the Charters.3 In the ensuing debate, William Brewer answered for the King: “The liberties you ask ought not to be observed of right, because they were extorted by force,” words which, coming from a royal favourite, were sufficient to justify suspicion. When the Archbishop had rebuked this rash adviser: “William, if you loved the King, you would not endanger thus the peace of his realm,” the young King said: “We have all sworn these liberties, and what we have sworn we are bound to keep.”1

  No formal charter seems at this time to have been granted; but the barons’ opportunity came in December of the same year, when Henry’s necessities forced him to demand a contribution of one–fifteenth of moveables. A bargain on these terms was struck, and on 11th February, 1225, the Charter of Liberties and the Forest Charter were both reissued.2 The new Forest Charter was practically identical with that issued in 1217; while the alterations in the new Charter of Liberties were the result of a determination to place on record the circumstances in which it had been granted. In the preamble Henry stated that he acted “spontanea et bona voluntate nostra” and all reference to consent was omitted, although many magnates appear as witnesses. These alterations were intended to emphasize the fact that no pressure had been brought to bear, and thus to meet the objection urged by Brewer in 1224, that the Charter had been extorted by force.3

  The “consideration” also appears in the concluding portion of the Charter, where it is stated that in return for the foregoing gift of liberties along with those granted in the Forest Charter, the archbishops, bishops, abbots, priors, earls, barons, knights, free tenants, and all others of the realm had given a fifteenth part of their moveables to the King.

  The prominence given to this feature brings the transaction embodied in the reissue of 1225 (as compared with the original grant of 1215) one step nearer the legal category of “private bargain.” In another important new clause—founded probably on a precedent taken from chapter 61 of John’s Charter—Henry is made to declare: “And we have granted to them for us and our heirs, that neither we nor our heirs shall procure any thing whereby the liberties in this charter shall be infringed or broken; and if any thing shall be procured by any person contrary to these premises, it shall be held of no validity or effect.” This provision was clearly directed against future papal dispensations; the clause, however, was diplomatically made general in its terms.1

  One original copy of this third reissue of the Great Charter is preserved at Durham with a still perfect impression of Henry’s recently made seal in green wax, though the parchment has been “defaced and obliterated by the unfortunate accident of overturning a bottle of ink.”2 A second original is to be found at Lacock Abbey, in Wiltshire. The accompanying Forest Charter is also preserved at Durham.3

  This third reissue brings the story of the genesis of the Great Charter to an end. It marked the final form assumed by Magna Carta; the identical words were then used which afterwards became stereotyped and were confirmed, time after time, without further modification. It is this Charter of 1225 which (in virtue of the confirmation of Edward I.) still remains on the statute book.4

  Henry, however, was not yet, in 1225, fully of age; and suspicions seem still to have been entertained as to what would be his attitude when he became of full age for all purposes. It was apparently in January, 1227, that the Council authorized the King to issue writs to his sheriffs that all grants of lands, tenements, or liberties, to be held valid, must be confirmed under Henry’s seal. Writs in these terms went forth on 21st January. This was tantamount to an official declaration that the minority was ended.1

  Under feudal theory, the close personal relations between lord and vassal had to be renewed when a death occurred: every new King exacted payments for confirmation of earlier grants, and Henry’s previous recognitions had been provisional. The King was enunciating no general doctrine of contempt for vested interests: his abuse of power lay in the exorbitant sums charged for charters confirming earlier, informal “precepts.”2 There is no substantial ground for the opinion, once widely held,3 that the King intended to annual the Great Charter, and that, accordingly, it was not in force from 1227 to 1237. Nor, in the instructions to the sheriffs, is there a word said about the Forest Charter. Henry, indeed, dared not openly repudiate either of the Charters, which had received full papal authority.

  Yet he was far from scrupulous in observing the letter of their provisions: there was good warrant for the complaint contained in article 7 of the Petition of 1258,4 that Henry broke his bargain, by extending the forests beyond the boundaries to obtain which the fifteenth had been paid. The process was begun by the issue of letters close, on 9th February, 1227.5 Henceforward, Henry’s attitude towards the charters was a settled one: he confirmed them with a light heart when he could obtain money in return, and then acted as though they did not exist.

  (IV.) Confirmations (1237 to 1297). After the close of Henry’s minority history is concerned not with reissues of the Charter but with confirmations. Matthew Paris refers to the circumstances under which the first of these was executed on 28th January, 1237: as the express condition of a grant of “a thirtieth part of the kingdom, to wit of all moveables,” Henry promised that thenceforward the “libertates Magnae Cartae” should be inviolably observed.1 This Charter differs fundamentally from those of 1215, 1216, 1217 and 1225. It does not rehearse the substance of any one of the “liberties” it confirms, but contents itself with a brief reference: “We have granted and by this our charter confirmed . . . all liberties and free customs contained in our charters which we caused to be made to our subjects during our minority, to wit as well in magna carta nostra as in carta nostra de foresta.”2 Even with the long list of witnesses, occupying half of its extent, this document is a small one when compared with the voluminous parchments of earlier grants. It has been suggested3 that the marked contrast in size may have given rise to the practice of alluding to the earlier charter (whether of John or Henry) as Magna Carta, in distinction from the new parva carta.4

  In support of the suggestion, it may be argued that the phrase “Magna Carta” is never used by Roger of Wendover, and that its first appearance in the narrative of Matthew Paris is in the passage just quoted, sub anno 1237, “carta libertatum” being the usual description. The words ”Magna Carta” appear a second time in his account of a famous debate in 1242,5 where pointed reference is made to the bargain struck in 1237, when Henry conceded the liberties contained in “Magna Carta” in return for the thirtieth of moveables “et inde fecit eis quandam parvam cartam suam.” The antithesis is here emphatic.

  The adoption of this parva carta means that the Charter had become stereotyped as it stood in 1225, and no longer moved with the times. For ten years previous it had, like a living thing, adapted itself to changing needs and grievances. The new style possibly corresponds with a new attitude on the part of both King and barons. Henry had abandoned any intention of repudiating the Charter or even of infringing its specific promises as to wardships, reliefs or the like: his practice was to evade its spirit, while observing its letter. The opposition, on their part, may unconsciously have come to consider the Charter’s value to lie, not in its specific clauses, but in its assertion of the existence of a fixed body of law to which successful appeal could be made against the King’s caprice. Changes in the texture of that law are no longer reflected in reaffirmations of the Charter; but must be sought for in a series of supplementary documents such as those of 1258, 1297, 1300, 1311, 1406 and 1628.

  After 1237 little is heard of the charters until 1253, when complaint was raised of infractions, particularly in regard to the privileges of the Church. Both charters were republished, and on 13th May, the sentence of excommunication, which had accompanied the reaffirmations of 1225 and 1237, was repeated in a peculiarly impressive manner.1

  In 1265 Simon de Montfort, during his brief period of power, exacted from Henry and his son a new confirmation, dated 14th March, notable for its clause empowering “all of the realm to rebel against us and use their utmost resources and efforts to our hurt” in imitation of chapter 61 of John’s grant. After Simon’s overthrow and death, the King and the young Edward, of their own initiative, affirmed the charters by chapter five of the Statute of Marlborough (1267). Of the confirmations of Edward’s reign, it is only necessary to mention the emphatic Confirmatio Cartarum of 1297, accompanied by an Inspeximus of the issue of 1225, granted under conditions that are well known. It contains new clauses which impose restrictions on the taxing power of the Crown; and these, to some extent, take the places of those chapters (12 and 14) of the original grant of John, which had been omitted in all intervening grants.

  Of later confirmations, Coke1 has counted 15 under Edward III., 8 under Richard II., 6 under Henry IV. and one under Henry V. Of these, only the statute of 1369 (42 Edward III. c. 1) requires special notice: it commands that “the Great Charter and the Charter of the Forest be holden and kept in all points, and if any statute be made to the contrary that shall be holden for none.” Parliament in 1369 thus sought to deprive future Parliaments of the power to effect any alterations upon the terms of Magna Carta. Yet, if Parliament in that year had the power to add anything, by a new legislative enactment, to the ancient binding force of the Great Charter, it follows that succeeding Parliaments, in possession of equal powers, might readily undo by a second statute what the earlier statute had sought to effect. If Parliament had power to alter the sacred terms of Magna Carta, it had power to alter the less sacred statute of 1369 which declared it unalterable. The terms of that statute, however, are interesting as perhaps the earliest example on record of the illogical theory that the English Parliament might so use its present legislative supremacy as to limit the legislative supremacy of other Parliaments in the future.2

  II.

  Magna Carta and the Reforms of Edward I.

  The Great Charter, alike from its excellences and its defects, exercised a potent influence throughout the two succeeding reigns. It is hardly too much to say that the failure of Magna Carta to provide adequate machinery for its own enforcement is responsible for the protracted struggles and civil war that made up the troubled reign of Henry III.; while the difference of attitude assumed by Henry and his son respectively towards the scheme of reform it embodied, explains why one reign was full of conflicts and distress, while the other was prosperous and progressive. The fundamental difference between the policies of Henry and Edward lies in this, that while Henry, in spite of numerous nominal confirmations of Magna Carta, never loyally accepted the settlement it contained, Edward acquiesced in its main provisions honestly on the whole, with a sincere intention to carry them into practice.

  At the same time, the attitude of Henry III. indicates an advance upon that of John. Henry, on attaining majority, had confirmed the charters freely and on his own intiative, and found himself thereafter unable openly to repudiate the bargain he had made. Yet the settlement between Crown and baronage was nominal rather than real: the King was bound by bonds of parchment which he could break at pleasure. In the absence of sanctions for its enforcement, the Charter became an empty expression of good intentions: no constitutional expedient existed to obviate a final recourse to the arbitrament of civil war. Thus, part of the blame for the recurring and devastating struggles of the reign of Henry must be attributed to the defects of the Great Charter.

  The whole interest of the reign, indeed, lies in the attempts made to evolve adequate machinery for enforcing “the liberties.” Experiments of many kinds were tried in the hope of turning theory into practice. The system of government outlined in the Provisions of Oxford of 1258, for example, reproduced the defects of the scheme contained in chapter 61 of the Great Charter, and added new defects of its own. The baronial committee was not designed to enter into friendly co–operation with Henry in the normal work of government, but rather to supersede entirely certain of the royal prerogatives. No glimmering was yet apparent of the true solution afterwards adopted with success: it was not yet realized that the best way to control the Crown was through the agency of its own Ministers.

  If Simon de Montfort had any vague conception of the real remedy for the evils of the reign, his ideals were overruled in 1258 by the more extreme section of the baronial party. Earl Simon, indeed, had one opportunity of putting his theories into practice: during the brief interval between the battle of Lewes, which made him supreme for the moment, and the battle of Evesham, which ended his career, he enjoyed an unfettered control; and some authorities find in the provisional scheme of the closing months of 1264, traces of the constitutional expedient afterwards successfully adopted as a solution of the problem. In one respect, the Earl of Leicester did influence the development of the English constitution; he furnished the first precedent for a true Parliament, reflecting interests wider than those of Crown tenants and free–holders, when he invited representatives of the boroughs to take their places by the side of representatives of the counties in a national council summoned to meet in January, 1265. His schemes of government, however, were not fated to be realized by him in a permanent form: the utter overthrow of his faction followed his decisive defeat and death on 4th August, 1265.

  The personal humiliation of Simon, however, assured the ultimate triumph of the cause he had made his own. Prince Edward, from the moment of his brilliant victory at Evesham, was not only supreme over his father’s enemies, but also within his father’s councils. He found himself in a position to realize some of his political ideals; and he adopted as his own, the main constitutional conceptions of his uncle Earl Simon, who had been his friend and teacher before he became his deadliest enemy.

  Edward Plantagenet, alike when acting as chief adviser of his aged father and after he had succeeded to his throne, not only accepted the main provisions of the Great Charter,1 but adopted also a new scheme of government which formed their necessary counterpart. The very fact of the adoption of Earl Simon’s ideals by the heir to the throne altered their chances of success. All such schemes had been foredoomed to failure so long as they emanated from an opposition leader, however powerful; but their triumph was assured when accepted by the monarch himself. Under the protection of Edward I.—the last of the four great master–builders of the constitution—the Commune Concilium of the Angevin kings grew into the English Parliament. This implied no sudden dramatic change, but a long process of adjustment, under the guiding hand of Edward.

  The main features of his scheme may be briefly summarized: Edward’s conception of his position as a national king achieving national ends, the funds necessary for which ought to be contributed by the nation, led him to devise a system of taxation which would fill the Exchequer while avoiding unnecessary friction with the tax–payer. In broadening the basis of finance, he was led to broaden the basis of Parliament; and thus he advanced from the feudal conception of a Commune Concilium, attended only by Crown tenants, towards the nobler ideal of a national Parliament containing representatives of every community and every class in England. The principle of representation (foreshadowed in a vague way for centuries before the Conquest in English local government), now found a home, and, as it proved, a permanent home, in the English Parliament.

  The powers of this assembly widened almost automatically, with the widening of its composition. To its original function of taxation, legislation was soon added. The functions of hearing grievances and of proffering advice had, even in the days of the Conqueror, belonged to such of the great magnates as were able to make their voices heard in the Curia Regis; and similar rights were gradually extended to the humbler members of the augmented assembly. The representatives of counties and towns retained rights of free discussion even after Parliament had split into two Houses. These rights, fortified by command of the purse strings, tended to increase, until they secured for the Commons some measure of control over the executive functions of the King, varying in extent and effectiveness with the weakness of the King, with his need of money, and with the political situation of the hour.

  The new position and powers of Parliament logically involved a corresponding alteration in the position and powers of the smaller but more permanent council or Concilium Ordinarium (the future Privy Council). This had long been increasing in power, in prestige, and in independence, a process quickened by the minority of Henry III. The Council was now strengthened by the support of a powerful Parliament, usually acting in alliance with the leaders of the baronial opposition. The Council was recruited from Parliament, and the appointment of King’s ministers was influenced by the proceedings in the larger assembly.1

  The Council thus became neutral ground on which the conflicting interests of King and baronage might be discussed and compromised. Wild schemes like that of chapter 61 of Magna Carta or that typified in the Committee appointed by the Mad Parliament of 1258, were now unnecessary. The King’s own ministers, backed by Parliament, became an adequate means of enforcing the constitutional restraints embodied in royal Charters. The problem was thus, for the time being, solved. The bargain made at Runnymede between the English monarch and the English nation found its counterpart and sanction, before the close of the thirteenth century, in the conception of a King ruling through responsible ministers and in harmony with a national Parliament. Edward Plantagenet, though merely the unconscious instrument by whose agency the new conception was for a time partially realized, yet merits the gratitude of posterity for his share in the elaboration of a working scheme of government which took the place of the clumsy expedients designed as constitutional sanctions in 1215. The ultimate triumph of the principles underlying Magna Carta was assured not through any executive committee of rebellious barons, but through the constitutional machinery devised by Edward Plantagenet.

  PART V.

  MAGNA CARTA: ORIGINAL VERSIONS, PRINTED EDITIONS AND COMMENTARIES.

  I.

  Manuscripts of Magna Carta and Relative Documents.

  The barons who had forced the Great Charter on King John were determined that its contents should be widely known and permanently preserved. It was not sufficient that the great seal should be formally impressed upon one parchment. Those who compelled John to submit were not content even with the execution of its terms in duplicate or in triplicate: copies were to be distributed throughout the land, to be preserved in important strongholds and among the archives of the chapters of cathedral churches.1

  I. The extant original versions. Of the many sealed copies, four have escaped the destroying hand of time: (1) The British Museum Magna Carta, number one—formally cited as “Cotton, Charters XIII. 31a.” The recent history of this document, which is possibly the original copy delivered to the barons of the Cinque Portes, is well known. It was discovered in the seventeenth century, among the archives of Dover Castle, by the Warden, Sir Edward Dering, and by him presented to Sir Robert Cotton.2 In the fire of 23rd October, 1731, this Charter was rendered in parts illegible, while the yellow wax of the seal was melted. It is possible that the accident has added to the prestige of this particular copy of Magna Carta.

  Like the three others still extant, it is written continuously, though with many contractions, in a neat, running, Norman hand. Some omissions seem to have been made in the body of this version and to have been supplied at the foot. These are five in number.1 It is possible to regard them as corrections of clerical omissions due to carelessness or hurry in engrossing the deed; but the fact that one of the additions is distinctly in the King’s favour raises a presumption that they embodied additions made as afterthoughts to what had been originally dictated to the engrossing clerk, and that they were inserted at the King’s suggestion before he would adhibit the great seal.

  The importance of this document was recognized, and a facsimile was prepared by John Pine, a well–known engraver, some eighteen months after the great fire. The engraving bears a certificate, dated 9th May, 1733, that the copy is founded on the original, which had been shrivelled up by the heat; but that, where two holes had been burned, the words obliterated had been replaced from the other version (to be immediately described) preserved in the Cottonian collection.

  (2) The British Museum Magna Carta, number two—cited as “Cotton, Augustus, II. 106.”2 The early history of this document is unknown, but it came into the possession of Mr. Humphrey Wyems, and by him was presented to Sir Robert Cotton on 1st January, 1628–9. Unlike the other Cottonian copy, this one is happily in an excellent state of preservation; but there is no trace left of any seal.1 Three of the five addenda inserted at the foot of the copy previously described are found in a similar position here; but the substance of the two others is included in the body of the deed. On the left–hand margin, titles intended to be descriptive of several chapters occur in a later hand. Thus for the preservation of two original copies of the national charter of liberties the nation is indebted to Sir Robert Cotton. Several authors2 gravely record how Sir Robert discovered “the palladium of English liberties” in the hands of his tailor at the critical moment when scissors were about to transform it into shapes for a suit of clothes. This detail is a fable, since both manuscripts of Magna Carta in the Cottonian collection are otherwise accounted for.

  (3) The Lincoln Magna Carta. This copy is under the custody of the Dean and Chapter of Lincoln Cathedral, where it has lain for many centuries. The word “Lincolnia” is endorsed in a later hand in two places on folds of the parchment. It has no corrections or additions inserted at the foot, but embodies in their proper places all those which occurred in the versions already discussed. Further, it is executed with flourishes and in a more finished manner: the inference is that it took longer to engross. The Record Commissioners, in preparing the Statutes of the Realm, considered this version of superior authority to the others and have chosen it for their engraving published in 1810 in that valuable work, and also in the first volume of their edition of Rymer’s Foedera in 1816.3

  (4) The Salisbury Magna Carta—preserved in the archives of the Cathedral there. The early history of this manuscript has not been traced, but its existence was known at the close of the seventeenth century.1 Sir William Blackstone, in April, 1759,2 instituted a search for it, but without success—his inquiries being met with the statement that it had been lost some thirty years before, during the execution of repairs in the Cathedral library. As its disappearance had taken place during the tenure of the see by Gilbert Burnet, his political adversaries accused him of appropriating it—an undoubted calumny, as will be hereafter explained. The document had not been re–discovered in 1800 when the royal commission published a report of its inquiries for national records.3 Two sub–commissioners visited Salisbury in 1806 in search of it, but obtained no satisfaction. It seems, however, to have been re–discovered within the next few years, since it is mentioned in a book published in 1814,4 and it is now exhibited to the public by order of the Dean and Chapter of Salisbury Cathedral. It resembles the Lincoln copy both in its fine, leisurely penmanship and also in the absence of additions at the bottom of the parchment.5

  II. Comparison of the Originals. Prior to Sir William Blackstone’s work, extraordinary confusion seems to have prevailed concerning the various Charters of Liberties. Not only was John’s Magna Carta confused with reissues by Henry; but these latter were known only from an official copy of the Charter of 1225 contained in the Inspeximus of the twenty–eighth year of Edward I. Neither Madox1 nor Brady2 was aware of the existence of any one of the four originals; and no mention is made of them in the first edition of Rymer’s Foedera, which appeared in 1704. Mr. Tyrrell, indeed, seems to have known of the second original in the British Museum and also of the Salisbury version.3 Mr. Care4 showed no clear knowledge of the various manuscripts, though he mentioned the existence of several. Even Blackstone in 1759 collated only the two Cottonian copies, since he failed to find that of Salisbury, and was unaware of the existence of the Lincoln manuscript.5

  As these four versions are practically identical in their substance, no important question seems to be involved in the discussion as to whether any one of them has greater authority than the others. The Record Commissioners considered that the Lincoln copy was the first to be completed (and therefore that it possessed special authority), because it contained no insertions at the foot of the instrument. Yet it seems more plausible to argue that this very immunity from clerical errors, or from additions made after engrossment, proves that it was of later and less hurried execution than the others, and therefore of less authority, if any distinction is permissible. Mr. Thomson has much ground for his contention, in speaking of the fire–marked version, that “the same circumstances may probably be a proof of its superior antiquity, as having been the first which was actually drawn into form and sealed on Runnymede, the original whence all the most perfect copies were taken.”1

  In all printed texts of Magna Carta, the contents are divided into a preamble and sixty–three chapters. There is no warrant for this in any one of the four originals: the “chapters” are a modern invention, made for convenience of reference.

  III. Articles of the Barons. Of hardly inferior interest is the parchment which contains the heads of agreement made between John and the rebels on 15th June, 1215. This is now in the British Museum, cited officially as “Additional MSS. 4838.” The seven centuries that have passed over it have left surprisingly few traces; it is legible throughout, and still bears the impression of John’s seal in brown wax. It was apparently deposited in Lambeth Palace, where it remained until the middle of the seventeenth century. Archbishop Laud, when threatened with impeachment, thought it prudent to set his papers in order; and on 18th December, 1640, he dispatched for that purpose to his episcopal palace, his friend Dr. John Warner, Bishop of Rochester. A few hours later, Laud was committed to custody of Black–Rod, and an official messenger was sent by the House of Lords to seal up his papers. Bishop Warner had, meanwhile, escaped with the Articles of the Barons. He kept this till he died, and at his death it passed to one of his executors named Lee, and from him to his son Colonel Lee, who presented it to Gilbert Burnet. When the Salisbury Magna Carta disappeared, Burnet was suspected of appropriating it. What gave apparent weight to these misrepresentations of his political opponents was that special facilities had been granted him to search public records in the prosecution of his historical labours, and that he actually had in his possession—quite lawfully, as we know—the Articles of the Barons, which was confused by the carelessness of early historians with Magna Carta itself. The calumny was so widely spread that Burnet thought it necessary formally to refute it, explaining that he had received the Articles as a gift from Colonel Lee:—“So it is now in my hands, and it came very fairly to me.”1

  Bishop Burnet left it as a legacy to his son Sir Thomas Burnet; and on his death it passed to his executor David Mitchell, whose permission to print it Blackstone obtained in 1759. It was purchased from Mr. Mitchell’s daughter by another historian, Philip, second Earl of Stanhope, who presented it to the British Museum in 1769. It is now exhibited along with the two Cottonian copies of Magna Carta. The Record Commissioners have reproduced it in Statutes of the Realm in 1810, and also in the New Rymer in 1816.2

  The document begins with this headline: “Ista sunt Capitula quae Barones petunt et dominus Rex concedit.” Then the articles follow in 49 paragraphs of varying length, separate, but unnumbered, each new chapter (unlike the chapters of Magna Carta, which run straight on) beginning a new line. The numbers, which appear in all printed editions, have no warrant in the original.3

  IV. The so–called “unknown Charter of Liberties.” At Paris is preserved a copy of what looks like a charter granted by John, but irregular in its form. This document is preserved among the Archives du Royaume in the Section Historique and numbered J. 655.4 A copy of this copy was discovered at the Record Office in London by Dr. Horace Round in 1893. Before that date it seems to have been practically unknown to English historians, although it had been printed by a French writer thirty years earlier.5 As the interpretation of this document has proved a puzzle attracting many to attempt its solution, it may be well to give a brief analysis of its tenor.1 The text of the supposed Charter is preceded, in the manuscript (which is in a French hand of the early quarter of the thirteenth century), by a copy of the Charter of Liberties of Henry I., from which it is separated by this sentence, in Latin: “This is the Charter of King Henry, by which the barons seek their liberties, and these following are granted by King John,” words which invite comparison with the heading of the Articuli Baronum, and suggest that the document under description may have formed a link between Henry I.’s charter and these Articuli.

  The first clause runs in the third person (concedit rex Johannes) and grants that he will arrest no man without judgment, nor accept anything for justice, nor commit injustice. The remaining eleven clauses are all in the first person singular (whereas regular charters run in the plural). The second clause restricts relief; the third regulates wardship; the fourth, marriage; the fifth, testate and intestate succession; the sixth, the rights of widows. The seventh, opening with the word “adhuc” (as though later additions were now made to provisions previously written), concedes that Crown vassals need not go on military service outside of England except in Normandy and Brittany; and seems further to suggest, in certain circumstances, a diminution of the servitium debitum. Clause 8 limits scutage to one mark unless by counsel of the barons.

  Clause 9, again beginning with adhuc, agrees to give up the forests made by Henry II. and Richard. Clause 10 (also with its adhuc) grants remission, in several particulars, of the strictness of the forest laws. Clause 11 prohibits Jews from taking interest during a debtor’s minority; and clause 12 concedes that no one shall lose life or limbs for the killing of a deer.

  At least seven solutions have been attempted of the problems raised by this manuscript. (1) Dr. Round, in communicating his discovery to the English Historical Review, maintained that the document was a copy, in a mangled form perhaps, of a charter actually granted in the year 1213 by King John to the northern barons, containing concessions which they had agreed to accept in satisfaction of their claims.1 (2) Mr. Prothero preferred to view it as an abortive proposal made by the King early in 1215 and rejected by the barons.2 (3) Mr. Hubert Hall dismissed the document as a forgery, describing it as “a coronation charter attributed to John by a French scribe in the second decade of the thirteenth century”—probably between November, 1216, and March, 1217, when King Philip desired to prove that John had committed perjury by breaking his promises, and had thereby forfeited his right to the Crown of England.3

  (4) In the first edition of this work, published in 1905, the tentative suggestion was made that the document might be a copy of the actual “schedule” which we know from Roger of Wendover4 to have been drawn up by the barons prior to 27th April, 1215, and at that date forwarded to John with the demand, under threat of civil war, that he should forthwith set his seal to it. In this view the schedule would be merely a precursor of the Articles of the Barons, with which it had been previously identified. The fact that this “schedule” was hurriedly drawn up by unskilful hands was suggested as an explanation of the peculiar features of the “unknown charter” emphasized by Mr. Hall; its archaisms, its erroneous royal style running in the singular, and its transition from the third to the first person. (5) Mr. Davis,5 in rejecting this theory, maintained that the document contained the jottings made by some one present while negotiations were actually in progress between the barons and John’s representatives at some date between the drawing up of the Articuli Baronum and the sealing of the Great Charter, presumably, therefore, between 15th and 19th June, 1215.

  (6) Mr. Petit–Dutaillis6 modifies Mr. Davis’s theory materially. The conference, at which the unofficial note–taker was present, must have taken place shortly before the framing of the Articuli Baronum, and the note–taker himself may have been an emissary of Philip Augustus, possibly a spy of humble origin, collecting information in furtherance of Philip’s designs on England. (7) The most recent, detailed, and ingenious theory is that of Dr. Ludwig Riess of Berlin,1 who thinks that a copy of the first Henry’s Charter was sent to John for convenience of reference when the latter, amid the misfortunes of the ill–starred campaign of 1214, was trying to make terms with the rebellious northern barons, and that jottings subsequently made on the blank space at the foot of the parchment, as to concessions granted by John, constitute the so–called “unknown charter.”

  Successive clauses of the document tell the story of its genesis—and a romantic story it is. When the northern barons met the demand of 26th May, 1214, for a scutage, by the counter demand for a confirmation of Henry Beauclerk’s Charter, John’s Regent, Peter des Roches, wrote to the King, then in Poitou, for instructions, enclosing a transcript of Henry’s Charter, to which he had appended a jotting to remind John of the promise already made on 28th August, 1213, through Stephen Langton. This note forms, in Dr. Riess’s theory, clause one of the much discussed document. Thereafter a period of haggling ensued between John and the distant rebels, with Peter and perhaps also the archbishop as intermediaries, the King making a careful memorandum from time to time of each concession wrung from him by the obduracy of the barons. The King is thus the author of clauses 2 to 12 inclusive, couched in the informal first person singular, each new group opening with the word “adhuc.”

  The original document, which thus represented the stages of unsuccessful negotiations extending over several months, was captured, so it is inferred, by the French. After a copy had been made for preservation at Paris, the original was sent by Philip to the barons that they might embarrass John by confronting him with concessions in his own handwriting which he now desired to repudiate. When Henry’s Charter was produced by Stephen Langton at Bury St. Edmunds on 4th November, 1214, it was the royal jottings appended to it, not the familiar, century–old charter itself, that produced the sensation which modern writers have found so hard to explain.

  Such is Dr. Riess’s brilliant effort at historical reconstruction: the main difficulties to its acceptance are that it involves too many unproved assumptions; that John, before the failure of his schemes, was unlikely to authorize substantial concessions, or to make careful memoranda of them as though he meant to keep his promises; and that five months, between May and October, would not suffice for the conduct of protracted negotiations between John in Poitou and the malcontents scattered through the north of England.

  It is beyond doubt, however, that offers and counteroffers, of which the schedule of Easter was only one, passed to and fro, between March and June of the year 1215. The negotiations of which our document contains a record may have taken place between the respective dates of the “schedule” and the Articuli. It would be easy to explain the presence of a copy in the French archives on the assumption that the original was among “the charters of liberties” surrendered by Louis in 1217. This trifling amendment would meet some of the objections to Dr. Riess’s theory, which in all essentials seems to be the most convincing yet suggested. In any view, the “unknown charter” would appear to be a link between the Charter of 1100 and the Articuli.

  It would clearly be inadvisable to found conclusions upon a document, the nature and authenticity of which form the subject of so many rival theories; but even if further investigation proves it to be a forgery, a forgery of contemporary date may still throw light on otherwise obscure passages in genuine charters. Instances of this will be found in the sequel.

  II.

  Previous Editions and Commentaries.

  I. Printed Editions of the Text. Prior to 1759, even the best informed writers on English history laboured under much confusion in regard to the various charters of liberties. Few seem to have been aware that fundamental differences existed between the charter granted by John and the reissues of Henry. Much of the blame must be borne by Roger of Wendover, who, in his account of the transactions at Runnymede, incorporated, in place of John’s Charter, the text of the two charters granted by Henry.1

  Early editions of “Magna Carta,” then, are not of John’s Charter at all, but give the text of Edward’s Inspeximus of Henry’s reissue of 1225. The very earliest of these to be printed was apparently that published on 9th October, 1499, by Richard Pynson, the King’s printer.2 The same document was followed in numerous editions by Pynson, Redman, Berthelet, Tottel, Marshe and Wight, from 1499 to 1618. It was not until Blackstone’s day, however, that John’s Charter appeared in print. Of the numerous editions that have since appeared, only four call for separate notice.

  (1) In 1759 appeared Sir William Blackstone’s scholarly work entitled The Great Charter and the Charter of the Forest, containing accurate texts of all the important issues of the Charters of Liberties carefully prepared from the original manuscripts so far as these were known to him.3

  (2) In some respects the Record Commissioners have improved even on Blackstone’s work, in their edition of the Statutes of the Realm, published in 1810. A special section of the volume is devoted to Charters of Liberties, where not only the grants of John and Henry III., but also the charters which led up to them, and their subsequent confirmations, have received exhaustive treatment.

  (3) A carefully revised text, Magna Carta regis Johannis, was published by Dr. Stubbs in 1868; and the various charters are also to be found, arranged in chronological order, in his well–known Select Charters, first published in 1870.

  (4) In 1892, M. Charles Bémont published carefully edited texts of the charters of 1215 and 1225, printing as footnotes to the latter the variants of 1216 and 1217.

  II. Commentaries and Treatises. Within five years of the peace made at Runnymede, a minstrel attached to Robert of Béthune, one of John’s familiars, included an incomplete but not inaccurate summary of the Charter in his Histoire des ducs de Normandie et des rois d’Angleterre, supposed to have been composed in 1220.1 This first rude commentary has already been alluded to.2 Posterity would gladly have bartered it, such as it is, for a few words of explanation from one who was well able to speak but preferred to keep silence. The discreet biographer of William the Marshal excuses himself from drawing upon his intimate sources of information: he must pass over, he says, the war which was in England between the King and his barons, for there were too many incidents which it would not be honourable to recount.3

  Later in the century, comes the mysterious medieval lawbook known as the Mirror of Justices, complaining of “the damnable disregard” of Magna Carta and containing a chapter on that document with some claims to rank as a commentary, although it represents the opinions of a political pamphleteer rather than those of an unbiassed judge. The date of this treatise is still the subject of dispute. It has been usual to place it not earlier than the years 1307–27, mainly because it makes mention of “Edward II.” Prof. Maitland, however, dates it earlier, maintaining on general grounds that it was “written very soon after 1285, and probably before 1290.”4 He explains the reference to “Edward II.” as applying to the monarch now generally known in England as Edward I., but sometimes in his own reign known as Edward II., to distinguish him from an earlier Edward still enshrined in the popular imagination, namely, Edward Confessor. Mr. Maitland is not disposed to treat this work of an unknown author too seriously, and warns students against “his ignorance, political bias, and deliberate lies.”1

  Reference has already been made to the comparative neglect of Magna Carta in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and to the influence of Coke in reviving interest in its provisions. Of the commentaries that have subsequently appeared, it is not, perhaps, necessary to mention more than the following thirteen. (1) The elaborate treatise of Sir Edward Coke, King James’s deposed Chief Justice, comprising the second of his four Institutes, was published in 1642 under direction of the Long Parliament, the House of Commons having given the order on 12th May, 1641.2

  Although this commentary, like everything written by Coke, was long accepted as a work of great value, its method is in reality uncritical and unhistorical. The great lawyer reads into Magna Carta the entire body of the common law of the seventeenth century, of which he was admittedly a master. He seems almost unconscious of the changes wrought by the experience and vicissitudes of four eventful centuries. The clauses of Magna Carta are merely occasions for expounding the law as it stood, not at the beginning of the thirteenth century, but in Coke’s own day. In the skilful hands of Sir Edward, the Great Charter is made to attack abuses of James or Charles, rather than those of John or Henry. In expounding the judicium parium, for example, he explains minute details of procedure before the Court of the Lord High Steward, and the nature of the warrants to be issued prior to arrest of any one by the Crown; while in the clause of Henry’s Charter which secures an open door to foreign merchants in England “unless publicly prohibited,” he discovers a declaration that Parliament shall have the sole power to issue such prohibitions, forgetful that “Parliament” did not exist in 1215, and that the regulation of trade was then an exclusive prerogative of the Crown.

  (2) In 1680 Edward Cooke, barrister, published a small volume entitled Magna Charta made in the ninth year of King Henry III. and confirmed by King Edward I. in the twenty–eighth year of his reign. This contained a translation of Henry’s Magna Carta with short explanatory notes founded mainly on the commentary of Sir Edward Coke. Mr. Cooke declared that his object was to make the Great Charter more accessible to the public at large, since, as he said, “I am confident, scarce one of a hundred of the common people, know what it is.”

  (3) Sir William Blackstone’s Introduction to his edition of the charters, published in 1759, as already mentioned, contains valuable information as to the documents he edits; but he explicitly disclaims all intention of writing a Commentary. He is careful to state “that it is not in his present intention, nor (he fears) within the reach of his abilities, to give a full and explanatory comment on the matters contained in these charters.”1

  (4) Daines Barrington published in 1766 his Observations upon the Statutes from Magna Charta to 21 James I. This book contains some notes on the Charter also founded chiefly upon Coke’s Second Institute; his original contributions are not of outstanding value.

  (6) In 1772 Prof. F. S. Sullivan issued a course of lectures under the title An Historical Treatise on the Feudal Law, with a Commentary on Magna Charta: “I shall therefore proceed briefly to speak to Magna Charta, and in so doing shall omit almost all that relates to the feudal tenures, which makes the greatest part of it, and confine myself to that which is now law.”2

  (7) John Reeves’ invaluable History of English Law, which appeared in 1783–84, marked the commencement of a new epoch in the scientific study of the genesis of English law. Treating incidentally of Magna Carta, he shows wonderful insight into the real purport of many of its provisions, but the state of historical knowledge when he wrote rendered serious errors inevitable.

  (8) In 1829 Richard Thomson published an elaborate edition of the charters, combined with a commentary which makes no serious attempt to supplement the unhistorical explanations of Coke by the results of more recent investigations. His work is a storehouse of information which must, however, be used with caution.

  (9) In many respects, the most valuable contribution yet made to the elucidation of the Great Charter is that contained in M. Charles Bémont’s preface to his Chartes des Libertés Anglaises, published in 1892. Although he has subjected himself to the severe restraints imposed by the slender size of his volume and by a rigid desire to state only facts of an undisputed nature, leaving theories strictly alone; he has done much to help forward the study of the charters, insisting upon the close mutual connection between the various Charters of Liberties. It is doubtful, however, whether by this very insistence upon the continuity of this one series of documents, he does not lay himself open to the misconception that he takes too narrow a view of the scope and relations of the Charter. Magna Carta’s antecedents must not be looked for exclusively among documents couched in the form of charters, nor its results merely in their subsequent confirmations. It is impossible to understand it aright, except in close relation to all the varied aspects of the national life and development. Every Act appearing on the Statute Rolls is, in a sense, an Act amending Magna Carta; while such enactments as the Statutes of Marlborough and Westminster I. have as intimate a connection with John’s Great Charter as the Confirmatio Cartarum or the Articuli super Cartas have. This is a truth which M. Bémont recognizes, though the scheme of his book led him to emphasize another aspect of his subject. His object was not to explain the numerous ways in which the Charters of Liberties are entwined with the whole of English history, but merely to furnish a basis for the accurate study of one of their most important features. His book is indispensable, but is not intended to form, in any sense, a commentary on Magna Carta.

  (10) A brilliant article by Mr. Edward Jenks appeared in The Independent Review for November, 1904, whose title, The Myth of Magna Carta, indicates the iconoclastic lines on which it proceeds. He argues that the Charter was the product of the selfish action of the barons pressing their own interests, and not of any disinterested or national movement; that it was not, by any means, “a great landmark in history”; and that, instead of proving a material help in England’s advance towards constitutional freedom, it was rather “a stumbling block in the path of progress,” being feudal and reactionary in its intention and effects. Finally, for most of the popular misapprehensions concerning it, he holds Coke responsible.

  (11) In The Magna Carta of the English and of the Hungarian Constitution (1904), Mr. Elemér Hantos ably analyzes the numerous and interesting parallels between John’s Charter and the Bulla Aurea of Andreas II., dating from 1222, and furnishes a brief commentary on both.

  (12) M. Charles Petit–Dutaillis, in his Étude sur la vie et le règne de Louis VIII. (1894), was one of the first of modern historians to deprecate exaggerated estimates of the value of Magna Carta, insisting that “the barons had no suspicion that they would one day be called the founders of English liberty.”1 More recently, in his Studies and Notes supplementary to Stubbs’ Constitutional History2 he has included a brief but valuable discussion of the Great Charter.

  (13) The whole of Prof. G. B. Adams’ The Origin of the English Constitution (1912) is virtually a discussion of the Great Charter, and abounds in valuable suggestions for estimating its tenor and value, and for elucidating its various clauses. It does not aim at being an exhaustive treatise, but is intended to supplement rather than supersede existing commentaries.1

  Endnotes

  TEXT, TRANSLATION, AND COMMENTARY

  PREAMBLE.1

  Johannes Dei gratia rex Anglie, dominus Hibernie, dux Normannie et Aquitannie, et comes Andegavie, archiepiscopis, episcopis, abbatibus, comitibus, baronibus, justiciariis, forestariis, vicecomitibus, prepositis, ministris et omnibus ballivis et fidelibus suis salutem. Sciatis nos intuitu Dei et pro salute anime nostre et omnium antecessorum et heredum nostrorum, ad honorem Dei et exaltationem sancte Ecclesie, et emendacionem regni nostri, per consilium venerabilium patrum nostrorum, Stephani Cantuariensis archiepiscopi tocius Anglie primatis et sancte Romane ecclesie cardinalis, Henrici Dublinensis archiepiscopi, Willelmi Londoniensis, Petri Wintoniensis, Joscelini Bathoniensis et Glastoniensis, Hugonis Lincolniensis, Walteri Wygorniensis, Willelmi Coventriensis, et Benedicti Roffensis episcoporum; magistri Pandulfi domini pape subdiaconi et familiaris, fratris Aymerici magistri milicie Templi in Anglia; et nobilium virorum Willelmi Mariscalli comitis Penbrocie, Willelmi comitis Sarresburie, Willelmi comitis Warennie, Willelmi comitis Arundellie, Alani de Galeweya constabularii Scocie, Warini filii Geroldi, Petri filii Hereberti, Huberti de Burgo senescalli Pictavie, Hugonis de Nevilla, Mathei filii Hereberti, Thome Basset, Alani Basset, Philippi de Albiniaco, Roberti de Roppeleia, Johannis Mariscalli, Johannis filii Hugonis et aliorum fidelium nostrorum.

  John, by the grace of God, king of England, lord of Ireland, duke of Normandy and Aquitaine, and count of Anjou, to the archbishops, bishops, abbots, earls, barons, justiciars, foresters, sheriffs, stewards, servants, and to all his bailiffs and liege subjects, greeting. Know that, having regard to God and for the salvation of our souls, and those of all our ancestors and heirs, and unto the honour of God and the advancement of holy Church, and for the reform of our realm, [we have granted as underwritten]1 by advice of our venerable fathers, Stephen, archbishop of Canterbury, primate of all England and cardinal of the holy Roman Church, Henry archbishop of Dublin, William of London, Peter of Winchester, Jocelyn of Bath and Glastonbury, Hugh of Lincoln, Walter of Worcester, William of Coventry, Benedict of Rochester, bishops; of master Pandulf, subdeacon and member of the household of our lord the Pope, of brother Aymeric (master of the Knights of the Temple in England), and of the illustrious men2 William Marshal, earl of Pembroke, William, earl of Salisbury, William, earl Warenne, William, earl of Arundel, Alan of Galloway (constable of Scotland), Waren Fitz Gerald, Peter Fitz Herbert, Hubert de Burgh (seneschal of Poitou), Hugh de Neville, Matthew Fitz Herbert, Thomas Basset, Alan Basset, Philip d’Aubigny, Robert of Roppesley, John Marshal, John Fitz Hugh, and others, our liegemen.

  The Great Charter of John opens, in the form common to royal charters of the period, with a greeting from the sovereign to his magnates, officials, and faithful subjects, and announces, in the pious legal formula used by impious and pious kings alike, that he had made certain grants by the advice of counsellors whom he names. Three features call for comment.

  I. The King’s Title. Points of interest are suggested by the form of royal style here adopted. John’s assumption of the royal plural “Sciatis Nos” reads, in the light of subsequent history, as a tribute to his arrogance rather than his greatness, when compared with the humbler first person singular used by his father. In this particular, however, Richard, not John, had been the innovator.1 For a further alteration, John was alone responsible: to the titles borne by his father and brother, he added that of “lord of Ireland.” When the wide territories of Henry II., had been distributed among his elder sons, the young John (hence known as “John Lackland”) was left without a heritage, until his father bestowed on him the island of Ireland, recently appropriated; and this brought with it the right to style himself “dominus Hiberniae,” a title retained after he had outlived his brothers and inherited their wide lands and honours.

  John began his reign in 1199 as ruler over the undivided possessions of the House of Anjou from the Cheviots to the Pyrenees. These lands were held, by him as by his father, under a variety of titles and conditions. Anjou, the original fief of the Plantagenet race, still carried with it only the title of count. Henry II. had, at an early age, become duke of Normandy in his mother’s right, and thereafter duke of Aquitaine by marriage with Eleanor, its heiress.2 These fiefs were held by Henry and his sons under the King of France as Lord Paramount. Long before 1215, John had lost these wide dominions, except the most distant of them all, his mother’s dowry of Aquitaine. Anjou and Normandy were irretrievably lost, but he still retained their empty titles; and in this Henry III. followed him at first, until, by the Treaty of 1259, he surrendered to Louis IX. all claim to Normandy and Anjou with their dependencies, in return for a confirmation of his claims on Aquitaine.3

  Of Ireland, John was still, as formerly, “lord” not “king.”4 The exact denotation of “dominus” has formed the subject of learned controversy. It is not, as has sometimes been suggested, an inferior title to that of rex, appropriate only to a preliminary stage of the process culminating in kingship. The two words imply distinct relationships differing in kind. The one is national and the other personal and feudal. Kingship is conferred by “election” (or at least proclamation) followed by coronation; lordship depends on the feudal contract made with the individual vassal, by homage and fealty.1 England, alone of John’s possessions, was held by the style of “Rex,” implying sovereign rule, although John in 1213 had accepted Innocent as feudal overlord. In calling himself “Rex Angliae,” in place of “Rex Anglorum” (as Henry I. had done), he followed precedents of Stephen and of Henry II.2

  No vindication of John’s title is given. The simple words, “Dei gratia rex Angliae,” may be contrasted with the laboured attempt of Stephen’s second and more formal charter of liberties (of April, 1136) to set forth a valid title to the throne; where he describes himself as appointed (“electus”) by consent of clergy and people; consecrated by William, Archbishop of Canterbury and Legate of Holy Roman Church; and thereafter confirmed by Innocent, Pontiff of the Holy See of Rome.3

  Conscious of the claims of his cousin Matilda, Stephen here ignores the element of hereditary succession in determining the title to the Crown, and emphasizes the element of appointment or “election,” both of which were blended in the twelfth, as in earlier centuries, in proportions not easy to define with accuracy. Professor Freeman pushed to excess the supposed right of the Witenagemot to elect the King, and transferred it to the Norman Curia. A recent German writer, Dr. Oskar Rössler,4 denies that the Normans admitted the elective element at all. The theory now usually held is a mean between these extremes, namely, that the Norman Curia had a limited right of selecting among the sons, brothers, or near relations of the last King, the individual best suited to succeed him.1 Such a right, never authoritatively enunciated, gradually sank to an empty formality. Its place was taken, to some extent, by the successful assertion by the spiritual power of a claim to give or withhold the consecrating oil, without which no one could be recognized as rex. John, secure in possession, contents himself with the terse assertion of the fact of kingship: “John, by God’s grace, King of England.”

  II. The Names of the consenting Nobles. It was natural that the Charter should place on record the assent of those magnates who remained in at least nominal allegiance, and were therefore capable of acting as mediators.2 The leading men in England during this crisis may be arranged in three groups: (1) the leaders of the host opposed to John at Runnymede; (2) the agents of John’s oppressions, extreme men, mostly aliens, many of whom were in command of royal castles or of mercenary levies; and (3) moderate men, churchmen or John’s ministers or relations, who, whatever their sympathies might be, remained in allegiance to the King and helped to arrange terms of peace—a comparatively small band, as the paucity of names recited in Magna Carta testifies.3 The men, here made consenters to John’s grant, are again referred to, though not by name, in chapter 63, in the character of witnesses.

  III. The Motives of the Grant. The preamble contains a statement of John’s reasons for conceding the Charter. These are quaintly paraphrased by Coke:1 “Here be four notable causes of the making of this great charter rehearsed. 1. The honour of God. 2. For the health of the King’s soul. 3. For the exaltation of holy church, and fourthly, for the amendment of the Kingdom.” The real reason must be sought in another direction, namely, in the army of the rebels; and John in after days did not scruple to plead consent given under threat of violence, as a reason for voiding his grant. The technical legal “consideration,” the quid pro quo which John received as the price of this confirmation of their liberties was the renewal by his opponents of the homage and fealty that they had solemnly renounced. This “consideration” was not stated in the charter, but the fact was known to all.2

  CHAPTER ONE.

  In primis concessisse Deo et hac presenti carta nostra confirmasse, pro nobis et heredibus nostris in perpetuum, quod Anglicana ecclesia libera sit, et habeat jura sua integra, et libertates suas illesas; et ita volumus observari; quod apparet ex eo quod libertatem electionum, que maxima et magis necessaria reputatur ecclesie Anglicane, mera et spontanea voluntate, ante discordiam inter nos et barones nostros motam, concessimus et carta nostra confirmavimus, et eam obtinuimus a domino papa Innocencio tercio confirmari; quam et nos observabimus et ab heredibus nostris in perpetuum bona fide volumus observari.3 Concessimus eciam omnibus liberis hominibus regni nostri, pro nobis et heredibus nostris in perpetuum, omnes libertates subscriptas, habendas et tenendas eis et heredibus suis, de nobis et heredibus nostris.

  In the first place we have granted to God, and by this our present charter confirmed for us and our heirs for ever that the English church shall be free, and shall have her rights entire, and her liberties inviolate; and we will that it be thus observed; which is apparent from this that the freedom of elections, which is reckoned most important and very essential to the English church, we, of our pure and unconstrained will, did grant, and did by our charter confirm and did obtain the ratification of the same from our lord, Pope Innocent III., before the quarrel arose between us and our barons: and this we will observe, and our will is that it be observed in good faith by our heirs for ever. We have also granted to all freemen of our kingdom, for us and our heirs forever, all the underwritten liberties, to be had and held by them and their heirs, of us and our heirs forever.

  This first of the sixty–three chapters of Magna Carta places side by side, bracketed equal as it were, (a) a general confirmation of the privileges of the English church, and (b) a declaration that the rights to be afterwards specified were granted “to all freemen” of the kingdom and to their heirs for ever. The manner of this juxtaposition of the church’s rights with the lay rights of freemen, suggests an intention to make it clear that neither group was to be treated as of more importance than the other. If the civil and political rights of the nation at large occupy the bulk of the Charter, and are defined in their minutest details, the church’s rights receive a prior place.1 A twofold division thus suggests itself.

  I.

  The Rights of the Church.

  A general promise that the English church should be free was accompanied by specific confirmation of the separate charter, guaranteeing freedom of canonical election, granted on 21st November, 1214.

  (1)

  Quod Anglicana ecclesia libera sit.

  This emphatic declaration, which has no counterpart in the Articles of the Barons, is repeated twice in Magna Carta, at the beginning and the end respectively. If the original scheme of the barons showed no special tenderness for churchmen’s privileges, Stephen Langton and his bishops were careful to have that defect remedied. It is interesting to note that, where the charters of Henry II. and earlier Kings spoke of “holy church,” Magna Carta speaks of “ecclesia Anglicana.” When English churchmen found that the tyrant, against whom they made common cause with English barons and townsmen, received sympathy and support from Rome, the conception of an English church that was something more than a mere branch of the church universal, began to take clearer shape. The use of the words ecclesia Anglicana may indicate, perhaps, that under the influence of Stephen Langton, English churchmen were beginning to regard themselves as members of a separate community, that looked for guidance to Canterbury rather than to Rome. John was now the feudal dependent of the Holy See, and the “liberty of the English church” had to be vindicated against the King and his lord paramount: the phrase had thus an anti–papal as well as an anti–monarchical bearing.

  In promising that the English church should be free, John used a phrase that was deplorably vague; it scarcely needed stretching, to cover the widest encroachments of clerical arrogance. Yet the formula was by no means a new one: both Henry I. and Stephen had confirmed the claim of holy church to its freedom.1

  Henry II. had agreed in 1173 to give greater freedom of elections, and in 1176 that he would not keep sees vacant for longer than one year,2 but avoided sweeping promises of unlimited freedom. His whole reign, indeed, was an effort, not unsuccessful, in spite of the disastrous consequences of Becket’s murder, to deprive the English church of what she considered her freedom. John in 1215 receded from the ground occupied by his father, confirming by the Great Charter the promise given by the weakest of his Norman predecessors, in a phrase repeated in all subsequent confirmations.

  It by no means follows that “freedom of the church,” as promised by Stephen, meant exactly the same thing as “freedom of the church” promised by John and his successors. The value to be attached to such assurances varied in inverse ratio to the strength of the Kings who made them, and this is well illustrated by a comparison of the charters of Henry I., Stephen, and John. Henry used words, which may possibly be interpreted as defining and restricting the grant of freedom,1 until it meant little more than freedom from the graver abuses of Rufus’ reign. Stephen’s charter, on the contrary, supplements the same phrase by definite declarations that the bishops should have sole jurisdiction over churchmen and their goods, and that all rights of wardship over church lands were renounced, thus making it a “large and dangerous promise.”2

  “Freedom of the church” had come in 1136 to include “benefit of clergy” in a specially sweeping form, and much besides.3 It is easy to understand why churchmen cherished an elastic phrase which, wide as were the privileges it already covered, might readily be stretched wider. Laymen, on the contrary, contended for a more restrictive meaning; and the Constitutions of Clarendon must be viewed as an attempt to settle disputed points of interpretation. Henry II. substantially held his ground, in spite of his nominal surrender after Becket’s murder. Thanks to his firmness, “the church’s freedom” shrank to more reasonable proportions, so that the well–known formula, when repeated by John, was emptied of much of the content found in it by Stephen’s bishops. Chapter 18 of Magna Carta embodied, apparently with the approval of all classes, the principle that questions of church patronage (assizes of darrein presentment)4 should be settled before the King’s Justices, a concession to the civil power inconsistent with the more extreme interpretations formerly put by churchmen on the phrase.

  In later reigns, the pretensions of the church to privileged treatment were reduced to narrow bounds, and the process of compression was facilitated by that very elasticity on which the clergy had relied as being favourable to the expansion of their claims. It was the civil government which benefited in the end from the vagueness of the words in which Magna Carta declared quod Anglicana ecclesia libera sit.1

  (2)

  Canonical Election.

  The charter, granted to the church on 21st November, 1214, had been reissued on 15th January.2 Its tenor may be given in three words, “freedom of election.” In all cathedral and conventual churches and monasteries, the appointment of prelates was to be free from royal intervention for the future, provided always that licence to fill the vacancy had first been asked of the King. The bishops present at Runnymede succeeded in having this concession inserted in the very forefront of Magna Carta.

  Henry III. in his reissues was made to repeat the phrase quod Anglicana ecclesia libera sit, but omitted all reference alike to canonical election and to John’s charters to the church. With the Pope’s connivance or support, he reduced the rights of cathedral chapters to the sinecure they had been before 1215. It is true that Henry was prone to lean on the papal arm, and that the Curia at Rome rather than the Curia Regis often dominated appointments to vacant sees: the canons elected the nominee of king or pope, as each was, for the moment, in the ascendant.3 In spite of Magna Carta, the independence of the English church retrograded during the long alliance between Henry III. and successive occupants of the papal throne.4

  II.

  Civil and Political Rights.

  After providing thus briefly for the church, chapter one proceeds to give equal prominence, but at greater length, to the grant or confirmation of secular customs and liberties. A general enacting clause leaves details to the remaining sixty–two chapters of the Charter. Some of the more important points involved have already been discussed in the Historical Introduction—for example, the feudal form of the grant, better suited, according to modern ideas, to the conveyance of a specific piece of land, than to the securing of the liberties of a mighty nation; and the vexed question as to what classes were intended, under the description of “freemen,” to participate in these rights.1

  Another interesting point, though of minor importance, calls for separate treatment. John does not state that his grants of civil and political rights had been made spontaneously. Whether deliberately or not, there is here a marked distinction between the phraseology applied to secular and to ecclesiastical rights respectively. While the concessions to churchmen are said to have been granted “mera et spontanea voluntate,” no such statement is made about the concessions to freemen. John may have favoured this omission with an eye to the future repudiation of the Great Charter on the ground that it had been sealed by him under compulsion. Perhaps it was to anticipate the repetition of such arguments that the words spontanea et bona voluntate nostra were inserted in the preamble of the reissue of 1225, which had been purchased by a liberal grant.2

  CHAPTER TWO.

  Si quis comitum vel baronum nostrorum, sive aliorum tenencium de nobis in capite per servicium militare, mortuus fuerit, et cum decesserit heres suus plene etatis fuerit et relevium debeat, habeat hereditatem suam per antiquum relevium; scilicet heres vel heredes comitis de baronia comitis integra per centum libras; heres vel heredes baronis de baronia integra per centum libras; heres vel heredes militis de feodo militis integro per centum solidos ad plus; et qui minus debuerit minus det secundum antiquam consuetudinem feodorum.

  If any of our earls or barons, or others holding of us in chief by military service shall have died, and at the time of his death his heir shall be full of age and owe “relief” he shall have his inheritance on payment of the ancient relief, namely the heir or heirs of an earl, £100 for a whole earl’s barony; the heir or heirs of a baron, £100 for a whole barony; the heir or heirs of a knight, 100s. at most for a whole knight’s fee; and whoever owes less let him give less, according to the ancient custom of fiefs.

  Preliminaries concluded, the Charter attacked what was, in the barons’ eyes, the chief of John’s abuses, his arbitrary increase of feudal obligations. The Articles of the Barons, indeed, had plunged at once into this most crucial question without a word by way of pious phrases or legal formulas.

  I.

  Assessment of Reliefs.

  Each “incident” had its own possibilities of abuse, and the Great Charter deals with these in turn. The present chapter defines the reliefs to be henceforth paid to John.1 Vagueness as to the amount due was a natural corollary of doubts as to whether the hereditary principle was binding: the lord took as much as he could grind from the inexperience or timidity of the youthful vassal.

  A process of definition, however, was early at work: some conception of a “reasonable relief” was evolved. Yet the criterion varied.2 Henry I., when bidding against duke Robert for the throne, was willing, in words if not in practice, to accept the limits set by contemporary opinion. His Charter of Liberties promised that reliefs should be “just and lawful”—an elastic phrase, liberally interpreted by exchequer officials in their royal master’s favour. When Glanvill wrote the sums to be taken by mesne lords had been fixed; but the Crown remained free to exact higher rates. Baroniae capitales were charged relief at sums which varied juxta voluntatem et misericordiam domini regis.1

  Every year, however, made for definition; custom pointed towards 100s. for a knight’s fee, and £100 for a barony. Two entries on the Pipe Roll of 10 Richard I. amusingly illustrate the unsettled practice: £100 is described as a “reasonable relief” for a barony, and yet a second entry records an additional payment by way of “fine” to induce the King to accept the sum his own roll had just declared “reasonable.”1 John was more openly regardless of reason. The Pipe Roll of 1202 shows how an unfortunate heir failed to get his heritage until he paid 300 marks, with the promise of an annual “acceptable present” to the King.2

  If John could ask so much, what prevented him asking more? He might name a prohibitive price, and so defeat the hereditability of fiefs altogether. Such arbitrary exactions must end, so the barons were determined in 1215: custom must be defined, so as to prevail henceforth against royal discretion. The first demand of the Articles of the Barons is, “that heirs of full age shall have their heritage by the ancient relief to be set forth in the Charter,” as though the final bargain had not yet been made. Here it is, then, duly set forth and defined as £100 for an “earl’s barony,” £100 for “a baron’s barony,” 100s. for a knight’s fee, and a proportional part of 100s. for every fraction of a knight’s fee. This clause produced the desired effect. These rates were strictly observed by the exchequer of Henry III., as we know from the Pipe Rolls of his reign. Thus, when a certain William Pantoll was charged with £100 for his relief on the mistaken supposition that he had a “barony,” he protested that he held only five knights’ fees, and got off with the payment of £25.3 The relief of a barony was subsequently reduced from £100 to 100 marks. The date of this change, if we may rely on Madox,4 lies between the twenty–first and thirty–fifth years of Edward I.5

  Apparently all who paid reliefs to the King were mulcted in a further payment (calculated at 9 per cent. of the relief) in name of “Queen’s Gold,” to the private purse of the Queen Consort, collected by an official representing her at the exchequer.6

  The charter here says nothing of socage or serjeanty.7 (a) Socage. The barons were not vitally interested in socage, that being, in the normal case, the tenure of humbler men.1 In later reigns the King, like an ordinary mesne lord, contented himself with one year’s rent of socage lands in name of relief. (b) Serjeanty. The barons cannot have been indifferent to the fate of serjeanties, since many of them held great estates by such tenures. Possibly they assumed that the rules applied to knights’ fees and baronies would apply to serjeanties as well. The Crown acted on quite a different view; large sums were frequently extorted by Henry III. By the reign of Edward I., however, the exchequer limited itself to one year’s rent2 for petty serjeanties, which thus fell into line with socage.3

  II.

  Units of Assessment.

  Some explanation is required of the three groups into which Crown estates were thus divided—knights’ fees, barons’ baronies, and earls’ baronies.

  (1)

  Feodum militis integrum.

  There is little doubt, in light of evidence accumulated by Mr. Round in his Feudal England, that William I. stipulated verbally for the service of a definite number of knights from every fief bestowed by him on his Norman followers. A knight’s fee (or scutum) became the measure of feudal assessment: servitium unius militis was a well–known legal unit. But difficult problems emerge when it is asked what equation, if any, existed between land and service. Unsuccessful attempts have been made to identify the knights’ fee with a fixed area of five hides on the one hand, or with a fixed annual value of £20 upon the other. Prof. Vinogradoff4 has shown conclusively that no fixed ratio exists. Fees have been found as small as one hide and as large as 48; and they vary in value from place to place, as well as from reign to reign. William I. allowed himself a wide discretion in saddling estates with service: favoured foundations like Gloucester and Battle Abbey enjoyed complete exemption. Yet he did not distribute burdens in pure wantonness; and the majority of holdings approximated to a normal standard of extent and value. Under Henry II. two types appear, the larger of 16 marks and the smaller of 10. Under Edward I. a general appreciation of values seems to have raised the former standard to £20.1

  The Crown tenant’s holding consisted of a fixed number of knights’ fees—usually a multiple of five (a troop of ten mounted soldiers forming the military unit of the Norman Kings); and each fee, whatever might be its acreage or rental, owed the service of one knight. Each fee, under the Great Charter, paid relief at 100s., unless the estate, of which it formed part, was reckoned as a barony.

  (2)

  Baronia integra.

  The word “barony” has undergone many changes.2 A “barony” at the Norman Conquest differed in almost every respect from a “barony” at the present day. The word baro was originally synonymous with homo, meaning, in feudal usage, a vassal of any lord. It soon became usual, however, to confine the word to king’s men; “barones” were identical with “crown tenants”—a considerable body at first; but a new distinction arose (possibly as a consequence of the procedure for summoning them to a Great Council as stipulated for in chapter 14 of Magna Carta) between the great men and the smaller men (barones majores and minores). The latter were called knights (milites), while “baron” was reserved for the greater tenants.3 For determining what constituted a “barony,” however, it was impossible to lay down any absolute criterion. Mere size was not sufficient. Under Henry II. baronies still paid relief at the King’s good pleasure.1 Richard and John were more rapacious than their father. John, indeed, forced William de Braose, who was heir to the barony of Limerick, to promise a relief of 5000 marks—a sum he was quite unable to pay.2 Magna Carta, here not merely declaratory, but making an addition to existing custom, fixed £100 as the relief for a full barony (a sum afterwards reduced to 100 marks) irrespective of size or value.3

  (3)

  Baronia comitis integra.

  Where a modern eye expects to find “earldom,” the text reads “earl’s barony.”4 But “earldom” originally meant an office, the chief magistracy of a county, not a title of dignity nor the ownership of land: whereas “relief” was due for the land, not the office. Therein lies also the explanation why the earl originally paid no more for his barony than the baron paid for his.

  The position of an earl under the Norman Kings had been something far different from a modern “earldom”: it did not pass, as matter of course, from father to son without the King’s confirmation; it did not carry with it any right to demand entry to the King’s Council; it was not one of several “steps in the peerage,” a conception that did not then exist.5

  The policy of the Conqueror had been to bring each county as far as possible under his own direct authority; many districts had no earls, while in others the connection of an earl with his titular shire was reduced to a shadow, the only points of connection being the right to enjoy “the third penny” (that is, the third part pro indiviso of the profits of the county court) and the right to bear its name. It is true that, in addition, the earl usually held valuable estates in the shire, but he did this only as any other land–owner might. For purposes of taxation the whole of his lands were reckoned as one unit, here described as baronia comitis integra, the relief on which was taxed at £100.

  Very gradually, in after ages, the conception of an earldom suffered change. The official character made way for the idea of tenure, and later on for the modern conception of a hereditary dignity conferring rank and privileges. The period of transition, when the tenurial idea prevailed, is illustrated by the successful attempt of Ranulf, earl of Chester and Lincoln, in the reign of Henry III. to dispose of one of his two earldoms—described by him as the comitatus of Lincoln.1 Earls are now, like barons, created by letters patent, and need not be land–owners. Thus the words “barony” and “earldom,” so diverse in their origin and early development, became closely united in their later history.

  III.

  Liability of Church Property to “Relief.”

  The Charter of John, unlike that of Henry I., makes no mention of the lands of vacant sees in this connection, probably because the main question had long been settled in favour of the church. The position of a bishopric was, however, a peculiar one: each prelate was a Crown tenant, and his fief was reckoned a “barony,” entitling its owner to all the privileges, and saddling him with all the feudal obligations of a baron.2

  It was not unnatural that, when a prelate died, the Crown should demand “relief” from his successor. Thus, in 1092, Herbert Losinga paid £1000 of relief for the see of Thetford, an act of simony for which his conscience pricked him. Such demands met with bitter opposition. The Crown, unwilling to forego its feudal dues, endeavoured to shift their incidence from the revenues of the see to the shoulders of the feudal under–tenants. After bishop Wulfstan’s death on 18th January, 1095, a writ was issued in William’s name to the freeholders of the see of Worcester, calling on each of them to pay, as a relief due on their bishop’s death, a specified sum, assessed by the barons of exchequer.1

  In revenge for such extortions, the historians of the day, recruited from the clerical class, have heartily commended Rufus and Flambard to the opprobrium of posterity. Henry I., in his coronation Charter, promised to exact nothing during vacancies from the demesne of the church or from its tenants.2 No corresponding promise was demanded from John, a proof that such exactions had ceased. The Crown no longer extorted relief from church lands, although wardship was, without protest, enforced during vacancies.

  CHAPTER THREE.

  Si autem heres alicujus talium fuerit infra etatem et fuerit in custodia, cum ad etatem pervenerit, habeat hereditatem suam sine relevio et sine fine.

  If, however, the heir of any one of the aforesaid has been under age and in wardship, let him have his inheritance without relief and without fine when he comes of age.

  The Crown is here forbidden to exact relief where it had already enjoyed wardship. It was hard on the youth, escaping from leading–strings, to be met, when he “sued out his livery,” with the demand for a large relief by the exchequer which had appropriated all his revenues.1

  Such double extortion had long been forbidden to mesne lords; Magna Carta was extending similar limitations to the King. The grievance complained of had been intensified by an unfair expedient which John sometimes adopted. In cases of disputed succession he favoured the claims of a minor, enjoyed the wardship, and thereafter repudiated his title altogether, or confirmed it only in return for an exorbitant fine. The only safeguard was to provide that the King should not enjoy wardship until he had allowed the heir to perform homage, which pledged the King to “warrant” the title against all rival claimants. This expedient was actually adopted in the revised Charter of 1216.2

  The alterations in that reissue were not altogether in the vassal’s favour. Another addition made a reasonable stipulation in favour of the lord, which illustrates the theory underlying wardship. Only a knight was capable of bearing arms; hence, the lord held the lands in ward until the minor should reach man’s estate. Ingenious attempts had apparently been made to defeat these legitimate rights of feudal lords by making the infant heir a “knight,” thus cutting away the basis on which wardship rested. The reissue of 1216 provided that the lands of a minor should remain in wardship, although he was made a knight.3 Incidentally, the same Charter declared twenty–one years to be the period at which a military tenant came of age, a point on which John’s Charter is silent.

  In one case, exceptionally, wardship and relief might both be exacted on account of the same death, though not by the same lord. Where the dead man had formerly held two estates, one of the Crown and one of a mesne lord, the Crown might claim the wardship of both, and then the disappointed mesne lord was allowed to exact relief as a solatium for his loss.1

  CHAPTER FOUR.

  Custos terre hujusmodi heredis qui infra etatem fuerit, non capiat de terra heredis nisi racionabiles exitus, et racionabiles consuetudines, et racionabilia servicia, et hoc sine destructione et vasto hominum vel rerum; et si nos commiserimus custodiam alicujus talis terre vicecomiti vel alicui alii qui de exitibus illius nobis respondere debeat, et ille destructionem de custodia fecerit vel vastum, nos ab illo capiemus emendam, et terra committatur duobus legalibus et discretis hominibus de feodo illo, qui de exitibus respondeant nobis vel ei cui eos assignaverimus; et si dederimus vel vendiderimus alicui custodiam alicujus talis terre, et ille destructionem inde fecerit vel vastum, amittat ipsam custodiam, et tradatur duobus legalibus et discretis hominibus de feodo illo qui similiter nobis respondeant sicut predictum est.

  The guardian of the land of an heir who is thus under age, shall take from the land of the heir nothing but reasonable produce, reasonable customs, and reasonable services, and that without destruction or waste of men or goods; and if we have committed the wardship of the lands of any such minor to the sheriff, or to any other who is responsible to us for its issues, and he has made destruction or waste of what he holds in wardship, we will take of him amends, and the land shall be committed to two lawful and discreet men of that fee, who shall be responsible for the issues to us or to him to whom we shall assign them; and if we have given or sold the wardship of any such land to anyone and he has therein made destruction or waste, he shall lose that wardship, and it shall be transferred to two lawful and discreet men of that fief, who shall be responsible to us in like manner as aforesaid.

  This chapter and the next treat of wardship,1 a muchhated feudal incident, which afforded opening for grave abuses. It is a mistake, however, to regard its mere existence as an abuse: it seems to have been perfectly legal in England from the date of the Norman Conquest, although some writers2 consider it an innovation devised by William Rufus and Flambard. Their chief argument is that Henry I., in promising redress of several inventions of Rufus, promised also to reform wardship. This shows that wardship was abused, but does not prove it an innovation.

  The Charter of Henry committed him to drastic remedies, which would have altered the character of wardship altogether. Clause 4 of that document removed from the lord’s custody both the land and the person of the heir, and gave them to the widow of the deceased tenant (or to one of the kinsmen, if such kinsman had, by ancient custom, rights prior to those of the widow).3 This was one of the many promises which the “lion of justice” never kept. Wardship continued to be exercised as before, over lay fiefs, throughout the reigns of Henry I. and Stephen. Article 4 of the Assize of Northampton (1176) merely confirmed the existing practice when it allowed wardship to the lord of the fee.4 The barons in 1215 made no attempt to revert to the drastic remedies of the Charter of Henry I., although the evils complained of had become worse under John’s misgovernment.

  It must be remembered that “wardship” placed the property and person of the heir at the mercy of the Crown. Even if the popular belief as to the fate met by prince Arthur at his uncle’s hands was unfounded, John was not the guardian to inspire confidence in the widowed mother of a Crown tenant whose estates the King might covet. Further, the King might confer the office, with the delicate issues involved, upon whomsoever he would. When such a trust was abused, it was difficult to obtain redress. In 1133, a guardian, accused de puella quam dicitur violasse in custodia sua, paid a fine to the Crown, if not as hush money, at least in order to obtain protection from being sued elsewhere than in the Curia Regis.1

  Guardians were of two kinds. The King might entrust the lands to the sheriff of the county where they lay (or to one of his bailiffs), such sheriff drawing the revenues on the Crown’s behalf, and accounting in due season at the exchequer. Alternatively, the King might make an out–and–out grant of the office, with all its profits, to a royal favourite or the highest bidder. Commentators of a later date2 apply the word “committee” to the former type of guardian, reserving “grantee” for the latter. This distinction, mentioned by Glanvill,3 obtains recognition in this passage of the Charter. Neither type was likely to have the interests of the minor at heart. They had always strong inducements to exhaust the soil, stock, and timber, uprooting and cutting down whatever would fetch a price, and replacing nothing. The heir too often found impoverished lands and empty barns.

  William Marshal’s experience affords apt illustration. Early in Richard’s reign, he married Isabel of Clare, but John, Dominus Hiberniae, refused seisin of the bride’s Irish lands. When Richard was appealed to, John tried to make conditions: “provided the grants of lands I have made to my men hold good and be confirmed,” to which the King aptly replied: “That cannot be: for what would then remain to him, seeing that you have given all to your people?”4

  The remedies proposed by Magna Carta were too timid and half–hearted; yet something was effected. It was unnecessary to repeat the recognized rule that the minor must receive, out of the revenues, maintenance and education suited to his station; but the Crown was restrained by chapter 3 from exacting relief where wardship had already been enjoyed; chapter 37 forbade John to exact wardship in certain cases where it was not legally due; while here in chapter 4 an attempt was made to protect the estate from waste.

  The promised reforms included a definition of “waste”; punishment of the wasteful guardian; and protection against repetition of the abuse. Each of these calls for comment. (1) The definition of waste. The Charter uses the words “vastum hominum vel rerum” (a phrase which occurs also in Bracton).1 It is easy to understand waste of goods; but what is “waste of men”? An answer may be found in the “unknown Charter of Liberties,”2 which binds guardians to hand over the land to the heir “sine venditione nemorum et sine redemptione hominum.” To enfranchise villeins was one method of “wasting men.” The young heir, when he came to his estates, must not find his praedial serfs emancipated.3 In 1259, the Provisions of Westminster (c. 20) forbade “farmers” to make waste, or sale, or exile, of woods, or houses, or men. The statute of Marlborough placed such defaulters at the King’s mercy.

  (2) Punishment of wasteful guardians. The Charter provides appropriate punishment for each of the two types of guardian. John promises to take “amends,” doubtless of the nature of a fine, from the “committee” who had no personal interest in the property; while the “grantee” is to forfeit the guardianship, thus losing a valuable asset for which he had probably paid a high price. While the Statute of Westminster1 merely repeated the words of Magna Carta, the Statute of Gloucester2 enacted that the grantee who had committed waste should not only lose the custody, but should, in addition, pay to the heir any balance between the value of the wardship thus forfeited and the total damage. More severe penalties were found necessary. Statute 36 Edward III (c. 13) enacted that King’s escheators, guilty of waste, should “yield to the heir treble damages.” If the boy was still a minor, his friends might bring a suit on his behalf; or after he was of full age he might bring it on his own account.3

  (3) Provision against recurrence of the waste. It was only fair that reasonable precautions should be taken to prevent the heir who had already suffered hurt, from being similarly abused a second time. John promised to supersede the keeper guilty of waste, by two trustworthy free–holders on the heir’s estate. These men, from their local and personal ties to the young heir, might be expected to deal tenderly with his property. The “unknown Charter” proposed a more drastic remedy: the lands were to be entrusted at once to four knights of the fief, without waiting until damage had been done. Even the milder provision of Magna Carta was an innovation, and there is no evidence that it was ever put in force.

  CHAPTER FIVE.

  Custos autem, quamdiu custodiam terre habuerit, sustentet domos, parcos, vivaria, stagna, molendina, et cetera ad terram illam pertinencia, de exitibus terre ejusdem; et reddat heredi, cum ad plenam etatem pervenerit, terram suam totam instauratam de carrucis et waynagiis, secundum quod tempus waynagii exiget et exitus terre racionabiliter poterunt sustinere.

  The guardian, moreover, so long as he has the wardship of the land, shall keep up the houses, parks,1 fishponds, stanks,2 mills, and other things pertaining to the land, out of the issues of the same land; and he shall restore to the heir, when he has come to full age, all his land, stocked with ploughs and “waynage,”3 according as the season of husbandry shall require, and the issues of the land can reasonably bear.

  These stipulations form the complement, on the positive side, of the negative provisions of chapter 4. It was not sufficient to prohibit acts of waste; the guardian must keep the estates in good repair.

  I.

  The Obligations of the Warden of a Lay–fief.

  It was the duty of every custodian to preserve the lands from neglect, together with all the usual equipment of a medieval manor. Outlay thus required formed, in modern language, a first charge on the revenues, before the balance was appropriated by the “grantee,” or paid to the exchequer by the “committee.”

  This clause expands and improves the corresponding Article of the Barons; but the obligation to restore the land and its appointments “in as good order as the revenues would bear” came to be regarded as too stringent, obliging the guardian to use up surplus revenue in repairing waste committed in the time of the deceased. Henry’s charters modified this: the guardian need only hand over the land and appointments in as good condition as he had received them.4

  New methods of abusing wardship were invented after Magna Carta. The Statute of Marlborough (c. 16) gave to a ward, kept out of his heritage, an action of mort d’ancestor against a mesne lord, but not against the Crown.1 The Statute of Westminster I. (c. 48) narrates that heirs were often carried off bodily to prevent them raising actions against guardians. The whole subject was regulated in 1549 by Statute 32 Henry VIII. c. 46, which instituted the Court of Wards and Liveries, the expensive and dilatory procedure of which caused increasing discontent, until an order of both Houses of Parliament, dated 24th February, 1646, abolished it along with “all wardships, liveries, primer seisins, and ouster les mains.”2 This ordinance was confirmed at the Restoration by Statute 12 Charles II. c. 24.3

  II.

  Wardships over Vacant Sees.

  The church had its own grievances. The Constitutions of Clarendon4 had stipulated that each prelate should hold his Crown land sicut baroniam; and this view ultimately prevailed. It followed that all appropriate feudal burdens affected church fiefs equally with lay fiefs. The lands of a see were, however, the property of an undying corporation (to use the language of a later age): a minority was impossible, and therefore, so it might be argued, wardships could never arise. Rufus objected to this reasoning, and devised a substitute for ordinary wardships by keeping sees long vacant, and meanwhile appropriating the revenues. Henry I., while renouncing all pretensions to exact reliefs, retained his right of wardship, promising merely that vacant sees should neither be sold nor farmed out. Stephen went further, renouncing expressly all wardships over church lands; but Henry II. ignored this concession, and reverted to the practice of his grandfather. In his reign the wardship of the rich properties of vacant sees formed a valuable asset of the exchequer. During a vacancy the Crown drew not only the rents and issues of the soil, but also the various feudal payments which the under–tenants would otherwise have paid to the bishop. The Pipe Roll of 14 Henry II.1 records “reliefs” of £30 and £20 paid by tenants of the vacant see of Lincoln for six and four knights’ fees respectively.2

  John reserved his wardships in his charter to the church; and Stephen Langton thought, perhaps, it was unnecessary to press for their renunciation, since the promise not to delay elections would render such wardship unprofitable.3

  The omission was supplied in 1216, when the provisions applicable to lay fiefs were extended to vacant sees, with the added proviso that church wardships should never be sold.

  These provisions were supplemented by later acts. An Act of 14 Edward III. (stat. 4, cc. 4 and 5) gave to the dean and chapter of a vacant see a right to pre–emption of the wardship at a fair price. If they failed to exercise this, the King’s right to appoint escheators or other keepers was confirmed, but under strict rules as to waste.

  CHAPTER SIX.

  Heredes maritentur absque disparagacione, ita tamen quod, antequam contrahatur matrimonium, ostendatur propinquis de consanguinitate ipsius heredis.

  Heirs shall be married without disparagement, yet so that before the marriage takes place the nearest in blood to that heir shall have notice.

  The Crown’s right to regulate the marriages of wards had become an intolerable grievance. The origin of this feudal incident and its extension to male as well as female minors have been elsewhere explained.4 John made a regular traffic in the sale of wards—maids of fourteen and widows alike. The Pipe Roll of John’s first year5 records how the chattels of Alice Bertram were sold because she refused “to come to marry herself” at the King’s summons. Only two expedients were open to those who objected to mate with the men to whom John sold them. They might take the veil, become dead in law, and forfeit their fiefs to escape the burdens inherent in them; or they might outbid objectionable suitors. Brief entries in John’s Exchequer Rolls condense many a tragedy. In his first year, the widow of Ralph of Cornhill offered 200 marks, with three palfreys and two hawks, that she might not be espoused by Godfrey of Louvain, but remain free to marry whom she chose, and yet keep her lands. This was a case of desperate urgency, since Godfrey, for love of the lady or of her lands, had offered 400 marks, if she could show no reason to the contrary. It is satisfactory to learn that the lady escaped.1

  Sometimes John varied his practice by selling, not the woman herself, but the right to sell her. In 1203 Bartholomew de Muleton bought for 400 marks the wardship of the lands and heir of a certain Lambert, along with the widow, to be married to whom he would, yet so that she should not be disparaged.2

  Great stress was placed on “disparagement”—that is, forced marriage with one not an equal. William of Scotland, by the treaty of 7th February, 1212, conferred on John the right to marry prince Alexander to whom he would, “but always without disparagement.”3 Such proviso was understood where not expressed. It is not surprising, then, to find it confirmed in Magna Carta. The Articles of the Barons had, indeed, demanded that a royal ward should only be married with consent of the next of kin. In our text, this is softened down to the mere intimation of an intended marriage: the opportunity was still afforded of protesting against an unsuitable match. Insufficient as the provision was, it was omitted from the reissues of Henry’s reign. The sale of heiresses went on unchecked.

  Magna Carta made no attempt to define disparagement, but the Statute of Merton4 gave two examples,—marriage to a villein or a burgess. This was not an exhaustive list. Littleton1 adds other illustrations:—“as if the heir that is in ward be married to one who hath but one foot, or but one hand, or who is deformed, decrepit, or having an horrible disease, or else great and continual infirmity, and, if he be an heir male, married to a woman past the age of childbearing.” Plenty of room was left for forcing on a ward an objectionable spouse, who yet did not come within the law’s definition of “disparagement.” The barons argued in 1258 that an English heiress was disparaged if married to anyone not English born.2

  Was it in the power of the far–seeing father of a prospective heiress, by bestowing her in marriage during his own life–time, to render nugatory the Crown’s right to nominate a husband? Not entirely: the Charter of Henry I. reserved the King’s right to be consulted by the barons before they bestowed the hand of female relations in marriage. Magna Carta is silent on the point. Bracton3 thus explains the law:—No woman with an inheritance could marry without the chief lord’s consent, under pain of losing such inheritance; yet the lord when asked was bound to grant consent, if he failed to show good reason to the contrary. He could not, however, be compelled to accept homage from an enemy or other unsuitable tenant. The Crown’s rights in such matters were apparently the same as those of a mesne lord.4

  CHAPTER SEVEN.

  Vidua post mortem mariti sui statim et sine difficultate habeat maritagium et hereditatem suam, nec aliquid det pro dote sua, vel pro maritagio suo, vel hereditate sua quam hereditatem maritus suus et ipsa tenuerint die obitus ipsius mariti, et maneat in domo mariti sui per quadraginta dies post mortem ipsius, infra quos assignetur ei dos sua.

  A widow, after the death of her husband, shall forthwith and without difficulty have her marriage portion and inheritance; nor shall she give anything for her dower, or for her marriage portion, or for the inheritance which her husband and she held on the day of the death of that husband; and she may remain in the house of her husband for forty days after his death, within which time her dower shall be assigned to her.

  No forethought of a Crown tenant, setting his house in order, could rescue his widow from the unfortunate position into which his death would plunge her. He must leave her without adequate protection against the tyranny of the King, who might inflict terrible hardships by harsh use of rights vested in him for the safeguard of his feudal incidents. She might, if deprived of her “estovers,” find herself in actual destitution, until she had made her bargain with the Crown. She had a right, indeed, to one–third of the lands of her husband (her dos rationalis) in addition to any lands she might have brought as a marriage portion; but she could only enter into possession by permission of the King, who had prior claims and could seize everything by his prerogative of primer seisin.1 This chapter provides a remedy. Widows shall have their rights without delay, without difficulty, and without payment.

  I.

  The Widow’s Share of Real Estate.

  Three words are used:—dos, maritagium, and hereditas.

  (1)

  Dower.

  A wife’s dower is here the portion of her husband’s lands set aside to support her in her widowhood. It was customary from an early date for a bridegroom to make provision for his bride on the day he married her. The ceremony formed a picturesque feature of the marriage rejoicings, taking place literally at the church door, as man and wife returned from the altar. The share thus set apart for the young wife was known as her dos (or dowry), and would support her if her husband died. In theory, the transaction between the spouses partook of the nature of a contract. The wife’s rôle, however, was a passive one: her concurrence was assumed. Yet, if no provision was made at all, the law stepped in, on the presumption that the omission had been unintentional, and fixed the dower at one–third of all his lands.1

  John’s Magna Carta contents itself with the brief enactment “that a widow shall have her dower.” The Charter of 1217 goes farther, containing an exact statement of the law as it then stood:—“The widow shall have assigned to her for her dower the third part of all her husband’s land which he had in his lifetime unless a smaller share had been given her at the door of the church.” Lawyers of a later age have, by a strained construction of the words in vita sua, made them an absolute protection to a wife against all attempts to lessen her dower by alienations granted without her consent during the marriage.2 Magna Carta contains no warrant for such a proposition, although a later clause (chapter 11) secures dower lands from attachment by the husband’s creditors, Jews or others.

  (2)

  Maritagium.

  It was customary for a land–owner to bestow marriage portions on his daughters. Land so granted was usually relieved from burdens of service and homage. It was hence known as “frank–marriage” (liberum maritagium), which almost came to be recognized as a separate form of feudal tenure. Such grants could be made without the consent of the tenant’s expectant heirs. Maritagium was thus “a provision for a daughter—or perhaps some other near kinswoman—and her issue.”1 The husband was, during the marriage, treated as virtual owner; but, on his death, the widow had an indisputable title.

  The obvious meaning, however, has not always been appreciated. Coke2 reads the clause as allowing to widows of under–tenants a right denied (by chapter 8) to widows of Crown tenants—namely “freedom to marry where they will without any licence or assent of their lords.” This interpretation is inherently improbable, since the barons at Runnymede desired to place restrictions on the King, not upon themselves; and it is opposed to the law as expounded by Bracton.3

  Daines Barrington4 invents an imaginary rule of law in order to explain a supposed exception. An ordinary widow, he declares, could not marry again within a year of her husband’s death, but widows of landowners were privileged to cut short this period of mourning. “Maritagium” is thus interpreted as a landowning widow’s right of speedily entering on second nuptials. This is a complete inversion of the truth; the possession of land really restricted freedom of marriage. Yet several later authorities follow Barrington’s mistake.5 This is the more inexcusable in view of the clear explanation given a century ago by John Reeves,6 who distinguished between two kinds of marriage portion: liberum maritagium, whence no service whatever was exigible for three generations, and maritagium servitio obnoxium, liable to the usual services from the first, although exempt from homage until after the death of the third heir.1

  (3)

  Hereditas.

  Is the third item here mentioned simply another name for either dos or maritagium? Or, is it something different? It is possible that “the inheritance which her husband and she held on the day of the death of that husband” denotes lands that had come to the lady as heiress on the decease of relations, not as a gift at her marriage. Such lands might be described as held by both spouses; for a husband might even attend Parliament as a baron on the strength of his wife’s barony.

  II.

  The Widow’s Share of Personal Estate.

  The present chapter says nothing of the widow’s “peculiar” or share of her deceased husband’s money and chattels; but chapter 26 secured to her the portion of one third allowed her by the existing law.

  III.

  Provision for the Widow’s immediate Needs.

  Intricate questions might arise before the land was divided into aliquot portions. Meanwhile, temporary provision must be made for her support. This was of two kinds:

  (1)

  Quarantine.

  Magna Carta confirmed her right to the family home for forty days, known to later lawyers as the widow’s quarantine. The charter of 1216 notes an exception, on which John’s Charter is silent: if the husband’s place of residence had been a castle, the widow could not stay there; feudal strongholds were not for women. In such cases another residence must be substituted. In later days, widows were provided with a writ, “de quarentina habenda,” directing the sheriff to do her right.2

  (2)

  Estovers of Common.

  The widow required more than the protection of a roof; until her dower lands had been assigned to her, no portion of the produce of her husband’s manors could be strictly called her own. The estate was held “in common” between her and her husband’s heir. It was only fair that, until her rights were ascertained, she should be allowed a reasonable share of the produce. Neither John’s Charter nor the first issue of Henry III. said anything on this head. The reissue of 1217 supplied the omission, expressly confirming her right to rationabile estoverium suum interim de communi. Many explanations of the word estovers might be cited: from Dr. Johnson, who defines it broadly as “necessaries allowed by law,” to Dr. Stubbs, who narrows it to ”firewood.”1 It was the right to supply one’s personal or domestic wants: this varied in extent from full supply of all things necessary for the maintenance of life, down to a right to take one kind of produce for one specific purpose only.2

  In this passage the word bears its wider signification. Such was Coke’s view,3 who held that it implied the widow’s right to “sustenance” of every kind, including the right to kill such oxen on the manor as she required for food. Estovers “of common” should thus be read as extending the widow’s right of consumption for her own and her household’s use over every form of produce held “in common” by her and the heir’s guardian prior to a final division.4 She could not, however, cut down trees.

  CHAPTER EIGHT.

  Nulla vidua distringatur ad se maritandum dum voluerit vivere sine marito; ita tamen quod securitatem faciat quod se non maritabit sine assensu nostro, si de nobis tenuerit, vel sine assensu domini sui de quo tenuerit, si de alio tenuerit.

  No widow shall be compelled to marry, so long as she prefers to live without a husband; provided always that she gives security not to marry without our consent, if she holds of us, or without the consent of the lord of whom she holds, if she holds of another.

  Wealthy widows were glad to escape from John’s clutches by agreeing to buy up the Crown’s rights for a lump sum. In the year of Magna Carta, Margaret, widow of Robert fitz Roger, paid £1000;1 and a few years earlier Petronilla, countess of Leicester, had given 4000 marks.2 The Pipe Rolls mention numerous smaller sums; in 1200, Juliana, widow of John of Kilpec, accounts for 50 marks and a palfrey.3 Horses, dogs, and falcons were frequently given in addition to money fines, and testify eloquently to the greed of the King, the anxiety of the victims, and the extortionate nature of the system. In return, formal charters were obtained, a good example of which is that granted to Alice, countess of Warwick, dated 13th January, 1205,4 containing concessions that she should not be forced to marry; that she should be sole guardian of her sons; that she should have one–third part of her late husband’s lands as her reasonable dower; and that she should be quit from attendance at courts of shire and hundred, and from payment of sheriff’s aids during her widowhood. Another charter, of 20th April, 1206, shows what a widow might expect if she failed to make her bargain with the Crown: John granted to Richard Fleming, an alien as his name implies, the wardship of the lands of the deceased Richard Grenvill, with the rights of marriage of the widow and children.1

  Magna Carta, in substituting a rule of law for the provisions of these private charters, repeated at greater length the promises made (and never kept) by Henry I. in his coronation charter: no widow was to be constrained to marry against her will. This liberty must not be used, however, to the prejudice of the Crown: the widow could not marry without the King’s consent. Magna Carta provided that she must find security to this effect, an annoying, but not unfair stipulation. The Crown, in later days, compelled the widow, when having her dower assigned to her in Chancery, to swear not to marry without licence under penalty of a fine of one year’s value of her dower.2

  CHAPTER NINE.

  Nec nos nec ballivi nostri seisiemus terram aliquam nec redditum pro debito aliquo, quamdiu catalla debitoris sufficiunt ad debitum reddendum; nec plegii ipsius debitoris distringantur quamdiu ipse capitalis debitor sufficit ad solucionem debiti; et si capitalis debitor defecerit in solucione debiti, non habens unde solvat, plegii respondeant de debito; et, si voluerint, habeant terras et redditus debitoris, donec sit eis satisfactum de debito quod ante pro eo solverint, nisi capitalis debitor monstraverit se esse quietum inde versus eosdem plegios.

  Neither we nor our bailiffs shall seize any land or rent for any debt, so long as the chattels of the debtor are sufficient to repay the debt; nor shall the sureties of the debtor be distrained so long as the principal debtor is able to satisfy the debt; and if the principal debtor shall fail to pay the debt, having nothing wherewith to pay it, then the sureties shall answer for the debt; and let them have the lands and rents of the debtor, if they desire them, until they are indemnified for the debt which they have paid for him, unless the principal debtor can show proof that he is discharged thereof as against the said sureties.

  The Charter passes to another group of grievances. Chapters 9 to 11 treat of debts, usury, and the Jews, and should be read in connection with chapter 26, which regulates procedure for attaching personal estate of deceased Crown tenants who were also Crown debtors. The present chapter, although general in its terms, had special reference to cases where the Crown was creditor; while the two following chapters treat more particularly of debts contracted to money lenders.

  The fact that John’s subjects were indebted to his Exchequer did not imply that they had borrowed from the King. What with feudal incidents and scutages, and indiscriminate fines, a large proportion of Englishmen must have been permanently indebted to the Crown. At John’s accession many northern barons still owed scutages imposed by Richard. John remitted none of the arrears, while imposing new burdens of his own: the attempts made to collect these debts intensified the friction between John and his barons.1

  Three rules were laid down. (1) The personal estate of a debtor must be exhausted before his real estate or its revenues were attacked. To take away his land might deprive him of his means of livelihood; for chattels could not yield a permanent revenue.2 This rule has not found a place in modern systems of law, which usually leave the option with the creditor. (2) The estate of the chief debtor had to be exhausted before proceedings could be instituted against his sureties. Magna Carta thus enunciated for English law a rule that has found favour in most systems of jurisprudence. The man who is only a surety for another’s debt is entitled to immunity, until the creditor has taken all reasonable steps against the principal debtor. Such a right is known to the civil law as beneficium ordinis, and to Scots law as the “benefit of discussion.” (3) If these sureties had, after all, to pay the debt in whole or part, they were allowed “a right of relief” against the principal debtor, being put in possession of his lands and rents. This rule has some analogy with the equitable principle of modern law, which gives to the surety who has paid his principal’s debt, the right to whatever the creditor held in security.

  Even when the Crown’s bailiffs obeyed Magna Carta, they might still inflict terrible hardship upon debtors. Sometimes they seized goods valuable out of all proportion to the debt; and an Act of 12661 forbade this practice when the disproportion was “outrageous.” Sometimes they attempted to extort prompt payment by selecting whatever chattel was most indispensable: oxen were taken from the plough and allowed to die of neglect. The practice of the Exchequer, in the days of Henry II., had been more considerate; oxen were to be spared as far as possible where other personal effects were available.2 John’s charter has no such humane provision,3 and the abuse continued. The Act of 1266, already cited, forbade officers to drive away the owner who came to feed his impounded cattle at his own expense. The Articuli super cartas4 went further, prohibiting seizure of beasts of the plough so long as other effects might satisfy the debt.5

  CHAPTER TEN.

  Si quis mutuo ceperit aliquid a Judeis, plus vel minus, et moriatur antequam illud solvatur, debitum non usuret quamdiu heres fuerit infra etatem, de quocumque teneat; et si debitum illud inciderit in manus nostras, nos non capiemus nisi catallum contentum in carta.

  If one who has borrowed from the Jews any sum, great or small, die before that loan be repaid, the debt shall not bear interest while the heir is under age, of whomsoever he may hold;1 and if the debt fall into our hands, we will not take anything except the principal sum2 contained in the bond.

  Usury, denied by law to Christians, was carried on by Jews under disadvantages and risks. The rates of interest were proportionately high, ranging in normal cases from two to four pence per pound per week; that is, from 43⅓ to 86⅔ per cent. per annum.3 During his nonage a ward had nothing wherewith to discharge either principal or interest, since he who had the wardship drew the revenue. At the end of a long minority, an heir would have found the richest estates swallowed up by a debt which had increased automatically ten or twenty–fold.4

  Magna Carta prevented this injustice to the ward; but, in doing so, inflicted some injustice on the money–lenders. During the minority no interest at all, it was provided, should accrue to Jew or other usurer; while, if the debt passed to the Crown, the King must not use his prerogative to extort more than a private debtor might; he must confine himself to the principal sum specified in the document of debt. The provision that no interest should run during minorities was confirmed by the Statute of Merton,1 which made it clear, however, that its provisions should not operate to discharge the principal sum or interest accrued before the ancestor’s death. The Statute of Jewry, of uncertain date,2 made interest irrecoverable by legal process. All previous acts against usury were repealed by the statute 37 Henry VIII. c. 9, which, however, forbade the exaction of interest at a higher rate than 10 per cent., and this remained the legal rate until reduced to 8 per cent. by 21 James I. c. 17.

  I.

  The History of the Jews in England.

  In the policy of the Crown towards aliens of the Hebrew race, three periods may be distinguished. From the Norman Conquest to the coronation of Richard I., the Jews were fleeced and tolerated; during the reigns of Richard and John and the minority of Henry III., they were fleeced and protected; and finally they were fleeced and persecuted, this last stage ending with the ordinance of 1290, which banished Jews from England. The details of this long story of hardship and oppression, tempered fitfully by royal clemency, can be only glanced at here. There were Jews in England before the Norman Conquest; but the first great influx came in the reign of Rufus, whose financial genius recognized in them an instrument for his gain, and who would the more gladly protect them, as likely to prove a thorn in the side of his enemy the Church. A new immigration led to the disarming of Jews in 1181, a measure which left them at the mercy of the Christian rabble.

  When a disturbance occurred at the coronation of Richard I., on 3rd September, 1189, a general massacre took place in London. York and other towns were not slow to follow this example. The King was moved to anger, not so much by the sufferings of the Jews, as by the destruction of their bonds; for the more the Jews had, the more could be extorted from them. Richard, returning from captivity a few years later, in urgent need of money, determined to prevent a repetition of such interference with a valuable source of revenue. His motive was selfish, but that was no reason why the Israelites should not pay for a measure designed for their own protection. Assembled at Nottingham, they granted a liberal aid, in return for a new expedient devised to secure their bonds. This scheme,1 for the details of which Richard was probably indebted to the genius of his great justiciar, Archbishop Hubert Walter, was of a comprehensive and practical character. In London, York, and other important cities, offices or bureaus were established under the Crown’s protection, containing treasure chests, called archae, fitted with triple locks, to be opened in presence of custodians, known as chirographers, who kept the keys. These were four in number, two Christians and two Jews, chosen by juries summoned for that purpose by the sheriff; and they were obliged to find sureties. Only in their presence could loans be validly contracted between Jews and Christians; and it was their duty to see such bargains reduced to writing in duplicate copies. No contract was binding unless a written copy or chirograph had been preserved in one or other of those repositories or arks, which thus served every purpose of a modern register, and other purposes as well. If the money–lender suffered violence and was robbed of his copy of the bond, the debtor was still held to his obligations by the duplicate which remained. If the Jew and all his relatives were slain, even then the debtor did not escape, but was confronted by a new and more powerful creditor, the King himself, armed with the chirograph. Lists of transactions were preserved, and all acquittances and assignments of debts, known from their Hebrew name as “starrs,” had to be carefully enrolled.2 Stringent rules, codified by Hubert Walter, were issued to the judges when starting on their circuit in September, 1194.3

  If this cunningly–devised system prevented the Christian debtor from evading his obligations, it also placed the Jewish creditor completely at the mercy of the Crown; for the exact wealth of every Jew could be accurately gauged from a scrutiny of the contents of the archae. The King’s officials knew, to a penny, how much it was possible to wring from the coffers of the Jews, whose bonds, moreover, could be conveniently attached until they paid the tallage demanded. The custom of fixing on royal castles as the places for keeping these arks, probably explains the origin of the special jurisdiction exercised over Jews by King’s constables (“qui turres nostras custodierunt”).1 In their dungeons, horrible engines were at hand for enforcing obedience. Such jurisdiction, however, extended legitimately over trivial debts only.2 Important pleas were reserved for the officials of the exchequer of the Jews, a special government department, which controlled and regulated the whole procedure. Evidences of the existence of this separate exchequer have been traced back to 1198, although no record has been found of a date prior to 1218.3 John, while despising the Jews, protected their wealth as a reservoir from which he might draw in time of need. Thus, by a charter dated 10th April, 1201, he took 4000 marks for confirming their privileges; and he obtained a similar amount after his rupture with Rome. The charter of 1201 was only a confirmation of rights already enjoyed by English Jews in virtue of the liberal interpretation put upon the terms of an earlier charter, granted by Henry I. to a particular father in Israel and his household, but subsequently extended, with the tacit concurrence of the Crown, to the whole Hebrew race. Under John’s charter they enjoyed valuable and definite privileges, which exempted them from all jurisdictions except those of the King’s justices and castellans.4

  When a repetition of the massacres that had disgraced his brother’s coronation was threatened in 1203, John promptly ordered the mayor of London to suppress all such attempts: his promise of protection, “even though granted to a dog,” must be held inviolate.1 Protection was accorded, however, only that they might furnish a richer booty when the occasion came: suddenly John issued orders for a wholesale arrest of Jews throughout England. The most wealthy members of their community were brought together at Bristol, and, on 1st November, 1210, compelled to give reluctant consent to a tallage of the enormous sum of 66,000 marks. This amount had been fixed as the result of an exaggerated estimate of the contents of the archae, and was more than they could pay. The methods adopted by John’s castellans to extort arrears are well known, especially the case of the unfortunate Jew of Bristol, from whom seven teeth were extracted, one each day, until he consented to pay the sum demanded.2

  It was doubly hard that the race thus plundered and tortured by the King should be subjected to harsh treatment by the King’s enemies on the ground that they were pampered protégés of the Crown. Yet such was the case: on Sunday, 17th May, 1215, when the insurgents on their way to Runnymede entered London, they robbed and murdered Jews, using the stones of their houses to fortify the city walls.3 It is not to be wondered, then, that the same insurgents, in forcing on King John the demands that formed the basis of Magna Carta, included provisions against usury.

  The advisers of the young Henry in 1216 omitted these clauses, but not from love of the Jews. They were unwilling to impair so useful a source of revenue, which has been compared to a sponge which slowly absorbed the wealth of the nation, to be quickly squeezed dry again by the King. The Jews were always willing to disgorge a portion of their gains in return for protection in the rest; but their lot became hard indeed when Henry III., urged by popular clamour and the wishes of the Pope, began a course of active persecution. In 1253, a severe ordinance inflicted vexatious regulations on the Hebrews, almost converting their quarters in each great city into ghettos, like those of the Continent of Europe.

  This was merely the commencement of oppressive measures, the outcome of the growing hatred with which Christians regarded Jews—a result partly of the heated imagination of the rabble, ready to believe unauthenticated stories of the crucifixion of Christian children, and partly of the fact that rich Jews, in spite of all persecution, had possessed themselves of the landed estates of freeholders and barons and claimed to act as lords of Christian tenants, enjoying wardships, escheats, and advowsons, as any Christian might have done. The scope of this enquiry excludes any detailed account of the stages through which repressive legislation passed. The Statute of Jewry, however,1 was of exceptional importance; taking from usurers the right to recover interest by legal process, and limiting execution for the principal to one half of the debtor’s lands and chattels. In return, some temporary concessions were granted. One by one, however, these privileges were again withdrawn, until the end came in 1290 with the issue of a decree of perpetual banishment by Edward I., who was compelled to sacrifice his royal preserve of Jews, in deference to national prejudice.

  II.

  Legal Position of the Jews.

  All through these vicissitudes of fortune, the legal status of the Jews had remained unchanged in essentials. Their position was doubly hard; they were plundered by the Crown and persecuted by the populace. If John saved them from being robbed by his Christian subjects, it was that they might be better worth the robbing by a Christian king. Yet, for this protection, at once fitful and interested, the Jews had to pay a heavy price; not only were they liable to be tallaged arbitrarily at the King’s will, without limit and without appeal, but they were hated by rich and poor as the King’s allies. Such feelings would of themselves account for the unsympathetic treatment accorded to money–lenders by Magna Carta; two other reasons contributed. Usury was looked on in the Middle Ages as immoral (although illegal only for Christians); while excessive interest was habitually exacted.

  The feudal scheme of society had no place for Jews. They shared the disabilities common to aliens, in a form unmitigated by the protection extended to other foreigners by their Sovereigns and by the Church. As exiles in a foreign land, exposed to attacks of a hostile mob, they were forced to rely absolutely on the arm of the King. The Jews became the mere perquisites or chattels of the Crown, in much the same way as the villeins became the serfs or chattels of their lords. Rights they might have against others by royal sufferance, but they had no legal remedy against their master. In the words of Bracton,1 “the Jew could have nothing of his own, for whatever he acquired, he acquired not for himself but for the king.” His property was his merely by royal courtesy, not under protection of the law. When he died, his relations had no legal title to succeed to his mortgages, goods, or money; the exchequer, fortified by an intimate knowledge of the extent of his wealth (for that consisted chiefly in registered bonds), stepped into possession and could do what it pleased. The King usually, indeed, in practice contented himself with one–third of the whole; but if the relations of the deceased Jew received less than the balance of two–thirds, they would be well advised to offer no remonstrance. The Crown did not admit a legal obligation; and there was no one either powerful enough, or interested enough, to compel fulfilment of the tacit understanding that restricted the royal claims. Whatever the Jew had amassed belonged legally and potentially not to him but to the Crown. Magna Carta, in striking at money–lenders, was striking at the King.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN.

  Et si quis moriatur, et debitum debeat Judeis, uxor ejus habeat dotem suam, et nichil reddat de debito illo; et si liberi ipsius defuncti qui fuerint infra etatem remanserint, provideantur eis necessaria secundum tenementum quod fuerit defuncti, et de residuo solvatur debitum, salvo servicio dominorum; simili modo fiat de debitis que debentur aliis quam Judeis.

  And if anyone die indebted to the Jews, his wife shall have her dower and pay nothing of that debt; and if any children of the deceased are left under age, necessaries shall be provided for them in keeping with the holding of the deceased; and out of the residue the debt shall be paid, reserving, however, service due to feudal lords; in like manner let it be done touching debts due to others than Jews.

  If the preceding chapter deprived Jews of part of their interest, the present one deprived them of part of the security on which they had lent the principal. The widow’s dower lands were discharged from her husband’s debts, only two–thirds of the original security thus remaining under the mortgage. Even this must submit to a prior claim, namely the right of the debtor’s minor children to such “necessaries” as befitted their station in life. Magna Carta, at the same time, with characteristic care for feudal rights, provided that the full service due to lords of fiefs must not be prejudiced, whoever suffered loss. Finally, these rudiments of a law of bankruptcy were made applicable to Gentile creditors equally as to Jews. These provisions, with others injuriously affecting the royal revenue, were omitted in 1216, not to be restored in future charters: but they were re–enacted in their essential principle, though not in detail, by the Statute of Jewry, which limited a creditor’s rights of execution to one moiety of his debtor’s lands and chattels.

  CHAPTER TWELVE.

  Nullum scutagium vel auxilium ponatur in regno nostro, nisi per commune consilium regni nostri, nisi ad corpus nostrum redimendum, et primogenitum filium nostrum militem faciendum, et ad filiam nostram primogenitam semel maritandam, et ad hec non fiat nisi racionabile auxilium: simili modo fiat de auxiliis de civitate Londonie.

  No scutage nor aid shall be imposed on our kingdom, unless by common counsel of our kingdom, except for ransoming our person, for making our eldest son a knight, and for once marrying our eldest daughter; and for these there shall not be levied more than a reasonable aid. In like manner it shall be done concerning aids from the city of London.

  This is a famous clause, greatly valued at the time it was framed because of its precise terms and narrow scope (which made evasion difficult), and even more highly valued in after days for different reasons. It came indeed to be interpreted in a broad general sense by enthusiasts who, with the fully–developed British Constitution before them, found in it the modern doctrine that the Crown can impose no financial burden on the people without consent of Parliament. Before discussing how far such an estimate is justified, it will be necessary to examine the historical context, with special reference to two classes, feudal tenants and the citizens of London respectively.

  I.

  Protection of Crown Tenants from arbitrary Exactions.

  Apart from payments such as reliefs and amercements, the occasions of which were independent of the royal will, feudal exactions were of two types: scutages and aids. By these two expedients the King could arbitrarily increase the burdens of his feudal tenants beyond the letter of the original feudal contract. Recognized usage, however, required the consent of the vassals before they were subjected to extraordinary exactions. The barons were within their rights in seeking to embody this general principle in Magna Carta, although it would appear (from comparison of the versions of 1215, 1216 and 1217) that they had difficulty in devising a proper formula to give effect to it. The present chapter attempts a rough compromise of the question at issue, by requiring consent of the Crown tenants to all scutages and also to aids other than the recognized three.1

  (1)

  Feudal aids.

  The three recognized aids are here specified, but no reform is attempted with regard to them, and in particular (in marked contrast to the care taken in chapter two to define the exact rate of “relief”), nothing is said of the amount payable in name of “aid.” It is only the extraordinary aids1 that are regulated by this chapter: these are not to be taken without “common counsel” or the “Common Council”—for the Latin will bear either of these two meanings, which indeed in 1215 were probably not yet differentiated from each other. If the Crown tenants by “common counsel” could refuse a grant, they could a fortiori make one upon conditions; fixing, for example, the amount of an extraordinary aid as well as the occasions of its payment. So far as aids were concerned, there was here no innovation upon existing practice.

  (2)

  Scutage.

  With regard to scutage, the requirement of consent was something very different. Scutage, in lieu of military service, was of the essence of the feudal relation: to make it impossible for the Crown ever to levy a scutage without consent of those who had to pay, was to go much beyond redress of the grievance suffered under John: it was to impose on him restrictions that his father had never acknowledged.2

  The total omission of this chapter in 1216 may have been partly occasioned by the consciousness that it contained an innovation unwarranted by custom: the reissue of 1217 said nothing of aids, and contented itself, in regard to the vexed question of scutages, with the vague declaration that for the future these should be taken as had been the custom under Henry II.3

  In spite, however, of the omission of chapter 12 from all reissues of the Great Charter, it was customary for Henry’s advisers to consult “the Common Council” before exacting a scutage or aid. This was done, for example, in 1222, when a Council granted an “aid for the Holy Land” of three marks for an earl, one mark for a baron, and twelve pence for a knight.1 The consent of a Council, indeed, was usually taken even for one of the three recognized feudal aids.

  II.

  Protection of London from arbitrary Exactions.

  Some attempt was made to protect the men of London from arbitrary demands: the insurgent leaders in this way discharged part of their debt to an ally with claims upon their gratitude.2 The Articles of the Barons contained important provisions affecting London; and these were embodied in the Charter in slightly altered terms.3 The present clause, for example, uses only one word, “aids,” where the 32nd Article of the Barons referred to “tallages and aids.” There is no evidence to show whether the omission had been deliberately planned, or was the result of inadvertence; and the ambiguity inherent in both words makes it dangerous to hazard a dogmatic opinion on the practical effect of the alteration. Yet a clearly–marked line can be traced between the respective meanings of the two terms when they are technically used.4

  (1)

  “Aid,”

  a vague word, is applicable to any payment that can be regarded as, in any sense, a freewill offering. It embraced gifts to the Crown, whether from prelate or burgess or feudal baron. London was stimulated towards acts of generosity by Kings of England both before and after John. There were times when “voluntary” aids (like the “benevolences” of Tudor days) could not safely be withheld.5

  (2)

  Tallage

  would appear to mean a toll or exaction imposed on individuals who had no option of refusal. Villeins were talliable at their lord’s caprice, without appeal. Liability to tallage, however, did not necessarily imply servile status; for the King could tallage all inhabitants of towns on royal demesne. London itself, for all its wealth, political importance, and chartered privileges, still shared this unwelcome liability.1

  (3)

  Comparison of Aid and Tallage.

  The “aid,” being a voluntary offering, differed fundamentally from tallage, which was a forced payment. In theory, the citizens were free to name the sum they proposed to pay. If the King was satisfied, the city collectively became responsible for assessing, collecting and paying over the money: the King’s representatives had no need nor right to interfere with individual citizens. The amount of a tallage, on the contrary, was fixed by the King’s Justices, assessed by them per capita on individual citizens, who were subject to direct distraint by the agents of the Crown. It was to the advantage of a borough to forestall, by a liberal aid, the Crown’s anticipated demand for a tallage, for the hated tax–gatherer was thus kept outside the city gates. An aid was more to the King’s advantage also than a tallage: not only was he saved the trouble, expense, and delay of collection, but he obviated risk of loss through the insolvency of some of the individuals fixed upon.

  A story told by Madox2 brings out the contrast. A dispute had arisen between the King and the Londoners in 1255. To Henry’s demand for 3000 marks of “tallage,” they at first replied by offering 2000 marks of “aid,” which the King refused. The citizens then denied outright their liability to tallage, but were confronted with entries in Exchequer and Chancery Rolls which contradicted their contention. On the morrow, the mayor and citizens acknowledged that they were talliable, and paid the sum demanded.

  (4)

  London’s attempts to escape tallage.

  There is ample evidence that London in John’s reign was galled by the liability to tallage, and was ready to seize any loophole of escape. John’s letter to the city in 12061 refers to the serious damage done to his capital by the manner in which tallages had been assessed and collected. A document compiled about 1210, in the interests of London, partly from authentic sources, purporting to be a Charter by William I., declares that all freemen shall hold their lands and possessions “free from every unjust exaction and from every tallage.”2 Finally, Miss Bateson in 19023 called attention to a document of nine articles, which seem to be the heads of a petition prepared by the Londoners, probably in 1215, in which they ask inter alia the abolition of all tallages except per communem assensum regni et civitatis.

  (5)

  Effects of omission of “tallage” from Magna Carta.

  Why, if not through pure inadvertence, was the word “tallage,” occurring in Articuli Baronum, omitted from the Charter? Widely different answers have been given. Prof. G. B. Adams4 ingeniously argues that the omission was deliberately made in the interests of London. That city, now a full–blown commune, enjoyed the status of a feudal vassal: though liable to aids, its burghers resented any allusion to the servile “tallage” in connection with themselves. If Prof. Adams here interprets their attitude aright, the Londoners were ill–advised to refuse, on any such punctilio, to secure in the Charter incorporation of a definite protection from arbitrary tallage by the Crown—a grievance from which they were destined to suffer for more than a century thereafter.

  The true explanation, however, is more likely to lie in an opposite direction. The omission was, perhaps, made deliberately to the detriment of London, in deference to John’s strong feeling on a point that did not affect the barons personally. John, for his part, would be readily persuaded to renounce the right to take “aids” from the wealthy traders of the capital, if he preserved the more drastic privilege of tallaging them at will. The word “tallage” was dropt from the Charter, not to gratify London’s pride, but to enable the Crown to have access to the city’s treasure chests.

  (6)

  Nature of the protection accorded to London.

  The arrangement of this chapter is noteworthy: after securing redress of abuses pressing on the barons, a few comparatively careless words are added: “in like manner it shall be done concerning aids from the city of London.” The words “in like manner” are difficult to interpret, for the two cases are far from parallel. Do they mean that no aid can be taken from London without the same “common counsel of the realm” previously stipulated for the taking of scutages from the tenants in chief? Probably not, for the method provided in chapter 14 for obtaining “the common counsel” would have been peculiarly ill–adapted to protect the Londoners, whose interests were not represented in the baronial assembly. The Petition of nine heads1 had asked more than this, namely, that no tallage should be taken without common assent “of the kingdom” (that is, of the baronial assembly) and “of the city”—a double consent being thus required, as though “the common counsel” was not enough.

  High authorities suggest a different explanation for the clause in chapter 12, which is read simply as an assertion that only “reasonable” aids should be taken from London.2 If that be so, no criterion of reasonableness is suggested, and such might be difficult to find.3 Subsequent history sheds no clear light on the intention of this clause. As the chapter was omitted from all reissues, no occasion ever arose of testing its meaning by actual practice.

  In deciding between the two suggested explanations, however, it should be noted that, though “councils” framed on the model of 1215 continued for half a century to meet, they made no claim to interfere with the Crown’s right to tallage London. Neither Henry nor Edward waited for the “common counsel of the realm” before enforcing their demands.

  Whatever may have been the intention of the framers of this clause with regard to London, it is notable that they allowed that city to stand alone. Magna Carta completely ignored that provision of the Articles of the Barons which extended the same protection “to citizens of other places who thence have their liberties,” meaning the boroughs whose chartered privileges had been modelled upon those of the metropolis.1 Here, again, the alteration was probably a concession to John made by the barons at their allies’ expense.2

  (7)

  Later history of the Crown’s right to tallage the towns.

  The Crown continued at intervals to take tallages from London until 1340. It has sometimes been maintained, indeed, that the Confirmatio Cartarum of 1297 was intended to abolish this prerogative, and a document once considered an authoritative version of the Confirmatio bore the suggestive title of De tallagio non concedendo. It is now well known that the latter document is unauthentic; while, if the Confirmatio itself was intended to relieve the towns from tallages, it signally failed. Edward III. exacted tallages from London and other towns. Parliament, however, succeeded, in 1340, in passing a statute which abolished unparliamentary taxation of every kind. This act, sometimes styled by modern writers “the real statutum de tallagio non concedendo,” finally settled the law,3 but did not prevent the King from trying to break that law. Edward frequently disregarded the restrictions placed upon his financial resources, and with varying success. He rarely did so, however, without meeting protests; and the rule of law laid down in the act of 1340 was never repealed.

  III.

  Magna Carta and the Theory of Parliamentary Taxation.

  It is a commonplace of our text–books that chapters 12 and 14, taken together, amount to the Crown’s absolute surrender of all powers of arbitrary taxation, and even that they enunciate a doctrine of the nation’s right to tax itself.1 Yet the very idea of “taxation” in its abstract form, as opposed to specific tallages and exactions, levied on definite things or individuals, is essentially modern. The doctrine of the day was that the King in normal times ought “to live of his own,” like any other land–owning gentleman. A regular scheme of “taxation” to meet the ordinary expenses of government was undreamt of. It is too much to suppose, then, that our ancestors in 1215 sought to abolish something which, strictly speaking, did not exist. The famous clause treats, not of “taxation” in the abstract, but of the scutages and aids already discussed. It does not concern itself with the rights of Englishmen as such, but chiefly with the interests of barons who held freeholds of the Crown, and incidentally and inadequately with those of the citizens of London. Several considerations place this beyond reasonable doubt.

  (1) The terms of the restriction are by no means wide or sweeping; but precise, accurate, and narrow. The “common counsel of the realm” was required for three exactions at the most: for scutages and for extraordinary aids from feudal tenants, and possibly also for aids from the city of London: that is all. Not a word is said of other forms of taxation or other groups of taxpayers. (2) If under–tenants received, by chapter 15, protection against mesne lords, they received none against the King. The Charter affected, not national “taxation,” but feudal dues. (3) The scant measure of protection did not extend even to all Crown tenants. The King’s villeins were, of course, excluded; and so were even freeholders whose tenure was other than that of chivalry. Socage tenants were left liable to carucage, while the Crown’s right to raise the “farms” of its own demesnes was reserved.1 (4) The Crown’s initiative in “taxation” (here restricted in regard to “aids” and “scutages”) was, under many other names and forms, left intact. The King required no consent before taking prises and custom dues from merchandise reaching or leaving England, or before taking tolls and fines at inland markets under the plea of regulating trade. Tallages also were exigible at discretion from aliens and Jews, from tenants of demesne, from London and other chartered towns. (5) The assembly to be convened for taking “common counsel” was a narrow body, representative neither of the ranks and classes of the community, nor of the separate national interests, nor yet of the various districts of England. Its composition was homogeneous, an aristocratic council of the military tenants of the Crown, convened in such a way that only the greater among them were likely to attend.2

  These facts serve as a warning not to read into Magna Carta modern conceptions which its own words will not warrant. This famous clause was far from formulating any doctrine of self–taxation; it primarily affected impositions levied by John, not qua sovereign but qua feudal lord. Such as it was, it was omitted, along with its corollary (chapter 14), in 1216 and subsequent reissues.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN.

  Et civitas Londonie habeat omnes antiquas libertates et liberas consuetudines suas, tam per terras, quam per aquas. Preterea volumus et concedimus quod omnes alie civitates, et burgi, et ville, et portus, habeant omnes libertates et liberas consuetudines suas.

  And the city of London shall have all its ancient liberties and free customs, as well by land as by water; furthermore, we decree and grant that all other cities, boroughs, towns, and ports shall have all their liberties and free customs.

  A full list of London’s liberties and customs would be a long one; and to relate how each of these grew up and was confirmed by the Crown need not be here attempted. The most cherished of the privileges enjoyed in John’s day by the citizens were the right to appoint a civic chief, who bore the name of mayor, and the right to choose the sheriffs who should collect the city’s firma1 (or annual rent payable to the exchequer), so as to obviate the intrusion of royal bailiffs. Only a brief account of the way in which the metropolis obtained these privileges is here required.

  The chief feature of London before the Norman Conquest seems to have been lack of proper municipal organization. Dr. Stubbs describes the capital during the eleventh century as “a bundle of communities, townships, parishes, and lordships, of which each has its own constitution.”2 It was thus a collection of small administrative units, rather than one large unit. Some semblance of legal unity was, it is true, afforded by the folkmoot, in which the citizens regularly assembled; by its smaller council known as “husteng”; and perhaps also by its “cnihtengild” (if, indeed, this third body be not entirely mythical); while the existence of a “portreeve” shows that for some financial purposes the city was treated as one whole. London, however, prior to the reign of Henry I. was far from possessing the machinery of an efficient municipal government.

  The first step towards a constitution is generally supposed to have been taken by the citizens when they obtained a charter from Henry I. in the last years of his reign (1130–35). This is not strictly accurate. London, indeed, by that grant gained valuable privileges; but it did not obtain a constitution. The chief rights actually conferred by Henry were as follows:—(1) The firma was fixed at the reduced rate of £300 per annum, the citizens obtaining a lease in perpetuity of their own city with the surrounding county of Middlesex—the grant being made to the citizens and their heirs; (2) they acquired the right to appoint the sheriffs of London and Middlesex, implying the exclusion of the King’s tax–collectors by men of their own choosing; (3) a similar right of appointing their own nominee as justiciar was also conferred on them, to the exclusion apparently of the royal justices of eyre. Many minor privileges were confirmed which need not here be specified. Mr. J. H. Round1 argues with convincing force that these concessions, important as they were, did not confer a civic constitution upon London. Henry’s charter, in his opinion, confirmed the separate jurisdictions and franchises, perpetuating the old state of disunion, rather than creating a new principle of cohesion. Mr. Round proves, further, that the new concessions were cancelled by Stephen in 1141, when Geoffrey de Mandeville compelled Stephen to appoint him as sheriff and justiciar of London. Earlier in the same year, the citizens had risen against Matilda and tried to establish a sworn Commune, presumably of the continental type.2 When London was placed in Earl Geoffrey’s hands, all vestige of this would be swept away, along with any of the privileges granted by Henry I. that had endured till then.

  Henry II., indeed, granted a charter in 1155, which is usually interpreted as a full confirmation of the concessions of the earlier Henry.3 Mr. Round has proved the error of this opinion.4 The charter of 1155 restricted, rather than enlarged, the privileges of London, being couched in cautious and somewhat grudging terms. The main concessions of the earlier charter were omitted: the citizens no longer elected their sheriffs or justiciar; the reduction of the firma to £300 was not confirmed; and subsequent pipe rolls show that Henry doubled that amount.

  The next crisis came early in Richard’s reign. Then it was, perhaps, that London obtained its municipal constitution. Then also it may have regained the privileges precariously held under Henry I. and Stephen. The form in which the constitution came at last was, Mr. Round argues, borrowed from France, and was neither more nor less than the Commune, so well known on the Continent in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Mr. Round1 has shown that these concessions were not, as has sometimes been supposed, voluntarily granted in 1189 by Richard I., but were extorted from his brother John, when that ambitious prince was bidding for powerful allies to support his claim to act as Regent. London, Mr. Round maintains, got its constitution on 8th October, 1191, under picturesque and memorable circumstances. While Richard tarried in the Holy Land, a scramble took place at home for the right to represent him. The Chancellor Longchamp had been appointed Regent; but John, wily and unscrupulous, ousted him, with the help of the men of London. At the critical moment, the metropolis had offered support on conditions, which included restoration of the short–lived privileges conferred by Henry I., and, in addition, a municipal constitution of the continental type.

  Mr. Round, in a notable passage, describes the scene. “When, in the crisis of October, 1191, the administration found itself paralysed by the conflict between John, as the King’s brother, and Longchamp, as the King’s representative, London, finding that she held the scales, promptly named the ‘Commune’ as the price of her support. The chronicles of the day enable us to picture to ourselves the scene, as the excited citizens, who had poured forth overnight, with lanterns and torches to welcome John to the capital, streamed together on the morning of the eventful 8th October at the well–known sound of the great bell, swinging out from its campanile in St. Paul’s Churchyard. There they heard John take the oath to the ‘Commune,’ like a French king or lord; and then London, for the first time, had a municipality of her own.”1

  For any accurate definition of a Commune we look in vain to contemporary writers. Richard of Devizes2 quotes with approval, “Communia est tumor plebis, timor regni, tepor sacerdotii.” Some insight has been gained in recent years, however, into its exact nature. A Commune was a town that had obtained recognition as a corporate entity, as a link in the feudal chain, becoming the free vassal of the King or other lord, and itself capable of having subvassals of its own.3 Its chief institutions were a mayor and elective council, generally composed of twenty–four members, some or all of whom were known as échevins or skivini. Perhaps, the chief peculiarity of the Commune was the method of its formation, namely, by popular association or conspiracy, involving the taking of an oath of a more or less revolutionary nature by the citizens, and its subsequent ratification by those in authority. It is generally admitted that these communes, though revolutionary in origin, were not necessarily democratic in their sympathies.

  From 1191 onwards, London was governed by its own mayor, an official chosen by the citizens, but holding office for life, until the citizens obtained a further concession in 1215. It has sometimes been argued that as a mayor was the natural head of a Commune, the continued existence of the one implied the existence of the other. It seems more likely, however, that if a Commune was actually set up in 1191, it did not long survive Richard’s return from captivity. Mayors were to be found in the twelfth century ruling over boroughs that were not technically “Communes”; and Richard may have been willing to accept a mayor of London’s choosing, while he repudiated the city’s claim to independence as a Commune.

  When John became King, he granted three charters to the capital for a gersuma (or slump payment) of 3000 marks.1 All franchises specified in the charter of Henry I. were confirmed, with one exception: the liberty to appoint a justiciar of their own, now seen to be inconsistent with the Crown’s centralizing policy, was abandoned. None of these charters made mention of mayor or commune, but they confirmed some minor privileges gained in Richard’s reign.2

  A fourth charter, dated 20th March, 1201, was of temporary interest. The fifth and last of the series came in the crisis of 1215, and some light is possibly shed on it by comparison with the petition of nine articles already mentioned,3 which seems to represent the demands made by the Londoners at that date. Besides exemption from arbitrary tallage and several minor concessions, they demanded the control of Thames, the annual election of their mayor in the folkmoot, freedom of access for foreign traders, and the right to distrain for debt against the persons and property of debtors.

  Some of these demands were granted by John’s fifth charter, dated 9th May, 1215, some five weeks previous to Magna Charter, and representing the bait thrown by John to gain their support in this new crisis as he had gained it in the earlier crisis of 1191. The men of London obtained the right to appoint a mayor annually, and, if they chose, to depose him at the year’s end and appoint another in his place, a right which Miss Norgate aptly calls “the crowning privilege of a fully constituted municipality.”4 The charter at the same time confirms all liberties already enjoyed, “as well within London as without, as well on water as on land, salva nobis chamberlengia nostra.” The control of Thames and Medway, mentioned with more particularity in Magna Carta, seems to be here granted; while the freedom of access of foreign merchants is qualified by John’s reservation of the right to take toll from them by appropriating such of their choicest wares as his chamberlain might select for the royal household.1

  If the nine articles contain London’s demands in 1215, the Charter of 9th May gives what John was willing to promise in return for the city’s support; and the Articuli Baronum what the barons compelled him to grant to the city after it had preferred their alliance to his; while Magna Carta shows some slight modifications in the King’s favour.

  Such was the London whose privileges were confirmed by chapter 13 of Magna Carta in words that avoided details and confined themselves to a general confirmation of ancient “liberties and free customs.”2 Neither mayor nor Commune is mentioned; but the question has been raised whether by implication the Great Charter does not recognize the existence of one or both of these.

  As the charter of 9th May had granted to London the right to elect a mayor, and as the mayor was appointed one of the 25 executors under chapter 61, it is clear that Magna Carta accepted that magistrate as head of the city’s government; and the recognition of a mayor has sometimes been held to suggest also the recognition of a Commune. Professor Adams, on the other hand, has based an argument for the existence of a Commune after June, 1215, mainly upon the omission of the word tallage from chapter 12, which thus makes it possible to infer that an auxilium is the only imposition to be lawfully levied on London.3 He seeks to show, further, that London lost this status of a Commune in 1216, when the charter was reissued without the chapter associating London with the payment of auxilium: “this clause was omitted, and with it London’s legal right to a Commune fell to the ground.”4

  It is pertinent to note, however, that the Patent Rolls for 12211 refer to “the mayor and Commune of London.” If this implies the existence of a real Commune of the continental type, the date of its final abolition may possibly have been the year following, when London quarrelled with the young King’s ministers and had difficulty in making peace.2 On the whole, it must be left an open question whether or not the privileges granted to London in 1215 included the establishment of a Commune, and, if so, when that form of municipal government came to an end.

  In this chapter of John’s Magna Carta (in contrast with the last clause of chapter 12), London did not stand alone. “All other cities, boroughs, towns and ports” were confirmed in their liberties and free customs. A specification of these was, of course, impossible; each borough was left to prove its privileges as best it might. In the reissues of Henry, London shared the distinction of being mentioned by name with “the barons of the Cinque ports,” who from their wealth, their situation, and their fleet, were allies worth conciliating. They played, indeed, a prominent part in the decisive naval victory gained by Hubert de Burgh on 24th August, 1217.3

  Among the most cherished privileges claimed by the chartered boroughs were the rights to exact tolls and to place oppressive restrictions upon rival traders not members of their guilds, foreigners and denizens alike. The general confirmation of privileges in this chapter has been held to contradict chapter 41, which grants protection and immunities to foreign merchants.4 The inconsistency, however, is perhaps greater in appearance than reality, since the later chapter aimed at abolition of “evil customs” inflicted by the King, not of those inflicted by the boroughs. At the same time, any favour shown to aliens would be bitterly resented by English traders. If the charter had been put in force in its integrity, the more specific privileges in favour of foreign merchants would have prevailed in opposition to the vague confirmation of borough “liberties,” wherever the two conflicted.1

  Other portions of John’s Great Charter that specially affected Londoners were the last clause of chapter 12, and chapters 33 and 41; while many of the privileges granted or confirmed in other chapters were shared by them.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN.

  Et ad habendum commune consilium regni, de auxilio assidendo aliter quam in tribus casibus predictis, vel de scutagio assidendo, summoneri faciemus archiepiscopos, episcopos, abbates, comites, et majores barones, sigillatim per litteras nostras; et preterea faciemus summoneri in generali, per vicecomites et ballivos nostros, omnes illos qui de nobis tenent in capite; ad certum diem, scilicet ad terminum quadraginta dierum ad minus, et ad certum locum; et in omnibus litteris illius summonicionis causam summonicionis exprimemus; et sic facta summonicione negocium ad diem assignatum procedat secundum consilium illorum qui presentes fuerint, quamvis non omnes summoniti venerint.

  And for obtaining the common counsel of the kingdom anent the assessing of an aid (except in the three cases aforesaid) or of a scutage, we will cause to be summoned the archbishops, bishops, abbots, earls, and greater barons, severally by our letters; and we will moreover cause to be summoned generally, through our sheriffs and bailiffs, all others who hold of us in chief, for a fixed date, namely, after the expiry of at least forty days, and at a fixed place; and in all letters of such summons we will specify the reason of the summons. And when the summons has thus been made, the business shall proceed on the day appointed, according to the counsel of such as are present, although not all who were summoned have come.

  This chapter, which has no equivalent among the Articles of the Barons, appears here incidentally: it would never have found a place in Magna Carta but for the need of machinery to give effect to chapter 12.2

  As chapter 12 is frequently supposed to enunciate a general doctrine of taxation, so this one is cited as enunciating a doctrine of parliamentary representation; while the close connection between the chapters is taken as evidence that the framers of Magna Carta had grasped the essentially modern principle that taxation and representation ought always to go together.1 In this view, the barons at Runnymede are given credit for anticipating the best features of modern parliamentary government. The text, however, will scarcely bear so liberal an interpretation.2 Vital points of difference between the principles of Magna Carta and the modern doctrine of representation are revealed by analysis.

  Under chapter 12, scutages and extraordinary aids could only be levied “with common counsel of our kingdom,” and now chapter 14 fixes authoritatively the composition of an assembly charged with this function. The same Latin words which signify joint “consent” or counsel came to signify also the “Common Council,” afterwards of vital constitutional importance, continuing under a new name the old curia regis, and passing in turn into the modern Parliament. The duties and constitutional importance of this commune concilium may be considered under six heads.

  I.

  Nature of the Summons.

  Formal writs had to be issued, specifying the time, place, and reason of assembling, at least forty days in advance. Each of the really powerful men of the realm—archbishops, bishops, abbots, earls, and “other greater barons”—received a separate writ addressed to him individually, while the “smaller barons” were summoned collectively and indirectly through the sheriffs and bailiffs of each district.

  II.

  Composition of the Council.

  It is clear that the meetings contemplated were purely baronial assemblies, since none but Crown tenants were invited to attend. “The common consent of my kingdom,” in John’s mouth, was synonymous with “the consent of my barons.”1 The King’s Council had by this time freed itself from any complicated theories as to its own composition, which may ever have hampered it. It was now entirely homogeneous, a feudal muster of Crown–vassals.2

  It is unnecessary here to examine the rival theories professing to explain the composition of the Anglo–Saxon Witenagemot, or to discuss the exact connection between that institution and the Curia Regis of the Norman Kings. As matter of fact, the early constitution of the court of the Conqueror or of Rufus seems to have been monarchic rather than aristocratic or democratic; that is to say, it depended to a great extent on the personal will of the King. No evidence exists, of date anterior to the Great Charter, of any magnate thrusting himself unbidden into a royal council or forcing the King to issue a formal invitation. On one occasion, indeed, the action of Henry II. in omitting to issue a writ laid him open to criticism. This was in October, 1164, when a special council was summoned to Northampton to pass judgment upon questions at issue between the King and Thomas à Becket. The primate was ordered to appear for judgment; but the formal writ of summons, which every holder of a barony was wont to receive, was withheld. Apparently, contemporary opinion condemned this omission.3 It is safer to infer, then, that as early as 1164, the method of issuing these writs had become uniform, but this constitutional understanding was not reduced to writing until embodied in Magna Carta. It was in 1215 that the magnates of England formulated a distinct claim to be present at the King’s councils; and even then the demand only referred to assemblies summoned for one specific purpose. Previously, attendance was reckoned not as a privilege, but rather as a burden incident to the possession of land.1

  Mr. Round2 maintains that under John “the writ of summons suddenly assumed a very real importance,” and argues, with much plausibility, that the present chapter proves “that the Crown had been endeavouring to use the writ as a means of excluding its opponents from the assembly.” The barons, on their part, unable to assert a right to attend uninvited, “insisted that they all must be summoned.”

  III.

  Position of “Minor Barons.”

  Crown–tenants varied in power and position from the great earl, who owned the larger share of one or more counties, to the small freeholder with a few hides or acres of his own. A rough division was drawn somewhere in the midst; but the boundary was vague, and this vagueness was probably encouraged by the Crown, whose requirements might vary from time to time.3 The Crown–tenants on one side of this fluctuating line were barones majores; those on the other, barones minores. The distinction had been recognized as early as the days of Henry II.;4 but Magna Carta helped to stereotype it, and contributed to the growing tendency to confine the word “baron” to the greater men.5 The smaller barons grudged the long journeys and the expense of attending Councils whose decisions they were powerless to influence; and they found a more fitting sphere for their energies in the meetings of the shire. For these reasons, they were prepared to ignore any summonses they might receive. In this respect, in Mr. Round’s1 opinion, the feudal theory “broke down in England.”

  Three distinct theories have been advanced as to the position occupied by the “minor barons” in the Common Council. (1) The duty of attendance was burdensome on the poorer Crown–tenants. It has been suggested that the device of inviting them by general summons was intended as an intimation that they need not come. This is the view taken by Prof. Medley.2 (2) Dr. Hannis Taylor holds an opposite opinion, reading this chapter as an attempt “to rouse the lesser baronage to the exercise of rights which had practically passed into desuetude.”3 If such an attempt had really been made, and had succeeded, the result would have been to leave no room for the future introduction of the representative principle into the national council. (3) A third theory holds that the smaller Crown–tenants were called in a representative capacity. A few knights (probably elected for this purpose by their fellows) were expected to attend to represent the others. Dr. Stubbs seems predisposed towards this opinion, although he expresses himself with his usual caution.4

  It may be suggested, even at the risk of seeming to invent a fourth theory in a series already too numerous, that to the great men who framed the clause it was a matter of supreme indifference whether their humbler fellow–tenants attended or stayed away. The general summons expressed neither an urgent desire for their presence, nor yet an intimation that they were not wanted; but merely conformed with established usage, and left with each “minor baron” the decision whether he should come or stay away. His presence would make little difference upon the deliberations of the magnates.

  IV.

  Representation.

  It is well to hesitate before applying to ancient institutions a word so essentially modern as “representation.” In a sense, the reeve and four best men of every village “represented” their fellows in the county court from an early age; and in a somewhat different sense the feudal lord “represented” his free tenants and villeins in the King’s court; but in neither instance was there anything approaching the definite relation which exists at present between the member of Parliament and his constituents. Magna Carta shows no tendency whatever to adapt this expedient of representation, even in its crudest form, to the composition of the Common Council. The councillors whose summons was enjoined were all of one type, military tenants of the Crown, each of whom was to attend in his own interests not in those of his class, still less of his district or of the community as a whole. The barons, great and small, might be present, each man for himself; but the other contributors to the King’s exchequer were ignored.1

  V.

  Powers of the Council.

  It was not until long after the days of Magna Carta that Parliament secured the most important of those functions now deemed essential to its existence. No claim was made on behalf of the commune concilium to be consulted in the making of laws or in the performance of administrative duties by the Crown: no effort was made towards formulating any doctrine of ministerial responsibility. This assembly, narrow and aristocratic in composition, had only one right secured to it, a limited control over taxation. Even here, as we have seen, no general claim was put forward. It had no right to control the national purse: the barons merely protected their own individual pockets against an increase of feudal burdens. A modern Magna Carta would have contained a careful list of the powers and privileges of “the common council of the realm.”1

  It would, indeed, have been an evil thing for England, if this narrow baronial assembly had established a claim to tax the important classes of the community, townsmen and vassals of mesne lords, who were totally unrepresented in it. Doubtless, it would have been ready enough to substitute, if it could, a scheme of taxation that relieved Crown–tenants of the burden of scutages and aids, at the expense of their humbler neighbours.

  VI.

  Rights of Majorities and Minorities.

  The medieval conception of solidarity was defective; the King’s council acted too much like a fortuitous gathering of unrelated individuals, and too little like a recognized organ of the body politic. “No new exactions without consent of the individual taxed” was nearer the ideals of 1215 than “no taxation without consent of Parliament.” Each “baron” was summoned on his own behalf; and it is doubtful how far a dissenting minority could be bound by a decision of the rest. Accordingly, the framers of Magna Carta deemed it necessary to assert what would be too obvious to modern politicians to require assertion—namely, that when the commune concilium had been properly convened, its power to transact business should not be lost because a section of those summoned chose to stay away. “The business shall proceed on the day appointed, according to the advice of such as shall be present, although all that were summoned do not come.” Not all business was competent, however, for the cause of summons had to be mentioned in the writs. If these writs were in order, the Council, so we may presume, had power to impose aids or scutages on those who were absent.2

  Nothing is said, however, as to the validity of a protest made by those who came and expressed disapproval. As the substance of this chapter was observed in practice (though omitted from subsequent confirmations), a precedent of the year 1221 may illustrate the interpretation put upon it by contemporary practice. A Council summoned by William Marshal had consented to a scutage, and the Bishop of Winchester was assessed at 159 marks for his knight’s fees. He refused to pay, on the ground, quite untenable by modern standards, that he had dissented from the grant. The plea was accepted by the Regent, and the exchequer adjudged bishop Peter quit of the payment.1 The incident shows how far the statesmen of the day were from realizing the principles of modern political theory. They had not yet grasped the conception of a Council endowed with constitutional authority to impose its will on a dissenting minority. Here it was apparently a minority of one.2

  From this time forward the Common Council was almost invariably consulted before the Crown attempted to levy such contributions; and sometimes was bold enough to make conditions or to decline payment altogether, the first instance on record of an outright refusal taking place in a Parliament held at London in January, 1242.3 The barons, in October, 1255, if Matthew Paris has not fallen into error, considered that the provisions of chapters 12 and 14 of John’s Magna Carta were still in force, although they had been omitted in the reissues of Henry III. When the King asked a liberal aid in furtherance of his scheme for securing the Crown of Sicily for his son Edmund, those present at the Council deliberately refused, on the ground that some of their peers had not been summoned “according to the tenor of Magna Carta.”4

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN.

  Nos non concedemus de cetero alicui quod capiat auxilium de liberis hominibus suis, nisi ad corpus suum redimendum, et ad faciendum primogenitum filium suum militem, et ad primogenitam filiam suam semel maritandam, et ad hec non fiat nisi racionabile auxilium.

  We will not for the future grant to any one licence to take an aid from his own free tenants, except to ransom his body, to make his eldest son a knight, and once to marry his eldest daughter; and on each of these occasions there shall be levied only a reasonable aid.

  This chapter confers on the tenants of mesne lords protection similar to that already conferred on Crown–tenants: money is no longer to be extorted arbitrarily by their lords.1 Different machinery, however, had here to be adopted, since the expedient of chapter 12 (“the common counsel of the realm”) was inapplicable.

  I.

  Points of difference between tenants–in–chief and under–tenants.

  Tenants of mesne lords were in some respects better off than tenants of the King,2 but in others their position was worse. Not only had they to satisfy demands of their own lord for “aids,” but part of every burden laid by the King upon that lord’s shoulders was transferred to theirs. In seeking to protect under–tenants, Magna Carta looked, not to the common council, but to the King. No mesne lord could compel his tenants to contribute to his necessities without written licence from the Crown; and the Crown was now forbidden to issue such licences except upon the usual three occasions.3 Contrast this procedure with that which affected Crown–tenants:—

  (1) While chapter 12 had spoken of “aids and scutages,” this one speaks of “aids” alone. The omission can be readily explained: a mesne lord in England had no admitted right of private war, and was debarred from demanding scutage upon his own initiative. He might, indeed, allocate upon his freeholders part of any scutage which the Crown had taken from him; but the barons who framed the Charter had no intention to renounce so just a right. The restriction of this clause to “aids” was thus intentional.

  (2) It would have been absurd to require “the common counsel of the realm” for every aid paid by the freeholders of a manor. The embryo Parliament had no time for petty local affairs; and the present chapter makes no such suggestion. Some substitute had, however, to be found. A natural expedient would have been to compel the mesne lord, who wished an aid, to take “the common consent” of the freeholders of his manor, assembled in court baron, as in a local Parliament. This course was sometimes followed. Henry Tracey, for example, in 1235 (although armed with a royal writ), convened his Devonshire knights and obtained their consent to an aid of 20s. per fee on his daughter’s marriage.1 No such obligation, however, had been placed on mesne lords by Magna Carta, which had sought a practical substitute for “the common counsel of the realm” in a different direction.

  (3) A check upon such exactions was sought, not in the court baron, but in the need for a royal licence. The necessity for this may at first have been a practical, rather than a legal, one; for executive power lay with the officers of the Crown alone, and the sheriff gave his services only at the King’s command.2 The Crown thus exercised what was virtually a power of veto over all aids taken by mesne lords. Such a right, conscientiously used, would have placed an effectual restraint on their rapacity. John, however, sold writs to every needy lord who proposed to enrich himself at his tenants’ expense. Magna Carta forbade the two tyrants thus to combine against sub–tenants, enunciating a hard–and–fast rule which, if duly observed, would have struck at the root of the grievance: no writ could be lawfully issued except on the three well–known occasions.

  II.

  The Influence of Magna Carta upon later Practice.

  This chapter, along with chapters 12 and 14, was discarded by Henry III.; and little difference, if any, can be traced between the practices that prevailed before and after 1215. Mesne lords invariably asked the Crown’s help to collect their aids. They could not legally distrain their freeholders, except through the sheriff, and this was, in part at least, a result of Magna Carta.1

  Henry III., however, disregarded the rule which forbade the licensing of extraordinary aids. Like his ancestors, he was prepared to grant writs on almost any plausible pretext. From the Patent and Close Rolls, as well as from other sources, illustrations of the Crown’s earlier and later practice can readily be collected:

  (1)

  Scutages.

  In 1217, for example, Henry granted permission to all Crown tenants who had served in person to collect scutage from their knights.2

  (2)

  Ordinary Aids.

  (a) John in 1204 authorized the collection of “an effectual aid” from the knights and freeholders of the Constable of Chester for the ransom of their lord.1 (b) A royal writ in 1235 allowed Henry Tracey, as already mentioned, to take an aid for his daughter’s marriage.

  (3)

  Special Aids.

  (a) When a fine of sixty marks was incurred in 1206 by the Abbot of Peterborough, John allowed him to distrain his under–tenants.2 (b) An heir, paying relief, might likewise take reasonable contributions from freeholders.3 (c) The lord’s debts were frequently paid by his tenants. The returns to the Inquest of 1170 contain particulars of “sums given individually by some forty burgesses of Castle Rising towards paying off the mortgages of their lord, the Earl of Arundel, who was clearly in the hands of the Jews”4 while in 1234 the Earl of Oxford and the Prior of Lewes each obtained a letter patent distraining tenants to contribute to discharge their debts.5 Evidence is thus preserved that Henry III. took full advantage of the omission from his own charters of this part of his father’s promises. He did not question the justice of such writs, if good fees were paid. His letters authorized the taking of a “reasonable” aid, without hinting at any mode of determining what that was. This is illustrated by the procedure adopted by Henry Tracey in 1235, when he debated with his assembled knights of Devonshire the amount to be paid as “reasonable,” and finally accepted 20s. per fee.6 This same mesne lord, however, twelve years later, obtained a writ bidding the sheriff of Somerset assist him to collect “the scutage of Gascony” at 40s. per fee.7

  The first Statute of Westminster virtually reverted to the rule laid down in 1215, for its terms imply that aids could only be taken on the three well–known occasions. Only 20s. could be taken from a knight’s fee and an equal sum from land held in socage of the annual value of £20. No aid for a knighthood could be taken before a son was 15 years of age, or for a marriage until a daughter was 7.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN.

  Nullus distringatur ad faciendum majus servicium de feodo militis, nec de alio libero tenemento, quam inde debetur.

  No one shall be distrained for performance of greater service for a knight’s fee, or for any other free tenement, than is due therefrom.

  For military tenants, the transition from scutage to service was a natural one. John declared that no freeholder should be constrained to do more service for his lands than he was legally bound to do. Disputes might arise, however, as to what extent of service actually was due in each particular case, and Magna Carta did nothing to remove such ambiguities. The difficulties of definition, indeed, were enormous, since the duration and conditions of service might vary widely, in consequence of special exemptions or special burdens which appeared in title deeds or rested upon immemorial usage. The barons could not enter on so intricate and laborious a task.

  One grievance may have been specially in their minds. They had frequently objected to serve abroad, particularly during John’s campaigns in Poitou.1 To force them to serve in the south of France, or to fine them for staying at home, was, they may well have argued, to distrain them ad faciendum majus servicium de feodo militis quam inde debetur. When they inserted these words in the Charter, they doubtless regarded them as a prohibition of compulsory service in Poitou, at all events.2 The clause was wide enough, however, to include minor grievances. The barons did not confine its provisions to military service, but extended it to other forms of freehold tenure (“nec de alio libero tenemento”). No freeholder, whether in socage, serjeanty, or frankalmoin, could in future be compelled to render services not legally due.

  If the barons thought they had thus settled the vexed questions connected with foreign service, they deceived themselves. Although this chapter (unlike those dealing with scutage) remained in all subsequent confirmations, it was far from preventing disputes. Yet the disputants in future reigns occupied somewhat different ground. From the days of William I. to those of Charles II., when the feudal system was abolished, quarrels frequently arose, the most famous of which, in 1297, led to Edward’s unseemly wrangle with his hereditary Constable and Marshal, who refused to embark for Gascony except in attendance on the King’s person.1

  It has been shown in the Introduction2 how the obligations of a military tenant fell naturally into three groups (services, incidents, and aids), while a fourth group (scutages) was added when the Crown commuted military service for its equivalent in money. Feudal grievances may be arranged in four corresponding groups, each redressed by special clauses of Magna Carta: abuse of aids by chapters 12, 14, and 15; of feudal incidents, by chapters 2 to 8; of scutage, by chapters 12 and 14; and of service, by the present chapter.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN.

  Communia placita non sequantur curiam nostram sed teneantur in aliquo loco certo.

  Common pleas shall not follow our court, but shall be held in some fixed place.

  An attempt was here made to render royal justice cheaper and more accessible. Law–suits in which the Crown had no special interest, common pleas, were to be held in some pre–appointed spot, and no longer to follow the King from place to place. The full extent of this boon will be better appreciated after a short consideration of the method of dispensing justice adopted by Henry II. and his sons.

  I.

  The Curia Regis as a Court of Law.

  The evil complained of was a characteristically medieval one, and arose from the fact that all departments of government were centred in the King’s household. This Curia Regis, indeed, united in itself the functions of the modern Cabinet, of the administrative departments (such as the Home Office, the Foreign Office, and the Admiralty), and of the various legal tribunals. It was the parent inter alia of the Court at St. James’s and the courts at Westminster. Nothing could be done outside of the royal household, and that household never tarried long in any one spot. Everything was focussed to one point, but to a point constantly in motion. Wherever the King went, there the Curia Regis, with all its departments, went also. The entire machinery of royal justice followed Henry II., as he passed, sometimes on the impulse of the moment, from one of his favourite hunting seats to another. Crowds thronged after him in hot pursuit, since it was difficult to transact business of moment elsewhere.

  This meant intolerable delay, annoyance, and expense. The case of Richard of Anesty is often cited in illustration. His own account is a graphic record of his journeyings in search of justice, throughout a period of five years, during which he visited in the King’s wake most parts of England, Normandy, Aquitaine, and Anjou. The plaintiff, although ultimately successful, paid dearly for his legal triumph. Reduced to borrow from the Jews to meet enormous outlays, mostly travelling expenses, he had to discharge his debts with accumulations of interest at the ruinous rate of 86⅔ per cent.1

  II.

  Common Pleas and Royal Pleas.

  Long before 1215, litigations conducted before the King’s courts had come to be divided roughly into two classes, according as the royal interests were or were not specially affected by the issue. Those on one side of this fluctuating line were known as royal pleas, or “pleas of the Crown,” provisions for holding which are contained in chapter 24, those on the other side as ordinary or “common pleas,” to which alone the present chapter refers. As these ordinary suits did not require to be determined in the royal presence, it was possible to appoint a bench of judges to sit permanently in some fixed spot, selected to suit the convenience of litigants. No town was named in Magna Carta; but Westminster, even then the natural home of law, was probably intended from the first. It is Westminster that Sir Frederick Pollock has in mind when he writes: “We may also say that Magna Carta gave England a capital.”1 The barons in 1215, in asking this reform, were not insisting on any startling innovation, but demanding merely the observance of a rule long recognized. During most of John’s reign, a court did sit at Westminster dispensing justice, with more or less regularity; and there most “common pleas” were tried, unless John ordered otherwise.2 Magna Carta confirmed the understanding that “common pleas” should not dance attendance on the King, though it did not name any one fixed place where they should be tried.3

  III.

  Influences of Magna Carta on genesis of Courts of Common Law.

  The ultimate consequences of this reform reached further than was foreseen. Intended to remove a practical grievance, it had important effects on the development of the English Constitution. By securing for common pleas a permanent home, it gave an impetus to the disintegrating tendencies already at work within the many–sided household of the King. It helped forward the cleavage destined to divide completely the future Courts of Westminster from the Court of St. James’s and from Downing Street. Nor was this all: the special treatment accorded to “common pleas” emphasized the distinction between them and royal pleas, and so contributed to the splitting up of the same Curia Regis, on its judicial side, into two distinct tribunals. One little group of judges were set apart for hearing common pleas, and known as “the King’s Judges of the Bench,” or more briefly as “the Bench,” and at a later date as the Court of Common Pleas. A second group, reserved for royal pleas, became the court Coram Rege, known subsequently as the Court of King’s Bench. There were thus two benches: a common bench for common pleas and a royal bench for pleas of the Crown.1

  The double process, by which these two small courts separated slowly from the parent court and from each other, began long prior to Magna Carta, and was not completed before the close of the thirteenth century. These benches were also closely linked with a third bench, known for centuries as the Court of Exchequer, which was in its origin merely one department of that government bureau, the King’s financial Exchequer in which money was weighed and tested and the royal accounts drawn up. Many disputes or pleas affecting Crown debts had to be there decided, and a group of officials were set aside to try these. These men, called “barons of the exchequer,” formed what was in fact, though not in name, a third bench or court of justice.

  All three of the Courts of Common Law were thus offshoots of the King’s household. In theory, each of these ought to have confined itself to a special class of suits—royal pleas, common pleas, and exchequer pleas respectively; but, by a process known to law–courts in all ages, each encroached on the jurisdictions and fees appropriate to the others, until they became, for most purposes, three sister courts of co–ordinate authority. They were bound to decide all suits according to the technical and inflexible rules of common law; and their jurisdiction required a supplement, which was supplied by the genesis of the Court of Chancery, dispensing, not common law, but equity, which professed to give (and, for a short time, actually did give) redress on the merits of each case as it arose, unrestrained by precedents and legal subtleties.

  IV.

  The Evolution of the Court of Common Pleas.

  The comment usually made upon the present chapter is that we have here the origin of the Court of Common Pleas. Now, legal institutions do not spring, full–fledged, into being: the Common Pleas, like its sister Courts of King’s Bench and Exchequer, was the result of a long process of bifurcation from a common stem.

  Three stages may be emphasized. (1) The earliest trace of a definite bench, set apart for common pleas, is to be found in 1178. Henry II., returning from Normandy, found that there had been irregularities. To prevent their recurrence, he effected changes, the exact nature of which is matter of dispute. A contemporary writer1 relates how Henry chose two clerks and three laymen from the officials of his own household, and gave to these five men authority to hear all complaints and to do right “and not to recede from his court.” It was long thought that this marked the origin of the King’s Bench,2 but Mr. Pike3 has conclusively proved that the bench thus established was the predecessor, not of the royal bench, but rather of the bench for common pleas.

  In 1178, then, these five judges were set apart to hear ordinary suits; but they were specially directed not to leave Henry’s court; so that common pleas still “followed the King,” even ordinary litigants in non–royal pleas having to pursue the King in quest of justice as he passed from place to place in quest of sport or business.

  It must not be supposed that the arrangement thus made settled the practice for the whole period of thirty–seven years preceding the grant of Magna Carta. On the contrary, it was merely one of many experiments tried by that restless reformer, Henry of Anjou; and the separate bench then instituted may have been pulled down and set up again many times. It had probably, at best, a fitful and intermittent existence. There is evidence, however, that some such court did exist and did try common pleas in the reigns of Richard and John.1 On the other hand, this tribunal had in John’s reign ceased to follow the King’s movements habitually, and established itself at Westminster.2 It was in 1215 considered an abuse for John to try a common plea elsewhere.

  (2) Magna Carta, in 1215, gave authoritative sanction to this understanding, and thus marks a stage in the evolution of the Court of Common Pleas.3 Ordinary pleas were no longer to follow the King.4 Young Henry renewed this promise, and his minority favoured its strict observance: a mere boy could not make progresses through the land dispensing justice as he went. Accordingly, all pleas continued for some twenty years to be heard at Westminster. The same circumstance may have temporarily arrested the process of cleavage between the two benches.

  (3) About 1234, Henry began to follow the precedent, set by his ancestors, of moving through his realm with judges in his train. While one group went with him, another remained at Westminster: some method of allocating business had therefore to be found. Common pleas, in accordance with Magna Carta, remained stationary; while pleas of the Crown went on their travels. The split between the two benches now became absolute: from the year 1234, two continuous series of distinct rolls can be traced, known respectively as rotuli placitorum coram rege and rotuli placitorum de banco. If any date in the history of one law court, which is in process of becoming two, can be reckoned as marking the point of separation, it should be that at which separate rolls appear. The court’s memory lies in its records, which are thus closely associated with its identity. The common bench and the royal bench had become distinct.1 While Henry and his justices sat in judgment at Worcester, in 1238, a litigant protested against his suit being tried before them. It was a “common plea” and therefore, he argued, ought not to follow the King, in violation of Magna Carta. At Westminster only, not at Worcester or elsewhere, could his case be heard.2

  With royal pleas it was different: for long they continued to follow the King’s person without any protest being raised; and the Court of King’s Bench did not finally settle at Westminster for nearly a century after the Court of Common Pleas had been established there. It is doubtful whether, even in 1258, a separate royal bench had been constituted.3 So late as 1300, Edward I. ordained, by the Articuli super cartas, that “the Justices of his Bench” (as well as his Chancellor) should follow him, so that he might have at all times near him “some sages of the law, which be able duly to order all such matters as shall come into the Court at all times when need shall require.”4 The matters here referred to were royal pleas: common pleas were tried at Westminster.

  V.

  Common Pleas and the Exchequer.

  Records speak of the curia regis meeting for legal business ad scaccarium (that is, in the room where the business of the Exchequer of Accounts was normally transacted) long before the genesis of a separate Court of Exchequer.5

  Formal sessions of the Exchequer for auditing the Sheriffs’ accounts could only be held at Westminster, where the necessary apparatus was kept; but “the Exchequer,” using that elastic word in a somewhat different sense, with much of its impedimenta of writs and tallies, would accompany the King on his progresses through the realm. In 1210, for example, the Exchequer was at Northampton; in 1266, at St. Paul’s; in 1277, at Shrewsbury; and in 1299, at York.1

  Now, the Exchequer, when it sat as a Court of law, was ever willing—for a consideration—to place its potent procedure, devised for the King’s use, at the disposal of private creditors, treating “common pleas” as “exchequer pleas.” Ordinary debtors, summoned to answer for their debts before the barones scaccarii were subjected to more rapid pressure than they would have experienced elsewhere. Debtors were thus as anxious to escape the jurisdiction of the Exchequer, as creditors were to invite it.

  Both before and after Magna Carta, it would appear that common pleas were sometimes tried at sessions of the Exchequer, held not only at Westminster but also during its wanderings in the King’s train. It was natural enough that defendants who found themselves hustled by the stringent Exchequer process should seek shelter under the present chapter of the Great Charter. That they did so is proved by the words of the Articuli super Cartas of 1300, which declared that no common pleas should henceforth be held in the Exchequer “contrary to the form of the Great Charter.”2

  The implication of this clause of the statute of 1300 has sometimes been accepted literally.3 Magna Carta, however, in set terms at least, contains no such prohibition. If the present chapter excludes common pleas from the jurisdiction of a travelling Exchequer equally as from that of a travelling King’s bench, its words cannot be so stretched as to apply to normal sessions of the Exchequer held at Westminster. The Articuli super Cartas, however, attempted what the Charter of 1215 did not. After 1300 it was clearly illegal to hold any pleas in the Exchequer, unless such as affected the Crown and its ministers. Subsequent statutes confirmed this; but their plain intention was always defeated by the ingenious use of legal fictions and the connivance of the barons of Exchequer, who welcomed the increase of fees that kept pace with the increase of business.1

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN.

  Recogniciones de nova dissaisina, de morte antecessoris, et de ultima presentacione, non capiantur nisi in suis comitatibus et hoc modo; nos, vel si extra regnum fuerimus, capitalis justiciarius noster, mittemus duos justiciarios per unumquemque comitatum per quatuor vices in anno, qui, cum quatuor militibus cujuslibet comitatus electis per comitatum, capiant in comitatu et in die et loco comitatus assisas predictas.

  Inquests of novel disseisin, of mort d’ancestor, and of darrein presentment, shall not be held elsewhere than in their own country–courts,1 and that in manner following,—We, or, if we should be out of the realm, our chief justiciar, will send two justiciars through every county four times a year, who shall, along with four knights of the county chosen by the county, hold the said assizes in the county court, on the day and in the place of meeting of that court.

  Provision is here made for holding before the King’s travelling justices, frequently and in a convenient manner, three species of judicial inquests known as “petty assizes.” These are of exceptional interest from their connection with the genesis of trial by jury and the Justices of Assize.

  I.

  The Curia Regis and the travelling Justices.

  From an early date, certainly from the accession of Henry I., it was the Crown’s practice to supplement the labours of its officials at the royal exchequer by the occasional despatch of chosen individuals to inspect the provinces, collecting information and revenue, and, incidentally, hearing lawsuits. Justice was thus dispensed in the King’s name by his delegates in every shire of England, and a distinction arose between two types of royal courts: (1) the King’s Council and its offshoots (including the three courts of common law and the court of chancery), which at first followed the King’s person, but gradually, as already shown,2 found a settled home at Westminster; and (2) the courts of the itinerant justices which exercised such delegated authority as the Crown chose from time to time to entrust to them. The sphere of labour of these commissioners, as they passed from district to district, was the court of each shire, convened to meet them. They formed, in this way, a link between the old local popular courts and the system of royal justice. These travelling justices were of two types, Justices in Eyre and Justices of Assize respectively.

  (a) The Justices in Eyre were the earliest form of travelling judges, though their original duties were rather financial and administrative, than strictly judicial. Their history extends from Henry I. to the end of the fourteenth century.1 Their outstanding characteristics were the sweeping nature of their commissions (ad omnia placita), the harsh and drastic way in which they used their authority, and their intense unpopularity. Their advent was dreaded like a pestilence: each district visited was left impoverished by fines and penalties. On one occasion, the men of Cornwall “from fear of their coming, fled to the woods.”2 An eyre was only resorted to at long intervals—seven years came to be the recognized term—and was a method of punishing delinquencies and miscarriages of justice and of collecting royal dues. It was not a visit from these hated Justices of Eyre that the barons in 1215 desired to have four times a year.

  (b) The Justices of Assize also were travelling judges, but in their original form at least, possessed hardly another feature in common with the Justices in Eyre. Their history extends from a period not earlier than the reign of Henry II. down to the present day.3 They seem to have been popular from the first, as they used a speedy and rational procedure; while the scope of their jurisdiction, although extended as their popularity increased, was limited by the terms of their commissions. They were regarded, not as royal tax–gatherers armed with harsh powers of coercion, but as welcome bearers of justice to the doors of those who needed it.

  At first their duties were confined to enquiries of the kind mentioned in the text, known as “assizes”; and the new species of travelling judges were hence called “Justices of Assize,” a name that has clung to them for centuries, although their jurisdiction has been gradually increased till it now includes both civil and criminal pleas of every description, and although meanwhile the invention of new forms of process has superseded the old “assizes,” and at last necessitated their total abolition.1 They are still “justices of assize” in an age which knows nothing of the old assizes.

  II.

  Nature and Origin of the Petty Assizes.

  The institution of the “assizes”—particular forms of the sworn inquest—occupied a prominent place among the expedients by which Henry II. hoped to substitute a more rational procedure for the form of proof known as trial by combat.2

  The duellum, introduced at the Norman Conquest, remained for a century the chief method in use among the upper classes for determining serious litigations. Gradually, however, it was confined to two groups of pleas, one civil and the other criminal: appeals of treason and felony on the one hand, and suits to determine title to land on the other.3 The process of restriction was carried further by Henry II., who provided for the defendant or accused party, wherever possible, an option to trial by battle. Under chapter 36 will be explained the expedient adopted for evading combat in criminal cases. The present chapter relates to certain important groups of civil pleas,4 namely, the three Petty Assizes, the frequent use of which was now insisted on, although the Grand Assize was still viewed askance, for reasons to be explained in connection with chapter 34.

  (1)

  The Grand Assize

  is not mentioned in Magna Carta; but some acquaintance with it is necessary to an appreciation of the Petty Assizes. In the troubled reign of Stephen, lands changed hands frequently: there was hardly an important estate in England to which, at Henry’s accession, two or more rival magnates did not lay claim. Constant litigations resulted, and the only legal method of deciding the issue was the duellum.

  Henry II. introduced a startling innovation. The actual holder of a property de facto, when challenged to combat by a rival claimant, was allowed an option: he might force the claimant (if the latter persisted) to refer the matter to the oath of twelve knights of the neighbourhood. Henry’s ordinance provided for the appointment of these recognitors. Four leading knights of the county were first to be chosen, on whom was placed the duty of selecting twelve knights of the particular district where the lands lay, and these, with all due solemnity and in presence of the King’s justiciars, declared upon oath to which suitor the lands belonged. Their decision was final, and determined the question of ownership for all time.1 The name Grand Assize was applied alike to the procedure and to the knights who gave the verdict.

  The procedure was slow; many formalities and possibilities of delay intervened, involving expensive journeys to the central Curia, first by the four appointing knights and afterwards by the twelve appointed. Months and even years might elapse before the final verdict was obtained. To lighten these hardships in comparatively unimportant cases, the Capitula of 1194 authorized Justices of Eyre to hold Grand Assizes where the lands did not exceed £5 in annual value.2

  Normally, however, this procedure was for the King’s central Curia, neither for county court nor yet for baronial jurisdictions. For one thing, only magnates with wide demesnes were likely to command the attendance of twelve knights (or even of twelve freeholders) from their own territories. In combination with the rule given by Glanvill,1 that no plea concerning title to land could be commenced in any court without royal writ, and with the use made by the King of the writ praecipe,2 the Grand Assize, while superseding trial by battle, became also an expedient for curtailing the jurisdiction of mesne lords. It is easy to understand why (unlike the petty assizes) it never became popular with the magnates.

  Valuable boon as was the option to substitute the verdict of twelve knights for the duellum in questions of title to land, the reform had one obvious weak point: the option conferred might sometimes be usurped by the wrong man, if a turbulent claimant took the law into his own hands, evicted the holder by the rude method of self–help, and thereafter claimed the protection of Henry’s ordinance. In such a case the man of violence—the holder mala fide—would enjoy the option intended for his innocent victim.

  (2)

  The petty assizes

  may, perhaps, have been the outcome of Henry’s determination to prevent misuse of his new engine of justice.3 If a demandant alleged that the present possessor had usurped his place by violence, the King allowed the preliminary plea thus raised to be summarily decided by the oath of twelve local landowners, according to a procedure known as a petty assize. These petty assizes, of which three are here mentioned, related to questions of “possession,” as opposed to “ownership.”

  (a) Novel disseisin. The word “seisin,” originally synonymous with “possession” in general, was gradually restricted by medieval lawyers to the possession of real estate. “Disseisin” thus meant the interruption of seisin (or possession) of land; and was the technical term applied to violent acts of eviction. “Novel” implies that such ejection was of recent date; for a summary remedy could be given only where there had not been undue delay in applying for it.1

  The first of the petty assizes, then, was a rapid and peaceable method of ascertaining, by reference to sworn local testimony, whether an alleged recent eviction had really taken place or not. Without any of the law’s delays, without any expensive journeys to the King’s Court or to Westminster, but quickly and in the district where the lands lay, twelve local gentlemen determined upon oath all allegations of this nature. If the recognitors of the petty assize answered “Yes,” then the evicted man would have “seisin” immediately restored to him, and along with “seisin” went the valued option of determining what proof should decide the “ownership,”—whether it should be battle or the Grand Assize. An ordinance instituting this most famous of the three petty assizes was issued probably in 1166, a year fertile in legal expedients.

  (b) Mort d’ancestor. The protection afforded to the victim of “disseisin” did not remove all possibility of justice miscarrying; interested parties, other than the man ejected, were unprotected. An heir might be deprived of his tenement by his lord or by some rival claimant before he had an opportunity to take possession; never having been “in seisin,” he could not plead that he had been disseised. For the benefit of such an heir, a second petty assize, known as “mort d’ancestor,” was invented.2 This is mentioned in article 4 of the Assize of Northampton, issued in 1176, where procedure, essentially similar to, though not quite so speedy as that already described, was put at the heir’s disposal. If successful, he took the lands temporarily, subject to all defects in his ancestor’s title, leaving as before the question of absolute ownership to be determined (if challenged) by the more cumbrous machinery of the Grand Assize.

  (c) Darrein presentment. Advowson (or the right of appointing to a vacant church) was then, as now, a species of real estate. Such patronage was highly prized, affording a living for a younger son or needy relative; or it might be converted into cash. Disputes often arose as to possession and ownership of advowsons. Any one who claimed the absolute property, as against the holder, must offer battle, as in the case of any other form of real estate; and the Charter says nothing on this head.1

  The less vital question of possession was more rapidly determined: if a benefice fell vacant, and two proprietors claimed the patronage, the Church could not remain without a shepherd until the question was decided.2 No; the man in possession was allowed to make the appointment. But who was the man in possession? Clearly he who had (or whose father had) presented a nominee to the living when the last vacancy occurred. Here, however, there might be a dispute as to facts. Twelve local men decided which claimant had made the last appointment (the “darrein presentment”); and the claimant thus preferred filled up vacancies, until ousted by battle or the Grand Assize.

  All three forms of petty assize were merely new applications of the royal procedure known in England, since the Norman Conquest, as inquisitio or recognitio.3

  III.

  Aims of Magna Carta.

  If the petty assizes were objects of suspicion when first invented by Henry II., public opinion, half a century later, had vindicated their wisdom. The insurgent barons in 1215 were far from demanding their abolition; their new grievance was rather that sessions of assize were not held often enough. In prescribing the way in which these assizes must be held, several points were emphasized:—(1) No inquiry of the kind was to be held elsewhere than in the county where the property was situated. This was intended to meet the convenience of litigants, of those who served on assizes, and of all concerned.1 Within two years it was seen that this provision went too far. It was more convenient to hold certain inquiries before the Bench at Westminster, and the reissue of 1217 made two modifications: (a) Assizes of darrein presentment were thereafter to be taken before “the Justices of the Bench”; (b) any novel disseisin or mort d’ancestor, revealing points of special difficulty, might also be reserved for the decision of the Bench. An element of uncertainty was thus introduced, of which the Crown took advantage. In a reported case of the year 1221, it was decided that an assize of mort d’ancestor should be held in its own county, not at Westminster.2

  (2) John’s Charter further insists on quarterly circuits of Justices of Assize; so that litigants in every county of England might have four opportunities each year of having their disputes thus settled. Such frequency involved expense and labour out of proportion to the good effected. The Charter of 1217, accordingly, provided that circuits should be made only once a year. In 1285, however, it was enacted that they might be held three times a year, but not oftener.3

  (3) The Charter regulates the composition of the tribunal. Two justices appointed by the King (or by his chief justiciar) are directed to hold the assizes, along with four knights of the shire. The bench of six thus combines representatives of the Curia with local landowners. No mention is made of the twelve recognitors: nor was this necessary, as their functions and status were well known in 1215, and their verdict formed the essential feature of the procedure.1 Chapter 19 provides that the classes, from whom recognitors had to be selected, should attend in sufficient numbers “for the efficient making of judgments.”

  (4) The four knights were to be “elected” by the county court (quatuor militibus . . . electis per comitatum),2 and emphasis has been laid on this provision by historians searching for ancient prototypes of modern institutions. These knights have been incautiously welcomed as county magistrates elected on a more or less extended suffrage.3

  As the provisions of the reissue of 1217 are more carelessly expressed, and as in particular they contain no word implying “election,” it is sometimes assumed that a change was intended; that a step tentatively taken towards representative local government in 1215 was deliberately retraced two years later.4“Electus,” however, in medieval Latin was a vague word, differing widely from the ideas usually associated with a modern “election,” and applied indiscriminately to all methods of appointment or selection, even to the proceedings of officers engaged by Edward I. to compel the impressment of soldiers. The twelve knights were to be “appointed,” not “elected,” in the county court; and it remains doubtful whether the sheriff, the magnates, or the body of the suitors, would have the chief share in the appointment. No evidence is forthcoming that any importance was attached in 1217 to the word “electus,” and its omission may have been due to inadvertence.

  IV.

  Effects of Magna Carta.

  The stipulations of the Great Charter were not strictly followed in practice. It was not the custom under Henry III. for the Crown to grant general commissions to hold petty assizes. On the contrary, each litigant was left to make separate application to the King, who would then assign a justice by letters patent to preside over that one particular plea. Hundreds of such commissions might be issued in one year, and recognitors were separately summoned for each one of these. In 1258 the Petition of the Barons (c. 19) complained of this, and an attempt was made at organization. The Statute of Westminster II. (c. 30) ordained that two sworn justices should be assigned, before whom and none others assizes of Novel Disseisin and Mort d’ancestor (along with attaints) should be taken. They were to go on circuit three times a year, and to associate with themselves one or more of the discreetest knights of each county—instructions which fall short of the stipulations of Magna Carta.1

  V.

  An Erroneous View.

  Hallam, commenting on this chapter, seems to have misapprehended the issues at stake. “This clause stood opposed on the one hand to the encroachments of the King’s court, which might otherwise, by drawing pleas of land to itself, have defeated the suitor’s right to a jury from the vicinage: and, on the other, to those of the feudal aristocracy, who hated any interference of the Crown to chastise their violations of law, or control their own jurisdiction.”2 Hallam thus interprets the chapter as denoting a triumph of the old local popular courts over both the King’s courts and the courts of the feudal magnates. It denoted no such thing, but marked in reality a triumph (so far as it went) of the King’s courts over the tribunals of the feudal magnates—courts baron, as they were afterwards called. The assizes, it is true, were to be taken in the county court, but they were to be taken there by the King’s justices. The county courts by this time had fallen completely under the King’s domination, and were to all intents and purposes royal courts. The present chapter is thus conclusive evidence of the triumph of the King’s justice, which was the best article in the market, and, in spite of all defects, deserved the popularity it had won.

  VI.

  Later History of the Justices of Assize.

  Whatever may have been the exact date when there first went on tour throughout England travelling judges entitled to the description of “Justices of Assize,” such circuits, once instituted, continued to be held at more or less regular intervals from the beginning of the thirteenth century to the present day. Their jurisdiction steadily widened under successive kings, from Henry II. to Edward III.; and they gradually superseded the older Justices of Eyre, taking over such functions as were not inconsistent with the change from the medieval to the modern system of justice.1

  For centuries it was customary for the Crown to issue to the justices of each new circuit several commissions, each conferring jurisdiction over a different class of pleas. Founding on the authority of Sir Francis Bacon, historians have been wont to enumerate five distinct commissions.2

  (1) The commission of assize, already discussed, allowed them to hold petty assizes, but not (in the normal case) the grand assize.3

  (2) Commission of Nisi Prius. Under Statute Westminster II. c. 30, the sheriff was directed to summon jurors to Westminster “unless at an earlier date” (nisi prius) the justices of assize should happen to arrive in the county in question. This was interpreted as creating a jurisdiction in the justices of assize to try all non–criminal pleas of the county—a jurisdiction afterwards known as “nisi prius.” Thereafter, any such plea, whether begun in King’s Bench or Common Pleas, might be determined locally in its appropriate shire as well as at Westminster. According to the opinion generally received, a separate commission of “nisi prius” was issued to each group of justices of assize, but it has recently been urged that no separate commission was required, the one jurisdiction being merely incidental to the other.1

  (3) The commission of gaol delivery was, subsequently to 1299, conferred on the justices of assize, in accordance with a statute of that year,2 authorizing them to inspect all gaols and enquire into all charges against prisoners, and to set free those unjustly detained. Previously, similar powers had been spasmodically conferred on separate commissioners, who had too often abused their authority.

  (4) Commissions of Oyer and Terminer, issued spasmodically from as early a date as 1285,3 to more or less responsible individuals, were from 1329 onwards conferred exclusively on the justices of assize, who thus obtained authority4 “to hear and determine” all criminal pleas pending in the counties they visited. This, combined with the commission of gaol delivery, amounted to a full jurisdiction over crimes and criminals of every kind and degree; just as the commission of assize (with or without an added commission of nisi prius) conferred full jurisdiction over civil pleas.5

  (5) In the generally received opinion, a fifth commission was invariably issued to the justices, in the form of a special commission of the peace, from the reign of Edward III. onwards.6

  The justices of assize, from the small beginnings referred to in John’s Great Charter, thus gathered to themselves the powers exercised originally by various sets of commissioners. They have continued for many centuries to perform the functions conferred by these various commissions, and form a characteristic part of the judicial system of England.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN.

  Et si in die comitatus assise predicte capi non possint, tot milites et libere tenentes remaneant de illis qui interfuerint comitatui die illo, per quos possint judicia sufficienter fieri, secundum quod negocium fuerit majus vel minus.

  And if any of the said assizes cannot be taken on the day of the county court, let there remain of the knights and freeholders, who were present at the county court on that day, as many as may be required for the efficient making of judgments, according as the business be more or less.

  This supplement to the preceding chapter prescribed the course to be followed when press of business prevented some of the assizes on the agenda from being disposed of on the court day. The shiremoot lasted for one day only, and to hold an adjourned session of all the suitors would inflict hardship on those whose presence was required elsewhere. The framers of the charter here sought to provide for the presence of a sufficient supply of recognitors, without insisting on the continued attendance of the whole body of suitors. They were doing their best to give effect to two requirements of the Articuli Baronum not readily reconcilable, namely, that only those actually required as recognitors should be summoned (article 8); and that assizes should be “shortened” (article 13), implying the presence of sufficient recognitors for a rapid despatch of business.

  The terms of Magna Carta made it clear that assizes in the normal case should be held in the county court—a point upon which the Articles had been silent. This was a salutary provision, since a healthy publicity accompanied the proceedings of the shiremoot. If there was more business than could be got through in one day, a compromise must be made between the claims of litigants wishing their pleas hastened and the desire of other people to be discharged from further attendance. The justices were directed to complete their labours on the morrow, but were forbidden to retain anyone in attendance except the actual parties to suits and a sufficient number of jurors. Those whom Magna Carta thus compelled to wait a second day were exactly those whose presence the Articles had required upon the first day. The discrepancy between the two documents might be explained on the supposition that the device of synchronizing the visit of the justices with the date of holding the monthly shiremoot was only thought of after the Articles of the Barons had been sealed.1

  The Charter of 1217 made a different provision for the same contingency. Unfinished assizes need no longer be taken in their own county on the day following the county court, nor, indeed, on any other day. The judges received full authority to bring them to a conclusion elsewhere on their circuit according as it might suit their convenience. This concession to the justices, taken in connection with the further provisions of 1217, reserving all darrein presentments, together with other assizes of any difficulty, for the decision of the bench, shows a comparative disregard of the convenience of jurors, who might, in the option of the justices, find themselves compelled either to follow the assizes from shire to shire, or else to undertake the irksome journey to Westminster, from which the Charter of 1215 had relieved them.2

  CHAPTER TWENTY.

  Liber homo non amercietur pro parvo delicto, nisi secundum modum delicti; et pro magno delicto amercietur secundum magnitudinem delicti, salvo contenemento suo; et mercator eodem modo, salva mercandisa sua; et villanus eodem modo amercietur salvo waynagio suo, si inciderint in misericordiam nostram; et nulla predictarum misericordiarum ponatur, nisi per sacramentum proborum hominum de visneto.

  A freeman shall not be amerced for a slight offence, except in accordance with the degree of the offence; and for a grave offence he shall be amerced in accordance with the gravity of the offence, yet saving always his “contenement”; and a merchant in the same way, saving his “merchandise”; and a villein shall be amerced in the same way, saving his “wainage”—if they have fallen into our mercy: and none of the aforesaid amercements shall be imposed except by the oath of honest men of the neighbourhood.

  This is the first of three chapters that seek to remedy abuses connected with royal amercements. To understand what these were requires some knowledge, not only of the system of legal procedure of which they formed part, but also of previous systems.

  I.

  Three stages of criminal law.

  The efforts made in medieval England to devise machinery for suppressing crime took various forms. Three periods may be distinguished.

  (1)

  The bloodfeud.

  The earliest method of redressing wrongs was retaliation, or the bloodfeud. The injured man, or his heir, took the law into his own hands and exacted satisfaction by the aid of battle–axe or spear.

  (2)

  Fixed money–payments.

  At some early, but uncertain, date it became customary to accept money in lieu of vengeance. The new practice, at first exceptional, was gradually extended. It was made compulsory to offer solatium in money, and, finally, to accept it when offered. The right of private revenge was lawful only after the aggrieved individual had demanded, and been refused, compensation at the recognized rate. Various codes formulated rules for determining the amounts thus payable. Each man had his money value or wer (from the simple freeman, reckoned at 200 shillings, up to prelates and lay nobles, estimated at much higher figures). Slighter wrongs could be compensated by smaller sums, known as bots: so much for a foot, or an eye, or a tooth. The King or other lord exacted further payments from the wrong–doer, under the name of wites, which are sometimes explained as the price charged by the magistrate for enforcing payment of the wer or bot; sometimes as sums due to the community, on the ground that every evil deed inflicts a wrong on society in general, as well as upon its victim.

  (3)

  Amercements.

  A third system succeeded. This is found in working order soon after the Norman Conquest, but was still regarded as an innovation at the accession of Henry I. It is known as the system of amercements. None of our authorities contains an entirely satisfactory account of how the change took place; but the following suggestions may be hazarded. The sums demanded from a wrong–doer, who wished to buy himself back under protection of the law, became increasingly burdensome. He had to satisfy claims of the victim’s family, of the victim’s lord, of the lord within whose territory the crime had been committed, of the church, mayhap, whose sanctuary had been invaded, of other lords who could show an interest of any sort, and finally of the King as lord paramount. It became practically impossible to buy back the peace once it had been broken. The Crown, however, stepped in, and offered protection on certain conditions: the culprit surrendered himself and all that he had to the King, placing himself “in misericordiam regis,” and delivering a tangible pledge (vadium) as evidence and security of the surrender.1 Strictly speaking, the man’s life and limbs and all that he had were at the King’s mercy.2 The Crown, however, found that it might defeat its own interests by excessive greed; and generally contented itself with moderate forfeits. Rules of procedure were formulated: the amounts taken were regulated partly by the wealth of the offender, and partly by the gravity of the offence. Further, it became a recognized rule that the amount should be assessed by what was practically a jury of the culprit’s neighbours; and attempts were also made to fix a maximum.3

  Thus a sort of tariff grew up, which the Crown usually respected in practice, without abandoning the right to demand more. Such payments were known as “amercements.” For petty offences, men were constantly placed “in mercy”: for failure to attend meetings of hundred or county; for false or mistaken verdicts; for infringements of forest rights. The Charter of Henry I. (chapter 8) had promised a remedy, drastic indeed but of a reactionary and impossible nature. His promise, to abolish altogether the system of amercements (then of recent introduction) and to revert to the earlier Anglo–Saxon system of bots and wites, was made only to be broken.4

  II.

  Magna Carta and Amercements.

  No one could expect to pass through life (perhaps hardly through a single year) without being subjected to amercements.1 Three chapters of Magna Carta accordingly are occupied with remedies. Chapter 20 seeks to protect the ordinary layman; chapter 21, the barons; and chapter 22, the clergy—thus anticipating the conception of three estates of the realm;—commons, nobles, clergy. The “third estate” is analysed for purposes of this clause, into three subdivisions—the freeman, the villein, and the merchant.2

  (1)

  Amercement of freeholders.

  The great object of the reforms here promised was to eliminate the arbitrary element; the Crown must conform to its own customary rules. With this object, safeguards were devised for freemen. (a) For a slight offence, only a petty sum could be taken. This was nothing new: the records of John’s reign show that, both before and after 1215, very small amounts were often taken: threepence was a common sum. (b) For grave offences, a larger sum might be assessed, but not out of proportion to the offence. (c) In no case could the offender be pushed absolutely to the wall: his means of livelihood must be saved to him. Even if all other effects had to be sold off to pay the amount assessed, he was to retain his “contenement,” a word to be afterwards discussed. (d) Another clause provided machinery for giving effect to these rules. The amount must be fixed, not arbitrarily by the Crown, but by impartial assessors, “by the oath of honest men of the neighbourhood.” In the reissue of 1216 “honest men” became “honest and lawworthy (legalium) men,” a purely verbal change.3

  There were apparently two steps in the fixing of amercements. (a) In the case of a commoner, the penalty under normal circumstances would be assessed provisionally by the King’s justices on circuit, with the assistance of the sheriff. It was their duty to see that the amount was proportionate to the gravity of the offence.1 (b) Thereafter, the sheriff or his serjeants, in full county court, with the assistance of twelve neighbours, taxed the amercements, reducing them in accordance with their knowledge of the wrong–doer’s ability to pay.2

  The Pipe Rolls afford illustrations of the practice. In the fourteenth year of Henry II.3 a certain priest (who, in this respect, stood on the same footing as a layman) had been placed “in misericordiam” of 100 marks by William fitz John, one of the King’s justices, but that sum was afterwards reduced to 40 marks “per sacramentum vicinorum suorum.” It seems a safe inference that, on the priest pleading poverty, the question of his ability to pay was referred to local recognitors with the result stated. This priest was subsequently pardoned altogether “because of his poverty.”4

  Magna Carta in this chapter, treating of the amercements of freeholders, merchants and villeins, makes no reference to the part played by the King’s justices, but only to the functions of the jury of neighbours.5 All this is in marked contrast with the provisions of chapter 21, regulating the treatment to be accorded to earls and barons who made default.

  (2)

  Amercement of merchants.

  The trader is in the same position as the liber homo, except that it is his “merchandise,” not his “contenement,” that is protected. The word is capable of two somewhat different shades of meaning. Narrowly interpreted, it may refer to his wares, the stock–in–trade without which the pursuit of his calling would be impossible. More broadly viewed, it might mean his business itself, his position as a merchant. The difference is of little practical import: in either view the Charter saves to him his means of earning a living.1

  Some boroughs, indeed, had anticipated Magna Carta by obtaining in their own charters a definition of the maximum amercement exigible, or in some cases of the amercing body. Thus, John’s Charter to Dunwich of 29th June, 1200,2 provides that the burgesses shall only be amerced by six men from within the borough, and six men from without. The capital had special privileges: in his Charter to London, Henry I. promised that no citizen in misericordia pecuniae should pay a higher sum than 100s. (the amount of his wer).3 This was confirmed in the Charter of Henry II., who declared “that none shall be adjudged for amercements of money, but according to the law of the city, which they had in the time of King Henry, my grandfather.”4 John’s Charter to London of 17th June, 1199, also referred to this;5 and the general confirmation of customs, contained in chapter 13 of Magna Carta, would further strengthen it. In all probability, the earlier grant covered trivial offences only (such as placed the offender in the King’s hands de misericordia pecuniae). The present chapter is wider in its scope, applying to grave offences also, and embracing merchants everywhere, not merely the burgesses of chartered towns.

  (3)

  Amercements of villeins.

  The early history of villeins as a class is enveloped in the mists that still surround the rise of the English manor. Notwithstanding the brilliant efforts of Mr. Frederic Seebohm6 to find the origin of villeinage in the status of the serfs who worked for Roman masters upon British farms long before the Teutonic immigrations began, an older theory still holds the field, namely, that the abject villeins of Norman days were descendants of free–born “ceorls” of Anglo–Saxon stock. On this theory, most of England was once cultivated by Anglo–Saxon peasant proprietors grouped in little societies, each of which formed an isolated village. These villagers were slowly sinking from their originally free estate during several centuries prior to 1066: but the process of their degradation was completed rapidly and roughly by the Norman conquerors. The once free peasantry were crushed down into the dependent villeins of the eleventh and twelfth centuries.

  Whichever theory may be the correct one, the position, economic, legal, and political, of villeins in the thirteenth century has been ascertained with certainty. Economically they were part of the equipment of the manor of their lord, whose fields they had to cultivate as a condition of being left in possession of acres, in a sense, their own. The services exacted, at first vague and undefined, were gradually specified and limited. They varied from century to century, from district to district, and even from manor to manor; but at best the life of the villein was, as a contemporary writer has described it, burdensome and wretched (graviter et miserabiliter). After his obligations were discharged, little time was left him for the ploughing and reaping of his own holding. The normal villein possessed his virgate or half virgate (thirty or fifteen scattered acres) under a tenure known as villenagium, sharply distinguished from the freeholder’s tenures. He was a dependent dweller on a manor which he dared not quit without his master’s leave.

  It is true that he had rights of a proprietary nature in the acres he claimed as his own; yet these were determined, not by the common law of England, but by “the custom of the manor,” or virtually at the will of the lord. These rights, such as they were, could not be pled elsewhere than before the court customary of that manor over which the lord’s steward presided with powers wide and undefined. Politically his position was peculiar: allowed none of the privileges, he was yet expected to perform some of the duties, of the freeman. He attended the shire and hundred courts, and acted on juries, thus suffering still further encroachments on the scanty portion of time he might call his own, but preserving for a brighter day a vague tradition of his earlier liberty.

  This chapter extends some measure of protection to villeins. Two questions, however, may be asked:—What measure? and from what motive? One point is clear: the villeins were protected from the abuse of only such amercements as John himself might inflict, not from the amercements of their manorial lords; for the words used are “si inciderint in misericordiam nostram.” A villein in the King’s mercy shall enjoy the same consideration as the freeholder or merchant in similar plight—his means of livelihood being saved to him. The word now used is neither “contenement” nor “merchandise,” but “waynagium,” the meaning of which has been the subject of discussion. Coke defined it as “the contenement of a villein; or the furniture of his cart or wain,” and Coke has been widely followed. The word, however, has apparently no connexion with wains or wagons, but is merely a Latinized form of the French word “gagnage,” of which Godefroy gives five meanings: (a) gain; (b) tillage; (c) crop; (d) land under the plough; (e) grain. Professor Tait is inclined to read the word, in its present context, as equivalent either to “crops” or to “lands under cultivation,” and to translate the clause “saving his tillage.”1 What was the motive of these restrictions? It is usually supposed to have been clemency, the humane desire not to reduce a poor wretch to absolute beggary. It is possible, however, to imagine a different motive; the villein was the property of his lord, and John must respect the vested interests of others. That the King might do what he pleased with his own property, his demesne villeins, seems clear from a passage usually neglected by commentators, namely, chapter 16 of the reissue of 1217. Four important words were there introduced—villanus alterius quam noster: the king was not to inflict crushing amercements on villeins “other than his own,” thus leaving villeins on royal manors unreservedly in his power.1

  It must not be thought, however, that the position of the King’s villeins was worse than that of villeins of an ordinary unroyal manor. On the contrary, it has been clearly shown2 that the King’s peasants enjoyed privileges denied to the peasants of other lords. Magna Carta protected a lord’s villeins from the King, not from the lord who owned them. That “great bulwark of the people’s rights” left the bulk of the rural population of England at the mercy of their lords. The King must not take so much from any lord’s villeins as to destroy their usefulness as manorial chattels; that was all.3

  (4)

  The difference between fines and amercements.

  In the thirteenth century, these terms were sharply contrasted. “Amercement” was applied to sums imposed in punishment of misdeeds; the law–breaker had no option of refusing, and no voice in fixing the amount. “Fine,” on the contrary, was used for voluntary offerings made to the King to obtain some favour or to escape punishment. Here the initiative rested with the individual, who suggested the amount to be paid, and was, indeed, under no legal obligation to make any offer at all. This distinction between fines and amercements, absolute in theory, could readily be obliterated in practice. The spirit of the restriction placed by this chapter and by the common law upon the King’s prerogative of inflicting amercements could often be evaded. The Crown might imprison its victims for an indefinite period, and then graciously allow them to offer large payments to escape death by fever or starvation in a noisome gaol: enormous fines might thus be taken, while royal officials were forbidden to inflict arbitrary amercements.

  With the gradual elimination of the voluntary element the word “fine” came to bear its modern meaning, while “amercement” dropped out of ordinary use.”1

  (5)

  Contenement.

  This word, which occurs in Glanvill2 and in Bracton,3 and also (in its French form) in the Statute of Westminster, I.,4 as well as in Magna Carta, has formed a text for many commentators from Coke’s days to our own. By comparing the entries from exchequer rolls brought together by Madox,5 it appears that to save a man’s “contenement” was to leave him sufficient for the sustenance of himself and those dependent on him. The word comes from the French “contenir,” and has many shades of meaning, as capacity, maintenance, appearance, social condition or grade. A free man is not to be so crushed by an amercement that he cannot maintain himself in his former condition.6 Several entries on Exchequer Rolls of Henry III. and Edward I., collected by Madox,1 throw light on the way in which a “contenement” might be saved to the man amerced. Thus in 40 Henry III. the officials of the exchequer, after discussing an offender’s failure to pay an amercement of 40 marks, ordered inquiry to be made, “how much he was able to pay the King per annum, saving his own sustenance and that of his wife and children,” an excerpt which illustrates the more humane side of exchequer procedure. In 14 Edward I. again, the officials of that day, when ferreting out arrears, found that certain poor men of the village of Doddington had not paid their amercements in full. An inquiry was set on foot, and the barons of exchequer were ordered to fix the dates at which the various debtors should discharge their debts (evidently an arrangement for payment by instalments) “salvo contenemento suo.”2

  These illustrations of the procedure of later reigns, agreeing closely with the rules laid down by the Great Charter, show how a man’s contenement might be saved to him without loss to the Crown. Magna Carta apparently desired that time should be granted in which to pay up debts by degrees. Meanwhile, the amerced freeman was not forced to part with what was necessary to maintain him, with his wife and family, in his proper station in life.

  CHAPTER TWENTY–ONE.

  Comites et barones non amercientur nisi per pares suos, et non nisi secundum modum delicti.

  Earls and barons shall not be amerced except through their peers, and only in accordance with the degree of the offence.

  Amercement of earls and barons. It is noteworthy that the Articuli Baronum contain no provisions corresponding to this chapter, which forms in one sense a supplement to chapter 20, and in another to chapter 39 of John’s Charter. How is the omission from the earlier document to be explained? Was it an oversight? Was the present clause added at Runnymede as an afterthought for the sake of symmetry? Had the barons no personal grievances under this head to redress? Were they too disinterested to urge them? Or was the grievance of so notable a kind and so hard to remedy that they hesitated till the last moment before committing themselves to any form of expression? There is no contemporary evidence on which to base a conclusive answer to these questions; but much may be said for answering the last of them in the affirmative.

  The equally natural question as to what the actual words of the Charter stood for in the minds of the barons is also hard to answer. When they mentioned amercement per pares suos, what exactly did they desire? Bracton1 has a famous gloss on this chapter, in which these words seem at first sight to be replaced by the phrase “et hoc per barones de scaccario vel coram ipso rege.” Is this to be taken as an honest paraphrase? or does it represent a deliberate attempt by Crown lawyers to pervert the plain words of the Charter to authorize precisely what they had been originally intended to forbid?—to substitute the decision of a small knot of royal officials for that of the community of feudal barons? While the problem is perhaps insoluble, some suggestions may be founded on a consideration of the actual practice before and after 1215.1

  The plea rolls contain no distinct evidence of two stages in the amercement of barons, corresponding to those described in connexion with commoners. It is clear, however, that the justices on circuit had no power to fix the amercements imposed on them: in their case a blank was usually left to be afterwards filled in at the exchequer. “For this purpose, a separate roll or schedule was prepared containing the names of the amerced barons with the offences for which they were penalised, and this was sent to the exchequer with the other estreats.”2

  This was the course followed at an eyre held at Hertford in 1198–9: when a list of the amerced was prepared and definite sums were entered after each ordinary offender’s name, blanks were left after the names of Gerard de Furnivall and Reginald de Argenton, each of whom was reserved for special treatment “as a baron,” and as such “to be amerced at the Exchequer for a disseisin.” The Pipe Roll of John’s first year shows that this procedure was carried out.3

  Magna Carta, then, had good precedents for insisting that barons ought not to be amerced by the justices of eyre in the course of their circuits; but what exactly did it mean by demanding amercement “by their peers”? In asking amercement per pares suos, were they merely acquiescing in John’s current practice? Did they desire to substitute the decision of a full commune concilium, as defined in chapter 14, for that of the King’s professional justices? Did they merely ask for the presence of a few barons at the exchequer, when one of their own class was being amerced? Or, did they refer to a second stage of procedure in which the amercements of barons should be taxed or reduced by other barons, just as (in the procedure referred to in chapter 20) amercements of commoners were taxed by a jury of neighbours?

  If the last query could be answered in the affirmative, a clue would be afforded to the interpretation of Bracton’s gloss:—“Comites vero vel barones non sunt amerciandi nisi per pares suos et secundum modum delicti et hoc per barones de scaccario vel coram ipso rege.”1 The words “et hoc” may here refer merely to the first stage in the process, the provisional fixing of the amount at the exchequer secundum modum delicti, while the function of the baron’s “peers” was to “tax” this amount, with reference to the circumstances of the defaulting baron. If this interpretation of Bracton be admissible and if he has accurately paraphrased the substance of this chapter, then the barons were asking no more for themselves than they had already asked for their humble dependents. They were unlikely to ask less.

  In the fourteenth century several cases are recorded in the course of which defaulters, in the hope of escaping with smaller payments, protested against being reckoned as barons. Thomas de Furnivall, for example, in the nineteenth year of Edward II. complained that he had been amerced as a baron “to his great damage, and against the law and custom of the realm,” whereas he really held nothing by barony. The King directed the Treasurer and Barons of Exchequer “that if it appeared to them that Thomas was not a baron, nor did hold his land by barony, then they should discharge him of the said imposed amercement; provided that Thomas should be amerced according to the tenor of the great Charter of Liberties,”2 that is to say, as a simple freeholder according to the provisions of chapter 20. It is clear that Thomas de Furnivall was confident that a local jury would “tax” him at a lower figure than that fixed by the Exchequer barons. A few years earlier the Abbot of Croyland had made a similar claim, but without success.1

  At a later date, barons and earls were successful in securing by another expedient some measure of immunity from excessive exactions. They had established, prior to the first year of Henry VI., a recognized scale of amercements with which the Crown was expected, in ordinary circumstances, to content itself.2 In the reign of Edward VI. a duke was normally amerced at £10, and an earl or a bishop at 100s.3

  CHAPTER TWENTY–TWO.

  Nullus clericus amercietur de laico tenemento suo, nisi secundum modum aliorum predictorum, et non secundum quantitatem beneficii sui ecclesiastici.

  A clerk shall not be amerced in respect of his lay holding except after the manner of the others aforesaid; further, he shall not be amerced in accordance with the extent of his ecclesiastical benefice.

  Amercement of the clergy. The churchman was to receive the same favourable treatment as the layman in all respects, and to enjoy one additional privilege. In proportioning the amercement to his means, no account was to be taken of the value of his “church benefice.” There is room, however, for doubt as to the precise nature of this privilege, which seems to depend for its point on an antithesis between “lay tenement” and “ecclesiastical benefice.”

  In a well–known article of the Constitutions of Clarendon (c. 9), a contrast is drawn between laicum feudum and tenementum pertinens ad eleemosinam. It is possible that Magna Carta means to observe the same distinction between “lay fee” and “frankalmoin,” reckoning the former, but not the latter, in estimating a clerk’s ability to pay amercements.

  A more likely interpretation is that the contrast is drawn between lands owned by a clerk absolutely, and lands belonging to the church and held by the clerk in liferent. The plausibility of this conjecture is strengthened by alterations, apparently of a purely verbal nature, made in reissues of the Charter. The “de laico tenemento” of 1215 was omitted altogether in 1216; and in 1217, the provision took this final form: “Nulla ecclesiastica persona amerciatur secundum quantitatem beneficii sui ecclesiastici, sed secundum tenementum1 suum et secundum quantitatem delicti.” The substitution of ecclesiastical “person”—a word fast acquiring even then a connotation like that of the “parson” of present–day colloquial speech—for “clerk” has no significance, but the main antithesis drawn would seem to be between the “benefice” or mere liferent and the “tenement” or fief held in perpetuity. In taxing a clerk’s amercement, no account was to be taken of possessions of which he was not really owner.

  CHAPTER TWENTY–THREE.

  Nec villa nec homo distringatur facere pontes ad riparias, nisi qui ab antiquo et de jure facere debent.

  No village or individual2 shall be compelled to make bridges at river banks, except those who from of old were legally bound to do so.

  The object of this chapter is obvious; to compel the King to desist from his practice of illegally increasing the burden of the obligation to keep in repair all bridges over rivers. John might continue to exact what his ancestors had exacted; but nothing more. So much lies on the surface of the Charter, which explains, however, neither the origin of the obligation nor the reasons that made John keen to enforce it.

  I.

  Origin of Obligation to make Bridges.

  The Norman kings seem to have based their claim to compel their subjects to maintain bridges upon the ancient tripartite obligation1 (known as the trinoda necessitas). Three duties were required of all the men of England in the interests of the commonweal: attendance on the fyrd or local militia; the making of roads, so necessary for military purposes; and the repairing of bridges and fortifications. Gradually, as feudal tendencies prevailed, the obligation to construct bridges ceased to be a personal burden upon all freemen, and became a territorial burden.2 The present chapter seems to be a particular application of the general principle enunciated in chapter 16. “Brigbot” required special treatment because of the prominence into which it had been forced by John.

  II.

  The King’s interest in the Repair of Bridges.

  Part at least of John’s motives for making an oppressive use of this prerogative must be sought in his rights of falconry. Whenever John proposed to ride a–fowling, with his hawk upon his wrist, he issued letters compelling the whole country–side to bestir themselves in the repair of bridges. Several such writs of Henry III. are extant. The exact words vary somewhat, but comparison leaves no room for doubt either as to the nature of the commands conveyed or the reasons for issuing them. Addressed to sheriffs of such counties as the King was likely to visit, these letters gave instructions for repair of bridges, and a prohibition against the taking of birds before the King had enjoyed his sport. Both points are well brought out in a Letter Close of Henry III., dated 26th December, 1234, which directed “all bridges on the rivers Avon, Test, and Itchen to be repaired as was wont in the time of King John, so that when the lord King may come to these parts, free transit shall lie open to him for ‘revaying’ (ad riviandum) upon the said rivers.” The sheriff is to issue a general prohibition against any one attempting to “revaye” along the river banks, previous to the coming of the King.1 The Latin verb, for which the Old English word “revaye” or “ryvaye” is an exact equivalent, has been the subject of misconception; but conclusive evidence has recently been adduced to prove that it referred to the medieval sport of fowling, that is to the taking of wild birds in sport by means of hawks and falcons.2

  These writs prove that the Crown claimed a preferential right to this form of sport along the banks of certain rivers; and these “preserved” rivers were said to be “in defence” (in defenso), a phrase which occurs also in a later chapter of Magna Carta.3

  Two distinct hardships were thus imposed by the King’s exercise of his rights of falconry, one negative and the other positive. Between the King’s intimation and his arrival at the indicated rivers, the sport of other people was forbidden, while whole villages had to forsake their ploughs to reconstruct otherwise useless bridges. A wise king would be careful to use such rights so as to inflict a minimum of hardship. John knew no moderation, placing “in defence” not merely a few banks at a time, but many rivers indiscriminately, including those which had never been so treated in his father’s day, and demanding that all bridges everywhere should be repaired, with the object, not so much of indulging a genuine love of sport, as of inflicting heavy amercements on those who neglected prompt obedience to his commands. Great consternation was aroused when John at Bristol in 1209 prohibited the taking of birds throughout the entire realm of England.1

  Both grievances were redressed by Magna Carta. The present chapter promised not to impose the burden on those from whom it was not legally due.2 Chapter 47, in which he agreed to withdraw his interdict from all rivers which had not been previously “in defence,” and to disafforest all forests of his own creation, was entirely omitted in the Charter of 1216;3 but in 1217 it reappeared in a new position and expressed in different words. The provision in the original chapter 47 that related to forests was relegated to the Carta de Foresta, and the other part of that chapter, relating to falconry, was joined to a clause which redressed another grievance growing from the same root. Chapter 19 of Henry III.’s Charter, in its final form, repeats word for word the terms of the present chapter of John, while in chapter 20 Henry proceeds to declare “that no river shall in future be placed in defence except such as were in defence in the time of King Henry, our grandfather, throughout the same places and during the same periods as they were wont in his day.”

  This express prohibition seems to have prevented the Crown from extending its prerogatives further in this direction. Yet Henry III. had ample opportunities of harassing his subjects by an inconsiderate use of the rights still left to him. In many cases dubiety existed as to what banks had actually been ”preserved” by Henry II., and a vague general command left in cruel uncertainty the district to be visited. Henry III. made important concessions: after the year 1241, he specified the particular river along whose banks he intended to sport, and sometimes announced the exact date at which he expected to arrive. As no writs appear subsequent to 1247, it is possible that he was induced to abstain from the exercise of a right which inflicted hardships out of all proportion to the benefits conferred on the King.1

  The Crown, however, had not renounced its prerogatives, and several writs still exist to show that Edward I. occasionally allowed his great nobles to share in the royal sport. Licences were granted in 1283 to the Earl of Hereford and to Reginald fitz Peter, and in the following year to the Earl of Lincoln. On 6th October, 1373, Edward III. commanded the sheriff of Oxfordshire to declare that all bridges must be repaired and all fords marked out with stakes, for the crossing of the King “with his falcons” during the approaching winter.2

  III.

  Erroneous Interpretations.

  It is not surprising that a pastime so passionately followed as falconry, should have left its traces on two chapters of Magna Carta, the full import of which has not been appreciated by commentators, partly from failure to read them together, but chiefly through the assumption that the words ad riviandum and in defenso referred to fishing rather than to fowling.3

  It has been confidently inferred that the framers of Magna Carta, when forbidding additional banks to be put “in defence,” equally as when demanding the removal of “weirs” from non–tidal waters,4 intended to preserve public rights of fishing against encroachment. This is an error: in the Middle Ages, fishing was a means of procuring food, not a popular form of sport: to depict John and his action–loving courtiers as exponents of the gentle art of Isaac Walton is a ridiculous anachronism.

  It is true that the value of fish as an article of diet led in time to legislation directed primarily to their protection; but apparently no statute with such a motive was passed previous to 1285.1 It is further true that in the reign of Edward I. it became usual to describe rivers, over which exclusive rights of fishing had been established by riparian owners, as being in defenso;2 but rivers might be “preserved” for more purposes than one.

  From Edward’s reign onwards, however, rights of fishing steadily became more valuable, while falconry was superseded by other pastimes. Accordingly a new meaning was sought for provisions of Magna Carta, whose original motive had been forgotten. So early as the year 1283 the words of a petition to the King in Parliament show that “fishing” had been substituted for “hawking,” in interpreting the prohibition referred to in chapter 47 of John’s Charter. The men of York complained that Earl Richard had interfered with their rights of fishing by placing in defenso the rivers Ouse and Yore “against the tenor of Magna Carta.”3 This error, which thus dates from 1283, has been accepted for upwards of five hundred years by all commentators on Magna Carta. The credit for dispelling it is due to Mr. Stuart A. Moore and Mr. H. S. Moore in their History and Law of Fisheries, published in 1903.4

  CHAPTER TWENTY–FOUR.

  Nullus vicecomes, constabularius, coronatores, vel alii ballivi nostri, teneant placita corone nostre.

  No sheriff, constable, coroners, or others of our bailiffs, shall hold pleas of our Crown.

  The main object of this provision is not open to doubt: men accused of crimes must be tried before the King’s judges and not by local magistrates of whatsoever kind. Innocent men dreaded the jurisdiction of the local tyrants whose harshness had earned widespread hatred. The sheriffs and castellans deserved their bad repute: the records of the age overflow with tales of their cruelties and oppressions. It ought not to be forgotten, however, that if this chapter contains a condemnation of the local administration of justice, it testifies to the comparative purity of the justice dispensed by the King’s own judges. So far there is no difficulty; but differences of opinion exist as to certain points of detail.

  I.

  Pleas of the Crown.

  Pleas were royal or common according as the interests of the Crown were or were not involved. This classification has already been discussed in connection with chapter 17. The present chapter concerns itself only with “pleas of the Crown,” a phrase which had, even in 1215, considerably altered its original meaning. In the eleventh century it had denoted royal business, whether relating to judicial procedure or not, embracing all matters connected with the King’s household or his estates, with the collection of his revenue, or the administration of his justice, civil as well as criminal. Gradually, however, the usage of the word altered in two respects, contracting in one direction, while expanding in another. It ceased to be applied to financial business and even to non–criminal, judicial business, and was reserved for criminal trials held before the King’s judges. This process of contraction had been nearly completed before the accession of John.

  A tendency in an opposite direction had been for some time in progress; the distinction drawn in early reigns between petty trespasses, which were left in the province of the sheriff, and grave offences, which alone were worthy of the King’s attention, was being slowly obliterated.1 The central courts extended their activity over all misdeeds, however trivial, until the whole realm of criminal law fell under the description of “pleas of the Crown.” In John’s reign this process of expansion was far from complete: the words then, indeed, embraced grave criminal offences tried in the King’s great courts, but not the petty offences disposed of in the sheriff’s tourn or elsewhere.1

  North of the Tweed the same phrase has had a different history: in modern Scots law its connotation is still a narrow one; and this is a result of the slow growth of the Scottish Crown in authority and jurisdiction, in notable contrast to the rapidity with which the English Crown attained its zenith. The Kings of Scotland failed to crush their powerful vassals, and pleas of the Scottish Crown, exclusively reserved for the High Court of Justiciary, formed a meagre list—the four heinous crimes of murder, robbery, rape, and arson. The feudal courts of the Scottish nobles long preserved their wide jurisdiction over all other offences. When the heritable jurisdictions were at last abolished, in 1748, the old distinction, so deeply rooted in Scots law, still remained. The sheriff court had no cognizance, until late in the nineteenth century, over the four crimes specially reserved for the King’s judges.2 Thus in Scotland the historic phrase “pleas of the Crown” is, even at the present day, confined to murder, robbery, rape, and fire–raising, while to an English lawyer it embraces the entire realm of criminal law.

  II.

  Keeping and Trying Criminal Pleas.

  The machinery for bringing criminals to justice, as organized by Henry II., was somewhat elaborate. For our present purpose, it may be sufficient to emphasize two important stages in the procedure. An interval had always to elapse between the commission of grave crimes and the formal trial of the accused, for the coming of the itinerant justices took place only at intervals of about seven years. Meanwhile, preliminary steps were taken to collect and record evidence, which might otherwise be lost. The magistrate responsible for these preliminary steps was said to “keep” the pleas (custodire placita)—that is, to prevent them from passing out of mind1 while waiting for the justices who would formally “hold” or “try” or “determine” them (placitare or habere or tenere placita).

  Before the reign of John, the two functions had been entrusted to two distinct types of royal officials. The local magistrates of each district “kept” royal pleas, while only the King’s justices could “hold” them. The process of differentiation was accelerated in consequence of the jealousy with which the Crown regarded the increasing independence of the sheriffs. The elaborate instructions issued in 1194 to the justices, whom Archbishop Hubert Walter was despatching through the counties, contain provisions intended to keep the pretensions of sheriffs within bounds:2 they were expressly forbidden to act as justices within any counties in which they had acted as sheriffs since Richard’s coronation.3

  It is safe to infer that the “trying” of royal pleas was the province from which the sheriff was thus to be excluded. Even with regard to the “keeping” or preliminary stages of such pleas, the sheriff was by no means left in sole command. The justices received instructions4 to cause three knights and one clerk to be chosen in each county as “custodes placitorum coronae.” It is possible that these new local officers, specially entrusted with the duty of “keeping” royal pleas, were intended rather to co–operate with, than to supersede, the sheriffs in this function; but, in any view, the sheriffs had no longer a monopoly of authority in their bailiwicks. Magistrates, to be afterwards known as coroners, were thenceforward associated with them in the administration of the county.5

  The ordinance of 1194 seems to have settled subsequent practice in both respects. Sheriffs, while still free to punish petty offenders in their half–yearly tourns or circuits, allowed the coroners to “keep” royal pleas, and the justices to “try” them. Public opinion of the day approved both rules. Yet John condoned and encouraged irregularities, allowing sheriffs to meddle with pleas of the Crown, even when no coroners were present to check their arbitrary methods;1 and allowing them to give final judgments, involving loss of life or limb, without waiting for the Justices.2 He employed the same men to visit as justices the very counties they had oppressed as sheriffs. The notorious Engelard of Cigogné, branded by name in chapter 50 of Magna Carta, acted as justice in his own county of Gloucester.3

  The Articles of the Barons condemned such practices; and Magna Carta, in this first of a series of clauses directed against sheriffs’ misdeeds, forbade them under any circumstances to try royal pleas.

  III.

  The Intention of Magna Carta.

  The barons were merely demanding that the Crown should observe the rules it had laid down for its own guidance: caprice must give way to law. Sheriffs must not usurp the functions of coroners; nor must sheriffs and coroners together usurp those of King’s justiciars. John’s opponents associated these two irregularities, and may have assumed that expressly to abolish one implied an intention to abolish both. Some such supposition would explain a peculiar discrepancy between the Articles and the Charter. While Article 14 demanded redress of one grievance, Magna Carta granted redress of a different one. The earlier document required that coroners should always be associated with the sheriff when he meddled with pleas of the Crown: the Charter forbade sheriffs and coroners to “try” pleas of this description. These two provisions are the complements of each other. Magna Carta would seem to be here incomplete.

  The prohibition against sheriffs trying pleas of the Crown was repeated in all reissues of the Charter; and, although not strictly enforced in Henry’s reign, soon became absolute. Thus sheriff Ralph Musard was one of seven justices of eyre who went on circuit in 1221, but he was prohibited from sharing the labours of his colleagues when they sat in Gloucestershire, where he was still sheriff.1 Under Edward I. no one could determine such pleas unless armed with a royal commission to that effect;2 and the commission would take the form either of gaol delivery, of trailbaston, or of oyer and terminer.3

  IV.

  An Erroneous View.

  Hallam misunderstood the object of this provision. Commenting on Henry’s Charter of 1225, he declares that the “criminal jurisdiction of the Sheriff is entirely taken away by Magna Carta, c. 17.”4 This is a mistake: both before and after the granting of the Charter, the sheriff exercised criminal jurisdiction, and that of two kinds. Along with the coroners, he conducted preliminary enquiries even into pleas of the Crown; while in his tourn (which was specially authorized to be held twice a year by chapter 42 of the very Charter quoted by Hallam) he was made responsible for every stage in the trial of trivial offences. He heard indictments and then condemned and punished petty offenders in a summary manner.5 Several statutes of later reigns confirmed, even while regulating, the authority of the sheriff to take indictments at his tourns,6 until this jurisdiction was transferred, by an act of the fifteenth century, to the justices of peace assembled in Quarter Sessions.1

  All that Magna Carta did was to insist that no sheriff or local magistrate should encroach on the province reserved for the royal justices, namely the final “trying” of such grave crimes as had now come to be recognized as “pleas of the Crown.”2 The Charter did not even attempt to define what these were, leaving the boundary between great and small offences to be settled by use and wont. In all this, it was simply declaratory of existing practice, making no attempt to draw the line in a new place.3

  Professor Hearnshaw4 propounds a theory that better fits the facts. He holds that this chapter defined and consolidated the sheriff’s authority, giving him a recognized sphere of action of his own: in 1215 “leet jurisdiction came into existence. It was the jurisdiction left by the Great Charter to the sheriff in his tourn,” while chapter 42 of the reissue of 1217, forbidding the tourn to be held oftener than twice a year, marked it off “from the ordinary civil jurisdiction of the three–weekly hundred court.”

  V.

  Local Magistrates under John.

  The urgent need of restricting the authority of the sheriffs can be abundantly illustrated from contemporary records. Ineffectual attempts had, indeed, been made more than once to restrain their evil practices, as in August, 1213, when directions were issued from the Council of St. Alban’s commanding the sheriffs, foresters, and others, to abstain from unjust dealing,1 and, again, some two months later, when John, at the instance of Nicholas, the papal legate, promised to restrain their violence and illegal exactions.2 Little or nothing, however, was effected; and Magna Carta, in addition to condemning specified evils, contained two general provisions: chapter 45, which indicated what type of men should be appointed as Crown officials, and the present chapter, which forbade local magistrates to encroach on the province of the King’s justices. These local magistrates are comprehensively described under four different names.3

  (1)

  The Sheriff.

  No royal officer was more justly hated than the sheriff. The chapter under discussion affords strong evidence alike of his importance and of the jealousy with which his power was viewed. A brief sketch of the growth of the office is all that is here possible. Long before the Conquest, in each shire of England, the interests, financial and otherwise, of the kings of the house of Wessex had been entrusted to an agent of their own appointing, known as a scir–gerefa (or shire–reeve). These officers were continued by the Norman monarchs with increased powers, under the new name of vice comites.4

  In England, during the Anglo–Saxon period, the chief power over each group of shires had been shared among three officers—the bishop, the earl, and the sheriff. The bishop, by the natural differentiation of functions, soon confined his labours to spiritual affairs; while the policy of the Conqueror relegated the earl to a position of dignity severed from the possession of real power. Thus the sheriff was left without a rival within his shire. For a period of at least one hundred years after the Norman Conquest, he wielded an excessive local authority as the sole tyrant of the county. He was not indeed irresponsible, but it was difficult for his victims to obtain the ear of the distant King, who alone was strong enough to punish him.

  To appreciate the full authority enjoyed by a sheriff who retained the King’s confidence, we must remember the varied nature of his powers. He was not only local magistrate, local tax–gatherer and local judge, but he commanded the troops of his bailiwick. A royal favourite might have several counties and one or more royal strongholds in his custody. The military power of Fawkes de Breauté, for example, must have been enormous, for it embraced the forces of Northampton, Cambridge, Huntingdon, Bedford, Buckingham, and Oxford.1 How powerful such men had become is shown by their pretensions after King John’s death, when they claimed to hold their bailiwicks as matter of right throughout his son’s minority. Preposterous as this demand seems, Henry’s advisers gave effect to it, when they confirmed the appointment of all John’s sheriffs (with the one exception of the notorious Stephen Harengod), thus weakening the central government at a time when it needed all its strength.2

  The sheriff, however, had passed the zenith of his power before the reign of John. That King’s father had been strong enough to show the disobedient sheriff his proper place, as he did notably in 1170. John, however, had his own reasons for giving a freer hand to the agents of his evil will, foreigners and desperadoes, whose services he rewarded in this way. This recrudescence of the sheriff’s powers must be added to the causes contributing to the revolt of 1215.

  It has already been explained how in 1194 the sheriff’s powers were restricted. To the next year is usually traced the origin of the justices of the peace, who gradually took over the duties of the sheriff, until they practically superseded him as the ruling power in the county. In Tudor days a new rival appeared in the Lord Lieutenant, then first appointed in each shire to represent the Crown in its military capacity. The fall of the sheriff was thus gradual, although finally complete. From presiding, as he did in his golden age, over all the business of the district—financial, administrative, military, and judicial—the sheriff has become, in England at the present day, a mere honorary figure–head of the county executive. A high sheriff is still chosen annually by King George for each county by pricking at random one name out of a list of three leading land–owners presented to him for that purpose. He is responsible, during his year of office, for the execution of all writs of the superior Courts within his county, including the execution of criminals, for returning the names of those elected to serve in the House of Commons, and for many other purposes; but his responsibility is chiefly theoretical. The real duties of his office are now performed by subordinates. What really remains to him is an empty and expensive honour, usually shunned rather than courted. In Scotland and America, the sheriff also exists at the present day, but his position and functions have in these countries developed in very different directions. In Scotland, in opposition to what has happened in England and America, the sheriff has remained emphatically a judicial officer, the judge of the local court of his shire, known as “the Sheriff Court.” He has thus retained intact his judicial functions, to which such administrative duties as still remain to him are subordinate. In the United States of America, on the contrary, the sheriff is a purely executive official, possessing perhaps more real power, but notably less honour and social distinction, than fall to the lot of the English high sheriff. The duties of his office are sometimes performed by him in person; he may even set out at the head of the posse comitatus in pursuit of criminals. Three completely different offices have thus sprung from the same constitutional root, and all three are still known by one name.

  (2)

  The constable.

  Portions of certain counties were exempted from the sheriff’s bailiwick. Districts afforested were administered by wardens, assisted by verderers, who excluded the sheriff and coroners; while royal fortresses, together with the land immediately surrounding them, were under command of officers known indifferently as castellans or constables.1 The offices of warden of a particular forest and warden of an adjacent royal castle were frequently conferred on the same individual. Indeed, chapter 16 of the Forest Charter of Henry III. seems to use the term “castellans” as the recognized name of forest wardens, whom it forbids to hold “pleas of the forest.”

  The name constable has at different periods been applied to officers of extremely different types. The King’s High Constable, a descendant of the horse–thegn of the Anglo–Saxon kings, was originally the member of the royal household responsible for the King’s stables. At a later date, he shared with the Earl Marshal the duties of Commander–in–chief. The name of constable came to be applied also to commanders of small bodies of troops, whether in castles or elsewhere. At a later date the word was used in connection with duties of watch and ward: each hundred had its high constable and each village its petty constable in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.2 The name is at the present day, confined to members of the police force.

  The word, as used in Magna Carta, denoted the captain of a royal castle.3 Such an office was one of trust; and wide powers were conferred upon its holder. He acted as gaoler of prisoners confided to the safe–keeping of his dungeons. He had authority, under certain ill–defined restrictions, to take whatever he thought necessary for provisioning the garrison—a privilege the exercise of which frequently led to abuses, guarded against by chapters 28 and 29 of Magna Carta. He had also, to a limited extent, judicial authority. Not only did he try pleas for small debts to which Jews were parties, but he enjoyed a jurisdiction over all petty offences committed within the precincts of the castle, analogous to that of the sheriff within the rest of the county. The power of trying and punishing misdemeanours was not taken away by the Great Charter, and was confirmed by implication in 1300 by a statute which directed that the constable of Dover Castle should not hold, within the castle gate, “foreign” pleas of the county which did not affect “the guard of the castle.”1 The Articles of 1309 complained that constables of the King’s castles took cognizance of common pleas.2 In the reign of Henry IV. complaint was made that constables of castles were appointed justices of the peace, and imprisoned in one capacity the victims they had unjustly condemned in another. This practice was put down by statute in 1403.3

  It would appear that at an earlier period the constable of the hundred sometimes acted as deputy–sheriff. Chapter 12 of the Assize of Northampton provided that when the sheriff was absent the nearest castellanus might take his place in dealing with a thief who had been arrested. His interference outside his own precincts must, however, have been regarded with great jealousy, and the coroners, after their appointment in 1194, would naturally act as substitutes during the sheriff’s absence.

  (3)

  The coroners.

  The coroners of each county, after their institution in 1194, seem to have shared with the sheriff most of the powers of which the latter had previously enjoyed a monopoly. They were appointed by the whole body of freeholders assembled in the county court,4 and the nature of their duties is explained by the oath of office sworn in the same words for many centuries, “ad custodienda ea quae pertinent ad coronam.” Their duty was to guard royal interests generally; and their “keeping” of royal pleas was merely one aspect of this wider function. Besides “attaching” those suspected of crimes—that is, receiving formal accusations and taking such sureties as might be necessary, it was their duty to make preliminary investigations; to examine the size and nature of the victim’s wounds in a charge of mayhem;1 and to keep a watchful eye on royal windfalls, including deodands, wrecks, and treasure–trove. They had also to appraise the value of chattels forfeited to the King. When felons took refuge in sanctuary, it was the coroner who arranged for their leaving the country on forfeiting all that they had. They kept a record of those who had been outlawed, and received “appeals” of criminal charges.2

  Magna Carta forbade the coroner to determine pleas of the Crown; but, even after 1215, he sometimes did justice upon felons caught red–handed. An act of Edward I.3 accurately defined his duties, empowering him to attach pleas of the Crown and to present criminals for trial, but forbidding him to proceed further alone.

  The coroner’s functions, originally so wide and varied, have been gradually narrowed down, until at the present day the duty usually associated with his office is the holding of inquests on dead bodies where there are suspicious circumstances.4 He is still responsible for treasure–trove and he is also competent to act as the sheriff’s substitute in case of illness or absence during the year of office.

  (4)

  The bailiffs.

  The mention by name of three classes of local officers is supplemented by the addition of an indefinite word sufficiently wide to cover all grades of Crown officials. The term “bailiff” may be applied to every individual to whom authority of any sort has been delegated by another. It would include the men who actually served writs, or distrained the goods of debtors; and also generally all local officials of every description, holding authority directly or indirectly from the Crown. The district over which his office extended was called his “bailiwick,” a term often applied to the county considered as the sphere of the sheriff’s labours.1

  CHAPTER TWENTY–FIVE.

  Omnes comitatus, hundrede, wapentakii, et trethingii, sint ad antiquas firmas absque ullo incremento, exceptis dominicis maneriis nostris.

  All counties, hundreds, wapentakes, and trithings (except our demesne manors) shall remain at the old rents, and without any additional payment.

  This provision, directed against the sheriffs, shows a determination to get to the root of the disease, instead of merely attacking the symptoms. The rents at which the counties (or parts of them) were farmed out to the sheriffs must no longer be arbitrarily raised, but were to remain at the old figures which had become stereotyped from long usage. To understand how such increases would injuriously affect the inhabitants of the county, some explanation is necessary. Centuries before the Norman Conquest, England had been already mapped out into shires on lines substantially the same as those which still exist. Each county had been subdivided into smaller districts known as “hundreds” in the south, and as “wapentakes” in the Danish districts of the north; while intermediate divisions existed, exceptionally, in some of the large counties such as York and Lincoln, each of which had three “trithings” or ridings.

  In commenting upon chapter 24, it has been explained how the Anglo–Saxon Kings entrusted their interests in each shire to an officer called a sheriff, and how a similar officer under the Norman Kings became the chief magistrate in the county. His financial duties, however, long remained the most important. Even before 1066, the sheriff had ceased to be a mere intermediary, who lifted the King’s rents and paid over, pound by pound, the yearly varying sums he might receive. He had become a firmarius, buying for a yearly rent the right to appropriate to his own uses the revenues of the county. The Crown got the exact sum stipulated for, known as the firma comitatus; while the balance, if any, remained with the sheriff. In plain words, the sheriff speculated in the returns: it was his business, by fair means or foul, to make sure of a handsome surplus.

  Authorities differ as to the exact list of items purchased by the firma comitatus; but the two chief sources of revenue were the profits of justice in the local courts, and the rents of royal manors.

  William I. sharply raised the farms, and his successors endeavoured, whenever possible, to increase them further. Now, it might seem at first sight that these additional burdens concerned exclusively the Crown and the sheriff, but such was by no means the case. The sheriff took care to pass on the burden to the shoulders of those subject to his authority. His rule tended always to be oppressive, but his unjust exactions would be doubled when the amount of the firma had recently been raised.

  Under the vigilant rule of Henry II., some measure of relief was obtained by the shires from the misdeeds of their local tyrants, since that far–seeing King knew that his own best interests called for curtailment of the sheriffs’ pretensions. He punished their excesses and deprived them of office. John, on the contrary, appointed men of a less reputable type, and gave them rope. In return, he wrung more money from them. Not content with exacting the annual firma and the additional sum known as “increment,” which had now become stereotyped as a fixed and recognized payment,1 John from 1207 onwards exacted a third payment under name of proficuum, and allowed his sheriffs to inflict new severities to recoup themselves for their additional outlay.

  Magna Carta made no attempt to abolish the practice of farming out the shires, but forbade alike the increase of the farm and the exaction of proficuum. The barons here made an innovation which was unfair to John. If it benefited the men of the counties in dealing with their sheriffs, it gave the sheriffs an undeserved advantage over the exchequer. The total value of the various assets included in the firma comitatus had greatly increased in the past, and would probably continue to increase in the future. Therefore, it was unfair to bind the Crown by a hard–and–fast rule which would practically make a present of this future “unearned increment” to the sheriff. To stereotype the firma was to rob the Crown, which required increased revenues to meet the increased cost of its expanding duties.2

  Although this chapter was omitted from all reissues, the Crown, during Henry III.’s minority, forbore to exact the proficuum, reverting to the practice prior to the seventh year of his father’s reign. After he had been declared of age, however, increased sums were again taken.3 There was, indeed, no valid reason why the unearned increment should go to the sheriff rather than to the King: it was sufficient to provide against the fixing of the amounts too high. The Articuli super cartas, accordingly, while conceding to the counties the right of electing their own sheriffs, declared that neither the bailiwicks and hundreds of the King, nor those of great lords ought to be put to farm at too high rates. The evil, however, continued under a new form; sheriffs, while only paying a moderate farm themselves, sublet parts of their province at much higher rates, thus appropriating the increment denied to the exchequer, while the bailiffs who had paid the increase could not “levy the said ferm without doing extortion and duress to the people.”1 Three successive acts prohibited this practice, declaring that hundreds and wapentakes must either be kept in the sheriff’s own hands, or sublet, if at all, at the old fixed farms only.2

  One exception to the scope of its own provisions was deliberately made by Magna Carta—an exception of an important and notable nature; the demesne manors of the Crown were left exposed to arbitrary increases of their annual rents. Now, the chief items contained in the firma were, as already explained, the rents of these manors and the profits of the local courts. It would thus appear, in the light of this exception, that the aim of Magna Carta was to prevent an increase under the second head—to prevent, that is, the local courts being made the instruments of extortion; and this apparently was the precise object of chapter 42 of the reissue of 1217.

  That chapter struck at one of the most fertile of the sheriffs’ expedients for swelling the profits of their office. It was their practice to summon the various district courts with unnecessary frequency and at inconvenient times and places, fining every suitor who failed to attend. The Charter of 1217 reaffirmed the ancient usage3 : no county court should meet in future oftener than once a month; no sheriff or bailiff should make his “tourn” through the hundreds oftener than twice a year, to wit at Easter and Michaelmas, and that only at the accustomed place; view of frankpledge should only be held once a year at Michaelmas, and the sheriff must not seek “occasions,” but content himself with what he was wont to get for taking his “view” under Henry II.; all liberties must be respected; and any district in which the courts meet by custom less frequently than is normal, shall have the benefit of such exceptional local usage.1

  In a curious case2 that came before the justices in 1226, this clause was pleaded as a defence against a charge of impeding the sheriff of Lincoln in the performance of his duties of holding “counties,” “thethings” (or courts of ridings), and wapentakes: the sheriff, against custom, was holding county courts oftener than once in five weeks and for more than one day at a time, and was holding a wapentake in Ancaster oftener than twice a year, and not according to the charter of liberty.

  In another plea (1231)3 juries testify that since the making of “carta de Runemede” (here evidently used for the Charter of 1217) the sheriff has come into the hundred twice instead of once a year (as the old custom was) to take view of frankpledge and to make attachments of pleas of the Crown.

  After 1217, in absence of express royal grant or prescription to the contrary, the rule formulated in Henry’s second reissue of Magna Carta fixed the times of holding the “tourn” of the sheriff, and this was extended also to the “leet” jurisdiction, which in the liberties took the place of the tourn.4

  CHAPTER TWENTY–SIX.

  Si aliquis tenens de nobis laicum feodum moriatur, et vicecomes vel ballivus noster ostendat litteras nostras patentes de summonicione nostra de debito quod defunctus nobis debuit, liceat vicecomiti vel ballivo nostro attachiare, et inbreviare catalla defuncti, inventa in laico feodo, ad valenciam illius debiti, per visum legalium hominum, ita tamen quod nichil inde amoveatur, donec persolvatur nobis debitum quod clarum fuerit; et residuum relinquatur executoribus ad faciendum testamentum defuncti; et, si nichil nobis debeatur ab ipso, omnia catalla cedant defuncto, salvis uxori ipsius et pueris racionabilibus partibus suis.

  If any one holding of us a lay fief shall die, and our sheriff or bailiff shall exhibit our letters patent of summons for a debt which the deceased owed to us, it shall be lawful for our sheriff or bailiff to attach and catalogue chattels of the deceased, found upon the lay fief, to the value of that debt, at the sight of law–worthy men, provided always that nothing whatever be thence removed until the debt which is evident1 shall be fully paid to us; and the residue shall be left to the executors to fulfil the will of the deceased; and if there be nothing due from him to us, all the chattels shall go to the deceased, saving to his wife and children their reasonable shares.

  The primary object of this chapter was to regulate the procedure to be followed in attaching the personal estates of Crown tenants who were also Crown debtors. Incidentally, it throws light on the right of bequeathing property.

  I.

  Nature of the Grievance.

  When a Crown tenant died it was almost certain that arrears of scutages, incidents, or other exactions remained unpaid. The sheriff and bailiffs of the district, where deceased’s estates lay, were in the habit of seizing everything they could find on his manors, under excuse of securing the interests of their royal master. They attached and sold chattels out of all proportion to the sum actually due. A surplus would often remain in the sheriff’s hands, which he refused to disgorge.

  Magna Carta sought to make such irregularities impossible, by defining the procedure to be followed. The sheriff and his bailiffs were forbidden to touch a single chattel of a deceased Crown tenant, unless they came armed with legal warrant in the form of royal letters patent vouching the existence and the amount of the Crown debt. The officers of the law were allowed to attach only as many chattels as might reasonably be expected to satisfy the debt due to the exchequer; and everything so taken must be carefully inventoried. All this was to be done “at the sight of lawful men,” respectable, if humble, neighbours specially summoned for that purpose, whose function it was to form a check on the actions of the sheriff’s officers, to prevent them from appropriating anything not included in the inventory, to assist in valuing each article and to see that no more chattels were distrained than necessary. A saving clause protected the interests of the Crown by forbidding the removal from the tenant’s fief of any chattels, even those not so attached, until the full ascertained amount had been paid to the exchequer. Not till then could a division take place among the deceased man’s relatives or legatees.

  These provisions should be read in connection with chapter 9,1 which provided that diligence for Crown debts must proceed against personal estate before the debtor’s freehold was distrained, and laid down other equitable rules applicable alike to a deceased Crown debtor and to a living one.

  II.

  The Right to Bequeath.

  The main interest of this chapter, for the historian of law and institutions, lies in a different direction; in the light thrown on the right of making Wills in 1215. The early law of England had difficulty in deciding how far it ought to acknowledge the claims made by owners of property, both real and personal, to direct its destination after death. Various influences were at work, prior to the Norman Conquest, to make the development of this branch of law illogical and capricious.2 Of the law of bequests in the twelfth century it is possible to speak with greater certainty; definite principles had by that time received recognition. All testamentary rights over land or other real estate were then denied, not, as has sometimes been maintained, in the interests of the feudal lord, but rather of the expectant heir.3 Many reasons contributed to this result. For one thing, it had become necessary to prevent churchmen from using their spiritual influence to wring bequests from dying men to the impoverishment of the heir. Churchmen, in compensation as it were for the obstacles thus opposed to their thirst for the land of the dying, ultimately, but not before the reign of Henry III., made good their claim to regulate all Wills dealing with personal estate; that is money, goods, and chattels.

  Under Henry II. no such right had been admitted. The Assize of Northampton (1176) directed that heirs should divide the chattels according to the provisions made in the Will, without any reference to the supervision of the bishop or his clergy. Glanvill twice gives a writ directing the sheriff to uphold the Will of a testator; but no trace of any similar writ appears in the Registers of the early years of Henry III.: “the state has had to retreat before the church.”1

  This victory of the ecclesiastical courts was probably won shortly after 1215. John’s Charter makes no admission of any right of the church in the “proving” of Wills; but it does admit (in chapter 27) the church’s right to “superintend” the division of the goods of intestates, an insidious privilege, which was used as a lever during the minority of Henry (a ward of Holy See), and thus helped to give the courts Christian an excuse for deciding also as to the validity of Wills. It was apparently in John’s reign that the practice of appointing executors to carry out the Will of the deceased became general. Henry II. in his own case had entrusted this duty to individuals whom he named, but did not describe as “executors,” a word, however, used in its technical sense in King John’s Will.2

  John claimed that his subjects could not make valid Wills without his consent, which had, as usual, to be paid for. Such, at least, is the inference to be drawn from the existence of writs granting licences to make a Will, or confirming one that had been made.3 The King’s interference in this province seems to have been regarded as an illegal encroachment.

  Magna Carta declares that all the chattels (or the residue after paying Crown debts) “shall go to the deceased” for “the executors to fulfil the will of the deceased,” but immediately adds the saving clause, that “all the chattels” means only what remains after deducting the “reasonable shares” of wife and children. This seems to exclude, by implication, the King’s right to interfere on the plea that he had not licensed a Will, while it keeps alive an ancient rule that a testator could only dispose of part of his pecunia (or personal estate), his widow and children having absolute claims to the rest.

  The Charter did not define these “reasonable shares”; but custom had already fixed them at the same proportions of the whole as the law of Scotland observes at the present day. When a Scotsman dies, leaving wife and children, his movable or personal estate falls into three equal parts, known respectively as the widow’s part (or jus relictae), the “bairns’ ” part (or legitim, the legitima portio of the Roman law), and “the dead’s part.”1 If he attempts to dispose of his entire estate, wife and children may claim their legal rights, and “break the Will.” Where a wife survives, but no children (or a child and no wife), the division is into two equal portions. Magna Carta recognizes a similar division; and we know from Glanvill that, if the dead man’s Will had attempted to defeat the just claims of wife or children, the writ de rationabili parte bonorum would give them relief.2

  The conception of a “dead’s part” or portion to be dispensed in charity and good works for the benefit of the deceased’s soul was, of course, in great measure due to the influence of the church, which was not unwilling to stimulate the belief that one of the best methods of affecting this was to leave money to itself. Under Henry III. the bishop of the diocese made good his claim to “prove” Wills (that is to determine whether they were valid), and to control the “executors” in carrying out the dead man’s instructions. Where the testator’s intentions were ambiguous, the “ordinary” would see to it that deceased’s soul did not suffer through giving too little to the church.

  The reissue of 1216 makes no alteration on this chapter of John’s Charter: that of 1217 omits “et pueris,” probably through a clerical blunder, for the words were restored in 1225. As mere disuse does not abrogate an English statute, this provision remained in force until repealed by implication by the Wills Act of 1837.1

  Long subsequent to the thirteenth century, the laws of England and Scotland as to the rights of succession of wife and children seem to have remained identical: but, while Scots law is unaltered to the present day, English law has, by slow steps, the details of which are obscure, entirely changed. The rule that acknowledged the children’s right to one third of the personal estate was gradually relaxed, while the testator became sole judge what provision he ought to make for his sons, until at last a purely nominal sum of money was all that was required. The law of England, at the present day, does not compel a father to leave son or daughter even the proverbial shilling. The phrase “to cut off a son with a shilling,” which still lives in popular usage, may perpetuate the tradition of an intermediate stage of English law, where some provision, however inadequate, had to be made, if the Will was to be allowed to stand.

  CHAPTER TWENTY–SEVEN.

  Si aliquis liber homo intestatus decesserit, catalla sua per manus propinquorum parentum et amicorum suorum, per visum ecclesie distribuantur, salvis unicuique debitis que defunctus ei debebat.

  If any freeman shall die intestate, his chattels shall be distributed by the hands of his nearest kinsfolk and friends, under supervision of the church, saving to every one the debts which the deceased owed to him.

  Here the Great Charter proceeds to remedy an evil connected with intestate succession, a natural sequel to the subject of testate succession.1 In light of subsequent history, the words most worthy of notice are probably “per visum ecclesiae,” which appear also in the Articles of the Barons. There were good reasons for welcoming the intervention of the bishop’s court as a substitute for the scramble that often took place for an intestate’s chattels; but the jurisdiction thus gained by the church was quickly put to other uses.

  The placing of this powerful weapon in the hands of the church was only incidental to the main purpose of this chapter. This was (while safeguarding the interests of creditors) to secure to the deceased’s kinsmen and friends the right to make an equitable division of his chattels. By implication the Charter says “hands off” to John, and indeed to any lord superior, whether the King or another.

  In the Middle Ages all classes of men, good and bad alike, exhibited an extreme horror of dying intestate.2 Several causes contributed towards this frame of mind. Churchmen, from motives not unmixed, inculcated the belief that a dying man’s duty was to leave part at least of his personal estate for religious and charitable objects. The bishop or priest, who had power to withhold extreme unction from dying men, was in a strong position to force advice upon penitents who believed the church to hold the keys of heaven. Motives of a more worldly nature lent their weight. If a man died intestate, his lord seized his chattels. Henry I. in his Coronation Charter renounced this right over Crown tenants under certain circumstances: if a baron or “man,” cut off by war or infirmity (the words have a grudging, hesitating sound), had given no instructions for disposal of his pecunia, his wife and children and legitimi homines (or vassals) should divide it “for his soul” as seemed best to them.3 Stephen, in his second or Oxford Charter,1 gave up all such claims, as regards the property of prelates and clerks, who were confirmed in their rights of making Wills.

  These promises were not kept: in Glanvill’s day, the King, like other feudal lords, appropriated the goods of intestates.2 Henry II. continued to treat intestacy, especially in the case of clerks, as an excuse for forfeiture.3 Magna Carta contained a clear pronouncement against this practice. The kinsmen and friends of the deceased, without royal interference, were to divide the chattels under supervision of the church: the King’s courts were excluded. No scheme of intestate succession was set forth; but where wife and children survived, the tripartite division was clearly implied. In the distribution of the dead’s part, the prelates allowed themselves liberal discretion: something went to the poor, but more might be spent on masses, while a portion would be retained as remuneration for trouble expended.

  In 1216 this provision of John’s Charter was withdrawn. Why? Had a suspicion crossed the mind of William Marshal that it conferred a dangerously elastic privilege upon the church? Did the legate Gualo refuse to trust the English prelates with authority? Did the young King’s advisers, conscious of their urgent need of money, determine to reserve what rights the indefinite earlier law allowed them of taking part in the scramble for the coin and chattels of intestates?

  Irregularities continued during Henry’s reign: Bracton1 thought it necessary to urge that intestacy was not a crime. But his direct condemnation of the feudal lords’ practice of seizing chattels is confined to cases of sudden death. Yet it was neither King nor barons, but the church that triumphed: the rule, enunciated in John’s Charter, though omitted from all reissues, settled the practice of later years.2 The personal estate of intestates was administered “under supervision of the church,” and the same supervision was ultimately extended over the Wills and estates of men who had died testate.

  CHAPTER TWENTY–EIGHT.

  Nullus constabularius, vel alius ballivus noster, capiat blada vel alia catalla alicujus, nisi statim inde reddat denarios, aut respectum inde habere possit de voluntate venditoris.

  No constable or other bailiff of ours shall take corn or other provisions from any one without immediately tendering money therefor, unless he can have postponement thereof by permission of the seller.

  This chapter is the first of several that redressed abuses springing from the exercise of the royal right of purveyance.

  I.

  Purveyance in General.

  The Norman and Angevin Kings of England were compelled by their administrative duties and induced by the pleasures of the chase to move constantly from district to district. The difficulties must have been great of finding sufficient food for the retinues surrounding the King in peace or war. It was to the interests of the community that the work of government should not be brought to a stand–still for want of supplies. No opposition was made when the King arrogated to himself the privilege of appropriating, under fair conditions, the necessaries his household might require. Such a right, not unlike that enjoyed in modern times by the commander of an army encamped in an enemy’s country, was allowed to the Kings of England in their own land in time of peace. This was known as purveyance.1 Unfortunately, the conditions under which supplies might be requisitioned were left vague: the privilege was subject to abuse. In theory it was a right of pre–emption; the provisions seized were to be paid for at the market rate: but practice tended to differ lamentably from theory. In the absence of a neutral arbitrator to fix the value of the goods, the unfortunate seller was thankful to accept any pittance offered by royal officials, who might subsequently, indeed, charge a higher rate against the Crown. Payment was often indefinitely delayed or made not in coin but in exchequer tallies, “a vexatious anticipation of taxation,” since these could only be used in payment of Crown dues.

  Magna Carta did not abolish purveyance, and placed no restrictions upon its use for the legitimate purpose of supplying the King’s household. Some slight attempt to control its exercise was made sixty years later in the Statute of Westminster I.; but without producing much effect.2 The Articles of 13093 complained that the King’s purveyors took great quantities of corn, malt, and meat without paying even by exchequer tallies. The grievances connected with purveyance continued, throughout four centuries, as a fertile source of vexation to the people and of friction between parliament and the King. An attempt, made by the House of Commons to induce James I. to surrender this prerogative for a money grant, ended in failure, with the abandonment of the abortive treaty known as “the Great Contract.” In the general re–settlement of the revenue, however, at the Restoration, purveyance and pre–emption, which had fallen into disuse during the Commonwealth, were abolished.1 Yet in the following year a new statute2 virtually revived one branch of the right under essential modifications: when royal progresses were necessary in the future, warrants might be issued from the Board of Green Cloth, authorizing the King to use such carts and carriages as he might require, at a fair rate of hire specified in the Act of Parliament.

  II.

  Branches of Purveyance restricted by Magna Carta.

  A practice tolerated because of its absolute necessity, when confined to providing for the needs of the King’s household, became intolerable when claimed by every castle–warden, sheriff, and local bailiff, for his own personal or official needs. Discretionary authority was vested by John in a class of officials least qualified to use it, unscrupulous foreign adventurers hired to intimidate the native population, responsible to no one save the King, and careful never to issue from their strongholds except at the head of their reckless soldiery. The Great Charter contained a few moderate provisions for checking the abuses of purveyance.

  (1)

  Provisioning of castles.

  Commanders of fortresses were left free by Magna Carta to help themselves to such corn and other supplies as they deemed necessary for their garrisons. Immediate payment, however, must be made in current coin (not in exchequer tallies) for everything they requisitioned, unless the owner consented to postpone the date of payment. The Charter of 1216 made a slight modification in favour of castellans. Payment for goods taken from the town where the castle was situated might be legally delayed for three weeks, a term extended in 1217 to forty days. Such relaxation was perhaps necessary to meet the case of a warden with an empty purse called on to provide against an unexpected siege or other emergency; but the peaceful townsmen, over whose dwellings the dark walls of a feudal stronghold loomed, would not dare to press unduly for payment. Under Henry’s Charters, as under that of John, immediate payment had to be tendered to owners who lived elsewhere than in this neighbouring town.1

  (2)

  Requisitioning horses and carts.

  The provisions of chapter 30, modified in subsequent reissues, sought to prohibit sheriffs from commandeering wagons that were the property of freemen.

  (3)

  Appropriation of timber.

  The succeeding chapter confined the King and his officers to the use of such wood as they could obtain from the royal demesnes.2

  III.

  Branches of Purveyance not mentioned in Magna Carta.

  A wide field was left alike for the use and the abuse of this prerogative, after due effect had been given to these moderate provisions. Two minor aspects of purveyance came into prominence in later history.

  (1)

  Requisition of forced labour.

  Hallam explains how the King’s rights of pre–emption were extended, by analogy, to his subjects’ labour. “Thus Edward III. announces to all sheriffs that William of Walsingham had a commission to collect as many painters as might suffice for ‘our works in St. Stephen’s chapel, Westminster, to be at our wages as long as shall be necessary’; and to arrest and keep in prison all who should refuse or be refractory; and enjoins them to lend assistance. Windsor Castle owes its massive magnificence to labourers impressed from every part of the kingdom. There is even a commission from Edward IV. to take as many workmen in gold as were wanted, and employ them at the King’s cost upon the trappings of himself and his household.”3 Perhaps, however, such demands did not form a legal branch of purveyance, but were merely instances of illegal royal encroachments.

  (2)

  Billeting of soldiers in private houses.

  This practice, which may be considered a branch of purveyance, has always been peculiarly abhorrent to public opinion in England. It is as old as the reign of John; for, when that King visited York in 1201, he complained bitterly that the citizens neither came out to meet him nor provided for the wants of his crossbow–men. His threats and demands for hostages were with difficulty turned aside by a money payment of £100.1 Charles I. made an oppressive use of this prerogative, punishing householders who refused to pay illegal taxes by quartering his dissolute soldiery upon them, a practice branded as illegal by the Petition of Right in 1628.2

  CHAPTER TWENTY–NINE.

  Nullus constabularius distringat aliquem militem ad dandum denarios pro custodia castri, si facere voluerit custodiam illam in propria persona sua, vel per alium probum hominem, si ipse eam facere non possit propter racionabilem causam; et si nos duxerimus vel miserimus eum in exercitum, erit quietus de custodia, secundum quantitatem temporis quo per nos fuerit in exercitu.

  No constable shall compel any knight to give money in lieu of castle–guard, when he is willing to perform it in his own person, or (if he himself cannot do it from any reasonable cause) then by another responsible man. Further, if we have led or sent him upon military service, he shall be relieved from guard in proportion to the time during which he has been on service because of us.

  Castle–guard, or the liability to serve in the garrison of a royal fortress, formed part of the feudal obligations of the owners of certain freeholds. This service was sometimes due in lieu of attendance in the army; more usually the tenant who owed garrison duty owed knight’s service as well.3 It was probably this duplication of duties that prevented castle–guard from hardening into a separate tenure.1 John preferred to commute personal service of castle–guard for money payments (analogous to the scutage paid in lieu of knight’s service), and to man his feudal towers with soldiers of fortune rather than with rebellious Englishmen. Captains of royal castles were, therefore, in the habit of demanding money even from those who offered personal service. What was worse, when the freeholder followed John on distant service, he was mulcted in a money payment because he had not stayed at home to perform garrison duty during the same period. Both abuses were forbidden in 1215.2 In certain circumstances, however, this prohibition would have deprived the King of what was equitably due to him. Suppose he had granted two fiefs to the same tenant—one by simple knight’s service, the other by castle–ward. A double holding implied double service; the tenant could not in fairness plead that the service of one knight, rendered abroad, operated as the full discharge of the services of two knights due from his two separate fiefs. Castle–guard must in such a case be performed by an efficient deputy, or else the usual compensation be paid. The reissue of 1217 amended John’s Charter to this effect. Service with the army abroad operated as a discharge of castle–guard at home, but not where the tenant owed two services for two distinct fiefs.3

  CHAPTER THIRTY.

  Nullus vicecomes, vel ballivus noster, vel aliquis alius, capiat equos vel carectas alicujus liberi hominis pro cariagio faciendo, nisi de voluntate ipsius liberi hominis.

  No sheriff or bailiff of ours, or other person, shall take the horses or carts of any freeman for transport duty, against the will of the said freeman.

  The Charter here returns to the subject of purveyance, one branch of which is practically abolished, except as affecting villeins. No carts or horses belonging to a freeman were to be requisitioned by any sheriff or bailiff for the King’s use without the owner’s consent; that is to say, they could not be requisitioned at all. Protection, however, was limited to freemen; the inference is that the horses and implements of villeins were left at the disposal of the Crown. The relative chapter of the reissue of 1216 partially restored this branch of purveyance; consent of the owner, even when a freeman, need not be obtained, provided hire was paid at rates that were fixed: 10d. per diem for a cart with two horses, 1s. 2d. for one with three.1 The prerogative, though restored, was not to be abused.

  In 1217 it was again slightly restricted in favour of the upper classes. No demesne cart of any “parson” (ecclesiastica persona), or knight, or lady, could be requisitioned by the bailiffs. The “demesne” carts were, of course, those that belonged to the owner of the manor as opposed to the carts of the villeins: the rights of villeins, if they had any, must not stand against the rights of the Crown. Yeomen and small freeholders were also left exposed to this annoying form of interference. Abuses continued. Purveyors would lay hands on all horses and carts in the countryside—far more than they required—choosing perhaps the season of harvest or some equally busy time. The owners, who urgently required them for their own purposes, had to pay ransom to regain possession. Edward I. enacted that perpetrators of such deeds should be “grievously punished by the marshals,” if, as members of his household, they were amenable to the summary jurisdiction of his domestic tribunal, or, if not members, then they should pay treble damages and suffer imprisonment for forty days.2

  CHAPTER THIRTY–ONE.

  Nec nos nec ballivi nostri capiemus alienum boscum ad castra, vel alia agenda nostra, nisi per voluntatem ipsius cujus boscus ille fuerit.

  Neither we nor our bailiffs shall take, for our castles or for any other work of ours, wood which is not ours, against the will of the owner of that wood.

  Purveyance of timber growing elsewhere than on royal manors is here prohibited in absolute terms. In marked contrast with the limited restrictions placed upon other branches of purveyance, this branch is taken away, not merely from local officials, but from the King himself.1 There was an obvious reason for greater stringency in this case: the King’s own extensive demesne woods furnished timber in abundance, whether for building purposes or for firewood, leaving him no excuse for taking, especially if for nothing, the trees of other people.

  The purveyors of James I., shortly after his accession, transgressed this provision of Magna Carta by requisitioning timber for repairing the fortifications of Calais. A decision against the Crown was given by the Barons of Exchequer in the second year of James’s reign, and a proclamation was issued, bearing date 23rd April, 1607, disclaiming any right to such a prerogative. The guilty purveyors were brought before the Star Chamber.2

  CHAPTER THIRTY–TWO.

  Nos non tenebimus terras illorum qui convicti fuerint de felonia, nisi per unum annum et unum diem, et tunc reddantur terre dominis feodorum.

  We will not retain beyond one year and one day, the lands of those who have been convicted of felony, and the lands shall thereafter be handed over to the lords of the fiefs.

  I.

  The Crown’s Claim to Property of Felons.

  The Crown had established certain rights, not too well defined, in the property of criminals formally indicted and sentenced for felony. John, here as elsewhere, took advantage of the vagueness of the law to stretch prerogative to its limit. Magna Carta, therefore, attempted to define the exact boundaries of his rights. Custom gave the felon’s land to his feudal lord, and his chattels to the lord who tried him. The Crown encroached on the rights of both, claiming the real estate of felons, as against mesne lords, and their personal estate, as against lords who had jurisdiction.

  (1)

  The felon’s lands.

  No difficulty arose when Crown tenants were convicted, for the King was lord of the fief as well as lord paramount, and claimed the whole lands as escheat. When the condemned man was the tenant of a mesne lord, however, a conflict of interests occurred, and here a distinction, which gradually became hard and fast, was drawn between treason and felony.1 Treason was an offence against the person of the sovereign, and it was probably on this ground that the King made good his claim to seize as forfeit the entire estate, real and personal, of every one condemned to a traitor’s death. With regard to ordinary felons, what looks like a compromise was arrived at. The King secured the right to lay waste the lands in question and to appropriate everything he could find there during the space of a year and a day; after which period he was bound to hand over the freehold thus devastated to the lord who claimed the escheat. Such was the custom during the reign of Henry II. as described by Glanvill,2 who makes it perfectly clear that, before the lands were given up at the expiration of the year, houses were thrown down and trees rooted up. The lord, when at last he entered into possession of the escheated lands found a desert, not a prosperous manor.1

  Coke has attempted to give a more restricted explanation of the Crown’s rights in this respect, maintaining that the “year and day” was not an addition to, but a substitute for, the earlier right of “waste,” that the King renounced his barbarous claims in return for the undisputed enjoyment of the ordinary produce for one year only, and agreed, in return to hand over the land with all buildings and appurtenances intact.2 The authorities he cites, however, are inconclusive, and the weight of evidence on the other side leaves little room for doubt. Not only does the phrase, “year, day, and waste” commonly used, create a strong presumption; but Glanvill’s words in speaking of the earlier practice are quite free from ambiguity, while the document known as the Praerogativa Regis is equally explicit for a period long after Magna Carta.3 Waste, indeed, was a question of degree, and the Crown was not likely to be scrupulous in regard to felons’ lands, when it allowed wanton destruction even of Crown fiefs held in honourable wardship.4

  Wide as were the legal rights of the Crown, John extended them illegally. When his officers had once obtained a footing in the felon’s land, they refused to surrender it to the rightful lord after the year and day had expired. In 1205, Thomas de Aula paid 40 marks and a palfrey to get what he ought to have had for nothing, namely, the lands escheated to him through his tenant’s felony.1 Magna Carta prohibited such abuses, and settled the law for centuries.2 The Crown long exercised its rights, thus limited, and Henry III. sometimes sold his “year, day, and waste” for considerable sums. Thus, in 1229 Geoffrey of Pomeroy was debited with 20 marks for the Crown’s rights in the lands of William de Streete and for his corn and chattels. This sum was afterwards discharged, however, on the ground that the King, induced to change his mind, doubtless by a higher bid, had bestowed these rights on another.3

  (2)

  The felon’s chattels.

  From an early date the King enjoyed, like other owners of courts, the right to the goods of the offenders he condemned. When Henry II. reorganized the system of criminal justice, and formulated, in the Assizes of Clarendon and Northampton, a scheme whereby all grave offenders should be formally indicted, and thereafter reserved for the coming of his own justices, he established a royal monopoly of jurisdiction over felons; and this logically implied a monopoly over their chattels—an inference confirmed by the express terms of article five of the earlier Assize. As the list of “pleas of the Crown” grew longer, so this branch of royal revenue increased proportionately, at the expense of the private owners of “courts leet.” The goods of outlaws and fugitives from justice likewise fell to the exchequer—the sheriff who seized them being responsible for their appraised value.4

  The magnates in 1215 made no attempt to interfere with this branch of administration, tacitly acquiescing in Henry II.’s encroachments on their ancestors’ criminal jurisdictions and perquisites. Under Henry III. and Edward I., the forfeited goods of felons continued to form a valuable source of revenue. In 1290 the widow of a man who had committed suicide, and therefore incurred forfeit as a felo de se, bought in his goods and chattels for £300, a high price, in addition to which the Crown specially reserved its “year, day and waste.”1

  II.

  Indictment, Conviction, and Attainder.

  The Crown could not appropriate the property of men merely suspected of crime, however strong might be the presumption of guilt. Mere accusation was not enough; a formal judgment was required. The Charter refers to the lands of a “convicted” offender, and conviction must be distinguished from indictment on the one hand, and from attainder on the other; since these formed three stages in the procedure for determining guilt.

  (1)

  Indictment.

  It has been already shown2 how Henry of Anjou tried to substitute, wherever possible, indictment by a jury for private appeal in criminal suits. The Assize of Clarendon authorized such indictments to be taken before sheriffs, and we learn from Bracton that, immediately the formal accusation had been made, the sheriff became responsible for the safety of the accused man’s property, both real and personal. With the help of the coroners and of law–worthy men of the neighbourhood he must have the chattels appraised and inventoried, and hold them in suspense until the “trial,” providing therefrom in the interval “estovers,” that is, sufficient sustenance for the accused and his family.3

  If the prisoner was acquitted or died before conviction, the lands and chattels were restored to him or to his relatives, the Crown taking nothing. Reginald of Cornhill, sheriff of Kent, was discharged in 1201 from liability for the appraised value of the goods of a man who, after indictment for burning a house, had died in gaol non convictus. As the Pipe Roll states, his chattels did not pertain to the King.1

  (2)

  Conviction.

  Only the justices could “try” the plea, that is, give sentence according to success or failure in the test appointed for the accused man to perform.2 Prior to 1215 the usual test was ordeal of water in the ordinary case, or of the red–hot iron in the case of men of high rank and of women. If the suspected person failed, sentence was a mere formality; he had “convicted” himself of the felony. As a consequence of the condemnation of ordeal by the Lateran Council of 1215, the verdict of a petty jury became the normal “test” that branded an offender as convictus. This was long looked on as an innovation, and accordingly the law refused to compel the accused, against his will, to trust his fate to this new form of trial. He might refuse to “put himself upon his country,” and by “standing mute” make his “conviction” impossible, saving himself from punishment and depriving the King of his chattels and “year and day.” For centuries those responsible shrank from the obvious course of treating silence as equivalent to a plea of guilty; but while liberty to refuse a jury’s verdict was theoretically recognized, barbarous measures were in reality adopted to compel consent. The Statute of Westminster in 12753 directed that all who refused should be imprisoned en le prison forte et dure. This statutory authority for strict confinement was liberally interpreted by the agents of the Crown, who treated it as a legal warrant for revolting cruelties. Food and drink were virtually denied, a little mouldy bread and a mouthful of impure water only being allowed upon alternate days; and at a later date the prisoner was slowly crushed to death under great weights “as heavy, yea heavier than he can bear.” Brave men, guilty, or mayhap innocent, but suspicious of a corrupt jury, preferred thus to die in torments, that they might save to their wives and children the property which would upon conviction have fallen to the Crown. The fiction was carefully maintained that the victim of such barbarous treatment was not subjected to “torture,” always illegal at common law, but merely to peine forte et dure, a perfectly legal method of persuasion under the Statute of 1275. This procedure was not abolished until 1772; then only was an accused man for the first time deprived of his right to “have his law”—his claim to ordeal as the old method of proving his innocence. Until that date, then, a jury’s verdict was treated as though it were still a new–fangled and unwarranted form of “test” usurping the place of the ordeal, although the latter had been virtually abolished early in the thirteenth century.1

  (3)

  Attainder.

  Coke in commenting on this passage draws a further distinction between “conviction,” which directly resulted from a confession or a verdict of guilty, and “attainder” which required a formal sentence by the judge. In his age, apparently, it was the attaint that implied forfeiture; looking as usual at Magna Carta through seventeenth–century glasses, he seems surprised to find “convicted” used where he would have written “attainted.” Yet this distinction, if recognized in 1215, must have been immaterial then. It was under the Tudor sovereigns that the doctrine of the penal effects of attainder was elaborated. When sentence was passed on a felon, a blight fell on him: his blood was impure, and his kindred could inherit nothing that came through him. The Crown reaped the profit.2

  Statutes of the nineteenth century modified the harshness with which this rule bore on the felon’s innocent relations:3 finally the Forfeiture Act of 18704 abolished “corruption of blood” and deprived the Crown of all interest in the estates of felons, alike in escheats and chattels. Thus the word “attainted” has become practically obsolete. A criminal who is fulfilling the term of his sentence is known, not as a man attainted, but simply as a “convict,” the same word as was used in Magna Carta.

  CHAPTER THIRTY–THREE.

  Omnes kydelli de cetero deponantur penitus de Tamisia, et de Medewaye, et per totam Angliam, nisi per costeram maris.

  All kydells for the future shall be removed altogether from Thames and Medway, and throughout all England, except upon the sea shore.

  The object of this provision is not open to doubt; it was intended to remove from rivers all obstacles likely to interfere with navigation. Its full importance can only be understood when the deplorable state of the roads is kept in view. The water–ways were the great avenues of commerce; when these were blocked, townsmen and traders suffered loss, while those who depended on them for necessaries, comforts, and luxuries, shared in the general inconvenience. Magna Carta mentions only one kind of impediments, namely, “kydells” (or fish–weirs), not because of the purpose to which these were put, but because they were the form of obstruction that called for repressive measures at the moment. This word seems to have been used by the framers of Magna Carta in a wide general sense, embracing all fixed contrivances or “engines” intended to catch fish, and likely by their bulk to interfere with the free passage of boats.1

  It has been gratuitously assumed that the motive for prohibiting “kydells” must have been of a similar nature to the motive for constructing them; and that therefore the object of the present chapter was to prevent any monopoly in rights of fishing. Law courts and writers on jurisprudence for many centuries endorsed this mistaken view, and treated Magna Carta as an absolute prohibition of the creation of “several” (or exclusive) fisheries in tidal waters.1 Although this legal doctrine has been frequently and authoritatively enunciated, it rests on a misconception. The Great Charter sought to protect freedom of navigation, not freedom of fishing; and this is obvious from the last words of the chapter: kydells are to be removed from Thames and Medway and throughout all England “except upon the sea–shore.” It would have been a manifest absurdity to allow monopolies of taking fish in the open seas, while insisting on freedom to fish in rivers, the banks of which were private property. The sense is clear: no objection was taken to “kydells” so long as they did not interfere with navigation.

  The erroneous view, however, had much to excuse it, and acquired plausibility from the circumstance that the destruction of obstacles to the free passage of boats incidentally secured also free passage for salmon and other migratory fish; and that later statutes, when legislative motives had become more complicated, were sometimes passed with both of these objects in view. The change is well illustrated by a comparison of the words of two statutes of 1350 and of 1472 respectively. The first of these repeats the substance of this chapter, and thus explains its object:—“Whereas the common passage of boats and ships in the great rivers of England be oftentimes annoyed by the inhancing of gorces, mills, weirs, stanks, stakes, and kydells.”2 Here there is no allusion to fish or rights of fishing. The later Act, while confirming, under penalties, previous statutes for the suppression of weirs, not only states its own intention as twofold, namely, to protect navigation of rivers, and “also in safeguard of all the fry of fish spawned within the same,” but retrospectively and unwarrantably attributes a like double motive to Magna Carta.1

  So far as Thames and Medway were concerned, this provision contained nothing new. To the Londoners, indeed, the keeping open of their river for trade was a matter of vital importance. The right to destroy kydelli had been purchased from Richard I. for 1500 marks, and a further sum had been paid to John to have this confirmed. These charters (dated 14th July, 1197, and 17th June, 1199) “granted and steadfastly commanded that all kydells that are in the Thames be removed wheresoever they shall be within the Thames; also we have quit–claimed all that which the Warden of our Tower of London was wont yearly to receive from the said kydells. Wherefore we will and steadfastly command that no warden of the said Tower, at any time hereafter, shall exact anything of any one, neither molest nor burden nor make any demand of any person by reason of the said kydells.” John’s Charter went further than that of Richard, making it clear that the prohibition referred to Medway as well as to Thames, and granting the right to inflict a penalty of £10 upon anyone infringing its provisions.2

  Magna Carta confirmed this provision and extended it to all rivers, and this was repeated in the reissues of Henry III. The citizens of London, not content with a clause in a general enactment, purchased for 5000 marks three new charters exclusively in their own favour. One of these, dealing with kydells in Thames and Medway, was issued by Henry on 18th February, 1227, in terms almost identical with those of Richard and John.1

  CHAPTER THIRTY–FOUR.

  Breve quod vocatur Precipe de cetero non fiat alicui de aliquo tenemento unde liber homo amittere possit curiam suam.

  The writ which is called praecipe shall not for the future be issued to anyone, regarding any tenement whereby a freeman may lose his court.

  The grievance here dealt with lay at the heart of the quarrel of 1215, and the remedy adopted proved a vital factor in the history of royal jurisdiction in England. In extorting from John a solemn promise to restrict the use of this particular writ, the barons gained something of infinitely greater value than a petty reform of court procedure; they committed their enemy to a reversal of a line of policy vigorously pursued for half a century. The process by which the jurisdiction of the King’s courts was undermining that of the feudal courts was now to be arrested.2 Magna Carta, by this apparently inoffensive clause, was grappling in reality with an urgent problem of the day, fraught with tremendous practical issues alike for King and barons. This can only be understood in connection with the technical details on which it hinges.

  I.

  Royal Writs and Feudal Jurisdictions.

  In pleas of disputed titles to land, feudal theory gave sole jurisdiction to the lord of the fief. No principle was more absolutely established than this: no person, neither King nor Emperor, had any right to interfere, except on the one ground of failure of justice. Not even Henry II. dared to repudiate this universal rule; but he adopted expedients to render it inoperative. If Glanvill may be trusted, Henry was strong enough to obtain acquiescence in his prohibition of any plea, concerning ownership of a lay fee, being tried in a seignorial court without the licence of a royal precept.1

  Henry also invented, or adopted from precedents of the Carolingian Emperors, two types of writ, the virtual effects of which were to evoke causes from the lords’ courts to his own, without too open an infringement of feudal principle.2 These were the Writ of Right and the Writ Praecipe. The Writ of Right proceeded on the principle that a lord superior was bound to see that his vassals dispensed justice to their rear vassals. When a freeholder, the tenant of a mesne lord, complained to the King that justice was refused him, the King formally commanded the remiss lord “to do full right” to the complainant, and added the threat that, unless he did so, the King himself would. The writ, known as a breve de recto tenendo, was thus issued to the owner of a feudal court; professed to afford him an opportunity of obedience by trying the plea in his court; and avoided conflict with feudal theory by justifying the proposed royal interference as “pro defectu justitiae.” It afforded, however, excellent opportunities for the insidious encroachments of the royal courts at the behest of powerful kings, who retained in their own hands the right to define what constituted a failure to do justice.3

  The Writ Praecipe in its origin and antecedents differed fundamentally from the Writ of Right: it was addressed to the sheriff, not to the owner of a franchise; it was a more direct violation of feudal rights, for it made no allegation of failure of justice but simply ignored the lord’s jurisdiction, bidding the sheriff command the tenant to restore the land in question to the demandant; or else to appear before the royal court to explain his reasons for disobedience. No opportunity was afforded the mesne lord of hearing the plea. The whole procedure, almost without disguise or excuse, was an open transference of the dispute from the manorial court to that of the King.1 The writ, which on the surface reads merely as a summary and final command to hand over the estate to another, is really an “original writ” commencing a litigation in the King’s court. One important effect of its issue was that all proceedings instituted in inferior tribunals must immediately stop.

  The feudal lord, in whose court baron the plea would naturally have been decided, was thus robbed by the King of his jurisdiction. With it, he lost also authority over his tenants, and numerous fees and perquisites. The writ praecipe was thus an ingenious device for “evoking” a particular cause from the manorial court to the King’s court.2

  The two types of writ, praecipes and writs of right, at first contrasted as alternative methods of bringing a plea under royal jurisdiction, came in time to have entirely different relations. The person to whom the preliminary writ was issued, whether sheriff or lord of a franchise court, ceased to be of much importance, when the writ had become a mere formality. The essential feature of a Writ of Right came to be that it dealt with ownership as opposed to mere possession: all royal writs that originated pleas involving title to land were then reckoned Writs of Right, which now embraced an important species of the originally opposed genus of writs praecipe.3 Thus, in one place, writs praecipe and writs of right overlapped each other.4

  The motives of Henry II., in instituting his legal reforms, were probably mixed; and it is not easy to determine whether he favoured his new writs most because they really stimulated the flow of justice in the feudal courts, or because they afforded facilities for sapping their strength. While reforming the entire administration of justice in England, the King hoped, by the same means, to destroy gradually the feudal privileges of his magnates. He intended to draw into his own courts all pleas relating to land. Questions of property were to be tried before his justices, by combat or, at the tenant’s option, by the grand assize; questions of possession (without any option) by the appropriate petty assize. The barons showed no desire to dispute the Crown’s assumption of a monopoly over the petty assizes; indeed they cordially acquiesced in this by the terms of chapter 18 of the Charter. The grand assize was another matter; they refused to be robbed of their right to determine, in their own courts baron, proprietary actions between their own tenants. Indeed, for such wholesale extension of the King’s jurisdiction over pleas of land, Henry II. had absolutely no precedent. He had made the Crown strong and then used its power for his own aggrandizement. The King’s courts had increased their authority, as a distinguished American historian has expressed it, “by direct usurpation, in derogation of the rights of the popular courts and manorial franchises, upon the sole authority of the King.”1

  While undermining the feudal courts, Henry was devising improved methods of dispensing justice in his own. Efforts were being successfully made, as has been shown,2 to substitute the grand assize for trial by combat; and the desire for the more rational mode of proof favoured the King’s policy of removing important litigations to his own court. The assize procedure must be taken along with the writ of right and the writ praecipe as parts of one scheme of reform.

  II.

  The Intention of Magna Carta.

  The present chapter says nothing of the Writ of Right, but guards against the abuse of the Writ Praecipe, without attempting to interfere with its employment within its legitimate sphere, that is to say, in settling disputes as to Crown fiefs. John might keep his own court, and issue praecipes to his own tenants; but let him respect the rights of other feudal lords and not use his writs as engines of encroachment upon manorial jurisdictions. For the future, such writs must not be issued “concerning any tenement whereby a freeman may lose his court.” Writs praecipe might be freely used for any other purpose, but not for this. This one purpose, however, was exactly what had specially recommended them to King Henry.

  The present chapter must, therefore, be regarded as one of the most reactionary in the Charter: the barons had forced John to promise a complete reversal of the deliberate policy of his father.

  Here, then, under the guise of a small change in legal procedure, was concealed a notable triumph of feudalism over the centralizing policy of the monarchy—a backward step, which, if given full effect to, might have ushered in a second era of feudal turbulence such as had disgraced the reign of Stephen. We are told on high authority that John’s acknowledgment of “the claims of the feudal lord to hold a court which shall enjoy an exclusive competence in proprietary actions” was one which “Henry II. would hardly have been forced into.”1 That may well be; but John had already more than once rejected this proposal with vehemence. In 1215, he could no longer strive against the inevitable, and agreed under compulsion to provisions which he had no intention to keep. The concession, although insincere, was nevertheless an important one. The substance of chapter 34 was repeated, with some trivial verbal alterations, in all future issues of Magna Carta.2

  Why did the barons, it may be asked, while attacking the writ praecipe, allow the writ of right patent to go unscathed? History is silent; but inferences may be drawn. The barons had no legal ground for condemning the legitimate use of the writ of right even when it deprived a baron or other freeman of his court. Feudal theory sanctioned this procedure, unless where it was abused; and it was difficult to define abuse of the procedure. If “pro defectu justitiae” was honestly alleged, the King had a right to interfere, well grounded in feudal law. The interference, too, even where unwarranted, was of a subtle nature, and difficult to guard against. Finally, encroachments initiated by this procedure had not been attempted before 1215 to any noticeable extent: the barons had no premonition of the new uses to which the writ of right would be put, after the channel of royal aggression by way of the praecipe had been closed. The writ of right patent was a cumbrous process, and its short day of usefulness came after the granting of Magna Carta.

  III.

  Expedients for evading Magna Carta.

  One question remains: was this provision observed in practice? The answer is that its letter was stringently observed, but its spirit was evaded. Writs praecipe that deliberately evoked suits, other than those of Crown tenants, to the King’s courts ceased to be issued, but the sphere denied to the writ was made as narrow as possible; and methods were devised for reducing seignorial courts practically to impotence, without direct violation of the terms of the Great Charter.

  (1)

  The letter of the law.

  The Chancery, in obedience to Magna Carta, ceased to issue this particular form of writ in such a manner as to cause a freeman “to lose his court.” It was still issued to Crown tenants; but strictly denied to under–tenants, who were thus left to find redress at the feudal court of the magnate from whom they held their land.1

  The measure thus forced on the Crown in the selfish interests of the baronage, inflicted hardship on tenants of mesne lords: the court baron was now their only source of feudal justice, and in that court they could not get the benefit of the improved methods of royal procedure. In particular, the grand assize was a royal monopoly. The magnates, indeed, desired to adopt it, but they had difficulty in getting together twelve knights willing to act as jurors.1 Whatever hopes the barons entertained of overcoming such difficulties were disappointed: in 1259 the Provisions of Westminster declared that freeholders should not be compelled to swear against their will “since no one can make them do this without the King’s warrant.”2 It was the deliberate policy of Edward I. to exaggerate all such difficulties, putting every obstacle in the way of private courts, until he reduced their jurisdictions to sinecures.3

  (2)

  Evasion of its spirit.

  While the letter of Magna Carta was strictly kept, its spirit was evaded. It was impossible to give loyal effect to an enactment that went directly counter to the whole stream of progress. Manorial justice was falling into disrepute, while royal justice was becoming more efficient and more popular. Under–tenants, deprived of access to the King’s court by the direct road of the writ praecipe, sought more tortuous modes of entrance. Legal fictions were devised. The problem was how to evade Magna Carta without openly infringing it: the King’s justices and would–be litigants in the King’s courts formed a tacit alliance for this end, but had to proceed by wary steps, in the teeth of opposition from the powerful owners of seignorial courts. Three methods were adopted by the Crown:—

  (a) Magna Carta had not condemned the writ praecipe, but only its abuse; and abuse was sometimes difficult to define. That writ remained the normal procedure in cases of Crown holdings,1 and a liberal interpretation of this exception would sometimes pass unchallenged, though there seems no ground for supposing that any recognized legal fiction of this nature came into use. Then, besides the later developments of the praecipe (to be afterwards described), the King claimed, in spite of Magna Carta, to grant ex gratia speciali the very writ complained of.2

  (b) When the use of the writ praecipe was barred, the King could fall back on the more cumbrous procedure instituted by writ of right, the potentialities of which were developed after 1215. Coke3 cites an instance from the 34th year of Edward I., where a demandant admitted that the lands in dispute were not held of the King in capite but of his brother Edmund, and therefore he could not proceed by way of praecipe, but he might, if he so desired, proceed by writ of right patent in the King’s curia. This substitution of the writ of right for the praecipe is described by Professor Maitland4 as “a victory of feudalism consecrated by the Great Charter.”

  When a tenant, whose title was challenged in his lord’s court, applied to the King for a grand assize, the plea was practically certain, by one avenue or another, to reach the Curia Regis.1 The rule that no one need defend his liberum tenementum unless summoned by a royal writ also worked towards the same end. But many difficulties lay in the path of the writ of right.2 The Petition of the Barons of 1259 (chapter 29)3 illustrates one attempt to make the most of these. Moreover, the whole procedure was dilatory, expensive, and inelastic, and it was gladly abandoned, after the invention of less direct but more convenient methods of effecting the same purpose.

  (c) The procedure which rendered recourse to the writ of right unnecessary was instituted by one of various writs developed from the older praecipe and known as writs of entry. These writs instituted procedure in the King’s court on the averment of some recent flaw in the tenant’s title, which could be settled without opening up the whole matter of the ownership. This was a subterfuge, for the settling of the special point virtually decided the general question of ownership without appeal. Although probably not invented for the express purpose of defeating this chapter of the Great Charter, these writs were soon applied to that purpose. One of the most useful of their number was the writ of cosinage, devised by William of Raleigh, extending to others than the dispossessed heir the simple procedure of the petty assizes. As early as 1237, it was decided in the King’s court that such a writ did not violate the Charter.4 Writs of entry were thus, from the point of view of the magnate with his private court, wolves in sheep’s clothing. They professed to determine a question of possession, but really decided a question of ownership At first, the pleas to which they could be applied were few and special. Steadily, new forms of action were devised to cover almost every conceivable case. The process of evolution was a long one, commencing soon after 1215, and virtually concluding with chapter 29 of the Statute of Marlborough, or rather with the liberal construction which Crown lawyers placed upon that statute in the following reign.

  Edward I., at the height of his power, and eager to set his house in order, shrank from an open breach of the Great Charter, gladly adopting subtle expedients to oust mesne lords from rights secured to them by the present chapter. In Edward’s reign the legal machinery was brought to perfection, so that thereafter no action relating to freehold was ever again tried in the courts baron of the magnates, but, in direct violation of the spirit of Magna Carta, decided in the courts of the King.1

  The demandant had no need to infringe the prohibition against the older form of writ praecipe when he could obtain another writ, equally effective. A writ of entry was, indeed, to a peaceable demandant, preferable to a writ praecipe, which could only be issued to one prepared to offer battle, the option of accepting lying with his adversary. Crown tenants, even, who could obtain the original writ praecipe, came to prefer the modern substitute; and clause 34 of Magna Carta was virtually obsolete.

  IV.

  Influence on later legal development.

  One of the indirect effects of the clause was of a most unfortunate nature. The necessity it created for effecting reforms by a tortuous path did great and lasting harm to the form of English law. Legal fictions have indeed their uses, by evading technical rules of law in the interests of substantial justice. The price paid for this relief, however, is usually a heavy one. Complicated procedures and underhand expedients have to be invented, and these lead in turn to new legal technicalities of a more irrational nature than the old ones. It would have been better in the interests of scientific jurisprudence, if so desirable a result could have been effected in a more straightforward manner. The authors of Magna Carta must bear the blame.2

  CHAPTER THIRTY–FIVE.

  Una mensura vini sit per totum regnum nostrum, et una mensura cervisie, et una mensura bladi, scilicet quarterium Londonie, et una latitudo pannorum tinctorum et russetorum et halbergectorum, scilicet due ulne infra listas; de ponderibus autem sit ut de mensuris.

  Let there be one measure of wine throughout our whole realm; and one measure of ale; and one measure of corn, to wit, “the London quarter”; and one width of cloth (whether dyed, or russet, or “halberget”),1 to wit, two ells within the selvedges; of weights also let it be as of measures.

  This chapter confirmed the provisions of various ordinances that sought to regulate the sale of commodities. Assizes of bread and beer were issued from time to time, and also assizes of weights and measures, and of wines. Richard’s Assize of Cloth, for example, of 20th November, 1197, was, according to modern conceptions of the proper sphere of government, partly commendable and partly ill–advised. It strove, on the one hand, to overcome the inconvenience experienced by traders, who met with varying standards as they moved their wares from place to place. What was of more importance, the Assize sought to obviate frauds perpetrated upon buyers under shelter of ambiguous weights and measures. The London quarter must, therefore, be used everywhere for corn; and one measure for wine or beer: so far, good. On the other hand, the ordinances of Richard went further than modern ideas of laissez faire would tolerate. In particular, freedom of trade was interfered with by the regulations reported by Roger of Hoveden.2 No cloth, he tells us, was to be woven except of a uniform width, namely, “two ells within the lists.”3

  Dyed cloths, it was provided, should be of equal quality through and through, as well in the middle as at the outside. Merchants were prohibited from darkening their windows by hanging up, to quote the quaint language of the ordinance, “cloth whether red or black, or shields (scuta) so as to deceive the sight of buyers seeking to choose good cloth.” Coloured cloth was only to be sold in cities or important boroughs. Here we have a sumptuary law meant to ensure that the lower classes went in modest grey attire. Six lawful men were to be assigned to keep the Assize in each county and important borough. These custodians of measures must see that no goods were bought or sold except according to the standards; imprison those found guilty of using other measures; and seize the chattels of defaulters, for the King’s behoof. If the custodes performed their duties negligently they were to suffer amercement of their chattels.1 Richard’s Assize of Measures was supplemented in 1199 by John’s Assize of Wine, which tried to regulate the price of wines of various qualities,2 an attempt not repeated in Magna Carta.

  The author who gives us the text of the ordinance of 1197, tells us that its terms were too stringent, and had to be relaxed in practice.3 This was done in 1201: the King’s justices seized cloth that was less than the legal width. They compromised, however, by accepting money “to the use of the King and to the damage of many”; thus Hoveden denounces what he regards as an unlawful bargain between justices and traders for evading the strict letter of the ordinance.

  The justices, indeed, were often more intent on collecting fines for its breach than on enforcing the Assize. In 1203, two merchants of Worksop were amerced each in half a mark for selling wine contrary to the Assize, while the custodians of measures of the borough were mulcted in one mark for performing their duty negligently—an exact illustration of the words of the ordinance.1 In the same year, a fine of one mark was imposed on certain merchants “for stretching cloth,” in order, presumably, to bring it to the legal width.2 Merchants frequently paid heavy fines to escape the ordinance altogether.3

  When the barons in 1215 insisted upon John enforcing his brother’s ordinance, they took a step in their own interests as buyers, and against the interests of the trade guilds as sellers. Although this provision was repeated in subsequent charters, evasion continued. One example may suffice: in the second year of Henry III.4 the citizens of London paid 40 marks that they might not be questioned for selling cloth less than two yards in width. Here is an illustration of the practice of the judges to which Hoveden had objected, and which Magna Carta had apparently failed to put down. Sometimes, however, Richard’s Assize of Measures5 and John’s Assize of Wine were enforced. In 1219, a Lincolnshire parson, with a liberal conception of his parochial duties, had to pay 40s. for wine sold extra Assisam.6 Parsons, apparently, might engage in trade, but only if they conformed to the usual regulations.

  CHAPTER THIRTY–SIX.

  Nichil detur vel capiatur de cetero pro brevi inquisicionis de vita vel membris, sed gratis concedatur et non negetur.

  Nothing in future shall be given or taken for a writ of inquisition of life or limbs, but freely it shall be granted, and never denied.

  This chapter has an important bearing upon trial by combat, and none at all upon habeas corpus, to which it is often supposed to be closely related. The writ upon which emphasis is here laid had been invented by Henry II. to obviate the judicial duel, by allowing the accused to refer the question of guilt or innocence to the verdict of his neighbours.

  I.

  Trial by Combat prior to the Reign of John.

  The crucial moment in judicial proceedings during the Middle Ages arrived, as has already been explained,1 when the “test” or “trial” (lex), appointed by the court, was attempted by one or both of the litigants. The particular form of proof to which the warlike Norman barons were attached was the duellum, and it was only natural that such of the old Anglo–Saxon aristocracy as associated with them on terms of equality should adopt their prejudices. “Combat” became the normal mode of deciding pleas among the upper classes. From the first, however, it seems not to have been competent for property of less than 10s. in value,2 and it soon came to be specially reserved for two classes of disputes—civil pleas instituted by writ of right, and criminal pleas following on “appeal.” The present chapter is concerned with the latter only.

  An “appeal” in this connection was entirely different from the modern appeal from a lower to a higher court. It was a formal accusation of treason or felony made by a private individual on his own initiative, and was usually followed by judicial combat between the appellant and appellee, each of whom fought in person. Such a right was necessary in an age when the government had not yet assumed a general responsibility for bringing ordinary criminals to justice. The wronged person, not the magistrate, was the avenger of crime; and this explains several peculiarities—why, for example, when the accused had uttered “that hateful word craven,”1 thus confessing himself vanquished and deserving a perjurer’s fate, the victorious accuser was entitled to his vengeance, even in face of a royal pardon. When Henry of Essex, constable and standard–bearer of Henry II., in 1163, had been worsted in the combat, the royal favour could not shield him, though the King’s connivance enabled him, by becoming a monk, and therefore dead in law, to escape actual death by hanging.2 At an early date the procedure resembled even more closely a legalized private revenge: “the ancient usage was, so late as Henry IV.’s time, that all the relations of the slain should drag the appellee to the place of execution.”3

  The evils of trial by combat are obvious. From the first it was dreaded by the traders of the boroughs, who paid heavily for charters of exemption. Their aversion spread to the higher classes, and was shared by Henry II. To that statesman, endowed with the instincts of a reformer, despising obsolete and irrational modes of procedure, and devoid of reverence for tradition, trial by combat was abhorrent. He would gladly have abolished it, but followed the more subtle policy of undermining its vitality. For this purpose, he used four expedients, which are of great interest, in respect that they throw light on the process by which trial by jury superseded trial by battle.4 (1) Every facility was afforded the parties to a civil suit to forego the duellum voluntarily. Henry placed at their disposal, as a substitute, a procedure which his ancestors had reserved for the service of the Crown. Litigants might refer their rival claims to the oath of a picked body of local neighbours: the old recognitors thus developed into the jurata. This course was possible, however, only where both parties consented, and it had many features in common with a modern arbitration. (2) In pleas relating to the title and possession of land, Henry went further, granting to the tenant the option of a peaceful settlement even when the demandant preferred battle. The assisa, like the jurata, applied only to civil pleas. (3) Attempts were made to discourage trial by combat in criminal pleas also, by discouraging private “appeal,” its natural prelude. The corporate voice of the accusing jury was made to supersede the individual complaint of the injured party. Only the near blood relation, or the liege lord, of a murdered man was allowed to prove the offender’s guilt by combat; while a woman’s right of appeal was kept within narrow limits.1 (4) A wide field was still left for private appeal and battle; but Henry endeavoured to narrow it by a subtle device. In appeals of homicide, where the accusation was not made bona fide, but maliciously or without probable cause, the appellee was afforded a means of escaping the duellum: he might apply for the writ that forms the subject of this chapter.

  II.

  The Writ of Life and Limb.

  The writ here referred to, better known to medieval England as the writ de odio et atia,2 was intended to protect from duel men unjustly appealed of homicide. Many an appealed man was glad to purchase escape by assuming the habit and tonsure of a monk;3 but Henry desired to save innocent men from the risk of failure in the duellum, without this subterfuge. If the accused asserted that his appellant acted “out of spite and hate” (de odio et atia), he might purchase from the chancery a writ to refer this preliminary plea to the verdict of twelve recognitors. If his neighbours upheld the plea, further proceedings were quashed: the duellum was avoided.1 A similar privilege was afterwards extended to those guilty of homicide in self–defence, or of homicide by misadventure.2 Soon every man appealed of murder, whether guilty or not, alleged as matter of course that he had been accused maliciously, mere “words of common form.” Virtually, the main issue of guilt or innocence, not merely the preliminary pleas, came to be determined by the neighbours’ verdict,3 which was treated as final. No further proceedings were necessary: none were allowed. The duellum had been elbowed aside, although it was not abolished until 1819.4

  III.

  Subsidiary Uses of the Writ.

  This inquest of life and limb has been claimed as the direct antecedent of the procedure which became so valuable a bulwark of the subject’s liberty, under the name habeas corpus. This is a mistake; the modern writ of habeas corpus was developed out of an entirely different writ, which had for its original object the safe–keeping of the prisoner’s body in gaol, not his liberation from unjust confinement.5

  The opinion generally, though erroneously, held, is not without excuse; for the writ mentioned by Magna Carta was put to a subsidiary use, which bears superficial resemblance to that of the habeas corpus. Considerable delay might occur between the appellee’s petition for the writ of inquisition and the verdict upon it. In the interval, the man accused of murder had no right to be released on bail, a privilege allowed to those suspected of less grave crimes. This was hard where the accused was the victim of malice, or guilty only of justifiable homicide. Prisoners, in such a plight, might purchase royal writs that would save them from languishing for months or years in gaol. The writ best suited for this purpose was that de odio et atia, since it was already applicable to presumably innocent appellees for another purpose.1

  As trial by combat became rapidly obsolete, the original purpose of the writ was forgotten, and its once subsidiary object became more prominent. Before Bracton’s day, this change had taken place: the writ had come to be viewed primarily as an expedient for releasing upon bail homicides per infortunium or se defendendo. Bracton, in giving the form of the writ,2 declares it to be iniquitous that innocent men should be long detained in prison: therefore, he tells us, an inquisition is wont to be made, at the request of sorrowful friends, whether the accusation is bona fide or has been brought de odio et atia. This pleasing picture of a king moved to pity by tearful friends of accused men scarcely applies to John, who listened only to suitors with long purses: the writs that liberated homicides had become a valuable source of revenue. Sheriffs were reprimanded for releasing prisoners on bail without the King’s warrant, but, in spite of heavy amercements, they continued their irregularities. Thus, in 1207, Peter of Scudimore paid to the exchequer 10 marks for setting homicides free upon pledges, without warrant from the King.3 In that year, John repeated his orders, strictly forbidding manslayers to be set free upon bail until they had received judgment in presence of the King’s justices.4

  To John, then, the fees to be received for this writ, constituted its greatest merit; whereas the barons claimed, as mere matter of justice, that it should be issued free of charge to all who needed it. John’s acceptance of their demands was repeated in all reissues, and apparently observed in practice. The procedure during the reign of Henry III. is described by Bracton in a passage already cited. After the writ de odio had been received, an inquest, he tells us, must be held speedily, and if the jury decided that the accusation had been made maliciously, or that the slaying had been in self–defence or by accident, the Crown was to be informed of this. Thereafter, from the chancery would be issued a second writ (known in later days as the writ tradias in ballium), directing the sheriff, on the accused finding twelve good sureties of the county, to “deliver him in bail to those twelve” till the arrival of the justices.

  It should be noted that the provision granting gratuitous writs was not construed as forbidding payments made by an accused man for a special form of “trial.” Prof. Maitland has shown how “occasionally a person pays money to the King that he may have an inquest, and it would seem that he might still buy the right to be tried by a body constituted in some particular way. He might pay to be tried by the jurors of two hundreds, or of three hundreds, and because of local enmities such a payment may sometimes have been expedient.”1 A certain Reginald, Adam’s son, in 1222, offered one mark for a verdict of the three neighbouring counties (it was a Lincolnshire plea), as to whether the accusation was made because of “the ill–will and hate” which William de Ros, appellant’s lord, bore to Reginald’s father “vel per verum appellum.”2

  A long series of later statutes enforced or modified this procedure. These have been interpreted to imply frequent changes of policy, sometimes abolishing and sometimes reintroducing the writ and the procedure which followed it.3 This is a mistake; the various statutes wrought no radical change, but merely modified points of detail; sometimes seeking to prevent the release of the guilty on bail, and sometimes removing difficulties from the path of the innocent. The Statute of Westminster, I., for example, after a preamble, which animadverted on sheriffs impanelling juries favourable to the accused, provided that inquests “shall be taken by lawful men chosen by oath (of whom two at least shall be knights) which by no affinity with the prisoners nor otherwise are to be suspected.”1 The Statute of Gloucester, on the other hand, ordered the strict confinement, pending trial, of offenders whose guilt was apparent.2 The Statute of Westminster, II., once more favoured prisoners, providing by chapter 12 for the punishment of false appellants or accusers, and by chapter 29 that “lest the parties appealed or indicted be kept long in prison, they shall have a writ of odio et atia, like as it is declared in Magna Carta and other Statutes.”3 The writ in question was in use in 1314,4 and seems never to have been expressly abolished, but to have sunk gradually into neglect, as appeals became obsolete and gaol deliveries were more frequently held.

  IV.

  Later History of Appeal and Battle.

  The right of private accusation was restricted, not abolished, by Henry II. and his successors. It could not be denied to an injured man who was not suspected of abusing his right. Prosecutions by way of indictment and jury trial supplemented, without superseding, private prosecutions by way of appeal and battle. The danger of a second prosecution might hang over the head of an accused man after he had “stood his trial” and been honourably acquitted. It was unfair that he should be kept in such prolonged suspense; and, accordingly, the Statute of Gloucester provided that the right of appeal should lapse unless exercised within year and day of the commission of the offence.5 To obviate all risk of a double prosecution, it was necessary that the Crown should delay to prosecute until the year and day had expired. This rule was followed in 1482. Such immunity from arraignment for twelve months would have produced a worse evil, by facilitating the escape of criminals from justice. After experience of its pernicious effects, the rule was condemned by the act of parliament which instituted the Star Chamber.1

  This remedied the more recent evil, but revived the old injustice: the same statute enacted that acquittal should not bar appeal by the wife or nearest heir of a murdered man. Thus, once again, a man declared innocent by a jury might find himself exposed to a second prosecution. In 1817 the British public was startled to find that a long–forgotten procedure of the dark ages still formed part of the law of England. The body of a Warwickshire girl, Mary Ashford, was discovered in a pit of water under circumstances that suggested foul play. Suspicion fell on Abraham Thornton. After indictment and trial at Warwick Assizes on a charge of rape and murder, he was acquitted. The girl’s brother, William Ashford, not satisfied by what was apparently an honest verdict, tried to secure a second trial, and claimed the appeal of felony, which the judges did not refuse. Ashford’s attempt to revive this obsolete procedure was met by Thornton’s revival of its equally obsolete counterpart. Summoned before the judges of King’s Bench, he offered to defend himself by combat, throwing down as “wager of battle” a glove of approved antique pattern. Lord Ellenborough had to admit his legal right to defend himself against the appeal “by his body,” and Thornton successfully foiled the attempt to force him to a second trial, as Ashford, a mere stripling, declined the unequal contest with an antagonist of athletic build.1 The unexpected revival of these legal curiosities led to their final suppression. In 1819 a Statute abolished proof by battle alike in criminal and in civil pleas: the right of appeal fell with it.2

  CHAPTER THIRTY–SEVEN.

  Si aliquis teneat de nobis per feodifirmam, vel per sokagium, vel per burgagium, et de alio terram teneat per servicium militare, nos non habebimus custodiam heredis nec terre sue que est de feodo alterius, occasione illius feodifirme, vel sokagii, vel burgagii; nec habebimus custodiam illius feodifirme, vel sokagii, vel burgagii, nisi ipsa feodifirma debeat servicium militare. Nos non habebimus custodiam heredis vel terre alicujus, quam tenet de alio per servicium militare, occasione alicujus parve serjanterie quam tenet de nobis per servicium reddendi nobis cultellos, vel sagittas, vel hujusmodi.

  If anyone holds of us by fee–farm, by socage, or by burgage, and holds also land of another lord by knight’s service, we will not (by reason of that fee–farm, socage, or burgage,) have the wardship of the heir, or of such land of his as is of the fief of that other; nor shall we have wardship of that fee–farm, socage, or burgage, unless such fee–farm owes knight’s service. We will not by reason of any small3 serjeanty which anyone may hold of us by the service of rendering to us knives, arrows, or the like, have wardship of his heir or of the land which he holds of another lord by knight’s service.

  In these provisions the Charter reverts to the subject of wardship, laying down three rules, which will be better understood when their sequence is altered, the second being taken first. (1) Ordinary wardship. The reason for claiming wardship from lands held in chivalry, namely, that a boy could not perform military service, did not apply to fee–farm, socage, or burgage. There was much looseness of usage, however; and of this John took advantage. The Charter stated the law explicitly; wardship was not due from any such holdings, except in the anomalous case where lands in fee–farm expressly owed military service.1 As petty serjeanties (although mentioned in the present chapter in a different connection) are not expressly said to share this exemption, it may be inferred that the barons admitted John’s wardship over them, as over great serjeanties. By Littleton’s time, the law had changed: petty serjeanties were then exempt.2

  (2) Prerogative wardship. When the heir of a tenant–in–chivalry held military fiefs of different mesne lords, each of these lords enjoyed wardship over his own fief. This was fair to all parties: but, if the ward held one estate of the Crown, and another of a mesne lord, the King claimed wardship over both; and that, too, even when the Crown fief was of small value.3 Such rights were known as “prerogative wardship,” and, thus limited, were in 1215 perfectly legal, however inequitable they may now seem. (a) Fee–farm, socage, and burgage. John, however, pushed this right further, and exercised prerogative wardship over fiefs of mesne lords, not merely by occasion of Crown fiefs held in chivalry, but also by occasion of Crown fiefs held by any tenure. It was outrageous to claim prerogative wardship in respect of fee–farm, socage, or burgage lands, which were exempt even from ordinary wardship. John was made to promise amendment.4 (b) Small Serjeanties5 were in a different position. Magna Carta did not abolish the Crown’s rights of ordinary wardship over these, but forbade that this should form an excuse for prerogative wardship over the wider fiefs of other lords.1

  Prerogative wardship (even in the limited form admitted by Magna Carta) might involve a double hardship on the mesne lord. Suppose that the common tenant held lands from a mesne lord on condition of say, five knights’ service, as well as his Crown fief. The King seized both fiefs on his death, nominally as a compensation for the loss of military service, which the minor heir could not render. Yet, when a scutage ran, the King demanded from the mesne lord payments in proportion to his full quota without allowing for the fees of five knights taken from him by prerogative wardship. This is no imaginary case: the barons in 1258 complained of the practice and demanded redress.2

  CHAPTER THIRTY–EIGHT.

  Nullus ballivus ponat de cetero aliquem ad legem simplici loquela sua, sine testibus fidelibus ad hoc inductis.

  No bailiff for the future shall, upon his own unsupported complaint, put anyone to his “law,” without credible witnesses brought for this purpose.

  The exact nature of the abuse here condemned has been much discussed by commentators. Bailiffs (the word is probably used here in its widest sense1 ) were wont to abuse their authority: henceforth they shall put no man to his “lex” on their own initiative. The word lex, in its technical sense, applied to any form of judicial test, such as compurgation, ordeal, or combat, the precise meaning required in each particular case being determined by the context.2 In the present chapter it seems to have this technical meaning of a judicial “proof” or “trial” of any sort:3 henceforward no bailiff should have power “simplici loquela sua”4 to put anyone to a “lex” of any kind. Authorities differ as to the exact nature of the irregularities which this clause was meant to suppress.

  I.

  Medieval Interpretations.

  Ignorance of the exact nature of the abuse prohibited may well be excused at the present day, since it had become obscure within a century of the granting of the Charter. Some legal notes of the early fourteenth century, containing three alternative suggestions, have come down to us.1

  (1) The first interpretation discussed, and apparently dismissed, in these notes, was that Magna Carta by this prohibition wished to ensure that no one should serve on a jury (in juratam) unless he had been warned by a timely summons. This far–fetched suggestion is clearly erroneous.

  (2) The next hypothesis raised is that the clause prevented the defendant on a writ of debt (or any similar writ) from winning his case by his unsupported oath, where compurgators ought to have sworn along with him. Exception was, in this view, taken to the bailiff treating favoured defendants in civil pleas with unfair leniency.

  (3) A third opinion is stated and eulogized as a better one, namely, that the Charter prohibited bailiffs from showing undue favour to plaintiffs in civil pleas. The defendant on a writ of debt (or the like) should not, in this interpretation of Magna Carta, be compelled to go to proof at all (that is, to make his “law”) unless the plaintiff had brought “suit” against him (that is, had raised a presumption that the claim was good, by production of preliminary witnesses or by some recognized equivalent).2

  II.

  Modern Interpretations.

  If the chapter is read in a broad sense as prohibiting abuses of a generic kind, it is possible that more than one of its modern exponents may be substantially correct, in spite of apparent contradictions. (1) One theory would read the clause as forbidding magistrates to show undue favour to defendants of certain classes. Crown officials, under John, it is pointed out, favoured Jews against Christians with whom they went to law. The Hebrew defendant in a civil suit “might purge himself by his bare oath on the Pentateuch, whereas in a similar case a Christian, as the law then stood, might be required to wage his law twelve–handed—i.e. with eleven compurgators.”1 Magna Carta, it has been suggested, struck at this preferential treatment of Jewish litigants, trebly hated as aliens, capitalists, and rejectors of Christ. If so, the attempt failed; for in 1275 a certain Hebrew, named Abraham, was allowed “to make his law single–handed on his Book of the Jewish Law” in face of the plaintiff’s protest that this was contrary to the custom of the realm.2

  (2) On the other hand, the clause is sometimes made to prohibit undue favour shown to demandants in civil suits to the prejudice of defendants. A “suit” of witnesses (sectatores) had to be produced in court by the plaintiff before any “trial” (lex) could take place at all. Bailiffs were forbidden to allow, through slackness, favour, or bribery, this rule to be relaxed. This interpretation, which was adopted by the author of the Mirror of Justices, and by the writer of the notes appended to the Year Book already cited, found favour with Chief Justice Holt in 1700.3

  (3) A closely allied explanation treats the clause not as forbidding undue favour towards one party to an action, but rather as preventing bailiffs from favouring themselves. When it suited them, the King’s officials were wont to dispense with the wholesome rule that demanded “suit” or its equivalent before a plea could be entertained. This practice was by no means confined to England, and has been discussed by Dr. Brunner.4

  (4) It is perhaps only another aspect of the same explanation to regard the clause as directed mainly against unfair treatment of accused men in criminal prosecutions. No one ought to be put to his “lex,” in the sense of “ordeal,” on mere grounds of vague suspicion or on the unsupported statement of a royal bailiff. After 1166, at least, the voice of an accusing jury of neighbours was a necessary preliminary, under normal circumstances, before any one could be put to the ordeal in England. Magna Carta confirmed this salutary rule: no bailiff should put any one to the ordeal except after formal indictment, due evidence of which was presented at the diet of proof.1

  III.

  Nature of the grievance.

  As already suggested, it seems not unlikely that two or more of these theories may require to be combined in order to furnish a complete explanation of the clause under discussion. Magna Carta may well have condemned alike the practice of compelling a man to defend a civil action unsupported by suit, and of sending him to the dreaded ordeal without indictment by his neighbours.

  To the criminal aspect of the matter, the Assize of Clarendon (1166) seems to supply the key. Article 4 of that ordinance prescribes the procedure for trying robbers, thieves, and murderers: “the sheriff shall bring them before the justices; and with them they shall bring two law–worthy men of the hundred and of the village where they were apprehended, to bear the record of the county and of the hundred, as to why they had been apprehended; and, there, before the justices they shall make their law.” This “law” is elsewhere in the ordinance clearly identified with ordeal;1 and the purport of the whole was that accused men could not be put to ordeal except in presence of two lawful men who had been present at the indictment and had come before the justices specially to bear witness thereof. In other words, the sheriff’s own report of the indictment “sine testibus fidelibus ad hoc inductis” was not sufficient. The “county” and the “hundred” which had heard the prisoner accused, must send representatives to bear record of the facts.2

  The ordeal was a solemn affair, and every precaution must be taken against its abuse. Sheriffs or other royal bailiffs must be present, as well as members of the accusing jury. Lords of feudal courts, claiming this franchise, required apparently royal warrant for its exercise.3 Practice, however, was loose: the King’s justices would seem to have had a right to put suspects to the ordeal ex officio without the intervention of the accusing jury:4 sheriffs and others, with the Crown’s approval or connivance, exercised a similar privilege. In condemning these practices, Magna Carta would appear to have been, to some extent, modifying previous usage.5 It was not enough thereafter that indictment should precede ordeal; members of the presenting jury, who had made the accusation at the first diet, must accompany the sheriff before the justices at the final diet, there to bear testimony both as to the nature of the crime and as to the fact of the indictment. Before anyone could be put “to his law,” the sheriff’s formal report must be corroborated by the testimony of representative jurors.

  The Charter of 1216 repeated this provision without alteration. In 1217 a change occurred, which was undoubtedly a consequence of the virtual abolition of the ordeal by the Lateran Council in 1215. The framers of Henry’s second reissue found leisure to adjust points of administrative detail. The simple reference to ordeal was inappropriate now that new forms of trial were taking its place. The justices, indeed, scarcely knew what test to substitute for ordeal. They seem sometimes to have resorted to compurgation and sometimes to battle; but the sworn verdict of neighbours was fast occupying the ground left vacant. The Charter of 1217, then, made it clear that the provisions applied in 1215 to ordeal were to be extended to other tests. The “ad legem” of John’s Charter became in the new version “ad legem manifestam nec ad juramentum.” A “manifest law” might well mean either ordeal or any other actual physical test such as “battle,”1 while “juramentum” points to the sworn testimony of the jury, which was slowly taking the place of the discredited ordeal.2

  CHAPTER THIRTY–NINE.

  Nullus liber homo capiatur vel imprisonetur, aut disseisiatur, aut utlagetur, aut exuletur, aut aliquo modo destruatur, nec super eum ibimus, nec super eum mittemus, nisi per legale judicium parium suorum vel per legem terrae.

  No freeman shall be taken or [and] imprisoned or disseised or exiled or in any way destroyed, nor will we go upon him nor send upon him, except by the lawful judgment of his peers or [and] by the law of the land.3

  This chapter occupies a prominent place in law–books, and is of considerable importance, although its value has sometimes been exaggerated.1

  I.

  Its Main Object.

  It has been usual to read it as a guarantee of trial by jury to all Englishmen; as absolutely prohibiting arbitrary commitment; and as solemnly undertaking to dispense to all and sundry an equal justice, full, free, and speedy.2 The traditional interpretation has thus made it, in the widest terms, a promise of law and liberty and good government to every one.3 A careful analysis of the clause, read in connection with its historical genesis, suggests the need for modification of this view. It was in accord with the practical genius of the Charter that it should here direct its energies, not to the enunciation of vague platitudes, but to the reform of a specific abuse. Its object was to prohibit John from resorting to what is sometimes whimsically known in Scotland as “Jeddart justice.”4 It forbade him for the future to place execution before judgment. Three aspects of this prohibition may be emphasized.

  (1)

  Judgment must precede execution.

  In some cases John proceeded, or threatened to proceed, by force of arms against recalcitrants as though assured of their guilt, without waiting for legal procedure.1 Complaint was made of arrests and imprisonments suffered “without judgment” (absque judicio); and these are the very words of the “unknown charter”—“Concedit Rex Johannes quod non capiet homines absque judicio.”2 The Articles of the Barons and Magna Carta expand this phrase. Absque judicio becomes nisi per legale judicium parium suorum vel per legem terrae, thus guarding, not merely against execution without judgment, but also against John’s subtler device for attacking his enemies by a travesty of judicial process. The Charter asks not only for a “judgment,” but for a “judgment of peers” and “according to the law of the land.” Two species of irregularities were condemned by these words; and these will be explained in the two following subsections.

  (2)

  Per judicium parium:

  every judgment must be delivered by the accused man’s “equals.”3 The need for “a judgment of peers” was recognized at an early date in England.4 It was not originally a class privilege of the aristocracy, but a right shared by all grades of free–holders; whatever their rank, they could not be tried by their inferiors.1 In this respect English custom did not differ from the procedure prescribed by feudal usage on the Continent of Europe.2 Two applications of this general principle had, however, special interest for the framers of Magna Carta: the “peers” of a Crown tenant were his fellow Crown tenants, who would normally deliver judgment in the Curia Regis; while the “peers” of the tenant of a mesne lord were the other suitors of the Court Baron of the manor. In either case, judgments were given per pares curiae. John, resorting wholesale to practices used sparingly in earlier reigns, had set these rules at defiance. His political and personal enemies were exiled, or deprived of their estates, by the judgment of a tribunal composed entirely of Crown nominees. Magna Carta promised a return to the ancient practice.

  The varied meanings conveyed by the word “peers” to a medieval mind, together with the nature of judicium parium, may be further illustrated by the special rules applicable to four exceptional classes of individuals:—(a) Jews of England and Normandy enjoyed under John’s Charter of 10th April, 1201, the right to be judged by men of their own race; for them a judicium parium was a judgment of Jews.3 (b) A foreign merchant, by later statutes, obtained the right to a jury of the “half tongue” (de medietate linguae), composed partly of aliens of his own country.4 (c) The peers of a Welshman seem, in some disputes with the Crown, to have been men drawn from the marches: such at least is the plausible interpretation of the phrase “inmarchia per judicium parium suorum,” occurring in later chapters of Magna Carta, and granting to the Welsh redress of wrongful disseisins.1 (d) A Lord Marcher occupied a peculiar position, enjoying rights denied to barons whose estates lay in more settled parts of England. In 1281 the Earl of Gloucester, accused by Edward I. of a breach of allegiance, claimed to be judged, not by the whole body of Crown tenants, but by such as were, like himself, lords marchers.2 These illustrations show that a “trial by peers” had a wider and less stereotyped meaning in the Middle Ages than it has at the present day.3

  (3)

  Per legem terrae.

  No freeman could be punished except “in accordance with the law of the land.” The precise meaning of these often–quoted words ought, perhaps, still to be regarded as an open question. Two meanings are possible: one, narrow and technical; the other, of a loose and popular bearing. The more technical has already been explained.4 Thus interpreted, the words of John’s Charter promised a threefold security to all the freemen of England. Their persons and property were protected from the King’s arbitrary will by the rule that execution should be preceded by a judgment—by a judgment of peers—by a judgment according to the appropriate time–honoured “test,” battle, compurgation, or ordeal.5

  Much weight, however, must be allowed to the arguments of those who contend for interpreting “lex terrae” more in accordance with the vague and somewhat meaningless “law of the land” of popular speech at the present day. The phrase, they argue, was not confined to methods of procedure, but referred to the entire tone and substance of the law.1 Advocates of both theories can point to other parts of Magna Carta where “lex” is used in the sense they claim for it in the present passage; for its purport was, in 1215, ambiguous. In chapters 18, 36, and 38, it refers primarily to procedure, whereas chapters 9, 45, 52, 56, and 59 suggest a broader interpretation.

  Magna Carta is undoubtedly a loosely drawn document, and it is always possible that both meanings were in the minds of the framers. If so, the older, more technical signification was gradually forgotten, and “the law of the land” became the vague and somewhat meaningless phrase of the popular speech of to–day. It was only natural that this change of emphasis should be reflected in subsequent statutes reaffirming, expanding, or explaining Magna Carta. An important series of these, passed in the reigns of Edward III. and Richard II., shows how the per legem terrae of 1215 was read in the fourteenth century as equivalent to “by due process of law,” and how the Great Charter was interpreted as prohibiting the trial of men for their lives and limbs before the King’s Council on mere informal and irresponsible suggestions, sometimes made loosely or from malicious and interested motives.2

  The Act of 1352, for example, after reciting this provision of Magna Carta, insisted on the “indictment or presentment of good and lawful people of the same neighbourhood where such deeds be done.” Coke,1 founding apparently on these fourteenth–century statutes, makes “per legem terrae” equivalent to “by due process of law” and that again to “by indictment or presentment of good and lawful men,” thus finding the grand jury enshrined in Magna Carta. The framers of the Petition of Right2 read the same words as a prohibition, not only of imprisonment “without any cause showed” but also of proceedings under martial law, thus interpreting the aims of King John’s opponents in the light of the misdeeds of King Charles.

  Anachronisms such as these must be avoided. Whatever may have been the exact grievances that bulked most largely in the barons’ minds in 1215, their main contention was obvious. John was no longer to take the law into his own hands: the deliberate judgment of a competent court of law must precede any punitive measures to be taken by the King against freemen of his realm.

  (4)

  The meaning of “vel.”

  The peculiar use of the word “vel” introduced an unfortunate element of ambiguity. No proceedings were to take place “without lawful judgment of peers or by the law of the land”—“or” thus occurring where “and” might naturally be expected. Authorities on medieval Latin are agreed, however, that “vel” is sometimes equivalent to et.3 Comparison with the terms of chapter 52 and with those of the corresponding Article of the Barons places the matter almost beyond doubt. The 25th of the Articles of the Barons had provided that all men disseised by Henry or Richard should “have right without delay by judgment of their peers in the king’s court,” giving no hint of any possible alternative to judicium parium. Chapter 52 of the Charter, in supplementing the present chapter, describes the evils complained of in both chapters as acts of disseisin or outlawry by the King “sine legale judicio parium suorum,” leaving no room for ambiguity.

  II.

  The Scope of the Protection afforded.

  The object of the barons was to protect themselves and their friends against the King, not to set forth a scientific system of jurisprudence: the judicium parium was interposed as a barrier against measures instituted by the King, not against appeals of private individuals. Pleas following upon accusations by the injured party were held in 1471 not to fall within the words of Magna Carta.1 This was a serious limitation; but as against the Crown the scope of the protection afforded by the Great Charter was very wide indeed. Care was taken that the three–fold safeguard should cover every form of abuse likely to be practised by John.2

  (1)

  Capiatur vel imprisonetur.

  These words are followed in the text by a string of other verbs, each of which is introduced by “aut” (“aut disseisiatur,” etc.). The contrast between “vel” and “aut” strengthens the suggestion that “vel” is used in this chapter conjunctively. The meaning would then be that no one could be arrested and imprisoned (that is, no one could be detained as a prisoner) without trial. If “vel,” on the other hand, were to be read disjunctively while the two words it connects were literally interpreted and enforced, orderly government would be at an end.1 Arrest normally precedes judgment, although judgment must precede permanent imprisonment following on arrest.

  (2)

  Aut disseisiatur.

  Avarice was a frequent motive of John’s oppressions: the machinery of justice was an engine for transferring land and money to his treasury. Crown–tenants frequently found their estates appropriated by the Crown as escheats. That this was a grievance to which the barons attached supreme importance is shown in many ways: by the care taken in the 25th Article of the Barons and in chapter 52 of the Charter to provide procedure for restoring “disseised”2 estates, and by the terms of writs issued by John after the treaty at Runnymede, for the immediate restoration of “lands, castles, and franchises from which we have caused any one to be disseised injuste et sine judicio.”3

  Later versions of Magna Carta (beginning with that of 1217) are careful to define the objects to be protected from disseisin: “free tenements, franchises, and free customs.”4 (a) Liberum tenementum. “Free” tenements were freeholds as opposed to the villenagium that passed into the modern copyhold. None of the possessions thus protected were more highly valued by the barons than their feudal strongholds.5 Castles claimed by great lords as their own property are mentioned in many writs of the period, while chapter 52 of Magna Carta gives them a prominent place among the “disseisins” to be restored. (b) “Libertates” covered feudal jurisdictions, immunities, and privileges of various sorts, of too intangible a nature to be appropriately described as “holdings.” (c) Consuetudines had two meanings, a broad general one and a narrower financial one.1 As the Charter of 1217 uses a proprietary pronoun (no freeman shall be disseised of his free customs), it probably refers to such rights as those of levying tolls and tallages. These vested interests were of the nature of monopolies; and Coke, in treating this passage as a text on which to preach the doctrine that monopolies have always been illegal in England, aims wide of his mark. Commenting on the words “de libertatibus,” he declares that generally all monopolies are against this Great Charter, because they are against the liberty and freedom of the subject and against the law of the land.”2 In this error he has been assiduously followed.3

  (3)

  Aut utlagetur, aut exuletur, aut aliquo modo destruatur.

  The declaration of outlawry, which could only be made in the county court, was a necessary preliminary to the forfeiture of the outlaw’s lands and goods. The expedient recommended itself peculiarly to John’s genius; it was his policy to terrify those with whom he had quarrelled, until they fled the country; to summon them three times before the county court, knowing that they dared not face his corrupt and servile officers; and finally to have them formally outlawed and their property seized. Such had been the fate of Robert Fitz Walter and Eustace de Vesci, in the autumn of 1212.4 The outlawed man was outside the pale of society; anyone might slay him at pleasure; in the grim phrase of the day, he bore “a wolf’s head” (caput lupinum), and might be hunted like a noxious beast. A reward of two marks was offered for each outlaw’s head brought to Westminster. This sum was paid in 1196 for the head of William of Elleford.1 The word “exiled” explains itself; and commentators have very properly noted the care taken to widen the scope of the clause by the use of the words “or in any other way destroyed.”2

  (4)

  “Nec super eum ibimus, nec super eum mittemus.”

  These words have been frequently misinterpreted. Read in the light of historical incidents of the immediately preceding years, they leave no room for ambiguity. Their object was to prevent John from substituting violence for legal process: he must never again attack per vim et arma men unjudged and uncondemned.

  The meaning is plain. Yet Coke, following his vicious method of assuming the existence, in Magna Carta, of a warrant for every legal principle of his own day, misled generations of commentators. He maintained that John promised to refrain from raising, in his own courts, actions in which he was personally interested. In elaborating this error, he drew a distinction between the court of King’s Bench, otherwise known as coram rege, because the King was in theory present, and other courts to which he had “sent” a writ delegating authority. Ibimus, he seems to think, applied in the former case; mittemus in the latter. To quote his words, “No man shall be condemned at the King’s suit, either before the King in his bench, where the pleas are coram rege (and so are the words, nec super eum ibimus, to be understood) nor before any other commissioner, or judge whatsoever (and so are the words, nec super eum mittemus, to be understood), but by the judgment of his peers, that is, equals, or according to the law of the land.”3 Coke is in error; it was the use of brute force, not merely one particular form of legal process, which John in these words renounced.

  III.

  What Classes enjoyed the Protection of Judicium Parium?

  No “freeman” was to be molested in any of the ways specified; but how far in the social scale did this description descend? Coke claims villeins as free for purposes of this chapter and of chapter 1, while rejecting them for the purposes of chapter 20.1 Their right to the status of freeman has already been disallowed, and any possible ambiguity as to the present chapter is removed by the words of the revised version of 1217. Chapter 35 of that reissue, with the object of making its meaning clearer, inserts after “disseisiatur” the words (already discussed) “de libero tenemento suo vel libertatibus vel liberis consuetudinibus suis.” Mr. Prothero suggests that this addition implies an advance on the privileges secured in 1215:—“It is worth while to notice that the words in which these liberties are stated in § 35 of the Charter of 1217 are considerably fuller and clearer than the corresponding declaration in the Charter of 1215.”2 It is safer to infer that no change was here intended, but merely the removal of ambiguity. If there is a change, it is rather a contraction than an extension, making it clear that only “free” tenements are protected, and excluding the property of villeins and even villenagium belonging to freemen.3 It was made plain beyond reasonable doubt that no villein should have lot or part in rights hailed by generations of commentators as the national heritage of all Englishmen.4

  IV.

  Reactionary Side of these Provisions.

  To insist that in all cases a judgment of feudal peers, either in King’s Court or in Court Baron, should take the place of a judgment by the King’s professional judges, was to reverse one of the outstanding features of the policy of Henry II. In this respect, the present chapter may be read in connection with chapter 34. The barons, indeed, were not strict logicians, and probably thought it prudent to claim more than they intended to enforce. Yet, a danger lurked in these provisions; the clause was a reactionary one, tending to restore feudal privileges and feudal usage, inimical alike to the Crown and to the growth of popular liberties.1 John promised that feudal justice should be dispensed in his feudal court; and, if this promise had been kept, the result would have been to check the development of the small committees destined to become at no distant date the Courts of King’s Bench and Common Pleas, and to revive the fast–waning jurisdictions of the manorial courts on the one hand and of the commune concilium on the other.2

  V.

  Genesis of this Chapter.

  The interpretation here given is emphasized by comparison with certain earlier documents and events. The reigns of Richard and John furnish abundant examples of the abuses complained of. In 1191, Prince John, as leader of the opposition against his brother’s Chancellor, William Longchamp, concluded a treaty that protected himself and his allies from the very evils which John subsequently committed against his own barons. Longchamp conceded in Richard’s name that bishops and abbots, earls, barons, “vavassors” and free–tenants, should not be disseised of lands and chattels at the will of the King’s justices or ministers, but only by judgment of the King’s court according to the lawful customs and assizes, or by the King’s command.3

  Now, the main subject of the arbitration, ending in this treaty, was the custody of certain castles and estates. After the right to occupy each separate castle in dispute had been carefully determined, provision was then made, in the general words cited above, against this arrangement being disturbed without a judgment of the curia regis. Disseisin, and particularly disseisin of castles, was thus in 1191, as in 1215, a topic of special prominence.

  Early in 1213, the King had attempted to take vengeance upon his opponents in a manner they are not likely to have forgotten, two years later at Runnymede. John, resenting the attitude of the northern barons who had refused alike to accompany him to Poitou and to pay scutage, determined to take the law into his own hands. Without summoning his opponents before a commune concilium, without even a trial and sentence by one of his Benches, he set out with an army to punish them. He had gone as far north as Northampton when, on 28th August, 1213, Stephen Langton persuaded him to defer forcible proceedings until he had obtained a legal sentence in a formal Curia.1 That John again threatened recourse to violent methods may be inferred from the letter patent issued in May, 1215, when both sides were armed for war. He proposed arbitration, and promised a truce until the arbitrators had given their award. The words of this promise are notable; since, not only do they illustrate the procedure of August, 1213, but they agree closely with the clause of Magna Carta under discussion. The words are:—“Know that we have conceded to our barons who are against us, that we shall not take or disseise them or their men, nor shall we go against them per vim vel per arma, unless by the law of our kingdom, or by the judgment of their peers in curia nostra.”2 Magna Carta repeats this concession in more general terms, substituting “freemen” for the “barons” of the writ—an alteration which necessitated the omission from the Charter of the concluding words of the writ, “in curia nostra”; because the peers of ordinary freemen would be found among the freeholders in the Court Baron.1

  VI.

  Later History of “Judgment of Peers.”

  The claim made by the barons at Runnymede was re–asserted on subsequent occasions. The phrase “judicium parium” which, probably in consequence of its use in Magna Carta, sprang into “sudden and extraordinary prominence”2 was destined to have a long and distinguished career. Mr. Harcourt3 thinks that “it was the obscurity of the chapter when reissued, the fact that it might mean so many things, which supplied the congenial soil wherein the principle of trial of peers was able to expand and grow to maturity,” when “the Charter as a whole became the Bible of the constitution.”

  (1)

  The baronial contention.

  The earls and barons, throughout the reign of John’s unhappy son, attempted to place a broad interpretation on the privilege secured to them by this chapter—claiming that all pleas, civil and criminal (such at least as were raised against them at the instance of the Crown) should be tried by their fellow earls and barons, and not by professional judges of lower rank. William de Braose in 1208 had declared himself ready to satisfy John “secundum judicium curiae suae et baronum parium meorum.”4

  (2)

  The royal contention.

  The Crown, on the other hand, while not openly infringing the Charter, tried to narrow its scope. Judges appointed to determine pleas coram rege, no matter what their original status might be, became (so the Crown argued) by such appointment, the peers of any baron or earl. This doctrine was enunciated in 1233 when Peter des Roches denounced Richard, Earl Marshal, as a traitor, in a meeting (colloquium) of crown–tenants held at Gloucester on 14th August of that year. Thereafter, “absque judicio curiae suae et parium suorum,” as Matthew Paris carefully relates,5 Henry treated Earl Richard and his friends as outlaws, and bestowed their lands on his own Poitevin favourites. An attempt was made, at a subsequent meeting held on 9th October, to have these proceedings reversed on the ground, already stated, that they had taken place absque judicio parium suorum.

  The sequel makes clear a point left vague in Matthew’s narrative: there had been a judgment previous to the seizure, but only a judgment of Crown officials coram rege, not of earls and barons in commune concilium. The justiciar defended the action of the government by a striking argument: “there were no peers in England, such as were in the kingdom of France,” and, therefore, John might employ his justices to condemn all ranks of traitors.1 Bishop Peter was here seeking to evade the provisions of Magna Carta without openly defying them, and his line of argument was that the King’s professional judges, however lowly born, were the peers of an English earl or baron.2 Neither the royal view nor the baronial view entirely prevailed. A distinction, however, must be drawn between criminal and civil pleas.

  (3)

  Criminal pleas.

  Offenders of the rank of barons partially made good their claim to a trial by equals; while ordinary freemen failed. A further distinction is thus necessary. (a) Crown tenants. The conflicting views held by King and baronage here resulted in a compromise. In criminal pleas, the Crown was obliged to recede from the high ground taken by Peter des Roches in 1233. Unwillingly, and with an attempt to disguise the fact of surrender by confusing the issue, Bracton in theory and Henry III. in practice admitted part of the barons’ demand, namely, “that in cases of alleged treason and felony, when forfeiture or escheat was involved, they should be judged only by earls and barons.1 Bracton does not admit that the King’s justices were not “peers” of barons; but deduces their disability from the narrower consideration that the King, through his officials, ought not to be judge in his own behalf, since his interests in escheats might bias his judgment. This explains why “privilege of peers” has never extended to misdemeanours, since these involved no forfeiture to the Crown.

  The judicium parium was secured to earls and barons in later reigns by bringing the case before the entire body of earls and barons in commune concilium. What the barons got at first was “judgment” by peers. The actual “trial” was the “battle,” the fellow–peers acting as umpires and enforcing fair play.2 Although new modes of procedure came to prevail, the Court of Peers continued its control, and the judgment of peers gradually passed into the modern trial by peers.3 The subject has been further complicated by the growth of the modern conception of a “peerage,” embracing various grades of “nobles.” In essentials, however, the rights of a baron accused of crime have remained unchanged from the days of Henry III. to our own. The privilege of “trial by peers” still extends to treason and felony, and is still excluded from misdemeanours. When competent, it still takes place before a “Court of Peers”—namely, the House of Lords, if Parliament is in session, and the Court of the Lord High Steward, if not. Under these limitations the privilege of a peer has been for centuries a reality in England for earls and barons, and also for members of those other ranks of the modern “peerage” unknown in 1215—dukes, marquesses, and viscounts.4

  (b) For tenants of a mesne lord no similar privilege has been established, even in a restricted form. In charges of felony, as in those of misdemeanour, all freemen outside the peerage are tried, and have been tried for many centuries past, in the ordinary courts of law. There is no privileged treatment for knight or landed gentleman: private feudal courts never recovered from the wounds inflicted by Henry II. The clauses of Magna Carta which sought to revive them were rendered nugatory by legal fictions or simply by neglect.

  (4)

  Civil pleas.

  Various attempts were made by the barons to make good a claim to judicium parium in civil cases.1 The chief anxiety, perhaps, of the men of 1215 was to save their estates and castles from disseisin consequent on such pleas. Yet the barons’ efforts in this direction were unsuccessful. The House of Lords (except in cases involving the dignity or status of a peer) has never claimed to act as a court of first instance in civil cases to which a peer was a party. Noble and commoner here are on a level. No “peer of the realm” has, for many centuries, asked to plead before a special court of peers in any ordinary non–criminal litigation, whether affecting real or personal estate.

  VII.

  Erroneous Interpretations.

  The tendency to vagueness and exaggeration has already been discussed. Two mistakes of unusual persistence require detailed notice.

  (1)

  The identification of judicium parium with trial by jury.

  The words of the present chapter form the main, if not the sole, ground on which this traditional error has been based.2 The mistake probably owes its origin to a tendency of later generations to explain what was unfamiliar in the Great Charter by what was familiar in their own experience. They found nothing in their own day to correspond with the judicium parium of 1215; and nothing in Magna Carta (unless it were this clause) to correspond with trial by jury: therefore they identified the two.1 Mr. Reeves, Dr. Gneist, and other writers long ago exposed this error, but the most conclusive refutations are those given by Prof. Maitland and Mr. Pike. The arguments of these writers are of a somewhat technical nature;2 but their importance is far–reaching. They seem to be mainly three:—

  (a) The criminal petty jury cannot be intended in this chapter, since it had not been invented in 1215:3 to introduce trial by jury into John’s Great Charter is an unpardonable anachronism. (b) The barons would have repudiated trial by jury if they had known it. They desired (here as in chapter 21) that questions affecting them should be “judged” before fellow barons, and in the normal case, by the duellum. They would have scorned to submit to the verdict of “twelve good men” of their own locality. Their inferiors must have no voice in determining their guilt or innocence. This sentiment was shared by the tenants of mesne lords. (c) Judgment and verdict were essentially different. The function of a petty jury (after it had been invented) was to answer a specific question. The insurgent barons demanded more than this: they asked a decision on the whole case.4 The “peers” who judged presided over the proceedings from beginning to end, appointing the proof they deemed appropriate, sitting as umpires while its fulfilment was essayed, and giving a final decision as to success or failure therein.

  (2)

  Magna Carta and arbitrary commitment.

  A second erroneous theory has still to be discussed. The Petition of Right, as already stated, treats Magna Carta as prohibiting the Crown from making arrests without a warrant showing the cause of detention; and the earlier commentators further interpreted it as making all acts of arbitrary imprisonment by the Crown absolutely illegal. Hallam, for example, declares that “It cannot be too frequently repeated that no power of arbitrary detention has ever been known to our constitution since the charter obtained at Runnymede.”1 Yet every King of England from John Lackland to Charles Stewart claimed and exercised the prerogative of summarily committing to gaol any man suspected of evil designs against Crown or Commonwealth. Even the famous protest of the judges of Queen Elizabeth, asserting the existence of legal limits to the royal prerogative of commitment, proves the lawfulness of the general practice to which it makes exceptions. Such rights inherent in the Crown were never seriously challenged until the struggle between Charles I. and his parliaments had fairly begun. Then only was it suggested that Magna Carta was intended to prohibit arbitrary commitments at the command of the Crown. Such was the argument deliberately put forth in 1627 during the proceedings known sometimes as Darnell’s case and sometimes as the case of the Five Knights. Health, the Attorney–General, easily repelled this contention: “the law hath ever allowed this latitude to the King, or his privy council, which are his representative body, in extraordinary cases to restrain the persons of such freemen as for reasons of state they find necessary for a time, without for this present expressing the causes thereof.”2 The parliamentary leaders, however, too grimly in earnest to be deterred by logic, were far from abandoning their error because Heath had exposed it. They embodied it, on the contrary, in the Petition of Right, which condemned the Crown’s practice of imprisoning political offenders “without any cause showed” (other than per speciale mandatumregis), as contrary to the tenor of Magna Carta—an effective contention as a political expedient, but unsound in law.

  CHAPTER FORTY.

  Nulli vendemus, nulli negabimus, aut differemus, rectum aut justiciam.

  To no one will we sell, to no one will we refuse or delay, right or justice.

  This chapter, like the preceding, has had much read into it that would have astonished its framers: application of modern standards to ancient practice has resulted in complete misapprehension. The sums customarily received by John, as by his predecessors, at every stage of legal procedure, were not always the wages of deliberate injustice. Many such payments were not bribes to an unjust judge, but merely expedients for hastening the law’s delays, or to ensure a fair hearing for a good plea, or to obtain some unusual but not unfair expedient, such as a peculiarly potent writ or the hearing of a case in the exchequer, which would ordinarily have been tried elsewhere. If the royal courts charged higher rates than the feudal courts, they supplied a better article. When Henry of Anjou threw open the doors of his court to all freemen who chose to pay for writs, he found a ready market. These writs differed widely in price. Some from an early date were issued whenever applied for (writs de cursu) and at a fixed sum: others were granted only as marks of favour or after a bargain had been struck. Specially quick or cogent procedure had to be specially paid for.

  It would thus appear that the system of John was not open to the unqualified and violent condemnation which it usually receives. Hallam’s language is too sweeping when he says: “A law which enacts that justice shall neither be sold, denied, nor delayed, stamps with infamy that government under which it had become necessary.”1 In the twentieth century, as in the thirteenth, justice cannot be had for nothing; and the would–be litigant with a good claim but a slender purse will be well advised to acquiesce in a small loss rather than incur certainty of losing as much again in extra–judicial outlays, and risk of losing many times more in the judicial expenses of a protracted litigation. The lack of “free justice” is a reproach which the men of to–day cannot with good grace fling at the administration of John.

  As the evils complained of are often exaggerated, so also are the reforms promised by this chapter of Magna Carta. John is usually held to have agreed to the abolition of payments of every sort for judicial writs and other fees of court. Justice, unlike other valuable commodities, was, it would appear, to be obtained for nothing—an ideal never yet attained in any civilized community.

  Those who framed this chapter desired to secure a more reasonable measure of reform: abuses of the system were to be redressed.1 Unfortunately, it was not easy to define abuses—to determine where legitimate payments stopped and illegitimate ones began. Prohibitive prices ought not to be charged for writs de cursu; but was the Crown to have no right to issue writs of grace on its own terms? Plaintiffs who had any special reason for haste frequently paid to have their suits heard quickly: was that an abuse?2

  Whatever the intention may have been, the practical effect of the clause was not to secure the abolition of the sale of writs. The practice under Henry III. has been described by our highest authority:—“Apparently there were some writs which could be had for nothing; for others a mark or a half–mark would be charged, while, at least during Henry’s early years, there were others which were only to be had at high prices. We may find creditors promising the King a quarter or a third of the debts that they hope to recover. Some distinction seems to have been taken between necessaries and luxuries. A royal writ was a necessary for one who was claiming freehold; it was a luxury for the creditor exacting a debt, for the local courts were open to him and he could proceed there without writ. Elaborate glosses overlaid the King’s promise that he would sell justice to none, for a line between the price of justice and those mere court fees, which are demanded even in our own day, is not easily drawn. That the poor should have their writs for nothing, was an accepted maxim.”1

  Probably the practice before and after 1215 showed few material differences. Some of the more glaring abuses were checked: that was all.2 Parliament in subsequent reigns had frequently to petition against the sale of justice in alleged breach of Magna Carta.3 The King usually returned a politic answer, but never surrendered his right to exact large sums for writs of grace. Richard II., for example, replied: “Our lord the King does not intend to divest himself of so great an advantage, which has been continually in use in Chancery as well before as after the making of the said charter, in the time of all his noble progenitors who have been kings of England.”4

  It is evident that Magna Carta did not put down the practice of charging heavy fees for writs. Yet this chapter, although so frequently misunderstood and exaggerated, is still of considerable importance. It marks, for one thing, a stage in the process by which the King’s courts outdistanced all rivals. In certain provinces, at least, royal justice was left in undisputed possession. In these the grievance was not that there was too much royal justice, but that it was sometimes delayed or denied. Here, then, even in the moment of John’s bitter humiliation we find evidence of the triumph of the policy inaugurated by his father.

  It is not to such considerations, however, that this chapter owes the prominence usually given to it in legal treatises; but rather to the fact that it has been interpreted as a universal guarantee of impartial justice to high and low; and because, when so interpreted, it has become in the hands of patriots in many ages a powerful weapon in the cause of constitutional freedom. Viewing it in this light, Coke throws aside his crabbed learning and concludes with what is rather a rhapsody than a lawyer’s commentary: “as the gold–finer will not out of the dust, threads, or shreds of gold, let pass the least crumb, in respect of the excellency of the metal; so ought not the learned reader to pass any syllable of this law, in respect of the excellency of the matter.”1

  CHAPTER FORTY–ONE.

  Omnes mercatores habeant salvum et securum exire de Anglia, et venire in Angliam, et morari et ire per Angliam, tam per terram quam per aquam, ad emendum et vendendum, sine omnibus malis toltis, per antiquas et rectas consuetudines, preterquam in tempore gwerre, et si sint de terra contra nos gwerrina; et si tales inveniantur in terra nostra in principio gwerre, attachientur sine dampno corporum et rerum, donec sciatur a nobis vel capitali justiciario nostro quomodo mercatores terre nostre tractentur, qui tunc invenientur in terra contra nos gwerrina; et si nostri salvi sint ibi, alii salvi sint in terra nostra.

  All merchants shall have safe and secure exit from England, and entry to England, with the right to tarry there and to move about as well by land as by water, for buying and selling by the ancient and right customs, quit from all evil tolls, except (in time of war) such merchants as are of the land at war with us. And if such are found in our land at the beginning of the war, they shall be detained, without injury to their bodies or goods, until information be received by us, or by our chief justiciar, how the merchants of our land found in the land at war with us are treated; and if our men are safe there, the others shall be safe in our land.

  Merchants and merchandise had suffered from John’s greed. The control of commerce was reserved for the King’s personal supervision: no binding rule of law or traditional usage trammelled him in his dealings with foreign merchants, who were dependent on royal favour, not on the law of the land, for the privilege of trading and even for personal safety. No alien could enter England or leave it, nor take up his abode in any town, nor move from place to place, nor buy and sell, without paying heavy tolls to the King. This royal prerogative proved a profitable one.1

  John increased the frequency and amount of such exactions, to the detriment alike of foreign traders and their customers. Magna Carta, therefore, sought to restrain this branch of prerogative, forbidding him to exact excessive tolls for removing obstacles of his own creating. This benefited merchants by securing to them certain privileges, which may perhaps be analysed into three: safe–conduct, that is protection of their persons and goods from violence; liberty to buy and sell in time of peace; and a confirmation of the ancient stereotyped rates of “customs.”

  So far, the general purport of the enactment is undoubted; but discussions have arisen on several important points, such as the nationality of the traders in whose favour it was conceived; the exact nature of the “evil tolls” abolished; the motives for the rules enforced; and the relations between denizens and foreign traders.

  I.

  Magna Carta favours alien Merchants.

  The better opinion would seem to be that this chapter applied to foreign traders from friendly states. Attempts have been made, indeed, to argue that denizens were to benefit equally with strangers: such was the purport of a learned discourse delivered in the House of Commons by William Hakewill, Barrister of Lincoln’s Inn, in 1610, during the debate on John Bate’s case.1 His main argument was that certain statutes of Edward III.,2 in seeking to confirm and expand the provisions of Magna Carta, did clearly embrace denizens as well as aliens. Yet the framers of an Act in the fourteenth century may well have misunderstood the tenor of John’s Charter, or may have deliberately altered it.

  Intrinsic and extrinsic evidences combine to create a strong presumption that here Magna Carta referred chiefly, perhaps exclusively, to merchants of foreign lands.3 Denizens trading in England did not require those “safe conducts” which form the chief concession in this chapter. Their rights of buying and selling were already protected in another way; for independent traders were unknown, all merchants being banded into guilds in the various towns whose privileges (“omnes libertates et liberas consuetudines”) were guaranteed in a previous part of the Great Charter.4 Alien merchants, however, required protection, since they had, strictly speaking, no status in the eye of the law, and held their privileges from the King.1 The policy of Henry II. and his sons was to favour merchant strangers, but to exact in return the highest dues possible, restrained only by an enlightened self–interest which stopped short at the point where trade would languish by becoming unprofitable. The exchequer and patent rolls afford illustrations of how individual traders or families made private bargains with the Crown for trading privileges. In 1181, Henry obtained two falcons for granting leave to export corn to Norway. In 1197, a certain Hugo Oisel owed 400 marks for licence to trade in England and Richard’s other lands, in time of war as well as peace.2

  At the commencement of John’s reign, traders resident in England collectively obtained confirmation of their privileges. That King issued letters patent to the Mayor of London, to the magistrates of many smaller towns, and to the sheriffs of the southern counties of England, directing them, in terms closely resembling those of Magna Carta, to allow to all merchants, of whatsoever land, safe coming and going, with their wares.3

  These arrangements were temporary. John did not intend that any general grant should prevent him from exacting further payments from individuals as occasion offered. For example, Nicolas the Dane promised a hawk each time he entered England, that he might come and go and trade “free of all customs which pertain to the King.”4 Such customary dues, at the usual rates, were not abolished by the Charter, but only the arbitrary additional payments for which there was no warrant.

  On this point, then, Magna Carta contained no innovations, and the same is true of its provision for reprisals against traders from lands where English merchants were ill–treated. On the outbreak of war, the Charter directs that merchants of the enemy’s nation should be detained until the King ascertained how his own subjects were treated in the enemy’s territory. This is declaratory of previous practice, of which an illustration may be found in the terms of a writ of August, 1214, which directed the bailiffs of Southampton to detain all Flemings and their goods pending further instructions.1 There were thus precedents for those rules for foreign traders, which have aroused the admiration of Montesquieu.2

  II.

  Customs and Tolls.

  “Consuetudines” is in this passage used in its narrower, financial sense, relating to those duties on imports and exports still called “customs” at the present day, and to various local dues as well. “Tolls,” when not stigmatized as “evil tolls” would seem to be practically synonymous with these customs. The Crown had at first taken whatever it thought fit. Practice soon established rules as to the normal rates considered fair in various circumstances. When a ship–load of foreign wine arrived, the normal toll was “one cask from a cargo of ten up to twenty casks, and two casks from a cargo of twenty or more.”3 From other merchandise a share was claimed of a fifteenth or sometimes a tenth of the whole. Such tolls, if originally a species of ransom, had in John’s day come to be regarded as a legitimate branch of royal revenue. Any arbitrary increase, however, was condemned by public opinion, and ultimately by Magna Carta as a “mala tolta.”

  The King was not the only one who exacted tolls. Every town in England, and many feudal magnates, by prescriptive usage or royal grant, levied payments on goods bought or sold at fairs and markets, or that entered the city gates, or were unloaded at river wharves, or traversed certain roads. The ambition of every borough was to increase its own franchises at the expense of its neighbours. The free customs of Bristol, for example, meant not only that the men of that city should have freedom from tolls inflicted by others, but that they should have the right to inflict tolls upon those others. A whole network of such customs and restrictions impeded the free exchange of commodities in every part of England. Magna Carta had no intention of sweeping these away, so far as they were “just and ancient”; and it is probable that the prohibition against arbitrary increase of tolls was directed only against the Crown.

  III.

  The Motives prompting these Provisions.

  It has been not unusual to credit the framers of Magna Carta with a policy of quite a modern flavour; they are made free–traders and credited with a knowledge of economic principles far in advance of their contemporaries. This is a misconception: Englishmen in the thirteenth century had formulated no far–reaching theories of the rights of the consumer, or the policy of the open door. The home traders were not consenting parties to this chapter, and would have bitterly resented any attempt to place foreigners on an equal footing with the protected guilds of the English boroughs. The barons acted on their own initiative and from purely selfish motives. Rich nobles, lay and ecclesiastic, desired that nothing should prevent the foreign merchants from importing wines and rich apparel that England could not produce. John, indeed, as a consumer of continental luxuries, partially shared their views, but his selfish policy threatened to strangle foreign trade by increasing the burdens attached to it, until it ceased to be remunerative. The barons, therefore, in their own interests, not in those of foreign merchants, still less in those of native traders, demanded that the customs duties should remain at their old fixed rates. In adopting this attitude, they showed their selfish indifference to the equally selfish claims of English traders, who desired a monopoly for themselves. Every favour shown to foreign merchants was an injury done to the guilds of the chartered boroughs. This chapter thus shows a lack of gratitude on the barons’ part for the great service rendered by their allies, the citizens of London. John, on the other hand, would have little reluctance in punishing the men of his capital who, with the ink scarce dry on their new municipal charter, had not scrupled to desert his cause.1 It must have been with grim pleasure that, on 21st July, 1215, in strict conformity with the tenor of Magna Carta, he addressed a writ to King Philip inviting reprisals upon London merchants in France in certain contingencies.2

  In the reissue of 1216 the privileges conferred on merchant strangers were confined to such as had not been “publicly prohibited beforehand.” This was a material alteration, the effect of which was to restore to the King full discretionary authority over foreign trade, since he had only to issue a general proclamation, and then to accept fines for granting exemption from its operation.

  IV.

  English Boroughs and Merchant Strangers.

  The quarrel between home and alien traders underwent many vicissitudes during succeeding centuries, the Crown taking now one side, and now the other, as its pecuniary interests happened to dictate for the moment. No glimmerings of the doctrine of free trade can be traced: the merchants of each town, banded in their guilds, directed their endeavours towards securing rights of exclusive trading for themselves. It is true that the men of London were scarcely more jealous of the citizens of Rouen or Paris than of those of York or Lincoln; their ambition was to inflict restrictions upon all rivals alike.

  English traders were not yet merchant shippers and therefore did not prevent foreigners from undertaking the carrying trade between England and the Continent. Flanders bought English wool and sent back woven fabrics to rival which English looms could not aspire. Londoners, however, resold these goods at a profit and resented any attempt of aliens to encroach on their retail monopoly by coming into touch with English magnates or other consumers. Foreigners must be kept “at the wharf–head.”

  The Liber Custumarum, a compilation of the early thirteenth century, lays down minute rules for the regulation of foreign traders in London. The merchant stranger had to take up his abode in the house of a citizen. He was prohibited from purchasing articles in process of manufacture. He could buy only from those who had the freedom of the city, and could not re–sell within the borough walls. He was allowed to sell only to burgesses of London, except on three specified days of the week. Such were a few of the rules which the Londoners enforced on all traders within their gates. The King, however, intermittently encouraged foreigners. Under the fostering protection of Henry III., Lombards and Provençals settled in considerable numbers in the capital; and, with connivance of the King, infringed these rules. When the Londoners complained, Henry refused relief. Their loyalty thus shaken, they sided with the King’s opponents in the Barons’ War, and when the royalist cause triumphed at Evesham, the Capital shared in the punishment meted out to the Crown’s opponents. Prince Edward in 1266 was nominated protector of foreign merchants. At the accession of that Prince, London bought itself back into favour, and an attempt was made to define what tolls might be taken by the Crown. In 1275, in Edward’s first parliament, a tariff was fixed by “the prelates, magnates, and communities at the request of the merchants” on most of what then formed the staple exports of England: half a mark on every sack of wool, half a mark on every three hundred wool–fells (that is untanned skins with the fleeces on), and one mark on every load of leather.

  These were subsequently called magna et antiqua custuma. The settlement of 1275 was by no means final. New disputes arose; and in 1285 Edward I. confiscated the liberties of London, suppressed what he characterized as abuses, and favoured the aliens. In 1298 the franchises of the capital were restored, and very soon the abuses complained of began anew. Edward retorted in 1303 by a special ordinance known as the Carta Mercatoria in favour of their foreign rivals, by the terms of which the provisions of the present chapter of Magna Carta became at last a reality. This new charter, which was the result of a bargain struck between the Crown and the alien traders, conferred various privileges and exemptions in return for an increase of fifty per cent. of duty, known henceforth as parva et nova custuma. Edward I. made several attempts to exact the higher rates from denizens as well as strangers; but in this he failed. In 1309 a Petition of Parliament was presented against the exaction of the “new customs,” declaring them to be in contravention of Magna Carta.

  In 1311 a temporary community of economic and political interests resulted in an alliance between the English merchants and the English baronage, whose combined efforts forced the “Ordinances” upon Edward II., compelling him for a time to reverse his father’s policy of favouring foreigners at the expense of native merchants. It is unnecessary to follow the checkered fortunes of these Ordinances, frequently enforced and as frequently abolished, according as the fortunes of the barons or of Edward II. were for the moment in the ascendant. During the reign of Edward III. the deep–rooted quarrel between home and alien merchants continued; and many changes of policy were adopted by the Crown. The statute of 1328, which abolished the “staples beyond the sea and on this side,” provided “that all merchant strangers and privy may go and come with their merchandises into England, after the tenor of the Great Charter.”1 Seven years later, this was confirmed by an act which placed strangers and denizens on an exact equality in all branches of trade, both wholesale and retail, under the express declaration that no privileged rights of chartered boroughs should be allowed to interfere with its enforcement.1 While this statute merely repeated and applied the general doctrine of the present chapter of Magna Carta, it directly infringed the provisions of chapter 13.2 Such sweeping regulations were in advance of their age and could not be carried out without revolutionizing the medieval scheme of trade and commerce, which depended on merchant guilds, town charters and local monopolies. The influence of the English boroughs and their political allies was strong enough to make the strict enforcement of such legislation impossible; and later statutes, bowing to the inevitable, restored the privileges of the boroughs, while continuing to enunciate an empty general doctrine of free trade to foreigners.3 The English boroughs, to which Parliament in the reign of Richard II. thus restored their franchises and monopolies, were able effectually to exclude foreign competition, in certain trades at least, from within their walls, for four centuries, until the Statute of 1835 ushered in the modern era of free trade.4

  CHAPTER FORTY–TWO.

  Liceat unicuique de cetero exire de regno nostro, et redire, salvo et secure, per terram et per aquam, salva fide nostra, nisi tempore gwerre per aliquod breve tempus, propter communem utilitatem regni, exceptis imprisonatis et utlagatis secundum legem regni, et gente de terra contra nos gwerrina, et mercatoribus de quibus fiat sicut predictum est.

  It shall be lawful in future for any one (excepting always those imprisoned or outlawed in accordance with the law of the kingdom, and natives of any country at war with us, and merchants, who shall be treated as is above provided) to leave our kingdom and to return, safe and secure by land and water, except for a short period in time of war, on grounds of public policy—reserving always the allegiance due to us.

  The terms of this permission for free intercourse between England and foreign lands are peculiarly wide, the exceptions being reasonable and necessary. Prisoners obviously could not leave our shores, nor outlaws return to them: the case of merchants from hostile states had already been provided for in a liberal spirit; while the temporary restriction of intercourse with the enemy on the outbreak of hostilities was eminently reasonable.

  Although the provision is thus general in its scope, it was peculiarly welcome to the clergy, as enabling them without a royal permit to proceed to Rome, there to prosecute their appeals or press their claims for preferment. Thus considered, it contains a virtual repeal of article 4 of the Constitutions of Clarendon of 1166, which forbade archbishops, bishops, and parsons (personæ) of the kingdom to leave England without the King’s licence. The grant of freedom of intercourse in 1215 opened a door for the Church to encroach on the royal prerogative; and for that reason it was omitted from the reissue of 1216, never to be replaced. A boon was thus withdrawn from all classes from fear that it might be abused by the ecclesiastics. Henry III. took advantage of the omission in order to restrain the movements of clergy and laity alike. Those who left the country without licence had frequently to pay fines.1

  The stringency with which the prerogative was at first enforced tended afterwards to relax. The King preserved the right, but only exercised it by means of proclamations over particular classes or on special occasions, the inference being that all not actually prohibited were free to come and go as they pleased. Thus, in 1352 Edward III. had it proclaimed throughout every county of England that no earl, baron, knight, man of religion, archer, or labourer, should depart the realm under pain of arrest and imprisonment.1 The fact that Edward found it necessary to issue such an ordinance, autocratic and abhorrent to modern ideals as its terms now appear, points to a decrease of royal power, as compared with that exercised by Henry II., John, or Henry III. A further curtailment of prerogative may be inferred from the terms of a Statute of Richard II.,2 which, in confirming the King’s power to prohibit free egress from England, does so, subject to wide exceptions. Under its provisions the Crown might prohibit the embarkation of all manner of people, as well clerks as others, under pain of forfeiture of all their goods, “except only the lords and other great men of the realm, and true and notable merchants, and the King’s soldiers,” who were apparently in 1381 free to leave without the King’s licence, although earls and barons had been prohibited in 1352. Even if this statute confers on magnates, merchants, and soldiers, freedom to go abroad without royal licence (which is doubtful), the powers of veto reserved to the Crown were still, to modern ideas, excessive. The Act remained in force until 1606, when it was repealed under somewhat peculiar circumstances. After the union of the Crowns, King James, anxious to draw the bond closer, persuaded his first English parliament to abrogate a number of old laws inimical to Scottish interests. It was in this connection that the Act of Richard II. was declared (in words, however, not limited to Scotland) to be “from henceforth utterly repealed.”3 Coke stoutly maintains that this repeal left intact the Crown’s ancient prerogative, not founded upon statute but on the common law, of which power the already–cited Proclamation of Edward III. had been merely an emanation. He seems almost, therefore, to argue that the King in the seventeenth century retained authority which extended precisely over those classes mentioned in the ordinance of 1352.

  In any view, this prerogative has never been completely abolished: yet the onus has been shifted. While, under John or Henry III., the subject required, before embarking, to obtain a licence from the Crown, under later Kings he was free to leave until actually prohibited by a royal writ. Coke1 speaks of the form originally used for this purpose, a form so ancient in his day as to be already obsolete, known as Breve de securitate invenienda quod se non divertet ad partes externas sine licentia regis. This was superseded by the simpler writ Ne exeat regno which is still in use.2 The sphere of this writ was restricted and altered: it ceased to be an engine of royal tyranny and was never issued except as part of the process of a litigation pending in the Court of Chancery. Regarded with suspicion by the courts of common law, it was for centuries the special instrument which prevented parties to a suit in equity from withdrawing to foreign lands. Some uncertainty exists as to the proper province of these writs since the Judicature Acts have merged the Court of Chancery in the High Court of Justice.3 The perfect freedom to leave the shores of England and return at pleasure, accorded by John’s Magna Carta, but immediately withdrawn as impracticable for that age, has thus in the course of centuries been fully realized.4

  Two phrases, occurring in this chapter, call for comment: (1) Salva fide nostra. This short–lived clause of Magna Carta very properly provided that mere absence from England should absolve no one from allegiance to his King. The old doctrine of nationality was stringent: nemo potest exuere patriam. Everyone born in the land owed allegiance to its King—and this tie continued unbroken until severed by death. A breach of allegiance, which was consequent thus on the mere accident of birth, might expose the offender to the inhuman horrors inflicted upon traitors.

  A series of statutes, culminating in the Naturalization Act of 1870, have entirely abrogated this ancient doctrine. A native of Great Britain is now free to become the subject of any foreign state; and the mere fact of his doing so, deliberately and with all necessary formalities, denudes him of his British nationality, severs the tie of allegiance, and frees him from the operation of the law of treason. The words “salva fide nostra” no longer apply.

  (2) Propter communem utilitatem regni. The Charter, in placing restriction on the right of free egress in time of war, declared that such restriction was to be imposed for the common good of the kingdom, thereby enunciating what is regarded as a modern doctrine: John was to take action, not for his own selfish ends, but only pro bono publico.

  CHAPTER FORTY–THREE.

  Si quis tenuerit de aliqua eskaeta, sicut de honore Wallingfordie, Notingeham, Bolonie, Lancastrie vel de aliis eskaetis, que sunt in manu nostra, et sunt baronie, et obierit, heres ejus non det aliud relevium, nec faciat nobis aliud servicium quam faceret baroni si baronia illa esset in manu baronis; et nos eodem modo eam tenebimus quo baro eam tenuit.

  If anyone holding of some escheat (such as the honour of Wallingford, Nottingham, Boulogne, Lancaster, or of other escheats which are in our hands and are baronies) shall die, his heir shall give no other relief, and perform no other service to us than he would have done to the baron, if that barony had been in the baron’s hand; and we shall hold it in the same manner in which the baron held it.

  This chapter reaffirms a distinction recognized by Henry II. but ignored by John. Crown–tenants were divided into two classes, according as their holdings had been originally granted by the Crown, or by some mesne lord whose barony had subsequently escheated. The latter class received preferential treatment from Henry II. for reasons to be immediately explained. A mesne lord had no right to appropriate the holdings of sub–tenants of a tenant who had incurred escheat; but the Crown did not submit to this just restriction. The King treated all sub–tenancies as wiped out by the mere fact that their lord’s fief had escheated to the Crown.

  Henry II. mitigated in practice the full severity of this theory, confirming as of grace, or from motives of policy, or in return for money, claims which he refused to admit as matter of right. The tenants of escheated baronies were accepted as tenants in capite of the Crown.1 Not only so; but Henry did not allow them to be prejudicially affected by the change. The King would only take from them those services and feudal dues which they had been wont to render to the lord of the barony previous to its escheat. This just and lenient policy explains the origin of the division of royal tenants into two classes; tenants who held of Henry ut de corona, and tenants who held of him ut de escaeta, ut de honore, or ut de baronia (phrases used synonymously).2 In respect of such obligations as were heavier for ordinary Crown tenants than for tenants of mesne lords, holders of Crown fiefs ut de escaeta were placed on the more favoured footing. Two illustrations may be given. While tenants ut de corona under Henry had to pay large and arbitrary reliefs, those ut de escaeta paid no more than 100s. per knight’s fee.3 Nor was their obligation of “suit” to be increased: “the tenants of any honour or manor which had come by escheat to the Crown, were not suitors of the Curia Regis, but of the court of the honour or manor which had so escheated.”1

  John ignored this distinction, extending to tenants ut de escaeta the more stringent rules applicable to tenants ut de corona. Magna Carta reaffirmed the distinction; and, not content with enunciating a general principle, made two particular applications of it: neither reliefs nor services of former tenants of baronies were to be augmented by reason of the fact that such baronies had escheated to the Crown.2 Henry III.’s Charter of 1217 emphasized a third application of the general rule, declaring that he would not, by reason of an escheated barony, claim escheat or custody over the sub–tenants of that barony.3 To understand this concession, it must be remembered that under Henry III. sub–tenants of baronies were still liable to have their titles reduced through the escheat of their lord; while sub–tenants of those who were themselves sub–tenants were not exposed to a similar mischance. Here also, the position of Crown fiefs ut de escaeta was to be assimilated to that of fiefs of mesne lords, and differentiated from that of Crown fiefs ut de corona. Sub–tenancies of escheated baronies were not to be wiped out, but to subsist, and the Crown (or its grantee) would take the escheat, subject to all liabilities to, and rights of, sub–tenants.

  The Crown seems not to have strictly observed this rule in practice. Article 12 of the Petition of the Barons in 12581 complained that Henry had granted charters conferring rights not his to give (aliena jura), but which he claimed as escheats. An act of the first year of Edward III. narrated how the Crown had confiscated, from purchasers, tenements held of the Crown “as of honours,” thus treating them “as though they had been holden in chief of the King, as of the Crown.” Redress was promised by the statute:2 but irregularities continued throughout the earlier Tudor reigns; and the first Parliament of Edward VI. passed an act to protect purchasers of lands appertaining to honours escheated to the Crown.3

  CHAPTER FORTY–FOUR.

  Homines qui manent extra forestam non veniant de cetero coram justiciariis nostris de foresta per communes summoniciones, nisi sint in placito, vel plegii alicujus vel aliquorum, qui attachiati sint pro foresta.

  Men who dwell without the forest need not henceforth come before our justiciars of the forest upon a general summons, except those who are impleaded, or who have become sureties for any person or persons attached for forest offences.

  These provisions were intended to redress one of many abuses connected with the oppressive forest laws.

  I.

  The Royal Forests.

  The word “forest” had acquired an exact technical meaning, and was applied to certain wide districts, scattered irregularly throughout England, reserved to the Crown for purposes of sport. Here the wild boar and deer of various species found shelter, in which they were protected by the severe regulations of the “Forest Law.” It was the prevalence of this code which marked off the districts known as royal forests from all that lay extra forestam; and this made an accurate definition possible. A “forest” was a district where this law prevailed to the exclusion of the common law which ruled outside. The forests with their inhabitants had been omitted from the process by which the rest of England had been assimilated under a uniform lex terrae: this was the root from which many evils grew.

  From this definition of a forest as a legal, not a physical, entity, it follows that the word is far from synonymous with terms such as “wood” or “covert,” implying merely natural characteristics. A forest was not necessarily covered with trees throughout the whole or even the greater part of its extent. Miles of moorland and heath and undulating downs might be included, and even fertile valleys, with ploughed fields and villages nestling among them. The same forest, indeed, might contain many woods, some of them on royal demesne and some the property of private owners. Within the imaginary line the King’s power was supreme, and he used it frankly for the preservation of beasts of the chase. The men who happened to dwell there were subject to a law, in the expressive words of Dr. Stubbs, “cruel to man and beast.” If accused of forest offences, they had no protection from the common law of England any more than from the law of a foreign land. It was something, however, that even in these high places of prerogative, customary rules grew up, obtained authoritative recognition, and hardened into laws which set some limits to royal caprice. Before John’s time the forest code, as set forth in the Assize of Woodstock, had taken its place as a definite system of law, distinct from common law and canon law alike.1

  II.

  Origin of the Forests.

  Before the Norman Conquest the Kings of England do not seem to have laid claim to any exclusive prerogative in this respect. The only ordinance of Canute on the subject, admitted to be authentic, enacted merely that every man should have his own hunting, while the King should have his.1 The rights of the Crown, however, were strengthened by the events of 1066, and by the hardening of feudal theory which followed. All unoccupied waste lands became royal property; and these were the natural resorts of the larger sorts of game. The King established a claim to an exclusive right to hunt the more important species of animals ferae naturae, known as “beasts of the forest”—embracing the red deer (harts and hinds), the fallow deer (bucks and does), the roe deer of both sexes, and the wild boar, with, exceptionally in one forest, the ordinary hare.2 Henry I. formulated the forest law, and it was probably due to him that “forest” acquired its technical meaning. With the special meaning came the express claim to a monopoly of hunting, together with supreme and exclusive jurisdiction. The disorders of Stephen’s reign lowered the Crown’s authority, and Henry II. found the forests much curtailed. He had no intention to acquiesce in this, but it was not till 1184 that he attempted, by the Assize of Woodstock, to formulate the rules of the forest law. In this sphere, as in so many others, Henry II. built on foundations laid by his grandfather. John’s attitude to the forest laws was not consistent. The monk of Barnwall relates how, in 1212, John allowed some relaxation in the severity of the forest code.3 More characteristic of his normal attitude was the order issued on 28th June, 1209, that hedges should be burned and ditches levelled, so that, while men starved, the beasts might fatten upon the crops and fruits.4

  III.

  Forest officials.

  The local magistrates who administered the rest of England were excluded from the forests by a separate set of officials. At the head of this special organization was placed, in early times, the Forest Justiciar (called the chief forester in chapter 16 of the Carta de Foresta), whose duties were divided in the year 1238, after which there were two provinces separated by the river Trent.1 His appointment was permanent, and his duties, which continued between the eyres, were administrative rather than judicial. He had discretionary authority to release trespassers imprisoned for offences against the forest law.2 Under his general supervision each forest, or group of forests, was governed by a separate warden, aided by a number of petty officials known as foresters, whose duties were analogous to those of a modern gamekeeper, but with magisterial powers in addition. Wardens were of two classes—“the one appointed by letters patent under the great seal, holding office during the King’s pleasure; the other hereditary wardens.”3 There was situated in or near each forest of any extent a royal residence which, in the Middle Ages, naturally took the form of a stronghold. It was convenient that the office of warden should be combined with that of constable of this neighbouring castle.4 “The wardens were the executive officers of the King in his forests. Writs relating to the administration of forest business, as well as to the delivery of presents of venison and wood, were in general addressed to them.”5

  The office was one of authority and profit, usually paid in kind rather than by a salary. The warden often held a fief by a tenure connected with the service, and enjoyed rights and perquisites always of a valuable nature, though varying with each forest. These were sufficient to provide him with an income adequate to his position, and to allow him to find the wages of his under–keepers, who ought thus to have been paid officials. Such was the theory; as matter of fact, the foresters, instead of receiving wages, paid large sums to the warden, and recouped themselves by extortions from the dwellers in their bailiwicks.1 These unpaid foresters were expressively said to “live upon the country.” They may be classified in various ways, as, into riding and walking foresters, or into foresters nominated by the wardens, and foresters in fee. These last had vested interests which the Forest Charter was careful to respect; as, where chapter 14 reserved to them the right to take “chiminage,” or way–leave, denied to other types of foresters. They might still enjoy, but not abuse, the “vested rights” reserved to them.2

  With these professional gamekeepers there co–operated, in later times at least, several groups of unpaid magistrates appointed from the knights and freeholders of the district. Of these honorary officials, whose original function was to supply supplementary machinery for protecting the rights of the Crown, but whose position as county gentleman, with a stake in the district, led them also to act to some extent as arbitrators between the King and outside parties, there were three recognized kinds. (a) Towards the close of the twelfth century officers known as verderers (usually four for each forest) become prominent. They appear in the Carta de Foresta of 1217, but had not been mentioned in the Assize of Woodstock of 1184. It is probable that the office was devised in the interval as a check on the warden’s power; just as the office of coroner had been instituted in the reign of Richard as a drag on the sheriff. In other important respects the duties of the verderers within the forests resembled those of coroners within the rest of the county. They were not royal employees, but local landowners whose unpaid magisterial services were required only on special occasions. They were responsible directly to the King, not to the warden; and were appointed in the county court, their “election” taking place in accordance with the terms of the writ “de viredario eligendo.” They attended the forest courts and swanimotes, and it appears from chapter 16 of Henry’s forest charter that it was their duty to bring before the Justices in Eyre lists of all offenders indicted in the lower courts. These “rolls of attachment” were certified by their seals.1 (b) The Regarders were twelve knights appointed in each forest county to make tours of inspection every third year, finding answers to a series of questions known as the “Chapters of the Regard.” In this way they reviewed the Crown’s interests alike in “the venison and the vert” (the technical names for game and growing timber respectively), and reported upon all encroachments: upon hawks and falcons, bows and arrows, greyhounds and mastiffs (with special reference to “expeditation” or cutting of their claws),2 and generally upon everything owned by private individuals likely to harm the beasts of the forest.3 (c) The Agistors are mentioned in the same clause of the Assize of Woodstock which mentions the Regarders. Four knights were appointed to protect the King’s interests in all matters connected with the pasturing of swine or cattle within the royal woods. For thirty days at Michaelmas, pigs were turned loose to feed on acorns and beech mast, on payment by their owners of a small fixed sum per head. The four knights were required to take note of sums thus due, known as “pannage,” and to collect them at Martinmas.4

  Mention ought, perhaps, to be made of the private foresters also, whom owners of woods within the forests were obliged to appoint. These “wood wards,” as they were sometimes called, while paid for by the owner of the wood, were expected to protect the King’s interests. In particular, they must prevent trees from being destroyed or wasted: these formed shelter for the game.

  IV.

  Forest Courts.

  The judicial side of the forest system was developed in a manner equally elaborate. Three sets of tribunals must be distinguished: (1) The Court of Attachments (or “view of attachments”) was a petty tribunal, the chief duty of which was the taking of evidence to be laid in due course before a higher court. Exceptionally, however, it had power to inflict fines for small trespasses against the “vert”—namely, for acts of waste not exceeding the value of fourpence. It met once in every forty days,1 which seems in practice to have been interpreted as once every six weeks, the meetings being always held on the same day of the week.2 (2) Courts of Inquisitions. When a serious trespass was discovered, a special court was, in early days, immediately summoned. The foresters and verderers conducted the inquiry, but it was their right and duty to assemble the men of the neighbouring townships to help them. In strictness, all inhabitants might be compelled to attend. In practice, it was sufficient if four men and the reeve represented each of the four adjoining villages. Whenever a “beast” was found dead in the forest, twenty men had thus to assemble, to the neglect of their own affairs. In one district at least (Somerton) the definition of beasts of the chase extended to the ordinary hare; and we read3 how four townships sat in solemn judgment, and found “that the said hare died of murrain, and that they know of nothing else except misadventure,” and how, this verdict not giving satisfaction, the townships were fined on the pretext that they were not fully represented. The real offence was their failure to disclose the culprit. Some alleviation of the burden was effected when, at some date posterior to 1215, special inquisitions were superseded by one general inquisition, held at regular intervals (usually every six weeks), to cover all trespasses committed during the interval. These courts of inquiry (whether special or general) only “kept” pleas without “trying” them—that is to say, they received and recorded accusations, while judgment was reserved for the justices. (3) Courts of the forest justices in eyre. As the smaller courts, in the normal case, received verdicts and reports, without punishing the offences reported, it is evident that the whole system ultimately depended on the justices. Their eyres, however, were held at wide intervals—apparently once every seven years during the reign of Henry III. A full attendance of forest officials and of the public was summoned to meet them. The evidence, stored up as a result of the work of the smaller courts, supplemented by the Rolls of the Regard, was laid before the justices, who summarily judged “pleas of the vert,” and “of the venison.” These eyres came to be known as “Courts of Justice Seat,” but not until long after the reign of John. No juries were present; the justices punished offenders already convicted by juries at a lower court.

  In addition, there should be mentioned two other kinds of assemblies which performed duties administrative rather than judicial, as these terms are now understood. (4) The regard, held once every three years—not by Crown officials, but by what was practically a jury of local knights—has already been referred to. These tours of inspection, sometime known as visitationes nemorum,1 and sometimes even as “views of expeditation,” were of great practical importance. The resulting report was placed before the justices of eyre as evidence of forest trespasses. (5) Three times every year, meetings, known from an early date as “Swanimotes,” were held to regulate the pasturing of swine and cattle within the royal woods. A fortnight before Michaelmas, the agistors met the foresters and verderers to provide for the agisting of the King’s woods, a process that lasted for thirty days—fifteen before and fifteen after Michaelmas. At Martinmas the agistors collected the pannage in presence of the same officials. A third meeting was held in June to make arrangements for excluding cattle from the King’s woods when the deer were fawning, but at this the presence of the agistors were not required.1

  The Carta de Foresta applies to these assemblies, and to none other, the name “Swanimotes”—a word whose correct use has been the subject of much discussion. Its authoritative appearance in 1217 affords strong evidence of the original sense which it bore. In later days, however, it was more loosely used, being applied to inquisitions and also to courts of attachment. This has led to much confusion, while its derivation has also been the subject of discussion. Bishop Stubbs derived it from “swain,” on the supposition that courts so called were resorted to by swains or country people. As matter of fact (whatever doctrine may be correct philologically), these assemblies were connected, not with “swains,” but with “swine.” The peasantry were specially exempted; whereas all three meetings sought to regulate the entry or exclusion of pigs from the woods.

  V.

  Chases, Parks, and Warrens.

  Forests were necessarily royal monopolies and must on this and other grounds be distinguished from three things with which they are apt to be confused. (1) A “chase” was a district, once a royal forest, which had, without any formal act of disafforestation, been granted by the King to a private individual. The result was to transfer the monopoly of hunting to the grantee, while modifying the nature of the rights transferred. The full force of the forest laws was abated, although the extent and direction of this diminution was nowhere strictly defined, but varied from chase to chase. Such provisions of the forest law as continued to be binding were no longer enforced by royal officials and royal courts, but by those of the magnate, who obtained a franchise over the chase and the royal beasts it contained.1 (2) A “park” was any piece of ground enclosed with a paling, or hedge, whether with the object of protecting wild beasts or otherwise, and the right to effect this was quite independent of royal grant. If the owner of a manor in the near neighbourhood of a royal forest wished to keep deer of his own, which he might kill at pleasure, whether for sport or for food, without infringing the forest laws, he had to stock an enclosure with beasts legally his own, and to keep them under conditions which made confusion with the King’s deer impossible.2 In 1234 the barons asserted their right to keep private gaols for poachers taken in their parks (in parcis et vivariis suis), but the King refused to allow this.3 (3) A “warren,” which might belong either to the King or to any private owner, carried with it exclusive rights of hunting within its bounds all wild animals, except those technically defined as “beasts of the forest.”4 In practice it chiefly embraced hares and foxes.5 Neither parks nor warrens were protected by the forest law, but by that part of the common law which related to theft and trespass. This was, however, vigorously administered, passing gradually into the modern Game Laws.6 Dr. Stubbs held, apparently, too narrow a conception of warren, when he read it in its modern sense of “a rabbit warren.”7 It was a tract of land wherein exclusive rights of hunting lesser game (together with rabbits and other vermin) were preserved to its owner. The King might, and did, have his warrens and warreners, just as any subject might; and these royal warreners might inflict cruel injustice on the common people;8 but their power was less than that of foresters, as they were dependent on the common law. The forest code did not apply even to royal warrens.9

  VI.

  Forest Rights and Forest Grievances.

  It is not difficult to understand the store which the Kings of England set upon their forests. They prized them not merely as a pleasure ground, but also as a source of revenue. Fines and amercements, individually small, but amounting to a large sum in the aggregate, flowed into the Exchequer. Great as were the pleasure and the profit to the King, the burden and loss inflicted upon the people were greater out of all proportion. Not only were the interests of forest–dwellers sacrificed to the royal hunting, not only were legal fines rendered trebly burdensome by the galling and wasteful manner of their collection; but the men who paid them were victims of illegal exactions in addition. These grievances may be considered under seven heads:—

  (1)

  The extent of the forests.

  The Crown constantly strove to extend the boundaries; the people to contract them. The Conqueror and Rufus each “afforested” wide tracts of land, of which the New Forest is only one example. In the Charter of 1100, Henry bluntly declared:—“I retain in my hand, by the common consent of my barons, my forests as my father had them.” This consent of the magnates would suggest that the barons were allowed some share in royal rights of hunting, which led them here to make common cause with the Crown. Henry, as matter of fact, retained not only the forests of his father but those of Rufus, and created new ones of his own.1 Stephen, while retaining the forests of the two Williams, renounced those added by Henry I. Under Henry II., afforestation began anew.2 The words of the Great Charter leave no doubt that Henry of Anjou had extended the boundaries of Stephen’s forests; and that both Richard and John carried the process further, bringing within the circle of the cruel law, not only waste and moor, but also “woods” belonging to private owners. These royal encroachments were the more oppressive, occurring in an age when population was increasing and seeking outlet in the reclamation of waste places on the debateable land that surrounded the forests. The vagueness of the frontier aggravated this grievance, as it was often difficult for the honest reclaimer of barren land to know when he was committing a trepass for which he might be punished by a crushing fine.1

  (2)

  The monopoly of hunting.

  The Crown also made the law more stringent. The Crown’s insistence on a strict monopoly may not seem an important grievance, but it was one likely to exasperate the sport–loving nobles. John, in 1207, admitted that his barons still retained some share in the hunting of royal beasts.2 These rights were formally recognized and defined in 1217. Chapter 11 of the Carta de foresta allowed each magnate when passing through a forest to take one or two beasts at sight of the foresters, or, if these officials could not be found, then after blowing a horn to show that nothing underhand was being done.

  (3)

  Interference with rights of property.

  Freeholders whose lands lay in districts which the King was successful in afforesting, retained their freeholds, but their proprietary rights lost half their value. They could not root out trees, to clear their own lands for cultivation; for that was to commit an assart. They could not plough up waste land or pasture (even outside the covert) and turn it into arable, nor build a mill, nor take marl or lime from pits, nor make fishponds, nor enclose any space with hedge or paling; for these acts of ownership were purprestures or encroachments on the King’s rights. They could not destroy a tree or lop off branches (except under stringent conditions), without being guilty of waste.1 They could not agist their woods until a fortnight after Michaelmas, when the agisting of the King’s demesnes was over (thus reserving for him the best market and “pannage dues”).2 Heavy tolls were, under the name of “chiminage,” taken from carts and sumpter–horses passing through the woods. The Great Charter endeavoured to strike at the abuse of these Crown rights by providing machinery for the abolition of “evil customs.” The Carta de foresta entered more into detail. Not only were past trespasses of all three kinds—wastes, purprestures, and assarts—to be condoned, but the law was altered for the future. The long list of purprestures was curtailed: it was made lawful for a man to make (on his own freehold in the forest) mills, ponds, lime pits, ditches, and arable lands, provided these were not placed within the covert and did not infringe on any neighbour’s rights.3 He might also keep eyries for breeding falcons and other birds of prey, and take honey found on his own ground—rights previously denied.4

  (4)

  Interference with the pursuits of the poor.

  If the rich suffered injury in their property, the poor suffered in a more pungent way: stern laws prevented them from supplying three of their primary needs; food, firewood, and building materials. On no account could they kill deer; while difficulties surrounded the taking of timber from the woods.5 It is true that even the Assize of Woodstock allowed them the privilege of “estovers” (that is of cutting firewood), but only under stringent rules. All waste was prohibited; and “waste” was a wide word covering, not merely wanton destruction, but all sales or gifts of logs; while nothing could be taken except at sight of the forester, whose consent would not be procured for nothing. This may be illustrated from a period sixty years later than John’s reign: Hugh of Stratford, who paid two and a half marks of yearly rent to the Warden for his post, recouped himself by taking “from the township of Denshanger for every virgate of land one quarter of wheat in return for their having paling for their corn and for collecting dead wood for their fuel in the demesne wood of the lord king; and from the same town he took from every house a goose and a hen in every year.”1 A sum might be taken for every load of sticks; the men of Somerset complained that “from the poor they take, from every man who carries wood upon his back, sixpence.”2 Dwellers within or near the forests were prohibited from keeping dogs, unless their value for other pursuits, as well as for hunting, was destroyed by the removal of three claws of the forefoot.3 Nor could they keep bows or arrows, so necessary for their protection amid the dangers that beset the inhabitants of lonely districts throughout the Middle Ages.4 No tanner or bleacher of hides could reside in forest districts, unless within a borough.5

  (5)

  Attendance at forest courts.

  At every inquisition, representatives from neighbouring townships must be present, while the entire population were compelled to meet the justices on their forest eyres. Henry II. enforced this duty upon those outside the boundaries as well as on those within. The Assize of Woodstock admits no exemption for earl or baron, for knight or freeholder, nor even (according to one version) for archbishop or bishop. The double duty of doing suit at county courts and forest courts meant double loss of time, and double risk of amercement. This 11th Article of the Assize was repealed by chapter 44 of Magna Carta, which restricted the obligation to denizens of the forests, a concession confirmed in 1217.6

  (6)

  Fines and punishments.

  Frequent exactions ground down the dwellers in royal forests to abject poverty. If they failed to attend one of the numerous inquisitions or to disclose the guilty poacher, they paid a fine. If they gave false information; sold or gave away timber; kept grey hounds or mastiffs, which had not been “lawed,” they paid a fine.1 If a bow or arrow were found in their keeping; if they committed any one of the numerous forms of waste or trespass, they paid a fine.

  The Northampton Eyre Roll of 1209 illustrates how a township might suffer severely for no fault of their own. “The head of a hart recently dead was found in the wood of Henry Dawney at Maidford by the King’s foresters. And the forester of the aforesaid Henry is dead. And because nothing can be ascertained of that hart, it is ordered that the whole of the aforesaid town of Maidford be seized into the King’s hand, on the ground that the said Henry can certify nothing of that hart.”2 There was a strong inducement to find someone guilty.

  In certain cases Henry II. would not accept a fine, but inflicted mutilation upon violators of the King’s monopoly. It was often better to kill a fellow–man than a boar or stag. Article 1 of the Assize of Woodstock announced that the full rigour of the laws would be enforced, as under Henry I., while article 12 laid down more definitely that sureties would only be accepted twice. For the third offence nothing would suffice save the body of the offender. John’s Magna Carta made no regulation on this head; but chapter 10 of the Carta de foresta in 1217 conceded that no one should henceforth lose life or limb for such offences. The culprit should lie in prison for year and day, and thereafter find sureties for his good behaviour, or be banished the realm.

  (7)

  Arbitrary government and illegal exactions.

  If the laws of Henry’s code were stringent and the legal payments onerous, it was a worse evil that the law could be defied by Crown officials, and that payments of a perfectly illegal nature might be freely exacted. Within the forest bounds, the peasantry lived in daily fear of the discretionary authority of officials, whose most unreasonable wishes they dared not oppose. Sometimes a local tyrant established a veritable reign of terror. This happened in the forest of Riddlington under Peter de Neville, as the records of the Rutland Eyre, held in 1269, disclose. One item, taken almost at random from the long list of his evil deeds, will suffice: “The same Peter imprisoned Peter, the son of Constantine of Liddington, for two days and two nights at Allexton, and bound him with iron chains on suspicion of having taken a certain rabbit in Eastwood; and the same Peter the son of Constantine, gave two pence to the men of the aforesaid Peter of Neville, who had charge of him, to permit him to sit upon a certain bench in the gaol of the same Peter, which is full of water at the bottom.”1 Other examples are only too abundant. In 1225, Norman Samson, a petty official of the forest of Huntingdon, put men to the torture without cause, and only released them from their torments in return for heavy bribes. If such things could happen after the Charters of 1215 and 1217, it is not likely that foresters were more merciful before. John was always too indifferent or too busy to redress such wrongs. The only guarantee against their recurrence was that honest officials should be selected. Chapter 45 of Magna Carta, which tried to effect this, was withdrawn in 1216.

  Some good must have resulted from chapter 16 of the Forest Charter, which forbade wardens to hold pleas of the forest. This prevented wardens from being judges in their own cause; but their arbitrary acts continued to be plentiful under Henry III., as has been already shown. Sixty years after Magna Carta, the men of Somerset complained that “foresters come with horses at harvest time and collect every kind of corn in sheaves within the bounds of the forest and outside near the forest, and then they make their ale from that collection, and those who do not come there to drink and do not give money at their will, are sorely punished at their pleas for dead wood, although the King has no demesne; nor does anyone dare to brew when the foresters brew, nor to sell ale so long as the foresters have any kind of ale to sell; and this every forester does year by year to the great grievance of the country.”1 Each one of these abuses had been forbidden by chapter 7 of the Carta de foresta, which had prohibited the making of “scotale” and the collection of corn, lambs, and pigs. Such rules were easier to enunciate than enforce.

  VII.

  Later History of Forests and Forest Laws.

  The Forest Charter signally failed to secure a pure administration of the law; but two ameliorating processes were at work. The long struggle to define the boundaries ended, in the reign of Edward II., in the defeat of the King, who consented to the frontier being drawn to suit the barons.2 Within these restricted limits, time and the progress of civilization softened the severity of the forest code, many customs becoming obsolete.3 Charles I. made an ill–judged attempt to revive some of the Crown’s long–forgotten rights. Justice–seats were held by the Earl of Holland, accompanied by amercements and attempts to extend the forest bounds.4 The result was a drastic act of the Long Parliament, limiting them to their old extents.5 This statute, however, abolished neither the forests, the forest laws, nor the forest courts. After the Restoration a Justice–seat actually took place pro forma before the Earl of Oxford. Blackstone declares this to be the last ever held,6 although the offices of justice and warden of the forests were not abolished till 1817.7 The forests, much curtailed in extent, are still Crown property, now administered in the interests of the public by Commissioners of Woods and Forests.1 The operation of the common law is, of course, no longer excluded from their confines, the old antithesis between forest law and the law of England being a thing of the past.2

  CHAPTER FORTY–FIVE.

  Nos non faciemus justiciarios, constabularios, vicecomites vel ballivos, nisi de talibus qui sciant legem regni et eam bene velint observare.

  We will appoint as justices, constables, sheriffs, or bailiffs only such as know the law of the realm and mean to observe it well.

  The object of this plainly worded clause was to prevent the appointment of unsuitable men to responsible posts under the Crown. The list of officers is a comprehensive one—justices, sheriffs, constables and bailiffs—embracing all royal ministers and agents, both of the central and of the local government, from the chief justiciar down to the humblest serjeant.3 This clause was directed in particular against John’s foreign favourites such as the Poitevin Bishop of Winchester, Peter des Roches, who had wielded the authority of chief justiciar in 1214 when the King was abroad,4 or such as Engelard de Cigogné, stigmatized by name in a later part of Magna Carta.5 Such men had no interests at stake in England, and little love for its customs and free traditions. In future John must choose a different type of servants, avoiding all such unscrupulous men, whether Englishmen or foreigners, as were ready to break the law in their master’s interests or their own. But what class were to fill their places?

  Bishop Stubbs credits the framers of the Charter with an intention to secure the appointment of men well versed in legal science: “on this principle the steward of a court–leet must be a learned steward.”1 The clause of Magna Carta, however, refers to royal nominees, not to the officers appointed by mesne lords to preside over their feudal courts. The barons appointed their own stewards and bailiffs, and had no wish to hamper their own freedom of choice; but only that of the King. Further, the barons did not desire that John should employ men steeped in legal lore, but plain Englishmen with a rough–and–ready knowledge of insular usage, who would avoid arbitrary acts condemned by the law. The barons at Runnymede desired precisely what the council of St. Albans had desired on 4th August, 1213, when it issued formal writs to sheriffs and foresters to observe the laws of Henry I. and abstain from unjust exactions;2 and these laws of Henry were but the laws of Edward Confessor (or, in reality, of Canute) slightly amended.

  The attitude of John’s barons was the same as that of Henry’s barons, when the latter declared, in 1234, in emphatic terms, that they did not wish the laws of England to be changed.3 They were far from desiring to be governed by ministers deeply versed in the science and literature of jurisprudence, since these would necessarily have been churchmen and civilians.

  This well–meaning provision of Magna Carta disappeared in 1216 (without any comment in the so–called “respiting clause”). Even if it had remained intact, it would not have effected much, in the absence of adequate machinery to ensure its enforcement. In promising the appointment of such ministers as knew the law and meant to keep it, John remained sole judge of the men appointed and their intentions. The clause indicated no standard of fitness, no neutral arbitrator to decide between fit and unfit,4 and no sanction to enforce compliance on an unwilling King. Half a century later, the Provisions of Oxford gave proof of some advance in political theory. They contained an expedient, crude enough it is true, for constraining royal officials to keep the law: forms of an oath of office to be taken by castellans and ministers of all grades were carefully provided.1 Even this was only a first step towards settling a problem not completely solved until the modern doctrine of ministerial responsibility was firmly established.2

  CHAPTER FORTY–SIX.

  Omnes barones qui fundaverunt abbatias, unde habent cartas regum Anglie, vel antiquam tenuram, habeant earum custodiam cum vacaverint, sicut habere debent.

  All barons who have founded abbeys, concerning which they hold charters from the kings of England, or of which they have long–continued possession, shall have the wardship of them, when vacant, as they ought to have.

  Religious houses of various orders (abbeys, priories, and convents), which had increased rapidly in number since the reign of Henry I., fell naturally into two classes, according as they had been founded by the King or by private individuals. The King or the great baron, in bestowing lands on a religious foundation, reserved, either expressly or by implication, valuable rights of property: of these the control over the election of the abbot or prior, together with the wardship of the fief during vacancies, were the most important. King John, while by his charter to the clergy he renounced control over election of bishops, reserved his rights of wardship; and the barons insisted that the proprietary rights of mesne lords who had founded religious houses, should also be respected. John, however, wherever he had any plausible pretext, usurped the wardship over private foundations. It would appear, from the terms of a later chapter,1 that in 1215 the Crown actually held in ward certain abbeys founded by mesne lords. The present chapter looks to the future, forbidding new usurpations of this nature.

  In reissues of the Charter verbal changes occur, but it is not clear that they imply changes of substance. In 1216 the words “and as it has been above declared” were added, implying that the rights of mesne lords were to be restricted by the rules previously laid down in chapter 5, as to wardship—rules particularly applied to the lands of bishoprics and religious houses in 1216 by a clause which had no parallel in John’s Charter.2 In 1217 three other small changes tend to define and perhaps to widen the scope of the clause. The “barons who have founded abbeys” become “the patrons of abbeys”; royal “charters” become more explicitly “charters of advowson”; “ancient tenure” is expanded into “ancient tenure or possession.”3 These alterations seem to indicate an effort towards greater verbal accuracy, and do not involve any change of principle. It should, perhaps, be noted, however, that the words “patroni” and “de advocatione,” occurring in 1217, contain a tacit assertion of lay patronage of which there was no hint in 1215; but it would not be safe to conclude from this alone that there had been any change of attitude on the question of canonical election.

  The object of this chapter was to define the relations between the King and the barons as to wardship, not those between the lay and ecclesiastical authorities as to rights of appointment. It seems to have made little difference, if any, in practice: Henry III. never observed in its fullness the doctrine here enunciated, but claimed wardship over abbeys and priories founded by earls and barons on their own fiefs.4 On the closely allied question of lay patronage, not directly raised in any version of Magna Carta, Henry’s practice seems not to have differed from his father’s. John interfered freely between abbeys and their founders. On 16th August, 1200, he granted to William Marshal the privilege of bestowing the pastoral staff of Nuthlegh Abbey, which lay within that earl’s fief; this shows that he forbade appointments without royal licence.1 The barons in 1258 protested against similar conduct on the part of Henry III.2

  CHAPTER FORTY–SEVEN.

  Omnes foreste que afforestate sunt tempore nostro, statim deafforestentur; et ita fiat de ripariis que per nos tempore nostro posite sunt in defenso.

  All forests that have been made such in our time shall forthwith be disafforested; and a similar course shall be followed with regard to river–banks that have been placed “in defence” by us in our time.

  An analogy may be traced between the prerogatives of hunting and of falconry here brought together. William the Conqueror claimed wide and ill–defined rights to “afforest” whole districts at his discretion; and for protecting his preferential rights of fowling, whole rivers might be placed “in defence.” The parallel must not be pushed too far. River–banks were preserved only for such limited period as was covered by the King’s express command; and, although wardens were appointed to guard them,3 the Crown never established such absolute control over the banks of rivers as it did within districts declared “afforested.”

  The provision of the present chapter, defining what riverbanks might be “defended,” disappeared, together with the relative clause of chapter 48 (“ripariis et earum custodibus”), from the reissue of 1216; but, in the “respiting” clause there was promised further deliberation, which resulted in its replacement in chapter 20 of the final version of Magna Carta.1

  More attention is usually paid to the bearing of the present chapter upon the limits of the forests. John, if he had created no new forests, had extended the boundaries of the old ones. All such encroachments are to be immediately given up. This summary redress should be contrasted with the more judicial procedure appointed by chapter 53 for determining encroachments made by Henry II. and Richard. A somewhat similar distinction is also to be found in the corresponding provisions of the Forest Charter of 1217 (chapters 1 and 3); but the line is there differently drawn. Chapter 1 of the Carta de foresta extends the summary methods of redress to the disafforesting of all forests created by Richard as well as those created by John. The terms of the later document are also more detailed. Both seem to be directed against encroachments on the rights of landowners, affording no protection to the poor. While they deny the Crown’s right to afforest private woods “to the damage of any one” (that is, of barons or freeholders owning them), they admit the legality of past acts, whether of Henry, of Richard, or of John, in afforesting Crown lands, subject always to a saving clause in favour of freeholders in right of common of pasturage.2

  Even if Henry III. had cordially co–operated with his barons to disafforest all tracts of ground afforested by Henry II. and his sons, difficulties of definition would still have made the task tedious. As it was, struggles to settle boundaries embittered the relations between Crown and Parliament, until the very close of Edward Plantagenet’s reign. Only the leading steps in the slow process by which the opposition triumphed need here be mentioned.

  After the issue of Carta de foresta on 6th November, 1217,1 machinery was set in motion, in obedience to its terms, to ascertain the old boundaries and disafforest recent additions. The work of redress continued for some years, suffering no interruption from the issue of the new royal seal at Michaelmas, 1218.2 In face of many difficulties, only slow progress was possible. More strenuous efforts followed the reissue of the Charters on 11th February, 1225;3 for, five days later, justices were appointed to make new perambulations, which resulted in the disafforestation of wide tracts. Henry considered himself, and with some reason, unjustly treated by these justices, or by the local juries on whose verdicts they had relied. After he had proclaimed himself of age in January, 1227, he challenged their findings; and this has been misinterpreted as an attempt to annul the Forest Charter.4

  Some of the knights who had perambulated the forests were persuaded or coerced into acknowledging that they had made mistakes; and, after further inquiry, Henry restored the wider bounds. His reactionary measures went on for two years; but thereafter the frontiers were fixed, in spite of many complaints, until strong pressure compelled Edward I. to reopen the whole question. Perambulations in 1277 and 1279 produced apparently no results. Renewed complaints were followed by new perambulations in 1299–1300, the reports of which were laid before a Parliament at Lincoln on 25th January, 1301. The King on 14th February confirmed the Forest Charter, and agreed to the reduced boundaries as defined by the most recent inquests. Edward had acted under constraint: on this plea he subsequently obtained from Pope Clement V. a bull, dated 29th December, 1305, revoking all concessions made at Lincoln.5 The Crown seemed thus to triumph once more; but the barons refused to accept defeat, forcing upon Edward II. the acceptance of the narrower bounds as defined at his father’s Parliament in 1301. This settlement was confirmed by statute in the first year of Edward III.1 and that King failed in all attempts to escape from its provisions. Thus the authoritative pronouncement made in 1301 by the Parliament of Lincoln furnished the basis on which the protracted controversy was finally determined.2

  The further history of the forest boundaries may be told in a few sentences. No changes were made until the sixteenth century. When Henry VIII. afforested the districts surrounding Hampton Court in 1540, he did so by consent of Parliament, and on condition of compensating all who suffered damage. The same course was followed by Charles I. in creating the Forest of Richmond in 1634. Finally, as a result of attempts of the Stewarts to revive obsolete rights, a statute of the Long Parliament, reciting the Act of 1327, “ordained that the old perambulation of the forest in the time of King Edward the First should be thenceforth holden in like form as it was then ridden and bounded.”3

  CHAPTER FORTY–EIGHT.

  Omnes male consuetudines de forestis et warennis, et de forestariis et warennariis, vicecomitibus et eorum ministris, ripariis et earum custodibus, statim inquirantur in quolibet comitatu per duodecim milites juratos de eodem comitatu, qui debent eligi per probos homines ejusdem comitatus, et infra quadraginta dies post inquisicionem factam, penitus, ita quod numquam revocentur, deleantur per eosdem, ita quod nos hoc sciamus prius, vel justiciarius noster, si in Anglia non fuerimus.4

  All evil customs connected with forests and warrens, foresters and warreners, sheriffs and their officers, river–banks and their wardens, shall immediately be inquired into in each county by twelve sworn knights of the same county chosen by the honest men of the same county, and shall, within forty days of the said inquest, be utterly abolished, so as never to be restored, provided always that we previously have intimation thereof, or our justiciar, if we should not be in England.

  This chapter is mainly, though not exclusively, a forest one. It provides in a sweeping and drastic manner for the abolition of “evil customs,” three groups of which are specially emphasized: (a) those connected with forests and warrens (presumably royal warrens only), or with their officials; (b) those connected with sheriffs and their subordinates; and (c) those connected with river–banks and their guardians. The word “customs” is obviously here used in its wider sense, embracing all usages and procedure, whether specially connected with pecuniary exactions or not.1 The word “evil” is not defined, but machinery is provided for arriving at a definition. In each county a local jury of twelve knights was to be immediately chosen by “the good people” of that county, and these twelve received a mandate to hold a comprehensive inquest into “evil customs”: practices condemned by them were to be abolished within forty days of the inquiry, “so that they shall never be restored.”

  At the end of the chapter appears a proviso that, before actual abolition, notice must be sent to the King, or, in his absence, to his justiciar. Although such intimation was necessary, both on grounds of policy and of ordinary courtesy, this clause is written (apparently as an afterthought) at the foot of two of the copies of the Great Charter.

  John lost no time in instituting machinery for effecting this part of the reforms. On the very day on which terms of peace were concluded at Runnymede, namely, on 19th June, 1215, he began the issue of writs to sheriffs, warreners, and river bailiffs. Within a few days every one of these had been certified of the settlement arrived at, and had received commands to have twelve knights chosen in the first county court to make sworn inquest into evil customs.2

  The knights appointed seem to have taken a liberal view of their functions, claiming to share with the sheriffs the exercise of the whole executive authority of the county. Some warrant for these pretensions may be found in the terms of a second series of writs issued in the King’s name on 27th June and following days. These were addressed to the sheriff and the twelve knights jointly, commanding them to make instant seizure of all who refused to take, as required in the previous writs, the oath of obedience to the twenty–five executors of the Charter.1 The revolutionary committee of the central government had thus, in each county, local agents in the twelve knights whose original duties had been to see evil customs abolished.

  The hatred to the forest laws is well illustrated by the iconoclastic spirit in which these knights set about the remedy of abuses. Moderate–minded men began to fear that sweeping changes would abolish the royal forests. Accordingly, the leading prelates issued a written protest that this chapter must be understood by both parties “as limited,” and “that all those customs shall remain, without which the forests cannot be preserved.”2 What effect, if any, this protest had, is not known. The country was soon plunged in civil war, during the continuance of which neither side had leisure for the reform of abuses. In 1216 the subject was “respited” for future consideration, and in 1217 an attempt was made to specify in detail the evil customs to be abolished. The dangerous experiment of leaving the definition to local juries in each district was not repeated.

  CHAPTER FORTY–NINE.

  Omnes obsides et cartas statim reddemus que liberate fuerunt nobis ab Anglicis in securitatem pacis vel fidelis servicii.

  We will immediately restore all hostages and charters delivered to us by Englishmen, as sureties of the peace or of faithful service.

  A feature of John’s system of government was the constant demand for hostages as guarantees of his subjects’ loyalty. Such an expedient was, indeed, naturally resorted to in the Middle Ages upon special occasions, as, for example, to secure the observance of a recent treaty, or where the leaders of a rebellion, newly suppressed, had been spared on condition of future good behaviour. Thus the Conqueror, in 1067, during a forced absence from England, took with him Edgar Atheling and the Earls Morkere and Edwin. Such cases were, however, exceptional, until John resorted to such a policy, not merely in face of danger, but as a constant and normal practice in times of peace.

  John lived in his native England like a conqueror in the midst of a hostile race, keeping sons and daughters in his clutches to answer for their parents’ attempts at revolt. This ingenious but unfair practice accords well with what we know of John’s character and general policy. It was a measure of almost devilish cunning for obtaining his immediate ends, but likely to recoil on himself whenever a critical state of his fortunes arrived. Its efficacy lay in this, that it forced the hand of discontented magnates, compelling them to decide, upon the instant, between the desperate expedient of open rebellion and delivery of their children to an unscrupulous enemy, thus renouncing, perhaps for ever, the possibility of resistance or revenge, thereafter to be purchased at too dear a price—the life of the hostage. By thus paralyzing his enemies one by one, John hoped to render disaffection innocuous.1

  The history of the reign shows of what excessive practical importance this question of hostages had become. Thus, in 1201, John seized the castles of certain of his barons; and one of them, William of Albini, only saved his stronghold of Belvoir by handing over his son as a hostage.1 In the same year, the men of York offended the King by omitting to meet him in procession when he visited their city, and by their failure to provide for the billeting of his archers. John, as usual, demanded hostages, but ultimately allowed the citizens to escape on payment of £100, to buy goodwill.2

  Hardly a year passed without similar instances; but, apparently, it was not until 1208 that the practice was enforced wholesale. In that year, the King’s abject fear of the effects of the Pope’s absolution of his barons from their allegiance, led to his demand that every leading man in England should hand over his sons, nephews, or other blood relations to the King’s messengers.3

  The danger of failure to comply with such demands is illustrated by the fate of Maud of Saint–Valery, wife of William de Braose, who refused point–blank to hand over her grandchildren to a King who, she was unwise enough to say, “had murdered his captive nephew.”4 Two years later John, after failing to extort enormous sums in name of fines, caused her, with her eldest son, to be starved to death, a fate to which her own imprudence had doubtless contributed.5 John’s drastic methods of treating his hostages may also be illustrated from the chronicles of his reign, for example, from the fate of the youths he brought from Wales in June, 1211. When he heard of the Welsh rebellion of the following year, he ordered his levies to meet him at Nottingham. At the muster, early in September, John found awaiting him a great concourse, who were treated to an object lesson which long might haunt their dreams. His passion at white heat, John incontinently hanged eight–and–twenty defenceless boys of the noblest blood of Wales.1 This ghastly spectacle could not have been forgotten, when later in the same month the King, in the throes of sudden panic, fled to London; and, secure in the fastnesses of the Tower, demanded hostages wholesale from all the nobles whose fidelity he doubted. Eustace de Vesci and Robert fitz Walter preferred to seek safety in flight.2 The others, with the Nottingham horror fresh in their memories, were constrained to hand over sons and daughters to the tender mercies of John, cunning and cruel by nature, and rendered doubly treacherous by suspicion intensified by fear.

  The defects of this policy, in the long run, may be read in the events which preceded Magna Carta. When John’s hold on the hostages was relaxed, because of the campaign of 1214, ending as it did in discomfiture, the disaffected were afforded their long–desired opportunity, and were stimulated to rapid action by the thought that such a chance might never occur again. John, on his return, held comparatively few hostages, and the northern barons saw that they must act, if at all, before their children were once more in the tyrant’s clutches.

  Even in June, 1215, however, John had still a few hostages, and this chapter demands the immediate restoration of those of English birth (the Welsh receiving separate treatment), together with the charters which John held as additional security. This provision of Magna Carta was immediately carried out. Letters were dispatched to the custodians of royal hostages, ordering an immediate release.3 The practice of taking hostages, however, by no means ended with the granting of the Great Charter. Before a year had run, some of the insurgent nobles, repenting of their boldness, succeeded in making terms with John by the payment of large sums of money and the delivery of their sons and daughters in security for their future loyalty. Simon fitz Walter, for example, thus gave up his daughter Matilda.1

  CHAPTER FIFTY.

  Nos amovebimus penitus de balliis parentes Gerardi de Athyes, quod de cetero nullam habeant balliam in Anglia; Engelardum de Cygony, Petrum et Gionem et Andream, de Cancellis, Gionem de Cygony, Galfridum de Martinny et fratres ejus, Philippum Marci et fratres ejus, et Galfridum nepotem ejus, et totam sequelam eorundem.

  We will entirely remove from their bailiwicks, the relations of Gerard of Athée (so that in future they shall have no bailiwick in England); namely, Engelard of Cigogné, Peter, Guy, and Andrew of Chanceaux, Guy of Cigogné, Geoffrey of Martigny with his brothers, Philip Mark with his brothers and his nephew Geoffrey, and the whole brood of the same.

  Chapter 45 sought to secure the appointment of suitable men to posts of trust under the Crown; the present chapter definitely excludes from bailiwicks (a comprehensive term embracing all grades of local magistracies) one particular group of royal favourites. This clause was omitted from future reissues, along with chapter 45.

  The Charter does not explain the reasons that had rendered these men obnoxious; but the testimony of contemporary Plea Rolls and Pipe Rolls amply supplies the omission. Each one of them can be shown to have held places of profit under the Crown as sheriffs of counties, forest wardens, and commanders of royal garrisons. They formed a group of kinsmen who, after John had lost his French dominions, preferred to follow their royal master to England. The three villages of Athée, Cigogné, and Chanceaux lie close together in Touraine, in the modern department of Indre–et–Loire, not far from the cities of Tours and Loches. The group of men here named all came from this district. “They were neither courtiers nor politicians, but soldiers of experience, whom the barons feared with good cause.”1

  The career of Engelard de Cigogné may be taken as typical of the rest. He was a nephew of Gerard of Athée, whom he succeeded, in 1209, as sheriff of Gloucester and Hereford, an office he held until about the time of Magna Carta. The Plea Roll of the Gloucestershire Eyre of 1221 covers the period of his shrievalty, and contains a striking and detailed picture of his misdeeds and extortions.2 He accounted for the firma burgi of Bristol,3 which seems to imply interference with its chartered liberties. He also held pleas of the Crown for Gloucestershire,4 in violation of the ordinance of 1194 forbidding any sheriff to act as justiciar in his own county.5 Several entries tell of barrels of wine which he took as “prise” from ships entering the port of Bristol, and thereafter sold to the King. For example, the exchequer officials allowed him to deduct from the firma, the sum of 60s., in respect of four tuns of red wine, as certified by the King’s writ.6 Engelard guarded a rich treasure for the King at Bristol, probably as constable of the castle there, sums being paid to him ad ponendum in thesauro regis.7 On one occasion he was entrusted with more than 10,000 marks of the King’s money.8 Hostages, as well as bullion, were placed under his care; a writ dated 18th December, 1214, directed him to liberate three noble Welshmen whom it mentioned by name.9

  In the civil war to which the treaty of peace sealed at Runnymede was a prelude, Engelard, then constable of Windsor Castle and warden of the adjacent forest of Odiham, proved active in John’s service. He successfully defended Windsor from the French faction, making vigorous sorties until relieved by the King.1 He requisitioned supplies to meet the royal needs; and a plea was brought against him so long afterwards as 1232, in connection with twelve hogsheads of wine thus taken.2 He acted as sheriff of Surrey under William Marshal, but was suspended from this office in 1218, in consequence of a dispute with Earl Warenne.3 He remained warden of the castle and forests for twenty years after the accession of Henry III.,4 and his long services were rewarded with grants of land: in the county of Oxford he held the manor of Benzinton, with four hundreds and a half, during the King’s good pleasure;5 while his son Oliver received the lucrative post of guardian over the lands and heirs of Henry de Berkley.6

  In 1221, however, acting in consort with Falkes de Bréauté, Philip Mark, and other castellans, Engelard supported earl William of Aumâle in his resistance to the demands of Henry’s ministers, that all royal castles should be restored to the King. Notwithstanding the secrecy with which he sent men to the earl at Biham castle,7 he fell under suspicion of treason, and found hostages that he would hold the castle of Windsor for the King.8 In 1236, he was relieved of some of his offices, but not of all, for in 1254 he was two years in arrears with the firma of the manor of Odiham.9 In that year, apparently, he died; for the patent roll contains a writ granting him permission to make his will, and an entry in 1255 relates how “for good service done to the King by Engelard of Cigogné in his lifetime, the King granted to his executors that they should be quit of all accounts to be rendered by them at the exchequer, and of all averages of accounts, and of all debts and imposts.”10 Engelard thus died, as he had lived, the trusted servant and favourite of kings. His career illustrates how the very same men who had incurred odium as partisans of John became, when the civil war was over, instruments of his son’s misgovernment.1

  CHAPTER FIFTY–ONE.

  Et statim post pacis reformacionem amovebimus de regno omnes alienigenas milites, balistarios, servientes, stipendiarios, qui venerint cum equis et armis ad nocumentum regni.

  As soon as peace is restored, we will banish from the kingdom all foreign–born knights, cross–bowmen, serjeants, and mercenary soldiers, who have come with horses and arms to the kingdom’s hurt.

  John here binds himself to disband his foreign troops, the agents of his tyrannies. These men, who had garrisoned royal castles, are to be banished “as soon as peace is restored,” an indication that a state of virtual war was recognized. This promise was partially fulfilled: on 23rd June writs were issued for disbandment of the mercenaries.2 The renewal of the civil war, however, was followed by enrolment of new bands of foreigners, whose presence was one of the main causes of the rebellion of 1224, after the suppression of which most of them were again banished with their ringleader, Falkes de Bréauté.

  The words used to describe these soldiers are comprehensive. Stipendiarii embraced mercenaries of every kind: balistarii were cross–bowmen. This weapon, imported into England as a result of the crusades, quickly superseded the earlier short bow, but had, in turn, to succumb to the long bow, which was apparently derived from Wales by Edward I., who gained by means of it many battles against the Scotch and Welsh, and made possible the later triumphs of the Black Prince and Henry V.

  CHAPTER FIFTY–TWO.

  Si quis fuerit disseisitus vel elongatus per nos sine legali judicio parium suorum, de terris, castellis, libertatibus, vel jure suo, statim ea ei restituemus; et si contentio super hoc orta fuerit, tunc inde fiat per judicium viginti quinque baronum, de quibus fit mencio inferius in securitate pacis: de omnibus autem illis de quibus aliquis disseisitus fuerit vel elongatus sine legali judicio parium suorum, per Henricum regem patrem nostrum vel per Ricardum regem fratrem nostrum, que in manu nostra habemus, vel que alii tenent que nos oporteat warantizare, respectum habebimus usque ad communem terminum crucesignatorum; exceptis illis de quibus placitum motum fuit vel inquisicio facta per preceptum nostrum, ante suscepcionem crucis nostre: cum autem redierimus de peregrinacione nostra, vel si forte remanserimus a peregrinacione nostra, statim inde plenam justiciam exhibebimus.

  If any one has been dispossessed or removed1 by us, without the legal judgment of his peers, from his lands, castles, franchises, or from his right, we will immediately restore them to him; and if a dispute arise over this, then let it be decided by the five–and–twenty barons of whom mention is made below in the clause for securing the peace.2 Moreover, for all those possessions, from which any one has, without the lawful judgment of his peers, been disseised or removed, by our father, King Henry, or by our brother, King Richard, and which we retain in our hand (or which are possessed by others, to whom we are bound to warrant them) we shall have respite until the usual term of crusaders; excepting those things about which a plea has been raised, or an inquest made by our order, before our taking of the cross; but as soon as we return from our expedition (or if perchance we desist from the expedition) we will immediately grant full justice therein.

  Chapter 39, in so far as it relates to illegal disseisins, is here supplemented: remedy is provided for everyone dispossessed by the Crown “sine legali judicio parium suorum.” Yet, a distinction is drawn between wrongs inflicted by John himself (where summary methods are to rule) and by his predecessors (where less precipitate procedure must take its course).

  The Articles of the Barons had recognized the same distinction, while providing somewhat different treatment. Those disseised by Henry or Richard were to get redress “according to the judgment of their peers in the King’s court”; those disseised by John, “according to the judgment of the twenty–five barons.” Both cases were, in the Articles, qualified by a stipulation which calls for comment. John had taken the crusader’s vow a few months before, and now claimed the usual three years’ “respite” from all legal proceedings. The barons, viewing John’s vow as a notorious perjury, rejected his claim. The Articles referred the question to arbitration. The prelates, whose judicium on this point was declared to be final (“appellatione remota”), and who were bound to give an early decision (“ad certum diem”), might not unreasonably have been suspected of partiality, since “taking the cross” was not a step to be belittled by churchmen. Yet they seem to have acted in a spirit of not unfair compromise, if the clause as it finally appeared in John’s Magna Carta may be taken as giving the substance of their award.

  In cases where John himself had been the disseisor, the twenty–five executors might decide forthwith. Respite was allowed, however, in respect of disseisins of Henry and Richard (except where legal proceedings were already pending).1 The Charter says nothing of the procedure at the close of the three years; but there was probably no intention to depart from the terms of the Articles in this respect, namely, “judgment of peers in the King’s court.”

  John had good reason to consider as unfair the mode here appointed for deciding disputes as to the other class of disseisins, namely, those effected by him: many delicate points would be referred to the summary decision of a baronial committee, sure to be composed of his most bitter enemies—the very men, perhaps, who claimed to have been dispossessed. If the “judgment of the twenty–five” meant for the barons “the judgment of peers,” it meant for the King the judgment of inferiors and enemies.1

  CHAPTER FIFTY–THREE.

  Eundem autem respectum habebimus, et eodem modo de justicia exhibenda de forestis deafforestandis vel remansuris forestis, quas Henricus pater noster vel Ricardus frater noster afforestaverunt, et de custodiis terrarum que sunt de alieno feodo, cujusmodi custodias hucusque habuimus occasione feodi quod aliquis de nobis tenuit per servicium militare, et de abbaciis que fundate fuerint in feodo alterius quam nostro, in quibus dominus feodi dixerit se jus habere; et cum redierimus, vel si remanserimus a peregrinacione nostra, super hiis conquerentibus plenam justiciam statim exhibebimus.2

  We shall have, moreover, the same respite and in the same manner in rendering justice concerning the disafforestation or retention of those forests which Henry our father and Richard our brother afforested, and concerning the wardship of lands which are of the fief of another (namely, such wardships as we have hitherto had by reason of a fief which anyone held of us by knight’s service), and concerning abbeys founded on other fiefs than our own, in which the lord of the fee claims to have right; and when we have returned, or if we desist from our expedition, we will immediately grant full justice to all who complain of such things.

  This chapter makes an addition to the Articles of the Barons, extending to three additional kinds of abuses, the respite provided in chapter 52 for redressing acts of illegal disseisin. The “close time” secured to John in virtue of his crusader’s vow is to cover (a) inquiries into boundaries of forests alleged to have been extended by his father or his brother; (b) wardships over lands usurped by illegal extensions of prerogative wardship; and (c) abbeys founded by mesne lords but seized by John during vacancies.1

  CHAPTER FIFTY–FOUR.

  Nullus capiatur nec imprisonetur propter appellum femine de morte alterius quam viri sui.

  No one shall be arrested or imprisoned upon the appeal of a woman, for the death of any other than her husband.

  The object of this chapter was to find a remedy for what the barons evidently considered an unfair advantage enjoyed by women appellants, who were allowed to appoint some champion to act for them in the duellum, while the accused man had to fight for himself. The connection between appeal and battle, and the distinction between battle following on appeal and battle on a writ of right, have already been explained.2 In civil pleas, neither party could fight in person: champions were essential, although hired champions were condemned.3 In criminal pleas, the parties must fight in their own persons. This distinction is not so illogical as it seems at first sight, for the appellant himself, in the one case, and the champion who fought for him, in the other, were both supposed to be eye–witnesses of the facts.1

  In a case of homicide, no private accuser would be heard unless he alleged that he had seen the accused actually do the deed. The stringency of this rule was, however, modified by legal fictions. The near relation, or the feudal lord, of the slain man, was treated as constructively present at his slaying. This, at least, is the most plausible interpretation of Glanvill’s words: “No one is admissible to prove the accusation unless he be allied in blood to the deceased or be connected with him by the tie of homage or lordship, so that he can speak of the death upon testimony of his own sight.”2

  The rule which required an appellant to offer proof by his own body was also relaxed in certain cases; women, men over sixty, and those with broken bones or who had lost a limb, an ear, a nose, or an eye, might fight by proxy.3 The privilege accorded to women was looked on with disfavour: accordingly, the man accused by a woman might, in Glanvill’s words, elect either “to abide by the woman’s proof or to purge himself by the ordeal.”4 This option was freely used; an appellee in 1201 was allowed to go to the ordeal of water,5 while two years later when the widow of a murdered man offered to prove her accusation “as the court shall consider,” the accused “elected to bear the iron.”6 After the virtual abolition of ordeal in 1215, appeals by women were usually determined per patriam: such is the doctrine of Bracton,7 whose authority is borne out by recorded cases. Thus in 1221, a man accused by a woman of her husband’s murder offered fifteen marks for a verdict of the jurors.8

  A woman’s right of accusation (even when thus safeguarded from abuse) was restricted to two occasions, the murder of her husband and the rape of her own person. Magna Carta mentions only one of these two grounds of appeal; but silence on the subject of assault need not be interpreted as indicating any intention to deprive women of their rights in such cases.1

  The present chapter of the Great Charter confines itself to appeals of murder, declaring that no woman has the right to institute proceedings in this way for the death of father, son, or friend, but only for that of her husband. Hard as this rule may seem, the barons here made no change on existing law. Glanvill does not recognize a woman’s appeal save for the death of her husband:2 —“A woman is heard in this suit accusing anyone of her husband’s death, if she speak as being an eye–witness to the fact, because husband and wife are one flesh”—another example of constructive presence.3

  There seems to be no authority for Coke’s hasty inference, that previous to 1215 a woman had an appeal for the death of any of her “ancestors”:4 this chapter was purely declaratory. Yet its provisions were by no means gallant. The barons were more careful to guard themselves against risk than to champion the cause of women.5

  CHAPTER FIFTY–FIVE.

  Omnes fines qui injuste et contra legem terre facti sunt nobiscum, et omnia amerciamenta facta injuste et contra legem terre, omnino condonentur, vel fiat inde per judicium viginti quinque baronum de quibus fit mencio inferius in securitate pacis, vel per judicium majoris partis eorundem, una cum predicto Stephano Cantuariensi archiepiscopo, si interesse poterit, et aliis quos secum ad hoc vocare voluerit: et si interesse non poterit, nichilominus procedat negocium sine eo, ita quod, si aliquis vel aliqui de predictis viginti quinque baronibus fuerint in simili querela, amoveantur quantum ad hoc judicium, et alii loco eorum per residuos de eisdem viginti quinque, tantum ad hoc faciendum electi et jurati substituantur.

  All fines made with us unjustly and against the law of the land, and all amercements imposed unjustly and against the law of the land, shall be entirely remitted, or else it shall be done concerning them according to the decision of the five–and–twenty barons of whom mention is made below in the clause for securing the peace, or according to the judgment of the majority of the same, along with the aforesaid Stephen, archbishop of Canterbury, if he can be present, and such others as he may wish to bring with him for this purpose, and if he cannot be present the business shall nevertheless proceed without him, provided always that if any one or more of the aforesaid five–and–twenty barons are in a similar suit, they shall be removed as far as concerns this particular judgment, others being substituted in their places after having been selected by the rest of the same five–and–twenty for this purpose only, and after having been sworn.

  The thirty–seventh of the Articles, forming the draft of this chapter, refers specially to fines exacted by John from widows for the peaceful enjoyment of their own and their husband’s estates (“pro dotibus, maritagiis, et hereditatibus”): it forms thus a natural supplement to chapter 7. The earlier chapter had confirmed widows in their rights for the future; this one remits fines unjustly taken in the past. It is probable that the Articles of the Barons did not intend to limit their own operation to this one group of unjust fines; and they mention amercements without qualification. In any view, the terms of Magna Carta were broadened out to embrace illegal fines and amercements of every sort.1

  The distinction between fines and amercements has been explained in a former chapter.2 The system of arbitrary fines culminated in the reign of John, whose talents were well suited to the development of its ingenious and mean details. Dr. Stubbs describes the product of John’s labours as “the system of fines which was elaborated into that minute and grotesque instrument of torture which all the historians of the reign have dwelt on in great detail,”3 and Hallam has a passage which has become classical:—“The Bishop of Winchester paid a tun of good wine for not reminding the King (John) to give a girdle to the countess of Albemarle; and Robert de Vaux five best palfreys, that the same King might hold his peace about Henry Pinel’s wife. Another paid four marks for leave to eat (pro licentia comedendi).”4

  Unique procedure was provided by the present chapter for deciding disputes as to the legality of fines and amercements. Authority to decide was vested in a board of arbitrators to consist of thirteen or more of the twenty–five executors, together with Stephen Langton and such others as he chose to summon. No mention is made of the maximum number whom the primate might nominate, and there is no attempt to define their powers relative to the other members, a somewhat unbusinesslike omission, but one which testifies to the confidence placed in Langton by those who approved its terms. Care is taken to prevent members of the twenty–five from sitting in judgment on suits arising from circumstances resembling their own.

  This chapter, like others addressed to special needs of John’s reign, found no echo in future charters.

  CHAPTER FIFTY–SIX.

  Si nos disseisivimus vel elongavimus Walenses de terris vel libertatibus vel rebus aliis, sine legali judicio parium suorum, in Anglia vel in Wallia,1 eis statim reddantur; et si contencio super hoc orta fuerit, tunc inde fiat in marchia per judicium parium suorum, de tenementis Anglie secundum legem Anglie, de tenementis Wallie secundum legem Wallie, de tenementis marchie secundum legem marchie. Idem facient Walenses nobis et nostris.

  If we have disseised or removed Welshmen from lands or liberties, or other things, without the legal judgment of their peers in England or in Wales, they shall be immediately restored to them; and if a dispute arise over this, then let it be decided in the marches by the judgment of their peers; for tenements in England according to the law of England, for tenements in Wales according to the law of Wales, and for tenements in the marches according to the law of the marches. Welshmen shall do the same to us and ours.

  Three chapters, redressing wrongs suffered by Welshmen, testify to the importance attached by the barons to the Welsh alliance. Restoration is to be made (a) of illegal disseisins effected by John (chapter 56); (b) of those effected by Henry II. and Richard I. (chapter 57); and (c) of hostages and charters delivered to John as pledges of peace (chapter 58).

  This chapter does for Welshmen dispossessed by John what chapter 52 did for Englishmen, but substitutes “in marchia per judicium parium suorum” for the “per judicium viginti quinque baronum” of the earlier chapter. The “venue” was thus fixed in the marchland for all Welshmen’s cases, although different kinds of law were to be applied according to the situation of the property in dispute. This indication of the existence of three distinct bodies of law, one for England, another for Wales, and a third for the marches, shows that the unifying task of the common law had not yet been completed. Interesting questions of a nature analogous to those treated by the branch of modern jurisprudence known as International Private Law must constantly have arisen.

  All three classes of alleged disseisins (whatever the law involved) were to be decided by a judicium parium; but the “peers” of a Welshman were not defined—a vital omission.1

  CHAPTER FIFTY–SEVEN.

  De omnibus autem illis de quibus aliquis Walensium disseisitus fuerit vel elongatus sine legali judicio parium suorum per Henricum regem patrem nostrum vel Ricardum regem fratrem nostrum, que nos in manu nostra habemus, vel que alii tenent que nos oporteat warantizare, respectum habebimus usque ad communem terminum crucesignatorum, illis exceptis de quibus placitum motum fuit vel inquisicio facta per preceptum nostrum ante suscepcionem crucis nostre: cum autem redierimus, vel si forte remanserimus a peregrinacione nostra, statim eis inde plenam justiciam exhibebimus, secundum leges Walensium et partes predictas.

  Further, for all those possessions from which any Welshman has, without the lawful judgment of his peers, been disseised or removed by King Henry our father, or King Richard our brother, and which we retain in our hand (or which are possessed by others, to whom we are bound to warrant them) we shall have respite until the usual term of crusaders; excepting those things about which a plea has been raised or an inquest made by our order before we took the cross; but as soon as we return, (or if perchance we desist from our expedition), we will immediately grant full justice in accordance with the laws of the Welsh and in relation to the foresaid regions.

  The provisions for Welshmen unjustly dispossessed by Henry or Richard are identical with those made in the latter part of chapter 52 for Englishmen, except for the last words, “in accordance with the laws of the Welsh in relation to the foresaid districts”: no machinery is here specified for declaring or applying these laws.

  The Articles of the Barons had, however, mentioned the procedure to be adopted; and a comparison of articles 25 and 44 with this chapter suggests the antithesis between “per judicium parium suorum in curia regis” for Englishmen, and “in marchia per judicium parium suorum” for Welshmen.

  CHAPTER FIFTY–EIGHT.

  Nos reddemus filium Lewelini statim, et omnes obsides de Wallia, et cartas que nobis liberate fuerunt in securitatem pacis.

  We will immediately give up the son of Llywelyn and all the hostages of Wales, and the charters delivered to us as security for the peace.

  The treatment of hostages in general and Welsh hostages in particular has already been illustrated.1 The patent and close rolls show a constant coming and going of these living pledges of the peace. A writ of 18th December, 1214, for example, bade Engelard of Cigogné restore three Welsh nobles to Llywelyn.2 Since then, new hostages, including Llywelyn’s son, had been handed over; and charters also had been pledged.

  The Articles of the Barons had treated this question as an open one, referring it to the arbitration of Stephen Langton and others he might nominate. The point had apparently been decided in favour of the Welsh before the Charter was engrossed in its final form.3 John is now made to promise an immediate surrender of hostages and charters.

  The Welsh prince must have breathed more freely when this was fulfilled. Soon, with a light heart, his son by his side, he renewed hostilities. Gualo, on 11th November, 1216, laid interdict on the whole of Wales for holding with the barons.1 By the treaty of Lambeth, Louis was to send a copy of the peace to Llywelyn and the other Welsh princes.2

  CHAPTER FIFTY–NINE.

  Nos faciemus Alexandro regi Scottorum de sororibus suis, et obsidibus reddendis, et libertatibus suis, et jure suo, secundum formam in qua faciemus aliis baronibus nostris Anglie, nisi aliter esse debeat per cartas quas habemus de Willelmo patre ipsius, quondam rege Scottorum; et hoc erit per judicium parium suorum in curia nostra.

  We will do towards Alexander, King of Scots, concerning the return of his sisters and his hostages, and concerning his franchises, and his right, in the same manner as we shall do towards our other barons of England, unless it ought to be otherwise according to the charters which we hold from William his father, formerly King of Scots; and this shall be according to the judgment of his peers in our court.

  The barons welcomed allies whether from Wales or Scotland; and this chapter was dictated by a desire to conciliate Alexander. John was forced to promise to restore to the King of Scots his sisters and other hostages, together with his franchises and his “right.”

  Opinions have been, and still are, sharply divided as to whether, or in what degree, Scotland was subject to feudal overlordship. David I. and his successors, Kings of Scotland, had been wont to do fealty and homage to the Kings of England; but this fact has received different interpretations. Such homage, it is argued, was performed in respect of certain English baronies which happened to belong by hereditary right to the Kings of Scotland, namely, the earldom of Huntingdon, and the counties of Northumberland, Cumberland, and Westmoreland. The terms of homage did not indicate for what fiefs it was sworn—whether for the English earldoms alone, or for the country north of Tweed as well.

  The position of the Kings of Scots remained ambiguous, until William the Lion was placed at a terrible disadvantage by his capture at Alnwick in 1174. To gain release, he ratified the Treaty of Falaise on 8th December, of that year, by which he agreed to hold his territories as fiefs of the English Crown. All his tenants in Scotland were to take oath to Henry; while hostages were surrendered, along with the castles of Berwick, Roxburgh, Jedburgh, Edinburgh, and Stirling.1

  Henry’s diplomacy was undone by his successor. Richard, preparing for his crusade of 1190, sold recklessly every right that would fetch a price: William bought back the independence of his kingdom; but this restoration of the relations that prevailed previous to 1174, involved a restoration of the old ambiguities. When Richard died, William despatched ambassadors to England, pressing claims upon the northern counties, promising to support John’s title in return for their admission, and adding threats.2 John avoided committing himself until his position in England was assured; thereafter he commanded William to do homage unconditionally. The Scots King disregarded the first summons, but yielded to a second, yet “reserving always his own right.”3 The saving clause left everything vague as before.

  In April, 1209, the King of Scots incurred John’s displeasure. William’s only son, Alexander, was demanded as a hostage, or alternatively three border castles must be delivered up. After a refusal, the old King gave in on 7th August, 1209.1 Alexander did homage on behalf of his father “for the aforesaid castles and other lands which he held,” and found sureties for the payment of 15,000 marks. William’s daughters, Margaret and Isabel, became wards of John, who had the right to bestow them in marriage.2 There seems to have been an understanding that one of them should wed John’s eldest son.3 Margaret and Isabel, though virtually prisoners in Corfe Castle, were honourably treated there. The Close Rolls contain orders for supplying them with articles of comfort and luxury. Thus on 6th July, 1213, John instructed the Mayor of Winchester to despatch in haste, for the use of his niece Eleanor and of the two Scots princesses, robes of dark green (tunics and super–tunics) with capes of cambric and fur of miniver, together with twenty–three yards of good linen cloth, with light shoes for summer wear, “and the Mayor is to come himself with all the above articles to Corfe, there to receive the money for the cost of the same.”4

  Meanwhile, events in Scotland had favoured English pretensions. In 1212, Cuthred, a claimant for the Scottish throne, endeavoured to dethrone King William. English succour was asked and paid for by a treaty sealed at Norham on 7th February, 1212, by which William granted to John the right to marry the young Alexander, then fourteen years of age, “sicut hominem suum ligium,” to whomsoever he would, at any time within the next six years, but always “without disparagement.”5 William pledged himself and his son to keep faith and allegiance to John’s son, Henry, “as their liege lord” against all mortals.6 William had saved his Crown, but Scotland was sinking into the position of a vassal state. On 28th October, 1213, Innocent III. ordered the King of Scotland and his son to show fealty and devotion to King John.1

  William the Lion died at Stirling on 4th December, 1214, and Alexander’s peaceful succession was facilitated by the knowledge that he had the support of John. Such was the position of affairs when John was brought to bay at Runnymede. The barons were willing to bid for the alliance of Alexander; yet it was unnecessary to bid high. John was made to promise to restore Alexander’s sisters and other hostages unconditionally, but words were used which committed him on none of the disputed points.2 Franchises and “right” were to be restored only in so far as accorded with William’s “charters,” as interpreted by the judgment of the English barons in the court of the English King.

  The allusion in the text to the Scottish King as one among “our other barons of England” need not be pressed against Alexander, any more than similar expressions should be pressed against John, whose position as Duke of Normandy and Aquitaine in no way made England a fief of the French Crown or prevented him becoming a vassal of Rome. In questions affecting his feudal position in France, John’s peers were the dukes and counts of that country; and similarly those who had a right to sit in judgment as Alexander’s peers over his claims to English fiefs were the English earls and barons. Such a tribunal was not likely to give decisions favourable to Scots pretensions, at the expense of England.3

  Alexander, though no party to the treaty at Runnymede, was willing to profit by it: on 7th July, 1215, he despatched the Bishop of St. Andrews and five laymen to John “concerning our business which we have against you to be transacted in your court.”1 Nothing came of this; and Alexander invaded England in order to push his claims. John swore his usual oath, “by God’s teeth,” that he would “chase the little red–haired fox–cub from his hiding–holes.”2

  By the treaty of Lambeth (12th September, 1217), Louis and Henry were each to send a copy of the peace to Alexander that he might be included in its terms on his restoring castles, lands, and prisoners, taken by him in the war.3 On 23rd September, they joined in urging him to restore Carlisle, and Alexander, anxious to preserve his English honour of Huntingdon, was constrained to yield.4 The deeper question at issue between England and Scotland was still unsolved when the relations between the two countries entered on a new phase, as a consequence of the attempts at annexation made by Edward I., “the hammer of the Scots.”

  CHAPTER SIXTY.

  Omnes autem istas consuetudines predictas et libertates quas nos concessimus in regno nostro tenendas quantum ad nos pertinet erga nostros, omnes de regno nostro, tam clerici quam laici, observent quantum ad se pertinet erga suos.

  Moreover, all these aforesaid customs and liberties, the observance of which we have granted in our kingdom as far as pertains to us towards our men, shall be observed by all of our kingdom, as well clergy as laymen, as far as pertains to them towards their men.

  It would have been as impolitic as it was obviously unfair for the barons, in their capacity of mesne lords, to inflict upon their own tenants those very exactions which they compelled the King to abjure as against themselves. Accordingly, the benefit of the “customs and liberties” conceded by John to his feudal tenants was—in a somewhat perfunctory manner, it is true—extended to the feudal tenants of all other magnates, whether cleric or lay. Although the reference to “customs and liberties” was quite general in its terms, it seems natural to infer that feudal grievances were chiefly meant, since the view of society indicated is feudal rather than national.1

  These considerations suggest that too liberal a view has sometimes been taken of the scope of this chapter. Coke treated it as affecting not merely freeholders, but the whole mass of the people:—“This is the chief felicity of a kingdom, when good laws are reciprocally of prince and people (as is here undertaken) duly observed.”2 In this view, he has had many followers; and the present chapter has received undue emphasis as supporting a democratic interpretation of Magna Carta.3 It has been referred to as “the only clause which affects the whole body of the people.”4 The better view is that its provisions were confined to feudal sub–tenants.

  Even authors who interpret the chapter in this restricted application are still prone to exaggerate its importance. (1) The clause is sometimes regarded as springing directly from the barons’ own initiative: Dr. Stubbs, contrasting it with Henry I.’s Charter of Liberties, holds that it was “adopted by the lords themselves.”5 Such praise is unmerited; the barons inserted it because they had need of allies. (2) On the other hand, credit for the clause, equally unwarranted, has been sometimes bestowed on John. Dr. Robert Henry says that “this article, which was highly reasonable, was probably inserted at the desire of the King.”6

  The substance of this chapter appears in the reissues of 1217 and 1225; but its force there is possibly somewhat impaired by the addition of a new clause reserving to archbishops, bishops, abbots, priors, templars, hospitallers, earls, barons, and all other persons as well ecclesiastical as secular, all the franchises and free customs they previously had1 —a “saving clause” that might be turned to various uses.

  CHAPTER SIXTY–ONE.

  Cum autem pro Deo, et ad emendacionem regni nostri, et ad melius sopiendam discordiam inter nos et barones nostros ortam, hec omnia predicta concesserimus, volentes ea integra et firma stabilitate in perpetuum2 gaudere, facimus et concedimus eis securitatem subscriptam; videlicet quod barones eligant viginti quinque barones de regno quos voluerint, qui debeant pro totis viribus suis observare, tenere, et facere observari, pacem et libertates quas eis concessimus, et hac presenti carta nostra confirmavimus, ita scilicet quod, si nos, vel justiciarius noster, vel ballivi nostri, vel aliquis de ministris nostris, in aliquo erga aliquem deliquerimus, vel aliquem articulorum pacis aut securitatis transgressi fuerimus, et delictum ostensum fuerit quatuor baronibus de predictis viginti quinque baronibus, illi quatuor barones accedant ad nos vel ad justiciarum nostrum, si fuerimus extra regnum, proponentes nobis excessum, petent ut excessum illum sine dilacione faciamus emendari. Et si nos excessum non emendaverimus, vel, si fuerimus extra regnum justiciarius noster non emendaverit, infra tempus quadraginta dierum computandum a tempore quo monstratum fuerit nobis vel justiciario nostro si extra regnum fuerimus, predicti quatuor barones referant causam illam ad residuos de illis viginti quinque baronibus, et illi viginti quinque barones cum communa tocius terre distringent et gravabunt nos modis omnibus quibus poterunt, scilicet per capcionem castrorum, terrarum, possessionum, et aliis modis quibus poterunt, donec fuerit emendatum secundum arbitrium eorum, salva persona nostra et regine nostre et liberorum nostrorum; et cum fuerit emendatum intendent nobis sicut prius fecerunt. Et quicumque voluerit de terra juret quod ad predicta omnia exequenda parebit mandatis predictorum viginti quinque baronum, et quod gravabit nos pro posse suo cum ipsis, et nos publice et libere damus licenciam jurandi cuilibet qui jurare voluerit, et nulli umquam jurare prohibebimus. Omnes autem illos de terra qui per se et sponte sua noluerint jurare viginti quinque baronibus, de distringendo et gravando nos cum eis, faciemus jurare eosdem de mandato nostro, sicut predictum est. Et si aliquis de viginti quinque baronibus decesserit, vel a terra recesserit, vel aliquo alio modo impeditus fuerit, quominus ista predicta possent exequi, qui residui fuerint de predictis viginti quinque baronibus eligant alium loco ipsius, pro arbitrio suo, qui simili modo erit juratus quo et ceteri. In omnibus autem que istis viginti quinque baronibus committuntur exequenda, si forte ipsi viginti quinque presentes fuerint, et inter se super re aliqua discordaverint, vel aliqui ex eis summoniti nolint vel nequeant interesse, ratum habeatur et firmum quod major pars eorum qui presentes fuerint providerit, vel preceperit, ac si omnes viginti quinque in hoc consensissent; et predicti viginti quinque jurent quod omnia antedicta fideliter observabunt, et pro toto posse suo facient observari. Et nos nichil impetrabimus ab aliquo, per nos nec per alium, per quod aliqua istarum concessionum et libertatum revocetur vel minuatur; et, si aliquid tale impetratum fuerit, irritum sit et inane et numquam eo utemur per nos nec per alium.

  Since, moreover, for God and the amendment of our kingdom and for the better allaying of the quarrel that has arisen between us and our barons, we have granted all these concessions, desirous that they should enjoy them in complete and firm endurance for ever, we give and grant to them the under–written security, namely, that the barons choose five–and–twenty barons of the kingdom, whomsoever they will, who shall be bound with all their might, to observe and hold, and cause to be observed, the peace and liberties we have granted and confirmed to them by this ou present Charter, so that if we, or our justiciar, or our bailiffs or any one of our officers, shall in anything be at fault toward anyone, or shall have broken any one of the articles of the peace or of this security, and the offence be notified to four barons of the foresaid five–and–twenty, the said four barons shall repair to us (or our justiciar, if we are out of the realm) and, laying the transgression before us, petition to have that transgression redressed without delay. And if we shall not have corrected the transgression (or, in the event of our being out of the realm, if our justiciar shall not have corrected it) within forty days, reckoning from the time it has been intimated to us (or to our justiciar, if we should be out of the realm), the four barons aforesaid shall refer that matter to the rest of the five–and–twenty barons, and those five–and–twenty barons shall, together with the community of the whole land, distrain and distress us in all possible ways, namely, by seizing our castles, lands, possessions, and in any other way they can, until redress has been obtained as they deem fit, saving harmless our own person, and the persons of our queen and children; and when redress has been obtained, they shall resume their old relations towards us. And let whoever in the country desires it, swear to obey the orders of the said five–and–twenty barons for the execution of all the aforesaid matters, and along with them, to molest us to the utmost of his power; and we publicly and freely grant leave to every one who wishes to swear, and we shall never forbid anyone to swear. All those, moreover, in the land who of themselves and of their own accord are unwilling to swear to the twenty–five to help them in constraining and molesting us, we shall by our command compel the same to swear to the effect foresaid. And if any one of the five–and–twenty barons shall have died or departed from the land, or be incapacitated in any other manner which would prevent the foresaid provisions being carried out, those of the said twenty–five barons who are left shall choose another in his place according to their own judgment, and he shall be sworn in the same way as the others. Further, in all matters, the execution of which is intrusted to these twenty–five barons, if perchance these twenty–five are present and disagree about anything, or if some of them, after being summoned, are unwilling or unable to be present, that which the majority of those present ordain or command shall be held as fixed and established, exactly as if the whole twenty–five had concurred in this; and the said twenty–five shall swear that they will faithfully observe all that is aforesaid, and cause it to be observed with all their might. And we shall procure nothing from anyone, directly or indirectly, whereby any part of these concessions and liberties might be revoked or diminished; and if any such thing has been procured, let it be void and null, and we shall never use it personally or by another.

  This important chapter stands by itself, providing machinery for enforcing all that precedes it. It thus forms what modern jurisprudence would describe as the “sanction” of the whole, but what was known in the current phrase of its own day as “the form of security” (forma securitatis ad observandum pacem et libertates).1 It contains the only executive clause of the Charter, the sole constitutional machinery.2

  I.

  The “Security” or legal Sanction.

  The procedure devised for enforcing the Charter was crude: John conferred upon twenty–five of his enemies a legal right to organize rebellion, whenever in their opinion he had broken any one of the provisions of Magna Carta. Violence might be legally used against him, until he redressed their alleged grievances “to their own satisfaction” (secundum arbitrium eorum). If it had been possible to put so violent an expedient into practice, the “sovereignty,” or supreme power in England, would have been split into two. John would have held the sceptre only until his opponents declared that he had broken the Charter, when, by his own previously–granted mandate, it would pass to the twenty–five barons forming what has been variously styled a “Committee of Remonstrance and Constraint” or a “Committee of Rebellion.”3

  The procedure for redressing grievances is described in some detail; the wronged party must make known his case to four barons of the twenty–five, who would then make it known to the King, and ask redress. If John refused or unduly delayed, compulsion might be used. On the matter of undue delay, the Articles of the Barons said “within a reasonable time to be determined in the Charter.” The Charter did determine this, naming forty days. Compulsion might take any form, except violence against the person of the King, or of his wife or children.

  II.

  Minor details.

  Although the whole expedient seems chimerical to the modern mind, the opposition leaders in 1215 evidently thought they had devised a practicable scheme of government. This is shown by the care with which they elaborated the procedure.

  (1)

  Appointment of the twenty–five executors.

  The members of the committee were to be, in the first instance, “elected” by the “barons.” Vacancies were to be filled by the method now known as “co–optation”: the committee, once appointed, would form a close corporation; no one uncongenial to the majority could gain admission—an arrangement with a thoroughly oligarchic flavour. The provision for supplying vacancies caused by death proves that the scheme was not to be temporary.

  Writs, issued to the sheriffs on 19th June, command the enforcement of the oath to the twenty–five barons, but do not mention them by name. Matthew Paris supplies the omission, and though he does not disclose the source of his information, it is unlikely that so comprehensive a list could be entirely a work of the imagination.1 They occur in the following order, the earls of Hertford, Aumâle, Gloucester, Winchester, Hereford, Norfolk, and Oxford, William Marshall the younger, Robert fitz Walter the elder, Gilbert de Clare, Eustace de Vesci, Hugh Bigod, William of Mowbray, William Hardell (Mayor of London), William de Lanvalei, Robert de Ros, John de Lacy (Constable of Chester), Richard de Perci, John fitz Robert, William Mallet, Geoffrey de Say, Roger de Mumbezon, William of Huntingfield, Richard de Muntfitchet, and William of Albini.2 There are here no churchmen and no members of the moderate party whose names appear in the preamble. All except two, or at most three, were declared enemies of John.1 It was an oligarchy of disaffected Crown tenants, whose baronial homogeneity was only broken by the presence of the Mayor of London. Such a committee was not likely to use its powers to further other interests than its own.

  (2)

  A majority to form a quorum.

  Driven by necessity the barons devised, or stumbled upon, a peculiarly modern expedient. Unanimity would be difficult to obtain. It was provided, accordingly, that the will of the majority of those present should prevail. It would be inaccurate to say, in modern phraseology, that thirteen formed a quorum, since the quorum varied with the number of those present. No provision was made for summoning or constituting this committee, and room was thus left for packed meetings: one faction, hurriedly convened, might usurp the rights of the whole body. The precedent tentatively introduced, for allowing a majority to act for the whole, was followed only timidly and at intervals. Still, its appearance in John’s Charter marks a stage in the advance of the principle of modern politics which substitutes the “counting of heads for the breaking of them.”2

  (3)

  The sub–committee of four.

  Four of the twenty–five executors were to act as intermediaries between aggrieved individuals and the King. Such a position involved discretionary powers; for, if the four refused to endorse the justice of any complaint, John also would be in safety to refuse.3

  (4)

  Local agents of the twenty–five executors.

  In each county the twelve knights, whose original function was to preside at inquiries into “evil customs,” came to act as local representatives of the revolutionary committee, being armed with power to constrain the sheriff to carry out the provisions of Magna Carta, very much as the twenty–five were authorized to constrain the King. In particular, these knights were charged with enforcement of the oath of obedience to the revolutionary committee, and with confiscating the property of all who refused.1

  (5)

  The part to be played by the public.

  John authorized his subjects to side against him, if he should violate the Charter: his general mandate was granted to the twenty–five “cum communa totius terræ,” while licence was “freely and publicly” bestowed on everyone so disposed, to swear obedience to the executors. Two aspects of this provision require attention: (a) Its relation to allegiance and treason. John solemnly authorized his subjects, in certain circumstances, to transfer their allegiance from himself to the committee of his foes. If they refused, he agreed to their compulsion; and on 27th June, 1215, writs were actually issued instructing the seizure of the lands and goods of all who would not swear to obey the twenty–five.2 (b) Communa totius terræ. The “community of the whole land” was thus to afford active help in subjecting the King to the reign of law; and the phrase has been pressed into the service of democracy by enthusiasts, who seek to magnify modern conceptions by finding their roots in the past. Few words of medieval Latin offer a more tempting field to enquirers than this communa, which, with its English and French equivalents, holds the key to many problems of constitutional origins. The appearance in Magna Carta of a body described as a “commune,” in conjunction with an oath of obedience to a revolutionary committee, suggests comparison with the form of civic constitution known in that age as “the sworn commune.”3 The “communa” referred to in chapter 61 was something widely different: to the barons at Runnymede it may have meant either the entire body of feudal tenants or only the magnates; but medieval analogies make it impossible that the word could embrace the free peasantry, still less the villeins of England. The occurrence of such a word is far from proving that the Charter rests on any broad or popular basis.

  III.

  Relations to Contemporary Theory.

  Clumsy and impracticable as the whole scheme appears to modern eyes, it was quite in accord with medieval theory. The conception of a relation founded upon contract between lord and vassal lies at the root of feudalism. If either party glaringly broke the terms of the compact, the other was justified in repudiating the relationship, but he must observe due formalities. Diffidatio, intimated to his lord, must precede any attempt of the vassal to redress his wrongs by force. The barons at Runnymede, having complied with this preliminary, had for the moment ceased to owe fealty to John. In reserving power to appoint an Executive Committee (even if this be regarded as implying a right of legalized rebellion), as a condition precedent to a renewal of allegiance, they moved in the direction of legal restraint as opposed to revolutionary violence. The right here recognized by John, likely as it might be to lead to hostilities, was in theory and intention an honest effort to obviate war by recourse to the nearest approximation to constitutional action then available. It was, further, an attempt to substitute united action of the body of feudal tenants (communa totius terræ) for the individual vassal’s right of private judgment, claimed and sometimes exercised in that age, on the European continent, and actually confirmed in 1222 by Andreas II. of Hungary by his Bulla Aurea.1

  The expedient contained in this chapter is a logical deduction from the vassal’s right of defiance as a prelude to private war against a lord who has wronged him. It was no innovation, but something found by the barons in feudal law.2 Foreign parallels have been found for it, not only in the more anarchic procedure of the Hungarian Bulla Aurea, but also in the institutions of Aragon and elsewhere.1 When the baronial leaders in 1263 performed diffidatio, they echoed the words of this chapter, “salva persona regis, reginae et liberorum suorum.”2

  This chapter has been acclaimed as embodying for the first time the idea that formed “the true corner stone of the English Constitution,”3 namely, the right to compel an erring King to bow to a body of law that lies outside his will. There is much to be said for this view. It is quite consistent, however, to combine an appreciation of the value of this conception, with an admission of the defective and clumsy nature of the machinery by which a first attempt was made to realize it.4

  IV.

  Modern Criticism.

  Until the last twenty–five years or so, commentators were wont to credit the framers of Magna Carta with anticipating most of the cardinal principles of the modern Constitution. In combating such exaggerations, it would not be unnatural to lay emphasis on the extent to which the machinery of this chapter is condemned by the standards of the nineteenth century. Yet it is well to steer a middle course, neither praising the men of 1215, nor blaming them for failing to achieve the impossible.

  The faults of the scheme, whether viewed from the side of modern theory or of modern practice, are obvious. It was a violent measure, full of immediate dangers, and calculated to exercise a baneful influence on constitutional development in the future. The fact that Magna Carta provided no better sanction for its own enforcement than the right of legalized rebellion, has already been discussed as its cardinal defect.5 It is instructive to note a few of its other defects in detail.

  (1) The scheme challenged hostility by its want of moderation. On every vexed political question of the day, John’s authority would have been superseded by that of twenty–five of the most hostile faction of the baronage. If the King thought himself aggrieved in anything, he would require to plead his cause before a tribunal in which his opponents sat as judges.1 The scheme was thus repugnant to loyal Englishmen, who cherished a respect for the monarchy. No King would submit tamely to remain a sovereign, whose “sovereignty” existed on sufferance of his enemies. The powers thus conferred in 1215 were more sweeping than those conferred on a similar committee in 1258, and yet the Parliament which appointed the latter has been branded as “the Mad Parliament,” because of the violence of its measures.

  (2) Rebellion, even where morally justified, is necessarily illegal; to attempt to map out for it a legitimate sphere of action is to attempt the logically impossible. The barons had failed to rise to the true conception of a limited monarchy; their scheme recognized a King still absolute in some matters, but in others powerless and abject. The powers of the twenty–five, a body which received no proper organization, were those of aggression rather than of administration. Viewed in this modern light, the claims of the barons to constructive statesmanship rank low.

  (3) The powers of the revolutionary committee, excessive though ill–defined, backed by the sworn obedience of all classes of the nation, would tend completely to paralyze the King. The nominal sovereign, nervous under this sword of Damocles, would lose all power of initiative, while the committee, powerful to reduce him to impotence, would be powerless to goad him into action or to act in his stead. The revolutionary committee had been planned as a drag on a bad executive, not as a good executive to take its place.

  (4) Even as a drag, the efficiency of the committee would have been neutralized in either of two contingencies: if the barons composing it disagreed among themselves, or, if the King refused to surrender. Not a step to restrain the King could legally be taken, until he had received formal intimation followed by an interval of forty days, during which he might complete his preparation for war without fear of interruption.

  (5) If the scheme of the barons seems ill–suited to the needs of the hour of its conception, it was fraught with even greater dangers to the future development of the English constitution. The problem it sought to solve was one of no transient or unimportant nature: the barons sought the best method of turning royal promises into laws which succeeding Kings must obey. In attempting this, Magna Carta moved along lines that were radically wrong;1 which, if not departed from in time, would have rendered any enduring progress impossible. The statesmanship which, while leaving one King on the throne, subjected him to the dictation of “five–and–twenty over–kings” was crude and ill–advised. It is true that the party of reform, throughout the long reign of Henry III., clung to the same erroneous solution; but they met with no success. After half a century of unrest, a settlement seemed as far distant as before. The dangers of schemes like those of 1215, 1244, and 1258 are clearly seen in contrast with the more tactful efforts of Edward I. towards a true solution, along lines leading in due time to complete success.

  The true policy for the barons was to use the King’s own administrative machinery and the King’s own servants to control the King. The principle was slowly established that the sovereign could perform no single act of prerogative except through the agency of a particular officer or organ of the royal household; while very gradually the doctrine of ministerial responsibility grew up, compelling each officer of the Crown to obey not only the law of the land, but also the Commune Concilium, fast changing into the modern Parliament. The credit of starting the constitution on its right line of development is in great measure due to Edward 1.2

  V.

  Failure of the Scheme.

  Almost before John’s Charter had been engrossed and sealed, the futility of its “sanction” was recognized. Each side grew suspicious and demanded new “sanctions” not contained in the Charter.

  (1)

  Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

  Magna Carta, assuming apparently that perfect trust could be placed in the revolutionary committee, provided no machinery for controlling them, no guarantee that they would observe the Charter. The futility of this complacency was soon manifest. One tyrant had brought distress on the whole nation; and now he was to be superseded by five–and–twenty. Who was to restrain the new tyrants? A second committee was nominated, partly to assist and partly to control the twenty–five. Matthew Paris1 describes it as composed of thirty–eight “Obsecutores et Observatores,” including the Earl Marshal, Hubert de Burgh, the earls of Arundel and Warenne, and other prominent members of the moderate party, not unfriendly to the King. Dr. Stubbs dismisses their relations to the executors with the remark that they “swore to obey the orders of the twenty–five.”2 Miss Norgate takes what seems to be a better view, in emphasizing, as the chief reason for their appointment, the duty of compelling “both the King and the twenty–five to deal justly with one another.”3 The thirty–eight were required to constrain the twenty–five, as the twenty–five constrained the King.4

  (2)

  Suspicions of the barons’ good faith.

  There is evidence that the King was distrustful of the barons’ good faith, and desired on his part some “sanction” that they would not again renounce allegiance. The barons’ promise to grant John security, and the written protest against their breach of faith, made by Langton and other prelates at John’s request, have already been described.5

  (3)

  Suspicions of John’s good faith.

  The barons, on their part, soon came to the conclusion that the Committee, in spite of all its powers, formed an inadequate sanction against John. They demanded further “security.” The city of London was placed in their hands, and the Tower of London in the neutral custody of the primate, as pledges of John’s good faith, until 15th August or longer if need were. Those terms were reduced to writing in a document entitled “Conventio facta inter Regem Angliae et barones ejusdem regni,” which thus supplied a new “form of security,” supplementing, if not superseding, that contained in chapter 61.1

  (4)

  Precautions against papal intervention.

  The Articles of the Barons afford evidence of the framers’ suspicions that John would apply to Rome for release from his bargain. They demanded that the English prelates and the papal legate should become the King’s sureties, that he would not invite the Pope to invalidate the Charter. If Pandulf, as the Pope’s accredited agent, had put seal to such a document, he would have seriously embarrassed his august master.

  Two important alterations in the completed Charter were effected, however, whether at John’s instance, or at that of Pandulf, or of the English prelates, is matter of conjecture. All mention of Innocent by name was omitted, the clause being made quite general in its terms: John promised to procure a dispensation “from no one”; while the question of sureties was ignored. Innocent was left free to support John’s policy of repudiation.2

  CHAPTER SIXTY–TWO.

  Et omnes malas voluntates, indignaciones, et rancores ortos inter nos et homines nostros, clericos et laicos, a tempore discordie, plene omnibus remisimus et condonavimus. Preterea omnes transgressiones factas occasione ejusdem discordie, a Pascha anno regni nostri sextodecimo usque ad pacem reformatam, plene remisimus omnibus, clericis et laicis, et quantum ad nos pertinet plene condonavimus. Et insuper fecimus eis fieri litteras testimoniales patentes domini Stephani Cantuariensis archiepiscopi, domini Henrici Dublinensis archiepiscopi, et episcoporum predictorum, et magistri Pandulfi, super securitate ista et concessionibus prefatis.

  And all the ill–will, hatreds, and bitterness that have arisen between us and our men, clergy and lay, from the date of the quarrel, we have completely remitted and pardoned to everyone. Moreover, all trespasses occasioned by the said quarrel, from Easter in the sixteenth year of our reign till the restoration of peace, we have fully remitted to all, both clergy and laymen, and completely forgiven, as far as pertains to us. And, on this head, we have caused to be made for them letters testimonial patent of the lord Stephen, archbishop of Canterbury, of the lord Henry, archbishop of Dublin, of the bishops aforesaid, and of Master Pandulf as touching this security and the concessions aforesaid.

  The clauses that follow the forma securitatis are of a formal nature. The present chapter, after making a well–meant declaration that bygones should be bygones, so that peace and goodwill should everywhere prevail—a pious aspiration doomed to speedy disillusion—proceeds to authorize the prelates to issue, under their seals, certified copies of the Great Charter. Such letters were actually issued, and their terms are preserved in the Red Book of the Exchequer.1

  CHAPTER SIXTY–THREE.

  Quare volumus et firmiter precipimus quod Anglicana ecclesia libera sit et quod homines in regno nostro habeant et teneant omnes prefatas libertates, jura, et concessiones, bene et in pace, libere et quiete, plene et integre sibi et heredibus suis, de nobis et heredibus nostris, in omnibus rebus et locis, in perpetuum, sicut predictum est. Juratum est autem tam ex parte nostra quam ex parte baronum, quod hec omnia supradicta bona fide et sine malo ingenio observabuntur. Testibus supradictis et multis aliis. Data per manum nostram in prato quod vocatur Ronimede, inter Windlesoram et Stanes, quinto decimo die Junii, anno regni nostri decimo septimo.

  Wherefore it is our will, and we firmly enjoin, that the English Church be free, and that the men in our kingdom have and hold all the aforesaid liberties, rights, and concessions, well and peaceably, freely and quietly, fully and wholly, for themselves and their heirs, of us and our heirs, in all respects and in all places for ever, as is aforesaid. An oath, moreover, has been taken, as well on our part as on the part of the barons, that all these conditions aforesaid shall be kept in good faith and without evil intent. Given under our hand—the above–named and many others being witnesses—in the meadow which is called Runnymede, between Windsor and Staines, on the fifteenth day of June, in the seventeenth year of our reign.

  This last of the sixty–three chapters into which Magna Carta has been divided by modern commentators, contains little that calls for remark. Beginning with a repetition of the declarations made in chapter one that the English church should be free (omitting, however, any second reference to canonical election) and that homines in regno nostro should have and hold all of the aforesaid liberties, rights and concessions, it records that both parties had taken oath to observe its contents in good faith.1 The magnates named in the preamble were thereafter, along with many others unnamed, referred to collectively as witnesses. The Charter concludes with a declaration that it has been “given by our hand,” and the place and date are specified. The actual “giving” by John’s hand was effected by impress of his great seal.2

  APPENDIX.
  DOCUMENTS RELATIVE TO, OR ILLUSTRATIVE OF, MAGNA CARTA.

  I.

  THE CHARTER OF LIBERTIES OF HENRY I.1 (1100.)

  Henricus Dei gratia rex Anglorum omnibus baronibus et fidelibus suis tam Francigenis quam Anglis salutem.

  1. Sciatis me Dei misericordia et communi consilio baronum regni Anglie ejusdem regni regem coronatum esse. Et quia regnum oppressum erat injustis exactionibus, ego, respectu Dei et amore quem erga vos omnes habeo, sanctam Dei ecclesiam imprimis liberam facio: ita quod nec vendam nec ad firmam ponam nec, mortuo archiepiscopo sive episcopo sive abbate, aliquid accipiam de dominio ecclesie vel de hominibus ejus, donec successor in eam ingrediatur. Et omnes malas consuetudines, quibus regnum Anglie injuste opprimebatur, inde aufero; quas malas consuetudines ex parte hic pono:

  2. Si quis baronum meorum, comitum, sive aliorum qui de me tenent, mortuus fuerit, heres suus non redimet terram suam sicut faciebat tempore fratris mei, sed legitima et justa relevatione relevabit eam. Similiter et homines baronum meorum legitima et justa relevatione relevabunt terras suas de dominis suis.

  3. Et si quis baronum vel aliorum hominum meorum filiam suam nuptum tradere voluerit, sive sororem, sive neptem, sive cognatam, mecum inde loquatur. Sed neque ego aliquid de suo pro hac licentia accipiam, neque defendam ei quin eam det, excepto si eam vellet jungere inimico meo. Et si, mortuo barone vel alio homine meo, filia heres remanserit, illam dabo consilio baronum meorum cum terra sua. Et si, mortuo marito, uxor ejus remanserit et sine liberis fuerit, dotem suam et maritationem habebit; et eam non dabo marito, nisi secundum velle suum.

  4. Si vero uxor cum liberis remanserit, dotem quidem et maritationem suam habebit, dum corpus suum legitime servaverit; et eam non dabo, nisi secundum velle suum. Et terre et liberorum custos erit sive uxor sive alius propinquorum, qui justius esse debebit. Et precipio ut barones mei similiter se contineant erga filios et filias vel uxores hominum suorum.

  5. Monetagium commune quod capiebatur per civitates et comitatus, quod non fuit tempore regis Eadwardi, hoc ne amodo sit, omnino defendo. Si quis captus fuerit, sive monetarius, sive alius, cum falsa moneta, justicia recta inde fiat.

  6. Omnia placita et omnia debita que fratri meo debebantur condono exceptis rectis firmis meis et exceptis illis que pacta erant pro aliorum hereditatibus, vel pro eis rebus que justius aliis contingebant. Et si quis pro hereditate sua aliquid pepigerat, illud condono, et omnes relevationes que pro rectis hereditatibus pacte erant.

  7. Et si quis baronum vel hominum meorum infirmabitur, sicut ipse dabit vel dare disponet pecuniam suam, ita datam esse concedo. Quodsi ipse, preventus vel armis vel infirmitate, pecuniam suam non dederit nec dare disposuerit uxor sua sive liberi aut parentes aut legitimi homines ejus eam pro anima ejus dividant, sicut eis melius visum fuerit.

  8. Si quis baronum vel hominum meorum forisfecerit, non dabit vadium in misericordia pecunie sue, sicut faciebat tempore patris mei vel fratris mei, sed secundum modum forisfacti, ita emendabit, sicut emendasset retro a tempore patris mei, in tempore aliorum antecessorum meorum. Quodsi perfidie vel sceleris convictus fuerit, sicut justum fuerit, sic emendet.

  9. Murdra etiam retro ab illa die qua in regem coronatus fui omnia condono; et ea que amodo facta fuerint juste emendentur secundum lagam regis Eadwardi.

  10. Forestas communi consensu baronum meorum in manu mea retinui, sicut pater meus eas habuit.

  11. Militibus qui per loricas terras suas deserviunt terras dominicarum suarum quietas ab omnibus geldis et ab omni opere, proprio dono meo, concedo, ut, sicut tam magno gravamine alleviati sunt, ita equis et armis se bene instruant, ut apti et parati sint ad servitium meum et ad defensionem regni mei.

  12. Pacem firmam in toto regno meo pono et teneri amodo precipio.

  13. Lagam regis Eadwardi vobis reddo cum illis emendationibus quibus pater meus eam emendavit consilio baronum suorum.

  14. Si quis aliquid de meo vel de rebus alicujus post obitum regis Willelmi, fratis mei, cepit, totum cito reddatur absque emendatione. Et si quis inde aliquid retinuerit, ille super quem inventum fuerit graviter michi emendabit.

  Testibus Mauricio Lundonie episcopo, et Gundulfo episcopo, et Willelmo electo episcopo, et Henrico comite, et Simone comite, et Waltero Giffardo, et Rodberto de Monfort, et Rogero Bigoto, et Henrico de Portu, apud Westmonasterium, quando coronatus fui. Valete!

  II.

  THE SECOND OR OXFORD CHARTER OF STEPHEN.1 (1136.)

  Ego Stephanus Dei gratia, assensu cleri et populi in regem Anglie electus, et a Willelmo Cantuariensi archiepiscopo et sancte Romane ecclesie legato consecratus, et ab Innocentio sancte romane sedis pontifice postmodum confirmatus, respectu et amore Dei sanctam ecclesiam liberam esse concedo, et debitam reverentiam illi confirmo. Nichil me in ecclesia vel rebus ecclesiasticis simoniace acturum vel permissurum esse promitto. Ecclesiasticarum personarum et omnium clericorum et rerum eorum justiciam et potestatem et distributionem bonorum ecclesiasticorum in manu episcoporum esse perhibeo et confirmo. Dignitates ecclesiarum privilegiis earum confirmatas et consuetudines earum antiquo tenore habitas inviolate manere statuo et concedo. Omnes ecclesiarum possessiones et tenuras, quas die illa habuerunt qua Willelmus rex avus meus fuit vivus et mortuus, sine omni calumpniantium reclamatione, eis liberas et absolutas esse concedo. Si quid vero de habitis vel possessis ante mortem ejusdem regis quibus modo careat, ecclesia deinceps repetierit, indulgentie et dispensationi mee vel restituendum vel discutiendum reservo. Quecunque vero post mortem ipsius regis liberalitate regum vel largitione principum, oblatione vel comparatione, vel qualibet transmutatione fidelium eis collata sunt, confirmo. Pacem et justiciam me in omnibus facturum et pro posse meo conservaturum eis promitto.

  Forestas quas Willelmus avus meus et Willelmus avunculus meus instituerunt et habuerunt mihi reservo. Ceteras omnes quas rex Henricus superaddidit, ecclesiis et regno quietas reddo et concedo.

  Si quis episcopus vel abbas vel alia ecclesiastica persona ante mortem suam rationabiliter sua distribuerit vel distribuenda statuerit, firmum manere concedo. Si vero morte preoccupatus fuerit, pro salute anime ejus, ecclesie consilio, eadem fiat distributio. Dum vero sedes propriis pastoribus vacue fuerint, ipsas et earum possessiones omnes in manu et custodia clericorum vel proborum hominum ejusdem ecclesie committam, donec pastor canonice substituatur.

  Omnes exactiones et injusticias et mescheningas sive per vicecomites vel per alios quoslibet male inductas funditus exstirpo. Bonas leges et antiquas et justas consuetudines in murdris et placitis et aliis causis observabo et observari precipio et constituo. Hec omnia concedo et confirmo, salva regia et justa dignitate mea.

  Testibus Willelmo Cantuariensi archiepiscopo, et Hugone Rothomagensi archiepiscopo, et Henrico Wintoniensi episcopo, et Rogero Saresberiensi episcopo, et Alexandro Lincolniensi episcopo, et Nigello Eliensi episcopo, et Evrardo Norwicensi episcopo, et Simone Wigorniensi episcopo, et Bernardo episcopo de S. Davide, et Audoeno Ebroicensi episcopo, et Ricardo Abrincensi episcopo, et Roberto Herefordiensi episcopo, et Johanne Rovecestriensi episcopo, et Athelulfo Carlolensi episcopo, et Rogero cancellario, et Henrico nepote Regis, et Roberto comite Gloecestrie, et Willelmo comite de Warenna, et Rannulfo comite Cestrie, et Rogero comite de Warewic., et Roberto de Ver., et Milone de Gloecestria, et Brientio filio Comitis, et Roberto de Oilly conestabulis, et Willelmo Martello, et Hugone Bigot, et Hunfredo de Buhun, et Simone de Belcamp dapiferis, et Willelmo de Albiniaco, et Eudone Martello pincernis, et Roberto de Ferreriis, et Willelmo Pevrello de Notingeham, et Simone de Saintliz, et Willelmo de Albamarla, et Pagano filio Johannis, et Hamone de Sancto Claro, et Ilberto de Laceio. Apud Oxeneford. Anno ab incarnatione Domini M.C. XXXVI., set regni mei primo.

  III.

  CHARTER OF HENRY II.1 (circa 1154.)

  Henricus Dei gracia rex anglie, dux Normannie et Aquitanie, et comes Andegavie, omnibus comitibus, baronibus et fidelibus suis Francis et Anglicis, salutem. Sciatis me, ad honorem Dei et sancte Ecclesie, et pro communi emendacione tocius regni mei, concessisse et reddidisse et presenti carta mea confirmasse Deo et sancte ecclesie et omnibus comitibus et baronibus et omnibus hominibus meis omnes concessiones et donaciones et libertates et liberas consuetudines, quas rex Henricus avus meus eis dedit et concessit. Similiter eciam omnes malas consuetudines, quas ipse delevit et remisit, ego remitto et deleri concedo pro me et heredibus meis. Quare volo et firmiter precipio quod sancta ecclesia et omnes comites et barones et omnes mei homines omnes illas consuetudines et donaciones et libertates et liberas consuetudines habeant et teneant libere et quiete, bene et in pace et integre, de me et heredibus meis, sibi et heredibus suis, adeo libere et quiete et plenarie in omnibus, sicut rex Henricus avus meus eis dedit et concessit, et carta sua confirmavit. Teste Ricardo de Luci apud Westmonasterium.

  IV.

  THE SO–CALLED “UNKNOWN CHARTER OF LIBERTIES” OF JOHN.2 (circa 1214–1215.)

  1. Concedit Rex Johannes quod non capiet hominem absque judicio, nec aliquid accipiet pro justitia, nec injustitiam faciet.

  2. Et si contingat quod meus baro vel homo meus moriatur et haeres suus sit in aetate, terram suam debeo ei reddere per rectum releveium absque magis capiendi.

  3. Et si ita sit quod haeres sit infra aetatem, debeo iiij^or militibus de legalioribus feodi terram bajulare in custodia, et illi cum meo famulo debent mihi reddere exitus terrae sine venditione nemorum et sine redemptione hominum et sine destructione parci et vivarii; et tunc quando ille haeres erit in aetate terram ei reddam quietam.

  4. Si foemina sit haeres terrae, debeo eam maritare, consilio generis sui, ita non sit disparagiata. Et si una vice eam dedero, amplius eam dare non possum, sed se maritabit ad libitum suum, sed non inimicis meis.

  5. Si contingat quod baro aut homo meus moriatur, concedo ut pecunia sua dividatur sicut ipse diviserit; et si praeoccupatus fuerit aut armis aut infirmitate improvisa, uxor ejus, aut liberi, aut parentes et amici propinquiores pro ejus anima dividant.

  6. Et uxor ejus non abibit de hospitio infra xl. dies et donec dotem suam decenter habuerit, et maritagium habebit.

  7. Adhuc hominibus meis concedo ne eant in exercitu extra Angliam nisi in Normanniam et in Britanniam et hoc decenter; quod si aliquis debet inde servitium decem militum, consilio baronum meorum alleviabitur.

  8. Et si scutagium evenerit in terra, una marca argenti capietur de feodi militis; et si gravamen exercitus contigerit, amplius caperetur consilio baronum regni.

  9. Adhuc concedo ut omnes forestas quas pater meus et frater meus et ego afforestaverimus, deafforesto.

  10. Adhuc concedo ut milites qui in antiquis forestis meis suum nemus habent, habeant nemus amodo ad herbergagia sua et ad ardendum; et habeant foresterium suum; et ego tantum modo unum qui servet pecudes meas.

  11. Et si aliquis hominum meorum moriatur qui Judaeis debeat, debitum non usurabit quamdiu haeres ejus sit infra aetatem.

  12. Et concedo ne homo perdat pro pecude vitam neque membra.

  V.

  THE ARTICLES OF THE BARONS.1 (1215.)

  Ista sunt Capitula que Barones petunt et dominus Rex concedit.

  1. Post decessum antecessorum heredes plene etatis habebunt hereditatem suam per antiquum relevium exprimendum in carta.

  2. Heredes qui infra etatem sunt et fuerint in custodia, cum ad etatem pervenerint, habebunt hereditatem suam sine relevio et fine.

  3. Custos terre heredis capiet rationabiles exitus, consuetudines, et servitia, sine destructione et vasto hominum et rerum suarum, et si custos terre fecerit destructionem et vastum, amittat custodiam; et custos sustentabit domos, parcos, vivaria, stagna, molendina et cetera ad terram illam pertinentia, de exitibus terre ejusdem; et ut heredes ita maritentur ne disparagentur et per consilium propinquorum de consanguinitate sua.

  4. Ne vidua det aliquid pro dote sua, vel maritagio, post decessum mariti sui, sed maneat in domo sua per .xl. dies post mortem ipsius, et infra terminum illum assignetur ei dos; et maritagium statim habeat et hereditatem suam.

  5. Rex vel ballivus non saisiet terram aliquam pro debito dum catalla debitoris sufficiunt; nec plegii debitoris distringantur, dum capitalis debitor sufficit ad solutionem; si vero capitalis debitor defecerit in solutione, si plegii voluerint, habeant terras debitoris, donec debitum illud persolvatur plene, nisi capitalis debitor monstrate poterit se esse inde quietum erga plegios.

  6. Rex non concedet alicui baroni quod capiat auxilium de liberis hominibus suis, nisi ad corpus suum redimendum, et ad faciendum primogenitum filium suum militem, et ad primogenitam filiam suam semel maritandam, et hoc faciet per rationabile auxilium.

  7. Ne aliquis majus servitium faciat de feodo militis quam inde debetur.

  8. Ut communia placita non sequantur curiam domini regis, sed assignentur in aliquo certo loco; et ut recognitiones capiantur in eisdem comitatibus, in hunc modum: ut rex mittat duos justiciaros per .iiii^or. vices in anno, qui cum .iiii^or. militibus ejusdem comitatus electis per comitatum, capiant assisas de nova dissaisina, morte antecessoris, et ultima presentatione, nec aliquis ob hoc sit summonitus nisi juratores et due partes.

  9. Ut liber homo amercietur pro parvo delicto secundum modum delicti, et, pro magno delicto, secundum magnitudinem delicti, salvo continemento suo; villanus etiam eodem modo amercietur, salvo waynagio suo; et mercator eodem modo, salva marcandisa, per sacramentum proborum hominum de visneto.

  10. Ut clericus amercietur de laico feodo suo secundum modum aliorum predictorum, et non secundum beneficium ecclesiasticum.

  11. Ne aliqua villa amercietur pro pontibus faciendis ad riparias, nisi ubi de jure antiquitus esse solebant.

  12. Ut mensura vini, bladi, et latitudines pannorum et rerum aliarum, emendetur; et ita de ponderibus.

  13. Ut assise de nova dissaisina et de morte antecessoris abbrevientur; et similiter de aliis assisis.

  14. Ut nullus vicecomes intromittat se de placitis ad coronam pertinentibus sine coronatoribus; et ut comitatus et hundredi sint ad antiquas firmas absque nullo incremento, exceptis dominicis maneriis regis.

  15. Si aliquis tenens de rege moriatur, licebit vicecomiti vel alii ballivo regis seisire et imbreviare catallum ipsius per visum legalium hominum, ita tamen quod nichil inde amoveatur, donec plenius sciatur si debeat aliquod liquidum debitum domino regi, et tunc debitum regis persolvatur; residuum vero relinquatur executoribus ad faciendum testamentum defuncti; et si nichil regi debetur, omnia catalla cedant defuncto.

  16. Si aliquis liber homo intestatus decesserit, bona sua per manum proximorum parentum suorum et amicorum et per visum ecclesie distribuantur.

  17. Ne vidue distringantur ad se maritandum, dum voluerint sine marito vivere, ita tamen quod securitatem facient quod non maritabunt se sine assensu regis, si de rege teneant, vel dominorum suorum de quibus tenent.

  18. Ne constabularius vel alius ballivus capiat blada vel alia catalla, nisi statim denarios inde reddat, nisi respectum habere possit de voluntate venditoris.

  19. Ne constabularius possit distringere aliquem militem ad dandum denarios pro custodia castri, si voluerit facere custodiam illam in propria persona vel per alium probum hominem, si ipse eam facere non possit per rationabilem causam; et si rex eum duxerit in exercitum, sit quietus de custodia secundum quantitatem temporis.

  20. Ne vicecomes, vel ballivus regis, vel aliquis alius, capiat equos vel carettas alicujus liberi hominis pro cariagio faciendo, nisi ex voluntate ipsius.

  21. Ne rex vel ballivus suus capiat alienum boscum ad castra vel ad alia agenda sua, nisi per voluntatem ipsius cujus boscus ille fuerit.

  22. Ne rex teneat terram eorum qui fuerint convicti de felonia, nisi per unum annum et unum diem, sed tunc reddatur domino feodi.

  23. Ut omnes kidelli de cetero penitus deponantur de Tamisia et Medeweye et per totam Angliam.

  24. Ne breve quod vocatur “Precipe” de cetero fiat alicui de aliquo tenemento unde liber homo amittat curiam suam.

  25. Si quis fuerit disseisitus vel prolongatus per regem sine juditio de terris, libertatibus, et jure suo, statim ei restituatur; et si contentio super hoc orta fuerit, tunc inde disponatur per juditium .xxv. baronum, et ut illi qui fuerint dissaisiti per patrem vel fratrem regis, rectum habeant sine dilatione per juditium parium suorum in curia regis; et si rex debeat habere terminum aliorum cruce signatorum, tunc archiepiscopus et episcopi faciant inde juditium ad certum diem, appellatione remota.

  26. Ne aliquid detur pro brevi inquisitionis de vita vel membris, sed libere concedatur sine pretio et non negetur.

  27. Si aliquis tenet de rege per feodi firmam, per sokagium, vel per burgagium, et de alio per servitium militis, dominus rex non habebit custodiam militum de feodo alterius, occasione burgagii vel sokagii, nec debet habere custodiam burgagii, sokagii, vel feodi firme; et quod liber homo non amittat militiam suam occasione parvarum sergantisarum, sicuti de illis qui tenent aliquod tenementum reddendo inde cuttellos vel sagittas vel hujusmodi.

  28. Ne aliquis ballivus possit ponere aliquem ad legem simplici loquela sua sine testibus fidelibus.

  29. Ne corpus liberi hominis capiatur, nec imprisonetur, nec dissaisietur, nec utlagetur, nec exuletur, nec aliquo modo destruatur, nec rex eat vel mittat super eum vi, nisi per juditium parium suorum vel per legem terre.

  30. Ne jus vendatur vel differratur vel vetitum sit.

  31. Quod mercatores habeant salvum ire et venire ad emendum vel vendendum, sine omnibus malis toltis, per antiquas et rectas consuetudines.

  32. Ne scutagium vel auxilium ponatur in regno, nisi per commune consilium regni, nisi ad corpus regis redimendum, et primogenitum filium suum militem faciendum, et filiam suam primogenitam semel maritandam; et ad hoc fiat rationabile auxilium. Simili modo fiat de taillagiis et auxiliis de civitate Londonie, et de aliis civitatibus que inde habent libertates, et ut civitas Londonie plene habeat antiquas libertates et liberas consuetudines suas, tam per aquas, quam per terras.

  33. Ut liceat unicuique exire de regno et redire, salva fide dominis regis, nisi tempore werre per aliquod breve tempus propter communem utilitatem regni.

  34. Si quis mutuo aliquid acceperit a Judeis plus vel minus, et moriatur antequam debitum illud solvatur, debitum non usurabit quamdiu heres fuerit infra etatem, de quocumque teneat; et si debitum illud inciderit in manum regis, rex non capiet nisi catallum quod continetur in carta.

  35. Si quis moriatur et debitum debeat Judeis, uxor ejus habeat dotem suam; et si liberi remanserint, provideantur eis necessaria secundum tenementum; et de residuo solvatur debitum salvo servitio dominorum; simili modo fiat de aliis debitis; et ut custos terre reddat heredi, cum ad plenam etatem pervenerit, terram suam instauratam secundum quod rationabiliter poterit sustinere de exitibus terre ejusdem de carucis et wainnagiis.

  36. Si quis tenuerit de aliqua eskaeta, sicut de honore Walingeford, Notingeham, Bononie, et Lankastrie, et de aliis eskaetis que sunt in manu regis et sunt baronie, et obierit, heres ejus non dabit aliud relevium, vel faciet regi aliud servitium quam faceret baroni; et ut rex eodem modo eam teneat quo baro eam tenuit.

  37. Ut fines qui facti sunt pro dotibus, maritagiis, hereditatibus, et amerciamentis, injuste et contra legem terre, omnino condonentur; vel fiat inde per juditium, .xxv. baronum, vel per juditium majoris partis eorumdem, una cum archiepiscopo et aliis quos secum vocare voluerit ita quod, si aliquis vel aliqui de .xxv. fuerint in simili querela, amoveantur et alii loco illorum per residuos de .xxv. substituantur.

  38. Quod obsides et carte reddantur, quae liberate fuerunt regi in securitatem.

  39. Ut illi qui fuerint extra forestam non veniant coram justiciariis de foresta per communes summonitiones, nisi sint in placito vel plegii fuerint; et ut prave consuetudines de forestis et de forestariis, et warenniis, et vicecomitibus, et rivariis, emendentur per .xii. milites de quolibet comitatu, qui debent eligi per probos homines ejusdem comitatus.

  40. Ut rex amoveat penitus de balliva parentes et totam sequelam Gerardi de Atyes, quod de cetero balliam non habeant, scilicet Engelardum, Andream, Petrum, et Gyonem de Cancellis, Gyonem de Cygony, Matheum de Martiny, et fratres ejus; et Galfridum nepotem ejus et Philippum Mark.

  41. Et ut rex amoveat alienigenas, milites, stipendiarios, balistarios, et ruttarios, et servientes qui veniunt cum equis et armis ad nocumentum regni.

  42. Ut rex faciat justiciarios, constabularios, vicecomites, et ballivos, de talibus qui sciant legem terre et eam bene velint observare.

  43. Ut barones qui fundaverunt abbatias, unde habent cartas regum vel antiquam tenuram, habeant custodiam earum cum vacaverint.

  44. Si rex Walenses dissaisierit vel elongaverit de terris vel libertatibus, vel de rebus aliis in Anglia vel in Wallia, eis statim sine placito reddantur; et si fuerint dissaisiti vel elongati de tenementis suis Anglie per patrem vel fratrem regis sine juditio parium suorum, rex eis sine dilatione justiciam exhibebit, eo modo quo exhibet Anglicis justiciam de tenementis suis Anglie secundum legem Anglie, et de tenementis Wallie secundum legem Wallie, et de tenementis Marchie secundum legem Marchie; idem facient Walenses regi et suis.

  45. Ut rex reddat filium Lewelini et preterea omnes obsides de Wallia, et cartas que ei liberate fuerunt in securitatem pacis .

  47. Et omnes foreste que sunt aforestate per regem tempore suo deafforestentur, et ita fiat de ripariis que per ipsum regem sunt in defenso.

  48. Omnes autem istas consuetudines et libertates quas rex concessit regno tenendas quantum ad se pertinet erga suos, omnes de regno tam clerici quam laici observabunt quantum ad se pertinet erga suos.

  [Here, there occurs a blank space in the original.]

  49. Hec est forma securitatis ad observandum pacem et libertates inter regem et regnum. Barones eligent .xxv. barones de regno quos voluerint, qui debent pro totis viribus suis observare, tenere et facere observari, pacem et libertates quas dominus rex eis concessit et carta sua confirmavit; ita videlicet quod si rex, vel justiciarius, vel ballivi regis, vel aliquis de ministris suis, in aliquo erga aliquem deliquerit, vel aliquem articulorum pacis aut securitatis transgressus fuerit, et delictum ostensum fuerit .iiii^or. baronibus de praedictis .xxv. baronibus, illi .iiii^or. barones accedent ad dominum regem, vel ad justiciarium suum, si rex fuerit extra regnum; proponentes ei excessum, petent ut excessum illum sine dilatione faciat emendari; et si rex vel justiciarius ejus illud non emendaverit, si rex fuerit extra regnum, infra rationabile tempus determinandum in carta, predicti .iiii^or. referent causam illam ad residuos de illis .xxv. baronibus, et illi .xxv. cum communa totius terre distringent et gravabunt regem modis omnibus quibus poterunt, scilicet per captionem castrorum, terrarum, possessionum, et aliis modis quibus poterunt, donec fuerit emendatum secundum arbitrium eorum, salva persona domini regis et regine et liberorum suorum; et cum fuerit emendatum, intendant domino regi sicut prius. Et quicumque voluerit de terra jurabit se ad predicta exequenda pariturum mandatis predictorum .xxv. baronum, et gravaturum regem pro posse suo cum ipsis; et rex pubblice et libere dabit licentiam jurandi cuilibet qui jurare voluerit, et nulli umquam jurare prohibebit. Omnes autem illos de terra qui sponte sua et per se noluerint jurare .xxv. baronibus de distringendo et gravando regem cum eis, rex faciet jurare eosdem de mandato suo sicut predictum est. Item si aliquis de predictis .xxv. baronibus decesserit, vel a terra recesserit, vel aliquo modo alio impeditus fuerit quominus ista predicta possint exequi, qui residui fuerint de .xxv. eligent alium loco ipsius pro arbitrio suo, qui simili modo erit juratus quo et ceteri. In omnibus autem que istis .xxv. baronibus committuntur exequenda, si forte ipsi .xxv. presentes fuerint et inter se super re aliqua discordaverint, vel aliqui ex eis vocati nolint vel nequeant interesse, ratum habebitur et firmum quod major pars ex eis providerit vel preceperit, ac si omnes .xxv. in hoc consensissent; et predicti .xxv. jurabunt quod omnia antedicta fideliter observabunt et pro toto posse suo facient observari. Preterea rex faciet eos securos per cartas archiepiscopi et episcoporum et magistri Pandulfi, quod nichil impetrabit a domino papa per quod aliqua istarum conventionum revocetur vel minuatur, et, si aliquid tale impetraverit, reputetur irritum et inane et numquam eo utatur.

  VI.

  WRITS SUPPLEMENTARY OF JOHN’S GREAT CHARTER.

  (1)

  Writ to Stephen Harengod, dated 23rd June, 1215, announcing that terms had been arranged.1

  Rex Stephano Harengod etc., Sciatis quod firma pax facta est per Dei gratiam inter nos et barones nostros die Veneris proximo post festum Sancte Trinitatis apud Runemed., prope Stanes; ita quod eorum homagia eodem die ibidem cepimus. Unde vobis mandamus firmiter precipientes quod sicut nos et honorem nostrum diligitis et pacem regni nostri, ne ulterius turbetur, quod nullum malum de cetero faciatis baronibus nostris vel aliis, vel fieri permittatis, occasione discordie prius orte inter nos et eos. Mandamus etiam vobis quod de finibus et tenseriis nobis factis occasione illius discordie, si quid superest reddendum, nichil capiatis. Et si quid post illum diem Veneris cepistis, illud statim reddatis. Et corpora prisonum et obsidum captorum et detentorum occasione hujus guerre, vel finium vel tenseriarum predictarum, sine dilatione deliberetis. Hec omnia predicta, sicut corpus vestrum diligitis, faciatis. Et in hujus etc., nobis mittimus. Teste meipso apud Runemed., xxiij. die Junii anno regni nostri xvij.

  (2)

  Writ to Hugh de Bova, dated 23rd June, 1215, ordering disbandment of mercenaries.2

  Rex Hugoni de Bova, salutem. Mandamus vobis quod in fide qua nobis tenemini non retineatis aliquem de militibus vel servientibus qui fuerunt apud Dover., sed in patriam suam in pace sine dilatione ire faciatis. Et in hujus, etc. Teste meipso apud Runimed. xxiij. die Junii anno regni nostri xvij^mo.

  (3)

  Writs issued to the sheriffs of counties on 19th June, 1215.1

  Rex vicecomiti, forestariis, warennariis, custodibus ripariarum et omnibus baillivis suis in eodem comitatu, salutem. Sciatis pacem firmam esse reformatam per Dei gratiam inter nos et barones et liberos homines regni nostri, sicut audire poteritis et videre per cartam nostram quam inde fieri fecimus, quam etiam legi publice precepimus per totam bailliam vestram et firmiter teneri; volentes et districte precipientes quod tu vicecomes omnes de baillia tua secundum formam carte predicte jurare facias xxv. baronibus de quibus mentio fit in carta predicta, ad mandatum eorundem vel majoris partis eorum, coram ipsis vel illis quos ad hoc atornaverint per litteras suas patentes, et ad diem et locum quos ad hoc faciendum prefixerint predicti barones vel atornati ab eis ad hoc. Volumus etiam et precipimus quod xii milites de comitatu tuo, qui eligentur de ipso comitatu in primo comitatu qui tenebitur post susceptionem litterarum istarum in partibus tuis, jurent de inquirendis pravis consuetudinibus tam de vicecomitibus quam eorum ministris, forestis, forestariis, warennis et warennariis, ripariis et earum custodibus, et eis delendis, sicut in ipsa carta continetur. Vos igitur omnes sicut nos et honorem nostrum diligitis, et pacem regni nostri, omnia in carta contenta inviolabiliter observetis et ab omnibus observari faciatis, ne pro defectu vestri, aut per excessum vestrum, pacem regni nostri, quod Deus avertat, iterum turbari contingat. Et tu, vicecomes, pacem nostram per totam bailliam tuam clamari facias et firmiter teneri precipias. Et in hujus, etc. vobis mittimus. Teste me ipso apud Runimede, xix. die Junii, anno regni nostri xvij^mo.

  (4)

  Writs issued to the sheriffs of counties on 27th June, 1215.2

  Rex vicecomiti Warewic. et duodecim militibus electis in eodem comitatu ad inquirendum et delendum pravas consuetudines de vicecomitibus et eorum ministris forestis et forestariis warennis et warennariis ripariis et earum custodibus salutem. Mandamus vobis quod statim et sine dilatione saisiatis in manum nostram terras et tenementa et catalla omnium illorum de comitatu Warewic. qui jurare contradixerint viginti quinque baronibus secundum formam contentam in carta nostra de libertatibus vel eis quos ad hoc atornaverint. Et si jurare noluerint statim post quindecim dies completos preterquam terre et tenementa et catalla eorum in manu nostra saisita fuerint, omnia catalla sua vendi faciatis et denarios inde preceptos salvo custodiatis, deputandos subsidio terre sancte. Terras autem et tenementa eorum in manu nostra teneatis, quousque juraverint. Et hoc provisum est per judicium domini Cantuar. archiepiscopi et baronum regni nostri. Et in hujus etc. Teste meipso, apud Winton, xxvij die Junii anno regni nostri xvij^mo.

  Idem mandatum est omnibus vicecomitibus Anglie.

  (5)

  Conventio facta inter Regem Anglie et barones ejusdem regni.1

  Hec est conventio facta inter dominum Johannem regem Anglie, ex una parte, et Robertum filium Walteri, marescallum exercitus Dei et sancte ecclesie in Anglia, et Ricardum comitem de Clare, Gaufridum comitem Essex. et Glouc., Rogerum Bigot comitem Northfolc. et Suthfolc., Saherum comitem Wint., Robertum comitem Oxon., Henricum comitem Hereford., et barones subscriptos, scilicet Willielmum Mariscallum juniorem, Eustachium de Vescy, Willielmum de Mobray, Johannem filium Roberti, Rogerum de Monte Begonis, Willielmum de Lanvalay, et alios comites et barones et liberos homines totius regni, ex altera parte, videlicet quod ipsi comites et barones et alii prescripti tenebunt civitatem London. de baillio domini regis, salvis interim domino regi firmis redditibus et claris debitis suis, usque ad assumptionem beate Marie anno regni ipsius regis xvii^mo. et dominus Cant. tenebit similiter de baillio domini regis turrim London. usque ad predictum terminum, salvis civitati London. libertatibus suis et liberis consuetudinibus suis, et salvo cuilibet jure suo in custodia turris London., et ita quod interim non ponat dominus rex munitionem vel vires alias in civitate predicta vel in turri London. Fiant etiam infra predictum terminum sacramenta per totam Angliam viginti quinque baronibus sicut continentur in carta de libertatibus et securitate regno concessis vel attornatis viginti quinque baronum sicut continentur in literis de duodecim militibus eligendis ad delendum malas consuetudines de forestis et aliis. Et preterea infra eundem terminum omnia que comites et barones et alii liberi homines petunt a domino rege que ipse dixerit esse reddenda vel que per xxv barones aut per majorem partem eorum judicata fuerint esse reddenda reddantur secundum formam predicte carte. Et si hec facta fuerint vel per dominum regem non steterit quo minus ista facta fuerint infra predictum terminum tunc civitas et turris London. ad eundem terminum statim reddantur domino regi salvis predicte civitati libertatibus suis et liberis consuetudinibus suis sicut prescriptum est. Et si hec facta non fuerint et per dominum regem steterit quod ista non fiant infra predictum terminum barones tenebunt civitatem predictam et dominus archiepiscopus turrim London. donec predicta compleantur. Et interim omnes ex utraque parte recuperabunt castra terras et villas quas habuerunt in initio guerre orte inter dominum regem et barones.

  (6)

  Protest by archbishops of Canterbury and Dublin, and other prelates, that chapter 48 of the Great Charter was to be interpreted by both sides as limited.1

  Omnibus Christi fidelibus ad quos presentes littere pervenerint, Stephanus, Dei gracia Cantuar. archiepiscopus, tocius Anglie primas et sancte Romane ecclesie cardinalis et H. eadem gracia, archiepiscopus Dublin., W. quoque London., P. Winton., J. Bathon et Glaston., H. Lincoln., W. Wygorn., et W. Coventr., ejusdem gracie dono episcopi, salutem in Domino. Cum dominus Rex concesserit et per cartam suam confirmaverit, quod omnes male consuetudines de forestis, et forestariis et eorum ministris, statim inquirantur in quolibet comitatu, per duodecim milites juratos de eodem comitatu; qui debent eligi per probos homines ejusdem comitatus; et infra xl. dies post inquisitionem factam penitus, ita quod nunquam revocentur, deleantur per eosdem; dum tamen dominus Rex hoc prius sciat; universitati vestre notum fieri volumus, quod articulus iste ita intellectus fuit ex utraque parte, quum de eo tractabatur, et expressus, quod omnes consuetudines ille remanere debent, sine quibus foreste servari non possint: et hoc presentibus litteris protestamur.

  (7)

  Protest by the archbishops and other prelates that the barons repudiated their promise to ratify their oaths by formal charters.1

  Omnibus Christi fidelibus etc. Stephanus, Dei gracia Cantuar. archiepiscopus, totius Anglie primas et sancte Romane ecclesie cardinalis, Henricus Dublin. archiepiscopus, Willielmus London., Petrus Winton., Joscelinus Bathon, et Glaston., Hugo Lincoln., Walterus Wigorn., Willielmus Coventr., Ricardus Cicestr., episcopi et magister Pandulfus domini Pape subdiaconus et familiaris, salutem. Noverit universitas vestra, quod quando facta fuit pax inter dominum regem Johannem et barones Anglie, de discordia inter eos orta, idem barones, nobis presentibus et audientibus, promiserunt domino Regi, quod quamcumque securitatem habere vellet ab eis de pace illa observanda, ipsi ei habere facerent, preter castella et obsides. Postea vero quando dominus Rex petiit ab eis, ut talem cartam ei facerent:—

  “Omnibus etc. Sciatis nos astrictos esse per sacramenta et homagia domino nostro Johanni Regi Anglie, de fide ei servanda de vita et membris et terreno honore suo, contra omnes homines qui vivere possint et mori; et ad jura sua et heredum suorum, et ad regnum suum custodiendum et defendendum.”

  Ipsi id facere noluerunt. Et in hujus rei testimonium id ipsum per hoc scriptum protestamur.

  VII.

  THE GREAT CHARTER OF HENRY III.2 (third reissue, 11th february, 1225.)

  Henricus Dei gratia rex Anglie, dominus Hibernie, dux Normannie, Aquitanie, et comes Andegavie, archiepiscopis, episcopis, abbatibus, prioribus, comitibus, baronibus,1 vicecomitibus, prepositis, ministris et omnibus ballivis et fidelibus suis presentem cartam inspecturis, salutem. Sciatis2 quod nos, intuitu Dei et pro salute anime nostre et animarum antecessorum et successorum nostrorum, ad exaltationem sancte ecclesie et emendationem regni nostri, spontanea et bona voluntate nostra, dedimus et concessimus archiepiscopis, episcopis, abbatibus, prioribus, comitibus, baronibus et omnibus de regno nostro has libertates subscriptas tenendas in regno nostro Anglie in perpetuum.

  1 (1). In primis concessimus3 Deo et hac presenti carta nostra confirmavimus4 pro nobis et heredibus nostris in perpetuum quod anglicana ecclesia libera sit, et habeat omnia5 jura sua integra et libertates suas illesas.1 Concessimus etiam omnibus liberis hominibus regni nostri pro nobis et heredibus nostris in perpetuum omnes libertates subscriptas, habendas et tenendas eis et heredibus suis de nobis et heredibus nostris in perpetuum.2

  2 (2). Si quis comitum vel baronum nostrorum sive aliorum tenencium de nobis in capite per servicium militare mortuus fuerit, et, cum decesserit, heres ejus3 plene etatis fuerit et relevium debeat, habeat hereditatem suam per antiquum relevium, scilicet heres vel heredes comitis de baronia comitis integra per centum libras, heres vel heredes baronis de baronia integra per centum libras,4 heres vel heredes militis de feodo militis integro per centum solidos ad plus; et qui minus debuerit minus det secundum antiquam consuetudinem feodorum.

  3 (3). Si autem heres alicujus talium fuerit infra etatem,5dominus ejus non habeat custodiam ejus nec terre sue antequam homagium ejus ceperit; et, postquam talis heres fuerit in custodia, cum ad etatem pervenerit, scilicet viginti et unius anni, habeat hereditatem suam sine relevio et sine fine, ita tamen quod, si ipse, dum infra etatem fuerit, fiat miles, nichilominus terra remaneat in custodia dominorum suorum usque ad terminum predictum.

  4 (4). Custos terre hujusmodi heredis qui infra etatem fuerit non capiat de terra heredis nisi rationabiles exitus et rationabiles consuetudines et rationabilia servicia, et hoc sine destructione et vasto hominum vel rerum; et si nos commiserimus custodiam alicujus talis terre vicecomiti vel alicui alii qui de exitibus terre illius nobis debeat respondere, et ille destructionem de custodia fecerit vel vastum, nos ab illo capiemus emendam, et terra committetur6 duobus legalibus et discretis hominibus de feodo illo qui de exitibus nobis respondeant vel ei cui eos assignaverimus; et si dederimus vel vendiderimus alicui custodiam alicujus talis terre, et ille destructionem inde fecerit vel vastum, amittat ipsam custodiam et tradatur duobus legalibus et discretis hominibus de feodo illo qui similiter nobis respondeant, sicut predictum est.

  5 (5). Custos autem, quamdiu custodiam terre habuerit, sustentet domos, parcos, vivaria, stagna, molendina et cetera ad terram illam pertinencia de exitibus terre ejusdem, et reddat heredi, cum ad plenam etatem pervenerit, terram suam totam instauratam de carucis1et omnibus aliis rebus, ad minus secundum quod illam recepit. Hec omnia observentur de custodiis archiepiscopatuum, episcopatuum, abbatiarum, prioratuum, ecclesiarum et dignitatum vacancium que ad nos pertinent, excepto quod hujusmodi custodie vendi non debent.

  6 (6). Heredes maritentur absque disparagatione.2

  7 (7). Vidua post mortem mariti sui statim et sine difficultate aliqua habeat maritagium suum et hereditatem suam, nec aliquid det pro dote sua vel pro maritagio suo vel pro hereditate sua, quam hereditatum maritus suus et ipsa tenuerunt3 die obitus ipsius mariti, et maneat in capitali mesagio mariti sui4 per quadraginta dies post obitum ipsius mariti sui, infra quos assignetur ei dos sua, nisi prius ei fuerit assignata, vel nisi domus illa sit castrum; et si de castro recesserit, statim provideatur ei domus competens in qua possit honeste morari, quousque dos sua ei assignetur secundum quod predictum est,5et habeat rationabile estoverium suum interim de communi. Assignetur autem ei pro dote sua tercia pars tocius terre mariti sui que sua fuit in vita sua, nisi de minori dotata fuerit ad hostium ecclesic.

  (8). Nulla vidua distringatur ad se maritandam,6 dum vivere voluerit sine marito, ita tamen quod securitatem faciet quod se non maritabit sine assensu nostro, si de nobis tenuerit, vel sine assensu domini sui,7 si de alio tenuerit.

  8 (9). Nos vero vel ballivi8 nostri non seisiemus terram aliquam nec redditum pro debito aliquo quamdiu catalla debitoris presencia sufficiant9 ad debitum reddendum et ipse debitor paratussit inde satisfacere; nec plegii ipsius debitoris distringantur quamdiu ipse capitalis debitor sufficiat1 ad solutionem debiti; et, si capitalis debitor defecerit in solutione debiti, non habens unde reddat aut reddere nolit cum possit, plegii respondeant pro2 debito; et, si voluerint, habeant terras et redditus debitoris quousque3 sit eis satisfactum de debito quod ante pro eo solverunt,4 nisi capitalis debitor monstraverit se inde esse quietum versus eosdem plegios.

  95 (13). Civitas6 Londonie habeat omnes antiquas libertates et liberas consuetudines suas.7 Preterea volumus et concedimus quod omnes alie civitates, et burgi, et ville, et barones de quinque portubus, et omnes portus, habeant omnes libertates et liberas consuetudines suas.

  108 (16). Nullus distringatur ad faciendum majus servicium de feodo militis nec de alio libero tenemento quam inde debetur.

  11 (17). Communia placita non sequantur curiam nostram, set teneantur in aliquo loco certo.

  12 (18). Recognitiones de nova disseisina et de morte antecessoris9 non capiantur nisi in suis comitatibus, et hoc modo: nos, vel si extra regnum fuerimus, capitalis justiciarius noster, mittemus10 justiciarios per unumquemque comitatum semel in anno,11 qui cum militibus comitatuum capiant in comitatibus assisas predictas. Et ea que in illo adventu suo in comitatu per justiciarios predictos ad dictas assisas capiendas missos terminari non possunt, per eosdem terminentur alibi in itinere suo; et ea que per eosdem propter difficultatem aliquorum articulorum terminari non possunt, referantur ad justiciarios nostros de banco, et ibi terminentur.

  13. Assise de ultima presentatione semper capiantur coram justiciariis nostris de banco et ibi terminentur.

  1412 (20). Liber homo non amercietur pro parvo delicto nisi secundum modum ipsius delicti, et pro magno delicto, secundum magnitudinem delicti, salvo contenemento suo; et mercator eodem modo salva mercandisa sua; et villanus alterius quam noster1 eodem modo amercietur salvo wainagio suo, si inciderit2 in misericordiam nostram: et nulla predictarum misericordiarum ponatur nisi per sacramentum3 proborum et legalium hominum de visneto.

  (21). Comites et barones non amercientur nisi per pares suos, et non nisi secundum modum delicti.

  (22).4Nulla ecclesiastica persona amercietur secundum quantitatem beneficii sui ecclesiastici, set secundum laicum tenementum suum, et secundum quantitatem delicti.

  15 (23). Nec villa, nec homo, distringatur facere pontes ad riparias nisi qui ex antiquo et de jure facere debet.5

  16.6Nulla riparia decetero defendatur, nisi ille que fuerunt in defenso tempore regis Henrici avi nostri, per eadem loca et eosdem terminos sicut esse consueverunt tempore suo.

  17 (24). Nullus vicecomes, constabularius, coronatores vel alii ballivi nostri teneant placita corone nostre.

  187 (26). Si aliquis tenens de nobis laicum feodum moriatur, et vicecomes vel ballivus noster ostendat litteras nostras patentes de summonitione nostra de debito quod defunctus nobis debuit, liceat vicecomiti vel ballivo nostro attachiare et inbreviare catalla defuncti inventa in laico feodo ad valenciam illius debiti per visum legalium hominum, ita tamen quod nichil inde amoveatur donec persolvatur nobis debitum quod clarum fuerit, et residuum relinquatur executoribus ad faciendum testamentum defuncti; et si nichil nobis debeatur ab ipso, omnia catalla cedant defuncto, salvis uxori ipsius et pueris suis8 rationabilibus partibus suis.

  191 (23). Nullus constabularius vel ejus ballivus2 capiat blada vel alia catalla alicujus qui non sit de villa ubi castrum situm est, nisi statim inde reddat denarios aut respectum inde habere possit de voluntate venditoris; si autem de villa ipsa fuerit, infra quadraginta dies precium reddat.3

  20 (29). Nullus constabularius distringat aliquem militem ad dandum denarios pro custodia castri, si ipse eam facere voluerit4 in propria persona sua, vel per alium probum hominem, si ipse eam facere non possit propter rationabilem causam, et, si nos duxerimus eum5 vel miserimus in exercitum, erit quietus de custodia secundum quantitatem temporis quo per nos fuerit in exercitu de feodo pro quo fecit servicium in exercitu.6

  21 (30). Nullus vicecomes, vel ballivus noster, vel alius7 capiat equos vel carettas alicujus8 pro cariagio faciendo, nisi9reddat liberationem antiquitus statutam, scilicet pro caretta ad duos equos decem denarios per diem, et pro caretta ad tres equos quatuordecim denarios per diem.10Nulla caretta dominica alicujus ecclesiastice persone vel militis vel alicujus domine capiatur per ballivos predictos.

  (31). Nec nos nec ballivi nostri nec alii11 capiemus alienum boscum ad castra vel alia agenda nostra, nisi per voluntatem illius12 cujus boscus ille fuerit.

  22 (32). Nos non tenebimus terras eorum13 qui convicti fuerint de felonia, nisi per unum annum et unum diem; et tunc reddantur terre dominis feodorum.

  23 (33). Omnes kidelli decetero deponantur penitus per Tamisiam et Medeweiam14 et per totam Angliam, nisi per costeram maris.

  24 (34). Breve quod vocatur Precipe decetero non fiat alicui de aliquo1 tenemento, unde liber homo perdat2 curiam suam.

  25 (35). Una mensura vini sit per totum regnum nostrum, et una mensura cervisie, et una mensura bladi, scilicet quarterium London., et una latitudo pannorum tinctorum et russettorum et haubergettorum, scilicet due ulne infra listas; de ponderibus vero3 sit ut de mensuris.

  26 (36). Nichil detur4 de cetero pro brevi inquisitionis ab eo qui inquisitionem petit5 de vita vel membris, set gratis concedatur et non negetur.

  27 (37). Si aliquis teneat de nobis per feodifirmam vel soccagium, vel per burgagium, et de alio terram teneat per servicium militare, nos non habebimus custodiam heredis nec terre sue que est de feodo alterius, occasione illius feodifirme, vel soccagii, vel burgagii, nec habebimus custodiam illius feodifirme vel soccagii vel burgagii, nisi ipsa feodifirma debeat servicium militare. Nos non habebimus custodiam heredis nec6 terre alicujus quam tenet de alio per servicium militare, occasione alicujus parve serjanterie quam tenet de nobis per servicium reddendi nobis cultellos, vel sagittas, vel hujusmodi.

  28 (38). Nullus ballivus ponat decetero aliquem ad legem manifestam vel ad juramentum simplici loquela sua, sine testibus fidelibus ad hoc inductis.

  29 (39). Nullus liber homo decetero capiatur vel inprisonetur aut disseisiatur de aliquo libero tenemento suo vel libertatibus vel liberis consuetudinibus suis,7 aut utlagetur, aut exuletur aut aliquo alio modo destruatur, nec super eum ibimus, nec super eum mittemus, nisi per legale judicium parium suorum, vel per legem terre.

  (40). Nulli vendemus, nulli negabimus aut differemus rectum vel8 justiciam.

  30 (41). Omnes mercatores, nisi publice antea prohibiti fuerint, habeant salvum et securum exire de Anglia, et venire in Angliam, et morari, et ire per Angliam tam per terram quam per aquam9 ad emendum vel10 vendendum sine omnibus toltis malis1 per antiquas et rectas consuetudines, preterquam in tempore gwerre, et si sint de terra contra nos gwerrina; et si tales inveniantur in terra nostra in principio gwerre, attachientur sine dampno corporum vel rerum, donec sciatur a nobis vel a capitali justiciario nostro quomodo mercatores terre nostre tractentur, qui tunc invenientur in terra contra nos gwerrina; et, si nostri salvi sint ibi, alii salvi sint in terra nostra.

  312 (43). Si quis tenuerit de aliqua escaeta, sicut de honore Wallingefordie, Bolonie, Notingeham, Lancastrie, vel de aliis3 que sunt in manu nostra, et sint baronie, et obierit, heres ejus non det aliud relevium nec fiat4 nobis aliud servicium quam faceret baroni, si ipsa5 esset in manu baronis; et nos eodem modo eam tenebimus quo baro eam tenuit; nec nos, occasione talis baronie vel escaete, habebimus aliquam escaetam vel custodiam aliquorum hominum nostrorum, nisi alibi tenuerit de nobis in capite ille qui tenuit baroniam vel escaetam.6

  32.7Nullus liber homo decetero det amplius alicui vel vendat de terra sua quam ut de residuo terre sue possit sufficienter fieri domino feodi servicium ei debitum quod pertinet ad feodum illud.

  338 (46). Omnes patroni abbatiarum qui habent cartas regum Anglie de advocatione, vel antiquam tenuram vel possessionem, habeant earum custodiam cum vacaverint, sicut habere debent, et sicut supra declaratum est.

  349 (54). Nullus capiatur vel imprisonetur propter appellum femine de morte alterius quam viri sui.

  35.1Nullus comitatus decetero teneatur, nisi de mense in mensem; et, ubi major terminus esse solebat, major sit. Nec aliquis vicecomes vel ballivus faciat turnum suum per hundredum nisi bis in anno et non nisi in loco debito et consueto, videlicet semel post Pascha et iterum post festum sancti Michaelis. Et visus de franco plegio tunc fiat ad illum terminum sancti Michaelis sine occasione, ita scilicet quod quilibet habeat libertates suas quas habuit et habere consuevit tempore regis Henrici avi nostri, vol quas postea perquisivit. Fiat autem visus de franco plegio sic, videlicet quod pax nostra teneatur, et quod tethinga integra sit sicut esse consuevit, et quod vicecomes non querat occasiones, et quod contentus sit eo quod vicecomes habere consuevit de visu suo faciendo tempore regis Henrici avi nostri.

  36. Non liceat alicui decetero dare terram suam alicui domui religiose, ita quod eam resumat tenendam de eadem domo, nec liceat alicui domui religiose terram alicujus sic accipere quod tradat illam ei2a quo ipsam recepit3tenendam. Si quis autem de cetero terram suam alicui domui religiose sic dederit, et super hoc convincatur, donum suum penitus cassetur, et terra illa domino suo illius feodi incurratur.

  37. Scutagium decetero capiatur sicut capi solebat4tempore regis Henrici avi nostri. Et salve5sint archiepiscopis, episcopis, abbatibus, prioribus, templariis, hospitalariis, comitibus, baronibus et omnibus aliis tam ecclesiasticis quam secularibus personis libertates et libere consuetudines quas prius habuerunt.

  (60). Omnes autem istas consuetudines predictas et libertates quas concessimus in regno nostro tenendas quantum ad nos pertinet erga nostros, omnes de regno nostro tam clerici quam laici observent quantum ad se pertinet erga suos.6Pro hacautem concessione et donatione libertatum istarum et aliarum libertatum contentarum in carta nostra de libertatibus foreste, archiepiscopi, episcopi, abbates, priores, comites, barones, milites, libere tenentes, et omnes de regno nostro dederunt nobis quintam decimam partem omnium mobilium suorum. Concessimus etiam eisdem pro nobis et heredibus nostris quod nec nos nec heredes nostri aliquid perquiremus per quod libertates in hac carta contente infringantur vel infirmentur; et, si de aliquo aliquid contra hoc perquisitum fuerit, nichil valeat et pro nullo habeatur.

  Hiis testibus domino Stephano Cantuariensi archiepiscopo, Eustachio Lundoniensi, Jocelino Bathoniensi, Petro Wintoniensi, Hugoni Lincolniensi, Ricardo Sarrisberiensi, Benedicto Roffensi, Willelmo Wigorniensi, Johanne Eliensi, Hugone Herefordiensi, Radulpho Cicestriensi, Willelmo Exoniensi episcopis, abbate sancti Albani, abbate sancti Edmundi, abbate de Bello, abbate sancti Augustini Cantuariensis, abbate de Eveshamia, abbate de Westmonasterio, abbate de Burgo sancti Petri, abbate Radingensi, abbate Abbendoniensi, abbate de Maumeburia, abbate de Winchecomba, abbate de Hida, abbate de Certeseia, abbate de Sireburnia, abbate de Cerne, abbate de Abbotebiria, abbate de Middletonia, abbate de Seleby, abbate de Wyteby, abbate de Cirencestria, Huberto de Burgo justiciario, Ranulfo comite Cestrie et Lincolnie, Willelmo comite Sarrisberie, Willelmo comite Warennie, Gilberto de Clara comite Gloucestrie et Hertfordie, Willelmo de Ferrariis comite Derbeie, Willelmo de Mandevilla comite Essexie, Hugone Le Bigod comite Norfolcie, Willelmo comite Aubemarle, Hunfrido comite Herefordie, Johanne constabulario Cestrie, Roberto de Ros, Roberto filio Walteri, Roberto de Veteri ponte, Willielmo Brigwerre, Ricardo de Munfichet, Petro filio Herberti, Matheo filio Herberti, Willielmo de Albiniaco, Roberto Gresley, Reginaldo de Brahus, Johanne de Munemutha, Johanne filio Alani, Hugone de Mortuomari, Waltero de Bellocampo, Willielmo de sancto Johanne, Petro de Malalacu, Briano de Insula, Thoma de Muletonia, Ricardo de Argentein., Gaufrido de Nevilla, Willielmo Mauduit, Johanne de Baalun.

  Datum apud Westmonasterium undecimo die februarii anno regni nostri nono.

  VIII.

  CARTA DE FORESTA.1 (6 november, 1217.)

  Henricus Dei gratia rex Anglie, dominus Hibernie, dux Normannie, Aquitanie et comes Andegavie, archiepiscopis, episcopis, abbatibus, prioribus, comitibus, baronibus, justiciariis, forestariis, vicecomitibus, prepositis, ministris, et omnibus ballivis et fidelibus suis, salutem. Sciatis quod, intuitu Dei et pro salute anime nostre et animarum antecessorum et successorum nostrorum, ad exaltacionem Sancte Ecclesie et emendacionem regni nostri, concessimus et hac presenti carta confirmavimus pro nobis et heredibus nostris in perpetuum, de consilio venerabilis patris nostri domini Gualonis tituli sancti Martini presbiteri cardinalis et apostolice sedis legati, domini Walteri Eboracensis archiepiscopi, Willelmi Londoniensis episcopi, et aliorum episcoporum Anglie, et Willelmi Marescalli comitis Penbrocie, rectoris nostri et regni nostri, et aliorum fidelium comitum et baronum nostrorum Anglie, has libertates subscriptas tenendas in regno nostro Anglie, in perpetuum:

  1. In primis omnes foreste quas Henricus rex avus noster afforestavit videantur per bonos et legales homines; et, si boscum aliquem alium quam suum dominicum afforestaverit ad dampnum illius cujus boscus fuerit, deafforestentur. Et si boscum suum proprium afforestaverit, remaneat foresta, salva communa de herbagio et aliis in eadem foresta, illis qui eam prius habere consueverunt.

  2. Homines qui manent extra forestam non veniant decetero coram justiciariis nostris de foresta per communes summoniciones, nisi sint in placito, vel plegii alicujus vel aliquorum qui attachiati sunt propter forestam.

  3. Omnes autem bosci qui fuerunt afforestati per regem Ricardum avunculum nostrum, vel per regem Johannem patrem nostrum usque ad primam coronacionem nostram, statim deafforestentur, nisi fuerit dominicus boscus noster.

  4. Archiepiscopi, episcopi, abbates, priores, comites et barones et milites et libere tenentes, qui boscos suos habent in forestis, habeant boscos suos sicut eos habuerunt tempore prime coronacionis predicti regis Henrici avi nostri, ita quod quieti sint in perpetuum de omnibus purpresturis, vastis et assartis factis in illis boscis, post illud tempus usque ad principium secundi anni coronacionis nostre. Et qui de cetero vastum, purpresturam, vel assartum sine licencia nostra in illis fecerint, de vastis et assartis respondeant.

  5. Reguardores nostri eant per forestas ad faciendum reguardum sicut fieri consuevit tempore prime coronacionis predicti regis Henrici avi nostri, et non aliter.

  6. Inquisicio, vel visus de expeditacione canum existencium in foresta, decetero fiat quando debet fieri reguardum, scilicet de tercio anno in tercium annum; et tunc fiat per visum et testimonium legalium hominum et non aliter. Et ille, cujus canis inventus fuerit tunc non expeditatus, det pro misericordia tres solidos; et de cetero nullus bos capiatur pro expeditacione. Talis autem sit expeditacio per assisam communiter quod tres ortilli abscidantur sine pelota de pede anteriori; nec expeditentur canes de cetero, nisi in locis ubi consueverunt expeditari tempore prime coronacionis regis Henrici avi nostri.

  7. Nullus forestarius vel bedellus decetero faciat scotale, vel colligat garbas, vel avenam, vel bladum aliud, vel agnos, vel porcellos, nec aliquam collectam faciant; et per visum et sacramentum duodecim reguardorum quando facient reguardum, tot forestarii ponantur ad forestas custodiendas, quot ad illas custodiendas rationabiliter viderint sufficere.

  8. Nullum suanimotum de cetero teneatur in regno nostro nisi ter in anno; videlicet in principio quindecim dierum ante festum Sancti Michaelis, quando agistatores conveniunt ad agistandum dominicos boscos nostros; et circa festum Sancti Martini quando agistatores nostri debent recipere pannagium nostrum; et ad ista duo suanimota conveniant forestarii, viridarii, et agistatores, et nullus alius per districtionem; et tercium suanimotum teneatur in inicio quindecim dierum ante festum Sancti Johannis Baptiste, pro feonacione bestiarum nostrarum; et ad istud suanimotum tenendum convenient forestarii et viridarii et nulli alii per districtionem. Et preterea singulis quadraginta diebus per totum annum conveniant viridarii et forestarii ad videndum attachiamenta de foresta, tam de viridi, quam de venacione, per presentacionem ipsorum forestariorum, et coram ipsis attachiatis. Predicta autem suanimota non teneantur nisi in comitatibus in quibus teneri consueverunt.

  9. Unusquisque liber homo agistet boscum suum in foresta pro voluntate sua et habeat pannagium suum. Concedimus eciam quod unusquisque liber homo possit ducere porcos suos per dominicum boscum nostrum, libere et sine inpedimento, ad agistandum eos in boscis suis propriis, vel alibi ubi voluerit. Et si porci alicujus liberi hominis una nocte pernoctaverint in foresta nostra, non inde occasionetur ita quod aliquid de suo perdat.

  10. Nullus de cetero amittat vitam vel menbra pro venacione nostra; set, si aliquis captus fuerit et convictus de capcione venacionis, graviter redimatur, si habeat unde redimi possit; et si non habeat unde redimi possit, jaceat in prisona nostra per unum annum et unum diem; et, si post unum annum et unum diem plegios invenire possit, exeat a prisona; sin autem, abjuret regnum Anglie.

  11. Quicunque archiepiscopus, episcopus, comes vel baro transierit per forestam nostram, liceat ei capere unam vel duas bestias per visum forestarii, si presens fuerit; sin autem, faciat cornari, ne videatur furtive hoc facere.

  12. Unusquisque liber homo decetero sine occasione faciat in bosco suo, vel in terra sua quam habeat in foresta, molendinum, vivarium, stagnum, marleram, fossatum, vel terram arabilem extra cooperatum in terra arabili, ita quod non sit ad nocumentum alicujus vicini.

  13. Unusquisque liber homo habeat in boscis suis aereas, ancipitrum et spervariorum et falconum, aquilarum, et de heyrinis et habeat similiter mel quod inventum fuerit in boscis suis.

  14. Nullus forestarius de cetero, qui non sit forestarius de feudo reddens nobis firmam pro balliva sua, capiat chiminagium aliquod in balliva sua; forestarius autem de feudo firmam nobis reddens pro balliva sua capiat chiminagium, videlicet pro careta per dimidium annum duos denarios, et pro equo qui portat sumagium per dimidium annum unum obolum, et per alium dimidium annum obolum, et non nisi de illis qui de extra ballivam suam, tanquam mercatores, veniunt per licenciam suam in ballivam suam ad buscam, meremium, corticem vel carbonem emendum, et alias ducendum ad vendendum ubi voluerint: et de nulla alia careta vel sumagio aliquod chimunagium capiatur: et non capiatur chiminagium nisi in locis illis ubi antiquitus capi solebat et debuit. Illi autem qui portant super dorsum suum buscam, corticem, vel carbonem, ad vendendum, quamvis inde vivant, nullum de cetero dent chiminagium. De boscis autem aliorum nullum detur chiminagium foristariis nostris, preterquam de dominicis bocis nostris.

  15. Omnes utlagati pro foresta tantum a tempore regis Henrici avi nostri usque ad primam coronacionem nostram, veniant ad pacem nostram sine inpedimento, et salvos plegios inveniant quod de cetero non forisfaciant nobis de foresta nostra.

  16. Nullus castellanus vel alius teneat placita de foresta sive viridi sive de venacione, sed quilibet forestarius de feudo attachiet placita de foresta tam de viridi quam de venacione, et ea presentet viridariis provinciarum et cum irrotulata fuerint et sub sigillis viridariorum inclusa, presententur capitali forestario cum in partes illas venerit ad tenendum placita foreste, et coram eo terminentur.

  17. Has autem libertates de forestis concessimus omnibus, salvis archiepiscopis, episcopis, abbatibus, prioribus, comitibus, baronibus, militibus et aliis tam personis ecclesiasticis quam secularibus, Templariis et Hospitalariis, libertatibus et liberis consuetudinibus in forestis et extra, in warennis et aliis, quas prius habuerunt. Omnes autem istas consuetudines predictas et libertates, quas concessimus in regno nostro tenendas quantum ad nos pertinet erga nostros, omnes de regno nostro tam clerici quam laici observent quantum ad se pertinet erga suos. Quia vero sigillum nondum habuimus, presentem cartam sigillis venerabilis patris nostri domini Gualonis tituli Sancti Martini presbiteri cardinalis, apostolice sedis legati, et Willelmi Marescalli comitis Penbrok, rectoris nostri et regni nostri, fecimus sigillari. Testibus prenominatis et aliis multis. Datum per manus predictorum domini legati et Willelmi Marescalli apud Sanctum Paulum London., sexto die Novembris, anno regni nostri secundo.

  SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY AND LIST OF AUTHORITIES REFERRED TO.

  I.

  COMMENTARIES AND OTHER WORKS ON MAGNA CARTA (CHRONOLOGICALLY ARRANGED).

  • The Mirror of Justices, edited by Whittaker, W. J. (Selden Society); 1895.

  • Coke, Sir Edward, Second Institute, 1641; 17th edition, 1817.

  • Cooke, Edward, Magna Charta made in the ninth year of King Henry III. and confirmed by King Edward I. in the twentieth year of his reign; 1684.

  • Blackstone, Sir William, The Great Charter and Charter of the Forest, to which is prefixed the History of the Charters; 1759.

  • Barrington, Daines, Observations upon the Statutes from Magna Charta to 21 James I.; 1766.

  • Sullivan, F. S., An Historical Treatise on the Feudal Law, with a Commentary on Magna Charta; 1772.

  • Thomson, Richard, An Historical Essay on the Magna Charta of King John; 1829.

  • Lau, Thaddaeus, Die Entstehungsgeschichte der Magna Charta; 1856.

  • Bémont, Charles, Chartes des Libertés Anglaises; 1892.

  • Hantos, Elemér, The Magna Carta of the English and of the Hungarian Constitution; 1904.

  II.

  CHRONICLES AND ANNALS.

  • Annals of Dunstable, edited by H. R. Luard (Rolls Series); 1866.

  • Annals of Waverley, edited by H. R. Luard (Rolls Series); 1865.

  • Benedict Abbot, Gesta Regis Henrici Secundi, edited by William Stubbs (Rolls Series); 1867.

  • Histoire de Guillaume le Maréchal, edited by Paul Meyer; 1891.

  • Histoire des ducs de Normandie et des rois d’Angleterre, edited by F. Michel; 1840.

  • Jocelyn of Brakelond, Chronica de rebus gestis Samsonis Abbatis Monasterii Sancti Edmundi, edited by J. G. Rokewode (Camden Society); 1840.

  • Matthew Paris, Chronica Majora, edited by H. R. Luard (Rolls Series); 1872.

  • Memorials of St. Dunstan, edited by William Stubbs (Rolls Series); 1874.

  • Ralph of Coggeshall, Chronicon Anglicanum, edited by Joseph Stevenson (Rolls Series); 1875.

  • Roger of Hoveden, Chronica, edited by William Stubbs (Rolls Series); 1868–1871.

  • Roger of Wendover, Chronica sive Flores Historiarum, edited by H. O. Coxe (Eng. Hist. Society); 1841.

  • Walter of Coventry, Memoriale, edited by William Stubbs (Rolls Series); 1872.

  • Walter of Hemingburgh, Chronicon de Gestis Regum Angliae, edited by H. C. Hamilton (Eng. Hist. Society); 1848–9.

  • William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum Anglorum, edited by William Stubbs (Rolls Series); 1887–9.

  III.

  COLLECTIONS OF STATUTES, CHARTERS, AND TREATIES.

  • Statutes of the Realm (Record Commission); 1810–28.

  • Dictionary of National Biography, edited by Leslie Stephen and Sidney Lee; 1885–1900.

  glasgow: printed at the university press by robert maclehose and co. ltd.

  [1 ]In one country, Westmoreland, the office did become hereditary.

  [1 ]Adams, Pol. Hist. of Engl., II. 141. See, however, Davis, England under Normans, 132.

  [1 ]Adams, Pol. Hist. of Engl., II. 148. Contrast the older view in Stubbs, Const. Hist., I. 342–3.

  [1 ]Makower, Const. Hist. of Church, 24–26.

  [1 ]Petit–Dutaillis, Louis VIII., 30.

  [2 ]See Round, Commune of London, 273.

  [3 ]Histoire des ducs, p. 109.

  [1 ]R. Wendover, III. 239.

  [2 ]W. Coventry, II. 207; R. Wendover, III. 239.

  [3 ]From their possible connection with chapter 39 of Magna Carta, it may be worth while to quote the words of Ralph de Coggeshall, Chronicon Anglicanum, p. 165: “Rex Eustachium de Vesci et Robertum filium Walteri, in comitatibus tertio requisitos, cum eorum fautoribus utlaghiari fecit, castra eorum subvertit, praedia occupavit.”

  [1 ]See Miss Norgate, John Lackland, 170, and authorities there cited.

  [2 ]Ibid., 292–3.

  [1 ]For the complacency with which contemporary opinion viewed John’s surrender, see Petit Dutaillis, Louis VIII. p. 39. Cf. ibid. p. 181. See also Cardinal Manning, Contemp. Rev., December, 1875; Adams, Origin Engl. Const., 152 n.

  [1 ]R. Coggeshall, p. 167.

  [2 ]For the latest views on this council and the writs of summons, see Prof. A. B. White, Am. Hist. Rev., XVII. 12–16.

  [3 ]R. Wendover, III. 261–2.

  [4 ]R. Wendover, III. 263–6. Blackstone (Great Charter, Introduction, p. vi.), makes the apposite comment that it seems unlikely that the discovery of a charter probably already well known “should be a matter of such novelty and triumph.”

  [5 ]R. Wendover, III. 263–6. Ramsay, Angevin Empire, 444, doubts the authenticity of this meeting, the incidents of which have a suspicious resemblance to what took place some fourteen months later at Bury St. Edmunds: see infra, p. 32.

  [1 ]See Appendix.

  [2 ]R. Wendover, III. 262–3.

  [3 ]The charter recording this act may be read in New Rymer, I. 115. It was sealed not in perishable wax, but in gold.

  [4 ]Sel. Chart. 287.

  [5 ]John Lackland, 195.

  [1 ]See e.g. Adams, Origin, 340–1.

  [2 ]See Rol. Pat. I. 110, 110, b.

  [1 ]See W. Coventry, II. 217.

  [2 ]See Norgate, John Lackland, p. 221.

  [1 ]R. Wendover, III. 293. Cf. supra 28.

  [1 ]R. Wendover, III. 301.

  [2 ]R. Wendover, III. 298. For the schedule see infra, pp. 37–9.

  [3 ]R. Wendover, III. 298.

  [4 ]Chronica de Mailros, sub anno 1215.

  [1 ]Blackstone, Great Charter, p. xiii, citing Annals of Dunstable (p. 43), says they were absolved at Wallingford by a Canon of Durham.

  [2 ]Cf. Adams, Origin, 181 n.; 306, 312; cf. also infra under c. 61.

  [3 ]The Charter appears Rot. Chart., p. 207. Cf. under chapter 13 infra, where the rights of the Londoners are discussed.

  [1 ]The writ is given in Rot. Pat., I. 141, and also in New Rymer, I. 128.

  [2 ]For writ, see Rot. Claus., 204.

  [3 ]Some authorities give 24th May, but New Rymer, p. 121, under 17th May, prints a writ of John, informing Rowland Blaot of the surrender of London. This was followed on 20th May (N. R., p. 121) by another writ, ordering bailiffs and other to molest the Londoners in every possible way.

  [4 ]III. 301.

  [1 ]Const. Hist., I. 581–3.

  [2 ]The names may be read in Stubbs, Ibid.; and readers in search of biographical knowledge are referred to Bémont, Chartes, 39–40, and for fuller, less reliable information, to Thomson, Magna Charta, 270–322.

  [1 ]See Appendix.

  [2 ]So far there can be no doubt. Either on Close or Patent Rolls (q.v.) copies of writs are preserved dated from Windsor on each of these days, and also one or more dated from Runnymede on 15th, 18th, 19th, 20th, 21st, 22nd, and 23rd June.

  [1 ]R. Wendover, III. 298.

  [2 ]In the British Museum. See infra under Part V.

  [3 ]R. Coggeshall, 172.

  [4 ]See infra, c. 2

  [1 ]See infra, cc. 58 and 59. Cf. Blackstone, Great Charter, xvii.: “subjoined in a more hasty hand, . . . as if added at the instance of the King’s commissioners upon more mature deliberation.”

  [2 ]See infra, c. 61.

  [3 ]Blackstone, Great Charter, xviii., has given a careful analysis of the points of difference.

  [4 ]E.g. chapters 48 and 52 infra.

  [5 ]E.g. chapters 12, 13, 35, and 41 infra.

  [1 ]The powers and constitutional position of these “executors” are fully discussed infra under c. 61.

  [2 ]See Protest in Appendix.

  [3 ]Round explains this (Geoffrey de Mandeville, 414) as “blackmail,” i.e. “money extorted under pretence of protection or defence.”

  [4 ]See Rot. Claus., p. 225. This writ does not stand alone. In another writ, dated 19th June, John informs his half–brother that he has just concluded peace. See also Annals of Dunstable, III. 43, reporting peace made “die Gervassi et Protasii,” i.e. on 19th June.

  [1 ]Miss Norgate, John Lackland, p. 234, in fixing on Monday as the day of final concord, relies for evidence on a more than doubtful interpretation of an error in the copy of a writ, which in the Patent Rolls bears to be dated 18th June (erroneously as will be shown), addressed to Stephen Harengod, announcing that terms of peace had been agreed upon “last Friday.” Miss Norgate contends that on the Friday preceding the 18th negotiations had not even begun, and is confident that the “die Veneris” which occurs three times in the writ is an unaccountable error for “die Lunae.” Yet, it is unlikely that a scribe writing three days after so momentous an event could have mistaken the day of the week. It is infinitely more probable that is writing xxiij. he formed the second “x” so carelessly that it was mistaken by the enrolling clerk for a “v.” The correct date is thus the 23rd, and the reference is to Friday the 19th. This presumption becomes a certainty by comparison with the words of the writ to William of Cantilupe, dated the 21st, and other evidences cited supra, p. 40.

  [2 ]No specimen of these Letters is known, but a copy is preserved on folio 234, Red Book of Exchequer. See infra under c. 62 and also R. L. Poole, Eng. Hist. Rev., XXVIII. 448.

  [1 ]See Appendix.

  [2 ]He might here have strengthened his argument by referring to the evidences of extreme care shown in revising the original Articles of the Barons when translating them into charter form. This would have been thrown away, if John intended to break faith. On the other hand, this care, equally with the issue of writs, might have been a blind.

  [3 ]See Louis VIII., p. 57, and also Hardy’s Introd. to Litt. Pat., XXIX., where the story was disproved by dates of writs issued elsewhere.

  [1 ]See Hist. des ducs de Norm., pp. 149–151.

  [2 ]Louis VIII., p. 57.

  [3 ]See Norgate, Lackland, 235, citing M. Paris, II. 611.

  [4 ]New Rymer, I. 133. See Appendix. It is undated, but must be later than the letters of 27th June to which it alludes.

  [5 ]Rot. Pat., 181. See Appendix.

  [6 ]See Rot. Pat. and New Rymer, I. 134.

  [1 ]See R. Wendover, III. 302–318.

  [2 ]Great Charter, p. xxi.

  [3 ]M. Paris, II. 605–6.

  [4 ]Hist. des ducs de Normandie, 151.

  [5 ]New Rymer, I. 129.

  [6 ]Stubbs, Const. Hist., II. 3.

  [1 ]Walter of Coventry, 222.

  [2 ]See Petit–Dutaillis, Louis VIII., 61.

  [1 ]The bull with the seal attached is in the British Museum (Cotton, Cleopatra E 1), and is carefully printed by Bémont, Chartes, 41. It may also be read in Rymer and Blackstone.

  [2 ]The text is given by Rymer.

  [3 ]See Rymer, and Bémont, Chartes, XXV.

  [1 ]Cronique de Merton, cited Petit–Dutaillis, Louis VIII., 514.

  [2 ]Ibid., 115

  [1 ]The Great Charter, p. vii.

  [2 ]R. Wendover, II. 535.

  [3 ]M. Paris, II. 669. Several of the most often–repeated charges of personal wrongs inflicted by King John upon the wives and daughters of his barons have been in recent years refuted. See Miss Norgate, John Lackland, p. 289.

  [4 ]See, e.g., the harrowing account of how he starved to death Matilda de Braose and her son (Davis, Engl. under Normans, 363). For his conduct in Ireland, see Orpen, Ireland, II. 96–105; and in Normandy, Powicke, Loss of Normandy, 190–2.

  [1 ]See infra the two sections (II. and III.) immediately following.

  [1 ]Stubbs, Select Charters, 270.

  [1 ]Commentaries, II. 59.

  [1 ]See Pollock and Maitland, Hist. Engl. Law, 1st ed., I. 218.

  [1 ]See Statute 12 Charles II., c. 24.

  [2 ]See Pollock and Maitland, I. 274 n.

  [3 ]Pollock and Maitland, I. 218.

  [4 ]Littleton, II. viii. s. 133. See, on whole subject, Maitland, Coll. Papers, II. 205–222.

  [5 ]Littleton, II. viii. s. 153.

  [6 ]Littleton, II. viii. s. 158. Cf. Round, Kings Serjeanties, 21.

  [1 ]History of Exchequer, I. 650, citing Pipe Roll of 18 Henry III.

  [2 ]See Littleton, II. ix. s. 159. With this may be compared the definition given in chapter 37 of Magna Carta, where John speaks of land thus held by a vassal as “quam tenet de nobis per servitium reddendi nobis cultellos, vel sagittas vel hujusmodi.”

  [3 ]Mediaeval England, 249–250. A similar tenure exists in Scotland under the name of “blench”—wherein the reddendo is elusory, viz., the annual rendering of such things as an arrow or a penny or a peppercorn, “if asked only” (si petatur tantum).

  [4 ]Round, Peerage, and Pedigree, 359.

  [1 ]Littleton, II. viii. s. 158.

  [2 ]Ibid., II. x. s. 162.

  [3 ]Pollock and Maitland, I. 218.

  [4 ]Littleton and Coke seem almost to countenance two additional tenures, viz., scutage or escuage, and castle–guard. Pollock and Maitland consider both as alternative names for knight’s service. (See I. 251 and I. 257.) The latter is discussed infra under c. 29 of Magna Carta.

  [5 ]Jenks, Modern Land Law, 14.

  [6 ]It has been well described by Pollock and Maitland (I. 294) as “the great residuary tenure.” In Scotland the “residuary tenure” is not socage but “feu” (resembling the English fee–farm). Holdings in feu are still originated by charter, followed by registration (the modern equivalent of infeftment or feudal investiture), thus preserving an unbroken connection with the feudal conveyancing of the Middle Ages.

  [1 ]Norman Conquest, V. 377; Hist. of William Rufus, 335–7.

  [2 ]Feudal England, p. 228 et seq.

  [3 ]All three forms of feudal obligation—service, incidents, and aids—have long been obsolete in England. The statute 12 Charles II. c. 24 swept away the feudal incidents along with the feudal system; centuries before, scutages in lieu of military service had become obsolete in the transition from the system of feudal finance to that of national finance, effected by the Crown in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Feudal aids were also long obsolete, although James I., in desperate straits for money, had attempted to revive two of them. In France the feudal system, with all its burdensome obligations, remained in full vigour until it was abolished in one night by the famous decree of the National Assembly of 4th August, 1790. In Scotland, the feudal system of land tenure still exists, and certain of its incidents (e.g. reliefs and compositions or fines for alienation) are exacted at the present day.

  [1 ]Blackstone, Commentaries, II. 63, arranges these in a different order, and mentions as a seventh incident “aids,” which are here reserved for separate treatment.

  [2 ]See Pollock and Maitland, I. 296.

  [3 ]See infra, under c. 2, for the process whereby this evil was redressed.

  [1 ]R. Thomson, Magna Charta, p. 236.

  [2 ]Infra, c. 32.

  [3 ]VII. c. 17.

  [4 ]Pollock and Maitland, I. 247 and 250, citing Hist. Abingdon, II. 128.

  [1 ]See Infra, c. 43.

  [2 ]See Hughes’ edition, p. 133.

  [3 ]See Dialogus, p. 222 (citing Pipe Roll, p. 27).

  [1 ]Glanvill, VII. c. 9. In socage and burgage tenures no wardship was recognized; the guardianship went to the relations of the ward, and not to his feudal lord. Complicated, but equitable, rules applied to socage. The maternal kindred had the custody, if the lands came from the father’s side; the paternal kindred, if from the mother’s side (Glanvill, VII. c. 11). In plain language, the boy was not entrusted to those who had an interest in his death. Cf. infra, cc. 3, 4 and 37.

  [2 ]Littleton, II. iv. s. 103.

  [3 ]See under c. 5.

  [4 ]What these were may be read in the Pipe Rolls, e.g., in that of 14 Henry II. when the Bishopric of Lincoln was vacant.

  [5 ]See Sel. Chart., 288. Contrast Stephen’s Oxford Charter; Sel. Chart., 120–1. Cf. supra, p. 32, and infra, under c. 1.

  [1 ]Rotuli de oblatis et finibus, p. 354.

  [2 ]Rot. Claus., 37, 55.

  [3 ]Pollock and Maitland, I. 305.

  [4 ]See infra, under chapters 6, 7, and 8.

  [5 ]Middle Ages, II. 429.

  [6 ]p. 437.

  [1 ]The Bishop of Durham enjoyed it, so it seems to be stated in a charter of 1303 (Lapsley, Pal. of Durham, 133). But this forms no real exception; since the Bishop, as an Earl Palatine, enjoyed the regalia of a king.

  [2 ]See Pollock and Maitland, I. 292. From Statute of Marlborough, c. 16, primer seisin extended over serjeanty as well as knight’s service. Statute of Merton, c. 7, provided that a ward might refuse a marriage on undertaking to pay the offered price when he came of age. Under c. 8, double the value might be exacted for a secret marriage or one in fraud of the lord’s right.

  [3 ]Rotuli de oblatis, p. 114.

  [1 ]Sir Edward Coke (Coke upon Littleton, 77 A) is the original source of much confusion as to the nature of primer seisin, which he seems to have considered as a second and additional relief exacted by the Crown, amounting to the whole rent of the first year. The Popes, he further held (erroneously), were imitating this practice when they exacted a year’s rent from every newly granted benefice under name of “first fruits.” These errors have been widely followed (e.g. Thomson, Magna Charta, p. 416; Taswell Langmead, Const. Hist., 50).

  [2 ]See Taswell Langmead, Const. Hist., pp. 51–2; also Pollock and Maitland, II. 326.

  [3 ]IX. c. 8.

  [4 ]An aid to marry the king’s eldest sister might be taken, if not previously exacted by her father.

  [5 ]See infra, under chapter 12.

  [1 ]Thus, the Abingdon Chronicle (II. 113) speaks of “auxilia quod barones michi dederunt”; while Bracton says (Book II. c. 16, s. 8): “Auxilia fiunt de gratia et non de jure; cum dependeant ex gratia tenentium, et non ad voluntatem dominorum.”

  [2 ]3 Edward I. c. 36.

  [3 ]Fixed at 100s. by c. 2 of Magna Carta.

  [4 ]Cf. Pollock and Maitland, I. 381–2. One entry in the Memoranda Roll of 42 Henry III. (cited Madox, I. 615) seems to admit that the Crown could not exact more than 20s.; but in 1258 the baronial opposition would be strong in the Exchequer as elsewhere.

  [5 ]25 Ed. III. stat. 5, c. 11.

  [1 ]Some of these questions might be answered by the terms of special charters: the Hundred Rolls (1279) relate how Hugh de Plesens must go with the King for forty days at his own, and thereafter at the King’s expense. Rot. Hund., II. p. 710; cf. for France, Établissements de St. Louis, I. c. 65.

  [2 ]Jocelin of Brakelond, 63, cited by Pollock and Maitland, I. 250 n.

  [3 ]See R. Coggeshall, p. 167; the barons argued non in hoc ei obnoxios esse secundum munia terrarum suarum.

  [1 ]W. Coventry, II. 217.

  [2 ]See his letter dated 1st April, 1215, in New Rymer, I. 128.

  [3 ]See “unknown charter” in Appendix.

  [4 ]Chronicon, II. 121.

  [5 ]See, however, infra under c. 16.

  [1 ]Const. Hist., I. 632.

  [2 ]Madox, I. 619.

  [3 ]See Round, Feudal England, 262 ff., 532.

  [1 ]Madox, I. 658.

  [1 ]Pollock and Maitland, I. 247, noted this distinction under Edward; it existed, as the above–cited instance proves, under John.

  [2 ]Pipe Roll of Richard I., cited Madox, I. 663.

  [3 ]Pipe Roll of 12 John, cited ibid.

  [4 ]Cf. infra, under cc. 39 and 21.

  [5 ]Interesting details are given by Vinogradoff, English Society, 15 ff. Cf. Round, Feudal England, 277 ff.

  [1 ]Round, Feudal England, 237–9.

  [2 ]Feudal England, 277 seq.

  [1 ]Norgate, John Lackland, p. 122.

  [2 ]Norgate, John Lackland, p. 123 note, correcting Swereford’s lists in the Red Book of Exchequer. Further corrections are perhaps necessary: R. Wendover III. 173, mentions a scutage of 2½ marks in January, 1204.

  [3 ]See Ramsay, Angevin Empire, 390, and authorities there cited.

  [1 ]Cf. Norgate, John Lackland, 125.

  [2 ]Commune of London, 273–4.

  [3 ]Yet, of recent historians, Ramsay (Angevin Empire, 432) treats it briefly, and Miss Norgate (John Lackland, 163) barely notices it.

  [1 ]Miss Norgate (123) describes the exactions supplementing the scutages: “These scutages were independent of the fines paid by the barons who did not accompany the King on his first return to Normandy in 1199, of the money taken from the host as a substitute for its service in 1201, of the equipment and payment of the ‘decimated’ knights in 1205, and the fines claimed for all the tenants–in–chivalry after the dismissal of the host in the same year, as well as of actual services which many of those who had paid the scutage rendered in the campaigns of 1202–4 and 1206.”

  [2 ]See Miss Norgate, John Lackland, 210, and cf. supra, 31. For a minor grievance connected with scutage and the writ de habendo scutagio, see infra, under c. 15. The later history of scutage is outlined in Pollock and Maitland, I. 254. Cf. infra, under c. 12.

  [1 ]Too absolute a line must not be drawn between the three types of court. In one sense all tribunals were, or tended to become, royal courts. The king’s representatives presided in the “popular courts,” and the king received a share of the fines levied there; while, in Prof. Vinogradoff’s words (English Society, 108), “all the well–known franchises or liberties of the feudal age were chips from the block of royal authority.”

  [1 ]John’s Charter makes no mention of these courts, although c. 25, forbidding increase of the farms of shires, may have a bearing on the subject. Henry’s Charters of 1217 and 1225 regulate their times of meeting. Cf. infra, Part IV.

  [2 ]This account of the relations of the two sets of courts would receive the support of recent writers, such as Maitland and Round, as well as of the older generation, such as Stubbs and Freeman. Mr. Frederic Seebohm may be mentioned as perhaps the most weighty upholder of the opposite view, which regards the manorial courts as of earlier origin than those of hundred and shire.

  [1 ]Cf. “landlord.”

  [1 ]The stages in the process, extending from the reign of Henry I. to that of Edward I., by which royal justice encroached on feudal justice, may be studied in Maitland’s preface to Sel. Pleas in Manorial Courts, pp. liii. ff. See also Pollock and Maitland, I. 181–2.

  [1 ]Sometimes no fore–witnesses were required; for example, where the claim was for restoration of stolen cattle, traced by “hue and cry” to defendant’s house or byre. The presumption was here so strong as to render corroborative evidence unnecessary.

  [1 ]See infra under cc. 38 and 39, where lex terrae is discussed.

  [1 ]Details may be studied in Neilson’s Trial by Combat.

  [2 ]See infra, cc. 38 and 39, where ordeal and compurgation and other forms of lex are further discussed.

  [3 ]Cf. Thayer, Evidence, p. 8. “The conception of the trial was that of a proceeding between the parties, carried on publicly, under forms which the community oversaw.”

  [1 ]These stages of procedure are fully illustrated by recorded cases. Two of these, both from the reign of John, may here be cited. (1) “Hereward, the son of William, appeals Walter, the son of Hugh, of assaulting him, in the King’s peace, and wounding him in the arm with an iron fork, and giving him another wound on the head; and this he offers to prove on his body as the Court shall appoint. And Walter defends all of it by his body. And it is testified by the coroners and by the whole county that the same Hereward showed his wounds at the proper time, and has made sufficient suit. Therefore it is decreed that there should be ‘battle.’ . . . Let them come armed, a fortnight from St. Swithin’s day, at Leicester.” Sel. Pleas of Crown (Selden Society), p. 18. (2) “Walter Trenchebof was said to have handed to Inger of Faldingthorpe the knife with which he killed Guy Foliot, and is suspected of it. Let him purge himself by water that he did not consent to it. He has failed and is hanged.” Ibid., p. 75.

  [2 ]The relation of “recognition” to trial by jury is discussed infra, Part III., section 7.

  [1 ]The trend of learned opinion for the moment is towards transferring the chief share of credit for remedial changes from Henry II. to his grandfather. Prof. Haskins, too, has shown reason for holding that the younger Henry found precedents in the procedure of his Angevin father as well as of his Norman grandfather (Amer. Hist. Rev., VIII. 618). There is some evidence also that Henry II. avoided any violent breaking with the past. Mr. Davis (Engl. under the Normans, p. 283) shows Henry and his Justice Glanvill acting in a spirit friendly to the private courts. It is possible, however, to found erroneous estimates upon such items of evidence. The true inventor is the man who adapts for common use what was before exceptional: Henry II. can afford to be judged by this test. To him, rather than to Henry I., belongs the credit for revolutionizing the whole system of dispensing justice. Cf. G. B. Adams (Origin of Engl. Const., 106–7): “It is in his time that these changes are finally made and the new methods become permanently a part of the constitution.”

  [2 ]E.g. 34 and 39.

  [1 ]See infra, under cc. 24 and 45.

  [2 ]See infra, under chapter 54.

  [1 ]See injra, under chapter 36.

  [2 ]See Maitland, Collected Papers, II., 110–173.

  [3 ]Glanvill xii, 25. For a discussion of the difficulties involved in accepting Glanvill see Adams, Origin, 96.

  [1 ]See Brunner, Schwurgerichte, 78–80. Details are discussed infra, under c. 34.

  [2 ]See infra, under chapters 17 and 24.

  [3 ]See infra, under chapter 18.

  [1 ]See infra, under chapters 21 and 39.

  [2 ]See infra, under chapter 34.

  [3 ]c. 34.

  [1 ]c. See infra, under chapter 39.

  [2 ]c. 21.

  [3 ]c. 17.

  [1 ]See Dr. H. L. Cannon’s article, Amer. Hist. Rev., XX. 37. Some of his theories, however, had been anticipated (see, e.g. Prothero, S. de Montfort, 16), and others have not been substantiated.

  [2 ]Engl. Hist. Rev., XXVII. 1–8. Dr. R. L. Poole is also an advocate of the traditional view: see ibid., XXVIII. 444.

  [3 ]Ibid., XXVII. 4. Mr. Stevenson explains further that “the Anglo–Saxon writ was in its origin a letter from the King to a shire–moot, and this characteristic clung closely to the Anglo–Norman writ–charter of the twelfth century” (p. 5). He also shows how the double–faced pendant seal, in the use of which William and his sons followed the Confessor, was not derived by Edward from the Normans, who in his day used (like the Kings of France) a seal plaqué. The whole article throws much light on the diplomatics of the genesis of Magna Carta.

  [1 ]See Memorials of St. Dunstan (Rolls Series), p. 355.

  [2 ]Florence of Worcester and the Worcester version of the Chronicle agree that the Conqueror took the oath. “William of Poitiers and Guy are silent about the oath” (Freeman, Norman Conquest, III. 561, note).

  [1 ]Stubbs, Const. Hist., I. 328–9, and authorities there cited.

  [2 ]See text in Appendix. For textual criticism see Liebermann, Trans. R. H. S., VIII. 21 ff.

  [1 ]See Liebermann, op. cit. On the whole subject of publication of charters by Henry I., Stephen and John, see Poole, Engl. Hist. Rev., XXVIII. 444–453.

  [2 ]Round, Feudal England, 227.

  [3 ]Const. Hist., I. 331.

  [1 ]The use of the word “donec” is ambiguous, and might grammatically be strained to make the clause a prohibition of wardship, coupled with an endorsement of relief: the King must take nothing until the new bishop gets possession. Another interpretation would stretch the prohibition to include both wardship and relief, and indeed to include the taking of profits of any sort whatever. It has also been read as mainly a prohibition against the Crown’s permanent appropriation of “escheats” falling to a see during a vacancy. See Makower, Const. Hist. of Church, 17.

  [2 ]Cf. infra, under cc. 2 and 3 of 1215.

  [3 ]Cf. infra, cc. 3 to 6.

  [4 ]See Stubbs, Early Engl. Hist., 113.

  [5 ]See infra, cc. 26 and 27.

  [6 ]See Pollock and Maitland, II. 512–3. See also infra, c. 20.

  [1 ]See Prof. Vinogradoff, in a review of the first edition of this book, Law Quarterly Review, XXI., 250–7. See also his Growth of the Manor, 226–7, and his Engl. Society, 191.

  [2 ]Dialogus de Scaccario, I. c. 11.

  [1 ]See Charter in Appendix. For text and textual criticism, see Liebermnan, Trans. R.H.S., VIII. 21–48. On whole subject, see Vinogradoff, Law Quart., Rev., as above cited.

  [2 ]The discussions on the “unknown charter” (infra, p. 175) would seem however, in another sense, to leave these three links out of the chain.

  [1 ]Stubbs, Const. Hist., I. 345.

  [2 ]Round, Geoffrey de Mandeville, p. 1.

  [3 ]Round, Geoffrey de Mandeville, p. 6. Dr. Round, ibid., p. 438, explains that this earlier charter of Stephen was supplemented by the verbal promise recorded by William of Malmesbury, de libertate reddenda ecclesiae et conservanda.

  [4 ]Round, Geoffrey, 22.

  [5 ]Stephen was not justified in this last assertion. See Round, Geoffrey, 9.

  [1 ]See Bémont, Chartes, 13, and Select Charters, 135.

  [1 ]See supra, p. 27, and Round, Eng. Hist. Rev., VIII. 292.

  [1 ]The quid pro quo was conditional homage, dependent (as we learn from chapter 63) on observance of the Charter.

  [2 ]Const. Hist., I. 569.

  [3 ]Cf. Prothero Simon de Montfort, 15; Pike, House of Lords, 312.

  [1 ]Études de droit constitutionnel, 41.

  [2 ]Prof. Jesse Macy, English Constitution, 162.

  [1 ]Anson, Law of the Constitution, I. 14. Cf. Report on Dignity of a Peer, I. 63, which makes it both a contract and a treaty.

  [2 ]In strict legal theory the complete investiture of the grantee required that “charter” should be followed by “infeftment” or delivery (real or constructive) of the subject of the grant. In the case of such intangible things as political liberties, the parchment on which the Charter was written would be the natural symbol to deliver to the grantees.

  [3 ]See chapter 1. The grant which purports to be perpetually binding on John’s heirs, was in practice treated as requiring confirmation by his son.

  [4 ]Prof. Maitland, Township and Borough, p. 76, explains some of the absurdities involved: “Have you ever pondered the form, the scheme, the main idea of Magna Charta? If so, your reverence for that sacred text will hardly have prevented you from using in the privacy of your own minds some such words as ‘inept’ or ‘childish,’ etc.”

  [1 ]Pollock and Maitland, I. 150, emphasize this disparity. “In form a donation, a grant of franchises freely made by the king, in reality a treaty extorted from him by the confederate estates of the realm, . . . it is also a long and miscellaneous code of laws.” Cf. also Ibid., I. 658.

  [2 ]See Prof. Adams (Origin, 212), who has a suggestive note on “the diplomatic form of the Great Charter.”

  [3 ]Law Quarterly Review, XXI. 250–7.

  [1 ]Cf. Vinogradoff, op. cit., who cites an example from a French ordinance of 1223.

  [2 ]G. Lapsley, Eng. Hist Rev. XXVII., p. 118.

  [3 ]Cf. Vinogradoff, op. cit.

  [4 ]History of Law, I. 266.

  [1 ]Harcourt, Steward, 215.

  [2 ]Adams, Origin, 250.

  [3 ]Adams, ibid., 256.

  [4 ]Ibid., 150, 169, 203, 232.

  [5 ]Ibid., 249.

  [1 ]Hist. Engl. Const., Chapter XVIII.

  [2 ]Dr. Gneist indeed confesses this, when, in discussing the limitations of the financial power, he admits that many of these are “already comprised in the provisions touching the feudal power.”

  [3 ]Great Charter, vii.

  [4 ]Pollock and Maitland, I. 151.

  [1 ]Simon de Montfort, 17.

  [1 ]House of Lords, 9th January, 1770.

  [2 ]History of English Constitution, 151.

  [3 ]Middle Ages, II. 447.

  [4 ]Const. Hist., I. 570–1.

  [5 ]Short History, 124. Cf. Gneist, Const. Hist. (trans. by P. A. Ashworth), 253; “A separate right for nobles, citizens, and peasants, was no longer possible.” See also Gneist, Hist. of Engl. Parl. (trans. by A. H. Keane), 103, and Hannis Taylor, Engl. Const., I. 380.

  [1 ]Norgate, John Lackland, 233.

  [2 ]Middle Ages, II. 447. See, e.g. Robert Brady, A Full and Clear Answer (1683).

  [1 ]Dialogus, II. xiii. c.

  [2 ]In addition to its appearance in the two places mentioned in the text, the word “freeman” appears in five other chapters, 15, 20, 27, 30, and 39. The last three instances throw no light on the meaning of the word. It is different, however, with chapter 15, where freemen are necessarily feudal tenants of a mesne lord—that is, freeholders; and with chapter 20, where, in the matter of amercement, freeman is contrasted with villanus. Further, where men of servile birth are clearly meant, they are described generally as probi homines (e.g. in cc. 20, 29, and 48), and in one place, perhaps, c. 26, as legales homines. Chapter 44 mentions homines without any qualification. It seems safe to infer that the Great Charter never spoke of “freemen” when it meant to include the ordinary peasantry or villagers. In chapter 39 of the reissue of 1217, liber homo is clearly used as synonymous with “freeholder.” In later centuries, it is true, the “freeman” of the Charter came to be read in an ever less restricted sense, until it embraced all Englishmen.

  [1 ]See infra, under c. 39.

  [2 ]Cf. supra, p. 39.

  [1 ]English Constitution, I. 383.

  [2 ]Bishop Stubbs, Preface to W. Coventry, II. lxxi., represents the barons, in their fervour for abstract law, as actually supporting their own vassals against themselves: “the Barons of Runnymede guard the people against themselves as well as against the common tyrant.”

  [3 ]For details, see infra under cc. 12, 13, 33, 35, and 41. Compare with the corresponding Articles of the Barons (viz. 32, 23, 12, and 31). The alterations, slightly inimical to the towns, seem to show that the barons were more willing to sacrifice their allies’ interests than their own to John’s insistence, when the final terms were being haggled over.

  [1 ]See Coke, Second Institute, p. 45, “for they are free against all men, saving against their lord.” Contrast ibid., p. 27.

  [2 ]Cf. under c. 20 infra.

  [3 ]Cf. under c. 4 infra.

  [4 ]See under c. 25 infra.

  [1 ]See chapter 26 of 1217.

  [2 ]See chapter 35 of 1217.

  [3 ]Dr. Stubbs takes a different view. Admitting that there is “so little notice of the villeins in the charter,” he explains the omission on two grounds: (1) they had fewer grievances to redress than members of other classes; (2) they participated in all grants from which they were not specially excluded. “It was not that they had no spokesman, but that they were free from the more pressing grievances, and benefited from every general provision.” Preface to W. Coventry, II. lxxiii.

  [1 ]See infra, p. 157.

  [2 ]See A. F. Pollard, Henry VIII., 33 ff.

  [1 ]Maitland, Social England, I. 409.

  [2 ]Cf Gneist Const. Hist., Chapter XVIII.: “By Magna Carta English history irrevocably took the direction of securing constitutional liberty by administrative law.”

  [1 ]Histoire des ducs (A.D. 1220), 149–150.

  [2 ]Petit–Dutaillis, Louis VIII., 58. Cf. Adams, Origin, 249.

  [3 ]Prof. Adams (Origin, 176 n.) condenses its essence into three general rules. Prof. Maitland (Collected Papers, II. 38), from a temporary angle of observation, declares that “Magna Carta is an act for the amendment of the law of real property and for the advancement of justice.” John Lilburne (Just Man’s Justification, p. 11) was also thinking of particular clauses when he wrote, “Magna Carta itself being but a beggarly thing containing many marks of intolerable bondage.”

  [4 ]Pollock and Maitland, I. 152. See, however, Petit–Dutaillis, Studies Supplementary, 143 (criticising Pollock and Maitland): “That again, it seems to us, is to assign too glorious a rôle to the baronage of John Lackland and to its political conceptions, which are childish and anarchical. The English nobility of that day had not the idea of law at all.”

  [1 ]A. V. Dicey, Law of the Constitution, Part II.

  [2 ]Adams, Origin, 251.

  [1 ]Const. Hist., I. 571. Cf. Ibid., I. 583, “The act of the united nation, the church, the barons, and the commons, for the first time thoroughly at one.” Who were “the commons” in 1215? Cf. also Prothero, Simon de Montfort, 18, “The spirit of nationality of which the chief portion of Magna Carta was at once the product and the seal.”

  [1 ]See infra, under c. 14.

  [2 ]The possibility that the movement leading to the Great Charter may have also helped forward the growth of the idea of a separate national Church is discussed infra, under c. one.

  [3 ]Supra, p. 109.

  [1 ]Adams, Origin, 250.

  [1 ]See infra, c. 61, for details.

  [1 ]This is the view of Pike, House of Lords, 204. See infra, c. 21.

  [1 ]Magna Carta has been described, in words already quoted with approval, as “an intensely practical document,” Maitland, Social England, I. 409; but this requires qualification. If it was practical in preferring condemnation of definite grievances to enunciation of philosophical principles, it was unpractical in omitting machinery for giving effect to its provisions.

  [2 ]Except in so far as affected by cc. 12 and 16.

  [3 ]Mr. Prothero estimates more highly the constitutional value of Magna Carta: “The constitutional struggles of the following half–century would to a great extent have been anticipated had it retained its original form.” Simon de Montfort, 14.

  [1 ]As early as 1231 the “carta de Runemede” was cited in a plea. See Bracton’s Notebook, No. 513. See also No. 1478, dating from 1221; others in Index.

  [2 ]Extravagant estimates of its value will readily suggest themselves. Sir James Mackintosh (History of England, I. 218, edn. of 1853) declares that we are “bound to speak with reverential gratitude of the authors of the Great Charter. To have produced it, to have preserved it, to have matured it, constitute the immortal claim of England upon the esteem of mankind. Her Bacons and Shakespeares, her Miltons and Newtons, etc., etc.”

  [1 ]Edmund Burke (Works, II. 53) credits Magna Carta with creating the House of Commons! “Magna Charta, if it did not give us originally the House of Commons, gave us at least a House of Commons of weight and consequence.” As will be shown in the sequel, chapter 14 of the Great Charter (the only one bearing on the subject) is in reality of a reactionary nature, confining the right of attendance at the commune concilium to the freeholders of the Crown.

  [1 ]The source of this error was the identification of jury trial with the judicium parium of c. 39. q.v.

  [2 ]For the origin of the jury see Brunner, Schurgerichte (1871): Haskins, Am. His. Rev., VIII. 613 ff., traces the steps made towards the civil jury in Normandy, particularly under Henry’s father, Geoffrey.

  [1 ]The theory now generally accepted that the origin of trial by jury must be sought in procedure introduced by Norman dukes, not in any form of popular Anglo–Saxon institutions, is ably maintained by Pollock and Maitland, I. 119, and by the late Professor J. B. Thayer, Evidence, p. 7. Undoubtedly their conclusions are in the main correct; but trial by jury may have had more than one root, and appreciation of the Norman contribution need not lead to neglect of the Anglo–Saxon. See, e.g. Hannis Taylor, English Constitution, I. 308 and I. 323; Vinogradoff, Growth of the Manor, 193: ‘something more than a Norman device.”

  [2 ]See supra, p. 86.

  [1 ]See Pollock and Maitland, I. 131. It was part of Henry’s policy to substitute indictment by a representative jury for the older appeal by the wronged individual or his surviving relatives. The older procedure, however, was not completely abolished: its continuance and its unpopularity may be traced in chapter 54 of Magna Carta, q.v.

  [2 ]Chapter 38 of Magna Carta, according to a plausible interpretation of an admittedly obscure passage, seems to insist on the necessity of such an accusation by the jury:—“non . . . sine testibus fidelibus ad hoc inductis.”

  [1 ]For details see infra under chapter 36, and supra, p. 89.

  [2 ]The three Petty Assizes are mentioned by name in c. 18, q.v.

  [1 ]See Annals of Waverley, p. 286.

  [2 ]For the question of the Regency and the position of England as a fief of Rome, see Norgate, Minority, 10–62; Turner, Trans. R.H.S. (1904), 268 ff. In a plea roll of 1237 (Bracton’s Notebook, No. 1219) Gualo is described as “quasi tutor domini regis et custos regni.”

  [1 ]The cause for wonder is rather how few changes required to be made. “It is, however, by no means the least curious feature of the history, that so few changes were needed to transform a treaty won at the point of the sword into a manifesto of peace and sound government.” Stubbs, Const. Hist., II. 21.

  [2 ]Minority, 15.

  [1 ]See Petit–Dutaillis, Louis, 130–1.

  [2 ]Ibid., 181.

  [3 ]In the Appendix, an attempt is made to show at a glance the main differences between the various Great Charters.

  [4 ]This classification takes no account of alterations merely verbal or inserted to remove ambiguities, e.g. cc. 22, 28, and 30 of the original Charter.

  [5 ]See, however, Adams (Origin, 261; 220), who maintains that the omission was not intended to leave the Crown a freer hand (whatever might be the practical result).

  [1 ]Are these omissions mainly accidental? Are they the result of some influence at work hostile to English ecclesiastics? Or, are they due to the personal wishes and ambitions of Gualo? The Legate may have preferred to keep the patronage of vacant sees in his own hands rather than confirm the rival rights of chapters. It is notable that when John made his peace with Rome, no suggestion of “free elections” was hinted at, whereas that concession was the essence of his charters to the English Church. Again, freedom of intercourse with Rome would facilitate appeals from the Legate to the Pope, and so diminish Gualo’s authority. In the months to follow, Gualo exercised almost despotic power over the Church, excommunicating all who supported Louis. On 27th October, 1217, he entered London, “went to the church of St. Paul, . . . and he put in new canons; and the old ones who had chanted the service in defiance of him he deprived of all their benefices.” Hist. des ducs, 206. See also Adams, Origin, 258. Honorius had conferred on Gualo authority to appoint to vacant sees and benefices; see Bouquet, XIX. 623.

  [2 ]Minute points of difference, which are numerous, will be discussed under appropriate chapters of the Commentary. Cf. Norgate, Minority, 10–14; Adams, Origin, 256–7, who holds these changes to strengthen the theory “that in the original charter the barons intended to state the law accurately and were not trying to take unjust advantage of the King.”

  [1 ]Dr. Stubbs propounds the theory that this reissue of 1216 represents a compromise whereby the central government, in return for increased taxing powers, allowed to the feudal magnates increased rights of jurisdiction. He gives, however, no reasons for this belief, either in Select Charters, p. 339, or in his Constitutional History, II. 27. The Crown reserved a freer hand in taxation, but there seems no evidence that feudal justice gained ground against royal justice in 1216, not already gained in 1215.

  [1 ]It is unnecessary to invent a catastrophe to account for the loss of John’s seal. Blackstone (Great Charter, xxix.) says, “King John’s great seal having been lost in passing the washes of Lincolnshire.”

  [2 ]On pp. 69–73. Text is given in Early Statutes of Ireland (Rolls Series, H. F. Berry), 5–19, and in Gilbert’s Hist. and Mun. Docs. of Ireland, 65–72.

  [3 ]New Rymer, I. 145.

  [4 ]Rot. Pat., I. 31. Cf. Norgate, Minority, p. 93: “On 6th February, 1217, a copy of the Charter was sent to Ireland with a letter in the King’s name addressed to all the King’s faithful servants in Ireland, expressing his desire that . . . they and their heirs should, of his grace and gift, enjoy the same liberties which his father and he had granted to the realm of England.” This was the Marshal’s policy.

  [1 ]Davis, Engl. under Normans, 392.

  [2 ]Stubbs, Const. Hist., II. 25.

  [3 ]Petit–Dutaillis, Louis VIII., 171.

  [4 ]Wendover, IV. 31–32; cited Norgate, Minority, 59, where full details are given.

  [1 ]Pipe Rolls, 2 and 3 Henry III., cited Petit–Dutaillis, 177. Miss Norgate (Minority, 85) gives the rate per incuriam as “two shillings.”

  [2 ]Martene and Durand, Thesaurus Novus Anecdotorum (1717), I. 858, cited Norgate, Minority, 59. Blackstone thinks that under this clause the original of the Articles of the Barons, captured by Louis with other national archives, was restored and deposited at Lambeth Palace until the seventeenth century. See Great Charter, xxxix.

  [3 ]The Charter of Liberties of 1217, found among the archives of Gloucester Abbey and now in the Bodleian Library at Oxford, still bears the impression of two seals—that of Gualo in yellow wax, and that of the Regent in green. See Blackstone, Great Charter, p. xxxv. The existence of the separate Forest Charter was only surmised by Blackstone, Ibid., p. xlii; but, shortly after he wrote, an original of it was found among the archives of Durham Cathedral. For an account of this and of its discovery, see Thomson, Magna Charta, pp. 443–5. This Forest Charter bears the date 6th November, 1217, and that, in itself, affords presumption that the Charter of Liberties (undated) to which it forms a supplement was executed at the same time. M. Bémont accepts this date; see his Chartes, xxviii., and authorities there cited. Blackstone, Great Charter, xxxix., gives the probable date as 23rd September. Dr. Stubbs gives 6th November in Const. Hist., II. 26; and both dates alternatively in Sel. Chart., 344. Prof. Lawlor, Engl. Hist. Rev., XXII. 514–6, contended for two independent issues, one of each date; but Prof. Powicke’s researches, Eng. Hist. Rev., XXIV. 232, prove that there is only one genuine charter of that year, dated as in the text.

  [1 ]Details are discussed infra, under appropriate chapters of John’s charter. The points in which this reissue differs from earlier and later charters are shown in the Appendix, in the footnotes to the text of 1225.

  [1 ]Origin, 260.

  [2 ]Pollock and Maitland, I. 250 n., suggest that this chapter absolved undertenants from the obligation of personal attendance in the army.

  [3 ]Mr. Hubert Hall (Eng. Hist. Rev., IX. 344) takes a different view, considering that a reduction of scutages to the old rate of Henry II. was impossible; he speaks of “the astounding and futile concession in c. 44 of the charter of 1217.” The clause is neither astounding nor futile if we regard it as a promise by Henry III. that he would not exact more than two marks per fee without consent, and if we further note that it was the practice of his reign to ask such consent from the Commune Concilium for scutages even of a lower rate. A levy of 10s., for example, was granted by a Council in 1221. See Stubbs, Const. Hist., II. 33.

  [1 ]M. Paris, 581–2; Sel. Chart., 369.

  [1 ]Sel. Chart., 129.

  [2 ]18 Edward I., also known as Westminster III.

  [3 ]7 Edward I., also known as the Statute de religiosis.

  [1 ]See Pollock and Maitland, I. 314.

  [2 ]See Rot. Claus., I. 377.

  [1 ]Stubbs, Const. Hist., II. 32.

  [2 ]Cf. Adams, Origin, 258–260.

  [3 ]New Rymer, I. 147, 150.

  [4 ]See text in Appendix.

  [1 ]See Norgate, Minority, 102; Stubbs, Const. Hist., II. 30. Annals of Waverley, 290, speak of a reissue of the charters about this date; but this probably results from confusion with what happened a year earlier.

  [2 ]New Rymer, I. 168; Rot. Claus., I. 569.

  [3 ]R. Wendover, IV. 84, who dates the demand a year earlier. Miss Norgate’s chronology is here followed (Minority, 215 n.). The request would be a natural corollary to the King’s coming of age. There may have been special reasons for uneasiness, e.g. the suspicions aroused by the recent inquest, the resumption of royal castles from their former wardens, and the Crown’s need of increased sources of taxation. See Adams, Origin, 281 n.; Turner, Trans. R.H.S., I. 205 ff. Miss Norgate (Ibid. 215) suggests that Langton desired some modification of the terms of the charter of 1217.

  [1 ]R. Wendover, Ibid.

  [2 ]Miss Norgate (Minority, 262), for reasons not fully explained, speaks of this purchasing of admitted rights by payments of hard cash as an “irretrievable blunder.” Does she not neglect, however, the effect of the legal doctrine of “valuable consideration” and the force underlying Brewer’s argument that earlier charters were voidable because granted under duress?

  [3 ]Dr. Stubbs thinks that in avoiding one danger, a greater was incurred. “It must be acknowledged that Hubert, in trying to bind the royal conscience, forsook the normal and primitive form of legislative enactment, and opened a claim on the king’s part to legislate by sovereign authority without counsel or consent.” (Const. Hist., II. 37.) This seems to exaggerate the importance of an isolated precedent, the circumstances of which were unique. The confirmation was something far apart from an ordinary “legislative enactment.” It had been asked and paid for.

  [1 ]A few minor alterations, such as the omission of the clause against unlicensed castles (now unnecessary) and some verbal changes need not be mentioned. A list of these is given by Blackstone, Great Charter, l.

  [2 ]See Blackstone, Ibid., xlvii. to l.

  [3 ]Ibid.

  [4 ]One slight exception should be noted. In one point of detail a change had occurred between 1225 and 1297; the rate of relief payable from a barony had been reduced from £100 to 100 marks. See infra, under chapter 2.

  [1 ]A bull of Gregory IX., dated 13th April, 1227, confirmed this. See Blackstone, Great Charter, li., and Stubbs, Const. Hist., II. 39.

  [2 ]See Powicke, Eng. Hist. Rev., XXIII. 221.

  [3 ]R. Wendover, IV. 140, is apparently the source of the error. See Norgate, Minority, 266 n.

  [4 ]Sel. Chart., 383.

  [5 ]See Rot. Claus., II. 169. The best account is in Turner’s Select Pleas of the Forest, pp. xcix. to cii., who gives a full and convincing account of Henry’s procedure and motives. “The king neither repudiated the Charter of the Forest nor annulled the perambulations which had been made in his infancy. He merely corrected them after due inquiry.” See also Adams, Origin, 283 n.

  [1 ]M. Paris, 435; Sel. Chart., 326–7.

  [2 ]Its facsimile is given in Statutes of the Realm; its text in Sel. Chart., 365–6.

  [3 ]By Dr. George Neilson, Juridical Review, XVII. 137.

  [4 ]Henry I.’s charter was also described as “Magna Carta” but not till the thirteenth century. Leibermann, Trans. R.H.S., VIII. 21.

  [5 ]M. Paris, 581–2; Sel. Chart., 369–370. Bracton’s Notebook (see its Index) mentions the Charter eight times under various descriptions, but never as the Great Charter.

  [1 ]Blackstone, Great Charter, 70–72; Stubbs, Sel. Chart., 373.

  [1 ]Second Institute, p. 1.

  [2 ]Many further details will be found in Bémont, Chartes, xxx.–lxx., and authorities there cited.

  [1 ]The best proof of this will be found in a comparison of Magna Carta with the statute of Marlborough, and the chief statutes of Edward’s reign, notably that of Westminster I.

  [1 ]The doctrine that the Commune Concilium should have some voice in the appointment of Ministers had been acted upon on several occasions even in the reign of Henry III. See Stubbs, Const. Hist., II. 41.

  [1 ]For methods of publishing Great Charters see R. L. Poole, Eng. Hist. Rev. XXVIII. 444 (July, 1913); and infra under c. 62.

  [2 ]The accompanying letter, dated 10th May, 1630, is also preserved in the British Museum, as “Cotton, Julius, C. III. Fol. 191.”

  [1 ]These are carefully noted among the variations described by the editors of the Charters of Liberties forming Part I. of the first volume of the Statutes of the Realm. These addenda are (1) at the end of c. 48, “per eosdem, ita quod nos hoc sciamus prius, vel justiciarius noster, si in Anglia non fuerimus,” providing that the King should receive intimation of all forest practices branded as “evil” before they are abrogated; (2); two small additions, near the beginning of c. 53, (a), “et eodem modo de justicia exhibenda,” and (b) “vel remansuris forestis”; (3) in c. 56, these four words, “in Anglia vel in Wallia”; and (4) in c. 61 the words “in perpetuum” after “gaudere.” In the 2nd British Museum MS. three of these addenda appear at the foot, viz. (1), (2a) and (2b); but the words of (3) and (4) are incorporated in the body of that MS.

  [2 ]Reproductions of this are sold at the British Museum for 2s. 6d.

  [1 ]“The fold and label are now cut off, though it is said once to have had slits in it for two seals, for which it is almost impossible to account; but Dr. Thomas Smith, in his Preface to the Cottonian Catalogue, Oxford, 1695, folio, states that they were those of the barons” (Thomson, Magna Carta, 425). The facsimile published by the Trustees of the British Museum shows slits for three seals.

  [2 ]See Isaac D’Israeli, Curiosities of Literature, I. 18, and Thomson, Magna Carta, 424.

  [3 ]The engraving was executed to their order by James Basire.

  [1 ]See James Tyrrell, History of England, Vol. II. 821 (1697–1704).

  [2 ]Blackstone, Great Charter, p. xvii.

  [3 ]See Report (1800), p. 341.

  [4 ]Dodsworth, Historical Account of the Cathedral, 202.

  [5 ]It is unnecessary to treat in detail of the copies of the charter not authenticated by John’s Great Seal, though some of these are of value as secondary authorities. The four most important are (a) a copy appearing in the Register of Gloucester Abbey, (b) the Harleian MS., British Museum No. 746 (which also contains the names of the twenty–five Executors in a hand probably of the reign of Edward I.). (c) in the Red Book of the Exchequer. There is also (d) an early French version, printed in D’Achery, Spicilegium, Vol. XII. p. 573, together with the writ of 27th September addressed to the Sheriff of Hampshire. See Blackstone, Great Charter, p. xviii., and Thomson, Magna Carta, pp. 428–430.

  [1 ]Thomas Madox, Firma Burgi (1726). On p. 45, Madox refers only to the Inspeximus of Edward I.

  [2 ]Robert Brady, Complete History of England, p. 126 of Appendix to Vol. I. (1685), takes his text of the Charter from Matthew Paris “compared with the manuscript found in Bennet College Library,” i.e. Corpus Christi, Cambridge.

  [3 ]James Tyrrell, History of England (1697–1704). In p. 9 of Appendix to Vol. II. p. 821, Tyrrell prints a text of John’s Charter founded on that of M. Paris, collated with those two originals.

  [4 ]Henry Care, English Liberties in the Freeborn subjects’ inheritance; containing Magna Charta, etc. (1719), p. 5. The first edition, with a somewhat different title, is dated 1691.

  [5 ]Strangely enough, Sir Thomas Duffus Hardy, so recently as 1837, in publishing his Rotuli Chartarum (Introduction, p. ii. note 5) declared that no original of John’s Charter existed; “notwithstanding all the care taken by multiplication of copies, it is singular that no contemporary copy of King John’s Magna Carta has yet been found.” The Lincoln MS. he dismissed as “certainly not of so early a date.” He further reasserts the fallacy, exposed by Blackstone eighty years earlier, that John had issued a separate Carta de Foresta.

  [1 ]Thomson, Magna Carta, 422.

  [1 ]See Burnet’s Own Time, I. 32 (edition of 1724).

  [2 ]Reproductions are sold by the British Museum at 2s. 6d.

  [3 ]Cf. supra, p. 39, and Blackstone, Great Charter, xvii.

  [4 ]See the account by Mr. Hubert Hall, Eng. Hist. Rev., IX. 326.

  [5 ]Teulet, Layettes du Trésor des Chartes, I. p. 423 (1863).

  [1 ]See text in Appendix.

  [1 ]Eng. Hist. Rev., VIII. 288–294.

  [2 ]Ibid., IX. 117–121.

  [3 ]Ibid., IX. 326–335.

  [4 ]Wendover, III. 298, and cf. supra, 33.

  [5 ]Eng. Hist. Rev., XX. 719 ff.

  [6 ]Studies Supplementary, 120 ff.

  [1 ]Historische Vierteljahrschrift, 1910, 449–458.

  [1 ]R. Wendover, III. 302–318.

  [2 ]This date is given by Bémont, Chartes, lxxi., but Robert Watt in his Bibliotheca Britannica, Thomson, Magna Carta, 450, and Lowndes, Bibliographer’s Manual, 1449, all give the date of the earliest edition as 1514.

  [3 ]The substance of this admirable edition, now unhappily scarce, has been reproduced in the same author’s Tracts (1762).

  [1 ]Published in 1840 (edited by F. Michel).

  [2 ]Supra, p. 123.

  [3 ]G. le Maréchal, 15031 ft.

  [4 ]See The Mirror of Justices (edited for the Selden Society by W. J. Whittaker), Introduction (by Maitland), xxiii. to xxiv.

  [1 ]See The Mirror of Justices, xxxvii. Cf. xlviii.

  [2 ]See Dictionary of National Biography, XI. 243.

  [1 ]Introduction, p. ii.

  [2 ]P. 375 of work cited.

  [1 ]P. 57 of work cited.

  [2 ]This is the title of the English translation by Mr. W. E. Rhodes (1908) of the Appendices to the first volume of a French version of Stubbs’ Const. Hist., published in 1907.

  [1 ]Of the books and articles containing incidental references to Magna Carta, it is unnecessary to speak; those containing comments on isolated chapters or particular aspects are mentioned infra in their appropriate places. The late Mr. Harcourt’s His Grace the Steward and Trial of Peers contains a vigorous commentary on chapter 39, and his article “The Amercement of Barons by their Peers” (Eng. Hist. Rev., XXII. 732), on chapter 21. The first edition of the present work (published, 1905) evoked a number of valuable contributions to various aspects of the subject; among these may be mentioned Vinogradoff, Law Quart. Rev., XXI. 250–7; Liebermann, Historische Vierteljahrschrift, 1907, 231–5; Bémont, Revue Historique, 1907, 122–4; Petit–Dutaillis, Le Moyen Age, 1906, 277–282; H. W. C. Davis, Eng. Hist. Rev. (1905), XX. 719–726; Neilson, Juridical Review, June, 1905, 128–144. See also Jurid. Rev., March, 1905, 61; and Law Notes (New York), August, 1905, 94–6 for some legal decisions, Scotch and American respectively.

  [1 ]The division of Magna Carta into a preamble and sixty–three chapters is a modern device for which there is no warrant in the Charter. Cf. supra, 170. No title or heading precedes the substance of the deed in any one of the four known originals, but on the back of the Lincoln MS. (cf. supra, 167) these words are endorsed; “Concordia inter Regem Johannem et Barones pro concessione libertatum ecclesie et regni Anglie.” The form of the document is discussed supra, 104–9. The text is taken from that issued by the Trustees of the British Museum founded on Cottonian version No. 2. Cf. supra, 166.

  [1 ]The sentence is concluded in chapter one (see infra)—the usual division, here followed, being a purely arbitrary one.

  [2 ]The phrase “nobiles viri” was not used here in any technical sense; the modern conception of a distinct class of “noblemen” did not take shape until long after 1215. Cf. what is said of “peerage” under cc. 14 and 39.

  [1 ]Coke (Second Institute, pp. 1–2) errs in attributing the change to John.

  [2 ]Aquitaine included Poitou and Gascony with the four dependent counties of Angoulême, La Marche, Limoges and Perigord. See Norgate, Minority, 132.

  [3 ]See Giry, Manuel de diplomatique, 798.

  [4 ]Henry VIII. was the first to call himself “King of Ireland”—a singular proof “of the success of Henry’s policy.” Gairdner, Lollardy, ii. 473.

  [1 ]Cf. supra, p. 95. See Orpen, Ireland, I. 300 and II. 31, where it is pointed out that William Marshal refused to support his King against his “lord.” For other theories, see Round’s Mandeville, 70; Rössler’s Matilde, 291–4 and 424; Ramsay’s Foundations, II. 403; Davis, England under Normans, 170.

  [2 ]Stubbs, Early English History, p. 122, seems to be in error here.

  [3 ]See Charter in Appendix.

  [4 ]Matilde, passim.

  [1 ]See, however, Chadwick, Anglo–Saxon Institutions, p. 355 ff.

  [2 ]Dr. Stubbs, Const. Hist., I. 582, gives the motive of thus naming them as “the hope of binding the persons whom it includes to the continued support of the hard–won liberties.” Those named were all moderate men. M. Paris (Chron. Maj., II. 589) describes them as “quasi ex parte regis.” Cf. Annals of Dunstable, III. 43. The neutrality of the prelates is proved by other evidence. (1) C. 62 gave them authority to certify by letters testimonial the correctness of copies of the Charter. (2) The 25th of the Articles of the Barons left to their decision whether John should enjoy a crusader’s privileges; while c. 55 gave Langton a special place in determining what fines were unjust. (3) The Tower of London was placed in the custody of the archbishop. (4) Copies are preserved of two protests by the prelates in favour of the King. See Appendix.

  [3 ]Cf. supra, 36; for biographical information see authorities there cited.

  [1 ]Second Institute, 1 n.

  [2 ]Cf. supra, 40.

  [3 ]Some editions place here the division between c. 1 and c.

  [1 ]Cf. supra, p. 39.

  [1 ]See their Charters in Appendix.

  [2 ]See Makower, Const. Hist. of the Church, 26, 315.

  [1 ]Cf. supra, p. 97.

  [2 ]Cf. Pollock and Maitland, I. 74.

  [3 ]Cf. supra, pp. 102–3.

  [4 ]For explanation see infra, c. 18.

  [1 ]Mr. J. H. Round (Geoffrey de Mandeville, 3), speaking of Stephen’s “oath” to restore the church her “liberty,” describes this as “a phrase the meaning of which is well known.” If “well” known, it was known chiefly as something which baffled definition, because churchmen and laymen could never agree as to its contents, while it tended also to vary from reign to reign. Mr. Round attempts no definition. Sir James Ramsay (Angevin Empire, p. 475), writing of the phrase as used in John’s Charter, is less prudent. “It would relieve the clergy of all lay control, and of all liability to contribute to the needs of the State beyond the occasional scutages due from the higher clergy for their knights’ fees.” This definition would not have satisfied John.

  [2 ]Cf. supra, p. 33. The text will be found in Statutes of the Realm, I. 5, and in New Rymer, I. 126–7. It was confirmed by Innocent on 30th March, 1215. See Potthast, Regesta pontificum romanorum, No. 4963.

  [3 ]Cf. supra, p. 141.

  [4 ]Cf. Prothero, Simon de Montfort, p. 152. “The English church was indeed less independent of the king in 1258 than in 1215, and far less independent of the Pope than in the days of Becket.”

  [1 ]See supra, pp. 104 and 114. For the meaning of “freeman” and Coke’s inclusion of villeins under that term for some purposes but not for others, see infra, cc. 20 and 39.

  [2 ]Cf. supra, 154, where the bearing of these words is discussed.

  [1 ]Cf. supra, p. 59.

  [2 ]At an early date, in the midland counties, the thegn with more than six “manors” paid £8 of relief to the King; the thegn with six or fewer paid three marks to the sheriff. See Domesday Book, I. 280, b (Derby and Notts). Contrast Ibid., I. 56, where, however, relief seems to be confused with heriot.

  [1 ]Glanvill’s words (IX. c. 4) are ambiguous. He distinguishes three cases: (a) the normal knight’s fee, from which 100s. was due as relief (whether this extends to fees of Crown–tenants does not appear); (b) socage lands, from which one year’s rent might be taken; and (c) “capitales baroniae” were left subject to the King’s discretion. Now “barony” was a loose word: baronies, like barons, might be small or great (cf. infra, c. 14); all Crown fiefs being “baronies” in one sense, but only certain larger “honours” being so reckoned in another. Glanvill leaves this vital point undetermined, but Dialogus de Scaccario (II. x. E. p. 135 and II. xxiv. p. 155) supports the distinction between Crown–tenants and tenants of mesne lords: only the latter had their reliefs fixed. Madox (I. 315–6) cites from Pipe Rolls large sums exacted by the Crown: in one case £300 was paid for six fees—or ten times what a mesne lord could have exacted. (Pipe Roll, 24 Henry II.) There is further evidence to the same effect: where a barony had escheated to the Crown, reliefs of the former under–tenants would in future be payable directly to the Crown; but it was the practice of Henry II. (confirmed by c. 43 of Magna Carta, q.v.) to charge, in such cases, only the lower rates exigible prior to the escheat. A similar rule applied to under–tenants of baronies in wardship; see the case of the knights of the see of Lincoln in the hands of a royal warden in Pipe Roll, 14 Henry II. cited by Madox, ibid.). It would thus appear that all holders of Crown fiefs (not merely barones majores) were in Glanvill’s day still liable to arbitrary extortions in name of reliefs. The editors of the Dialogus (p. 223) are of this opinion. Pollock and Maitland (I. 289) maintain the opposite—that the limitation to 100s. was binding on the Crown as well as on mesne lords.

  [1 ]Madox, I. 316.

  [2 ]Ibid., I. 317.

  [3 ]Ibid., I. 318.

  [4 ]Ibid., I. 321.

  [5 ]Apparently its first appearance is in the Inspeximus of 10th October, 1297. See Madox, 318; Pollock and Maitland, I. 289; Bémont, Chartes, p. 47.

  [6 ]See note by editors of Dialogus, p. 238; Poole, Exchequer, 16, 170. The barons in 1258 (Sel. Charters, 382) protested against this, and the practice was discontinued.

  [7 ]Cf. supra, pp. 54–6.

  [1 ]It is possible to argue that the custom as to socage was already too well settled to require confirmation: Glanvill (IX. c. 4) stated the relief for socage at one year’s value. It is not clear, however, whether this restriction applied to the Crown. Further, no custom, however well established, was safe against John’s greed.

  [2 ]See Littleton, Tenures, II. viii. s. 154, and Madox, I. 321, who cites the case of a certain Henry, son of William le Moigne, who was fined in £18 for the relief of lands worth £18 a year held “by the serjeanty of the King’s Lardinary.”

  [3 ]Cf. supra, p. 57. See Round, King’s Serjeanties, p. 33.

  [4 ]Engl. Soc. in Eleventh Century, pp. 42–48.

  [1 ]Engl. Soc. in Eleventh Century, pp. 49–50.

  [2 ]See Pollock and Maitland, I. 262, and authorities there cited. “An honour or barony is thus regarded as a mass of lands which from of old have been held by a single title.” See also Pike, House of Lords, pp. 88–9.

  [3 ]This change was not complete in 1215, but Magna Carta, when it uses “barones” alone, seems to refer to “barones majores” (see cc. 2, 21, 61). Cf. infra under c. 14.

  [1 ]Dialogus, II. xxiv.

  [2 ]New Rymer, I. 107.

  [3 ]Madox, I. 216 ff. As the Exchequer, from the time of Edward I., exacted 100 marks from a barony and 100s. from a knight’s fee, the false equation of extent “1 barony = 13⅓ knights’ fees” was deduced. Coke (On Littleton, IV. s. 112, and Second Inst., 7) is sometimes credited with originating this error, but it appears in Modus tenendi Parliamentum (Sel. Chart., 503). To suit the proportion given in John’s Charter the equation would need to be “1 barony = 20 fees.” There is, of course, no fixed equation; baronies might be of any size; we read of land held “in baronagio per servitium feodi unius militis” (Northumberland Eyre Roll, 7 Ed. I.; Surtees Soc., 88, p. 327).

  [4 ]In the Inspeximus of Edward I., however, comitatus (earldom) displaces the baronia comitis of the text. See Statutes of Realm, I. 114.

  [5 ]See Pike, House of Lords, 57.

  [1 ]See Pike, House of Lords, 63. This term comitatus was a word of many meanings. Originally designating the “county” or “the county court,” it came to mean also the office of the earl who ruled the county, and later on it might indicate either his titular connection with the shire, his estates, his share of the profits of justice, or his rank in the peerage.

  [2 ]This was affirmed in 1164 by Article 11 of the Constitutions of Clarendon, which stipulated that each prelate should hold his lands sicut baroniam.

  [1 ]Sicut per barones meos disposui. The writ is given in Heming’s Cartulary, I. 79–80, and reprinted by Round, Feudal England, 309.

  [2 ]See supra, p. 98.

  [1 ]Where there had already been a wardship, the relief was thus the price paid by the heir in order to escape from the heavy hand of the King, and was therefore known as “ousterlemain.” Taswell–Langmead (Engl. Const. Hist., 51 n.) states the amount at half a year’s profits. He cites no authorities, and is probably in error. Dialogus, II. x. E. p. 135, forbids relief to be taken, when wardship had been exercised per aliquot annos.

  [2 ]See chapter 3 of 1216, which stipulates that no lord shall have wardship “antequam homagium ejus ceperit.” See Coke, Second Institute, 10. Cf. Adams, Origin, 204, on “homage as a recognition of title.”

  [3 ]Coke, Ibid., p. 12, makes a subtle and unwarranted distinction depend on whether the minor was made a knight before or after his ancestor’s death. The proviso, he argues, does not apply to the former case, because lands cannot “remain” in wardship if they were not in it before.

  [1 ]See Coke on Littleton, Book II. c. iv. s. 112; and cf. infra, cc. 37 and 43 for the “prerogative wardship” of the Crown.

  [1 ]The nature of wardship is more fully explained supra, pp. 61–2.

  [2 ]E.g. Taswell–Langmead, Eng. Const. Hist., p. 51 n.

  [3 ]“This, it would seem, was the old English rule;” see Ramsay, Foundations of England, II. 230.

  [4 ]It is a common error to suppose that this Assize restores wardship to the lord.

  [1 ]See Pipe Roll, 29 Henry II., cited Madox, I. 483.

  [2 ]E.g. Coke, Second Institute, p. 13.

  [3 ]VII. c. 10.

  [4 ]Orpen, Ireland, II. 203.

  [1 ]II. folio 87.

  [2 ]See Appendix.

  [3 ]Another way of “wasting” villeins was by tallaging them excessively. (For meaning of tallage cf. infra, c. 12.) Thus Bracton’s Note Book reveals how one guardian destruxit villanos per tallagia (v. case 485); how another exiled or destroyed villeins to the value of 300 marks (case 574); how a third destroyed two rich villeins so that they became poor and beggars and exiles (case 632). Cf. also case 691. Daines Barrington, writing towards the middle of the eighteenth century, went too far when he inferred from this passage “that the villeins who held by servile tenure were considered as so many negroes on a sugar plantation” (Observations, p. 7).

  [1 ]Edward I. c. 21.

  [2 ]Edward I. c. 5.

  [3 ]Coke, Second Institute, p. 13, enunciates a doctrine at variance with this statute, holding that the heir who suffered damage could not, on coming of age, obtain triple damages, or indeed any damages at all, if the King had previously taken amends himself. Coke further maintains that even after waste, the person of the heir was left in the power of the unjust guardian, explaining that when the Charter took away the office “this is understood of the land, and not of the body.”

  [1 ]This term is explained, c. 47. infra.

  [2 ]It is difficult to distinguish between vivarium and stagnum. By Coke, in the Statutes at large, vivarium is translated “warren”; but that word has its Latin form in warrena. Westminster II. (c. 4) speaks of stagnum molendinæ (a millpond). Statute of Merton (c. 11) refers to poachers taken in parcis et vivariis.

  [3 ]Discussed infra, under c. 20.

  [4 ]Cf. Blackstone, Great Charter, lxxviii.

  [1 ]Cf. infra, under c. 18.

  [2 ]See R. S. Gardiner, Documents, p. 207.

  [3 ]See infra, under c. 37, for prerogative wardship.

  [4 ]Article 11: see Select Charters, 139.

  [1 ]Cited by editors of the Dialogus, p. 223.

  [2 ]Cf. under c. 43 infra.

  [3 ]C. 46 of Magna Carta (see infra) confirmed barons, who had founded abbeys, in their rights of wardship over them during vacancies.

  [4 ]See supra, 26–3.

  [5 ]Cited Madox, I. 565.

  [1 ]See Rotuli de Oblatis et Finibus, p. 37, and Pipe Roll, 2 John, cited by Madox, I. 515.

  [2 ]Pipe Roll, 4 John, cited by Madox, I. 324.

  [3 ]See infra, c. 59.

  [4 ]20 Henry III. c. 6.

  [1 ]Tenures, II. iv. s. 109.

  [2 ]See Petition of the Barons (Sel. Charters, 383). Gradually the conception of disparagement expanded, partly from the natural development of legal principles and partly from the increased power of the nobility. Coke commenting on Littleton (Section 107) mentions four kinds of disparagements: (1) propter vitium animi, e.g. lunatics; (2) propter vitium sanguinis, villeins, burgesses, sons of attainted persons, bastards, aliens; (3) propter vitium corporis, as those who had lost a limb or were diseased or impotent; and (4) propter jacturam privilegii, or such a marriage as would involve loss of “benefit of clergy.” The last clause had no connection with the law as it stood in 1215. Marriage with a widow or widower was deemed by the Church in later days an act of bigamy, and involved loss of benefit of clergy, until this was remedied by the Statute 1 Edward VI. c. 12 (sect. 16).

  [3 ]II. folio 88.

  [4 ]For further information on the age at which marriage could be tendered to a ward, and the penalties for refusing, see Thomson Magna Carta, pp. 170–171.

  [1 ]Cf. supra, 63–5.

  [1 ]See Pollock and Maitland, II. 422–3. The ceremony at the church door, when resorted to, was no longer an opportunity of giving material proof of affection to a bride, but a means of cheating her out of what the law considered her legitimate provision, by substituting something of less value.

  [2 ]Pollock and Maitland, II. 419.

  [1 ]See Pollock and Maitland, II. 15, 16. Liberum maritagium, considered as a tenure, has various peculiarities. The lady’s husband became the feudal tenant of her father. The issue of the marriage were heirs to the lands and would hold them as tenants of the heir of the donor. For three generations, however, neither service nor homage was due. After the third transmission, the land ceased to be “free”; the peculiar tenure came to an end; the new owner was subject to all the usual burdens.

  [2 ]Second Institute, p. 16.

  [3 ]See supra, p. 214.

  [4 ]Observations, pp. 8–10.

  [5 ]E.g. Thomson, Magna Carta, p. 172. Dr. Stubbs has his own reading of maritagium, namely, “the right of bestowing in marriage a feudal dependant.” See Glossary to Sel. Charters, p. 545. The word may sometimes bear this meaning, but not in Magna Carta.

  [6 ]See his History of English Law, I. 121 (3rd ed.).

  [1 ]Cf. Ibid., I. 242, where Reeves rightly points out that Coke is mistaken, although he fails to notice the distinction drawn, in the passage criticized, between the Crown and mesne lords.

  [2 ]See Coke, Second Institute, p. 16.

  [1 ]See Glossary to Select Charters, p. 539: “firewood; originally provision or stuff generally.”

  [2 ]Several instances of the wider use may be given. Bracton (III. folio 137) explains that, pending the trial of a man accused of felony, his lands and chattels were set aside by the sheriff; meanwhile the imprisoned man and his family received “reasonable estovers.” (Cf. infra, c. 32.) The Statute of Gloucester (6 Edward I. c. 4) mentions incidentally one method of stipulating for a return from property alienated, viz., estovers of meat or clothes. Blackstone, again (Commentaries, I. 441), applies the name estovers to the alimony made to a divorced woman “for her support out of the husband’s estate.” Sometimes the word was more restricted. Coke (Second Institute, p. 17) says, “when estovers are restrained to woods, it signifieth housebote, hedgebote, and ploughbote,”—that is, timber for repairing houses, hedges, and ploughs. Apparently it had an even more restricted scope when used to describe the right of those who dwelt in the King’s forest, viz., to take dead timber as firewood. (Cf. infra, c. 44.)

  [3 ]Second Institute, p. 17.

  [4 ]There seems no reason to restrict her estovers to a right over “commons,” in the sense of pastures and woods held “in common” by her late husband and the villeins of his manor. Some such meaning, indeed, attaches to the phrase “dower of estovers” met with in later reigns, e.g. in Year Book of 2 Edward II. (Selden Society), p. 58, where it was held that such a right (claimed as a permanent part of dower) did not belong to a widow.

  [1 ]See Pipe Roll of 16 John, cited Madox, I. 491.

  [2 ]See Pipe Roll of 6 John, cited Madox, I. 488.

  [3 ]See Pipe Roll of 6 John, cited Madox, I. 488.

  [4 ]New Rymer, I. 91.

  [1 ]See New Rymer, I. 92.

  [2 ]See Coke, Second Institute, 18.

  [1 ]See supra, pp. 73–6.

  [2 ]The Dialogus de Scaccario, II. xiv., half a century earlier, laid down rules even more favourable to the debtor in two respects: (1) the order in which moveables should be sold was prescribed; and (2) certain chattels were absolutely reserved to the debtor, e.g. food prepared for use; and, in the case of a knight, his horse with its equipment.

  [1 ]51 Henry III. stat. 4 (among “statutes of uncertain date” in Statutes of Realm, I. 197).

  [2 ]See Dialogus de Scaccario, II. xiv.

  [3 ]Cf., however, the rule as to amercements in c. 20.

  [4 ]28 Edward I. c. 12. Cf. Statute of Marlborough, 52 Henry III. c. 15.

  [5 ]Henry’s reissues make two small additions explaining certain points of detail: (1) the words “et ipse debitor paratus sit inde satisfacere” precede the clause giving sureties exemption; and (2) the sureties are declared liable to distraint when the chief debtor can pay, but will not.

  [1 ]The words “de quocumque teneat” include Crown–tenants and under–tenants, and suggest that only freeholders were protected by this clause.

  [2 ]Catallum and lucrum were the technical words for “principal” and “interest.” See Round, Ancient Charters (Pipe Roll Society, Vol. X.), No. 51, and John’s Charter to the Jews, Rot. Chart., p. 93.

  [3 ]See Pollock and Maitland, I. 452, and Round’s Ancient Charters, notes to Charter No. 51.

  [4 ]The Crown was sometimes called in to enable a debtor, overwhelmed by the accumulation of interest, to come to a settlement with his creditors. In 1199 Geoffrey de Neville gave a palfrey to the King to have his aid “in making a moderate fine with those Jews to whom he was indebted.” See Rotuli de Finibus, p. 40. Ought we to view John’s intervention as an attempt to arrange a reasonable composition with unreasonable usurers, or was it simply a conspiracy to cheat Geoffrey’s creditors?

  [1 ]20 Henry III. c. 5.

  [2 ]Statutes of Realm, I. 221.

  [1 ]Cf. Cap. de Judaeis (Sel. Ch. 262).

  [2 ]Cf. J. M. Rigg, Sel. Pleas of the Jewish Exchequer, p. xix.

  [3 ]Sel. Charters, 262.

  [1 ]See John’s Charter to the Jews of 10th April, 1201, in Rotuli Chartarum, p. 93.

  [2 ]See Pollock and Maitland, I. 453 n.

  [3 ]Rigg, Op. cit., xx.

  [4 ]See Rot. Chart., I. 93. Complaints brought by Christians against Jews were to be judged “per pares Judei,” a phrase which Harcourt, Steward, 228, interprets as equivalent to “the justices or custodes of the Jews,” but see infra under c. 39.

  [1 ]Rot. Pat., I. p. 33, and New Rymer, I. 89. The date is 29th July, 1203.

  [2 ]See Rigg, ibid., xxiv.

  [3 ]See Miss Norgate, John Lackland, p. 231.

  [1 ]Statutes of Realm, I. 221.

  [1 ]Folio 386b.

  [1 ]See supra, p. 65.

  [1 ]“Extraordinary aids” here mean all aids other than the three normal ones.

  [2 ]Miss Norgate, Minority, 15, thinks the innovation so undoubted as to justify Innocent’s Bull annulling the Great Charter. Cf. Adams, Origin, 276 n.: “a demand in regard to scutage which custom did not warrant.” Cf. ibid., 221–2, and supra, 71.

  [3 ]See supra, p. 148.

  [1 ]Miss Norgate, Minority, p. 194.

  [2 ]See supra, p. 35.

  [3 ]See Article 23 (which became c. 33), Article 31 (c. 41), and Article 32 (cc. 12 and 13), and cf. supra, p. 117. Whether Article 12 (c. 35) was more a benefit to, than a restraint upon, traders seems doubtful.

  [4 ]See, however, Ballard (British Borough Charters, lxxx. ff.) who seems to make the two things shade into each other.

  [5 ]Bracton, I. 288, holds that aids of this sort are personal not predial, for they look to persons not fiefs. Auxilium burgorum was sometimes a technical term, meaning sums paid by boroughs in lieu of ‘Danegeld. See Round, Eng. Hist. Rev., XVIII. 309. In our text, however, “aids” must be more broadly interpreted.

  [1 ]This statement, for which evidence is given infra, is not always admitted. Taswell–Langmead, Eng. Const. Hist., p. 107, says: “The city of London can never have been regarded as a demesne of the Crown.” For lists of prelates and barons paying tallage see Ludwig Riess, Historische Zeitschrift, Vol. 14, N.S. pp. 21 ff. (1904).

  [2 ]I. 712, citing Mem. Roll 39 Henry III.

  [1 ]Rot. Claus., I. 64.

  [2 ]Willelmi Articuli Londoniis Retractati, in Liebermann, Gesetze, I. 490, c. 5.

  [3 ]Eng. Hist. Rev., XVII. 726.

  [4 ]Ibid., XIX. 702; Origin, 358 ff.

  [1 ]See supra, p. 236.

  [2 ]Lords’ Report on the Dignity of a Peer, I. 65.

  [3 ]In 1168, when Henry II. took an aid for the marriage of his daughter, London contributed £617 16s. 8d., which might afford a precedent for a “reasonable” aid. See Pipe Roll, 14 Henry II., cited Madox, I. 585.

  [1 ]Cf. however, Davis, England under Normans, 380.

  [2 ]It might be argued that the last clause of chapter 13, extending to all towns a confirmation of liberties and customs, was intended to embrace this provision as to aids. If so, the draftsman has expressed himself clumsily.

  [3 ]See Stubbs, Const. Hist., II. 548. “Of the scope of this enactment there can be no doubt; it must have been intended to cover every species of tax not authorised by parliament, and . . . it seems to have had the effect of abolishing the royal prerogative of tallaging demesne.”

  [1 ]E.g. Taswell–Langmead, Engl. Const. Hist., 106. Dr. Stubbs, Const. Hist., I. 573, considers that these words “admit the right of the nation to ordain taxation.”

  [1 ]See infra, under c. 25.

  [2 ]Even when an honour escheated, its tenants “were not suitors of the Curia Regis.” See Report on Dignity of a Peer, I. 60.

  [1 ]Firma is explained infra, c. 25.

  [2 ]Stubbs, Const. Hist., I. 439. Round, Commune, 220, is in substantial agreement. Miss Bateson, however, thinks “there has been a tendency unduly to minimise the measure of administrative unity in the twelfth–century shire of London.” See evidence produced by her, Engl. Hist. Rev., XVII. 480–510.

  [1 ]Geoffrey de Mandeville, 356.

  [2 ]William of Malmesbury, II. 576.

  [3 ]See e.g. Miss Norgate, Angevin Kings, II. 471.

  [4 ]Geoffrey, 367.

  [1 ]Commune of London, 222.

  [1 ]Commune of London, 224.

  [2 ]Select Charters, p. 252.

  [3 ]Luchaire, Communes Françaises, p. 97, defines it as “seigneurie collective populaire.”

  [1 ]Miss Bateson, Engl. Hist. Rev., XVII. 508.

  [2 ]E.g. removal of obstacles in Thames and Medway. Cf. infra, c. 33.

  [3 ]Supra, p. 236.

  [4 ]John Lackland, 228. From this date the list of mayors shows frequent, sometimes annual, changes. Serlo, the mercer, was mayor in May, 1215, when London opened its gates to the insurgents, while William Hardell had succeeded him before 2nd June, 1216.

  [1 ]See text of Charter in Sel. Chart., 315.

  [2 ]The meaning of both words is discussed infra, c. 39.

  [3 ]See supra, p. 236. M. Petit–Dutaillis (Studies Supplementary, 102) doubts whether the citizens in 1215 had any wish to become a Commune, and holds that their desire was to escape burdensome exactions, no matter what these might be called. Prof. Adams (Origin, 367) maintains, in reply, that the only practicable method of effecting this exemption was to obtain recognition as a Commune.

  [4 ]Ibid., 361.

  [1 ]Rot. Pat., 303–4.

  [2 ]See Norgate, Minority, 186, and authorities there cited.

  [3 ]See supra, p. 145.

  [4 ]Cf. Pollock and Maitland, I. 447–8.

  [1 ]Cf. infra, c. 41.

  [2 ]On the whole subject of the commune concilium, cf. supra, 129–131 and 149.

  [1 ]E.g. Anson, Law and Custom of the Constitution (1st ed.), I. 14, declares that one of the two cardinal principles of the Charter is “that representation is a condition precedent to taxation.” This has been altered in later editions.

  [2 ]Prof. Adams (Origin, 276 n.) perhaps goes too far towards the opposite extreme in holding this chapter “an unnecessary addition to the Articles of the Barons and quite without importance.” Contrast Round as cited infra, p. 251.

  [1 ]This is illustrated by comparison with the phrases in which Henry and his sons expressed “the common consent”: e.g. (1) the Assize of Clarendon in 1166 (Select Charters, 143) bears to have been ordained by Henry II. “de consilio omnium baronum suorum”; (2) John’s Charter to Innocent in 1213 declares that he acted “communi consilio baronum nostrorum” (Select Charters, 285); (3) Matthew Paris makes Earl Richard complain to Henry III. in 1255 that the Apulian business had been entered on “sine consilio suo et assensu barnagii” (Chron. Maj., V. 520).

  [2 ]Cf. Round (Peerage and Pedigree, 349 ff.), who speaks of this as creating “a harsh and artificial division of society.” Its composition was stereotyped, and Mr. Round rejects alike the theory of Stubbs (Const. Hist., I. 566) that the Council was being gradually extended, and that of Freeman (Norman Conquest, V. 419) that it was suffering contraction. Cf. also Adams, Origin, 226 n., and the authorities there collected.

  [3 ]See Ramsay, Angevin Empire, p. 54, and authorities there cited.

  [1 ]See L. O. Pike, House of Lords, 92, “There is no trace of any desire on the part of the barons to be summoned to the King’s great Council as a privilege and an honour before the reign of John.” Cf. also Report on the Dignity of a Peer, I. 389.

  [2 ]Peerage and Pedigree, 355–6.

  [3 ]See Prof. Medley, Eng. Const. Hist., 123.

  [4 ]Dialogus de Scaccario, II. x. D., “baronias scilicet majores seu minores.”

  [5 ]Cf. supra, c. 2. Prof. Vinogradoff, Law Quart. Rev. XXI. 255, shows that “baronia” long remained a technical term for the body of freemen holding from the king, both great and small.

  [1 ]Op. cit., 353. Cf. also his King’s Serjeanties, 36; Commune of London; 252–3.

  [2 ]Eng. Const. Hist., 123. “The smaller tenants–in–chief would thankfully regard the general summons as an intimation to stay away.”

  [3 ]Eng. Const., I. 466.

  [4 ]See Const. Hist., I. 666. “Whether or no the fourteenth Article of the Great Charter intended to provide for a representation of the minor tenants–in–chief by a body of knights elected in the county court,” etc.

  [1 ]The writs of 7th November, 1213, are commonly regarded as introducing the representative principle into the national assembly, and in this view the barons’ scheme embodied in Magna Carta has been considered as reactionary by comparison. Cf. Anson, Law and Custom, I. 44: “The provisions of 1215 described an assembly which was already passing away.” There are difficulties, however, connected with the interpretation of those writs; and recent authorities are inclined to point to 1264, rather than to 1213, as the beginning of the systematic application of representation to Parliament. See Adams, Origin, 317, 340. Cf. also supra, 29–30.

  [1 ]Cf. Report on Dignity of a Peer, I. 63.

  [2 ]Cf. Stubbs, Const. Hist., I. 607: “Absence, like silence, on such occasions implies consent.”

  [1 ]See Pipe Roll of 5 Henry III., cited Madox, I. 675.

  [2 ]For the beginnings of the modern doctrine of the rights of majorities see infra under c. 61.

  [3 ]See Prothero, Simon de Montfort, 67, and authorities there mentioned.

  [4 ]See M. Paris, Chron. Maj., V. 520. Note, however, that the version of the Charter given in his own history contains no such requirement. The barons in 1255 may have had access to the version of 1215.

  [1 ]The chapter is, therefore, on the one hand, a supplement of cc. 12 and 14; on the other, a particular application of the principle enunciated in c. 60, which extended to sub–tenants benefits secured to Crown–tenants by previous chapters.

  [2 ]The exemptions enjoyed by them are explained under c. 43.

  [3 ]By strict feudal theory the King had no right to interfere between the barons and their sub–tenants. (1) The need for royal writs was thus a usurpation. (2) Those writs were “only letters of request,” not binding on sub–tenants. See Adams, Origin, 230–2.

  [1 ]Bracton’s Note–book, No. 1146, cited Pollock and Maitland, I. 331.

  [2 ]In theory, in Henry II.’s reign at least, a royal writ was not required in the normal case. See Dialogus, II. viii., and the editors’ comment (p. 191): “Normally the levying of money under any pretext from a landowner gave him a right to make a similar levy on his under–tenants.” As regards scutage, a distinction was recognized. The lord who actually paid scutage might collect it from his sub–tenants without a licence; but, if he served in person, he could recover none of his expenses except by royal writ. See ibid., and cf. Madox, I. 675. It is necessary, however, to avoid confusion between two types of writ, (a) that which merely authorized contributions, e.g., de scutagio habendo; (b) that which commanded the sheriff to give his active help. In later practice, the sheriff often collected scutage from the sub–tenants and paid it directly to the Crown. Pollock and Maitland, I. 249–253.

  [1 ]Cf. Pollock and Maitland, I. 331: “The clause expunged from the Charter seems practically to have fixed the law.”

  [2 ]Close Rolls, I. 306, cited Pollock and Maitland, I. 331.

  [1 ]Patent Rolls, 5 John, cited Madox, I. 615.

  [2 ]Close Rolls, 7 John, cited Madox, I. 616.

  [3 ]See Glanvill, IX. 8.

  [4 ]See Round, Commune of London, 130.

  [5 ]See Madox, I. 617, citing Patent Rolls, 18 Henry III. Various other examples are given by Pollock and Maitland, I. 331, e.g. “the earl of Salisbury, to enable him to stock his land.”

  [6 ]Supra, p. 257, and cf. Pollock and Maitland, I. 331.

  [7 ]See Madox, I. 677.

  [1 ]See the authorities cited supra, p. 68, n. 3, and 69, n. 1.

  [2 ]In the so–called “unknown Charter of Liberties” (see Appendix) John concedes to his men “ne eant in exercitu extra Angliam nisi in Normanniam et in Brittaniam,” a not unfair compromise, which may possibly represent the sense in which the present chapter was interpreted by the barons. See, however, Adams, Origin, 232, who takes a different view.

  [1 ]Walter of Hemingburgh, II. 121. Cf., on the whole subject of foreign service, supra, 67–76.

  [2 ]Supra, 59–69.

  [1 ]Cf. J. F. Stephen, Hist. of Crim. Law, I. 88–9.

  [1 ]Jurisprudence and Ethics, 209. Sometimes, however, another “fixed place” was substituted. The Court of Common Pleas sat once at York under Edward III. and once at Hertford under Elizabeth. See Maitland, Select Pleas of the Crown, xiii. The statute 2 Edward III. c. 11 enacted that it should not be removed to any new place without due notice.

  [2 ]See Prof. Maitland, Select Pleas of the Crown, xiii.–xvi.

  [3 ]See Pollock, Expansion of Common Law, 63 n. Cf. Holdsworth, I. 75.

  [1 ]Cf. supra, 90.

  [1 ]Author of Gesta Regis Henrici, I. 207.

  [2 ]Bigelow, Proceaure, 89; Stubbs, Gesta Regis Henrici, I. lxxi.

  [3 ]House of Lords, 32. See also Poole, Exchequer, 180, and Adams, Origin, 136 ff.

  [1 ]See Prof. Maitland, Sel. Pl. Crown, xiii.–xvi.; see also in Pipe Roll, 7 John (cited Madox, I. 791) how money was paid that a plea pending before the Justiciarii de banco might be heard coram rege. This entry proves the existence in 1205 of the de banco as distinct from the coram rege.

  [2 ]See Maitland, ibid.

  [3 ]Cf. Poole, Exchequer, 183, who insists, however, that “it said nothing about a distinct court.”

  [4 ]For attempts to evade this prohibition on the ground of the special character of particular pleas, see Bracton’s Note–book, Nos. 1213 and 1220.

  [1 ]See Maitland, Sel. Pl. Crown, xviii.

  [2 ]See Placitorum Abbreviatio (p. 105), 21 Henry III., cited Pike, House of Lords, p. 41 Cf. also Bracton’s Note–book, pleas Nos. 1213 and 1220.

  [3 ]Poole, Exchequer, 183.

  [4 ]28 Edward I. c. 5.

  [5 ]For stages in this genesis in 1234, 1236, and 1317, see Poole, Exchequer, 183.

  [1 ]Stubbs, Const. Hist., II. 281 n.

  [2 ]See 28 Edward I. c. 4. Many previous attempts had been made to keep common pleas out of the Exchequer, e.g. the writs of 56 Henry III. and 5 Edward I. (cited Madox, II. 73–4), and the so–called statute of Rhuddlan (12 Edward I.), see Statutes of Realm, I. 70.

  [3 ]Thus Madox (II. 73–4) holds that c. 17 relates to the Exchequer; so does Mr. Bigelow (History of Procedure, 130–1), who explains the grievance as a difficulty of getting speedy justice at the Exchequer, because the barons refused to sit after their fiscal business had been finished. This seems to be an error: the Barons of Exchequer made no difficulty about hearing pleas: quite the contrary. Plaintiffs were equally eager to purchase the writs which they were keen to sell: it was only defendants (debtors) who objected to the rapid and stringent procedure for enforcing payment adopted by this efficient court. The sheriffs and others waiting to render accounts before the Exchequer also protested against the congestion of business produced at the Exchequer by the eagerness of litigants who pressed there for justice. See Madox, II. 73. Plaintiffs had no reason to complain.

  [1 ]The fiction of “Crown debtors” is well known: plaintiffs obtained a hearing in the exchequer for their common pleas by alleging that they wished to recover debts due to them “in order to enable them to answer the debts they owed to the king.” See Madox, II. 192.

  [1 ]“Comitatus” indicates both the county where the lands lay and the court of that county. It was originally the sphere of influence of a comes or earl. Cf. supra, c. 2.

  [2 ]See supra, c. 17.

  [1 ]See W. S. Holdsworth (History of English Law, p. 115), who cites 1397 as the date of the final abolition of Eyres.

  [2 ]This was in 1233: see Pollock and Maitland, I. 181.

  [3 ]Blackstone, Commentaries, III. 58, assigns 1176 (the assize of Northampton), as the date of their institution.

  [1 ]See statute 3 and 4 William IV. c. 27, §§ 36–7. The last actual case of a Grand Assize occurred in Davies v. Loundes, in 1835 and 1838 (1 Bing. N.C. 597, and 5 Bing. N.C. 161).

  [2 ]The name “Assize” is sometimes a source of confusion, because of its various meanings. (1) Originally, it denoted a session or meeting of any sort. (2) It came to be reserved for sessions of the King’s Council. (3) It was applied to any Ordinance enacted in such a session, e.g. Assize of Clarendon. (4) It was extended to every institution or procedure established by royal ordinance, but (5) more particularly applied to the procedures known as Grand Assize and Petty Assizes. (6) Finally, it denotes at the present day a “session” of these Justices of Assize, thus combining something of its earliest meaning with something of its latest. In certain contexts, it has other meanings still, e.g. (7) an assessment or financial burden imposed at a “session.”

  [3 ]See Neilson, Trial by Combat, 33–6, and authorities there cited.

  [4 ]Cf. supra, p. 85, for the place of “combat” in legal procedure; and p. 89, for Henry’s policy in discouraging it. For the later history of trial by battle, see infra, under c. 36.

  [1 ]See Glanvill, II. 7.

  [2 ]Sel. Chart., 259. The Assize of Northampton in 1176 (ibid. 152) had given them jurisdiction over estates of half a knight’s fee or less, but nothing was there said of the mode of proof.

  [1 ]Glanvill, XII. 25.

  [2 ]See infra, under c. 34.

  [3 ]In the matter of actual date, the received opinion is that the “novel disseisin” procedure dates from 1166, and the Grand Assize came later. Round (Athenaeum for 28th Jany., 1899) suggests 1179. The evolution of the various writs was, however, a slow process, and steps in the chain are wanting. Under Geoffrey Plantagenet in Normandy various writs shade off into one another. See Haskins, Amer. Hist. Rev., VIII. 613 ff. In any view, the logical sequence seems to be that given in the text.

  [1 ]In Normandy the corresponding period was “since the last harvest.” See Maitland, Equity, 323.

  [2 ]At so late a date as 1267 it was found necessary to recognize by statute the right of the heir, who had come of age, to oust his guardian from his lands by an assize of mort d’ancestor. See Statute of Marlborough, c. 16.

  [1 ]Such was the law as late as 1285. Westminster II. c. 5 explains that, when any one had wrongfully presented to a vacant church, the real patron could not recover his advowson except by writ of right “quod habet terminari per duellum vel per magnam assisam.”

  [2 ]A Lateran Council in 1179 authorized the diocesan bishop to appoint after three months’ vacancy. Hence there was additional need of haste.

  [3 ]The relations of the assizes to the ancient inquisitio and to the modern jury are discussed supra, pp. 134–8.

  [1 ]Thus two successive chapters of Magna Carta emphasize two divergent tendencies: c. 17 had demanded that “common pleas” should all be held at Westminster, while c. 18 demands that “assizes” should not be taken there. In both cases, the object was to consult the convenience of litigants.

  [2 ]See Bracton’s Note–book, No. 1478; cited Coke (Second Institute, proem). If this assize had presented points of special difficulty it might have been held at Westminster without violating Magna Carta, as amended in 1217.

  [3 ]13 Edward I. c. 30. Stephen, History of Criminal Law, 105–7, gives further details.

  [1 ]Cf. Assize of Northampton, c. 4.

  [2 ]Cf. infra, c. 48, where twelve sworn knights are to be chosen per probos homines ejusdem comitatus. Cf. also Forma Procedendi of 1194 (Sel. Charters, 255).

  [3 ]See, e.g. Stubbs, preface to R. Hoveden, IV. xcviii.; Blackstone, Great Charter, xxxvi.; Medley, Eng. Const. Hist., 130.

  [4 ]Blackstone, ibid., points out these changes in the charter of 1217: “the leaving indefinite the number of the knights and the justices of assize, the abolishing of the election of the former, and the reducing the times of taking assizes to once in every year.”

  [1 ]On the whole subject, see an admirable article by G. J. Turner, Encycl. Laws of Engl., III. 76 ff.

  [2 ]See Middle Ages, II. 464.

  [1 ]Cf. Coke, First Institute, 293b: “As the power of justices of assizes by many Acts of Parliament and other commissions increased, so these justices itinerant by little and little vanished away.”

  [2 ]On whole subject see Stubbs, Sel. Chart., 141–3; Stephen, Hist. Crim. Law, I. 79–111; Holdsworth, I. 116–123. Contrast, however, Turner, op. cit., III. 76 ff.

  [3 ]For the exception where lands were under £5 in annual value, see supra, p. 273.

  [1 ]G. J. Turner, ibid., p. 79.

  [2 ]27 Edward I. c. 3. For early history of gaol delivery, see Pollock and Maitland, II. 642.

  [3 ]13 Edward I. c. 39; see Stephen, Hist. Criminal Law, p. 106.

  [4 ]Edward III. c. 2. Ibid., 110.

  [5 ]It is unnecessary to do more than notice the exceptional “commissions of trailbaston,” supposed to date from the Statute of Rageman (1276), conferring special powers for the suppression of powerful wrongdoers. These were soon superseded by the commissions of oyer and terminer.

  [6 ]Mr. Turner (ibid., p. 79) suggests, however, that a separate commission was not needed, as “all justices of assize and gaol delivery were in the commission of the peace within the precincts of the court.” In his view the justices received three distinct commissions, not five.

  [1 ]Subsequent practice did not conform to this rule. One novel disseisin, or one mort d’ancestor, might be held by itself; and complaint was made in 1258 that the sheriffs proclaimed in the market places that all knights and freeholders must assemble for such an inquest, and when they came not, amerced them at will (pro voluntate sua). See Petition of Barons, c. 19 (Sel. Charters, 385).

  [2 ]Subsequent legislation vacillated between two policies, actuated at times by a desire to restrain the discretionary powers of the justices; and at others by experience of the hardships inflicted upon litigants by inflexible rules. The Statute of Westminster II. (13 Edward I. c. 30) confirmed the power of the justices to reserve cases of mort d’ancestor for decision by the bench, and per contra allowed assizes of darrein presentment to be taken “in their own counties.” 6 Richard II. c. 5 curtailed the discretionary powers, directing that justices assigned to take assizes and deliver gaols should hold sessions in the county towns in which the shire courts were wont to be held. 11 Richard II. c. 11 once more relaxed this rule, alleging that it had resulted in the inconvenience of suitors. Authority was given to the chancellor, with the advice of the justices, to determine in what places assizes might be held.

  [1 ]See Charter of Henry I. c. 8, which, however, condemns the whole practice among the other innovations of the Conqueror and Rufus.

  [2 ]See Dialogus de Scaccario, II. xvi.

  [3 ]Cf. Pollock and Maitland, II. 511–4. There were, however, exceptions, e.g. Henry II. would not accept money payments for certain forest offences: mutilation was inflicted. See Assize of Woodstock, c. 1, and contrast Forest Charter of 1217, c. 10.

  [4 ]Cf. Pollock and Maitland (II. 512), who describe Henry’s promise as “a return to the old Anglo–Saxon system of pre–appointed wites.” In order to avoid confusion, no mention has been made in the account given above of a classification of amercements into three degrees, which increases the obscurity surrounding their origin. The Dialogus de Scaccario, II. xvi., tells how (1) for grave crimes, the culprit’s life and limbs were at the King’s mercy, as well as his property; (2) for less important offences, his lands were forfeited, but his person was safe; while (3) for minor faults, his personal effects only were at the King’s disposal. In the last case, the offender was “in misericordia regis de pecunia sua.” Thus to be “in mercy” did not always mean the same thing. Further, a villein or dependent freeman on a manor might fall into the “mercy” of his lord, as well as of the King. The records of manorial courts are full of amercements for petty transgressions of customs of the manor.

  [1 ]“Very likely there was no clause in Magna Carta more grateful to the mass of the people than that about amercements.” Maitland, Gloucester Pleas, xxxiv.

  [2 ]Even Coke (Second Institute, p. 27) has to confess that for purposes of this chapter he must abandon the attempt made elsewhere (ibid., p. 4 and p. 45) to bring villeins into the class of freemen.

  [3 ]Adams, Origin, 257, thinks the addition made it clear that villeins could not amerce the liber homo; but were not the four legaliores homines of each village described in Assize of Clarendon, villeins? Harcourt, Steward, 221 n., insists that the clause does not secure “trial by peers” in the feudal sense, for the jury of neighbours need not be “peers of a tenure.”

  [1 ]Harcourt, Engl. Hist. Rev., XXII. 733–4. See also Dial. de Scac., p. 207 n.; Maitland, Gloucester Pleas, xxxiv. Amercements apparently might also be provisionally fixed by the justices of the bench or the barons of exchequer, who might (where arrears were still unpaid) reduce their figures of previous years.

  [2 ]Harcourt, ibid.

  [3 ]Madox, I. 527.

  [4 ]See, however, on whole subject, Harcourt, ibid.

  [5 ]Reeves, History of English Law, I. 248 (Third Edition) says: “Upon this chapter was afterwards framed the writ de moderata misericordia, for giving remedy to a party who was excessively amerced.”

  [1 ]Cf. Professor James Tait, Engl. Hist. Rev. XXXVII., 720 ff., who thinks that any attempt to exempt merchant “wares” from amercement was inconsistent with the right to distrain goods for debt, as illustrated by many cases given by Gross, Sel. Cases in Merchant Law (Selden Society), passim.

  [2 ]Rotuli Chartarum, 51.

  [3 ]See Select Charters, 108.

  [4 ]See Birch, Historical Charters of London, p. 5.

  [5 ]Ibid., p. 11.

  [6 ]See English Village Community, passim.

  [1 ]See Engl. Hist. Rev., XXXVII. 724, where Mr. Tait argues “for a broader and less concrete interpretation of the term . . . than has hitherto been put upon it.” The villein was not to be ruined by impounding his seed–corn or growing crops any more than by depriving him of his plough or plough team. See also A. F. Pollard, Engl. Hist. Rev., XXXVIII. 117, and cf. waynagium in c. 5, supra. The Mirror of Justices, p. 169, has a gloss on this passage, in which it is the villein’s “gaigneur” that is saved to him, and this is apparently identified with the villenagium held by him. Mr. Tait’s view has been adopted here; but the word has sometimes a more restricted meaning, e.g. in Hoveden, iv. 48, where 100 acres of land are reckoned to the “waynage” of each plough.

  [1 ]The view here taken of the motive for protecting villeins is strengthened by the use of the peculiar phrase, “vastum hominum” in chapter 4 (q.v.). Thomson, Magna Charta, p. 202, seems completely to have misunderstood this 16th chapter of the reissue of 1217, construing the four interpolated words in a sense the Latin will not bear, viz.: “A villein, although he belonged to another.”

  [2 ]Notably by Professor Vinogradoff in his Villeinage in England, passim.

  [3 ]The gulf which separated villein from freeman in this matter is shown by the Pipe Roll of 16 Henry II. (cited Madox, I. 545); Herbertus Faber debet j marcam pro falso clamore quem fecit ut liber cum sit rusticus. A villein might be amerced for merely claiming to be free. It is difficult to reconcile any theory of the villein’s freedom with the doctrine of Glanvill, V. c. 5, who denies to everyone who had been once a villein the right to “wage his law,” even after emancipation, where any third party’s interests might thereby be prejudiced. R. Hoveden, iv. 46, speaking of the carucage of 1198, explains that for perjury a villein forfeited his best ox to his lord (not to the King).

  [1 ]C. 55, which supplements this chapter, cancels amercements unjustly inflicted in the past.

  [2 ]IX. 8.

  [3 ]III. folio 116b.

  [4 ]3 Edward I. c. 6.

  [5 ]See II. 208–9.

  [6 ]Prof. Tait’s conclusions (op. cit.) have here been accepted with some hesitation. “Contenement,” he urges, “is not a compound from tenement.” He admits, however, following Godefroy, that in one instance the word does mean “tenement.” He does not notice the striking analogy between the use of “contenement” in this chapter and that of “tenement” in c. 11 supra; nor does he discuss the evidence of the contemporary Histoire de Guillaume le Maréchal, where the word appears seven times with various meanings, e.g. capacity, manner of being, conduct, and equipment. M. Paul Meyer has collected these in his index. Mr. Tait goes too far when he asserts that to make freehold liable to amercement shows “a complete misconception of that form of punishment,” p. 726. There were three degrees of amercement; and only for the mildest of the three was the forfeit limited to the culprit’s personal estate (de pecunia). See supra, p. 286, n. Again, a man might be forced to sell his freehold to meet a heavy pecuniary mulct. Under Henry’s Charter, in its final form, no ecclesiastic could be amerced except in accordance with his “tenement,” which suggests an analogy with the saving of a freeman’s “contenement” in the present passage.

  [1 ]See II. 208–9.

  [2 ]See Madox, ibid.

  [1 ]III. folio 116b.

  [1 ]A valuable volume of evidence has been collected by Harcourt, Eng. Hist. Rev. XXII. 733 ff.; though his conclusions are mainly negative. See also his Steward, ff. 289.

  [2 ]Harcourt, ibid., 736. Pike, House of Lords, 256–7, shows how barons were assessed sometimes—(a) before the barons of exchequer; or (b) before the full King’s Council; or (c) at a later date, even before the justices of Common Pleas. They were never assessed, however, before the justices on circuit.

  [3 ]See Pike, House of Lords, 255.

  [1 ]Bracton, f. 116b.

  [2 ]Madox, I. 535–8.

  [1 ]See Madox, ibid., and also Pike, House of Lords, 257. Mr. Pike, p. 255, rightly says that what was originally a privilege had become a burden.

  [2 ]See Pike, ibid.

  [3 ]Madox, Baronia Anglica, 106, seems to view these sums as fixing a minimum, not a maximum. “If a baron was to be amerced for a small trespass, his amercement was wont to be 100s. at the least; he might be amerced at more, not at less. This, I think, was the meaning of the term amerciater ut baro.” He adds that a commoner for a similar trespass would get off with 10s., 20s., or 40s.

  [1 ]Stubbs, Sel. Chart., 345, by a curious oversight reads “contenementum,” in the issue of 1217, for which there seems to be no authority.

  [2 ]The word “villa,” used at first as synonymous with “manor,” came to be freely applied not only to all villages, but also to chartered towns. Even London was described as a villa in formal writs. “Homo,” though often loosely used, was the word naturally applied to a feudal tenant. The version given by Coke (Second Institute, p. 30) reads “liber homo,” which is also the reading of one MS. of the Inspeximus of 1297 (25 Edward I.). See Statutes of the Realm, I. 114.

  [1 ]See Rot. Claus., 19 Henry III., cited by Moore, History and Law of Fisheries, p. 8.

  [2 ]The Hundred Rolls illustrate the manner of its incidence; e.g. Omnes tenentes de Spaldinge debent ad reparacionem pontis illius, quilibet pro rata porcionis terrae suae contribuere, ita quod quaelibet acra erit par alterius. Rot. Hund., I. 468.

  [1 ]See Rot. Claus., 19 Henry III., cited in Moore, History and Law of Fisheries, p. 8.

  [2 ]See Moore, ibid., 8–16. Two links in the chain of evidence are worthy of emphasis: (a) Writs of 13th November and 1st December, 1234, order repair of bridges for the transit of the King “along with his birds.” (b) A writ of 28th October, 1283, contains a licence to the Earl of Hereford “during the present winter season to ‘revaye’ and take river–fowl throughout the rivers Lowe and Frome which are in defence.”

  [3 ]I.e. c. 47 (q.v.).

  [1 ]R. Wendover, II. 49 (R.S.), “Ibi capturam avium per totam Angliam interdixit.”

  [2 ]Article 11 of the Barons had demanded that no villa should be amerced for failure to make illegal repairs, thus illustrating at once John’s policy, and the point of connection between this provision and the immediately preceding chapters which dealt with amercements.

  [3 ]It was, however, included among the subjects reserved for further consideration in “the respiting clause” (c. 42 of 1216) under the words “de ripariis et earum custodibus.” Cf. supra, 143.

  [1 ]Moore, ibid., 9.

  [2 ]Moore, ibid., 12.

  [3 ]The Mirror of Justices is cited as first suggesting this. See Moore, ibid., 12–16. Coke, Second Institute, 30, misled by the Mirror, has misled others.

  [4 ]Cf. infra, under c. 33.

  [1 ]This was 13 Edward I., stat. 1, c. 47, cited Moore, ibid., 173.

  [2 ]Ibid., p. 6.

  [3 ]Ibid., p. 16.

  [4 ]Lord Hale (Hargreaves, Law Tracts, p. 7) partly anticipated their conclusions, and he seems to have been followed by decisions of the New York Courts. See Law Notes (New York) for August, 1905.

  [1 ]Traces may be found in Glanvill, I. c. 1.

  [1 ]The triumph of royal justice over all rivals in the sphere of criminal law is thus symbolized by the extension of the phrase “pleas of the Crown,” which can be traced through a series of documents—e.g. (a) the laws of Cnut; (b) Glanvill, I. cc. 1, 2, and 3; (c) the Assizes of Clarendon and Northampton; (d) the ordinances of 1194; and (e) Magna Carta.

  [2 ]The Criminal Procedure (Scotland) Act, 1887 (50 and 51 Victoria, c. 35) gave him jurisdiction over three of them.

  [1 ]Cf. infra, 315–6, for details.

  [2 ]See Forma procedendi, cc. 20 and 21 (Sel. Chart., 260).

  [3 ]Ibid., c. 21.

  [4 ]Ibid., c. 20.

  [5 ]The Forma procedendi is usually considered the earliest distinct reference to the office of coroner. Dr. Gross, however (History of Office of Coroner, 1892, and Select Cases from Coroners’ Rolls, 1896) claims to have found traces of their existence at a much earlier date. Maitland remained unconvinced (Eng. Hist. Rev., VIII. 758, and Pollock and Maitland, I. 519).

  [1 ]This inference is drawn from Article 14 of the Barons.

  [2 ]This inference is drawn from c. 24 of Magna Carta.

  [3 ]See Maitland, Gloucester Pleas, xx.

  [1 ]Ibid., p. x.

  [2 ]See Coke, Second Institute, 30, and authorities there cited.

  [3 ]For explanation of these terms, see supra, c. 18.

  [4 ]See Middle Ages, II. 482 n.

  [5 ]Cf. Stephen, History of Criminal Law, I. 83. The mistake made by Hallam and others may have been in part the result of their neglecting the important modification undergone by the phrase “pleas of the Crown” between 1215 and the present day.

  [6 ]E.g. 13 Edward 1. c. 13, and 1 Edward III., stat. 2, c. 17.

  [1 ]1 Edward IV. c. 2.

  [2 ]Contrast Coke, Second Institute, 32, who seems to suggest that one effect of Magna Carta was to take from the sheriff a jurisdiction over thefts previously enjoyed by him.

  [3 ]Dr. Stubbs, Const. Hist., I. 650, thinks that the Charter indicated a tendency towards judicial absolutism, only curbed by the growth of trial by jury. Yet the barons had no intention to enhance the royal power. The attitude of the insurgents in 1215 suggests rather that the sheriffs had now become instruments of royal absolutism to a greater extent than the King’s justices themselves. Edward I., indeed, deftly turned this chapter to his own advantage, arguing that it cancelled all private jurisdiction over criminal pleas previously claimed by boroughs or individuals. See Coke, Second Institute, 31, and cases there cited.

  [4 ]Leet Jurisdiction, 340.

  [1 ]See supra, p. 28.

  [2 ]See W. Coventry, II. 214–5.

  [3 ]Abuses by sheriffs and other bailiffs continued to be rife after 1215 as before it. Many later statutes afford graphic illustrations of the oppressive conduct they sought to control. In 1275 Edward found it necessary to provide “that the sheriffs from henceforth shall not lodge with any person, with more than five or six horses; and that they shall not grieve religious men nor others, by often coming and lodging, neither at their houses nor at their manors.” See Statute of Westminster, c. 1, confirmed by 28 Edward I., stat. 3, c. 13.

  [4 ]Cf. supra, pp. 15–16.

  [1 ]See G. J. Turner, Trans. R. Hist. Soc., XVIII. 272.

  [2 ]On this whole subject see the valuable remarks of Mr. Turner, op. cit., p. 272.

  [1 ]These localities were independent of the ordinary executive authorities of the county; partial exemption from the sheriff’s control was enjoyed also by (a) chartered boroughs and (b) holders of franchises. The same man might, of course, be both sheriff and castellan.

  [2 ]See H. B. Simpson, Eng. Hist. Rev., X. 625, for authorities.

  [3 ]Evidence collected by Coke, Second Institute, 31, proves the identity. See also Round, Ancient Charters, No. 55, where Richard I. in 1159 speaks of “constabularia castelli Lincolniae.”

  [1 ]See Articuli super cartas, 28 Edward I. c. 7.

  [2 ]Stubbs, Const. Hist., II. 339.

  [3 ]See 5 Henry IV. c. 10. Coke, Second Institute, 30, relates, as an indication of the authority and pretensions of these constables, that they had seals of their own “with their portraiture on horseback.”

  [4 ]See Stubbs, Hoveden, Pref. to Vol. IV. xcix.

  [1 ]See Bracton, f. 122b.

  [2 ]In 1197 Richard’s Assize of Measures appointed six custodientes in each county and town. These were coroners over one class of offences, the use of false weights and measures. Cf. infra, under c. 35.

  [3 ]Statute of Westminster, I. c. 10.

  [4 ]Cf. Coke, Second Institute, 31, “In case when any man come to violent or untimelv death, super visum corporis.”

  [1 ]Mr. G. J. Turner, speaking of the minority of Henry III., thinks “the term ‘bailiff’ as applied to a county at this period meant ‘sheriff.’” Transactions, p. 274.

  [1 ]These extra payments appear under various names, e.g. augmentum or incrementum in Domesday Book (cf. Ballard, Domesday Inquest, 75). The Pipe Roll for 1166 (p. 11) records 200 marks paid as gersuma for Norfolk and Suffolk. See evidence collected by Adams, Origin, 237 n. Huge sums were sometimes paid: Archbishop Geoffrey in 1194 purchased the shrievalty of York for £2000. Ramsay, Angevin England, 345.

  [2 ]Cf. Sir James Ramsay, Angevin Empire, 476, who describes this provision as “an impossible requirement.” Dr. Stubbs’ paraphrase is not entirely happy: “the ferms of the counties and other jurisdictions are not to be increased.” See Const. Hist., I. 575.

  [3 ]See Turner, Trans. R.H.S., XVIII. 289.

  [1 ]These are the words of the statute of 1330, cited below.

  [2 ]4 Edward III. c. 15; 14 Edward III. c. 9; 4 Henry IV. c. 5.

  [3 ]For this usage see Cnut, II. 18 (Liebermann, Gesetze, I. 321); Leges Henrici, 7 and 8 (ibid., 553); Writ of Henry I. (ibid., 524).

  [1 ]See supra, p. 150.

  [2 ]Bracton’s Note–book, Plea 1730.

  [3 ]Ibid., No. 513.

  [4 ]See Hearnshaw, Leet Jurisdiction, 79, 80, who reminds us, however (p. 147), that “even Magna Carta can be prescribed against.”

  [1 ]Cf. the use of the phrase “a liquid debt” in Scots law.

  [1 ]Cf. what is there said of the sheriff’s oppressions.

  [2 ]The subject is discussed by Pollock and Maitland, II. 312–353. See also Holdsworth, III. 418 ff.; Makower, Const. Hist. Church, 427 ff.

  [3 ]See Pollock and Maitland, II. 324.

  [1 ]Maitland, Coll. Papers, II. 139.

  [2 ]Holdsworth, III. 418 ff.

  [3 ]On 30th August, 1199 (New Rymer, I. 78) John confirmed the testament of Archbishop Hubert Walter; and on 22nd July, 1202 (ibid., I. 86), he granted permission to his mother, the dowager Queen Eleanor, to make a will.

  [1 ]Cf. “tota pars sua de pecunia sua” in Burton Abbey Surveys (cited by Round, Engl. Hist. Rev., XX. 279); Bateson, Borough Customs, II. xcvi.

  [2 ]Glanvill, VII. 7.

  [1 ]See Law Magazine, Oct. 1905.

  [1 ]On whole subject, see Holdsworth, III. 418 ff.; Makower, Const. Hist. Church, 427 ff.

  [2 ]Pollock and Maitland, II. 354.

  [3 ]See Appendix and supra, p. 98. Also Bateson, Borough Customs, II. cxlii–iii. Cf. Cnut, II. cc. 70 and 78 (Liebermann, Gesetze, 357–365).

  [1 ]See Appendix and supra, p. 102.

  [2 ]Glanvill, VII. 16.

  [3 ]See Pollock and Maitland, II. 354. Examples are readily found: “When Archbishop Roger of York died in 1182, Henry II. enjoyed a windfall of £11,000, to say nothing of the spoons and saltcellars” (Pollock and Maitland, I. 504). Royal prerogatives in the twelfth century were elastic. Henry II. used them freely, but on the whole fairly. His sons stretched every doubtful claim to its utmost limits. The Crown was the legal heir of all Jews (cf. c. 10) and apparently of all Christian usurers as well, at least of such as died unrepentant (see Pollock and Maitland, II. 486), and the making of a will was a necessary condition of a usurer’s repentance. (See Dialogus de Scaccario, 224–5 nn.) The King, further, took the goods of all who died a felon’s death (cf. c. 32) and of men who committed suicide (itself a felony). Madox (I. 346) cites an entry from the Pipe Rolls of 1172, recording 60 marks due to the exchequer as the value of the chattels of an intestate; and, two years later, mention is made de pecunia Gilleberti qui obiit intestatus. There is nothing to show whether such men were, or were not, usurers. The Pope was another competitor for the personal estates of intestate clerks. In 1246 he issued an edict making this demand: even Henry III. (dependent and ally of Rome as he was) protested, and the edict was withdrawn. See Pollock and Maitland, II. 357.

  [1 ]F. 60.

  [2 ]Pollock and Maitland, II. 355. Cf. supra, p. 324.

  [1 ]See Blackstone, Commentaries, I. 287, for an often–quoted definition.

  [2 ]3 Edward I. c. 32.

  [3 ]Stubbs, Const. Hist., II. 339.

  [1 ]12 Charles II. c. 24, ss. 11–12.

  [2 ]13 Charles II. c. 8.

  [1 ]The Statute of Westminster I. (3 Edward I. c. 7) enacted “that no constable or castellan from henceforth take any prise or like thing of any other than of such as be of their own town or castle, and that it be paid or else agreement made within forty days, if it be not ancient prise due to the king, or the castle, or the lord of the castle,” and further (c. 32) that purveyors taking goods for the King’s use, or for a garrison, and appropriating the price received therefor from the exchequer, should be liable in double payment and to imprisonment during the King’s pleasure.

  [2 ]For details, see under cc. 30 and 31.

  [3 ]Hallam, Middle Ages, III. 221.

  [1 ]See Rotuli de oblatis et finibus, 119.

  [2 ]See 3 Charles I. c. 1.

  [3 ]See the examples collected in Pollock and Maitland, I. 257. See also in Rotuli de oblatis et finibus, 107, how in 1200 Ralph de Bradel offered John 40 marks and a palfrey to be relieved of “the custody of the work of the castle of Grimsby.”

  [1 ]Cf. supra, p. 57 n.

  [2 ]Adams, Origin, 238, contrasts the principle of this chapter with that of c. 12, where no option is allowed the vassal of offering service in lieu of scutage—a breach of strict feudal custom.

  [3 ]De feodo pro quo fecit servicium in exercitu. This variation in the charter of 1217 seems to have escaped Dr. Stubbs’ attention. See Select Charters, 346.

  [1 ]The rate fixed by 13 Charles II. c. 8, for the hire of carts or carriages requisitioned by the King, was 6d. per mile. This hire included six oxen, or alternatively two horses and four oxen, to each vehicle.

  [2 ]See 3 Edward I. c. 32.

  [1 ]Cf. Sir James Ramsay, Angevin Empire, p. 476, who considers that chapters 28 and 30, in the branches of prerogative with which they respectively deal, “leave the king’s personal right open.”

  [2 ]See Coke, Second Institute, 36.

  [1 ]Pollock and Maitland, II. 500, consider that the present chapter had a distinct influence in accentuating this twofold classification of crimes.

  [2 ]Glanvill, VII. c. 17. Cf. Bracton, folio 129, for a graphic description of “waste,” which included the destruction of gardens, the ploughing up of meadow land, and the uprooting of woods.

  [1 ]Is it possible that the origin of “year and waste” can be traced to the difficulty of agreeing on a definition of “real” and “personal” estate respectively? The Crown would claim everything it could as “chattels”—a year’s crops and everything above the ground.

  [2 ]Second Institute, p. 36.

  [3 ]See Pollock and Maitland, I. 316. “The apocryphal statute praerogativa regis which may represent the practice of the earlier years of Edward I.” Bracto (folio 129) while stating that the Crown claimed both, seems to doubt the legality of the claim.

  [4 ]Cf. c. 4.

  [1 ]Such at least is the most probable explanation of an entry on the Pipe Roll of 6 John (cited Madox, I. 488); although it is possible that Thomas only bought in “the year day and waste.”

  [2 ]Magna Carta is peculiar in speaking of year and day, without any reference to waste. If it meant to abolish “waste” it ought to have been more explicit. Later records speak of “annum et vastum,” e.g. the Memoranda Roll, 42 Henry III. (cited Madox, I. 315), relates how 60 marks were due as the price of the “year and waste” of a mill, the owner of which had been hanged.

  [3 ]Pipe Roll, 13 Henry III., cited Madox, I. 347. In Kent, lands held in gavelkind were exempt alike from the lord’s escheat and the King’s waste, according to the maxim, “The father to the bough, the son to the plough.” See, e.g. praerogativa regis, c. 16. See also Gloucester Pleas, 114, where apparently the King’s rights over half a hide were sold for 20s.

  [4 ]Madox, I. 344–8, cites from the Pipe Rolls many examples.

  [1 ]This case is cited by Madox, I. 347, from 18 Edward I.

  [2 ]Supra, p. 88.

  [3 ]See Bracton, II. folio 123, and folio 137.

  [1 ]Pipe Roll, 2 John, cited Madox, I. 348.

  [2 ]Cf. supra, c. 24.

  [3 ]3 Edward I. c. 12.

  [1 ]The Act 12 George III. c. 20, made standing mute equivalent to a plea of guilty. A later Act, 7 and 8 George IV. c. 28, made it equivalent to a plea of not guilty. See Stephen, Hist. Crim. Law, I. 298.

  [2 ]This fiction of corrupt blood was apparently based in part on a false derivation of the word “attainder.” See Oxford English Dictionary.

  [3 ]E.g. 54 George III. c. 145, and 3 and 4 William IV. c. 106, s. 10.

  [4 ]33 and 34 Victoria, c. 23.

  [1 ]The Oxford English Dictionary defines it as “a dam, weir, or barrier in a river, having an opening in it fitted with nets or other appliances for catching fish.” For weirs in Domesday Book, see Ballard, D. Inquest, 175–6.

  [1 ]Blackstone, Commentaries, IV. 424, declared that this chapter “prohibited for the future the grants of exclusive fisheries.” Cf. e.g. Thomson, Magna Charta, 214, and Norgate, John Lackland, 217. See also Malcolmson v. O’Dea (1862), 10 H. of L. Cas., 593, and Neill v. Duke of Devonshire (1882), 8 App. Ca. at p. 179,—cases cited in Moore, History and Law of Fisheries, p. 13, where the fallacy is exposed. For an unsuccessful attempt to extend the principle to Scotland, after the Act of Union, see an interesting review of the first edition of this work in Jurid. Rev. for March, 1905.

  [2 ]25 Edward III., stat. 3, c. 4.

  [1 ]12 Edward IV. c. 7. Apparently the earliest statute which refers to weirs as causing injury to fish was one passed in 1402, namely, 4 Henry IV. c. 11; see Moore, Fisheries, p. 175.

  [2 ]It seems to have been generally assumed that these charters conferred positive as well as negative privileges on the citizens, including rights of administration and jurisdiction over the waters of Thames. See Noorthouck, New History of London (1773), 36. Luffman, Charters of London (1793), 13, says of Richard’s grant in 1197: “By this charter the citizens became conservators of the river Thames.” This is an anachronism, but Patent Rolls of 33 Edward I., 5 Edward III., 8 Edward III., contain Commissions of Conservancy. See Moore, op. cit., p. 176. In 1393 the statute of 17 Richard II. c. 9 granted authority to the Mayor of London to regulate weirs and generally to “conserve” the Thames from Staines downwards, and the Medway.

  [1 ]See Rotuli Cartarum, 11 Henry III.

  [2 ]The Histoire des ducs, 149, paraphrases this chapter thus: “Toutes hautes justices vaurrent–ils avoir en lor tierres.” Miss Norgate, Minority, 11, has not grasped the significance of this clause.

  [1 ]Glanvill, XII. 25. See supra, p. 89.

  [2 ]Brunner, Schwurgerichte, 78 ff.

  [3 ]The form of the writ is given in Glanvill, XII. 3.

  [1 ]Cf. Stubbs, Const. Hist., I. 576.

  [2 ]Glanvill, I. 6, gives the form of a praecipe: Rex vicecomiti salutem, Praecipe A. quod sine dilatione reddat B. unam hidam terrae in villa illa, unde idem B. queritur quod praedictus A. ei deforceat: et nisi fecerit, summone eum per bonos summonitores quod sit ibi coram me vel Justiciariis meis in crastino post octabas clausi Paschae apud locum illum, ostensurus quare non fecerit. Et habeas ibi summonitores et hoc breve. Teste Ranulpho de Glanvilla apud Clarendon.

  [3 ]Brunner, Schwurgerichte, 411; Maitland, Col. Papers, II. 129.

  [4 ]Coke, Sec. Inst., 40, gives three varieties of praecipe: (a) praecipe quod reddat; (b) quod permittat; (c) quod faciat. The first group includes one variety of Writs of Right and the various Writs of Entry. Writs of Right, on their part, are of three kinds: (1) writ of right patent, (2) writ praecipe, (3) little writ of right, applicable to villeins on ancient demesne.

  [1 ]See Bigelow, Hist. of Procedure, 78. Glanvill, read between the lines, supports this view. Thus in I. c. 3, he speaks of the King’s courts as normally dealing with “pleas of baronies”; in I. c. 5, he speaks of what he evidently considers an abnormal expansion of this jurisdiction to any plea anent a free tenement, if the Crown so desired.

  [2 ]See supra, under c. 18.

  [1 ]Pollock and Maitland, I. 151.

  [2 ]The version of 1216 speaks of a “free tenement,” where that of 1215 spoke merely of a “tenement.” The addition makes no change, since in no case could the King’s courts try pleas affecting villeins of mesne lords. Perhaps the object is to make it clear that there was no interference with the King’s rights over holdings of his own villeins.

  [1 ]In translating the reissue of 1225, the Statutes at Large expand the word “praecipe” into “praecipe in capite,” for which there is no authority in any known text of Magna Carta, though it appears in Coke’s version of Henry’s charter (Sec. Inst., 38). Authorities differ as to what constitutes a praecipe in capite. Brunner, Schwurgerichte, sec. xx., declares it to be so called “because it begins with the word Praecipe”; yet all praecipes so begin, even Writs of Entry, which are certainly not condemned by Magna Carta. Coke (Sec. Inst., 38) seems (inconsistently with his own version of Magna Carta) to identify the praecipe in capite with a class of writs not prohibited in the Charter, namely, with those professing to deal with estates held directly under the Crown: no one ought to have it without taking oath “that the land is holden of the King in capite.” He cites illustrations from the reign of Edward I. Adams (Origin, 104), speaks of an “in capite” clause inserted in praecipes to evade the prohibition of Magna Carta. See also Holdsworth, III. 10.

  [1 ]Such an attempt seems to have been made in 1207 by Walter de Lacy, Earl of Ulster, who set up in his Irish fief what is described as nova assisa, against which John protested. See Rot. Pat., I. 72, for writ dated 23rd May, 1207. In one case John acquiesced in grand assizes being held in feudal courts: on 4th May, 1201, he granted licence to Hubert Walter to hold them for his tenants in gavelkind. See New Rymer, I. 83.

  [2 ]See article 18 (Select Charters, 404). Cf. chapter 29 of the Petition of the Barons (Select Charters, 386), and Pollock and Maitland, I. 182: “The voice of the nation, or what made itself heard as such, no longer, as in 1215, demanded protection for the seignorial courts.”

  [3 ]A partially successful attempt was made to revive feudal jurisdictions as late as the reign of Edward III. See Stubbs, Const. Hist., II. 638–9.

  [1 ]See, e.g. Madox, I. 793.

  [2 ]Bracton, 404b.

  [3 ]Sec. Inst., 38.

  [4 ]Coll. Papers, II. 129.

  [1 ]See Brunner, Schwurgerichte, 406; Maitland, Coll. Papers, II. 129.

  [2 ]See Glanvill, XII. 7.

  [3 ]Sel. Chart., 386–7.

  [4 ]See Bracton’s Note–book, plea 1215, where the writ in question is cited at length: it contains the sentence, “nec tollat alicui curiam suam ubi locum habere possit breve de recto.”

  [1 ]Technical details are given by Pollock and Maitland, II. 63–7. The whole family of writs were known as “writs of entry sur disseisin”; and these were applied to still wider uses after 1267 on the authority of the Statute of Marlborough, as “writs of entry sur disseisin on the post.” See also Maitland, Preface to Sel. Pleas in Manorial Courts, p. lv.

  [2 ]Cf. Pollock and Maitland, I. 151, and Sel. Pleas in Manorial Courts, already cited.

  [1 ]This word, unknown to Ducange, seems to be connected with the “hauberk” or coat–of–mail. It may mean thick cloth worn under a coat–of–mail.

  [2 ]R. Hoveden, IV. 33–4.

  [3 ]At a later date cloth of an alternative standard width was also legalized, viz., of one yard between the “lists.” Hence arose the distinction between “broadcloth” (that is, cloth of two yards) and “streits” (that is, narrow cloth of one yard) (see Statute 1 Richard III. c. 8). The word “broadcloth” has, long since, changed its meaning, and now denotes material of superior quality, quite irrespective of width. See Oxford English Dictionary, under “Broadcloth.”

  [1 ]Cf. supra, c. 20, for “amercements,” and supra, c. 24, for “custodes” of pleas (or coroners).

  [2 ]See R. Hoveden, IV. 100.

  [3 ]See Hoveden, IV. 172, and Stubbs, Const. Hist., I. 616.

  [1 ]See Pipe Roll, 4 John, cited Madox, I. 566.

  [2 ]See ibid.

  [3 ]In 1203 the men of Worcester paid 100s. “ut possint emere et vendere pannos tinctos sicut solebant tempore Regis Henrici”; and the men of Bedford, Beverley, Norwich and other towns made similar payments. See Pipe Roll, 4 John, cited Madox, I. 468–9.

  [4 ]See Pipe Roll, cited Madox, I. 509.

  [5 ]Gloucester Pleas, No. 501.

  [6 ]Pipe Roll, 3 Henry III., cited Madox, I. 567.

  [1 ]See supra, pp. 84–6.

  [2 ]See Leges Henrici primi, c. 69, §§ 15–16.

  [1 ]See Bracton, folio 531.

  [2 ]See Jocelyn of Brakelond, 50–2.

  [3 ]Blackstone, Commentaries, IV. 316. Cf. Bateson, Borough Customs, I. 73, II. xxv., II. xxxiv.

  [4 ]Cf. supra, p. 88, and also p. 272.

  [1 ]See under c. 54.

  [2 ]In identifying the writ spoken of by Magna Carta as that “of life and limbs” with the well–known writ de odio et atia, most authorities rely on a passage in Bracton (viz., folio 123). There is still better evidence. The Statute of Westminster, II. c. 29, ordains: “Lest the parties appealed or indicted be kept long in prison, they shall have a writ de odio et atia like as it is declared in Magna Carta and other statutes.” Further, in 1231, twelve jurors who had given a verdict as to whether an appeal was false, were asked quo waranto fecerunt sacramentum illud de vita et membris, without the King’s licence. See Bracton’s Note–book, case 592.

  [3 ]Madox, I. 505, has collected instances.

  [1 ]Cf. Pollock and Maitland, II. 585–7, and Thayer, Evidence, 68.

  [2 ]Feudal courts adopted a similar procedure in malicious appeals (although the King objected to their doing so without royal licence). Inquests were held shortly after the abolition of ordeal (1215) in the court of the Abbot of St. Edmund. See Bracton’s Note–book, case 592.

  [3 ]See Pollock and Maitland, II. 586.

  [4 ]59 George III. c. 46.

  [5 ]The early history of habeas corpus is traced by Prof. Jenks, Law Quarterly Review, XVIII. 64. The writ de odio was obsolete prior to the invention of the habeas corpus.

  [1 ]Cf. Brunner, Schwurgerichte, 471.

  [2 ]See folio 123.

  [3 ]See Pipe Roll, 8 John, cited Madox, I. 566.

  [4 ]See Rot. Pat., I. 76; Madox, I. 494. The date is 8th Nov., 1207.

  [1 ]Gloucester Pleas, xli., where cases are cited.

  [2 ]See Bracton’s Note–book, case 134, and cf. case 1548.

  [3 ]Stephen, Hist. Crim. Law, I. 241 (following Foster, Crim. Cases, 284–5), considers that it was abolished by 6 Edward I., stat. 1, c. 9. Coke, Second Institute, 42, thought it was abolished by 28 Edward III. c. 9 (which, however, seems not to refer to this at all), and restored by 42 Edward III. c. 1 (abolishing all statutes contrary to Magna Carta). Coke, ibid., and Hale, Pleas of the Crown, II. 148, considered that the writ was not obsolete in their day. Cf. Pollock and Maitland, II. 587 n.

  [1 ]Edward I. c. 11.

  [2 ]6 Edward I., stat. 1, c. 9.

  [3 ]13 Edward I. cc. 12 and 29.

  [4 ]See Rot. Parl., I. 323.

  [5 ]6 Edward I. c. 9. Appeals were extremely frequent towards the close of the Plantagenet period, especially in the days of “the Lords Appellant.” The proceedings on appeal sometimes took place before the Court of the Constable and Marshal and sometimes before Parliament. In neither case were they popular. One of the charges brought against Richard II. was that “in violation of Magna Carta” (that is, probably, of chapter 39) persons maliciously accused of treasonable words were tried before constable and marshal, and although “old and weak, maimed or infirm,” yet compelled to fight against appellants “young, strong, and hearty.” See Rot. Parl., III. 420, cited Neilson, Trial by Combat, 193. On the other hand, Statute 1 Henry IV. c. 14, provided that no appeals should be held before Parliament, but certain appeals might come before constable and marshal. Cf. Harcourt, Steward, 369.

  [1 ]See 3 Henry VII. c. 1, s. 11: the injured party, with the right of appeal, was “oftentimes slow and also agreed with, and by the end of the year all is forgotten which is another occasion of murder.”

  [1 ]See Ashford v. Thornton, 1 B. and Ald., 405–461.

  [2 ]See 59 George III. c. 46.

  [3 ]Pollock and Maitland, I. 304, read “parva” as an untechnical word. Round, Serjeanties, 35–6, finds in this chapter the origin of the distinction between “grand” and “petty” serjeanties, and compares the distinction made in c. 14 between greater and lesser barons.

  [1 ]Cf. supra, pp. 55–7 and 61–2.

  [2 ]II. viii. s. 158.

  [3 ]Cf. Glanvill, VII. c. 10. “When any one holds of the King in capite the wardship over him belongs exclusively to the King, whether the heir has any other lords or not; because the King can have no equal, much less a superior.” Yet the King is not to have such wardship “because of burgage.”

  [4 ]Cf. Petition of Barons (1258), c. 2; Prov. of West. (1259), c. 12. Glanvill, VII. c. 10, had laid it down that burgage tenure could not give rise to prerogative wardship.

  [5 ]See supra, p. 56.

  [1 ]See Bracton, folio 87b. The Note–book, case 743, contains a good illustration. The motive for these restrictions was to prevent injustice to mesne lords. It was probably, however, an indirect consequence of Magna Carta that a similar rule came to be applied where no mesne lord was injuriously affected. In 1231 a certain Ralf of Bradeley died, who had held two separate freeholds of the Crown, (i) a small fee by petty serjeanty of twenty arrows a year, and (ii) land of considerable value held in socage. The Crown took possession of both estates, on the assumption that wardship over the petty serjeanty brought with it a right of wardship over the socage lands also (although these would have been exempt if they had stood alone). The King sold his rights for 300 marks. Ralf’s widow claimed the wardship of the socage lands, on the ground that these were of much greater value than those held by serjeanty. Her argument was upheld, and the 300 marks refunded to the disappointed purchaser. See Pipe Roll, 5 Henry III., cited Madox, I. 325–6.

  [2 ]See Petition of the Barons, Article 2 (Select Charters, 383). C. 53 of Magna Carta reverts to prerogative wardship, granting redress, although not summary redress, where John, or his father or brother, had illegally extended it by occasion of socage, etc. See also supra, p. 368. Round, Eng. Hist. Rev., XXVIII. 156, cites from Cal. Inq. post mortem, III. 406–7, an interesting case of prerogative wardship decided against the Crown in 1301. Orpen, Ireland, II. 234, cites two Charters in which John renounces prerogative wardship. C. 43 infra (amended by c. 38 of 1217) guards against another abuse of prerogative wardship.

  [1 ]Cf. supra, c. 24. It possibly includes sheriffs and their officers. The same men, apparently, were described as King’s serjeants and sheriff’s serjeants; one Roll records fines for a man buried “sine visu servientum vicecomitis,” and for a robber hanged “sine visu servientis regis” (Pipe Roll, 31 Henry II). The word may also include the stewards who presided in manorial courts. If so, the unqualified “ballivus” of this passage should, perhaps, be contrasted with the “noster ballivus” of cc. 28 and 30. Coke, Second Institute, 44, following the doubtful Mirror of Justices, extends it to all King’s justices and ministers.

  [2 ]Dr. Stubbs (Const. Hist., I. 576) translates “lex” in this passage by “compurgation or ordeal.” Pollock and Maitland (II. 604 n.) explain that the word “does not necessarily point to unilateral ordeal; it may well stand for trial by battle.” Thayer (Evidence, 199–200) extends it to embrace judicially appointed tests of every kind—battle, ordeal of fire or water, simple oath, oath with compurgators, charter, transaction witnesses, or sworn verdict. Bigelow (Placita Anglo–Normanica, 44) cites from Domesday Book cases where litigants offered proof omni lege or omnibus legibus, that is, in any way the court decided. Sometimes lex had a more restricted meaning; in the Customs of Newcastle–on–Tyne (Select Charters, 112) it seems to mean compurgation as opposed to combat. For its various meanings see also Harcourt, Steward, 232.

  [3 ]In c. 55 “lex” would seem to bear a meaning more akin to the broader conception of “law” in modern jurisprudence; while in c. 39 its denotation is subject of controversy.

  [4 ]Cf. the phrases “per simplex verbum suum” (Fordwick) and “per vocem suam simplicem” (Hereford) in Bateson, Borough Customs, I. 181. Cf. ibid., II. xxxii.

  [1 ]These appear as an Appendix to the Year Book of 32–3 Edward I. (p. 516); but the handwriting is supposed to be of the reign of Edward II.

  [2 ]Cf. supra, p. 83. The necessity for such “suit” was not legally abolished until 1852 (by Statute 15 and 16 Victoria, c. 76, s. 55). In 1343 it had been decided that the “suit” must be in existence, but need not be produced in court; and that if they did appear they could not be examined. See Thayer, Evidence, 13–15.

  [1 ]See Rigg’s Sel. Pleas Jewish Exch., xii., and cf. supra, c. 10.

  [2 ]Rigg, ibid., 89, where the case is cited.

  [3 ]See City of London v. Wood (12 Modern Reports, 669). Holt held the clause of Magna Carta to mean that the plaintiff, unless he had witnesses, could not put a defendant to his oath. Pollock and Maitland, II. 604, seem to concur, to the extent at least of counting this as one of the abuses condemned by c. 38: “The rule which required a suit of witnesses had been regarded as a valuable rule; in 1215 the barons demanded that no exception to it should be allowed in favour of royal officers.”

  [4 ]See his Schwurgerichte, 199–200. Cf. ibid., 178 and 409–74. For a similar practice in Galloway, see G. Neilson on “Surdit de Sergaunt,” Scot. Antiq., XI. 155. The Leges Quatuor Burgorum would seem to guard against an evil of an opposite kind when (c. 76) they forbid the provost or bedells of a town (prepositus vel precones) to “bring witnesses to a claim against anyone,” but direct that the defendant shall acquit himself per legem. This peculiar law would seem to be entirely unknown to previous commentators on this difficult passage of Magna Carta.

  [1 ]This reading is supported by Pollock and Maitland, I. 130 n. There is no necessary inconsistency between the view here cited, and that already cited from ibid., II. 604. The same clause of Magna Carta may have been aimed at irregularities of two kinds, in civil and criminal pleas respectively.

  [1 ]See Article 12 where “eat ad aquam” is contrasted with “non habeat legem” of Article 13 (Select Charters, 144).

  [2 ]The “ad portandum recordationem comitatus et hundredi” of the ordinance is exactly opposed to the “simplex loquela sua” of the Charter.

  [3 ]Thus in 1166 (the year of the Assize of Clarendon) the “Soca” of Alverton was amerced because of a man placed “ad aquam sine serviente” (Pipe Roll, 12 Henry II., p. 49). In 1185 the “villata” of Preston paid 5 marks for putting a man “ad aquam sine waranto” (Pipe Roll, 31 Henry II., cited Madox, I. 547). In the same year a certain Roger owed half a mark for being present at an ordeal “sine visu servientum regis”: and heavy fines were exacted from those who had put a man “injuste ad aquam” (ibid.).

  [4 ]See Miss Bateson, Eng. Hist. Rev., XVII. 712.

  [5 ]Miss Bateson (Borough Customs, II. xxxi.) speaks of the “right of accusation ‘ex officio’ which belonged to the King’s officers until Magna Carta, Art. 38, deprived them of it.”

  [1 ]See Thayer, Evidence, 37 n., for a case of 1291, where “ad legem manifestam” can only mean trial by combat. Cf. legem apparentem purgandus est in Glanvill, XIV. ff. 112–114.

  [2 ]Westminster I. (c. 12) described men refusing to put themselves on a jury’s verdict, “come ceaus qui refusent la commune ley de la terre.”

  [3 ]The usual English rendering has here been followed: Mr. Harcourt (Steward, 219) was possibly right in holding that “interpretation under the guise of translation is in this case an inevitable snare.” This does not, however, absolve the commentator from explaining the text. The Articles of the Barons (29) add “vi” (“nec rex eat vel mittat super eum vi” suggesting the fuller contemporary “per vim et arma”). This shows the inadequacy of the translation contained in the Statutes at Large, “nor will we pass upon him nor condemn him.” The Statutes of the Realm, I. 117, suggest “deal with him” as an alternative. Coke, as explained infra, originated the error which thus connected “going” and “sending” with legal process.

  [1 ]For a valuable discussion of alternative interpretations, see Adams, Origin, 256–274; also Pike, House of Lords, c. X. Mr. Harcourt’s learned discussions (Steward, cc. VII. and VIII.) are worthy of careful study, though they are more useful in suggesting difficulties than in finding solutions.

  [2 ]See, e.g. Coke, Second Institute, 55.

  [3 ]Thus Blackstone, Commentaries, IV. 424: “It protected every individual of the nation in the free enjoyment of his life, his liberty, and his property, unless declared to be forfeited by the judgment of his peers or the law of the land.” Hallam, Middle Ages, II. 448, speaking of cc. 39 and 40 together, says they “protect the personal liberty and property of all freemen by giving security from arbitrary imprisonment and arbitrary spoliation.” Creasy, Eng. Const., p. 151 n.: “The ultimate effect of this chapter was to give and to guarantee full protection for person and property to every human being that breathes English air.”

  [4 ]The same grim tradition applied to Lidford as to Jedburgh:

  • “I oft have heard of Lydford law,
  • How in the morn they hang and draw,
  • And sit in judgment after.”

  See Neilson, Trial by Combat, 131, and authorities there cited.

  [1 ]Mr. Bigelow considers that such cases were numerous. See Procedure, 155: “The practice of granting writs of execution without trial in the courts appears to have been common.”

  [2 ]See Appendix.

  [3 ]Mr. Harcourt (Steward, 218 ff.) has much to say on this phrase: for him a man’s “peers” need not be his equals in rank (p. 220); while “judgment” is a vague word embracing widely opposed procedures: e.g. (p. 248), “In common parlance of the time a resolution of the King in Council to make war on a subject was a judicium.” He further instances, as examples of legal processes accepted in 1215 as equivalent to “judgment,” the procedure for Crown debts under c. 9; outlawry under c. 42; the petty assizes under c. 19; and the special procedure in cc. 52, 56 and 59 (see ibid., 220–3). Mr. Harcourt’s conclusions are not clearly formulated, and some of them appear to be not well founded.

  [4 ]The earliest known reference occurs in the Leges Henrici (c. 31): Unusquisque per pares suos judicandus est et ejusdem provinciae.

  [1 ]Cf. Pollock and Maitland, I. 152. As there was no “peerage” in England (cf. supra, p. 186) until long after John’s reign, it is obvious that the judicium parium of Magna Carta must be interpreted in a broader sense than any mere “privilege of a peer” at the present day. Freeholders holding of the same mesne lord were “peers of a tenure.”

  [2 ]See Stubbs, Const. Hist., I. 578 n., for foreign examples of judicium parium.

  [3 ]“If a Christian bring a complaint against a Jew, let it be adjudged by his peers of the Jews.” See Rot. Chartarum, p. 93, and supra, p. 227 n. Harcourt, however (ibid., 228), translates pares Judei as “justices or custodes of the Jews.”

  [4 ]See Carta Mercatoria, c. 8; 27 Edward III. stat. 2, c. 8; and 28 Edward III. c. 13; also Thayer, Evidence, p. 94.

  [1 ]See infra, cc. 56, 57, and 58. Under c. 59 the barons of England were called peers of the King of Scots.

  [2 ]See Placitorum Abbrevatio, p. 201, cited Pollock and Maitland, I. 393 n.

  [3 ]See also a passage in the Scots Acts of Parliament (I. 318) attributed to David: “No man shall be judged by his inferior who is not his peer; the earl shall be judged by the earl, the baron by the baron, the vavassor by the vavassor, the burgess by the burgess; but an inferior may be judged by a superior.”

  [4 ]See supra, p. 84, and cc. 18, 36, and 38.

  [5 ]See Thayer, Evidence, 200–1, for a discussion of the phrase “lex terrae.” See also Bigelow, History of Procedure, 155 n.: “The expression ‘per legem terrae’ simply required judicial proceedings, according to the nature of the case; the duel, ordeal, or compurgation, in criminal cases; the duel, witnesses, charters, or recognition in property cases.” The words occur at least twice in Glanvill, each time apparently with the technical meaning. In II. c. 19, the penalty for a false verdict includes forfeiture by jurors of their law (“legem terrae amittentes”); while in V. c. 5, a man born a villein, though freed by his lord, cannot, to the prejudice of any stranger, wage his law (“ad aliquam legem terrae faciendam”). The stress placed on the accused’s right to the time–honoured forms of lex is well illustrated by the difficulty of substituting jury trial for ordeal. It has already been shown that the right of “standing mute,” that is, virtually, of demanding ordeal, was only abolished in 1772. See supra, p. 342. Five and a half centuries were thus allowed to pass before the criminal law was bold enough, in defiance of a fundamental principle of Magna Carta, to deprive accused men of their “law.”

  [1 ]Mr. Harcourt (Steward, 220 ff.) has vehemently, and Prof. Adams (Origin, 266 ff.) judicially and moderately, maintained this view. Mr. Adams is influenced by his failure to discover any instance of “per legem terrae” in the technical sense, but “per legem Angliae” occurs in Sel. Civil Pleas (Selden Society), No. 104, where the reference is to ordeal of water.

  [2 ]It would seem, however, from the words of these statutes that for this purpose the provisions of chapters 36 and 38 were used to supplement those of the present chapter, if they were not confused with them. See 5 Edward III. c. 9; 25 Edward III. stat. 5, c. 4; 37 Edward III. c. 18; 38 Edward III. c. 3; 42 Edward III. c. 3; 17 Richard II. c. 6. See also Stubbs, Const. Hist., II. 637–9, for the series of petitions beginning with 1351.

  [1 ]Second Institute, p. 46.

  [2 ]3 Charles I. c. 1.

  [3 ]Pollock and Maitland, I. 152 n., read the word as having both meanings in this passage. Cf. Gneist, Engl. Const., chapter xviii. Mr. Pike, House of Lords, 170, takes a different view: “King John bound himself in such a manner as to show that judgment of peers was one thing, the law of the land another. The judgment of peers was . . . a very simple matter and well understood at the time. The law of the land included all legal proceedings, civil or criminal, other than the judgment of peers.” The present writer rejects this antithesis, because the two things may be, and indeed must be, combined. The “trial” by a law and the “judgment” by equals were complementary of each other. The peers appointed the test and decided whether it had been properly fulfilled. See also, on opposite sides, Harcourt, Steward, 219 ff., and Adams, Origin, 262.

  [1 ]See, e.g. Pike, House of Lords, 217, citing Littleton in Year Book, Easter, 10 Edward IV., No. 17, fo. 6.

  [2 ]This chapter applied only to abuses of criminal process: cf. c. 21 for amercements and civil process.

  [1 ]The wording of the 29th Article of the Barons, if not merely due to careless draftsmanship, seems, however, against this conjunctive interpretation. Cf. Adams, Origin, 262.

  [2 ]For this word cf. supra, c. 18.

  [3 ]See Rot. Claus., I. 215. Mr. Pike (House of Lords, p. 170) maintains, indeed, that the prevention of disseisins “sine judicio” was the chief, if not the sole, object of the chapter under discussion: “The judgment of peers had reference chiefly to the right of landholders to their lands, or to some matters connected with feudal tenure and its incidents.” This goes too far: the barons by no means confined the safeguard afforded by the judicium parium to questions of land. Pollock and Maitland, I. 393, countenance a broader interpretation.

  [4 ]De libero tenemento suo vel libertatibus vel liberis consuetudinibus suis.

  [5 ]Cf. supra, p. 151.

  [1 ]Cf. supra, p. 246.

  [2 ]Second Institute, p. 47.

  [3 ]See, e.g. Creasy, Hist. of Const., p. 151 n.: “Monopolies in general are against the enactments of the Great Charter.” See also Taswell–Langmead, Eng. Const. Hist., 108.

  [4 ]See supra, p. 25.

  [1 ]See Pipe Rolls, 7 Richard I., cited by Madox, I. 201.

  [2 ]E.g. Coke, Sec. Inst., 48. For the early history of outlawry and exile, see Liebermann, Friedlosigkeit (Brunner–Festschrift), and Gesetze, II. 413; A. Réville, Abjuratio regni, Revue Hist., vol. 50 (1892). Harcourt (Steward, 221) characterises “destruatur” as a “colloquial expression” covering even amercements, if of excessive amounts.

  [3 ]See Second Institute, p. 46. John Reeves, History of English Law, I. 249 (third ed.), while condemning Coke, gives an even more strained interpretation of his own. Lingard, History of England, III. c. 1, deserves praise as the first commentator who took the correct view.

  [1 ]Second Institute, pp. 4, 27, and 45.

  [2 ]Simon de Montfort, 17 n. Cf. Blackstone, Great Charter, xxxvii., “the more ample provision against unlawful disseisins.”

  [3 ]Cf. Pollock and Maitland, I. 340 n.

  [4 ]Cf. supra, p. 118. Other verbal changes in the charter of 1217 show the same care to exclude the villeins. E.g. c. 16 leaves the King’s demesne villeins strictly “in his mercy,” that is, liable to amercement without any reservation.

  [1 ]Mr. G. H. Blakesley, Law Quarterly Review, V. 125, perhaps goes too far: “It may reasonably be suspected that cap. 39 also was directed merely to maintain the lord’s court against Crown encroachments.”

  [2 ]Mr. Pike, House of Lords, 170–4, shares this view of the reactionary nature of the clause, although he considers that the claim to judicium parium by a Crown tenant might be satisfied by the presence of one or more barons among the judges of the “Benches,” and did not necessarily involve a full commune concilium. Ibid., p. 204. If the “judgment” of the full court was requisite (and, in spite of the high authority of Mr. Pike, there is much to be said for that contention), then the reactionary feudal tendency is even more prominent.

  [3 ]See R. Hoveden, III. 136.

  [1 ]Cf. supra, p. 29.

  [2 ]The writ is dated 10th May, 1215, and appears in New Rymer, I. 128.

  [1 ]Magna Carta also omits “per vim et arma.”

  [2 ]Cf. Harcourt, ibid., 235.

  [3 ]Ibid., 236.

  [4 ]M. Paris, II. 524.

  [5 ]Ibid., III. 247–8.

  [1 ]M. Paris, Chron. Mag., III. 251–2.

  [2 ]Pollock and Maitland, I. 393, hesitate to condemn this argument. “The very title of the ‘barons’ of the Exchequer forbids us to treat this as mere insolence.” Dr. Stubbs has no such scruples: “The Bishop replied contemptuously, and with a perverse misrepresentation of the English law” (Const. Hist., II. 49). Elsewhere he makes him, not so much contemptuous, as ill–informed of the law—“ignorant blunder as it was” (II. 191). Yet Bishop Peter had presumably an intimate knowledge of the law he administered as justiciar in 1233. In the matter of amercements, at least, barons of exchequer acted as peers of earls and barons.

  [1 ]Pike, House of Lords, 173. See also Bracton, f. 119; Pollock and Maitland, I. 393.

  [2 ]“The trial, therefore—the ascertaining of the fact—was, though under the direction and control of the Court of Peers, by battle; but the judgment on the trial by battle was to be given by the peers.” Pike, House of Lords, 174.

  [3 ]Pike, ibid., 174–9.

  [4 ]The privilege was extended to peeresses by 20 Henry VI. c. 9.

  [1 ]The Earl of Chester claimed it in 1236–7, and the Earl of Gloucester (as a lord marcher) in 1281. See Pollock and Maitland, I. 393 n. See, however, Harcourt, Steward, 291.

  [2 ]Cf. supra, pp. 134–5.

  [1 ]The erroneous identification of judgment of peers with trial by jury can be found far back in legal history. Pollock and Maitland, II. 622–3 n., trace it to within a century of Magna Carta. “This mistake is being made already in Edward I.’s day; Y. B. 30–1 Edward I., p. 531.” In spite of modern research the error dies hard. It appears, e.g., in Thomson, Magna Charta, 223; Taswell–Langmead, Const. Hist., 110; Goldwin Smith, “The United Kingdom,” I. 127.

  [2 ]Pollock and Maitland, I. 152 n., and Pike, House of Lords, 169.

  [3 ]Cf. supra, p. 134.

  [4 ]Cf. Pike, ibid., 169. “From the time when trial by jury first commenced, either in civil or in criminal cases, to this present end of the nineteenth century, no jury ever did or could give judgment on any matter whatsoever.” The difference between the ancient and modern conceptions of judgment, however, must not be lost sight of.

  [1 ]Const. Hist., I. 234.

  [2 ]See State Trials, III. p. 1, and S. R. Gardiner, History, VI. 214.

  [1 ]Middle Ages, II. 451.

  [1 ]Cf. Madox, I. 455: “By nulli vendemus were excluded the excessively high fines: by nulli negabimus, the stopping of suits or proceedings, and the denial of writs: by nulli differemus, such delays as were before wont to be occasioned by the counterfines of defendants (who sometimes would outbid the plaintiffs) or by the prince’s will.”

  [2 ]Fines for this purpose were frequent under Henry II. and his sons. Madox, I. 447, cites many examples. Thus in 1166 Ralph Fitz Simon paid two marks “for speeding his right.” The practice continued under Henry III. in spite of Magna Carta. Bracton’s Note–book cites a hard case (No. 743): Henry III. was claiming prerogative wardship where it was illegal under c. 37 of Magna Carta (q.v.). The court might have delayed hearing the mesne lord’s plea until the wardship was ended; but he paid five marks pro festinando judicio suo. The fine was said to be given “willingly” (sponte). Did the use of this word make possible an evasion of c. 40 of the Charter?

  [1 ]Pollock and Maitland, I. 174. Cf. ibid., II. 204, and authorities cited.

  [2 ]Madox, I. 455, says: “And this clause in the great Charters seems to have had its effect. For . . . the fines which were paid for writs and process of law were more moderate after the making of those great Charters than they used to be before.”

  [3 ]Instances are collected by Sir T. D. Hardy in Rot. de oblatis, p. xxi. See also Stubbs, Const. Hist., II. 636–7.

  [4 ]Rot. Parl., III. 116, cited Stubbs, Const. Hist., II. 637.

  [1 ]Second Institute, 56.

  [1 ]So far all authorities are agreed, though a difference of opinion exists as to the source of these prerogatives. Thus (a) Stephen Dowell, History of Taxation and Taxes in England, I. 75, considers that the duties on imports and exports were in their origin of the nature of voluntary dues paid by foreign merchants in return for freedom of trade and royal protection; (b) Hubert Hall, Customs Revenue of England, I. 58–62, justly reckons this prerogative as merely one aspect of purveyance, that is, of the King’s right to take what he needed for himself and household. Under an autocrat, however, facts count for more than theories. The prerogative was measured by brute force: Kings took what they could with no jealous regard for the exact letter of the law, and left future ages to invent theories to justify or explain their conduct.

  [1 ]See State Trials, II. 407–475, and especially 455–6.

  [2 ]E.g. 2 Edward III. c. 9 and 14 Edward III., stat. 1, c. 21.

  [3 ]Two–thirds of the chapter is occupied in explaining that merchant strangers of unfriendly States are not to benefit from it. Mr. Hakewill was aware of this, but sought to evade the natural inference by subtleties which are not convincing.

  [4 ]See supra, under c. 13.

  [1 ]For the legal position of aliens, see Pollock and Maitland, I. 441–450.

  [2 ]See Pipe Rolls, 27 Henry II. and 8 Richard I., cited Madox, I. 467–8.

  [3 ]See Rot. Chart., 60 (5th April, 1200).

  [4 ]See Pipe Roll, 6 John, cited Madox, I. 469, where other illustrations will be found. Cf. also Rot. Pat., 170, 170b, 171, 172b.

  [1 ]In the same writ John bade them allow to depart freely all vessels of the land of the Emperor or of the King of Scotland after taking security that they would sail straight to their own countries, with none but their own crews. See Rot. Claus., I. 211, and cf. series of writs in I. 210.

  [2 ]See De l’Esprit des Lois, II. 12 (ed. of 1750, Edinburgh), “La grande chartre des Anglois défend de saisir et de confisquer en cas de guerre les marchandises des négociants étrangers, à moins que ce ne soit par représailles. Il est beau que la nation Angloise ait fait de cela un des articles de sa liberté!”

  [3 ]S. Dowell, Hist. of Taxation, I. 83, citing Madox, I. 525–9 (2nd ed. I. 765–770), and Liber Albus, I. 247–8.

  [1 ]See supra, 34–35.

  [2 ]See New Rymer, I. 135: “Know that we have ordered the mayor and sheriffs of London to allow merchants of your land to remove their goods and chattels from London, without hindrance to doing thence their will; and that if they do not, you may, if it please you, grieve and molest the men of that town (illius villae) in your power, without our reckoning it a breach of truce on your part.”

  [1 ]2 Edward III. c. 9.

  [1 ]See 9 Edward III. c. 1, and cf. 25 Edward III., stat. 4, c. 7.

  [2 ]Cf. supra, pp. 247–8, where the inconsistency between the two parts of the Great Charter is pointed out. See also supra, p. 117.

  [3 ]See 2 Richard II., stat. 1, c. 1, and 11 Richard II. c. 7.

  [4 ]See 5 and 6 William IV. c. 76, s. 14.

  [1 ]E.g. Coke (Third Institute, p. 179) cites from Rot. finium of 6 Henry III. and Rot. Claus. of 7 Henry III. the following case: “Willielmus Marmion clericus projectus est ad regem Franciae sine licentia domini regis, et propterea finem fecit.” The practice had apparently been much the same prior to Magna Carta. E.g. Madox (I. 3) cites from Pipe Roll of 29 Henry II. how “Randulfus filius Walteri reddit compotum de XX marcis, quia exivit de terra Domini Regis.” See also Makower, Const. Hist. of Eng. Church, 239–240 and notes.

  [1 ]See Coke, ibid., citing the Close Roll of 25 Edward III.

  [2 ]5 Richard II., stat. 1, c. 2.

  [3 ]4 James I. c. 1, s. 22.

  [1 ]Third Institute, p. 178.

  [2 ]Its origin is obscure. See Beames, Brief view of the writ of Ne Excat, passim.

  [3 ]See Encyclopaedia of Laws of England, IX. 79.

  [4 ]On the whole subject of these writs, see Stephen, Commentaries, II. 439–40 (ed. of 1899), and authorities there cited.

  [1 ]Royal clemency in this respect could not be relied on by the sub–tenants of small escheated fiefs (not reckoned as honours or baronies). This seems to be the opinion of Madox, Baronia Anglica, 199: “If a fee holden of the Crown in capite escheated to the King and was not an Honour or Barony, then such fee did not (that is to say, I think it did not) vest in the Crown in the same plight in which it was vested in the said tenant in capite.” Cf. also ibid., 203.

  [2 ]See Madox, Baronia Anglica, 169–171; also Pollock and Maitland, I. 261, and authorities there cited.

  [3 ]See Dialogus, II. x. F, and ibid., II. xxiv. The same rule applied to subtenants of baronies in wardship (which was analogous to temporary escheat): when the see of Lincoln was vacant in 1168, the heirs of sub–tenants paid to Henry only what they would have paid to the bishop; one giving £30 for six fees, and another 30 marks for four. See Pipe Roll, 14 Henry II., and cf. supra, c. 2. In the matter of scutage, also, a distinction was recognized: while tenants ut de corona might be compelled to serve in person without an option, Crown–tenants ut de honore (and, a fortiori, sub–tenants also) might claim exemption on tendering scutage. See case of Thomas of Inglethorpe in 12 Edward II., cited by Madox, Baronia Anglica, 169–171.

  [1 ]Report on the Dignity of a Peer, I. 60.

  [2 ]The need for this reference to relief is not, at first sight, obvious, since c. 2 of Magna Carta, by forbidding John to exact from Crown–tenants of either class the arbitrary sums taken by his father, would seem to have already secured them from abuse. Probably, however, c. 43 sought to prevent John from treating each tenant of the escheated barony as holder of a new barony of his own, and therefore liable to a baron’s relief of £100 instead of the £25 he ought to pay for his five fees, or £50 for his ten fees, or as the case might be. The case of William Pantol (see Pipe Roll, 9 Henry III., cited Madox, I. 318) seems to illustrate this. He was debited with £100 of relief, but protested that he held nothing of the Crown save five knights’ fees of the land which was of Robert of Belesme. This plea was upheld, and £75 of the amount debited was written off.

  [3 ]See c. 38 of 1217, and cf. the gloss given by Bracton (II. folio 87b) which makes the meaning somewhat less obscure. The Charter of 1217 contained a saving clause: “unless the holder of the escheated barony held directly of us elsewhere.” Bracton added a second proviso, namely, unless the said sub–tenants (now Crown–tenants ut de escaeta) had been enfeoffed by the King himself.

  [1 ]See Sel. Charters, 384; but see Adams, Origin, 344 n.

  [2 ]See 1 Edward III., stat. 2, c. 13, Statutes of Realm, I. 256.

  [3 ]See 1 Edward VI., c. 4, Statutes of Realm, III. 9.

  [1 ]A convenient, short account of the forests, with their special laws, special officials, and special courts, will be found in W. S. Holdsworth’s History of English Law, I. 340–352. For fuller information see Dialogus de Scaccario, I. xii.; John Manwood, Book of the Forests (1598); Coke, Fourth Institute, 289–317; Liebermann, Constitutiones de Foresta (1894); G. J. Turner, Preface to Select Pleas of the Forest (1901); and an article in the Edinburgh Review for April, 1902.

  [1 ]Select Charters, 156.

  [2 ]Select Pleas of the Forest, xiii.

  [3 ]See W. Coventry, II. 207, and Stubbs’ Preface, lxxxvii.

  [4 ]R. Wendover, III. 227. This, however, is clearly a hostile account of the King’s resumption of forest tracts illegally put under cultivation by way of purpresture.

  [1 ]See Select Pleas of the Forest, xiv. The permanent routine work performed by this functionary must not be confused with the intermittent duties of the Justices of Forest Eyres, although he was usually a member of the commission who went on circuit: e.g. chapter 16 of the Forest Charter speaks of the Chief Forester holding pleas of the forest.

  [2 ]Select Pleas, xv.

  [3 ]Turner, in Select Pleas, xvii.

  [4 ]Engelard de Cigogné, for example, whose name appears in chapter 50, occupied this double position. Chapter 16 of Carta de Foresta forbids castellans to determine pleas of the forests, thus strengthening the presumption that wardens were usually constables.

  [5 ]Select Pleas, xix.

  [1 ]Select Pleas, xxi.

  [2 ]The same chapter, however, fixed the rates of “chiminage.”

  [1 ]For the earliest notice of verderers see Select Pleas of the Forest, xix. n. Their appointment in county court may indicate that they acted in some measure as a check on the professional foresters in the interests of the people generally, as well as a check on the warden in the interests of the King. Within the forest the warden, with the verderers and foresters, offered an exact parallel to the sheriff with the coroners and bailiffs (or serjeants) in other parts of a county.

  [2 ]See Carta de Foresta, c. 6.

  [3 ]After 1217, if not before, it was their duty to fix the number of foresters required, so that the inhabitants need not groan under a heavier burden than necessary.

  [4 ]In one document they were styled agistatores precii (Select Pleas, p. l.), which suggests that fixing the rate was their chief duty. “Agist” was a general term; it was apparently correct to speak of “agisting a wood,” of “agisting cattle,” and of “agisting the money due.”

  [1 ]Carta de Foresta, c. 8.

  [2 ]Select Pleas of the Forest, xxx.

  [3 ]Select Pleas of the Forest, p. 42.

  [1 ]Dialogus, I. xi. E.

  [1 ]It is stated in Carta de Foresta (1217) that only verderers and foresters need be present at the June moot, and the same officers, with the agistors, at the two others. The public were exempted.

  [1 ]Select Pleas of the Forest, cix. et seq.

  [2 ]Ibid., cxvii.

  [3 ]Statute of Merton, c. 11.

  [4 ]Select Pleas of the Forest, cxxiii.

  [5 ]Ibid., cxxviii.–cxxix. Wild cats should perhaps be added.

  [6 ]See W. S. Holdsworth, History of English Law, I. 346.

  [7 ]See Select Charters, 552.

  [8 ]Some of these Magna Carta sought to guard against. See c. 48.

  [9 ]Rights of hunting were conferred on subjects over territory not their own. Richard I. granted permission to Alan Basset to hunt foxes, hares, and wild cats throughout the realm. Round, Ancient Charters, No. 18.

  [1 ]This is implied in the terms of Stephen’s Oxford Charter. An example of an act of afforestation by Henry is given in Select Pleas, 45, which shows how “a district could be afforested in a moment by the mere word of the monarch; it took centuries to free it from the royal dominion.” See Edinburgh Review, vol. cxcv. (1902), p. 459. Even the Forest Charter (cc. 1 and 3) admitted the Crown’s right to afforest woods on its own demesne—reserving, indeed, common of pasture to those with legal rights thereto.

  [2 ]The policy of Henry I., Stephen, and Henry II. respectively is well illustrated by the case of Waltham forest in Essex. See Round, Geoffrey de Mandeville, 377–8.

  [1 ]This group of grievances was partly remedied by chapters 47 and 53 of Magna Carta. The former provided for the summary disafforestation of all districts made forests by Richard and John, while the latter showed a more judicial spirit in the undoing of the similar work effected by their father. The Carta de Foresta of 1217 contained clauses which took the place of these somewhat crude provisions.

  [2 ]See Rot. Claus., I. 85 (dated 11th June, 1207).

  [1 ]For detailed information as to wastes, purprestures, and assarts with their ascending scale of penalties, see Select Pleas, lxxxii.

  [2 ]See Assize of Woodstock, article 7.

  [3 ]See Carta de Foresta, c. 12.

  [4 ]Ibid., c. 13; another clause (c. 14) forbade ordinary foresters to exact chiminage, and fixed the rates payable to those with vested rights at two pennies for each cart per half–year, and one half–penny for each sumpter horse.

  [5 ]See Assize of Woodstock, article 3.

  [1 ]See Select Pleas, 123 (6 Edward I.).

  [2 ]Select Pleas, (127 (1278–9). This was a heavy rate, the more remarkable in face of the provisions against “chiminage” in Carta de Foresta, c. 14.

  [3 ]Assize of Woodstock, article 14. Cf. Carta de Foresta, c. 6.

  [4 ]Ibid., article 2.

  [5 ]Ibid., article 15.

  [6 ]See Carta de Foresta, c. 2.

  [1 ]It had been the practice to exact an ox in reparation of such transgression, thus leaving the peasant without means of tilling his land. The Forest Charter (c. 6) limited the fine to 3s.

  [2 ]See Select Forest Pleas, p. 4.

  [1 ]Select Pleas, 50.

  [1 ]Select Pleas, 126.

  [2 ]See infra, under c. 47.

  [3 ]“Assisa et consuetudines forestae,” issued by Edward I. in 1278, although declaratory, may have done something towards curtailing discretionary authority. Statutes of Realm, I. 243; Bémont, Chartes, lxv.

  [4 ]See S. R. Gardiner, Hist. Engl., VII. 363, and VIII. 282.

  [5 ]16 Charles I. c. 16.

  [6 ]Commentaries, III. 72.

  [7 ]By 57 George III. c. 61.

  [1 ]In virtue of a series of Acts of which 14–15 Victoria c. 42 is the latest.

  [2 ]See Stephen, Commentaries, II. 465–6.

  [3 ]Constable and bailiff are discussed supra, c. 24, and shown to include forest magistrates, supra, c. 44.

  [4 ]See supra, p. 30, and cf. Blackstone, Great Charter, viii.

  [5 ]See c. 50.

  [1 ]Const. Hist., I. 578 n.

  [2 ]Cf. supra, p. 28.

  [3 ]“Nolunt leges Anglie mutare que usitate sunt et approbate.” See Statute of Merton, c. 9.

  [4 ]It would have been a notable anticipation of modern constitutional theory if the barons in 1215 had referred such questions to the decision of the Commune Concilium summoned as in c. 14 (q.v.).

  [1 ]See Select Charters, 388–391, and Madox, II. 149, with authorities there cited.

  [2 ]Prof. Adams seems to make too much of this chapter (Origin, 259–260). It is only a vague promise to employ honest officials: it confers no constitutional veto upon anyone. Had the function of defining fit ministers been conferred on the Common Council, it would have been a notable innovation.

  [1 ]See infra, c. 53.

  [2 ]Cf. supra, p. 212.

  [3 ]See Appendix for final form in charter of 1225.

  [4 ]See Petition of Barons, c. 11 (Sel. Chart., 384); Maitland, Sel. Pleas Man. Courts, lxxvii. For the practice in Normandy, see authorities cited by Adams, Origin, 246 n.

  [1 ]See New Rymer, I. 81. John had also interfered “in the time of the interdict” with what Robert fitz Walter considered his rights of patronage over Binham Priory (a cell of St. Albans). See J. H. Round, Eng. Hist. Rev., XIX. 710–11.

  [2 ]Petition of Barons, c. 11 (Sel. Chart., 384).

  [3 ]Mention of these officers is made in c. 48. The phrase “in defence” is explained supra, pp. 301–3.

  [1 ]Cf. supra, p. 147.

  [2 ]G. J. Turner, Select Pleas of Forest, xciii., points out that although forests included open country as well as woods, yet Carta de foresta spoke only of “woods” in this connection.

  [1 ]Cf. supra, p. 146.

  [2 ]Cf. supra, p. 153, and see Select Pleas, xcv.

  [3 ]Cf. supra, p. 154.

  [4 ]Cf. Select Pleas, xcix.; and see also supra, p. 156.

  [5 ]See Select Pleas, cv. Mr. Turner’s account of Edward’s conduct may be compared with the estimate of M. Bémont, Chartes, xlviii.

  [1 ]1 Edward III., stat. 2, c. 1.

  [2 ]See Select Pleas, cvi. There was one exception. On 26th December, 1327, Edward III. had to submit to further disafforestations in Surrey.

  [3 ]16 Charles I. c. 16.

  [4 ]The last sixteen words, inclusive of “per eosdem,” appear at the foot of both of the Cottonian versions of Magna Carta. Cf. supra, p. 166.

  [1 ]Contrast the more restricted meaning of the same word in c. 41.

  [2 ]See Rot. Pat., I. 180, cited also Select Charters, 306–7. Cf. supra, p. 42.

  [1 ]Cf. infra, c. 61.

  [2 ]Cf. supra, p. 43. The text is given Rot. Claus., 17 John, m. 27 d. and New Rymer, I. 134. It runs in name of the archbishops of Canterbury and Dublin, and the bishops of London, Winchester, Bath, Lincoln, Worcester and Coventry, comprising (with one exception) those mentioned in the preamble to Magna Carta. For text, see Appendix.

  [1 ]The only magnates not exposed to this dilemma were the prelates, whose celibacy cut them adrift from acknowledged family ties. They had no hostages to give, and were, further, in the normal case, exempt from fear of personal violence.

  [1 ]See R. Hoveden, IV. 161.

  [2 ]See Rotuli de Finibus, p. 119.

  [3 ]See R. Wendover, III. 224–5, and M. Paris, II. 523.

  [4 ]R. Wendover and Matthew Paris, ibid.

  [5 ]See authorities cited by Miss Norgate, John Lackland, p. 288.

  [1 ]Cf. supra, p. 25.

  [2 ]Cf. supra, p. 25.

  [3 ]See letter of 23rd June to Stephen Harengod in Appendix.

  [1 ]See Rotuli de Finibus, 571. The custody of hostages might be a desirable office; in 1199 Alan, the earl’s son, offered three greyhounds for the custody of a hostage of Brittany, Rotuli de Finibus, p. 29.

  [1 ]G. J. Turner, Trans. R.H.S., XVIII. p. 254.

  [2 ]See Gloucester Pleas, edited by Maitland, passim.

  [3 ]Pipe Roll, 12 John, cited Madox, I. 333.

  [4 ]Pipe Roll, 12 John, cited Madox, II. 146.

  [5 ]Gloucester Pleas, xiii. ff.

  [6 ]Pipe Roll, 12 John, cited Madox, I. 766.

  [7 ]Ibid., I. 606.

  [8 ]Ibid., I. 384.

  [9 ]Rot. Pat., 16 John, m. 9 (I. 125), and New Rymer, I. 126.

  [1 ]See M. Paris, II. 665, who calls him “Ingelardus de Athie” and describes him as vir in opere martis probatissimus. Cf. Rot. Pat., 9 Henry III. m. 9.

  [2 ]See Bracton’s Note–book, No. 684.

  [3 ]See Rot. Pat., 2 Henry III. m. 7.

  [4 ]Ibid., 19 Henry III.

  [5 ]See Testa de Neville, p. 18, and ibid., p. 120.

  [6 ]Rot. Pat., 9 Henry III. m. 6.

  [7 ]R. Wendover, IV. 66.

  [8 ]Annals of Dunstable, III. 68.

  [9 ]Mem. Roll, 28 Henry III., cited Madox, II. 201.

  [10 ]Mich. Communia, 29 Henry III., cited Madox, II. 229.

  [1 ]Some particulars respecting the other individuals named will be found in Thomson, Magna Charta, 244–5. Philip Mark was Constable of Nottingham (R. Wendover, III. 237), and Sheriff both before and after 1215 (see, e.g., Rot. Claus., I. 412), while Guy de Chanceaux in 1214 accounted for scutage of the honour of Gloucester (Madox, I. 639), and for the rent of the barony of William of Beauchamp (ibid., I. 717). See also Petit–Dutaillis, Louis VIII., p. 116; Gloucester Pleas, passim; Turner, op. cit. passim.

  [2 ]See Rot. Pat., 17 John, m. 23 (New Rymer, I. 134).

  [1 ]The elongatus of the Charter replaces the prolongatus of the Articles.

  [2 ]The so–called “executive clause,” the “forma securitatis ad observandum pacem” of the Articles, which became chapter 61.

  [1 ]This “benefit of a crusader” was extended to John in three other sets of complaints, specified in c. 53 (q.v.).

  [1 ]This chapter embraced not merely estates retained in John’s possession, but also those granted out anew. If the former owner recovered these, the Crown was bound to make good the loss caused by the eviction. The case of Welshmen is specially treated in c. 56 (q.v.).

  [2 ]The words, “et eodem modo, de justicia exhibenda,” and “vel remansuris forestis” are written at the foot of both the Cottonian versions. Cf. supra, 195 n. They make clear, rather than add to, the meaning of the rest.

  [1 ]It thus supplements three previous chapters (a) c. 47; (b) c. 37; and (c) c. 46 respectively.

  [2 ]Cf. supra, c. 36.

  [3 ]Bracton, folio 151b, cites the case of a champion sentenced to mutilation of a foot because he confessed that he was paid to appear. Statute of Westminster, I. (c. 41), enacted that champions need not swear to personal knowledge. Neilson, Trial by Combat, 48–51.

  [1 ]The appellant “in all cases except murder, that is, secret homicide, made oath as a witness that he had seen and heard the deed.” Neilson, Trial by Combat, 48.

  [2 ]Glanvill, XIV. c. 3.

  [3 ]See Bracton, II. ff., 142b, 145b; also Neilson, Trial by Combat 47, and authorities there cited.

  [4 ]Glanvill, XIV. c. 3.

  [5 ]Sel. Pleas of the Crown, No. 1.

  [6 ]Ibid., No. 68. Cf. No. 119.

  [7 ]Bracton, folio 142b.

  [8 ]Select Pleas of the Crown, No. 130.

  [1 ]The Act 6 Richard II. c. 6, to prevent the woman’s connivance, extended the right of appeal in such cases to a woman’s husband, father, or other near relative; but denied the appellee’s right to the option of defending himself by battle—thus proving no exception to the policy of discouraging the duellum wherever possible.

  [2 ]Glanvill, XIV. c. 3.

  [3 ]Fleta I. c. 33 seems to indicate the same doctrine when he speaks “de morte viri sui inter brachia sua interfecti,” although laboured explanations are sometimes attempted, e.g. Coke, Second Institute, 93. Pollock and Maitland (I. 468 n.) dismiss the phrase inter brachia sua as “only a picturesque common form.”

  [4 ]See Coke, Second Institute, p. 68, and contrast Pollock and Maitland, I. 468. John’s justices rejected in 1202 a woman’s claim to appeal for her father’s death, and some ten years later two claims for the death of sons. See Select Pleas of the Crown, Nos. 32, 117, and 118; yet Gloucester Pleas (No. 482) records n 1221 a woman’s appeal for a sister’s death.

  [5 ]A peculiarity of wording should, perhaps, be noticed. It restricts explicitly not appeals, but “arrest and imprisonment” following on appeal.

  [1 ]In its expanded form the clause becomes a supplement also to cc. 20, 21, and 22 (which defined procedure at amercements), and to cc. 36 and 40 (which condemned John’s practice of refusing writs and justice until heavy fines were offered).

  [2 ]See supra, c. 20.

  [3 ]See Preface to W. Coventry, II. lxix.

  [4 ]Middle Ages, II. 438. Hallam’s examples are all drawn from Madox, I. 507–9. O her illustrations of fines and amercements may be found under several of the foregoing chapters. Every man who began a plea and lost it, or abandoned it, was amerced.

  [1 ]The words “in Anglia vel in Wallia” are written at the foot of one of the Cottonian versions (cf. supra, 166 n.); but they appear in situ in the Articles of the Barons.

  [1 ]Cf. Harcourt’s comment, “A bad piece of work this” (Steward, 220).

  [1 ]See supra, p. 441.

  [2 ]See supra, p. 445.

  [3 ]No. 45 of the Articles is connected by a rude bracket with No. 46 (relating to Scotland); and a saving clause, thus made applicable to both, is added with some appearance of haste: “nisi aliter esse debeat per cartas quas rex habet, per judicium archiepiscopi et aliorum quos secum vocare voluerit.” Cf. supra, p. 38. So far as related to Scotch affairs, the King’s caveat found its way, in an altered form, into Magna Carta. See c. 59.

  [1 ]Annals of Waverley, sub anno 1216.

  [2 ]New Rymer, I. 148.

  [1 ]See Ramsay, Angevin Empire, 183–4. In the spring of 1185 Henry confirmed William’s claim to Huntingdon, and the Scots King transferred it to his brother David; ibid., 226 n.

  [2 ]See Miss Norgate, John Lackland, 66.

  [3 ]See Stubbs, Const. Hist., I. 596 n., and Norgate, John Lackland, 73, 78. Cf. the words “salvo jure suo” with the “et jure suo” of Magna Carta.

  [1 ]New Rymer, I. 103, where “Northampton” is apparently a mistake for “Norham.” See Ramsay, Angevin Empire, 421 n.

  [2 ]Ramsay, ibid., and authorities there cited.

  [3 ]Ramsay, Angevin Empire, 421, and authorities.

  [4 ]Rot. Claus., I. 144, and I. 157. This Eleanor was the sister of Prince Arthur. The fortunes of war had in 1202 placed both of them in John’s hands. Arthur disappeared—murdered it was supposed; Eleanor remained a prisoner for life; the Scots princesses were virtually her fellow–prisoners for a time in Corfe Castle.

  [5 ]See supra, c. 6.

  [6 ]New Rymer, I. 104. See also W. Coventry, II. 206.

  [1 ]See New Rymer, I. 116.

  [2 ]Both ladies, however, remained prisoners after Henry III.’s accession. Peter de Maulay, constable of Corfe Castle, was, in that King’s fifth year, credited with sums expended on their behalf. Rot. Claus., I. 466; see also I. 483. Both found permanent homes in England—Margaret as wife of Hubert de Burgh, Isabel as wife of Roger Bigod. See Ramsay, Angevin Empire, 421, and authorities there cited.

  [3 ]No. 46 of the Articles referred the question of Alexander’s “right” to the judgment of Langton and his nominees, for which Magna Carta substituted “judgment of his peers in our court.”

  [1 ]New Rymer, I. 135.

  [2 ]M. Paris, II. 642.

  [3 ]New Rymer, I. 148.

  [4 ]Rot. Pat., I. 93.

  [1 ]Harcourt, Steward, 221, treats this chapter as extending to manorial courts the principles regulating the judicium parium and amercements.

  [2 ]Second Institute, 77.

  [3 ]Cf. supra, p. 113.

  [4 ]Thomson, Magna Carta, 269, and authorities there cited.

  [5 ]Const. Hist., I. 570. Cf. supra, p. 117.

  [6 ]History of Great Britain, VI. 74 (1823). See also Henshall, History of South Britain, cited Thomson, Magna Carta, 268–9.

  [1 ]See c. 46 of 1217.

  [2 ]The words “in perpetuum” are written at the foot of one of the Cottonian versions. See supra, 166 n.

  [1 ]This phrase occurs in the 49th (and last) of the Articles, as the title of a clause separated from the others by a blank of the width of several lines of writing: “Haec est forma securitatis,” etc. The words are not used as a heading in the present chapter itself, but c. 52 refers to c. 61 as the clause “in securitate pacis,” and c. 62 refers to it as “super securitate ista.”

  [2 ]Histoire des ducs, 150, has a commentary on this chapter: “Over and above all this they desired that 25 barons should be chosen, and by the judgment of these 25 the King should govern them in all things, and through them redress all the wrongs that he should do to them, and they also, on the other hand, would through them redress all the wrongs that they should do to him. Also they further desired, along with all this, that the King should never have power to appoint a bailiff in his land except through the 25.” Cf. supra, p. 123 and p. 177.

  [3 ]Cf. S. R. Gardiner, Short History of England, 183: “a permanent organization for making war against the King.”

  [1 ]R. Wendover, from whom Paris borrows so freely, gives no list.

  [2 ]The list is from Matthew Paris, II. 604–5, as corrected by Blackstone, Great Charter, p. xx, after collation with a marginal note on the Harleian MS. of the charter (cf. supra, p. 168 n.). For biographical information, see Thomson, Magna Carta, 270–312.

  [1 ]These three were Earl Aumâle (a title sometimes exchanged for Earl of York, see Round, Geoffrey de Mandeville, 157 n.), William of Albini, and Geoffrey de Say (see Stubbs, Const. Hist., I. 583).

  [2 ]This is not the earliest reference in English law to the binding power of a majority; Liebermann, Gesetze, II. 575, points to Leges Henrici, c. 5, s. 6 (ibid., I. 549) as formulating the principle.

  [3 ]An alternative explanation is possible, namely, that the function of intermediary might be exercised by any four of the twenty–five. In that view, an aggrieved individual might place pressure on the King if he persuaded any four to support his claim.

  [1 ]Cf. supra, c. 48.

  [2 ]See Appendix.

  [3 ]It was fourteen years since London had extorted its “commune,” in this sense, from Prince John; cf. supra, c. 13.

  [1 ]Hantos, Magna Carta, 149, 198. Cf. Gneist, Eng. Const., 251.

  [2 ]Adams, Origin, 181 ff.

  [1 ]Hantos, op. cit., 150. Adams, Origin, 181 n., suggests a parallel from the kingdom of Jerusalem. Dr. Riess, Historische Zeitschrift, 1906, p. 170, compares also the Ephors of Sparta.

  [2 ]Liber de Antiquis Legibus, 53.

  [3 ]Adams, Pol. Hist. Eng., II. 439.

  [4 ]Cf. Adams, Origin, 276 n.

  [5 ]See supra, p. 129.

  [1 ]Dr. Riess, Historische Zeitschrift, 1906, p. 170, thinks this goes too far. Cf., however, Adams, Origin, 179: John “was reduced to the function of executing the judgments of a court not his own.”

  [1 ]Cf. Adams, Origin, 179: “It was not finally to be the way of the constitution.”

  [2 ]Cf. supra, pp. 159–164, for a sketch of Edward’s policy.

  [1 ]Chron. Maj., II. 605–6.

  [2 ]Const. Hist., I. 583 n.

  [3 ]John Lackland, 236.

  [4 ]One version of the narrative of Matthew Paris is fuller than the other. “Isti omnes juraverunt quod obsequerentur mandato viginti quinque baronum” of the first becomes “Omnes isti juraverunt cogere si opus esset ipsos xxv. barones ut rectificarent regem. Et etiam cogere ipsum si mutato animo forte recalcitraret” in the second, II. 606 n.

  [5 ]See supra, p. 43, and Protest in Appendix.

  [1 ]See supra, p. 43. The text is given in Appendix. Thirteen of the twenty–five executors are mentioned by name as agreeing to this new treaty; cf. Wendover, III. 319. A third sanction appears in the garbled versions of the Charter given by Wendover (III. 317) and M. Paris (II. 603): the constables of the four royal castles of Northampton, Kenilworth, Nottingham, and Scarborough were to swear to hold these strongholds under orders of the twenty–five. This clause has not been found in any known copy of any issue of Magna Carta: cf. Luard’s Preface to M. Paris, II. xxxiii to xxxvi.

  [2 ]Cf. supra, p. 45.

  [1 ]See folio 234. Compare supra, p. 41: also R. L. Poole in Engl. Hist. Rev., XXVIII. 448 ff. The text, as reproduced by Bémont, Chartes, 35, runs as follows: “Omnibus Christi fidelibus ad quos presens scriptum pervenerit, Stephanus Dei gratia Cantuariensis archiepiscopus, tocius Anglie primas et sancte romane ecclesie cardinalis, Henricus, eadem gratia Dublinensis archiepiscopus, Willelmus Londoniensis, Petrus Wintoniensis, Joscelinus Bathoniensis et Glastoniensis, Hugo Lincolniensis, Walterus Wigorniensis, Willelmus Coventriensis et Benedictus Roffensis, divina miseracione episcopi, et magister Pandulfus domini pape subdiaconus et familiaris, salutem in Domino. Sciatis nos inspexisse cartam quam dominus noster Johannes illustris rex Anglie fecit comitibus, baronibus et liberis hominibus suis Anglie de libertate sancte ecclesie et libertatibus et liberis consuetudinibus suis eisdem ab eo concessis sub hac forma . . . . . . . . . [Here follows the text of John’s Magna Carta] . . . . . . Et ne huic forme predicte aliquid possit addi vel ab eadem aliquid possit subtrahi vel minui, huic scripto sigilla nostra apposuimus.”

  [1 ]Cf. supra, p. 40.

  [2 ]There are no signatures to the document. The frequent references to “the signing of the Great Charter” are thus inaccurate, if “signing” is taken in its modern sense of “subscribing,” but may perhaps be justified by a reference to signum in its original meaning of “a seal.” To imprint a seal was, in a sense, “to sign.” Reasons have already been given for holding that Magna Carta, in spite of its mention of its own date as 15th June, was actually sealed on the 19th. See supra, pp. 48–9.

  [1 ]The text is taken from Liebermann, Gesetze, I. 521. Cf. Trans. R.H.S. viii. 21 ff., for an exhaustive discussion of the various copies of the lost charter. For commentary, cf. supra, pp. 96–101. Liebermann shows the striking variations of the opening and ending clauses: the preamble varied with the persons to whom each copy was addressed. Cf. R. L. Poole, Eng. Hist. Rev., XXVIII. 444 ff.

  [1 ]The text is founded on that of the Statutes of the Realm, I. 3, which follows the Exeter version. Cf. Bémont, Chartes, 8–10, who discusses the various editions. Dr. R. L. Poole has noted the variants of an original of the Charter preserved in the muniment room of Salisbury Cathedral; see Report on Manuscripts in Various Collections, I. 384–5 (Historical Manuscripts Commission, 1901). Two of these variants have been here adopted: (a) “regem Anglie” for “regem Anglorum” and (b) “postmodum” added after “pontifice.”

  [1 ]The text is taken from that given in Statutes of the Realm, I. 4, which is founded on a copy of the original preserved in the British Museum (Cotton, Claudius D. II., folio 107). Cf. Bémont, Chartes, 12–14.

  [2 ]For a discussion of the nature, date, and historical context of this document see supra, pp. 171–5 and Index. The text is founded upon that published by Mr. J. H. Round in the English Historical Review, VIII. 288, but effect has been given to most of the emendations suggested by Mr. Hubert Hall and Mr. G. W. Prothero. Cf. ibid., IX. 117 and 326. The twelve clauses are here numbered for convenience of reference, although no numbers appear in the MS.

  [1 ]The text is taken from that of the Statutes of the Realm, I. 7–8, which is founded on the original in the British Museum. See supra, pp. 170–1. Cf. Bémont, Chartes, 15–23.

  [1 ]The text follows that of New Rymer, I. 133, but has been collated with Rot. Pat., I. 143 (17 John, m. 23) and two corrections made. This writ is referred to supra, p. 41 n., where its date is discussed.

  [2 ]See supra, p. 42. The text is given in New Rymer, I. 134, and in Rot. Pat., I. 144 (17 John, m. 23).

  [1 ]See supra, p. 42. The text is given by New Rymer, I. 134, and in Rot. Pat., I. 134 (17 John, m. 21). A French version appears in D’Achery, Spicilegium, XII. 573, and in Bémont, Chartes, XXIV. n.

  [2 ]See supra, pp. 42–3, and 440. The text is taken from Rot. Pat., I. 180 (17 John, m. 23 d.). It will be found also in New Rymer, I. 134, and in Stubbs’ Sel. Chart., 306–7.

  [1 ]See supra, pp. 43, and 477. The text is taken from New Rymer, I. 133, on the authority of Rot. Claus., 17 John, m. 27 d. It is printed by Blackstone, Great Charter, 25–6.

  [1 ]See supra, pp. 43, and 440. The protest is recorded in Rot. Claus., 17 John m. 27 d., and is printed in New Rymer, I. 134.

  [1 ]See supra, p. 43. The protest is printed in Rot. Pat., I. 144 (17 m. 21 d.), and also in New Rymer, I. 134.

  [2 ]This is the definitive form of the Great Charter, as confirmed by Edward I. in 1297 and many times thereafter. See supra, p. 154. The text is taken from Statutes of the Realm, I. 22–25. Words not found in the Charter of 1215 are here printed in italics. The footnotes (in preparing which frequent reference has been made to Bémont’s Chartes) give the principal variants occurring in the Charters of 1215, 1216, and 1217, as compared with that of 1225. The numbers commonly used (and here adopted) for the chapters of the issue of 1225 do not agree with those used for similar chapters of the issue of 1217. The numbers in brackets are those of corresponding chapters of 1215.

  [1 ]Justiciariis, forestariis follow baronibus in the issues of 1215 and 1216, both of which omit prioribus.

  [2 ]The sentence following “sciatis” differs in each preamble. For that of 1215, see supra, pp. 185–6.
  
  The Charter of 1216 reads: Sciatis nos, intuitu Dei et pro salute anime nostre et omnium antecessorum et successorum nostrorum, ad honorem Dei et exaltationem sancte ecclesie et emendationem regni nostri, per consilium venerabilium patrum nostrorum domini Gualonis titulo sancti Martini presbiteri cardinalis, apostolici sedis legati, Petri Wintoniensis, Reineri de Sancto Asapho, Jocelini Batthoniensis et Glastoniensis, Simonis Exoniensis, Ricardi Cicestriensis, Willelmi Coventriensis, Benedicti Roffensis, Henrici Landavensis, Menevensis, Bangorensis et Sylvestri Wygorniensis episcoporum, et nobilium virorum Willelmi Mariscalli, comitis Penbrocie, Ranulfi comitis Cestrie, Willelmi de Ferrariis comitis Derebie, Willelmi comitis Albemarle, Huberti de Burgo justiciarii nostri, Savarici de Maloleone, Willelmi Brigwerre patris, Willelmi Brigwerre filii, Roberti de Crutenay, Falkesii de Breaute, Reginaldi de Vautort, Walteri de Lascy, Hugonis de Mortuomari, Johannis de Monemute, Walteri de Bellocampo, Walteri de Clifford, Roberti de Mortuomari, Willelmi de Cantilupo, Mathei filii Hereberti, Johannis Mariscalli, Alani Bassett, Philippi de Albiniaco, Johannis Extranei et aliorum fidelium nostrorum: (i) Imprimis concessisse Deo et hac presenti carta confirmasse . . . .
  
  The Charter of 1217 reads: Sciatis quod, intuitu Dei et pro salute anime nostre et animarum antecessorum et successorum nostrorum, ad exaltationem sancte ecclesie et emendationem regni nostri, concessimus et hac presenti carta confirmavimus pro nobis et heredibus nostris in perpetuum, de consilio venerabilis patris nostri domini Gualonis titulo Sancti Martini presbiteri cardinalis et apostolice sedis legati, domini Walteri Eboracensis archiepiscopi, Willelmi Londoniensis episcopi et aliorum episcoporum Anglie, et Willelmi Mariscalli comitis Pembrocie, rectoris nostri et regni nostri, et aliorum fidelium, comitum et baronum nostrorum Anglie, has libertates subscriptas tenendas in regno nostro Anglie in perpetuum.

  [3 ]Concessisse, in 1215 and 1216.

  [4 ]Confirmasse, in 1215 and 1216.

  [5 ]Omnia, omitted also in 1216 and 1217.

  [1 ]For the important clause occurring in 1215 between illesas and Concessimus, see supra, p. 190.

  [2 ]In perpetuum, omitted also in 1216 and 1217.

  [3 ]Suus, in 1215.

  [4 ]The Inspeximus of 1297 reads “marcas” in place of “libras.” See supra, p. 201. Cf. Bracton, II. c. 36, and other authorities cited by Bémont, Chartes, 47 n.

  [5 ]Et connects etatem and fuerit in custodia in 1215, the intervening words being omitted.

  [6 ]Committatur, in 1215, 1216 and 1217.

  [1 ]Different ending in 1215; see supra, p. 210.

  [2 ]An additional clause occurs in 1215; see supra, p. 212.

  [3 ]Tenuerint, in 1216 and 1217.

  [4 ]In domo mariti sui, in 1215 and 1216; in capitali mesuagio mariti sui, in 1217.

  [5 ]The words et habeat to ad hostium ecclesie are omitted also in 1216.

  [6 ]Maritandum, in 1216; a contraction occurs in 1217, which may stand for either termination.

  [7 ]De quo tenuerit, in 1215.

  [8 ]Nec nos nec ballivi, in 1215.

  [9 ]Sufficiunt, in 1215, 1216 and 1217.

  [1 ]Sufficit, in 1215.

  [2 ]De, in 1215.

  [3 ]Donec, in 1215.

  [4 ]Solverint, in 1215, 1216 and 1217.

  [5 ]Three additional chapters (10, 11 and 12) occur in 1215.

  [6 ]Et civitas, in 1215.

  [7 ]Tam per terras, quam per aquas, in 1215.

  [8 ]Two additional chapters (14 and 15) occur in 1215.

  [9 ]Et de ultima presentacione, added in 1215.

  [10 ]Duos justiciarios, in 1215.

  [11 ]Per quatuor vices in anno, in 1215, which concludes somewhat differently, see supra, p. 296. The charter of 1216 is practically the same, here, as that of 1215; while that of 1225 reproduces that of 1217.

  [12 ]An additional chapter (19) occurs in 1215.

  [1 ]Alterius quam noster, omitted also in 1216; first inserted in 1217.

  [2 ]Inciderint, in 1215.

  [3 ]Sacramenta, in 1217.

  [4 ]This reads in 1215: Nullus clericus amercietur de laico tenemento suo, nisi secundum modum aliorum predictorum, et non secundum beneficii sui ecclesiastici.
  
  In 1216: Nullus clericus amercietur, nisi secundum formam predictorum, et non secundum quantitatem beneficii sui ecclesiastici.
  
  The Charter of 1217 is here identical with that of 1225, except that sed takes the place of set.

  [5 ]Debent, in 1215.

  [6 ]Compare with last clause of c. 47 of 1215, which was omitted in 1216. The Charter of 1217 here resembles that of 1225.

  [7 ]An additional chapter (25) occurs in 1215; see supra, p. 317, which should be compared with c. 35 of 1225.

  [8 ]Omitted in 1216.

  [1 ]An additional chapter (27) occurs in 1215; see supra, p. 326.

  [2 ]Alius ballivus noster, in 1215, which omits ejus.

  [3 ]In 1216 the last phrase reads: si autem de villa fuerit, teneatur infra tres septimanas precium reddere.

  [4 ]Si facere voluerit custodiam illam, in 1215.

  [5 ]Eum comes after miserimus in 1215.

  [6 ]The words in italics here are omitted also in 1216.

  [7 ]Aliquis alius, in 1215.

  [8 ]Alicujus liberi hominis, in 1215.

  [9 ]Nisi de voluntate ipsius liberi hominis, in 1215.

  [10 ]This chapter is not in 1216, but first occurs in 1217.

  [11 ]Nec alii, omitted also in 1216.

  [12 ]Ipsius, in place of illius, in 1215.

  [13 ]Illorum, in place of eorum, in 1215.

  [14 ]De Tamisia, et de Medewaye, in 1215.

  [1 ]Libero follows aliquo, in 1297.

  [2 ]Amittere possit, in 1215; omittere possit, in 1216.

  [3 ]Autem, in 1215.

  [4 ]Vel capiatur, after detur, in 1215.

  [5 ]The words in italics are omitted also in 1216.

  [6 ]Et for nec, in 1216; vel in 1217.

  [7 ]The words in italics are omitted also in 1216.

  [8 ]Aut, in 1215.

  [9 ]Aquas, in 1216.

  [10 ]Et, in 1215 and 1217.

  [1 ]Malis toltis, in 1215.

  [2 ]An additional chapter (42) occurs in 1215.

  [3 ]Eskaetis, after aliis, in 1215.

  [4 ]Faciat, for fiat, in 1215.

  [5 ]Si baronia illa esset, in 1215; si terra illa esset, in 1216; si illa esset, in 1217.

  [6 ]The words in italics are omitted also in 1216.

  [7 ]Two additional chapters (44 and 45) occur in 1215.

  [8 ]The charter of 1215 reads: omnes barones qui fundaverunt abbatias, unde habent cartas regum Anglie, vel antiquam tenuram, habeant earum custodiam cum vacaverint, sicut habere debent.

  [9 ]Seven additional chapters (47 to 53) occur in 1215. The charter of 1216 omits cc. 32 and 33 of 1225, but has instead of them three chapters of which c. 36 is the same as c. 44 of 1215, except that sunt appears for sint; c. 37 is the same as c. 46 of 1215, as quoted in last note, except that the words et sicut supra declaratum est are added at the end; c. 38 is of the same tenor as c. 47 of 1215, except that John’s tempore nostro is changed to meet the altered circumstances.

  [1 ]The charter of 1216 (like that of 1215) omits cc. 35, 36, and 37 of 1225 (all of which occur in 1217). C. 35 of 1225, however, should be compared with c. 25 of 1215, and c. 37 of 1225 with c. 12 of 1215.
  
  The charter of 1215 has five additional chapters here (55 to 59), of which c. 56 appears in 1216 as c. 40, with the alteration made necessary by the new reign.

  [2 ]Eam illi (in place of illam ei), in 1217.

  [3 ]Receperit (in place of recepit), in 1217.

  [4 ]Consuevit (in place of solebat), in 1217.

  [5 ]The last sentence, from Et salve onwards, is omitted in 1217.

  [6 ]After erga suos, each charter proceeds differently. The charter of 1215 has three additional chapters (61, 62, and 63, q.v.).
  
  The charter of 1216 has one additional chapter: Quia vero quedam capitula in priori (sic) carta continebantur que gravia et dubitabilia videbantur, scilicet de scutagiis et auxiliis assidendis, de debitis Judeorum et aliorum et de libertate exeundi de regno nostro, vel redeundi in regnum, et de forestis et forestariis, warrenis et warrenariis, et de consuetudinis comitatum, et de ripariis et earum custodibus, placuit supradictis prelatis et magnatibus ea esse in respectu quousque plenius consilium habuerimus; et tunc faciemus plenissime tam de hiis quam de aliis que occurrerint emendenda, que ad communem omnium utilitatem pertinuerint et pacem et statum nostrum et regni nostri. Quia vero sigillum nondum habuimus, presentem cartam sigillis venerabilis patris nostri domini Gualonis tituli sancti Martini presbiteri cardinalis, apostolice sedis legati, et Willelmi Mariscalli comitis Penbrocie, rectoris nostri et regni nostri, fecimus sigillari, Testibus omnibus prenominatis et aliis multis, Datum per manus predictorum domini legati et Willelmi Mariscalli, comitis Penbrocie apud Bristollum duodecimo die novembris anno regni nostri primo.
  
  The charter of 1217 has two additional chapters (46 and 47):
  
  C. 46: Salvis archiepiscopis, episcopis, abbatibus, prioribus, templariis, hospitalariis, comitibus, baronibus, et omnibus aliis, tam ecclesiasticis personis, quam secularibus, libertatibus et liberis consuetudinibus quas prius habuerunt—(which may be compared with the last clause of c. 37 of 1225, supra).
  
  C. 47: Statuimus etiam, de communi consilio tocius regni nostri, quod omnia castra adulterina, videlicet ea que a principio guerre mote inter dominum Johannem patrem nostrum et barones suos Anglie constructa fuerint vel reedificata, statim deruantur. Quia vero nondum habuimus sigillum, hanc sigillis domini legati predicti et comitis Willelmi Mariscalli rectoris et regni nostri fecimus sigillari.

  [1 ]See supra, pp. 146–7. The text is taken from the Statutes of the Realm, I. 20–21. Bémont, Chartes, 64 ff., gives in footnotes the variants in the reissue of 1225.

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  5: 5. Francesco Petrarch, Sonnets

  Francesco Petrarca (b. July 20, 1304, Arezzo, Tuscany; d. July 18, 1374, Arqua, near Padua) was an Italian scholar and poet who is regarded by many scholars as being among the first humanists. He contributed to the Renaissance flowering of lyric poetry and literature through his poems addressed to Laura, his idealized beloved. Petrarch’s love of classical authors and learning inspired him to visit men of learning and search monastic libraries for classical texts. His discovery of several of Cicero’s letters encouraged the revival of the Ciceronian style that characterized Renaissance humanistic education.

  See the entry about Petrarch in the Goodrich Seminar Room.

  Francesco Petrarch, Some Love Songs of Petrarch, translated and annotated with a Biographical Introduction by William Dudley Foulke (Oxford University Press, 1915).

  Accessed from oll.libertyfund.org/title/1341 on 2007-12-03

  The text is in the public domain.

  ---

  FOOT-NOTE REFERENCES

  1. De Sade.	Mémoires pour la vie de François Pétrarque. Amsterdam, 1764. 3 vols.
  2. Foscolo.	Essays on Petrarch, by Ugo Foscolo. John Murray, 1823.
  3. Sismondi.	Storia delle Repubbliche Italiane, da G. C. L. Simondo de’ Sismondi. Capolago, 1844.
  4. Reeve.	Petrarch, by Henry Reeve. J. B. Lippincott & Co.
  5. Koerting.	Petrarca’s Leben und Werke, von Dr. Gustav Koerting. Leipzig, 1878.
  6. Piumati.	La Vita e le Opere di Francesco Petrarca, da Alessandro Piumati. Turin, 1885.
  7. Mascetta.	Il Canzoniere cronologicamente riordinato, da Lorenzo Mascetta. Lanciano, Rocco Carabba, 1895.
  8. Cochin.	La Chronologie du Canzoniere de Pétrarque, par Henry Cochin. Paris, Bouillon, 1898.
  9. Ware.	Petrarch, A Sketch of his Life and Works, by May Alden Ward. Little, Brown & Co., 1900.
  10. Calthrop.	Petrarch, His Life and Times, by H. C. Hollway-Calthrop. Putnams, 1907.
  11. Scherillo.	Il Canzoniere di Francesco Petrarca, da Michele Scherillo. Hoepli, Milan, 1908.
  12. Jerrold.	Francesco Petrarca, Poet and Humanist, by Maud F. Jerrold. J. M. Dent & Co., 1909.
  13. Carducci.	Le Rime di Francesco Petrarca, da Giosuè Carducci e Severino Ferrari. Florence, Sansoni, 1899-1912.

  ODE TO PETRARCH

  • Across the centuries and in every land
  • His name is honoured still. In that long night
  • When learning’s flame was quenched, it was his hand
  • That lit the torch and brought the welcome light.
  • So says the world, and yet we treasure more
  • These songs that tell of frailties like our own—
  • The fruitless love which many a year he bore
  • That grew the brighter when its hope was gone.
  • The lays wherein his passion was enshrined
  • Outlast the ages. While from day to day
  • I read his lines, old age is left behind
  • And youth returns; these scattered locks of gray
  • Turn brown once more, and solemn wisdom dies
  • Under the witchery of my lady’s eyes.

  INTRODUCTION AND BIOGRAPHY

  His reputation.Few names in literature have been more widely and permanently distinguished than that of Petrarch. Crowned with the laurel upon the Capitol at Rome as a great poet and historian, honoured above all others of his time, the chosen guest, companion, ambassador, and adviser of prince, pontiff, king, and emperor, he has come down to us after six centuries as second only to Dante among the five great classic authors of Italy and as worthy of the companionship of Homer, Virgil, Horace, Cervantes, Shakespeare, Milton, and Goethe on the world’s roll of fame.

  He was one of the great poets, and yet, except to those who are conversant with the Italian language, Petrarch is little more than a bright name. Few have read his works. Doubtless, much of his fame is due, not to his writings, but to the fact that he was foremost among the great scholars who awakened the world to the knowledge and the literature of antiquity after the long sleep of the Middle Ages. He loved the Roman poets, orators, and philosophers—Virgil, Cicero, Seneca—with a perfect love. He was indefatigable in his search for manuscripts, rummaging in libraries and archives and copying the texts with his own hand, and he discovered among other works the Institutes of Quintilian and some of the letters and orations of Cicero.

  Of his voluminous writings all except the Canzoniere or Song Book are in Latin, but although these constituted, during his lifetime, his chief title to distinction in scholarship and literature, they are now, with the exception of his personal letters, mostly forgotten. It is those poems in the Italian tongue, which he at one time depreciated, that are still read and admired wherever that tongue is spoken.

  Its causes. What is there in this collection of poems which gave to their author such widespread and lasting renown? Macaulay insists that their popularity is largely due to a curious tendency of human nature to enjoy in literature that egotism and revelation of personal characteristics and sufferings which we detest in conversation and of which the popularity of Rousseau, Wordsworth, and Lord Byron are such obvious illustrations.

  The poems of Petrarch are little more than the expression of his feelings upon a subject in which the world is greatly interested—the love of a woman. He was, moreover, if we except Dante, the first distinguished writer of amatory verse in modern times, after woman had assumed that new claim to veneration and respect which had been allowed to her by Christianity, by chivalry, by the tourney, and by the courts of love. Not that Petrarch’s poems were strikingly original. He imitates in many places the formal and artificial style of the troubadours as well as the more natural methods of some of his Italian predecessors, and he engrafts upon this modern poetry much that he has drawn from his rich classical resources. But at their best, the lyrics of Petrarch are indescribably beautiful and entitle him to a high place among the immortals.

  Petrarch lived, moreover, close to the dawn of Italian literature; he had much to do with giving to the Italian language its present poetical and polished character. ‘No term which he employed is become obsolete, and each of his phrases may be, and still is, written without quaintness.’1 He was followed for more than a century by imitators who were greatly his inferiors. He had also the good fortune, which even Dante did not possess, to have such distinguished commentators and critics as Muratori, the creator of critical and diplomatic history in Italy, and four poets of distinction, Tassoni, Foscolo, Leopardi, and Carducci.2 It is undoubtedly true, as in the case of Dr. Samuel Johnson, that the interest which attaches to the man has greatly enhanced the reputation earned by the merit of his writings.

  It seems singular, considering this reputation, that except among those who are acquainted with the Italian language, there are comparatively few to-day who have any considerable personal acquaintance with his works. The knowledge of Homer and the Greek dramatists, of Virgil and Horace, of Dante and Boccaccio, of Cervantes and Goethe, is widely disseminated in every civilized country, but the poems of Petrarch are still largely unknown in other lands than his own. The main reason undoubtedly is that the beauty of these poems has not been and perhaps cannot be adequately communicated by any translation.Difficulties of translation. Commentators assure us that ‘there is no other language capable of rendering them’, and that ‘he will never be disfigured by translators without soul and without ears’.1 Even Muratori doubts whether his poetry will ever succeed ‘on the other side of the mountains’.2

  Why is it that his songs cannot be readily rendered in another tongue? No kind of literature is more difficult to translate than lyric poetry, and this is because its beauty depends so largely upon its form, including the metre and the rhyme employed. In epic and dramatic poetry (as well as in all prose) other things predominate—the story to be told, the thing to be described, the character to be delineated. The translation of Homer may be almost equally good whether made in rhyme, in blank verse, or in rhythmical prose, and if made in verse, the particular kind of metre is not very essential. But lyric poetry cannot be well rendered in a prose translation nor even in verse which differs very greatly from that of the original. This is no doubt one of the reasons why Pindar, one of the greatest of the Greek poets, is not so widely known as the dramatists. The difficulty of adequate translation is especially great in the case of lyrics in rhyme, and most of all in the case of those where the system of rhyme employed is complex and artificial. Unless the translation reproduces something of this, it cannot faithfully represent the original.

  Now no lyric poems ever depended more for their beauty upon their form and the metre and the rhymes employed than those of Petrarch. He was not so much distinguished for originality of conception, liveliness of narrative, wealth of imagery or faithful portraiture of character, as for his delicate taste and the exquisite form in which his thoughts are embodied. It is said of him that each of his poems is like an enamel. He revised them again and again, some of his corrections being made years after the first composition, until in his old age he said, ‘I could correct my works and improve them all except my Italian poems, where I think I have reached the highest perfection I can attain.’1

  Form of the verse. The translator of Petrarch, therefore, if he would seek to give a true notion of these lyrics, should employ forms of verse and rhyme similar to the original, yet the restrictions which this involves are often fatal to an adequate rendering of the poetry itself. Too many repetitions of the same rhyme are required. The Italian language lends itself to the rhymes demanded by the Petrarch sonnet in a way that English does not, and certain licences are permitted in Italian and forbidden to us; for instance, the so-called equivocal rhymes or the use of identical words with different meanings for rhyming purposes. These were often employed in the Canzoniere. Petrarch himself occasionally varies the form of his sonnets, but all the forms he employs are usually difficult to reproduce exactly in English, and the effect in most cases seems to be quite well retained in the Shakespearean sonnet. I have therefore generally used the latter. In the one sestine translated, the form of the original has been exactly reproduced, although it is extremely artificial and not at all adapted to modern poetry. In two of the madrigals I have followed the original metre exactly. In the canzoni the original form has in some cases been closely, and in one or two instances exactly imitated. In the ‘Hymn to the Virgin’ this is the case except that the seventh and tenth lines, although they rhyme with each other, do not also rhyme with the third and sixth as they do in Italian. There seemed no object in giving this double assonance, and the stanza is quite as harmonious in English without it.

  Methods of translation. In the celebrated canzone ‘Clear, fresh, sweet waters,’ more liberty has been taken, since the poetry of this wonderful ode would be too greatly cramped by attempting to translate it in the exact metre of the original. The same is true of some of the other canzoni. In the original those vary considerably in form, but the following rules are observed. The lines are either of eleven or seven syllables each (rendered in English by the iambic pentameter or trimeter), and each stanza corresponds with the others in rhymes, measures, and pauses. The canzoni must contain no more than fifteen stanzas (they usually contain not more than seven) and the stanza must have no more than twenty lines (usually it has about fourteen), and the poem terminates with a conclusion or ‘envoi’ containing fewer lines than the other stanzas, and in which the poet addresses his own ode. ‘It rarely happens’, says Sismondi,1 ‘that this addition, which brings the poet himself upon the scene, does not destroy, with some trifle of vanity or gallantry, the impression made by the rest of the poem with its loftier thoughts and more lyrical movement.’ Some of Petrarch’s concluding stanzas, however, are exceedingly graceful and appropriate.

  BIOGRAPHY

  1304. Birth of Petrarch.Francesco Petrarca was born at Arezzo, Italy, July 20, 1304. He was the son of Ser Petracco di Parenzo, a notary of Florence, and Eletta Canigiani, his wife. On January 27, 1302, in the struggle between Guelphs and Ghibellines, or between the ‘Blacks’ and ‘Whites’, as they were then called, the former finally triumphed and banished from Florence some six hundred of their leading adversaries. Among these were the poet Dante and the notary Petracco.1 Some of the exiles fled to Pistoia, some to Pisa, some to Arezzo. Among the latter were the notary Petracco and his wife. After a period of about two years and a half, the ‘Whites’ attempted to recapture Florence and a small detachment actually entered the town, but owing to a succession of blunders the attempt failed. It was on the very day of this attack, in which his father took part, that Petrarch was born.

  Early life at Incisa. But the child did not remain long at Arezzo. In the little city of Incisa, south-east of Florence, the notary possessed a piece of property which had escaped confiscation. His wife was not included in the decree of banishment, and seven months after his birth, the boy was taken thither by his mother, and was almost drowned in the Arno on the way. Despite the decree of banishment, the husband and wife were sometimes together, for two other children were born to them at that place, one who died in infancy and one Gherardo, born in 1307. The family were reunited in 1312 in Pisa, where the father was then established in business.1312. Pisa. In the following year, however, the notary determined to leave Italy and seek his fortune beyond the Alps, at Avignon.Avignon. Pope Clement V, who had wandered from place to place, was then at that city, although it had not yet been established as the permanent seat of the papal court.

  On the way thither the vessel which carried the notary and his little family narrowly escaped shipwreck near Marseilles, and Petrarch was filled with an aversion and terror of the sea from which he never recovered.

  Avignon at this time was a constituent part of the earldom of Provence, and King Robert of Naples was its hereditary lord. It was a city situated upon a bluff on the east bank of the Rhône, and, as Petrarch afterwards wrote to Guido Settimo, his youthful friend, ‘The town was small for the Roman pontiff and the Church which had but newly wandered with him thither, at that time poor in houses and overflowing with inhabitants. Our elders determined that the women and children should move to a neighbouring spot. We two, then boys, went with the others, but were sent to a different destination, namely, to the schools of Latin.Carpentras. Carpentras was the name of the place, a small city, but the capital of a little province. Do you remember those four years? What happiness we had there; what safety, what peace at home, what liberty abroad, what leisure, and what silence in the fields!’1

  1312. Convenevole. One Convenevole, a native of Prato, near Florence, who had also emigrated to Provence, was Petrarch’s schoolmaster, and instructed the boy, first in reading and afterwards in rhetoric and Latin. In this school, where many who were subsequently distinguished received their education, Petrarch was the favourite of his master, for he afterwards writes,2 ‘Cardinal Giovanni, of blessed memory, used to joke with him, for he delighted in the conversation of this simple old man and excellent grammarian, and would ask him when he came to visit him, “Tell me, master, among so many great scholars of yours whom I know you love, is there some place for our Francesco?” And he, with his eyes full of tears, either kept silence or went away, or, if he could speak, would solemnly swear that he had never loved any of them all so much as poor wretched me.

  ‘As long as my father lived he helped him generously, for poverty and old age, importunate and difficult companions, were pressing on him. After my father’s death, he placed all his hopes on me. But I, albeit little able, feeling myself nevertheless bound by faith and duty, helped him to the utmost of my resources, so that, when money fell short (as was frequent) I succoured his poverty among my friends by standing surety, or by prayers, and with the usurers, by pledges. Thousands of times he took from me for this purpose books and other things, which he always brought back to me until poverty drove out fidelity. Hampered more than ever, he treacherously took from me two volumes of Cicero, one of which had been my father’s and the other a friend’s, and other books, pretending that they were necessary to him for a work of his. For he used daily to be beginning some book, and he would make a magnificent frontispiece and a consummate preface (which, although it stands first in the book, is wont to be composed last), and then he would transfer his unstable imagination to some other work. But why do I thus prolong the tale? When the delay began to arouse my suspicions (for I had lent him the books for study, not to relieve his indigence), I asked him point blank what had happened to them, and on hearing that they had been put in pawn, I besought him to tell me who it was who had them, that I might redeem them. Tearful and full of shame, he refused to do this, protesting that it would be too disgraceful to him if another should do what was his bounden duty. If I would wait a little longer he would fulfil his duty quickly. Then I offered him all the money which the transaction required, and this also he refused, begging me to spare him such a disgrace. Though trusting little to his promise, I held my tongue, being unwilling to give sorrow to him whom I loved. In the meanwhile, driven by his poverty, he returned to Tuscany, whence he had come, and I, remaining in my transalpine solitude near the source of the Sorgue, as I was wont to do, did not know that he had gone away, until I knew of his death by the request of his fellow citizens that I would write an epitaph to be placed on the tomb of him whom they had tardily honoured by bearing him to the grave crowned with laurel. Nor afterwards, in spite of every diligence, could I ever find the least trace of the lost Cicero, for the other books mattered to me much less, and thus I lost books and master together.’

  It was in this way that the De Gloria of Cicero vanished from the world.

  Under Convenevole, Petrarch learned to admire that author very greatly. Indeed, he tells us that even before he could understand the meaning of Cicero’s sentences ‘the sweetness and the sonorous sound of the words so held him captive that every other book he read or listened to appeared to him harsh and discordant’.

  Early visit to Vaucluse. Petrarch’s father was detained by business at Avignon most of the time, but frequently came to see his family at Carpentras, and being there on one occasion with the uncle of Guido Settimo, they determined to visit Vaucluse, a narrow valley where the river Sorgue rushes forth from a cavern in the rock at the foot of a steep and lofty mountain. The boys begged to accompany them, and were put on horseback with a trusty servant who rode behind to protect them. When they reached the beautiful spot, Petrarch, as he afterwards wrote to his friend Settimo, was so impressed by its loveliness that he said to himself, ‘Here is a place most suited to my nature which, if the opportunity be given me, I shall some day prefer to the greatest city.’

  1319. Montpellier. In 1319 Petrarch’s father, impressed with the necessity of giving the boy an education which would enable him to make a living, sent him with his brother Gherardo to the law school at Montpellier not far away. Here, however, Francesco devoted himself not so much to the law as to the great writers of ancient Rome. He had indeed managed to collect a small library of classical authors. His father once visited him unexpectedly, and the poet thus describes what happened. ‘All the books I had been able to collect of Cicero and of some of the poets, as enemies to lucrative study, were in my very sight dragged out of the secret places in which I (fearing what soon came to pass) had hidden them, and committed to the fire as though they were the works of heretics, which spectacle I lamented as though I myself were being cast into the flames.His father burns his books. Then my father, as I remember, seeing me so unhappy, straightway snatched two books, already half-scorched by the fire, and holding Virgil in the right hand and Cicero’s Rhetoric in the left, he held out both to me, smiling as I wept. “Keep this”, he said, “for an occasional solace to your mind, and the other to help you in your law studies.” And being comforted by these companions, so few but so great, I restrained my tears.’1

  1323. Bologna. After remaining four years at Montpellier, Petrarch, at the command of his father, went with his brother Gherardo to the University of Bologna (which was then, next to Paris, the most celebrated in the world) in order to continue his studies. Here, too, he attended lectures upon the civil law. While he was at this university he made an excursion with one of his instructors to Venice and saw the pride and prosperity of the republic of the lagoons at its highest point before it became weakened by the destructive wars with Genoa.

  1326. After three years at Bologna, the news of their father’s death, which took place April 6, 1326, recalled the two brothers to Avignon. Their mother survived her husband only a short time and died at the age of thirty-eight years. Petrarch wrote her eulogy in a poem of thirty-eight hexameters, one for each year of her life.

  The slender estate left by Petracco was dissipated by the dishonesty of his trustees, and the two brothers, now in straitened circumstances, appear to have taken holy orders, because it opened to them the best path to a livelihood.1

  Early life at Avignon. In such a city as Avignon, however, this did not involve the renunciation of worldly pleasures, and the poet, writing long afterwards to his brother, thus speaks of their habits and their personal vanity:

  Frivolities. ‘Do you remember that excessive display of most elegant attire which still, I confess, holds me captive, though growing less day by day? That trouble over putting on and putting off, a labour repeated morning and evening; that dread lest when, once arranged, our hair should get loose, or a light breeze should ruffle the elaborate arrangement of our locks; how we fled from advancing or retreating horses lest our perfumed and brilliant raiment should receive any adventitious dirt! Truly how vain are the cares of men, but especially of youths! . . . What shall I say of our shoes? See with how grievous and continuous a war they pressed that which they seemed to protect! . . . What shall I say of the curling irons and the business of our hair-dressing?1326. How often did that labour put off our sleep, and then disturb it! What slave-driver would inflict more cruel tortures than we inflicted with our own hands? What nocturnal scars did we see in the morning in our mirror burned across our red foreheads, so that we, who wished to make a show of our hair, were compelled to cover our faces!’1

  1327. Meets Laura. But now an event occurred which controlled the whole course of Petrarch’s life. On April 6, 1327, he first saw the lady Laura in the church of Santa Clara at Avignon, and became enamoured of the beautiful vision. His passion was the inspiration of nearly all his poetry, both during the twenty-one years she lived and more than ten years afterwards. Indeed his hopes of rejoining her in Paradise were expressed in his corrections to one of his ‘Trionfi’ only a few weeks before his death. There is much controversy among his commentators upon the question who this lady Laura really was. The matter is carefully considered in Appendix I.

  Friends. Petrarch had in Avignon a number of learned and estimable friends—among others, one Soranzio, a celebrated lawyer and the owner of an excellent library, who placed his books at Petrarch’s disposal and lent him a number of valuable works, including some by Varro and Cicero. In return Petrarch copied manuscripts for him. But the most important friendship which he formed was that of James Colonna, son of Stephen, who was the head of the great house of Colonna in Rome.James Colonna. James had been a student at Bologna while Petrarch was there, but their acquaintance had not ripened into intimacy until they met again at Avignon.

  1328. James Colonna had won the favour of John XXII, who was then pope, by the following circumstance. On January 17, 1328, King Louis of Bavaria, in spite of the opposition of the Holy See, was crowned as emperor, and on April 18, in an assembly which he had illegally summoned, he caused the pope to be denounced as a heretic and Antichrist. Four days later, the young Colonna, who was a papal chaplain and canon of the Lateran, suddenly appeared with four masked retainers on the place in front of the church of San Marcello in Rome, read to the multitude there assembled a papal bull against the emperor and his adherents, and offering to maintain with his sword the truth of the accusations therein contained, with his own hands he nailed the bull to the door of the church. Thereupon he mounted his horse and rode away with his companions, and the armed troops of the emperor were unable to capture him.

  The pope rewarded this bold deed by bestowing upon him the bishopric of Lombez, a little city south-west of Toulouse on one of the northern spurs of the Pyrenees.1330. Journey to Lombez. In the spring of 1330, the new bishop prepared to visit his diocese and invited Petrarch to go with him.1

  Petrarch attributed his invitation partly to the keen interest which the bishop took in the poetry of the country. A halt was made at Toulouse. This city was the literary centre of the troubadours whose poetry, although then in its decline, was still held in honour.Troubadours. 1323. In 1323, ‘The Gay Company of the Seven Troubadours’ of that city wrote a circular letter in Provençal verse to the various poets of Languedoc inviting them to come to Toulouse on May 1, 1324, with their productions, and promising to give a golden violet to him whose verses should be considered the most worthy of the prize.1324. The poets appeared on the day appointed, the prize was given to Arnaud Vidal for a poem on the Blessed Virgin, and the magistrates, wishing to perpetuate these contests, promised to distribute every year the same prize at the expense of the city.2

  1330. Petrarch has been called ‘the first of the humanists and the last and greatest of the troubadours’. He is indebted to the latter for many of his metres and systems of rhyme. A number of his metaphors, similes and conceits are taken from their poems, and in some places he has imitated their style, transforming it, however, into something far better than the original. While there is no direct evidence, it is probable that he acquired much of his knowledge of their poetry upon this journey.

  Socrates and Laelius. On the way from Toulouse to Lombez the weather was bad and the roads frightful. Petrarch found the country and the manners of the people rude and unattractive, and yet he afterwards spoke of his happiness during his sojourn, and it was at Lombez that he formed two of his most lasting and intimate friendships. One was with Lewis of Campinia, a Fleming, whom the poet called ‘Socrates’ and to whom he dedicated long afterwards his ‘Familiar Letters’. The other was with Lello Stefani, a Roman, whom Petrarch called ‘Laelius’ after the name of the follower and companion of his hero, Scipio Africanus.

  The Colonnas. When the poet returned to Avignon from Lombez, in the fall of 1330, the bishop presented him to others of his family: to his brother, Cardinal John Colonna, and later to his father, Stephen, who came to Avignon in 1331 to visit his two sons; also to Stephen’s brother, John of San Vito, lord of Gensano, who had travelled in Persia, Arabia, and Egypt, but whose passion for the Eternal City was shared by the young poet and formed a close bond of sympathy between them.1331.

  Petrarch soon entered the service of Cardinal Colonna and became a member of his household. He wrote of him long afterwards in his ‘Letter to Posterity’: ‘I lived under him for many years, not as under a master but a father, nay not even that, but as with a most affectionate brother or indeed as if I had been in my own home.’ The patronage of the powerful house of Colonna did much to advance the fortunes of the young poet.

  1333. Paris and the Netherlands. Nothing in Petrarch’s character was more marked than his eagerness to see new things, and in the spring of 1333 he set out on his first important journey, visiting Paris and the Netherlands. Paris was then the first seat of learning in Europe. Here Petrarch enjoyed the congenial society of scholars—of Robert de’ Bardi, chancellor of the University, and of the Augustinian monk, Dionysius, professor of divinity and philosophy, who became the poet’s intimate friend and probably his confessor.Dionysius. Petrarch confided to him his passion for Laura. Dionysius counselled him to struggle earnestly against it, and gave him a small but beautiful manuscript of the Confessions of St. Augustine for his instruction. From this time began the struggle in Petrarch’s soul between his religious convictions and his passion, a battle which remained undecided for many years.

  St. Augustine, who was a scholar like himself, was Petrarch’s favourite among the Fathers of the Church. This book of confessions being easily portable, was constantly with him on his journeys; he often referred to it, and its influence appears in one of the most important of his works, The Secret, containing his own similar confessions in the form of a dialogue.1

  After leaving Paris, Petrarch visited Ghent and other places in Flanders; Brabant, famous for woollen manufactures and weaving, and Liège, where he went book-hunting and discovered two orations of Cicero, of which he transcribed one and got a friend to copy the other, though ‘ink was almost impossible to obtain, and what there was, was as yellow as saffron’.

  1334. Cologne. Thence he visited Aix-la-Chapelle, which had been the capital of Charlemagne’s empire, and having bathed in the warm waters of its springs, he proceeded to Cologne. ‘It happened to be the vigil of St. John the Baptist’, he writes, ‘when I arrived, and it was near sunset. According to the wish of some friends of mine (for I have friends here whom my fame rather than my merit has procured for me), I was immediately conducted from the inn to the edge of the river to behold an extraordinary sight. Nor was I disappointed. All the river bank was covered with an immense and splendid concourse of women. I was astonished! Good God! what lovely forms and faces! And what dresses! Whoever had been heart-free must have fallen in love with one of them. I had taken my stand upon a bit of rising ground from which one had a good view of what was going on. The crowd was unbelievable and yet there was no disorder. I saw them all, half hidden by the sweet-scented grass, joyously turn up their sleeves above the elbow and bathe their hands and white arms in the stream, holding pleasant talk in their foreign tongue.’1

  Petrarch asked the meaning of all this, and was informed that it was a common belief that any misfortunes impending during the coming year would be washed away in the stream.

  Ardennes. On his return to France he traversed alone the Forest of Ardennes, and this, too, in time of war. ‘It was already known to me from books,’ he writes, ‘and is a truly wild and dreadful place, but, as they say, God takes care of the unwary.’2

  When he reached Lyons he was greatly disappointed to learn that the Bishop of Lombez, with whom he was to go to Rome, had already set out alone for that city, and Petrarch wrote him a letter of bitterreproaches, but learned afterwards that the bishop had been called thither suddenly to support his family in a critical feud which had broken out with their hereditary enemies, the Orsini. Petrarch was compelled to renounce his journey and to resume his wonted literary occupations in the house of the Cardinal Colonna at Avignon.

  In December 1334, Pope John XXII died and was succeeded by Benedict XII. Petrarch addressed to this pontiff two poetical epistles urging him to restore the Holy See to Rome, and the pope (no doubt at the instance of the Colonnas) bestowed upon the poet the office of Canon of Lombez.Canon of Lombez. This was his first preferment in the Church.

  Although Petrarch had renounced the profession of the law, yet this year he was unexpectedly called upon to become an advocate and he accepted the task. Orlando Rossi had been tyrant of Parma, and Mastino della Scala, lord of Verona, had driven him from the government of that city and confided it to Guido da Correggio. Rossi appealed to the pope, and Correggio sent his brother Azzo, with William of Pastrengo, to defend his claim to the city before the papal consistory.Azzo da Correggio. Azzo, young, handsome, and a friend of letters, though an unprincipled man, won the favour of Petrarch, and secured his services. They were successful. The Scaligers were confirmed as lords of the city and Correggio continued to administer its affairs. Azzo and Pastrengo remained for many years intimate and devoted friends of the poet.

  1336. Mont Ventoux. In April 1336, Petrarch with his brother, Gherardo, did a thing quite unusual in those days—they climbed for pleasure and curiosity a mountain not far from Avignon, called Mont Ventoux, an isolated peak some 6,200 feet in height. The ascent was rough and difficult, but the summit gave wonderful views of the Alps, the Rhône, and the Mediterranean.

  1336. Mont Ventoux. Petrarch thus describes, in a letter to his confessor, Dionysius, what he saw and how he felt. ‘The highest peak of all’, he says, ‘is called “The Grandson” by a sort of contradiction, for it seems rather to be the father of all the mountains in the neighbourhood. There is a little plot upon the summit, where we were all very glad to sit down. . . . At first, I was so affected by the unaccustomed spirit of the air, and by the free prospect, that I stood as one stupefied. I looked back; clouds were beneath my feet. I began to understand Athos and Olympus since I found that what I heard and read of them was true of a mountain of far less celebrity. I turned my eyes to that Italian region to which my soul most inclines and the great rugged Alps seemed quite close to me, though they really were at a great distance. I confess that I sighed for that Italian air, more sensible to the soul than to the eyes, and an intense longing came upon me to behold my friends and my country once more. Then a new reflection arose in my mind, I passed from place to time. I recollected that on this day ten years had elapsed since I terminated my youthful studies in Bologna, and, O immortal God! O immutable Wisdom! how many changes had that interval witnessed!1 . . . I wished to recollect my past uncleanness, and the carnal corruptions of my soul, not because I love them, but because I love Thee, O my God. I no longer love what I used to love; nay, that is not true; I do love still, but with more modesty and a deeper melancholy. Yes, I still love, but unwillingly, in spite of myself, in sorrow and tribulation of heart.1 . . . I could very clearly see the mountains about Lyons on the right, and on the left the Bay of Marseilles, which is distant some days’ journey. The Rhône flowed beneath our eyes. But whilst I was admiring so many objects of the earth, and my soul rose to lofty contemplations by the example of the body, it occurred to me that I would look into the book of Augustine’s Confessions, which I owe to your kindness, and which I generally carry about with me, as it is a volume of small dimensions, though of great sweetness. I opened it at a venture, meaning to read whatever might present itself, for what could have presented itself that was not pious and devout? The volume opened at the tenth book. My brother was expecting to hear the words of Augustine from my lips, and he can testify that in the first place I lighted upon it was thus written: “There are men who go to admire the high places of mountains, the great waves of the sea, the wide currents of rivers, the circuit of the ocean, and the orbits of the stars, and who neglect themselves.” I confess that I was amazed; I begged my brother, who was anxious to hear more, not to interrupt me, and I shut the book, half angry with myself, that I, who was even now admiring terrestrial things, ought already to have learnt from the philosophers that nothing is truly great except the soul.1336. Mont Ventoux. I was sufficiently satisfied with what I had seen upon the mountain, and I turned my eyes back into myself, so that from that hour till we came to the bottom, no one heard me speak. . . . You see, most beloved father, that there is nothing in me which I desire to conceal from your eyes, since I not only disclose to you my whole life, but even my individual reflections. Father, I crave your prayers, that whatever in me is vague and unstable may be strengthened, and that the thoughts I waste abroad on many things, may be turned to that one thing, which is true, good and secure. Farewell.’1

  First Journey to Rome. At the end of this same year, 1336, Petrarch was able to set out upon his journey to Rome, a city which had long been the object of his enthusiastic devotion. On his way thither he halted for about three weeks, on account of the dangerous condition of the roads, at Capranica, thirty miles away, where he was the guest of Count Orso del Anguillara, the husband of Agnes, sister of the Bishop of Lombez. The bishop joined him here on January 26, 1337, and they presently started for Rome accompanied by a troupe of a hundred horsemen to protect them from the hostile Orsini and from the robbers who infested the country. During his stay in Rome, he visited the aged Stephen Colonna and wandered about the city under the guidance of his brother John of San Vito. The Baths of Diocletian used to be their favourite restingplace, and they would climb to its vaulted roof to enjoy the prospect and discuss together the history of the glorious past and the ignoble present of the Eternal City.

  Journey to the English Channel. In the month of August the poet had returned to Avignon. In the interval it would appear that he again visited Lombez, where he now had a canonicate, and from a poetical letter to the Bishop of Lombez about this time it would seem that he had made a sea-trip to some point from which he could see ‘the mountain hardened by Medusa’s eye’, that is, some part of the Mount Atlas chain, and proceeding northward came to the place ‘where the swollen wave of the British sea wears away with its tide the shores that stand doubtful which shall receive its stroke’. The allusions to this journey are so obscure, however, that many critics believe it to be imaginary.

  Vaucluse. Petrarch had always an abhorrence of the bustle and confusion of the city, and he especially detested Avignon, which he called Babylon and considered as the abode of every foul and wicked thing, so he determined to seek another home. He says long afterwards, in his ‘Letter to Posterity’, ‘I looked for some retreat to which I could escape for shelter, and at fifteen miles from that city is the very small but solitary and pleasant valley which is called Chiusa (Vaucluse), where, queen of all fountains, the Sorga gushes forth.1337. Vaucluse. Charmed by the beauty of the place, I brought my books thither and there fixed my abode.’

  Jerrold thus describes this wonderful valley:1

  ‘It is shut in by limestone rocks, one of which rises so tall and sheer at the end of the defile as to appear like the impassable gateway of some giant’s prison. Before we have advanced thus far, however, we are in a land of fruit-trees and gardens, through which the river wins its rapid, turbulent way, and as we learn from Petrarch, often holds its own against the gardeners, destroying in one night the work of months. As we proceed, figs and mulberries, vines and olives, give place to a growth of small shrubs, to the box and the ilex, that wizard tree which seems to have woven into its branches the immemorial magic of the world. The valley narrows, the aspect becomes more threatening, we have reached the imprisoning barrier whose arching pent-roof seems to frown upon us, and lo! beneath it is the famous speco, the grotto of the fountain of the Sorgue. The water is wonderfully dark in hue; no one seems to satisfy himself in describing its colour; it is not green, or violet, or blue, or black; it seems to be as elusive as the eyes of Laura, and perhaps best corresponds to Shelley’s ‘firmament of purple light’; it wells up pure and still into an untroubled lake, and, when it has reached the brim, it overflows and rushes on its impetuous course. The forbidding sternness of the grotto, the mysterious calm of the rising water, the force and fury of the torrent, the austere hillside, gradually lending itself to cultivation, and dimpling down the valley, almost a poem in itself, was surely no inadequate setting for a poet’s soul.’

  In this valley Petrarch now lived, devoting himself in part to the studies of which he was so fond and in part to the enjoyment of nature, a simple, comfortable, and idyllic life which he himself has repeatedly described.

  ‘In the middle of the night’, he says, ‘I arise. In the early morning I leave the house and think, study, read, and write under the open sky just as if I were at home. So far as is possible I keep sleep from my eyes, softness from my body, the desire of the senses from my soul, and indolence from my work. I wander around for whole days upon the sunny mountains and through the valleys and grottos, fresh with dew.’1

  And again (this is written long afterwards): ‘I never see the face of a woman, except that of my bailiff’s wife, and if you saw her, you might suppose yourself to be looking on a patch of the Libyan or Ethiopian desert. ’Tis a scorched, sunburnt countenance, with not a trace of freshness or juice remaining. Had Helen worn such a face, Troy would still be standing; had Lucretia and Virginia been thus dowered, Tarquinius had not lost his kingdom, nor Appius died in his prison. But let me not, after this description of her aspect, rob the goodwife of the eulogy due to her virtues. Her soul is as white as her skin is swarthy. . . . There never was a trustier, humbler, more laborious creature. In the sun’s full blaze, where the very grasshopper can scarce bear the heat, she spends her whole days in the fields and her tanned hide laughs at Leo and Cancer. At evening the old dame returns home, and busies her unwearied, invincible little body about household work, with such vigour that you might suppose her a lass fresh from the bedchamber. Not a murmur all this time, not a grumble, no hint of trouble in her mind, only incredible care lavished on her husband and children, on me, on my household, and on the guests who come to see me, and at the same time an incredible scorn for her own comfort. . . . Well, this is my eyes’ discipline. What shall I say of my ears? Here I have no solace of song or flute or viol, which, elsewhere, are wont to carry me out of myself; all such sweetness the breeze has wafted away from me. Here the only sounds are the occasional lowing of cattle and bleating of sheep, the songs of birds, and the ceaseless murmur of the stream. What of my tongue, by which I have often raised my own spirits, and sometimes perhaps those of others?Life at Vaucluse. Now it lies low and is often silent from dawn to dusk, for it has no one except me to talk to. As to my gullet and belly, I have so disciplined them, that my herdsman’s bread is often enough for me, and I even enjoy it, and I leave the white bread, brought me from a distance, to be eaten by the servants who fetched it. To such an extent does custom stand me in the stead of luxury. . . . Here I have fashioned me two little gardens, the most apt in the world to my fancy and desire; should I try to picture them to you, this letter would be long drawn out. In a word, I think the world scarce holds their like, and if I must confess my womanish frivolity, I am in a huff that such beauty should exist anywhere out of Italy. The one I always call my Transalpine Helicon, for it is bowered in shade, made for study as for nothing else, and consecrated to my Apollo. It lies close to the pool in which the Sorgue rises, beyond which is only a trackless crag, quite inaccessible except to wild animals and birds. My other garden lies close to my house; it has a better-tilled appearance and Bromê’s nursling (Bacchus) has his favourite plant there. This, strange to say, lies in the middle of the beautiful swift river, and close by, separated only by a little bridge at the end of the house, hangs the arch of a grotto of natural rock, which under this blazing sky makes the summer heat imperceptible. It is a place to fire the soul to study, and I think not unlike the little court where Cicero used to declaim his speeches, except that his place had no Sorgue flowing by it. Under this grotto, then, I sit at noon; my morning is spent on the hills, my evening in the meadows, or in that wilder little garden, close to the source where design has embellished nature, where there is a spot in mid-stream overshadowed by the lofty crag, a tiny spot indeed, but full of lively promptings by which even a sluggard soul may be goaded to high imaginings.’1

  Philip of Cabassoles. Petrarch had a neighbour who came from time to time to a castle on the heights overlooking Vaucluse, whom he often visited and to whom he soon became bound by ties of intimate friendship. This was Philip of Cabassoles, the Bishop of Cavaillon, a town not many miles away.

  Literary Work in Vaucluse. It was at Vaucluse that Petrarch’s most important literary work was done. Here he began his ambitious Latin epic Africa, in honour of Scipio Africanus. It was at this place that a great part of his letters were written, as well as nearly all his eclogues. Here he conceived his project of a great work on the ‘Illustrious Men of Roman History’. It was here that he developed the outlines of his work on the ‘Repose of the Cloister’ and ‘Concerning the Life of Solitude’. All these productions were written in Latin, but it was also here that the greater part of his Italian love songs were composed, since the solitude by which he had hoped to heal his passion had inflamed it anew.11337. From 1337 to 1353, although his residence was interrupted by a number of voyages and sojourns in other places, Vaucluse was Petrarch’s home.

  It was in this same year 1337 that Petrarch became the father of a boy to whom he gave the name John. Who was the boy’s mother is unknown. We learn through the bull of Pope Clement VI, by which, in September 1348, the child was made legitimate, that she was an unmarried woman, and it is probable she was the same by whom he had a daughter in 1343. From what he says in his ‘Letter to Posterity’ it would seem that his heart was not engaged. She may have been a woman of low origin with whom he became associated in Avignon. There is no evidence that she ever came to Vaucluse. The connexion seems to have attracted little attention, doubtless because such relations were common enough at this time even among the clergy, a mistress having been attributed to Pope Clement VI himself. Petrarch’s bitterest enemies never appear to have criticized or censured him on this account.

  Robert of Naples. 1338. As we have already seen, Robert, King of Naples, was Count of Provence, and therefore hereditary lord of Avignon and Petrarch’s suzerain. He was a lover of literature and a patron of learning. He had lived in Avignon from 1318 to 1324, while Petrarch was at Montpellier and Bologna, and in 1338 he sent to Petrarch an epitaph which he had composed upon his niece, the widow of King Louis X of France, and he asked Petrarch’s judgement upon it. The reply of the poet was full of enthusiasm if not of fulsome flattery. ‘An unwonted gleam’, he said, ‘has dazzled my eye. Blessed the pen to which such words were entrusted. What shall I first admire, the classical brevity of expression, the sublimity of thought, or the godlike charm of its eloquence?’1

  1339. It must be said in justice to Petrarch, that to the end of his life he remained an extravagant admirer of King Robert. It is likely that Dionysius, Petrarch’s confessor, had first called Robert’s attention to the poet. Dionysius had stopped at Avignon on his way from Paris to Naples, where he afterwards lived at the court of this king, who in March 1339 appointed him Bishop of Monopoli. The agency of the bishop is also suspected in the subsequent efforts made (in which the poet himself participated) to obtain for Petrarch the laurel crown which was offered to him the following year.

  The Laurel Crown. The Roman emperor Domitian, in imitation of the Panathenaea and the Pythian festivals,2 had decreed that every five years a contest in musical and gymnastic arts should be held, including literature and poetry. These festivals continued as long as the western empire existed, and a dim recollection of the coronation of the poets on the Capitol was preserved during the Middle Ages, and was renewed during the thirteenth century in laurel crowns (substituted for the oak leaves of Domitian), which were conferred upon poets at various times and places. This was the commencement of a title that is still perpetuated in the designation of a poet laureate in England. Petrarch had an intense longing for this laurel crown. Intertwined with this desire was his love for Laura, with whose name the laurel seemed in his imagination to be identified. He founded his claims to this classic honour principally upon his Latin productions, especially upon the great epic Africa, on which he was then working. But very little of this epic had yet been written, and, as he himself afterwards confessed, his reputation was hardly ripe for such an honour. At first he desired to receive this crown from King Robert, and wrote to Dionysius in 1339 that he would not wish it bestowed by any other hand, adding, ‘If I am of sufficient merit to be invited, well; if not, I shall pretend to have heard something, or as doubting the sense of the letter which he sent me in his supreme and most kindly condescension toward an unknown man, I shall go into those parts that I may seem to have been invited!’1

  Dionysius at Naples, the Colonna family at Rome, and his friends in Paris, all appear to have been enlisted in the cause, and the result was that in September 1340, while he was wandering alone in a meadow at Vaucluse, he received a letter from the Roman Senate inviting him to be crowned in that city, and at six in the evening of that day a messenger from Paris brought a letter from Robert de’ Bardi, chancellor of the University, inviting him to receive the laurel in that city.1340. He conferred with Cardinal Colonna as to which invitation he should accept. Naturally Colonna urged the claims of Rome, which was Petrarch’s own preference, and he accordingly accepted the invitation of the Senate, and proceeded to that city, but by way of Naples, where he visited King Robert. He thus describes what occurred.1341. ‘When we had talked together of a thousand different things, I showed him my poem Africa, which pleased him so much that he begged me, as a singular favour, to dedicate it to him. I could not but consent to such an honourable request, nor indeed had I any wish to refuse. And for that which was the object of my journey, he fixed a day on which he examined me continuously from midday till evening.Examination at Naples. And because the time was too short for the many matters which arose for discussion, he continued the examination during the two following days. So for three days he put my poor abilities to the proof, and at last pronounced me worthy to receive the laurel. He offered it to me there in Naples, and earnestly besought me to accept it there, but the love of Rome had more power over my mind than even the august wishes of that great king.’1

  Therefore Petrarch resumed his journey to Rome. King Robert would have accompanied him, to place the crown upon his head with his own hand, but the infirmities of age forbade it. When Petrarch left Naples, the king kissed him, and threw around him his own purple mantle, so that the poet should have the appropriate apparel for the ceremony. The crown was placed upon his head by the Senator Orso del Anguillara, upon the Capitol, on Easter Day, April 8, 1341, and a contemporary writer thus describes the event.The Coronation. ‘Twelve boys arrayed in scarlet, each fifteen years old, and all sons of distinguished nobles and citizens, declaimed many verses composed by Petrarch in praise of the Roman people. After them came six citizens dressed in green cloth, and wearing wreaths of flowers of various kinds. Then the Senator strode forward, his head decorated with a laurel wreath, and after he had seated himself on the chair in the Hall of the Assettamento, Francesco Petrarca was summoned by trumpet and fife, and advanced clothed in a long garment and cried three times, “Long live the Roman people, long live its Senators, and God maintain it in its freedom;” and then he kneeled before the Senator, who said, “I first crown merit”, and took the wreath from his own head and put it on that of Master Francesco, who declaimed a beautiful sonnet in praise of the brave old Romans, and the festival was ended with great praise of the poet, since the whole people cried, “Long live the Capitol and the poet!” ’11341. Besides the sonnet, which is now no longer extant, Petrarch delivered a short speech describing the difficulties of the art of poetry and its reward, the laurel, possessing and conferring immortality. He was then conducted to St. Peter’s, where he deposited the crown as an offering.2 In his diploma, as Gibbon says, ‘the title and prerogatives of poet laureate are revived after the lapse of thirteen hundred years, and he receives the perpetual privilege of wearing at his choice a crown of laurel, ivy, or myrtle, of assuming the poetic habit and of teaching, disputing, interpreting, and composing in all places whatsoever, and on all subjects of literature’.3

  The crown undoubtedly added greatly to Petrarch’s reputation, because it was the recognized symbol of distinction, and it gave him much greater power than he would otherwise have possessed, of disseminating among mankind the ‘new learning’ of which he was the foremost apostle.

  On leaving Rome, armed robbers fell upon him not far from the walls, and the escaped with difficulty back into the city. On the following day he departed again, protected by a troop of armed men, and from Pisa he wrote an account of the ceremony to King Robert.Parma. Thence he proceeded to Parma, and entered that city with Azzo da Correggio, who, with his brothers, had revolted against the Scaligers, to whom they owed their position, and had assumed the sovereignty of the city themselves. Here Petrarch remained for a year, and continued his work upon his epic Africa with such goodwill that he brought it near its completion.Blind man of Pontremoli. It was at this place that he was visited by an old blind man, who kept a school at Pontremoli, and who was filled with such ardent enthusiasm for the poet that, guided by his son, he followed him to Naples. Petrarch had already left that city, and the blind man then followed him to Rome, but found him gone, and returned home; but hearing afterwards that Petrarch was at Parma, he crossed the Apennines, found the object of his devotion, and for three days never left the poet’s side.

  It was while he was at Parma that Petrarch lost his early friend, the bishop, James Colonna. On the night of his death the poet had a dream of that event.1342. In January 1342 his confessor Dionysius died at Naples.

  Although the Correggi treated him with the utmost consideration during his stay, and he was reluctant to leave Italy, he was called back to Avignon, probably by Cardinal Colonna, in the spring of 1342.1342. Or perhaps another motive actuated him. On April 25, Pope Benedict XII died, and Clement VI succeeded him. Petrarch may well have been anxious to acquire the favour of the new pontiff, since his livelihood was largely dependent on papal patronage.

  The Romans sent an embassy to congratulate Clement on his accession, to solicit the return of the papacy to Rome, and to ask permission for a jubilee in that city in 1350. It is said that Petrarch was made a member of this embassy. This is not certain, but it is known that Cola di Rienzi was its spokesman, and that Petrarch formed his acquaintance while on this mission.Meets Rienzi. The poet also addressed to Clement a long epistle in verse, urging his return to the Holy City; but if he would not, then asking him to restore the churches there, and to celebrate the great jubilee therein. The latter favour was conceded, and the poet appears to have been rewarded for his effort by the grant of the priorate of Migliarino, in the diocese of Pisa.

  Debauchery in papal court. With the accession of Clement, the appearance of the papal court was greatly changed, and a magnificence and luxury were introduced theretofore unknown. Clement was a great lover of horses, and celebrated for his gallantries. Promotions in the Church went by favour, and were distributed largely by Cécile de Commenges, Viscountess of Turenne, who apparently governed the papal curia in much the same way that Pompadour and Du Barry reigned in the Court of Louis XV. The immoralities which prevailed were afterwards denounced by Petrarch in unmeasured terms, not only in his eclogues and letters, but in three sonnets, the publication of which was subsequently forbidden by the Index. One of these sonnets, Fiamma dal Ciel (written probably between 1347 and 1351), is as follows:

  • A fire from heaven rain upon thy head,
  • Base creature! who in humble penury born,
  • With water from the stream and acorns fed,
  • Art grown so great in wealth from others torn!
  • How it delights thee to do deeds unjust!
  • O nest of treason, hatching every ill,
  • Servant of wine and gluttony and lust,
  • Where luxury to the brim her cup doth fill!
  • Within thy halls young girls and aged sires
  • Go wantoning together, while the fiend
  • Stirs with his bellows the infernal fires!
  • Of old, in such soft shades thou wert not screened,
  • But naked to the winds, mid thorns, unshod,
  • And now thy noisome stench ascends to God!
  • cxxxvi

  His personal relations with Clement, however, were always friendly. The pope was uniformly kind and generous, whether it was that he did not know of these invectives, or was magnanimous enough to overlook them, or whether it was on account of the feeling of reverence and almost of sanctity which a great poet and scholar at that time inspired.

  1342. Returns to Vaucluse. Petrarch betook himself again to his solitude at Vaucluse, where, however, his studies were interrupted by floods of letters from all parts of Europe, and by frequent visits from hosts of admirers.Epidemic of versemaking. A mania for composing poetry became epidemic. Ecclesiastics, artisans, and peasants felt the call of the Muses, and began to write in rhyme, sending their verses to Petrarch for his judgement and criticism. An old man reproached him because his son, misled by the poet’s example, had given up his legal studies and consumed his time in making verses.1

  In this same year of 1342 Petrarch’s brother Gherardo abandoned his worldly life, and entered the Carthusian monastery at Montrieu, near Marseilles.Gherardo enters convent. The occasion for this step is said to have been the death of the woman to whom he had been deeply devoted. Petrarch appears to have sympathized with his brother’s misfortune, and one of his tenderest sonnets2 is believed to have been inspired by this circumstance.

  1343. In January 1343 King Robert died, leaving as his heir his granddaughter, Joanna, a girl of sixteen, married to her cousin Andrew, son of the King of Hungary, also a minor. A wild factional struggle broke out in Naples concerning her guardianship, and the pope, as the over-lord of the kingdom, selected Petrarch, as his representative, to go to Naples and maintain the rights of the Papal See.Embassy to Naples. Petrarch found everything in confusion and disorder. A crafty Franciscan monk, the former teacher of Andrew, ruled the kingdom in the name of the youthful pair. Cruel gladiatorial sports were openly given, from which Petrarch fled in horror; crime was rampant everywhere; a dreadful storm wrought havoc in the harbour and the city. Near the close of the year he departed from Naples, having failed to accomplish the mission which the pope had entrusted to him. He did not return at once to Avignon, but stopped on the way at Parma, and remained there more than a year.Parma. Second visit.

  1344. During his stay there were quarrels among the Correggi, and in November 1344 the lords of Milan and Mantua laid siege to the city. For some three months Petrarch endured the discomforts of a beleaguered town, and then determined to escape.1345. On the night of February 23, after passing successfully through the camp of the besiegers with a small unarmed escort, he was attacked by a troop of robbers and was only saved by flight. His horse fell and threw him, the guides lost their way, and Petrarch, wounded from the fall, spent the night upon the ground in the midst of a raging storm. By this storm, however, his little company avoided an ambush which had been prepared for them, and the next day proceeded over the mountain paths to Modena, and thence to Bologna.

  Verona. Letters of Cicero. Later he visited Verona, at which place he had the good fortune to find in a church library a valuable manuscript of the letters of Cicero, probably his letters to Atticus.1 He immediately made with his own hand a copy of this new treasure.

  Near the close of this year we find him again in Vaucluse, where he writes to Cardinal Colonna, giving a lively description of his struggles with the water-nymphs, who had broken a dam he had built for the protection of his garden.

  1346. Refuses papal secretaryship. In 1346 Pope Clement offered him the influential and lucrative position of papal secretary, but the poet declined on the ground that he could not give up his liberty, as he would have to do if he accepted such a place. The pope was not offended at his refusal, but bestowed upon him a canonicate at Parma, and later (probably in 1348) the office of archdeacon in the same city. According to the ecclesiastical custom of the time, it was not necessary that these offices should be personally administered by those who held them. They were sinecures granted by the pope as a pure matter of patronage.

  Rienzi inspires Petrarch. We have seen that Petrarch first met Cola di Rienzi when the latter had come to Avignon, in 1342, as the spokesman of the embassy to Clement VI. It was during this visit that Rienzi first inspired the poet with his own ardent zeal for the regeneration of Rome, until Petrarch was moved to tears by Rienzi’s picture of the miseries and oppressions inflicted upon the Eternal City, the city that, as they both believed, had been designed by God to be the capital of the world, the pope and emperor being the representatives, the one of its spiritual, the other of its temporal dominion. Petrarch’s mind was fertile soil for the sowing of Rienzi’s propaganda. From his classical studies the poet had imbibed even the prejudices and aspirations of the ancient Romans, until he had almost come to consider as barbarian all things that were not Roman.1 In a letter, written almost immediately after Rienzi’s departure from Avignon, Petrarch says, ‘When I recall to my mind the most holy and weighty discourse which you held with me three days ago . . . I become all enkindled, and am as though I deemed an oracle had issued from the divine sanctuary, and seem to myself to have listened to a god rather than a man. So prophetically did you seem to deplore the present state, nay rather, the downfall and ruin of the republic, so penetratingly to put the fingers of your eloquence upon our wounds, that, as often as the sound of your words returns to my ears in memory, tears rise to my eyes, and grief comes back into my soul. . . . Often, with my mind wavering between one emotion and the other, I say to myself, Oh, if ever! Oh, if it might happen in my days! Oh, if I might be a partaker in such a splendid work and in so much glory!’1

  1347. Rienzi becomes Tribune. On May 20, 1347, Rienzi accomplished that remarkable yet bloodless revolution by which it was believed that Rome was to be delivered from the tyranny of its nobles, the old freedom of the city re-established, and all Italy reunited in a single commonwealth. This too was Petrarch’s dream, the dream of united Italy, not realized until five hundred years later, when it became an accomplished fact under Cavour, Garibaldi, and Victor Emmanuel. But it seemed then as if it were on the eve of accomplishment. Rienzi became master of Rome under the ancient and honoured title of Tribune of the People, and caused new ordinances to be established by acclamation for reforming many of the abuses which existed. The domination of the noble houses, with the Colonna and Orsini at their head, had been sheer brigandage. But now every murder was to be punished with death; trials must be completed within fifteen days; guards were to be placed in every part of the city and upon the roads around it; widows and orphans were to be befriended, and cloisters and churches protected by the State; the nobles were forbidden to fortify their dwellings or to give asylum to malefactors. Rienzi demanded a colleague, and chose for that office the vicar of the Pope, in order to conciliate the Holy See. Absolute power was given to the tribunes; the nobles themselves were compelled to swear allegiance to the Commonwealth; strict justice was administered without regard to the rank of the offender; public tranquillity was restored; the cities and communes of Italy were invited to send representatives to a general parliament to consider the peace and freedom of the whole peninsula; the pope himself at first confirmed the election of the two tribunes, and the sovereigns of Europe sent ambassadors to confer with them.

  Petrarch’s enthusiasm. Petrarch was dazzled by the delightful illusions which these things promised. He sent to Rienzi numerous letters of advice, congratulation, and encouragement. His exasperation against the nobles who had oppressed the city was unbounded. Fearing lest the Romans should again fall under their yoke, he even advised that no quarter be given them, since mercy to them was cruelty to the State. But among these nobles were his own friends of the house of Colonna, of whom he declared at a later time that no princely house in the world was so dear to him, yet added, ‘Dearer to me is Italy, dearer Rome, dearer the public good.’1 He seemed to fancy himself another Brutus, and denounced the Orsini and Colonna families as usurpers and barbarians, the former coming from Spoleto, and the latter from the banks of the distant Rhine.

  It is easy to see that a continuance of his former relations with Cardinal Colonna would now become impossible. Even his presence at the papal court at Avignon became embarrassing, for the pope soon repudiated Rienzi, whose messenger was beaten and insulted on his way to Avignon. Petrarch determined, therefore, to leave Provence, and betake himself to Italy.

  1347. Petrarch leaves for Italy. On November 20, 1347, he set out from Avignon for Rome. But in the very beginning of his journey, news came that things were going ill with Rienzi. His sudden rise to power had turned his head.Rienzi’s follies. He appeared in public with great splendour. He bathed in the porphyry vase where Constantine was baptized; he placed on his head the ‘seven spiritual crowns’; he coined money in his own name; he remained seated while the nobles stood bareheaded before him; he summoned the two claimants to the imperial throne, Louis the Bavarian and Charles IV, that he might decide between them; he demanded that the papal court should return to Rome, and he declared that even the right of proclaiming pope or emperor belonged to the Roman people.1

  Petrarch remonstrated, begging Rienzi not to destroy his own work nor tarnish his fame, nor make of himself a spectacle at which his friends must weep and his enemies laugh. ‘I was hastening toward you’, he wrote, ‘with all my heart, but I have changed my plan.’ After a short stay at Genoa he proceeded, not to Rome, but to Parma, and there he awaited the outcome.Parma. Third visit.

  Rienzi’s troops had won in a fierce fight with the barons, close to the walls of Rome, in which the leading members of the Colonna family were killed, so that the aged Stephen was left almost the only survivor, yet the tribune frittered away his victory in vain triumphant processions, and a month later, after having been excommunicated by the papal legate, he was deserted by the people, when a small band of reactionaries under the Count of Minorbino took possession of the city.Rienzi. His overthrow. Rienzi became panic-stricken, laid aside the insignia of his office, took refuge in the castle of St. Angelo, and thence fled in disguise to Naples, while the nobles re-entered and took their revenge. ‘At least’, said Petrarch, ‘he might have died gloriously in the Capital which he had freed.’2

  Two of the Colonnas who had been killed in the fight with Rienzi had been friends of Petrarch, and after many months’ embarrassing delay, urged by his friends, the poet wrote a letter of condolence to the Cardinal which, although beginning with a feeling acknowledgement of all that he owed to his princely patron, continued and concluded like a ‘rhetorical exercise upon death’.1

  1354. Five years later, when Rienzi was a prisoner at Avignon, Petrarch urged the Roman people to demand his liberation, which Rienzi afterwards secured, not on the merits of the case, but (as Petrarch relates the incredible tale) because it was rumoured and believed that the tribune was a poet! The papal court was unwilling to destroy a thing so precious! So Rienzi, in 1354, was sent back to Rome with the title of senator, but after four months of unsuccessful administration he was massacred in a tumult of the people, which had been fomented by the barons.

  1347. At Parma, Petrarch took possession of the canonicate which had been conferred upon him in that city, and afterwards learning of Rienzi’s overthrow, he determined upon a longer stay, built himself a house, and busied himself with the completion of his Latin epic Africa.

  1348. In the beginning of 1348 he went to Verona, where he was the guest of Pastrengo and of Azzo da Correggio, and where, on January 25, he was witness to a terrible earthquake.

  The Plague. But a more dreadful calamity than this was close at hand. In the beginning of 1348 the plague appeared, brought by merchants out of India through Constantinople. Whole cities were depopulated, fertile districts were laid waste, and the bonds of social order were dissolved. It spread rapidly. As early as January it appeared at Avignon, and lasted for seven months. Those who were attacked generally died at the end of three days. It was at its height in Lent, and during the three days which preceded the fourth Sunday thereof 1,400 persons died in that city.1Laura’s death. Among its victims was Laura. She fell ill, probably about April 2 or 3, and died upon the 6th of that month, as appears from Petrarch’s note on the margin of his manuscript of Virgil, written by him when the news reached him on May 19, on his return to Parma. The note is as follows:

  Note in Virgil MS. ‘Laura, distinguished by her own virtues and long celebrated in my songs, first appeared to my eyes in the days of my youth, in the year of our Lord 1327, on the 6th day of the month of April, in the church of Santa Clara at Avignon, in the morning hour; and in the same city, on the same month of April, on the same 6th day and at the same first hour, but in the year 1348, that light was withdrawn from the light of day, when I by chance was then at Verona, ignorant, alas! of my fate. But the unhappy news reached me at Parma by the letter of my Lewis, in that year, in the month of May, on the 19th day, in the morning. That most chaste and beautiful body was buried in the Franciscan church, on the same day of her death, in the evening. But I persuade myself that her soul indeed (as Seneca says of Africanus) returned to heaven from whence it came. And it seemed fitting that with bitter sweetness I should write this in mournful memory of the event, and particularly in this place which often comes under my eyes, so that I may realize by frequently looking at it that there ought to be nothing more that will please me in this life, and now since this, my greater bond is broken, that it is time for me to flee from Babylon, and that under the guidance of God I may be moved by this reflection on my most fleeting life, that it will consist (to one who thinks of the past in a clear and manly way) of nothing but empty cares, vain hopes and events that are wholly unexpected.’1

  Other friends die. Nor was this the only loss Petrarch sustained during this dreadful year. The pest counted many of his friends among its victims—Robert de’ Bardi in Paris, who sought to bring the poet thither to receive in that city the laurel crown; Sennuccio del Bene, to whom Petrarch had written, and from whom he had received many a sonnet, and who had been his confidant regarding Laura and his love; also Cardinal Colonna, in whose house the poet had so long been an inmate. In spite of their estrangement during the preceding year, Petrarch was deeply affected. Only three of his intimate friends now remained, Settimo, Laelius, and Socrates.

  The poet could no longer remain at Parma, and he set forth upon his journeys. We find him with the Gonzagas at Mantua, visiting the birthplace of Virgil; at Verona, renewing his companionship with Pastrengo; and in March 1349 at Padua, where James II of Carrara, a type of the Italian tyrant common at that time, had been ruling the city since 1345, after putting to death his cousin Marsilio, who was lawfully entitled to the throne.1349. Padua. James II of Carrara. He was, however, an able ruler, and a patron of literature and the sciences. He had pressingly invited Petrarch to reside at Padua, and had bestowed upon him a canonicate in that city. Petrarch, who could see little evil in those who were personally kind to him, accordingly took up his abode there, and his relations with Carrara soon became those of the most intimate friendship. On June 20 he took possession of his new office, and he made short visits to other places. For instance, he was entertained at a banquet on June 28 by the Gonzagas at their castle of Luzzera, which he describes as ‘a home of flies and fleas, enlivened by the croaking of an army of frogs’.

  But the time was now approaching for the great jubilee at Rome, and the poet determined to betake himself with other pilgrims to the Holy City.1350. He visited Verona on the way thither, he stopped at Parma during the heat of summer, and in October he paused for a few days at Florence, the city from which his father had been exiled, which he himself had never seen, and into which, according to the decree of expulsion, he was forbidden to enter.Florence. But no one thought of enforcing the prohibition, and among those who came to welcome him was Boccaccio, who was the third with Petrarch and Dante in the great trinity of the founders of Italian literature.Boccaccio. There began an intimacy, the most important in Petrarch’s later years. Here, too, began his attachment to Francesco Nelli, prior of the church of the Holy Apostles in Florence, whom Petrarch nicknamed ‘Simonides’.

  The Jubilee. On his way from Florence to Rome, Petrarch injured himself so seriously by a fall from his horse, that he was laid up at Rome for a fortnight. Of this visit he writes, ‘It is fourteen years since I first went to Rome from a desire to see its wonders; after a few years’ interval I was drawn there for the second time by the sweet, but perhaps immature desire for the laurel; my third and fourth journeys were occasioned by compassion for my illustrious friends;1 this, my fifth, and it may be my last Roman pilgrimage, is so much happier than the others, as the care of the soul is more excellent than that of the body, and eternal salvation more to be desired than human glory.’

  The Colonna family at this time was wellnigh extinct. Stephen was still living, after the death of all his sons, but he had fallen into the dementia that so often accompanies old age.

  Petrarch did not stay long at Rome among the multitudes of pilgrims that thronged the city.Arezzo. On his return journey he stopped at Arezzo, his native town, where the citizens were delighted to welcome a man who had given such honour to his birthplace, and the multitude marched before him in the street as they would have done if he had been a king. He was shown the house where he was born. ‘A little house,’ he calls it, ‘and one fit for an exile,’ and he was told that the city had forbidden any change to be made in it.

  Padua. He stopped a short time a Florence, and proceeded thence to Padua, where he found to his horror that his friend James of Carrara had been murdered in his palace by one whom he had made a member of his household.

  Invitation from Florence. Soon after his arrival in Padua, the government of Florence determined to revoke the decree of exile and of confiscation of Petrarch’s property. An interested motive was behind this tardy act of justice. The Florentines desired to establish a university in their city, and were anxious that it should be honoured by this distinguished poet and representative of the new culture in Italy. The decree of restoration to civil rights was brought to him by his friend Boccaccio, with the invitation to a chair in this new institution of learning. Petrarch wrote an elaborate letter of thanks which, however, was quite indefinite as to accepting the chair, and later the Florentines, finding he did not come, revoked the decree restoring his property! The poet justly observed, that other cities had treated him far better than his own, and he visited Florence no more.

  Padua had lost its attraction for him now that his friend was no longer living, and although Francesco, the new lord of Carrara, continued toward him the same favourable disposition that his father had shown, yet Petrarch’s restless nature was not inclined to remain in that city.1351. Return to Vaucluse. He resolved to return to Vaucluse, where he had left the greater part of his library. He departed from Padua on the 4th of May, 1351, and on the 27th of June we find him again at his home, in the narrow valley of the Sorgue. Here amid the scenes with which Laura was closely connected, the recollections of the past, and visions of the cherished image which he would see no more in life, again beset him, and destroyed his peace of mind, and many of his most exquisite sonnets and canzoni bear testimony to the depth of his sorrow.

  Papal secretaryship. It was about this time that another offer was made to him of the position of secretary to the pope. Two cardinals, friends of his, pressed him so earnestly to accept it, that he unwillingly consented. It was always hard for him to say ‘no’. But he wrote the necessary Latin thesis required of candidates as a trial of skill, in such an elaborate and elegant style, that it was considered ‘unfit for the humble and simple correspondence of the Holy See’! and Petrarch, being asked to simplify it, ‘spread the wings of his spirit to lift himself so high as to vanish from the sight of those who would make him a slave.’ He afterwards wrote to his friend Simonides: ‘They wanted to send me to school at my age, to teach me to write in a low and crawling manner.’ And again, ‘I am well pleased that those who thought themselves high up, found I was flying quite above their sphere. But I shall not expose myself another time to the same danger.’1

  1352. Quarrel with the physicians. In 1352 Clement fell ill, and Petrarch wrote him a letter filled with flattering and friendly expressions but warning him against his physicians. The pope told his doctors of this, and one of them wrote a personal attack upon the poet, to which he replied, first in a letter filled with abuse, and afterwards in an elaborate polemic denouncing the profession. The medicine of that day was for the most part ignorant quackery, yet for all this, it was a most unedifying squabble in which Petrarch was engaged, quite unworthy of his reputation. His ‘Invectives against a Certain Physician’ were composed in part at Avignon and in part afterwards at Milan. At the latter place the poet had been suffering from the tertian fever, and its effects can be seen in these unfortunate productions. They sound as if a sudden madness had overtaken him. They are filled with vilification, and in one of them occurs a passage which, if it were not inconsistent with the rest of his life and writings, would condemn his character to the charge of unfeeling brutality. For he says, ‘Doctors can no longer deceive and murder the educated, but only the ignorant masses, and there is very little need to weep over the destruction of these.’1

  And this from the enthusiast who was sharing Rienzi’s dreams of popular liberty! If the two things are to be reconciled, it must be because Petrarch’s sympathy was for the Roman citizen rather than for the human being.

  1352. Resolves to return to Italy. Petrarch’s restless disposition again induced him to depart from Avignon; possibly these controversies hastened his determination. He set forth upon his journey to Italy, November 16, 1352, and stopped on the way at Cavaillon to bid good-bye to his friend the bishop. A terrific storm came on, and after passing a sleepless night and learning that the road to Nice and Genoa was beset with armed bands, he followed the bishop’s counsel and delayed his departure, returning in the meantime to Vaucluse. On December 3, Pope Clement died and Innocent VI succeeded, a pontiff who reformed many of the abuses of the Church, but a man of limited intelligence who had considered Petrarch a sorcerer on account of his intimate acquaintance with the poems of Virgil!

  Before his final departure, Petrarch determined to visit his brother, Gherardo, in the Carthusian monastery of Montrieu, and there the brothers met for the last time. It was April 26, 1353, before the poet finally left Vaucluse for Italy.1353. On passing through Avignon he did not go to the palace to pay his respects to the pope. Cardinal Talierand urged him not to leave without performing this duty, but Petrarch refused. ‘I feared’, he said, ‘to do him harm by my sorceries, or else that he would do me harm by his credulity.’1

  Final departure from Vaucluse. Petrarch appears to have undertaken this final journey to Italy without any specific destination in view. He had already a house at Parma, and possessed a canonicate at that city as well as one near Pisa and one at Padua. His son and some of his dearest friends were at Verona, and at all these places he would have been more than welcome. But when on his way he halted at Milan, he met John Visconti, archbishop and ruler of that city and then the most powerful of the princes of Italy.1353. Milan and Visconti. Visconti saw the advantage of having a man so distinguished in learning and literature as an ornament of his court, and in the most flattering terms he asked the poet as a personal favour to remain at Milan. He anticipated Petrarch’s objection that he desired quiet and an opportunity to work by offering to place at his disposal a house in a retired situation and amid healthful surroundings, close to the church of St. Ambrose and with a delightful view of the Alps, as peaceful a retreat as he could find in the country. Petrarch should be the master of his own time and no service was expected of him, the poet’s presence alone being sufficient honour.

  His friends remonstrate. Petrarch could not resist these flattering importunities. He yielded and thereby incurred the reproaches of some of his closest friends, for Visconti was a tyrant who ruled his subjects and his dominions with despotic power. That Petrarch should become a satellite at his court was utterly inconsistent with the poet’s championship of the popular liberties of the people of Rome when he espoused the cause of Rienzi. From Petrarch’s Florentine friends, Nelli and Boccaccio, the remonstrances were emphatic. Boccaccio employed Petrarch’s own device of allegory and upbraided Sylvanus (Petrarch) for betraying Amaryllis (Italy) and aiding the oppressor, Egon (Visconti), the false priest of Pan, a monster of treachery and crime. Petrarch’s replies to his friends were quite inconclusive, and give the impression that he could not resist the solicitations of the great and of those who were kind to him, and that he had been overcome by the stronger will and the tactful methods of Visconti.1

  Visconti. When this powerful family once got the laureate in its possession it used him not only for display but also for actual service. He was in the cortège that went to meet Cardinal Albornoz, the Pope’s ambassador, when his horse shied and landed him on the edge of an embankment, where he might have been killed but for the courageous aid of Galeazzo Visconti, nephew of the archbishop, a man with whom in after years the poet lived on terms of intimacy.

  The Genoese, overthrown by the Venetians in a naval war, offered their city to Visconti, and Petrarch was asked by the archbishop to deliver to the embassy that came to convey the offer, a speech of acceptance, but he deemed it more fitting that this should be done by the archbishop himself. Visconti now sought peace with Venice, and Petrarch was sent as an ambassador to the Venetians to secure it.Embassy to Venice. On November 8 he delivered before the Doge and Council a speech filled with humanitarian sentiments and classical allusions. But the practical statesmen of the victorious republic (which was now allied with a number of independent cities of northern Italy and had sought with good promise of success the support of the Emperor Charles IV) rejected the overtures of Milan, and Petrarch’s mission was without result.

  1354. Archbishop Visconti dies. Archbishop Visconti died on October 5 of the following year. His three nephews, Matteo, Bernabò, and Galeazzo, succeeded to the sovereignty. Matteo was a debauchee who took little part in the government and died soon afterwards, murdered, it was charged, by his brothers, who shared in the succession. Bernabò was a monster of cruelty. Galeazzo was a brilliant but unscrupulous man, who so dazzled Petrarch that he won his close friendship and his most unrestrained admiration and praise.

  Petrarch announces the succession. On October 7, 1354, the new lords of Milan took formal possession of their inherited domain. Petrarch was commissioned to announce the change of government, and proceeded to deliver an address containing a eulogy of the archbishop and an admonition to his hearers that they should now serve the new sovereigns with equal devotion. His speech was interrupted by the court astrologer, who declared that the favourable moment had come for executing the deed of partition between the heirs of the throne. Petrarch accordingly desisted. In a few moments the astrologer learned that the conjunction of the planets was still not precisely what was desired and asked him to resume, but the orator laughingly answered that he had finished, so the multitude waited in silence for the auspicious moment.1

  Since the fall of Rienzi had blighted all hope of delivering Rome from oppression by means of a popular tribune, Petrarch had become insistent that the emperor should re-establish his authority in the imperial city. He had written to Charles IV as early as February 1351, imploring him to come to Rome to receive the imperial crown.Charles IV comes to Italy. This letter had been followed by others, and in the fall of 1354 came the welcome news that the emperor was on his way to Italy, whereupon Petrarch sent him still another epistle comparing him to Aeneas seeking his father Anchises in Hades! The lords of Milan were perhaps not unwilling that their poet laureate should be on friendly terms with Charles, as they themselves desired amicable relations with him, since his friendship with Venice and her allied cities in northern Italy boded them no good. When Charles arrived at Mantua, in November, they sent an embassy to him. Petrarch was not among the ambassadors. Probably his fruitless mission to Venice and his impractical character admonished the Visconti that a more skilled diplomat was needed. Charles, who had little ambition, showed a strong inclination for peace and a desire to replenish his exhausted treasury for his own kingdom of Bohemia, so it was settled that the Visconti were to be his vicars and representatives in Milan and Genoa, and were to pay him a large sum of money. A few days after the return of this embassy to Milan, Petrarch received a formal invitation from the emperor to visit him at Mantua.Petrarch visits him. The poet did not delay, but set forth on December 12. Charles received him in a most friendly manner, and long conferences followed night after night. Charles asked the poet about his writings and especially concerning his book The Lives of Illustrious Men, and requested that it might be dedicated to him. Petrarch told him that he would be worthy of this when he should have joined the ranks of the great, not by the splendour of a name or the glitter of a crown alone, but by noble actions and a virtuous soul.1 He presented to the emperor a number of coins bearing the effigies of the Caesars and asked him to emulate their deeds. Charles took all this in good part and invited Petrarch to accompany him to Rome, since he said he wished to see the city with the poet’s eyes and not merely with his own. This invitation, however, Petrarch was unable to accept. Possibly the Visconti would not have it so. Presently the emperor visited Milan and became their guest, and was crowned with the iron crown of Lombardy in the church of St. Ambrose. Then, proceeding to Rome, he received the imperial crown on Easter Day in that city.1355. Coronation.

  Charles IV had owed his election to papal support, and his presence in Italy was with the approval of the pope, to whom the emperor was uniformly submissive. He had secretly agreed long before with the predecessor of the present pontiff, that he would depart from Rome on the very day of his coronation, and he kept his word, returning by way of Pisa, where on May 14 he bestowed the laurel crown on Zanobi da Strada, a former friend and correspondent of Petrarch. His act in making this respectable but commonplace versifier a rival to our poet has never been explained. Possibly the emperor was piqued because Petrarch would not go to Rome with him; perhaps he wanted a laureate of his own and Zanobi was the only one available.

  Charles IV leaves Italy. The emperor proceeded northward in June, to Petrarch’s intense disgust and mortification, and returned to Germany. The poet now addressed to him a long letter filled with reproaches. ‘A noble thing have you accomplished, great Caesar, by your march through Italy, so long postponed, and by your hasty return. You bring home the iron and the golden crown, but at the same time a mere empty name of imperial authority. You will be called emperor of the Romans, while in truth you are only king of Bohemia. Would to God that you were not! Perhaps then your ambition, confined within too narrow limits, would try to rise and your needs would bestir you to recover your patrimony.1355. Laelius brought me your farewell, which has been for me like the stroke of a dagger. He sent to me from you an antique with an image of Caesar. If this medal could have spoken, what would it not have said to you to prevent you from making a shameful retreat! Farewell, Caesar, compare that which you leave with that which you go to seek.’1 Petrarch has been much praised for these bold words, and it has been said that they also speak well for the magnanimity of Charles, who could read them and still maintain his friendship and kindly spirit for their author. I find no evidence, however, that Charles ever received this letter. It may well be that it was never sent.

  After his departure civil war broke out in Italy on every side.Embassy to Prague. The rulers of a number of the smaller Lombard cities, fearing the annihilation of their power by the Visconti, united against them, and the latter, threatened by many foes and alarmed at the report that the king of Hungary was arming for an invasion of Italy and that the emperor was likely to join the coalition, were anxious to detach him from the ranks of their adversaries and resolved to send Petrarch to Charles at Prague, hoping that his winning personality might accomplish better results than an ordinary diplomatic embassy. Petrarch learned while upon this mission that it was not the emperor’s intention nor that of the king of Hungary to invade Italy, but Charles’s representative in Tuscany took part openly against the Visconti and even ventured to summon them as common criminals before his tribunal, a measure which they pretended to believe was not authorized by the emperor. But though Petrarch was not wholly successful in his mission to Bohemia, he was treated personally almost as if he were a member of the imperial family. Presents and favours were bestowed upon him, and after his departure he was made a Count Palatine. Still later the Empress Anna wrote him an autograph letter announcing the birth of a son.

  He returned to Milan in September to find the Visconti in serious trouble. The cities of the Lombard League were waging relentless war against them, and had desolated extensive territories with fire and sword. Important places were torn from their sovereignty. Among others, Genoa recovered her independence. An extraordinary thing occurred at Pavia.1357. Bussolari. James Bussolari, an Augustinian monk, filled with enthusiasm for democratic ideas, led an insurrection against the Beccaria, the reigning house in that city, organized a republican government, and expelled the tyrants. This was a movement which any friend of Rienzi should have supported. But the Beccaria made an alliance with the Visconti.1357. The allies besieged the city but failed to take it, and later, Galeazzo, unable to renew the siege, sought to secure its peaceful surrender by diplomatic means. He persuaded Petrarch that Bussolari was a mere adventurer, and the poet addressed to the monk a long epistle urging him to renounce his authority as inconsistent with his monastic duties and to co-operate in the re-establishment of peace. Evidently Petrarch’s association with the Visconti had greatly weakened his enthusiasm for popular government. Naturally his letter was fruitless. The courageous monk continued to defend the freedom of Pavia for two years longer. Finally, however, it was compelled to surrender to Galeazzo.

  Linterno. In 1357, in order to avoid the violent heat of the summer, Petrarch rented a house at Garignano, a short distance from Milan, a house which he called ‘Linterno’ from the name of the country seat of Scipio Africanus. From this place he writes to his friend Settimo, who had asked for a description of his life, his occupations, his projects, &c., a letter containing the following: ‘My health is so good, my body so robust, that neither my riper age nor more serious occupations, neither abstinence nor blows can succeed in entirely expelling that obstinate beast of the flesh upon which I am always making war. . . . So far as my fortune is concerned I am in a golden mean, equally separated from the two extremes.Life in Milan. I enjoy a happy mediocrity except in one single point, which may excite envy, and that is that I enjoy much more consideration than I desire and more than is good for me. Not only the greatest prince in Italy and all his court cherish and honour me, but his people do me more honour than I deserve and love me without knowing me and without seeing me, for I seldom show myself, and this is perhaps the reason for their love. . . . I live in a retired corner of the city on the west side. An ancient spirit of devotion attracts the people every Sunday to the church of St. Ambrose, of which I am a neighbour; the rest of the week it is a desert. . . . I love solitude and silence, but I am a prattler among my friends. This is so perhaps because I see them rarely. I compensate for the chatter of a day by the silence of a year. When my friends are gone I become mute again. There is nothing so fatiguing as intercourse with the public or with some one we do not love and who has not the same interests that we have. As soon as I felt the approach of summer I took a pleasant country house, a league from Milan, where the air is very pure. I am there now.’1

  1359. Letter on Dante. Early in the spring of 1359 he received a visit at Milan from his friend Boccaccio, who, on returning to Florence, sent him a copy of Dante’s Divine Comedy, which Petrarch had never read. In his letter to Boccacio acknowledging the gift, he tells the reason for this, and takes occasion to repel a rumour that he hated and despised this great poet.1359. On Dante. ‘Why should I hate him?’ he asks; ‘I never saw him but once in my childhood, or rather he was shown to me. He grew up with my father and my grandfather, older than the one, younger than the other. The same whirlwind carried them away from their country on the same day. . . . My father yielded to fortune and busied himself with bringing up his family. The other, on the contrary, resisted, and followed the path he had taken, thinking only of glory and neglecting all else. Neither the injustice of his fellow citizens nor his own quarrels, nor exile, nor poverty, nor the love of wife and children — nothing could distract him from his studies, although poetry demands silence and repose. In that, I cannot too much admire and praise him. I see in this reason for loving him and never for hating him, and still less for despising him. His genius and his style, excellent in their class, put him beyond the reach of contempt. This calumny is founded upon the fact that in my early youth, when I was hunting with incredible ardour for books that were considered lost and of which there remained scarcely a hope, I showed less eagerness for a book I could easily procure. I admit the fact but deny the evil intention. At this time I was devoted to the common tongue. I knew nothing better. It never came into my head that I could rise higher. As youth is flexible, drawn to admiration and imitation of what it admires, I feared that in reading the works of those who had written in the same language, I would become, without knowing it or wishing it, their copyist. Perhaps there was too much confidence and presumption in my act, but I wanted to rise without the help of others, to fly with my own wings with a manner and style that was peculiar to myself, in a word to be original. It is for others to judge if I have succeeded. Let me not be accused of being a plagiarist. If there is found in my writings anything that resembles what is read in the writings of another, it is pure chance that has caused it. I have always carefully avoided plagiarism and even imitation. If shame and modesty had not had this effect on me, a certain pride of youth would have produced it. But now, being cured of the fear I had of becoming a copyist, I read everything with pleasure, and above all the author in question to whom I award the prize in the eloquence of the common tongue. . . . One of the reasons which made me renounce the Italian language which occupied my youth is that I feared that which I saw happening to others and above all to this man, whose verses I heard torn to pieces on the crossways and in the theatres, since I did not dare to flatter myself that I could make tongues any more flexible and the pronunciation of my verses softer. . . .1359. On Dante. Those who are envious of me insist that I am envious of this poet. I have long said I am envious of no one, but perhaps I do not deserve to be credited upon my word. Let us seek the truth. How could I be envious of a man who passed his whole life in a kind of work which only served to amuse my youth, a man who had made his principal and perhaps his only occupation that which to me was only a game and trial of my wit? Tell me, I ask you, is there any reason for envy in this? What could I envy him? The hoarse applause of the fullers, cabmen, butchers, and other people of this kind, whose praises do more harm than honour? I rejoice and congratulate myself that with Virgil and Homer I am deprived of these things.’1

  In spite of his disclaimer, these words do not indicate that Petrarch was free from the feelings attributed to him. It is to be noticed, too, that in this letter even the name of Dante does not appear.

  Revision of manuscripts. In 1359 Petrarch determined to sort out and arrange what he had written at various periods of his life. The work was long and tedious, as his manuscripts were in great disorder and many of them in bad condition. In this revision more than a thousand letters and poems were thrown into the fire, or, as he expresses it, ‘sacrificed to Vulcan, not without a sigh, indeed, for why should I be ashamed of my weakness?’Revision of Petrarch’s letters. He had resolved to dedicate and to send his prose writings to his friend Socrates and his verse to another friend, Barbato, and he wrote a preface for those which were to go to Socrates. Two years afterwards he closed his collection with a second dedication to his friend. ‘With you I began,’ he says, ‘with you I finish. Here, my Socrates, you have what you asked for . . . I began this work in youth, I finish it in old age, or rather I am still continuing what I then began, for this is the one pursuit of mine to which death alone will put the finishing touch. How can I expect to cease from chatting with my friends until my life ceases?’1

  1365. But about this time Socrates died, and the collection was again revised and a few more letters added, and it was not until 1365 that Petrarch arranged the series as it now exists, containing 347 letters divided into twenty-four books. This was his series of ‘Letters on Familiar Things’. Besides these there was another series of ‘Miscellaneous Letters’, and later he commenced a third collection, entitled, ‘Letters Written in Old Age.’ There was still a fourth collection called ‘Letters without Title’—invectives against the corruption of the Church and clergy—which he kept secret, and even the names of those to whom they were addressed did not appear. The recipients were often requested to return them, and their scandalous contents have caused them to be omitted from the exhaustive collection made by Fracassetti. Petrarch’s precautions were all the more necessary, since everything he wrote was so highly prized that his letters were often opened and read by the curious on their way to their destination, and were in some cases retained by those who took them.

  Petrarch’s son. About this time Petrarch was visited by a serious domestic affliction. His son had long been a source of grief to him. The poet’s wandering and restless life had made it impossible to keep the boy always with him, and he had been sent from one teacher to another, and each received the injunction not to spare the rod. The boy showed a great disinclination for study, and had apparently a surly disposition. ‘When in my presence.’ Petrarch says, ‘whether through fear of me or shame of his ignorance, he preserves an obstinate silence. I cannot get a word out of his lips.’ Petrarch had applied for a benefice for the boy, and the latter was made a canon at Verona when only fifteen years of age. When he went to that city he was entrusted to two of Petrarch’s oldest friends, but the father wrote to him that the reports received showed that his conduct grew every day more disgraceful and that he would punish him by refusing to write or send him money.

  1359. In October 1359 (at that time the boy was living with his father in Milan), a robbery occurred in Petrarch’s house which was attributed to the servants, and it is probable that the son participated, since the father immediately afterwards drove him from home. In a letter to his old friend Settimo, Petrarch says, ‘The slave of his passions, he has abandoned himself to debauchery; he is envious, disobedient, and rebellious; he hates knowledge and virtue.’ The boy wrote, asking how long his banishment was to continue. Petrarch answered that it would end when he had wholly changed the tenor of his life. ‘You may not cross my threshold so long as you are what you were when you left me. If you wish to return to me everything must be changed. Your habits, tastes, step, gestures, carriage, the sound of your voice, the movements of your eyebrows.’1

  Petrarch, however, afterwards relented, and it is said began to hope for better things, when his son died suddenly of the plague in 1361, and the father, who had so bitterly reproached him, was deeply afflicted.2

  After the robbery Petrarch abandoned his dwelling near the church of St. Ambrose and took quarters in a Benedictine cloister.1360. Embassy to France. In the winter of 1359-60, at Galeazzo’s request, he crossed the Alps at the head of an embassy to King John of France. This king, after his disastrous war with England, had been imprisoned in that country and held for an enormous ransom. Galeazzo had offered him a very large sum of money on condition that his daughter Isabella should marry Galeazzo’s son. The wedding had been celebrated, the king had been ransomed, and Petrarch led the embassy to congratulate him upon his liberation. The theme of his address to the king at the state reception was, ‘The Vicissitudes of Fortune,’ rather a delicate subject, and some of his auditors, including the prince, proposed to refute his thesis, that fortune was a mere name, and in a later discussion with them Petrarch came off with credit. His reception in Paris was gracious and honourable, and the king endeavoured ineffectually to persuade him to remain.

  1361. After his return to Milan in 1361, the plague broke out there with great fury, and Petrarch removed to Padua. But the plague attacked that city also, and the poet, careful of his safety, in spite of the contempt of death so often expressed in his writings, betook himself to Venice, a city still free from the epidemic. It was in this second attack of the terrible scourge that the dearest of his remaining friends was taken away. Socrates died in May 1361, in the following year Azzo da Correggio passed away, and in 1363 Laelius and Simonides.

  At Venice, Petrarch was treated with much consideration, and on the occasion of a great public festival his seat was upon the right hand of the Doge. He offered the Republic his library with all the manuscripts he might thereafter acquire, the books not to be sold or divided after his death but kept in a protected room, and he asked in return for this the use of ‘a modest but respectable house’. The library was accepted, and the Palace of the Two Towers on the Riva Schiavoni was assigned to him as a residence. The library, however, has disappeared. There is, indeed, some doubt how much of it remained in Venice after Petrarch had himself gone elsewhere, and as it appears that many if not all of his books were at Padua in 1379, after his death, it is hardly likely that Francesco da Carrara, the lord of that city, would voluntarily send them to the unfriendly Republic of Venice. It is known that at least a part of this library finally passed into other hands.1

  1362. Petrarch settled permanently in Venice in the fall of 1362, and lived there five years. His daughter Francesca had married a young nobleman of Milan, Francesco da Brossano, and the two came to Venice and lived with the poet, not only during his stay in that city, but until his death. He was much attached to them. They had one daughter, named, after Petrarch’s mother, Eletta, and later, in 1366, a son, Francesco, was born—a great favourite with his grandfather—but he died two years later.

  It was about the time of Petrarch’s removal to Venice, or perhaps shortly before this event, that his friend Boccaccio wrote him that a Carthusian monk had brought him a message from a holy brother, Peter of Siena, who had had a vision telling him that Boccaccio was soon to die and that he must at once amend his life, cease to write of love, give up the study of poetry and profane letters, and devote the rest of his days to prayer and repentance if he would escape eternal punishment. Boccaccio, who had a strong trace of superstition in his nature, was greatly terrified, and wrote to Petrarch that he must get rid of his books and devote himself to an ascetic life, and he offered his library to his friend at whatever price the latter chose to give for it.Advice to Boccaccio. Petrarch’s answer was the manly and reasonable counsel of a genuine friend. The vision of Peter of Siena, he said, was wonderful if it were genuine; but was it in fact from the Lord, or had its author used the Lord’s name to give weight to it? And what was there in this tale, even if true, to cause such distress? Boccaccio knew without the telling that he had not very long to live. The advice to reform his life was good, but why forsake learning? Learning never hindered any one from becoming holy. There were many roads to heaven, but ignorance was the only one for the idle. ‘Show me the greatest saint you can find ignorant of letters and I will show you a scholar still more holy.’1 If Boccaccio is determined to sell his books Petrarch says he will buy them, but he would dissuade him, and urges his friend to come and share his home. Boccaccio’s fears were allayed, he returned to his studies, and in the following year, 1363, he paid Petrarch a visit of three months at Venice.1363. He was accompanied by Leontius Pilatus, a native of Calabria, whom he had established as Professor of Greek in the University of Florence, and from whom he had himself taken private lessons in that language.Translation of Homer. Both he and Petrarch were anxious to secure a Latin translation of the poems of Homer. Petrarch had a Greek manuscript of these poems, which had been sent to him some time before by one Nicholas Sigeros, but which was to him a closed book. At the request of the two friends (Petrarch paying the cost of it), Leontius appears to have made a translation of these poems, and they were doubtless the subject of study during the time of this visit. Leontius was a disagreeable companion, ugly, unmannerly, with a bad temper and with nothing to recommend him but his Greek. Still Petrarch and Boccaccio bore with him, and when the latter returned home he wished to take him back to Florence, but Leontius wilfully and obstinately set out for Constantinople instead. Two years later he decided to return to Italy, but was killed by lightning on his return voyage.1365. His translation of Homer had been completed, however, and Boccaccio afterwards sent a copy to Petrarch.

  During his residence at Venice, Petrarch frequently visited Padua to perform the duties of his canonicate in the latter city, and during the summer he was generally the guest of Galeazzo Visconti at Pavia. He was in possession of a good income, but his expenses were large, for he employed several copyists, two servants, and several horses for his journeys, and he had many dependants.

  Itinerant singers of poems. It was about this time that he described in one of his letters the efforts made by the itinerant singers of Italy to secure his poems for their performances. He says, ‘I have often undergone their importunities. They come to me more rarely now, perhaps on account of my age, or because my studies have changed. Perhaps also they are repelled by my refusals, for quite often, exasperated by their insistent demands, I treat them with harshness and they find me inflexible. Sometimes, touched by the wretched condition of the petitioner and by his humility, I let myself be persuaded and I use some hours of my time in drawing from my fancy a production which gives him a livelihood. I have sometimes seen them leave, half naked and miserable after they got what they wanted of me, and come back some time afterwards clothed in silk, their purses well furnished, to thank me for having brought them out of their misery. This touched me to such a degree, that looking upon what I was doing for them as a kind of alms, I determined not to refuse them any more, but the annoyance and importunity made me soon change my mind.’1

  Ejects heretic. But at last an event occurred which made Petrarch dissatisfied with his residence at Venice and led to his return to Padua. In spite of his denunciations of the papal court, and notwithstanding some of the irregularities of his own life, Petrarch was an earnest and orthodox Churchman and had a wholesome horror of all forms of heresy. There were in Venice at this time many followers of Averroes, a philosopher and disciple of Aristotle, who had flourished under the dominion of the Moors in Cordova. One of these visited Petrarch and said to him, with a mocking laugh and an air of pity, ‘Be a good Christian as much as you like; for my part I don’t believe anything of all of that. Your Paul, your Augustine, and all the rest you boast of, were only prattlers. Ah! if you could read Averroes you would see how superior he is to all such folk.’ Petrarch adds, ‘I confess that this blasphemy put me into a fury. I could not contain myself. “Go!” I said to him, “and talk this way somewhere else,” and taking him by the cloak, I put him out more rudely than agrees with my character.’21367. Four young Venetians.

  Now it seems that four young men, also disciples of Averroes, had often been hospitably entertained by Petrarch, had flattered him and loaded him with gifts and testified toward him a kind of veneration, until the poet, as he said, ‘received them as if they had been angels’ and talked to them without reserve. When they found that he despised the doctrines of Aristotle, however, they met in council and investigated his opinions in a pretended trial.Judgement on Petrarch. One of them was appointed, like an advocatus diaboli, to plead his cause, and urged his extensive reputation and his eloquence, but it was decided this had nothing to do with his real knowledge, that one could speak well and still be very ignorant, and it was solemnly and unanimously decided that Petrarch ‘was a good man but illiterate’.

  This pronouncement attracted much attention at Venice. Petrarch might well have looked with contempt upon such impudence, but his literary vanity was wounded. This was the tenderest spot in all his character, and he proceeded to write in answer an elaborate and venomous polemic filled with invective and satire, entitled ‘Concerning his own Ignorance and that of Several Others’.1De Ignorantia sua. In this work, although he spoke of these young men as his ‘friends’, he attacked them as atheists and revilers of religion, and evidently did what he could to expose them to the flames of the Inquisition. He was so deeply offended that he moved back to Padua, where, under the patronage of Carrara, the atmosphere was more congenial. This was probably about the close of 1367, though his invective was not concluded until the following year.1

  Francesco da Carrara was a patron of science, art and literature, and much devoted to him, showing him the respect and affection of a son, and Petrarch dedicated to him at his request an essay on ‘The Method of Administering a State’, filled with commonplace observations, much idealistic exhortation, and a few practical suggestions.

  1368. Pavia. In the spring of 1368, at the urgent entreaty of Galeazzo, Petrarch went to Pavia that he might participate in negotiations for peace between Milan and the pope, who was at the head of a powerful alliance against the Visconti. He returned from that city by boat upon the Po, and notwithstanding the country was beset by troops engaged in a destructive war, he suffered no molestation, although unarmed, both sides offering him wine, fruit, and other provisions, and treating him with the utmost respect.

  After his return to Padua he found the noise and confusion of the city unbearable, and in 1369 he betook himself to Arquà, a village ten miles to the south in a beautiful situation among the Euganean Hills, where he stayed until driven into the city by the breaking out of war between Padua and Venice in 1371.1369.

  Pope Innocent VI had died September 12, 1362, and the college of cardinals had selected his successor outside of their own number, choosing a simple abbot, who was crowned under the name of Urban V. Petrarch waited nearly four years before addressing him upon the subject of the return of the papacy to Rome, but in 1366 he sent him an elaborate letter reminding him that he was putting off too long the one essential matter of his reign.1366. Letter to Urban V. ‘When you shall shortly appear’, he said, ‘before the judgementseat of Christ, in Whose presence you stand not as a master, and we as slaves, but He only as Master, and you, like ourselves, a slave, what if these words are addressed to you: “Poor and humble, I raised thee from the ground, not merely as the equal of princes, but as one above them all. Thou, then, where hast thou left the Church I trusted to thy faith? For so many gifts vouchsafed to thee, what is thy return? To have kept on the rock of Avignon the seat placed by My hand upon the Capitol! . . . ” Whatever be your final decision, one prayer at least your Rome addresses to you. May it seem just to you to restore to her her other consort, the emperor, whom your predecessor, Innocent VI, succeeded by a rash engagement in divorcing from her. Deign to remove that impediment, and to command that Caesar should return to Rome. As long as Rome remains deprived of both her chiefs, human affairs can never go right, nor can the Christian republic enjoy peace. If either of them return, all will go well; if both, perfectly, and in the plenitude of glory and success. May Christ our Lord prolong your days and open your heart to counsels, not smooth or flattering, but just, sincere, and, as I believe, acceptable to God.’1

  1367. Papacy removed to Rome. Urban had long been desirous of moving the papal see to the Eternal City. The opposition of France and of the French cardinals was bitter and obstinate, but on April 30, 1367, he departed from Avignon and reached Rome on October 16 of the same year. Petrarch wrote him a letter of congratulation, and the pope, after his arrival, pressingly invited the poet to that city. Petrarch determined to go, and at last, in the spring of 1370, he made his will and set out upon the journey.1370. He was, however, overcome at Ferrara by a sudden illness so severe that for a long time he remained unconscious. He was tenderly cared for by the lords of that city, but had to give up his intended visit, and was brought back to Padua by boat upon the river.Urban returns to Avignon. It was, perhaps, fortunate that he did not reach his destination, for Urban, harassed by the incessant disturbances in Rome and overcome by the importunities of the French cardinals, determined to return to Avignon, and reached the latter city in September.

  Petrarch, filled with chagrin at the failure of the project so near his heart, addressed to the sovereign pontiff a letter filled with reproaches.Petrarch’s reproaches. ‘Did you not, like St. Peter, when you fled from Rome, meet Christ upon your way? “Domine, quo vadis? I go thither to be crucified again since you are departing from it.” ’

  It is doubtful whether Urban received this final epistle, since he died in December of that year and was succeeded by Gregory XI, and Petrarch, perhaps reproaching himself for his bitter words to one who had at least attempted to restore the papacy to its ancient seat, grieved for his death, and in spite of failing health went with Carrara to attend his obsequies at Bologna in January 1371.1370.

  Petrarch had acquired in 1370 a bit of land at Arquà, upon which he built a comfortable house where he might pass the declining days of his long and busy life. His health continued to fail.1371. In May 1371 he had an attack so severe that the doctors declared that unless he were kept awake he could not outlive the night. He disregarded their advice, went to sleep trusting in God, and the next morning they were astonished to find him at work at his desk.

  Malatesta. Pandolfo Malatesta, a soldier of fortune who had become lord of Pesaro, was much devoted to Petrarch, and in earlier years had had two portraits of the poet painted for himself. He now invited his friend to Pesaro, but Petrarch’s health and the disorderly condition of the country made the journey impossible.1373. Malatesta had asked for a copy of the Italian works of the poet, and on January 4, 1373, Petrarch sent him a manuscript of his Canzoniere with a letter in which he speaks of his poems as trifles which were the amusement of his youth, and adds (perhaps with some affectation), ‘It is shameful for an old man to send you things of this kind, but you have asked for them with eagerness.Canzoniere. Can I deny you anything? With what face would I refuse you verses which are current in the streets, which are on the lips of everybody, and which are preferred to the more substantial works that I have written at a riper age’.1 Malatesta died shortly after receiving them. The manuscript thus sent is regarded as perhaps the most valuable now existing of the Italian poems of Petrarch.

  Our author was engaged at this time on another work, far less edifying. A French monk had written a criticism of Petrarch’s letter to Pope Urban congratulating him on his return to Rome, and in this criticism he had praised France and disparaged Italy.Apologia. Whereupon Petrarch took up the gauntlet and wrote his Apology against the Calumnies of a Frenchman with his usual controversial bitterness.

  Francesco da Carrara had been defeated in his war with Venice, and had made a disgraceful treaty of peace, conceding considerable territory, giving a large indemnity, and agreeing to go or send his son to beg pardon of the Venetian Senate. Petrarch, urged by the claims of friendship, accompanied the son to Venice, and appeared with him before that body on the day appointed, but found himself unable to speak the discourse he had prepared, as his memory had entirely failed. The session adjourned until the following day, when he delivered, in the name of Carrara, an address which was highly praised by those who heard it.1

  ‘Letter to Posterity.’ Petrarch now returned to his home at Arquà, and resumed his literary work. It is very likely at this period2 that he began his autobiography, his so-called ‘Letter to Posterity,’ a fragment which remained unfinished at his death, a work which Macaulay considers ‘a simple, noble and pathetic composition, most honourable both to his taste and to his heart, and which Koerting, with less charity, regards as the product of his vanity. In it he gives a picture of himself as he would like to be remembered by posterity.3

  Decameron. In spite of his long friendship with Boccaccio, Petrarch had never read the Decameron until this year. The author now sent him a copy. He was especially pleased with the opening chapter describing the plague, and with the final tale, the story of Griselda, which he translated into Latin to give it a wider circulation outside of Italy.Griselda.

  But Petrarch was now at the close of his long and laborious career.1374. Death. On July 18, 1374, he was found dead in his library, his head bent over one of his books. He was buried with solemn ceremonies in the presence of Carrara and of many ecclesiastical dignitaries in the village church at Arquà, and six years later his son-in-law, Francesco da Brossano, transferred the body to a massive stone sarcophagus erected in front of that building.

  Appearance. Petrarch was a handsome man, tall and slender in his youth, but more inclined to corpulency in his old age. His expression was often merry, yet always dignified; his look earnest and piercing, yet mild; his voice musical and charming. Those who spoke with him sometimes continued the conversation merely to hear him talk. His complexion was soft and clear. His hair became grey quite early in life. The fresco painting attributed to Guariento, in Petrarch’s dwelling at Padua, which was transferred in 1816 to the bishop’s palace in that city, may be authentic, and, despite its unattractive headgear, its fine, spiritual features indicate a certain tenderness, and even softness, of character.1

  Versatility. The characteristic that first impresses the student of Petrarch’s life is his wonderful versatility, and closely connected with this, his many inconsistencies. He was a scholar, poet, musician, collector of manuscripts and coins, letter-writer, historian, philosopher, traveller, diplomat, and politician.Inconsistencies. He was a man who delighted in solitude, yet sought for and adorned the society of the great; he was enraptured with nature and yet a devotee to art; he was a passionate lover of Laura during twenty-one years of her life and ten years afterwards, yet the father of two illegitimate children by an unknown mother; he was a sensualist and an ascetic; a passionate lover of liberty, yet the companion, associate and tool of the greatest tyrants of the age; he was a faithful son of the Church, yet wrote violent invectives against the papal court; called Benedict XII a drunkard, Clement VI a profligate, and Innocent VI a fool, yet continued on terms of friendship with them all, and accepted favours and benefices at their hands; he would restore the Roman republic under the tribune Rienzi, and the empire under Charles IV, and the papacy under every successive pope; he professed the greatest contempt for riches, yet accepted gifts and pecuniary favours from the princes who sought his companionship, and died a wealthy man.

  His conduct was controlled by feeling rather than by reason. He was always delicately sensitive to the conditions around him. If we are to believe his poems, his tears were flowing much of the time, yet the cheerfulness of his correspondence and the gaiety of much of his life seem to belie these extravagant expressions of grief. Yet they were by no means mere affectations. So far as externals go, few men were more fortunate than Petrarch. No one was more admired, honoured, fêted, and generally beloved. His primacy in scholarship and literature was practically undisputed; yet with an affectation of modesty he was intensely vain, and was stung to the quick if his authority was even questioned. He had the artistic temperament, with waves of great discouragement and unhappiness. Usually gentle, impressionable, and affectionate, yet sometimes vindictive when he thought himself mistreated, he was by no means stable in his character; his moods and purposes were constantly fluctuating. His spirit was restless to the last degree, incessantly requiring a change of scene, but this, instead of rendering his work futile and abortive, had the effect of making him a broader and a greater figure, more cosmopolitan probably than any other man in the history of literature.

  With all his inconsistencies, it will not do to reproach him with conscious hypocrisy.His sincerity. His writings and his life indicate that he was sincere but volatile. He saw things as they were coloured by his surroundings. A prince who was gracious to him was a good and great man, and he did not look at the dark crimes under the shining surface.His lasting enthusiasms. Moreover, amid all the paradoxes which startle us in his biography, there were certain great and lasting enthusiasms to which he was constant at every period of his career. The first of these was his intense love of learning and literature.His devotion to Literature. In the words of Macaulay, ‘He was the votary of literature, he worshipped it with an almost fanatical devotion; he was the missionary who proclaimed its discoveries to distant countries; the pilgrim who travelled far and wide to collect its relics; the hermit who retired to seclusion to meditate on its beauties; the champion who fought its battles; the conqueror, who in more than a metaphorical sense led barbarism and ignorance in triumph.’

  Nothing could divorce him from this devotion, neither the love of woman, nor the admonitions of religion, nor the delights of social and political preferment. In the pursuit of literature his industry was unflagging down to his latest breath.His industry. He robbed his nights of sleep, and pursued his work amid many distractions with indomitable assiduity. ‘Whether I am being shaved or having my hair cut, whether I am riding on horseback or taking my meals,’ he says, ‘I either read myself or get some one to read to me. On the table where I dine and by the side of my bed, I have all the materials for writing, and when I awake in the dark I write, although I am unable to read the next morning what I have written.’1 It was a fitting termination of such a life that his body was found after his death, with his head bent over one of his manuscripts.

  His love of antiquity. Inseparably connected with his love of literature was his love of classical antiquity, which in his day was almost the only source from which all that was valuable in literature could come. He studied, it is true, the productions of the troubadours, and knew them well, and for some of them he had a high regard, but how insignificant were they by the side of the treasures of the past! His knowledge of ancient literature and history, however, was confined to the literature and history of ancient Rome, and Rome became glorified in his eyes as the mistress of the world who had given all these treasures to mankind. What, then, could be compared with the Eternal City, adorned with her long array of heroes and statesmen, poets, orators, philosophers? He had loved the sonorous periods of Cicero even before he could understand their meaning, and his enthusiasm for all things Roman grew ever more intense. His dream was that Rome should be again what she had been, the repository of the power and art and science of the world, and with this absorbing thought he would do what he could to restore and regenerate her, and deliver her from the bonds of mediaeval anarchy and decay. What matter whether it be pope or emperor or tribune, who would lift the Holy City from the slough of her degradation? His enthusiasm for this great object was embodied in one of his most celebrated odes—Spirto gentil.Spirto gentil. Commentators have disputed for centuries as to the person to whom this ode was addressed. It was at first generally believed that Rienzi was the ‘noble spirit’ who was to deliver Rome, but the concluding stanza, which declared that the poet had never met him, makes this impossible, since Rienzi and Petrarch had met at Avignon some years before Rienzi rose to power. De Sade believes that the ode was addressed as early as 1332 to the younger Stephen Colonna, but a note on one of the manuscripts states that it was sent to Bosone da Gubbio when he, in October 1337, was chosen Senator. Whoever it was, Petrarch had conceived extravagant hopes of him. The following most inadequate translation of the first and the last three stanzas of this canzone will at least show the enthusiasm of the poet.

  Spirto gentil che quelle membra reggi.

  • • Choice Spirit! that dost stir the mortal clay
    • Which in this earthly pilgrimage doth hold
    • A noble lord, skilful and wise and bold;—
    • Since thou hast won the rod of state, to sway
    • Rome and her erring sons and point the way
    • She trod in ancient days, on thee I call,
    • For nowhere else can I discern one ray
    • Of virtue in the world; ’tis vanished all!
    • None can I find who blush at doing ill!
    • I know not what my Italy doth will,
    • Nor what she yearns for. Careless of her woe,
    • Decrepit, idle, slow,
    • Shall she for ever sleep? Will no one dare
    • To rouse her? Would my hands were twisted in her hair!
  • • Seldom indeed when unto high emprise
    • Injurious fortune doth not bar the way.
    • Ill doth she sort with actions bold and wise,
    • But if she clear the path thou dost essay,
    • I will forgive her sins of long ago,
    • Now that in this her ways are changed and new;
    • For in the story that the world doth know
    • Ne’er unto man such path was spread to view
    • To win eternal fame, as unto thee,
    • Since thou canst lead (unless I falsely see)
    • The world’s great empire on its glorious way!
    • What rapture could we say
    • ‘In youth did others guide her destiny,
    • He in her withered age from death did set free.’

  • • Spirto gentil.

      Bear, wolf, and lion, eagle and coiling snake1
    • Clamour around a marble column high2
    • To vex it, yet more harm themselves do take,
    • And our fair lady3 lifts a mournful cry
    • And calls thee to uproot and bear away
    • Those noisome weeds that know not how to bloom!
    • And now the thousandth year is in its tomb
    • Since those great souls to other lands did stray
    • Who fixed in Rome of yore their dwelling place.
    • Ah! this unbridled haughty upstart race,
    • Scornful of such a mother fair and great!
    • Thou art her sire, her mate;
    • Succour from thee she doth await and ask,
    • The while her greater lord4 toils at some other task.
  • • Song, on the rock Tarpeian thou shalt see
    • A knight that honoureth all Italy,
    • Of others’ weal more thoughtful than his own.
    • Say to him, ‘One to whom thou’rt yet unknown,
    • But in whose heart thy fame hath found a home,
    • Declares that mighty Rome
    • With softened eyes, which bitter sorrow fills,
    • Asks succour at thy hands from all her seven hills.’
    • liii

  Seeks Italian unity. Petrarch’s enthusiasm was an enthusiasm for Rome and Italy, not for humanity at large. Italy was his fatherland, and divided as it was into little separate sovereignties, engaged in constant war with one another, its pitiable condition awakened his keenest sympathy and he longed to see it united under the leadership of Rome. Most grievous of all, among the afflictions from which it was then suffering, were the hordes of foreign mercenaries employed by each of the little principalities in warring with its neighbours. These mercenaries devastated the country and, in his eyes, made it again what it had been centuries before, the spoil of barbarian hordes. It was his indignation at these outrages, and his desire to see peace re-established, which led him to compose at a later period (probably at Parma, in 1344 or 1345) another noble ode, Italia mia.

  Italia mia, ben che ’l parlar sia indarno

  • • Italia mia.

      My Italy! though speech may be in vain
    • Those mortal wounds to heal
    • That on thy body sweet so thickly lie,
    • Yet I my heavy grief cannot conceal
    • That Tiber and fair Arno do constrain,
    • And Po upon whose banks I sit and sigh.
    • Ruler of heaven! I cry,
    • May pity, that once drew Thee here below,
    • Direct Thee now to Thy dear Italy!
    • O gracious Master, see
    • What idle cause engenders strife and woe!
    • Thy pitying grace bestow
    • And tender charity
    • On hearts made hard and bitter by the sword!
    • And may Thy truth (unworthy though I be)
    • By my poor lips through all the land be heard.

    • Italia mia.

      Ye in whose hands fortune hath placed the rein
    • To rule these regions fair,
    • And whose proud hearts no pity hath subdued,
    • Against your brothers why do strangers bare
    • Their keen and cruel swords? Why do ye stain
    • Your soil with slaughter by this savage brood?
    • Vain dreams your souls delude:
    • He is most blind who deems that most he knows.
    • Can you win love from the base souls ye pay?
    • The goodlier your array
    • The more are ye encompassed by your foes!
    • What deluge overflows
    • From regions dark and wild,
    • Pouring on our sweet land its raging sea!
    • If thus by our own hands we have defiled
    • Our native soil, whose arm shall set us free?
  • • Wisely and for our good, kind Nature wrought,
    • When that high Alpine wall
    • She set between us and the Teuton rage,
    • But blind ambitions did our souls enthral
    • And to a body sound, infection brought
    • With festering sores no physic could assuage.
    • Now, prisoned in one cage
    • Wild beasts and gentle flocks together dwell,
    • Until the good must suffer from the base.
    • And these are of the race
    • (For greater shame!) of lawless tribes and fell
    • Which Marius did quell,
    • And on their fleeing ranks such wounds did make
    • That history tells the tale how, by the flood
    • Of a swift stream, seeking his thirst to slake
    • He stooped and drank—not water, but men’s blood!
    • And Caesar too, on many a plain and shore
    • Hath made the greensward red
    • From veins of those through whom he drove the sword.
    • But now, beneath some star malign and dread
    • The wrath of heaven doth afflict us sore.
    • Thanks be for this to each contentious lord,
    • Who in disputes abhorred
    • Would all this goodly land with blood imbrue!
    • What madness, fate or sin your souls did lure
    • To crush the weak and poor
    • And their wrecked fortunes scatter and pursue
    • With some wild alien crew
    • That for your gold did sell
    • Their guilty souls to spill their blood in fight.
    • I do but speak the bitter truth to tell,
    • And not from hate of others nor despite.
  • • And after many a proof is it not plain
    • That sham Bavarian1 game,
    • That lifted finger2 turning death to play?
    • Great is the harm but greater still the shame.
    • And the red blood from your own veins doth rain
    • More copious; fury fights another way!
    • Some sober time of day
    • Think for yourselves and you will clearly see
    • If he love you who holds himself so base!
    • O noble Latin race,
    • From this fell burden set thy country free!
    • Let no mere name to thee

    • Italia mia.

      Become an idol vain.1
    • That a dull brood from stubborn folly grown,
    • Should conquer us by work of skill or brain
    • Is monstrous, and the fault is all our own.
  • • Is not this precious earth my native land?
    • And is not this the nest
    • From which my tender wings were taught to fly?
    • And is not this the soil upon whose breast,
    • Loving and soft, faithful and true and fond,
    • My father and my gentle mother lie?
    • ‘For love of God,’ I cry,
    • ‘Some time take thought of your humanity
    • And spare your people all their tears and grief!
    • From you they seek relief
    • Next after God. If in your eyes they see
    • Some mark of sympathy,
    • Against this mad disgrace
    • They will arise, the combat will be short
    • For the stern valour of our ancient race
    • Is not yet dead in the Italian heart.’
  • • Look! rulers proud! The hours are pressing on,
    • And life steals fast away.
    • Behold pale Death above your shoulders stand!
    • Tho’ now ye live, yet think of that last day
    • When the soul, naked, trembling, and alone
    • Shall come unto a dark and doubtful land;
    • O, ere ye press the strand,
    • Soften those furrowed brows of scorn and hate,
    • (Those blasts that rage against the spirit’s peace)
    • From strife and slaughter cease,
    • From hatching grievous ills, and consecrate
    • Your lives to a better fate,
    • To deeds of generous worth,
    • To gracious acts that cheer and bless mankind;
    • Thus will you gather joy and peace on earth
    • And heaven’s pathway opened wide will find.
  • • Song, I admonish thee
    • Thou speak thy speech with gentle courtesy,
    • For thou among proud folk thy path must find.
    • Steeped is the human mind
    • In evil ways by old authority,
    • Truth’s constant enemy.
    • With the great-hearted few
    • Thy fortune try. ‘Who bids my terrors cease?’1
    • I ask, ‘and which of you
    • Upholds my cry “Return! O heaven-born peace”?’
    • cxxviii

  His love of fame. Another trait that was always strong and often predominant with Petrarch was his love of fame. This is shown at a very early period, in his hexameters written after his mother’s death, wherein he assured her of immortality with himself: ‘We shall live equally and both will be remembered.’ It also appears in his eagerness to obtain the laurel crown, and his intrigues to secure it, while in that confidential self-analysis in his work ‘On Contempt of the World’, which he also calls ‘his secret’, St. Augustine reproaches him with this passion, and declares that it is alienating him from his love of God. But perhaps the frankest expression of his ambition is found in his Ode to Fame, Una Donna più bella, of which the first stanza is as follows:

  • Ode to Fame.

    A lady fairer far than is the day,
  • And brighter than the sun, and just as old,
  • With face of rarest mould,
  • Won me in youth to join her bright array.
  • In thought and word and action did she go
  • In stately majesty
  • Ever before me (rare it was to see!)
  • On all the thousand paths that men do know.
  • For her I ceased to be
  • What I had been, and soon as I could bear
  • To look upon her presence, for her love
  • I did devote my life to toil and care.
  • Now if I win the port whereto I move,
  • By her sweet guidance led,
  • Long do I hope to live, after men deem me dead.
  • cxix

  Love of fame. Throughout his poems to Laura there appears here and there the consciousness that he has achieved renown not merely for himself, but for the object of his love, as in the following:

  • Only of her, living or dead I sing—
  • (Nay she will always live—immortal made—)
  • That the dull world shall with her praises ring
  • And bring her sweet renown that will not fade.
  • cccxxxiii

  Hisfriendships. Another characteristic of Petrarch which continued from his youth until old age, was his warm and constant affection for his friends. ‘He had a genius for friendship.’ He was a good lover and a good hater, but his hatreds were few and his friendships were many. Settimo, James Colonna, Laelius, Socrates, Correggio, Pastrengo, Dionysius, King Robert, Philip of Cabassoles, the two Carraras, father and son, Simonides, Boccaccio, Galeazzo Visconti, Malatesta, were only the chief among his hosts of friends. With all these he was on terms of close personal intimacy, and in each instance the friendship lasted until death.The Colonnas. Only with Cardinal Colonna and his father was there any diminution of affection, and that was because Petrarch conceived that the higher claims of his beloved Rome and Italy were inconsistent with its continuance. Even then there was no positive break. Petrarch was a correspondent of the Cardinal until the time of his death, and afterwards, in one of his sonnets1 , joined the name of his friend with that of Laura in lamenting his double loss. Nor is there any evidence of personal ill feeling either toward or from the aged Stephen. It is seldom that Petrarch speaks of the family except with respect, though he appears to have fancied at one time that its overthrow or even its destruction was necessary to the welfare of the state. In 1366, late in the poet’s life, young Stephen, a grandson, visited Petrarch in Venice, and whatever wounds there may have been were healed on this occasion.

  Petrarch’s philosophy of friendship was a very simple one. In a letter to Simonides he says, ‘I practise no art except to love utterly, to trust utterly, to feign nothing, to hide nothing, and in a word, to pour out everything into my friends’ ears, just as it comes from my heart.’1

  Among his friends Petrarch was an active peacemaker. On one occasion some intermeddler had told Laelius that Socrates had declared he (Laelius) was untrue to Petrarch, and had opposed the poet’s interests at Avignon. Laelius was indignant, and Petrarch, hearing of the quarrel, wrote him a long, affectionate letter reproaching him for having believed a falsehood, and declaring that he ought to have known that his friend was incapable of such an act. ‘Friendship is a great, a divine thing,’ he goes on, ‘and quite simple. It requires much deliberation, but once only and once for all. You must choose your friend before you begin to love him; once you have chosen him, to love him is your only course. When once you have had pleasure in your friend, the time to measure him is past. ’Tis an old proverb that bids us not to be doing what is done already. Thenceforward there is no room for suspicion or quarrel. There remains to us but this one thing—to love.’1

  When Laelius read the letter he went with it to Socrates, and the reconciliation was complete. When Petrarch heard of this, he wrote to Laelius, ‘All your life you have done me pleasure on pleasure, but never a keener pleasure than this.’1

  There must have been something very lovable in the man who could thus maintain these constant friendships, and who also, in relation to his princely patrons, had that winning charm which made him their companion and confidant rather than their mere dependant.

  His love of Laura. But a passion stronger and deeper than friendship took possession of him when, at the age of less than twenty-three years, he saw Laura in the church at Avignon. It was a passion which continued for a period of twenty-one years until her death, which inspired his poems for ten years more, and the memories of which returned and adorned his ‘Triumphs’, the poems of his old age. Before he met Laura, he tells us, he was quite insensible to the assaults of love, and after he met her, both his songs themselves and his remaining writings indicate that she was the only object of his genuine affection. At least, this is what he wishes us to believe, and although there are commentators who insist that some of his love poems were really addressed to other women, there is no sufficient evidence that this is the fact. In one sonnet, indeed (cclxxi,L’ardente nodo), he tells us that after death had released the bond which held him one and twenty years, Love, unwilling to lose him, had stretched another snare amid the grass, and kindled another fire, so that he would have escaped with difficulty, and that if it had not been for the experience of his first sorrows he would have been taken and consumed, all the more readily, since he was no longer ‘green wood’; but that death had released him again, and broken the knot and quenched and scattered the fire, against which neither power nor skill availed. Commentators differ as to whether the death of which he last speaks in this sonnet was that of a new object of his affection, or of Laura herself, the memory of whose death had returned and restrained him from the pursuit of another love. We have no hint anywhere in his writings to tell us anything further of the woman referred to. On the contrary, in his ‘Letter to Posterity’, he says, ‘In youth I felt the pains of love, vehement in the extreme, but constant to one object and honourable, and I should have felt them longer had not death, bitter indeed but useful, extinguished the flame as it was beginning to subside.’ In this declaration, however, Petrarch cannot be entirely accurate. His first sestine (xxii,A qualunque animale) shows that his love at first was not altogether of the honourable character he intimates, and some of the poems of a broken heart, written shortly after Laura’s death, would indicate that his flame had not subsided very greatly at that time. Petrarch was a man of varying moods, and his love did not always seem the same to him. But the general constancy of his passion toward one supreme object appears clear enough in spite of his inconsistencies.

  Whether or not Laura in her heart responded to his affection will remain unknown. Petrarch’s own belief as to her love varied at different times. After her death he fancied that she had loved him. (See cccii,Levommi il mio pensier.) In his poem the ‘Triumph of Death’, written in his old age, he refers to an incident which, if true, would give some justification for this belief, since her spirit says to him from heaven:

  • An equal flame over our hearts did steal,
  • When once I knew thy love was deep and pure,
  • But I would hide it and thou wouldst reveal.
  • . . . . . . .
  • Yet every veil from off my heart I tore
  • Once when alone I heard thy tender words,
  • Singing, ‘Our love doth dare to speak no more.’1

  Petrarch’s songs themselves are the best evidence of the character and depth of his affection. The story of his love was one which had few external incidents, but it was a tragedy of the soul. His was a passion both of the flesh and of the spirit, a passion unhappy and tormenting, and, like his whole life, often self-contradictory. There were bright illusions of felicity alternating with black shadows of despair. It was ‘a continued battle between his desires and his conscience, between reason and the senses, between heaven and earth, between Laura and religion. Now the poet blesses the place and hour in which he first saw her; now he reveals his hope, born from some slight favour, that at last she will pity him and yield; now he complains of her cruelty, her pride, her contempt; now he is filled with remorse and resolves to abandon his fruitless passion. In fact, he repeatedly flies from her presence, taking long journeys in the hope that it will disappear, but he returns and flits again around the fateful flame, and finds that his efforts have been in vain’.1

  And yet, through all the vicissitudes of this story of his love, there is still a certain underlying unity in the Canzoniere. Petrarch’s passion became greatly exalted and purified by the tender, yet reserved and virtuous behaviour of his mistress. While Laura is far more a daughter of earth than Dante’s Beatrice, she still appears in his songs as a noble and gracious, as well as a very lovable, character, not at all the ‘heartless coquette’ that Macaulay calls her. If there was apparent coquetry in her conduct, it would seem to be due to pity and perhaps affection for her lover struggling with duty rather than to pleasure in inflicting pain. In the poems written after her death, when she had become glorified in his recollection and imagination, she approached more closely to the type of Beatrice, and in some of these poems Dante’s influence (which Petrarch avoided in his earlier productions) is distinctly traceable.

  In the words of Cochin1the Canzoniere describes ‘a passion ardent and carnal at the outset, but restrained by the honour and virtue of the lady whom he loved, and which, purified by sorrow at her death, was raised to an ideal love, and this too finally transformed into the love of God’. From the first passionate sestine to the noble ‘Hymn to the Virgin’ at the end, this is the history recorded in Petrarch’s love songs. His moods change from day to day, but through the long years we can trace the progress of a gradual spiritual development.

  His religious feeling. And this brings us to consider another sentiment which powerfully influenced the poet, at least during the later portion of his career, namely, his deep religious feeling. It appears that he had this even in his early life, and he represents St. Augustine in the Secretum as reproaching him with the fact that it became less after he fell in love with Laura. It could not have been a very strong conviction, for he and his brother took part in the frivolities of society in Avignon, and he received the minor orders of the Church merely to gain a livelihood, and without any special calling or inclination for the clerical profession. In his early poems and other writings there is little evidence of devotion. He does not appear at first to have considered his love of Laura as especially blameworthy, although she was a married woman, and he a servant of the Church. It was in 1333, when, in Paris, he became closely associated with the Augustinian friar Dionysius, that this devotional feeling appears to have taken serious hold upon him, and from that time, religion, love, and the passions of the senses continued to clash with one another in his spirit, through a decade of anxious and unhappy years. Sometimes, with the fervour of an anchorite, Petrarch condemns and renounces earthly things, only to return to them again with greater zest. In the mere matter of belief, he was always an orthodox Churchman, and those who fancy that they see in his denunciation of the papacy at Avignon a forerunner of the Reformation are greatly mistaken. But his life was long at variance with his faith.

  In several places he speaks of a new love as one of the cures prescribed to heal an old one, and it may be that he chose the mistress who became the mother of his children as an antidote to his unhappy love for Laura, but the remedy, too, tormented his conscience, and we have a faithful portrait of the conflict in his soul in his imaginary dialogues with St. Augustine in the Secretum.1His religious feeling.

  He himself fixes the date of his renunciation of the pleasures of the senses at a period shortly after his daughter Francesca was born (1342 or 1343), for he tells us in his ‘Letter to Posterity’ that after his fortieth year he not only renounced these pleasures, but lost all recollection of them ‘as much as if he had never seen a woman’. The completeness of his conversion at this early date may well be doubted, but in spite of the fluctuations of his moods, the influence of the religious sentiment, in the long run, appears to increase. In a canzone written not long before Laura’s death (cclxiv,I’ vo pensando), this struggle and desire for spiritual help are distinctly shown. The canzone opens thus:2

  • Thoughtful I go, and in my communings
  • So strong a pity for myself I see,
  • As ofttimes leadeth me
  • To other tears than I am wont to shed.
  • Since day by day the end nears visibly,
  • A thousand times I ask of God those wings
  • On which to Heavenly things
  • The mind can rise that here is prisonèd.

  But it was the death of Laura in 1348 which undoubtedly produced the greatest change in him, and we find that his poems written after that time are imbued with a far deeper spiritual character than those written before. And later still, his religious convictions seem to have been confirmed on his pilgrimage to Rome in 1350. Years afterwards, in a letter to Boccaccio, he says, ‘I hope the grace of Christ entirely delivered me many years ago, but especially since the Jubilee.’1

  Yet, even in 1357 he tells us that neither abstinence nor blows can entirely expel ‘that obstinate beast of the flesh’ upon which he is always making war.

  Still later, in 1366, we find a rather grotesque product of his ‘conversion’ in the shape of a so-called philosophical treatise written to console his friend Azzo da Correggio, who had suffered from the vicissitudes of fate. It was entitled ‘Remedies against Good and Evil Fortune’, and had been written with such deliberation, that when it was finished Azzo had been dead two years! The book is a curious collection of paradoxes to show that all things which we deem good in this world are really evil, and that all sorrows and misfortunes are really blessings. In the portion of it which treats of love and matrimony, Petrarch assumes the rôle of a violent woman-hater, and advocate of celibacy. Nothing but pure spiritual love, love of God, of holy things and of one’s friends, was fitting for a wise man. Every other love was an evil, especially if it awakened a corresponding affection. Only by separation, distracting occupations, or a new love, could the old love be healed. But the most effective antidotes were sickness, ugliness, and old age! Women were not worth being loved, since they were a wanton and giddy sex to whom deception had become a habit! Strife and discontent come into the house with a wife, especially if she be rich and of a noble family. He who has been once married and enters upon a second marriage is a fool, and he who gives a step-mother to his children, throws with his own hand a burning torch into his house. If it were not a sin and forbidden by God, concubinage would be better than a second marriage. Children are the source of continual care and unrest. Such are the sentiments to be found scattered in different places through this extraordinary work.1

  But although Petrarch now assumed more constantly than heretofore this monastic attitude toward life (which indeed he had often taken spasmodically even in his earlier years), and while his habitual temperance and abstinence had ripened, with his vigils and his fasts, into something closely resembling asceticism, yet he was still free from the grosser superstitions of the time. Whatever fanaticism might demand, he never believed that the claims of religion called on him to renounce his studies, and he always had a great contempt for astrology and kindred arts, and a great respect for the literature and ideals of pagan antiquity. Indeed, the resuscitation of that literature and the restoration of many of these ideals was the great work of his life.

  The Humanist. For whatever his excellence as a poet, it was as a humanist that he has had the widest influence upon the world. ‘Standing within the threshold of the Middle Ages he surveyed the kingdom of the modern spirit and by his own inexhaustible industry in the field of scholarship and study he determined what we call the revival of learning. By bringing the man of his own generation into sympathetic contact with antiquity he gave a decisive impulse to that European movement which restored freedom, self-consciousness, and the faculty of progress to the human intellect.1

  In showing how greatly he differed from the mediaeval type and how closely he resembled the modern man, some of his biographers have exaggerated both the contrast and the similarity. For instance, it is said he was the first man to collect libraries, and to advocate the preservation of manuscripts. This statement is refuted by the previous existence of libraries and manuscripts already collected and preserved in mediaeval monasteries. His Latin, while fluent and superior to most of that used in the Middle Ages, was still far from classic, and the different traits which are described as separating him from the mediaeval and uniting him with the modern world, his egotism, his boyish curiosity, his love of travel, his restless nature, his versatility, his strong individualism, his cosmopolitan character, his love of literature and learning for their own sake, and his national feeling were things in which he generally differed from his predecessors more in degree than in kind. Dante and other learned and distinguished men of the Middle Ages had many of these characteristics, and Petrarch himself had in his devotional spirit and his asceticism much of the Middle Ages in his disposition. The transition from one period to another in history is a work of development which goes on by degrees that at the time are generally imperceptible. It was because Petrarch had more modern characteristics, and some of them in greater degree than any of his predecessors or his contemporaries whom we know, that he is called by many the ‘first modern man’. He had, moreover, the power of communicating his ideals and his modern spirit to a degree which was not possessed by any other man of his time nor perhaps of any time in history. His enormous reputation, his association with all the princes and literary men of the period made him the chief distributor of the new learning. Although he was never an instructor in any educational institution he has been well called a praeceptor mundi, a ‘teacher of the world’, greater than Voltaire at Ferney or Goethe at Weimar.The Humanist. Indeed humanism in many ways was more like a new religion than a new school of learning, and if so regarded, Petrarch may well be considered the founder of the new cult. As Calthrop well observes:1 ‘It is to Petrarch, not to his predecessors, that we rightly attribute the inauguration of the Renaissance; they were its forerunners, not its founders; they handed down the torch of learning unextinguished; some quality in him enabled him to fire the world with it. His method was not merely to study the classics as ancient literature, but to bring the world back to the mental standpoint of the classical writers. To do this it was essential to spread the knowledge of those writers as widely as possible, and we have seen how diligent he and his friends were in the discovery and reproduction of texts. Then men had to be convinced that the affairs of old Rome were of vital interest to fourteenth-century Italy, and so Petrarch gave to the world the stimulating conception of the continuity of history. . . . Lastly it was necessary to set up again the fallen standard of criticism. . . . This intellectual faculty was conspicuously lacking in the men of the Middle Ages, but the classical men possessed it in rich abundance. Now of all the classical writers known to Petrarch he esteemed Cicero “far and away the chief captain”, the wisest thinker, the most discerning critic, the supreme master of style. Saturated himself with the Ciceronian spirit, he set himself to diffuse it through Europe. . . . Like all true apostles, he was less concerned to imitate the manner of his models than to preach their gospel. This was probably the secret of his success; the revival of classical learning became in his hands a resurrection of the classical spirit.’

  Editions of his works. From the day they were first given to the world, Petrarch’s works had an immense vogue. At first, of course, they were circulated in manuscript, but upon the invention of printing no books were more eagerly published or more generally sought. The first printed edition of the Canzoniere appeared in Venice in 1470, only a short time after that event. There were thirty-four editions before the century closed, one hundred and sixty-seven in the sixteenth century, seventy in the seventeenth, forty-six in the eighteenth, &c.1 and at the present time they are still multiplying rapidly. Six folio editions of his Epistles and other prose works were printed at Basle and Venice between 1494 and 1500. Professor Marsan, of Padua, collected eight hundred works relating to Petrarch and his writings, which were purchased in 1829 by Charles X of France and placed in the library of the Louvre.1 The late Professor Willard Fiske made a still larger collection, which is now in the library of Cornell University. The bibliography is enormous.

  His followers. The Italian followers and imitators of Petrarch were very numerous, but their productions were generally of poor quality. He had a better fate among the early English poets.Chaucer. Geoffrey Chaucer was at Padua in 1373, at the time when Petrarch, then an old man, was staying there. He saw Petrarch’s Latin version of the story of Griselda, or perhaps (as Warton2 thinks) heard the story from the Italian poet’s own lips, and, turning it into English verse, incorporated it in his Canterbury Tales. He thus speaks of the source from which it was derived:

  • I wol yow telle a tale which that I
  • Lerned at Padowe of a worthy clerk,
  • As preved by his wordes and his werk.
  • He is now deed and nayled in his cheste,
  • I prey to God so geve his soule reste!
  • Fraunceys Petrark, the laureat poete,
  • Highte this clerk, whos rethoryke sweete
  • Enlumined al Ytaille of Poetrye.

  Chaucer imitates Petrarch in other places, and in one instance, ‘The Song of Troylus,’ he makes a reasonably accurate version of one of Petrarch’s sonnets in which the antithetical conceits of the troubadours are imitated. Petrarch’s sonnet (‘S’amor non è, che dunque è quel ch’ io sento?’ cxxxii), which I have quite closely translated, is as follows:

  • If love it is not, what is this I feel?
  • And yet how strange a thing if love it is!
  • If good, why its effect so deadly ill?
  • If bad, then why is every torment bliss?
  • If by free choice I suffer, wherefore mourn?
  • If it be fate, how fruitless to lament!
  • O death in life! O pain from rapture born!
  • How canst thou sway me save that I consent?
  • If I consent, all senseless is my woe;
  • Mid adverse winds I toss in fragile bark,
  • Through stormy seas all rudderless I go,
  • Of knowledge void, yet filled with errors dark,
  • Till I know not myself which way I turn,
  • But freeze in summer and in winter burn.

  The following is ‘The Song of Troylus’:

  • If no love is, O God, what fele I so?
  • And if love is, what thinge and whiche is he?
  • If love be gode, from whennes comth my wo?
  • If it be wykke, a wonder thynketh me,
  • Whenne every torment and adversite,
  • That cometh of him, may to me savory thynke;
  • For ay thirst I the more that Iche it drynke.
  • And if that in myn owne lust I brenne,
  • From whennes cometh my wailynge and my pleynte?
  • If harme agree me, whereto pleyne I thenne?
  • I noot, ne why, unwery, that I feynte.
  • O quyke deth! O swete harm so queynte!
  • How may I se in me swiche quantite,
  • But if that I consente that it so be?
  • And if that I consente, I wrongfully
  • Compleyne ywis; thus possed to and fro,
  • Al sterelees withinne a boot am I
  • Amyd the see, betwexen windes two,
  • That in contrarie standen ever mo.
  • Allas! what is this wonder maladye?
  • For hete of cold, for cold of hete I dye.

  Two other imitators of Petrarch soon appear. Puttenham says,1 ‘In the latter end of the same king’s reigne,2 sprong up a new company of courtly makers, of whom Sir Thomas Wyat th’ elder and Henry, Earle of Surrey were the two chieftaines, who having travailed into Italie, and there tasted the sweete and stately measures and stile of the Italian poesie, as novices newly crept out of the schooles of Dante, Ariosto, and Petrarch, they greatly pollished our rude and homely manner of vulgar Poesie, from that it had bene before and for that cause may justly be sayd the first reformers of our English meetre and stile.’

  An illustration of Surrey’s imitations is found in the extremely artificial form of a sonnet with only two rhymes in the entire fourteen lines. It is entitled ‘Description of Spring, wherein every thing renews, save only the lover’,3 and it is an imitation of Petrarch’s sonnet, Zefiro torna (cccx), included in the following collection:

  • The soote season, that bud and bloom forth brings
  • With green hath clad the hill, and eke the vale.
  • The nightingale with feathers new she sings;
  • The turtle to her mate hath told her tale.
  • Summer is come, for every spray now springs;
  • The hart has hung his old head on the pale;
  • The buck in brake his winter coat he flings;
  • The fishes flete with new repairèd scale;
  • The adder all her slough away she slings;
  • The swift swallow pursueth the flies smale;
  • The busy bee her honey now she mings.
  • Winter is worn that was the flowers’ bale.
  • And thus I see among these pleasant things
  • Each care decays, and yet my sorrow springs!

  The following version by Wyatt of Pace non trovo [cxxxiv] comes even closer to the original:

  • I find no peace, and all my warre is done;
  • I fear and hope, I burne, and frese like yse;
  • I flye aloft, yet can I not arise;
  • And nought I haue, and all the world I season;
  • That lockes nor loseth, nor holdeth me in pryson;
  • And holdes me not, yet can I scape no wise;
  • Nor lettes me liue, nor dye, at my deuise,
  • And yet of death it geueth me occasion.
  • Without eye I se, without tongue I playne;
  • I wish to perysh, yet I aske for helth;
  • I loue another, and thus I hate my selfe;
  • I fede me in sorow, and laugh in all my payne;
  • Lo, thus displeaseth me both death and life,
  • And my delight is causer of this strife.

  A few concluding words as to the contents of the Canzoniere. There are 366 poems in all, 317 sonnets, 29 odes, 9 sestines, 7 ballads, and 4 madrigals, besides the epic poem, I Trionfi or Triumphs of (1) Love, (2) Chastity, (3) Death, (4) Fame, (5) Time, (6) Eternity.

  With the exception of thirty sonnets and five odes, all these poems are upon the subject of Madonna Laura and his love for her. Such a subject, where there are few external incidents, is necessarily limited in its scope, and Petrarch’s imagination, while delicate and exquisite, was not remarkably exuberant, nor was his vocabulary extensive. He gives us not so many new ideas as the same idea in many different lights. His work has been compared to a kaleidoscope, presenting a limited number of objects in many varied and beautiful combinations. In such a collection, however, there is sure to be some monotony and much repetition.

  I have attempted to translate only a portion of the Canzoniere, and have omitted those poems which are filled with elaborate mythological allusions, metaphors, and similes, such as the well-known canzone of the Metamorphoses; or with excessive punning upon the name of Laura, or with catalogues of other names as of rivers and of other objects. I have also omitted most of those poems filled with the artificial conceits of the troubadours and those which seem to be gymnastic exercises in the art of rhyming, such as Canzone III (No. xxix,Verdi panni, sanguigni), consisting of eight strophes of seven lines each, where each line rhymes with the corresponding line of the following strophe, and there are therefore in the whole poem only seven rhymes. Our modern ears refuse to carry a rhyme so far away, and the English language cannot be restricted by such limitations as to the concluding syllables of each line. Still more difficult is No. ccvi (S’il dissi mai), where in six stanzas of nine lines each there are three rhymes (ella, ei, ia), with one of which (recurring the same number of times in each stanza) each line must conclude. I have also omitted a great deal which seemed like repetition, and indeed all except that which appeared to me fairly illustrative of Petrarch’s best work, so far as that work was at all capable of reproduction in another tongue.

  PETRARCH
  From the Italian of Carducci

  • Master Francesco, I have come to thee
  • And to thy friend, that gentle, fair-haired dame,
  • To calm my angry spirit and set free
  • My grim soul by sweet Sorga’s crystal stream.
  • Look! shade and rest I find beneath this tree!
  • I sit, and to the lonely shore I call;
  • Thou comest, and a choir encircles thee
  • Who greet me with a friendly welcome all.
  • And that sweet choir—they are those songs of thine,
  • Down whose fair sides their golden tresses fall—
  • Escaping from the rose-wreaths that entwine
  • Their gathered folds, in ringlets prodigal;
  • And one doth shake her locks, and the rebel cry
  • Breaks from her tuneful lips, ‘Rome! Italy!’

  LOVE SONGS OF PETRARCH

  These poems are numbered in the order in which they appear in the Vatican manuscript, 3195, which was Petrarch’s own definitive edition, about one-third of it being written in his own hand. This is also the numeration followed in the edition of Scherillo (Milan, 1908). The numeration differs so greatly in different editions that the only certain way of identifying these poems is by the initial lines. The dates of the comparatively few poems whose dates are known are given in a foot-note. The translations are not arranged in the order of the originals, but so far as possible according to the subject-matter, in which arrangement, however, chronological sequence, while not controlling, has not been entirely disregarded.

  Goethe has said that every poem of Petrarch was an occasional poem. It is therefore important to trace, whenever we can, the circumstances to which it owed its origin.

  It was on April 6, 1327, a day which according to mediaeval tradition was the anniversary of the Crucifixion of our Lord (and which fell in that year, not on Good Friday, but on Monday of Holy Week), that Petrarch first saw Laura, in the church of Santa Clara at Avignon. He at once became enamoured of her beauty, but she gave no sign of responding to his passion. This meeting is the subject of the following sonnet.

  Era il giorno ch’al sol si scoloraro

  • It was the day when the sun’s heavy rays
  • Grew pale in pity of his suffering Lord,
  • When I fell captive, lady, to the gaze
  • Of your fair eyes, fast bound in love’s strong cord.
  • No time had I wherein to make defence
  • Or seek a shelter from Love’s sudden blows;
  • I walked secure, no harm perceiving, whence
  • My griefs began amid the general woes.
  • Love found me all disarmed, and through my eyes
  • Where tears are wont to flow, he saw the way
  • Wide open to my heart. His arrow flies
  • And strikes the mark where it must ever stay.
  • Scant honour his to wound me thus, nor show
  • To you, well armed against him, even his bow!
  • iii

  While she was still unconscious of his love, Laura appears to have treated Petrarch with friendly indulgence, but when she understood the ardour of his passion she sought protection behind her veil, of which he complains in the following ballad.

  Ballad I

  Lassare il velo o per sole o per ombra

  • Lady, I have not seen you draw aside
  • In shadow dark or under skies serene
  • The veil wherein your gracious face doth hide
  • Since first you did perceive the passion keen
  • That from my heart doth drive all else away.
  • While I could keep my precious thoughts concealed—
  • Those dreams that all my burning senses slay—
  • I saw compassion in your face revealed,
  • But after Love his yearning did betray,
  • A veil around your golden locks you threw,
  • And your kind glance within itself withdrew.
  • What most I cherish now no more I see—
  • So close that heavy veil restraineth me,
  • Which both in summer airs and wintry skies
  • Doth darken the sweet light of your fair eyes.
  • xi

  This reserve appears to have continued (perhaps intermittently) for a long period, for it is the subject of a sonnet written to Orso, Count of Anguillara, whom Petrarch visited at Capranica on his way to Rome in 1337, and from whom he afterwards received the laurel crown upon the Capitol.

  Orso, e’ non furon mai fiumi nè stagni

  • Orso, there never was a pool nor stream,
  • Nor sea (whereto all brooks and rivers run),
  • Nor shadow of a wall or hill or limb,
  • Nor mist, that bathes the earth and hides the sun,
  • No bar to feet, nor obstacle to sight
  • That frets me like that veil, which seems to say,
  • While it doth stifle all the gracious light
  • Of two fair eyes—‘Now weep and pine away.’
  • Her downcast look my greeting doth deny—
  • From modesty or pride? It kills my joy;
  • ’Twill be the cause that ere my time I die.
  • Her white hand too doth bring my heart annoy
  • That makes itself a barrier to mine eyes
  • And hides her face behind its frail disguise.
  • xxxviii

  Petrarch’s remonstrances are gracefully expressed in the following sonnet, which greatly resembles the gallantries and conceits of the troubadours.

  Mille fiate, o dolce mia guerrera

  • A thousand times to make my peace I sought
  • With your fair eyes, O my sweet warrior foe,
  • And offered you my heart; but little thought
  • Had your proud spirit to look down so low.
  • Yet if another would that heart enchain,
  • She lives in fickle hopes and dreams untrue;
  • Since I despise all things that you disdain,
  • It is no longer mine when scorned by you.
  • If driven forth, it cannot find at all
  • Harbour with you upon its wandering way,
  • Nor stand alone, nor go where others call,
  • Far from its natural pathway must it stray.
  • On both our souls this heavy sin will rest,
  • But most on yours, for you my heart loves best.
  • xxi

  1330-3. See Mascetta, 117.

  During the years that ensue the poet often treats of his love for Laura in lighter vein, and nowhere more exquisitely than in the three madrigals which follow.

  Non al suo amante più Dïana piacque

  • When all unclad, within the waters cool
  • By chance he saw her, Dian did not please
  • Her lover1 more than now, when in a pool
  • Washing her dainty veil that from the breeze
  • Confines her golden locks that roam at will,
  • This creature wild doth on my fancy seize,
  • Until, though heaven glows with warmth, I still
  • Do freeze and tremble with an amorous chill.
  • lii

  Nova angeletta sovra l’ale accorta

  • A wondrous little angel, wise of wing,
  • Flew down from heaven upon the river side
  • Where I by chance alone was loitering.
  • When me thus all unguarded she espied,
  • And naught suspecting, snares of silken thread
  • She wove among the tender grass and spread
  • Where it grew thick and made the pathway green.
  • Thus was I caught, but feel no shame nor dread,
  • So sweet a light in her soft eyes was seen.
  • cvi

  Or vedi, Amor, che giovenetta donna

  • Look, God of Love! a woman young and fair
  • Thy reign despises, pitying not my woes!
  • Secure she deems herself between such foes!
  • Thou’rt armed, but she in gown, with waving hair
  • Sits amid flowers and grass, her dainty feet
  • Disrobing, and her heart with pride replete.
  • Captive am I, but if thine arrow fleet
  • May yet avenge the shame we both do know,
  • And serve the ends of mercy, bend thy bow!
  • cxxi

  In similar vein he reproaches her with too strong an affection for her mirror, which he calls his rival.

  Il mio adversario, in cui veder solete

  • My glittering rival in whose fickle face
  • You see the orbs which Love and heaven do prize,
  • Charms you with beauty not his own, a grace
  • Joyous and sweet beyond all mortal guise.
  • ’Twas by his evil counsel, lady mine,
  • That from your gentle heart you drove me forth.
  • Sad exile! Now in solitude I pine,
  • Unfit to dwell with such exceeding worth.
  • If once securely I were fastened there
  • You should not harm me with your mirror bright,
  • Pleasing yourself alone, so proudly fair!
  • Think of Narcissus and his vain delight!
  • Like him you will become a flower, but where
  • The greensward worthy of a plant so rare?
  • xlv

  1333. See Mascetta, 172.

  The following sonnet also preserves this gayer mood. As its number indicates, it appears in the latter part of the collection in the Vatican manuscript, yet its reference to Petrarch and Laura as both young shows that it could hardly have been written as late as its position would indicate. This is one among many indications of the occasional violation of chronological order in that manuscript.

  It was said that King Robert of Naples, in a garden of Avignon, plucked the roses as described in the sonnet, giving one to Petrarch and the other to Laura. Robert was the hereditary lord of the district in which Avignon lay, and although Petrarch and the king were on terms of intimacy, yet his recorded visit to Provence occurred before Petrarch and Laura met, and it seems improbable that he was the ‘lover old and wise’ to which the poem refers.

  It is more likely that it was Senuccio del Bene, who was Petrarch’s confidant regarding his love for Laura, and to whom several of the poet’s sonnets were addressed.

  Due rose fresche e còlte in paradiso

  • Two roses fresh that grew in Paradise
  • The day that May was born in all her pride,
  • As a fair gift, a lover, old and wise,
  • ’Twixt two who still were youthful, did divide;
  • And added such sweet speech and smile so gay
  • That e’en a savage heart to love would turn,
  • And glow and sparkle with an amorous ray;
  • And thus with changing hues their faces burn.
  • ‘Ne’er did the sun such pair of lovers see,’
  • Laughing (yet not without a sigh), he said,
  • And then, embracing each, he turned away.
  • Thus flowers and words he portioned; till in me
  • Around my heart a trembling gladness spread.
  • O blessed gift of speech! O joyful day!
  • ccxlv

  Many and various are the conceits that appear everywhere throughout the Canzoniere. Some are mere mediaeval affectations, others, however, have a curious charm; for instance, the following where the lady Laura stands in the sunshine accompanied by Love and where the bright god of day and the poet himself are imagined as rivals for her favour.

  In mezzo di duo amanti, onesta, altera

  • My lady stood between her lovers twain
  • Stately and proud, and with her there was one—
  • A lord who reigneth over gods and men—
  • And I on this side, and on that the sun.
  • Yet while she was engirdled by the rays
  • Of him who was more fair, all tenderly
  • To eyes of mine she turned her radiant gaze,
  • (O that she ne’er had been more stern to me!)
  • And now to gladness all the jealousy
  • Was quickly changed that I at first had felt
  • Within my heart for my bright enemy.
  • Then came a cloud with rainy tears to melt
  • Before his face, grown dark with sullen gloom
  • So much it vexed him thus to be o’ercome.
  • cxv

  1339. See Mascetta, 464.

  In more serious vein, but still exultant, is the following:

  Quando fra l’altre donne ad ora ad ora

  • When, day by day, midst other women fair
  • Love comes to me in one sweet face and rare,
  • As others are less beautiful than she,
  • So grows the longing that enamours me;
  • And I do bless the place and hour and day
  • Wherein mine eyes did look so high; and say,
  • ‘O soul of mine, most grateful shouldst thou be
  • That thou wast worthy such felicity!
  • From her doth come to thee that loving mood
  • Which doth direct thee to the highest good,
  • Disprizing that which other men desire;
  • From her doth come to thee the quickening fire
  • That up to heaven thine eager feet will guide.’
  • And thus I walk, radiant in hope and pride.
  • xiii

  But a feeling far deeper than one which could be expressed in these graceful lines is at last developed. One of the first poems in which this burning passion is clearly revealed, is written in the artificial Provençal form of the sestine, a poem of six stanzas of six lines each (with three concluding lines). There are no rhymes, but in each stanza each line must conclude with the same word, and that too a noun, as some line in the preceding stanza and these words must follow in a certain order. Thus the last word of the first stanza is repeated at the end of the first line of the second stanza, the second line of the second stanza concludes with the same word as the first line of the first stanza, &c., the order being:

  1st Stanza	2nd Stanza	3rd Stanza	4th Stanza
  a b c d e f	f a e b d c	c f d a b e	e c b f a d
  5th Stanza	6th Stanza	Conclusion
  d e a c f b	b d f e c a	e d b

  The exact form of this sestine is preserved in the following translation.

  Sestine I

  A qualunque animale alberga in terra

  • • Unto whatever creature dwells on earth,
    • (Save only those whose eyes do hate the sun)
    • The time to toil is while it still is day;
    • And when at last the heavens light their stars,
    • Man homeward turns, the beasts hide in the wood
    • And find repose at least until the dawn.
  • • But I, from the first hour when early dawn
    • Shakes off the darkness from around the earth,
    • Awakening the beasts in every wood,
    • No truce in sighing have I with the sun,
    • And when at night I watch the flaming stars
    • I go lamenting, longing for the day.
  • • When evening drives away the shining day,
    • And our deep night to others brings the dawn,
    • Sadly I gaze upon the cruel stars
    • That formed my body out of sentient earth,
    • And I do curse the day I saw the sun,
    • Until I seem like one reared in the wood.
  • • Nor do I dream there ever browsed in wood
    • So wild a creature, either night or day,
    • As she whom I lament in shade and sun,
    • And weary not with weeping, eve or dawn,
    • Since, though my mortal body be of earth,
    • My love unchanging cometh from the stars.
  • • Ere I return to you, O shining stars,
    • Or fall to dust within this passionate wood,
    • And leave my body a dull clod of earth;
    • May she have pity who in one short day
    • Might for long years atone! Who ere the dawn
    • Could bless me, from the sinking of the sun!
  • • O were I but with her from set of sun,
    • And none to watch us but the silent stars
    • Only one night! And might there be no dawn!
    • Nor should she be transformed to leafy wood,
    • Escaping from my arms, as in that day
    • When Phoebus followed Daphne upon earth.
  • • But coffined shall I lie in senseless wood
    • And day shall come all full of tiny stars
    • Ere upon such sweet dawn shall shine the sun.
    • xxii

  1333. See Mascetta, 233.

  The same depth of feeling is shown in the following exquisite fifth stanza of the fifth canzone, Ne la stagion che ’l ciel rapido inchina, written at a somewhat later date.

  E perchè un poco nel parlar mi sfogo

  • Because I must a little ease my pain
  • Therefore I sing. The oxen come again
  • Unyoked at eve from field and furrowed hill;
  • Why, then, from sighing am I never free,
  • Whate’er the hour, but toil with heavy chain?
  • Why are mine eyelids wet by night and day?
  • O wretched me!
  • What was my foolish will
  • That I so held them fixed on one fair face
  • To sculpture it in fancy in a place
  • Whence it can ne’er be moved by force or skill
  • Till I shall be the prey
  • Of Death that endeth all? Nor do I know
  • If even on him my trust I may bestow.
  • l

  Early in 1337, perhaps at Capranica. Cochin, 53.

  On one occasion when the lady Laura fell seriously ill Petrarch wrote several poems upon this illness and her recovery, of which the following is an illustration.

  Già fiammeggiava l’amorosa stella

  • The star of Love1 already was ablaze
  • Throughout the East in the clear morning air,
  • And in the North, spreading its glittering rays,
  • The star that stirred the wrath of Juno fair.2
  • The agèd housewife rises, stirs the fire
  • Barefoot, ungirt, and sits her down to spin;
  • Fond lovers soon must quench their hearts’ desire
  • And all unwilling, mark the day begin.
  • Now she who had been close to death appears
  • (How changed she is!)—not by the customed way,
  • Which sleep has closed and grief has filled with tears,
  • But by the path of dreams—and seems to say,
  • ‘Take heart once more, why should thy courage flee?
  • Not yet these eyes of mine are lost to thee.’
  • xxxiii

  1333. See Mascetta, 121.

  Laura’s eyes were the subject of three famous canzoni called ‘The Sisters’, greatly admired by all Italian critics, though not easy to translate effectually into another language. The following is the second of these canzoni.

  Gentil mia donna, i’ veggio

  • • O gentle lady mine,
    • Within your eyes a gracious light I see;
    • The path that leads to heaven it showeth me!
    • Deep in those spheres divine
    • Where I am wont to sit with love alone,
    • All visibly your burning heart doth shine
    • And lights me to fair deeds. To glory’s throne
    • It points the way and from the ignoble throng
    • Doth draw my soul apart. No tongue can tell
    • The pure delights that to those orbs belong
    • Nor the rapture that they bring,
    • Both when the frost of winter clothes the earth,
    • And when the year again renews its birth,
    • (Then first I loved you) in the smiling spring.
  • • And I reflect, ‘Up there
    • Where the Eternal Mover of every star
    • Hath deigned to show us what His glories are,
    • If all His other works are half so fair,
    • Fling wide the prison door
    • That doth restrain me from my heavenward way!’
    • And then I turn me to my strife on earth,
    • Blessing the happy day that gave me birth,
    • Which hath reserved me for such sovereign bliss,
    • And praising her who raised me from the abyss
    • To such high hopes. Till I saw her I lay
    • In self-abasement chilled;
    • But in that hour I woke to joy. She filled
    • With lofty thoughts and sweet idolatry
    • The heart whereof her fair eyes hold the key.
  • • For never yet did Love and fickle chance
    • Such happiness bestow
    • On him for whom their friendship most they show,
    • That I would change it for a single glance
    • From those dear eyes whence cometh my repose
    • As the tree grows
    • From roots within the soil—angelic rays
    • That streaming, shed their joy
    • Upon my soul when Love doth light the blaze
    • That sweetly doth consume me and destroy!
    • As every other glory doth depart
    • Wherever yours doth shine,
    • So from my heart,
    • Whene’er your tender eyes on me incline,
    • All other hopes, all other thoughts are gone
    • And Love with you remaineth there alone.
  • • However sweet the grace
    • That in the heart of happy lovers lies,
    • Yet if it all were gathered in one place,
    • ’Twere naught to what I feel
    • When from those dreamy eyes
    • Between the black and white the soft rays steal
    • Wherein love sports and plays.
    • And I believe that from my infancy
    • Kind heaven did provide this remedy
    • For all my weakness and my evil days.
    • Oft-times your veil doth wrong me, that doth screen
    • Your face, and the fair hands that pass between
    • My one supreme delight
    • And eyes of mine that flow both day and night
    • With passionate longing from an ardent breast
    • Cheered by your love, by your disdain oppressed.
  • • Since I with sorrow see
    • That nature to my soul was mean and hard,
    • Nor made me worthy of such dear regard,
    • Therefore I strive to be
    • A man more fit for such felicity,
    • And for the gentle flame wherewith I burn;
    • And thus with patient care my soul doth learn
    • To be slow to evil, swift to all good things,
    • Spurning the idle joys the vain world brings.
    • Perchance if this I do
    • ’Twill help me to her favour kind and true,
    • And the end of all my woe
    • Shall come (full well my sorrowing heart doth know)
    • From the sweet trembling of relenting eyes
    • A faithful lover’s last and dearest prize.1
    • lxxii

  Sometimes Laura relents and awakens the liveliest expressions of joy from her lover, as in the following:

  La donna che ’l mio cor nel viso porta

  • The lady who holds my heart in her fair face
  • I saw before me in sweet thought entranced
  • Sitting alone, and I, to do her grace,
  • With pale and reverent countenance advanced.
  • Then she, when she perceived my state forlorn,
  • Turned to me with a smile so fresh and clear,
  • That from Jove’s hands his armour ’twould have torn
  • And calmed his wrath and smoothed his brow austere.
  • Then she passed on. I trembled with surprise
  • At words so sweet I could not bear to hear,
  • Nor watch the glistening of her tender eyes;
  • And now, reflecting on that welcome dear,
  • I am so filled with hope and teeming joys
  • That pain and grief and sorrow disappear.
  • cxi

  1333-6(?). Mascetta, p. 185.

  It was not till late in 1336 that Petrarch was able to set out for Rome, which had been the city of his dreams. He arrived in Italy early in 1337, and it was then that the following sonnet was written and was addressed (in all probability) to his patron James Colonna.

  L’aspetto sacro de la terra vostra

  • The sacred face of your dear land I see,
  • And pity for its evil fate it brings.
  • ‘Rise, wretched one!’ I cry; ‘what aileth thee?’
  • And the sight stirs my soul to higher things.
  • Then with this thought another doth contend
  • And asketh of me, ‘Wherefore dost thou flee?
  • Bethink thee! Why thy time thus vainly spend?
  • We must return our lady’s face to see.’
  • And while I mark the words, my heart grows cold,
  • Like one who doth some fateful message hear;
  • Then my first fancy doth return and hold
  • My spirit, while the other flees in fear.
  • And thus these thoughts in constant strife do dwell;
  • Which will prevail at last, I cannot tell.
  • lxviii

  Sometimes in despair Petrarch prays for deliverance from his hopeless passion, as in a sonnet written April 6, 1338, a day regarded as the anniversary of the death of Christ, and eleven years after he had first met Laura in the church of Santa Clara.

  Padre del ciel; dopo i perduti giorni

  • Father in heaven, lo! these wasted days
  • And all these nights in vain imaginings spent,
  • My thoughts enkindled to one maddening blaze,
  • On one alluring presence all intent!
  • May’t please Thee now that by Thy light I bend
  • My life to better things—some worthier aim—
  • And that my foe his snares in vain extend,
  • And at his bootless wiles be filled with shame,
  • ’Tis now, O Lord, the eleventh circling year
  • Since I am fettered by this pitiless chain
  • Which to the weak is ever most severe;
  • Have mercy on my undeservèd pain!
  • Guide Thou my wandering thoughts some better way,
  • Remind them Thou wast on the cross to-day!
  • lxii

  Of a similar religious nature is the following, which it is believed was addressed by Petrarch to his brother Gherardo, who had lost by death the lady to whom he was passionately attached, and who some years later, after intervals of despair, devoted himself to the monastic life.

  La bella donna che cotanto amavi

  • The lady fair whom thou didst greatly love,
  • Did pass, when least we thought, beyond our gaze,
  • And well I hope hath risen to heaven above,
  • So gentle and so gracious were her ways.
  • It is now time to take back both the keys1
  • (Which in her life she held) of thy sad heart,
  • Then by the straight road, follow her with ease,
  • No earthly burden left thy soul to thwart.
  • For, when delivered of thy heaviest load,
  • From what remains thou canst be quickly free,
  • And like a pilgrim to thy new abode
  • Rise all unburdened. Thou canst clearly see
  • How all things move to death. Well may we pray
  • The soul go light upon its perilous way.
  • xci

  1337. Cochin, pp. 73-4.

  It is possibly to this same brother, when about to enter the monastic life, that Petrarch addressed the following:

  Poi che voi et io più volte abbiam provato

  • Since you and I full many a proof can bring
  • That vain and false have been each hope and joy,
  • Lift up your heart unto a better thing,
  • That highest good that never brings annoy.
  • This earthly life is like a meadow green
  • Where the snake lies in flowers and grass entwined,
  • And where the eyes delight in what is seen,
  • The vision charms and captivates the mind.
  • If therefore you would have your soul unstirred
  • By the world’s tumult ere the final day,
  • Follow the few and not the common herd.
  • I hear your answer, ‘Brother, thou the way
  • Showest to others where full often thou
  • Thyself wert lost and never more than now.’
  • xcix

  Petrarch’s mystical temperament also appears in the following:

  Io son sì stanco sotto il fascio antico

  • I am so weary of the heavy load
  • Of all my sins and all my wicked ways
  • That I do fear to faint upon the road
  • And in my enemy’s hands to end my days.
  • Lo! a true friend to rescue me draws nigh;
  • Unspeakable His courtesy and grace;
  • Then far beyond my sight He soars on high
  • So that in vain I strive to see His face.
  • But still His voice re-echoes with the strain,
  • ‘Ye who are heavy laden come to Me;
  • I am the way that others bar in vain.’
  • What grace, what mercy, what divine decree
  • Will clothe me with the pinions of the dove
  • To rise from earth and find my rest above?
  • lxxxi

  1338 (?). Mascetta, p. 337.

  The tumult in his soul is thus described in the metaphor of a storm at sea:

  Passa la nave mia colma d’oblio

  • My bark the raging surges overwhelm,
  • Tossing at midnight on the winter sea
  • ’Twixt Scylla and Charybdis. At the helm
  • Sits Love, my master and my enemy.
  • At each oar stands some wicked thought and bold
  • That scoffs at death and shipwreck and the gale;
  • A driving blast, incessant, wet and cold
  • Of sighs and hopes and longings, strikes the sail;
  • Now tears rain hard in mists of wrath and scorn;
  • The weary sheets hang fluttering limp and drenched,
  • Twisted by ignorance, by error torn,
  • And my two beacon lights in gloom are quenched.
  • Amid these waves knowledge and skill are vain,
  • And I despair of reaching port again.
  • clxxxix

  1338. See Mascetta, p. 325.

  Sometimes he resolves to break off his unhappy attachment and even imagines he has succeeded in doing so, as in the following madrigal.

  Per ch’ al viso d’Amor portava insegna

  • Bearing love’s ensigns on her shining face,
  • A wandering fair one stirred my foolish heart;
  • No creature else seemed clothed with such a grace,
  • And through the fields I followed her apart;
  • When lo! a far clear voice called unto me,
  • ‘How many steps thou takest all in vain!’
  • Then in the shadow of a mighty tree
  • I paused in thought, and looking round again
  • I saw the perils that beset my way,
  • And turned me back, while it was still noonday.
  • liv

  Circa 1339. Cochin, p. 56.

  But his new liberty brings him no relief, as he declares in a sonnet addressed to some other women, who perhaps had rallied him on his deliverance.

  Fuggendo la pregionc ove Amor m’ebbe

  • After long years, escaping from the cell
  • Where Love, to work his will, imprisoned me,
  • O women, long the tale if I should tell
  • How I repented of my liberty.
  • My heart confessed it could not live a day
  • Apart from love and hope, and then there came
  • Craftier than I, a traitor on my way
  • In such false mask, he lured me to my shame.1
  • And many a time, sighing for what is past,
  • I cry, ‘Alas! the yoke and bond and chain
  • Were sweeter than to walk released and free.’
  • O wretched me! I know my fate at last,
  • Too late, delivered with still bitterer pain
  • From the sweet pangs that had encompassed me.
  • lxxxix

  Again and again his passion returns. In 1339 or 1340 Simone Martini, a distinguished painter of Siena, was employed at the papal court at Avignon, and Petrarch induced him to paint a miniature of Laura which the poet could carry with him upon his journeys. Petrarch wrote two sonnets on this theme, of which the following is one.

  Quando giunse a Simon l’alto concetto

  • While Simon mastered his conception high,
  • When at my wish his hand had grasped the brush,
  • If to her features and the delicate flush
  • Of those fair cheeks he also could supply
  • Both voice and soul, he had freed from every sigh
  • One who cares not for what most men hold dear.
  • All humble to my sight she doth appear
  • And her sweet face assureth me of joy;
  • And after, when I talk with her fair eyes,
  • She seems to listen in a kindly way
  • But cannot answer me the things I say!
  • Pygmalion, how greatly shouldst thou prize
  • The face that a thousand times did talk with thee,
  • While not once will these fair lips answer me!
  • lxxviii

  Sometimes the poet’s despair awakens compassion on the part of his mistress and he is comforted by some kindly salutation or gracious speech as in the following ballad.

  Volgendo gli occhi al mio novo colore

  • Turning your eyes upon that ashen hue
  • Which bids all men remember them of death,
  • ’Twas pity moved your soul and from you drew
  • That kindly greeting which did keep the breath
  • That stirs my heart; the fragile life that dwells
  • In this weak flesh did your fair eyes bestow,
  • And that angelic voice that softly wells
  • With rippling music. ’Tis from them I know
  • My very being. As sluggish beasts will start
  • Stung by the rod, so is the slumber rent
  • In my dull soul. The keys1 to my sad heart,
  • Lady, you have them both. I am content,
  • Ready with any wind to sail the sea;
  • Since all that comes from you is sweet to me.
  • lxiii

  1339. See Mascetta, p. 455.

  Laura was especially kind to her lover when he was about to leave her for a considerable time on one of his journeys, as appears from the following sonnet describing their last meeting prior to his departure for Italy.

  Quel vago impallidir, che ’l dolce riso

  • That pallid hue, which clothed her gentle smile
  • In tender mist, gave with such delicate grace
  • Its kindly welcome that my heart the while
  • Leaped forth in greeting through my eager face.
  • Then did I know how souls in Paradise
  • Do gaze on one another. I saw revealed
  • That pitying thought, unmarked by other eyes
  • Than mine alone which to all else were sealed.
  • Every angelic look or gracious mien
  • Of womankind where love might chance to be,
  • Was proud disdain to that which I have seen.
  • Silent she asked (as it did seem to me)
  • While down to earth her gracious eyes did bend,
  • ‘Who drives away from me my faithful friend?’
  • cxxiii

  1345. See De Sade, ii. p. 223.

  And when Petrarch is away her image is constantly before him—witness the following sonnet, composed as early as 1333, while he was journeying through the forest of Ardennes on his way back from Flanders, as well as the succeeding ode, which was written at a much later period on one of his journeys in Italy and shortly before his return to Vaucluse, possibly in 1345 while he was at Verona.

  Per mezz’ i boschi inospiti e selvaggi

  • Through forests inhospitable and drear
  • Where even men at arms in danger go,
  • I walk secure, and naught shall make me fear
  • Save the sun’s rays that full of love do glow.
  • And here I sing of her (O foolish dream)
  • Whom heaven cannot keep apart from me.
  • In pine and beech I see her, and there seem
  • Matrons and maids in her sweet company;
  • I hear her as the summer breezes pass,
  • In rustling leaves, in songs that fill the glades
  • And in the brooks that murmur through the grass,
  • Till the low music of these sylvan shades
  • Is grateful to my heart, save that the light
  • Of my sweet sun is too much quenched in night.
  • clxxvi

  The foregoing sonnet, as well as the three canzoni which follow, illustrates the fact that Petrarch constantly surrounds his mistress with natural beauties and establishes an intimate and mysterious connexion between her and Nature.

  Di pensier in pensier, di monte in monte

  • • From fancy unto fancy, peak to peak,
    • Love guideth me. Frequented ways I fly.
    • The paths of men are irksome to my peace;
    • But if on lonely shore a fount or creek
    • Or shadowy vale between the hills doth lie,
    • There doth the tumult of my spirit cease;
    • And then, as Love may please
    • I laugh, I tremble, I am bold, I weep;
    • My face reflects my soul where’er I go,
    • And bright or dark doth grow,
    • Yet but a little time its mood doth keep,
    • Till practised eyes do mark me and declare,
    • ‘He loves, yet knows not if his fate be fair.’
  • • Where hill or lofty pine doth cast its shade
    • I halt, and on the nearest rock I see
    • Limned by my fancy, her fair countenance!
    • When I revive, behold! my breast is made
    • All soft with tears; I cry: ‘Ah, wretched me,
    • Where art thou? Why awaken from thy trance?’
    • For while that tender glance
    • Doth hold my heart in sweet imprisonment,
    • Forgetful of itself, gazing on her,
    • I do feel love so near
    • That with the dream alone I am content;
    • So fair doth she appear on every side,
    • I ask no more if these sweet visions bide.
  • • Full oft her living image have I seen
    • In the clear waters or upon the grass
    • Or in the trunk of some widespreading tree
    • Or on a floating cloud. Her face hath been
    • So fair that Helen’s it did far surpass,
    • As the bright sun constrains the stars to flee.
    • Though wild the spot may be,
    • On lonely shore—in forest sere and brown—
    • All the more fair my thoughts her form portray.
    • And when truth drives away
    • The sweet delusion, then I sit me down,
    • Dead stone on living rock, cold with my fears,
    • And think, and weep, and write my song in tears.
  • • Within my heart a keen desire doth rise
    • To scale the steepest, loftiest peak of all
    • Where shade of other mountain cannot go.
    • There I begin to measure with mine eyes
    • How great my loss, and into weeping fall,
    • My heart all filled with a thick mist of woe,
    • Whene’er I look and know
    • What spaces part me from that radiant face
    • That still is near, even when far away!
    • Low to myself I say,
    • ‘Poor soul, why weep? Perchance in that far place
    • Thine absence grieves her and she sighs for thee.’
    • And with that thought my soul again is free.
    • O song, beyond those Alps,
    • Where heaven is more serene and skies more gay,
    • Thou’lt see me soon near a swift-running stream
    • Where the soft air doth teem
    • With odours from a laurel grove astray.
    • My heart and she who took it both are there,
    • Only my empty image bideth here.
    • cxxix

  1345. Cochin, p. 92.

  But his most vivid pictures of Laura are at Vaucluse in the narrow valley between steep mountains where the Sorgue rushes forth from a cavern and flows swiftly down the valley. This stream was then bordered with groves of oak and beech and laurel, and its banks were carpeted with sod on which wild flowers grew luxuriantly. It would seem that Petrarch and Laura had met in this valley on one or more occasions, and the memory of her presence there gave rise to the most exquisite poetry in the whole Canzoniere. His thirteenth ode, Se ’l pensier che mi strugge, preliminary to the one which is deservedly reckoned his masterpiece, thus sets forth in its sixth stanza the reasons why each spot is so precious to him:

  Ovunque gli occhi volgo

  • Where’er I turn mine eyes
  • A joy serene I find,
  • While fancy whispers ‘Here her glance she threw’.
  • The flowers and grass I gather, I do prize
  • When memory brings to mind,
  • ‘She pressed the gracious soil whereon ye grew,
  • Wandering between the mountain and the stream.
  • Perchance she made of you a fragrant chair
  • Blooming and fresh and fair!’
  • Thus not one spot is lost in my sweet dream.
  • I think ’tis better so
  • Than if each place I did more surely know!
  • O spirit blest, what must thy graces be,
  • That thou canst make such worshipper of me!
  • cxxv

  After 1337. Cochin, p. 90.

  The fourteenth ode, here given in full, is in the original perhaps the most finished love song ever written. Only a very small part of its grace and beauty can be transferred to another tongue. The picture presented by the fourth stanza especially is one which has hardly a superior in lyric poetry.

  De Sade believes this ode refers to some place near Avignon where Petrarch had met Laura, and to which he went frequently in the hope of seeing her (i. 207). Most commentators are satisfied that it refers to Vaucluse, since not only does the description correspond, but Petrarch in other poems also declared, as he does here in the second stanza, that it was in this place that he hoped to die.

  Chiare, fresche e dolci acque

  • • Clear, fresh, sweet waters,
    • Where she who seems to me
    • The only one among earth’s daughters
    • Hath laid her dainty limbs; thou stately tree,
    • (I sigh remembering it) she made of thee
    • A shaft whereon her gracious form might lean;
    • O flowers and herbage green
    • The which (with her angelic bosom fair)
    • Her graceful gown did hide;
    • And thou, soft air,
    • Calm, holy and serene
    • Where Love with those bright eyes did open wide
    • The portals to my heart; give heedful ears
    • To these my last wild words of grief and tears.
  • • If it be fate and heaven’s firm decree
    • That Love shall close my weary eyelids weeping,
    • Some grace it still shall be,
    • When back to its own goal
    • Returns my naked soul,
    • That gives my poor frail body to your keeping.
    • Death will have less
    • Of pang and bitterness
    • If to its dark defile that hope I bring;
    • For never spirit faint with heavy wing
    • From the tormented flesh could flee or stir
    • In port more calm, more tranquil sepulchre.
  • • The time perchance draws on apace
    • When to the old familiar place
    • That creature wild
    • Will come once more, all beautiful and mild
    • And turn her gaze with longing, nay with glee
    • To where she saw me on that happy day,
    • And seek my face again; but woe is me!
    • Seeing among the rocks I am but clay,
    • Love may inspire her such a way
    • That she will softly sigh
    • And ask me as a guerdon from the sky
    • Till heaven perforce must yield, the while she dries
    • With her fair veil her weeping eyes.
  • • Ah! sweet in memory! from these branches fair
    • Upon her gracious lap there fell soft showers
    • Of fluttering flowers!
    • Yet sat she there,
    • Lowly and meek amid that pageant proud,
    • All covered with a radiant cloud
    • Of love! One flower did stray
    • Upon her garment’s hem; one on her curls
    • That to my sight that day
    • Were made of burnished gold and shining pearls.
    • One rested on the earth; one on the stream;
    • Another, lingering slow, did softly move
    • And turn again, then wandering, did seem
    • To speak and say, ‘Here reigneth Love.’
  • • How many times I said,
    • Inspired with reverent dread,
    • ‘This creature sure was born in Paradise!’
    • Her port divine, her eyes,
    • Her angel’s face,
    • Her soft words, and the grace
    • Of her laughter did so bear me down
    • With sweet forgetfulness and drown
    • My thoughts in dear illusions, I did sigh
    • And questioning cry,
    • ‘How came I here, and when?’
    • And thought I was in heaven, and from then
    • Till now I so have loved this greensward fair
    • That I can find no joy nor peace elsewhere.
  • • O song of mine, hadst thou the graces meet
    • To match thy keen desire and eager mind,
    • Forth from the forest couldst thou turn thy feet
    • And walk with fearless step among mankind.
    • cxxvi

  It was the custom of every troubadour to remind his mistress of the long period of his devotion, and Petrarch follows this usage in a number of his sonnets, one of which, written fifteen years after he first met her, is here given. In this poem, however, he also imitates a well-known ode of Horace (Book I, Ode 22) to the ‘sweetly laughing Lalage’, expanding the thought of that poem with considerable elaboration.

  Pommi ove ’l sole occide i fiori e l’erba

  • Put me where all things wither in the sun,
  • Or where his beams grow faint ’mid ice and snow,
  • Or where through temperate climes his car doth run,
  • Or where the morn doth break or evening glow;
  • Clothe me in purple fortune or in grey,
  • Let skies be dark and dull, or airs serene,
  • Let it be night, or long or short the day,
  • Or ripening years or adolescence green;
  • Put me in heaven, on earth or down in hell,
  • On lofty mountain or in vale or moor,
  • As spirit freed or still in mortal shell,
  • With fame illustrious or with name obscure;
  • Through lustrums three I cherish, sigh, adore,
  • And so will I continue evermore.
  • cxlv

  1342.

  Many are the sonnets which, at various times, Petrarch devotes to the praise of the charms and perfections of his mistress. Witness the following:

  I’ vidi in terra angelici costumi

  • Here upon earth I saw those heavenly charms
  • Unique in all the world; those angel ways
  • Whose memory both delights me and alarms,
  • Till all I see seems shadow, dream and haze.
  • In tears I saw those two entrancing eyes
  • Whose beauty was the envy of the sun,
  • And heard the sound of such sweet words and sighs
  • As made the rivers stand and mountains run,
  • Love, honour, tender pity, grief sincere,
  • Weeping did utter sweeter melodies
  • Than any that the world is wont to hear;
  • While heaven attentive, drank the harmonies,
  • And every leaf on every branch was stilled;
  • With such delight the charmèd air was filled;
  • clvi

  1346. See De Sade, ii. p. 260.

  De Sade thinks some sorrow had befallen Laura perhaps the death of her mother, but this seems unnecessary for the explanation of the sonnet. The combination of love, honour, pity, and grief might well refer to her pity and sorrow for her lover from whom her honour required her to withhold her favours. Tears from such a cause might well account for Petrarch’s ecstasies.

  In qual parte del ciel, in quale idea

  • In what bright spot of heaven did it bide,
  • The pattern from which nature’s hand did bear
  • That gracious countenance, then turned aside
  • To show on earth what she could do up there?
  • What nymph or woodland goddess e’er unbound
  • Such golden tresses to the zephyr’s breath?
  • Where in a single breast such virtues found,
  • Although the chief has brought me to my death?
  • He looks in vain for beauty all divine
  • Who never gazed on this fair creature’s eyes
  • Nor saw how softly they did move and shine;
  • And he who never knew her tender sighs
  • Nor heard her gentle words or laughter gay
  • Knows not how Love can heal, how Love can slay.
  • clix

  Amor et io sì pien’ di meraviglia

  • O love! we need no further marvel seek
  • (Like one who never a strange thing hath known)
  • Gazing on her who, if she laugh or speak,
  • Is like none other than herself alone!
  • Beneath the shadow of her quiet brow
  • Shine those two faithful stars from azure sky;
  • No other light he needs his path to show,
  • Who hath resolved his love be pure and high.
  • What miracle to see her on the grass,
  • Where like a flower she sits! Or watch her press
  • Her breast on that green bush; or mark her pass
  • In the fresh springtime, in her loveliness,
  • By her own thoughts attended, chaste and fair,
  • Twining a garland for her golden hair!
  • clx

  Stiamo, Amor, a veder la gloria nostra

  • Love, let us stand our glory to behold!
  • Things beyond nature in their charm and worth!
  • Look! Beauty rains on her in showers of gold!
  • Behold the light that heaven shows to earth!
  • What art can deck with pearls and purple meet
  • That body fair whose like was never seen!
  • And how divinely tread those dainty feet
  • This shady cloister of fair hills and green!
  • Here in a thousand hues the scattered flowers
  • That spread themselves upon the tender grass
  • Which that old blackened oak shades and embowers
  • Pray that her foot may press them if she pass!
  • The stars are kindled round her, and the skies
  • Rejoice they are made clear by her bright eyes.
  • cxcii

  In nobil sangue vita umile e queta

  • Tranquil and meek her life, noble her blood;
  • A lofty mind; a pure heart filled with grace;
  • Mature the fruitage, tender still the bud;
  • A joyful spirit in a thoughtful face;
  • On one fair woman did her happy star—
  • Nay, King of all the stars—these gifts combine
  • With worth, true honour, fame from near and far;
  • To praise her well might weary bard divine!
  • For chastity in her is joined with love,
  • And gracious ways with nature’s comely guise;
  • With silent charm doth every gesture move,
  • And she hath that within her eloquent eyes
  • To darken day or bring night clear and calm,
  • Turn honey bitter or make wormwood balm.
  • ccxv

  In spite of the transitory gleams of hope and consolation from the kindness of his beloved, there returns to Petrarch again and again the conviction of the essential hopelessness of his passion, as in the following sonnet, which, although it appears quite early in the manuscript collection, was apparently written in one of the calmer and more reflective moments of his maturer years.

  Quanto più m’avicino al giorno extremo

  • The closer I draw near that final day
  • That hath the power to shorten human pain,
  • The swifter do the moments fly away
  • And all my hopes of them prove false and vain.
  • I say unto my thoughts, ‘We shall not go
  • Together far; our talk of Love must cease;
  • This dull and heavy body, like fresh snow
  • Is melting fast away; we shall find peace;
  • And when it comes that hope will disappear
  • Which fills us with our vain imaginings,
  • Our laughter and our sorrow, rage and fear,
  • And we shall clearly see what idle things
  • Are those for which we strive and pray and cry,
  • How fruitless are the joys for which we sigh!’
  • xxxii

  But no mood lasts long in the course of Petrarch’s love, and his poems are filled with continual changes and inconsistencies. There is none of them which reveals more fully the contradictions in his life and feelings than the following sonnet full of antitheses after the model of certain Proveçal songs.

  Pace non trovo, e non ho da far guerra

  • I find no peace, yet am not armed for war;
  • I hope and yet I fear; I freeze, I burn;
  • On earth I lie, above the heavens I soar;
  • I would embrace the world, yet all things spurn;
  • And she doth hold me in a cell confined
  • Who neither makes me hers nor sets me free;
  • Love will not kill, nor yet my cords unbind,
  • Nor wills I live, nor ends my misery.
  • I have no tongue, yet speak, no eyes, yet see;
  • I long to perish, yet I call for aid;
  • I loathe myself, yet love with constancy,
  • Weeping I laugh and on affliction feed;
  • And life and death I hold in equal hate.
  • Through you, my lady, comes this evil state.
  • cxxxiv

  1340-1. See Mascetta, p. 479.

  During the years that elapsed after the time when Petrarch and Laura met, her youthful beauty must have diminished, especially when her health was broken. It was perhaps on some such occasion when Petrarch had noted this that he composed the following exquisite sonnet recalling her appearance when he first met her and the love then awakened which could not now be quenched at a later time on account of the changes he perceived.

  Erano i capei d’oro a l’aura sparsi

  • Flung to the breezes was her golden hair,
  • Into a thousand knots its tresses wound,
  • Beyond all telling glowed the sunshine fair
  • From those soft eyes where now no light is found.
  • I cannot tell if it be true or no,
  • Methought her face to pitying colours turned;
  • My breast love’s touchstone was; at love’s first glow
  • What wonder that with sudden fire I burned!
  • Nor did she walk like any mortal thing,
  • But every motion was celestial grace;
  • Her words were like the angels’ when they sing;
  • A living sun, a heavenly spirit’s face
  • Was what I saw. If such it is not now
  • No wound is healed by slackening the bow.
  • xc

  1338. See Mascetta, p. 361. (Probably later.)

  At the end of twenty years from the time when he first met Laura in the church at Avignon, Petrarch thus describes his own condition.

  Beato in sogno, e di languir contento

  • Happy in dreams; content in languishing;
  • Shadows I clasp; I swim in shoreless seas;
  • I chase the summer airs with aimless wing;
  • Build on the sand and write upon the breeze.
  • I plough the waves in vain; the sun I woo
  • Till by its withering rays my powers are spent;
  • A swiftly fleeing deer do I pursue
  • With sluggish ox, crippled and maimed and bent;
  • Save to my own harm I am blind to all;
  • That harm I seek with fluttering heart and torn.
  • On Love, my lady, nay on Death I call,
  • And twenty years these torments have I borne.
  • Still am I filled with sighs and tears and gloom,
  • Yet dearly love the fate that weaves my doom.
  • ccxii

  1347.

  In 1347, when Petrarch set out for Rome with the intention of co-operating with Rienzi, it seems that a presentiment of some calamity was in Laura’s mind when he left her, and the poet afterwards, reflecting upon her appearance and conduct at their final interview, also becomes filled with forebodings of some impending danger, as appears in the following.

  Qual paura ho quando mi torna a mente

  • With what keen dread do I recall the day
  • When I did leave my lady—and my heart!
  • Pensive and grave was she when we did part.
  • No other image in my thought will stay!
  • Amid fair women in their fine array,
  • Humble I see her stand. She seems a rose
  • ’Mong lesser flowers. No joy nor pain she shows,
  • But a dim dread as one who cannot say
  • What he doth fear. Her mirth is put away,
  • Her pearls, her garments gay, her garlands choice;
  • Silent her songs and laughter and sweet voice.
  • And thus I left her, to dark doubts a prey.
  • Now portents, dreams and many a boding thought
  • Assail my heart; Pray God they come to nought!
  • ccxlix

  1347. Cochin, p. 115.

  Soon this foreboding takes definite shape in a dream in which Laura tells him that this parting is their final one.

  Solea lontana in sonno consolarme

  • My love was wont to comfort me in dreams,
  • Smiling with angel face from far away;
  • But now with gloom and dread the vision teems
  • And help is none, my terrors to allay.
  • For tender pity, joined to solemn grief
  • Full often in her face I seem to see,
  • And hear the thing that fills me with belief,
  • Yet strips my heart of all felicity.
  • ‘Dost thou remember not’, I hear her say,
  • ‘That final evening when we needs must part?
  • Late was the hour; I could no longer stay,
  • And left thee tearful, but I had no heart
  • To tell thee then what now is proved and plain:
  • Hope not on earth to see my face again.’
  • ccl

  1347. Cochin, p. 115.

  These forebodings were only too well founded, for it was while Petrarch was still in Italy that Laura died. His first sonnet afterwards is a wild, incoherent wail of despair, in which he recalls and invokes her face, her look, her bearing, her speech, her laughter, her soul, in all of which he needs must dwell and can feel or know no other sorrow now that he is deprived of these.

  Oimè il bel viso, oimè il soave sguardo

  • Ah, that sweet face! Alas! that sóft regard!
  • That noble bearing, winsome, blithe, and free,
  • That speech to soothe a nature fierce and hard,
  • And make the weak grow strong! Unhappy me!
  • Ah! that sweet laughter whence the dart has flown
  • Whose wound must end in death, my happiest fate!
  • Ah! regal soul most worthy of a throne,
  • Hadst thou not fall’n upon the world too late!
  • In you I needs must dwell and breathe and glow,
  • Since I was always yours; if you depart,
  • No other sorrow can I feel or know.
  • With hope and fond desire you filled my heart,
  • When I did say farewell, yet longed to stay!
  • And now the wind has borne the words away!
  • cclxvii

  1348. Cochin, p. 124.

  The bitterness of his soul also finds expression in the following:

  Quanta invidia io ti porto, avara terra

  • O sordid earth, what envy do I bear
  • To thee who claspest her I see no more,
  • Since thou dost hide from me those features fair
  • Wherein I found my peace in bitter war.
  • Heaven too I envy, that shuts in and bars,
  • And treasures for itself so grudgingly
  • That spirit meek which humbly sought the stars,
  • Yet opens nevermore its gates to me!
  • I envy too the souls who now enjoy
  • On high her sweet and gracious company,
  • Which I, with yearning keen, so long have sought;
  • I envy hateful Death who did destroy
  • My life with hers in ruthless cruelty,
  • Yet stands in her fair eyes, and calls me not!
  • ccc

  1351-3. Cochin, p. 132.

  But his grief sometimes strikes a more plaintive chord in which Christian resignation is blended.

  Occhi miei, oscurato è ’l nostro sole

  • O eyes of mine, our sun is dark to-day,
  • Or rather rises to heaven and shines in state!
  • There shall we see her yet, for she doth wait
  • Our coming—perhaps she grieves at our delay!
  • O ears of mine, her angel words convey
  • A deeper meaning there than you can know!
  • O feet of mine, ye have no right to go
  • Where she who oft hath drawn you wends her way.
  • Wherefore on me wage ye this bitter strife?
  • It was not I who shattered all your joy
  • Of seeing, hearing, following her in life;
  • Blame rather Death who did your hopes destroy.
  • Or better, praise Him who doth bind and free
  • And after mourning grants felicity.
  • cclxxv

  On July 3, 1348, only a few months after Laura’s death, Petrarch’s friend and patron, Cardinal Colonna, was also carried off by the plague. In the following sonnet the column (Colonna) and the laurel (Lauro) signify respectively his friend and his beloved.

  Rotta è l’alta colonna e ’l verde lauro

  • Broken the column tall and laurel green
  • That were my shade and my security,
  • And I have lost what shall no more be seen
  • From western ocean to the Indian sea.
  • ’Twas Death who from mine arms these treasures bore,
  • Wherewith I lived in joy and walked in pride,
  • And now no lands nor empires can restore
  • Nor gems nor gold allure them to my side.
  • If human will be ruled by destiny,
  • What else than bitter anguish can I choose
  • With downcast face and eyes suffused with tears?
  • That life of ours that is so fair to see,
  • How swiftly in one morning doth it lose
  • All that it won through many weary years!
  • cclxix

  1348-9. Cochin, p. 126.

  With the returning of another spring the memories of Laura awaken a new pang.

  Zefiro torna, e ’l bel tempo rimena

  • Again with gladsome feet Zephyr returns
  • Mid grass and flowers, his goodly family
  • And Procne chatters, Philomela1 mourns,
  • While Spring comes forth in all her finery.
  • The meadows laugh; the skies are bright and fair,
  • And Aphrodite wins the smile of Jove,
  • While full of passion is the earth and air
  • And every creature turns his thoughts to love.
  • For me, alas! these vernal days are shorn
  • Of all delight and laden with the sighs
  • Which from my heart’s recesses she hath torn
  • Who bore its hopes and pangs to Paradise!
  • Till birds and flowers and woman’s graces mild
  • To me are but a desert, stern and wild.
  • cccx

  The same note of inconsolable grief appears in the following:

  Nè per sereno ciel ir vaghe stelle

  • Neither the stars that wander through the sky,
  • Nor stately ships upon a tranquil sea,
  • Nor troops of gallant horsemen prancing by,
  • Nor blithe and agile beasts in wood and lea,
  • Nor tidings fresh from one for whom we fear,
  • Nor speech of love in grand and lofty air,
  • Nor amid verdant lawns with fountains clear
  • The tuneful songs of gentle dames and fair,
  • Nor aught beside can move my stony heart
  • Which she hath carried with her to the tomb,
  • Who to mine eyes did light and joy impart
  • Till now without her life is naught but gloom,
  • And I do call for death with longing keen.
  • O but to see her! Would I ne’er had seen!
  • cccxii

  And when he returns to Vaucluse, the familiar scenes arouse again the consciousness of his loneliness.

  Sento l’aura mia antica, e i dolci colli

  • I feel the soft breeze on my cheek; I see
  • The hills before me where that light was born
  • Which held mine eyes in its sweet sorcery,
  • And still doth hold them weeping and forlorn!
  • O idle fancies! withered hopes and dreams!
  • Empty and cold the nest where she did lie,
  • Lonely the grassy banks, turbid the streams
  • Where still I live and where I hoped to die!
  • For I did think to end my weary days
  • Here where her gracious feet might press the sward
  • Upon my grave and her fair eyes might gaze.
  • But I have served a hard and cruel lord!
  • All that did feed my flame I rashly burned,
  • And now I mourn my hopes to ashes turned.
  • cccxx

  1351. Cochin, p. 137.

  Petrarch’s sorrow at Laura’s death is none the less profound because their relations shortly before her death had begun to take on more and more the form of intimate friendship as her dread of the violence of his earlier passion gradually disappeared. He gives utterance to this change of feeling in the following.

  Tutta la mia fiorita e verde etade

  • At last my blossoming and vernal age
  • Was passing, and I felt my youthful fire
  • Grow calmer. Life had reached its crowning stage
  • And soon would seek the valley and expire.
  • Little by little my dear enemy
  • Began to win assurance from her fears,
  • And her pure heart and stainless honesty
  • Would take in fancied jest my sighs and tears.
  • For it was near the time when Love doth walk
  • With chastity, and lovers may have leave
  • To sit together and in friendly talk
  • To tell how they did dream and yearn and grieve.
  • But envious Death, to quench my hopes in woe
  • Rushed in between us like an armèd foe.
  • cccxv

  But less than two years after Laura’s death the poet is assailed by the temptation of another love, and in the following canzone he defies the fair god to ensnare him again.

  Amor, se vuo’ ch’ i’ torni al giogo antico

  • If thou wouldst bend me to thy yoke anew,
  • O God of Love, as all thy pains do show,
  • Ere thou my spirit shalt again subdue,
  • A new strange test thyself must undergo.
  • Find me the treasure that lies hid away
  • In the dark grave and left me stripped and poor.
  • Find that wise heart and pure
  • Wherein the fount of all my being lay.
  • Then, if thy power be such as men do say
  • In heaven above and in the abyss below,
  • (What things among us here thy skill can do,
  • So oft are proved and true
  • I think that every gentle soul doth know)
  • Take back from Death the prize his arm doth bear,
  • And set thine emblems on that visage fair.
  • Grant that again her gracious look I see,
  • Which like a sun did melt the ice away,
  • And let me on that path discover thee
  • Where went my heart and evermore did stay.
  • Take thou thy golden arrows and thy bow,
  • And let me hear again the cord rebound,
  • And the words of tuneful sound
  • That taught me all the depths of love to know!
  • Move thou the lips in which the charm did lie
  • That bound me; hide thy snare
  • Within her clustering hair!
  • To lure me elsewhere vainly wilt thou try.
  • But fling again those tresses to the wind,
  • And all content, my spirit thou canst bind.
  • For naught could free me from the threads of gold
  • That in her rippling ringlets did appear,
  • Nor from the fragrant breath that did enfold
  • Her gracious presence, tender yet austere.
  • Both day and night they kept my love more green
  • Than the fresh laurel hid in sylvan glades
  • When summer foliage fades;
  • Or myrtle, when the winter blast is keen;
  • But now that cruel death so stern hath been
  • And broke the bond from which I could not fly,
  • In all the world no other wilt thou find
  • My heart again to bind.
  • What use, O Love, to try?
  • Thine arms are lost; my spirit now is free,
  • I fear thee not; what canst thou do to me?
  • cclxx

  Date shown by manuscript, commenced June 9, 1350, finished 1351. Cochin, pp. 125-6.

  But in his dreams of Laura the thoughts of his own fame as a poet are not wholly absent. His earlier songs had been written to give his heart relief; now he would more willingly write to please the world, but with her death his inspiration had passed and her memory calls him away.

  S’ io avesse pensato che sì care

  • Had I but known how welcome were the rhymes
  • I fashioned from my sighs and deep despair,
  • Still other stanzas had I shaped betimes
  • In numbers greater and in charms more rare.
  • But she is dead who did inspire my heart,
  • Who on my peaks of fancy stood aloft,
  • And of myself I have no wit nor art
  • To make my rough dull verses clear and soft.
  • For all my labour in that earlier time
  • Was but to give my burdened heart relief
  • As best I might, not unto fame to climb;
  • I sought to grieve, but not renown from grief.
  • Now would I please, but she with noble pride
  • Doth call me, dumb and weary, to her side.
  • ccxciii

  In the two following stanzas, taken from the twenty-sixth canzone, he contrasts the days of his former journeys, when hope as well as memory accompanied him, with his present state now that hope is gone and he must live on memory alone. If he had only understood the meaning of Laura’s look at their last meeting and had then died, his lot would have been happy compared with his present loneliness.

  Solea da la fontana di mia vita

  • From my life’s fountain I was wont to stray,
  • And wandering over lands and seas would go,
  • Not by desire impelled but destiny;
  • And ever went (such aid did Love convey)
  • To banishment (how bitter, Love did know),
  • Pasturing my heart on hope and memory.
  • Now I surrender and my arms resign
  • Unto a fortune pitiless and stern
  • That hath despoiled me of my hope benign;
  • And now to memory only must I turn,
  • Feeding my longing heart with dreams alone,
  • So faint with fasting hath my spirit grown.
  • * * * * * *
  • If my dull mind had been with me at need,
  • And my vain longings had not sought to bend
  • My thoughts another way, in the sweet face
  • Of my dear lady I could plainly read
  • That I had reached of all my joy the end
  • And the beginning of much bitterness,
  • And learning this and finding swift release
  • While still she lived, from my affliction sore—
  • This grievous veil of flesh,—in joy and peace
  • I might have gone before,
  • And watched them raise in heaven her dwelling fair;
  • Now I must follow her with snowy hair.
  • * * * * * *
  • Song, say to him who in his love is blest,
  • ‘If thou art well contented, die to-day,
  • For timely parting is not grief, but rest;
  • Who can die happy, let him not delay.’
  • cccxxxi

  In the twenty-fifth canzone, Tacer non posso, e temo non adopre, the goddess of Fortune, who rules and foresees the destinies of men, converses with the poet in the fifth, sixth, and seventh stanzas, and thus describes the birth, the childhood and early womanhood of Laura, in a series of brilliant images, where the presence of only one dark cloud portended her approaching doom.

  Il dì che costei nacque, eran le stelle

  • • The day that she was born, those stars did shine
    • In high and chosen places
    • That most do shed on earth their favouring graces.
    • Each to the other did with love incline;
    • Venus and Jove with countenance benign
    • Did hold the lordliest state, serene and high;
    • While every orb malign
    • Was chased in shame from out the smiling sky.
    • The sun had never opened day so fair;
    • Jocund the blooming earth, the sky and air,
    • Peace on the waters of the seas and streams!
    • Yet while with friendly light the vision teems,
    • One distant cloud doth grieve me, dark with care,
    • The which may melt, I fear, in tears of woe,
    • Unless the heavenly powers some pity show.
  • • When to this nether world her spirit flew
    • (Which for such gentle soul was all unmeet)
    • ’Twas a strange thing and new
    • To see a child so saintly and so sweet.
    • She seemed a white pearl in a golden nest!
    • Now creeping, now with trembling steps and slow,
    • Her baby feet did go,
    • Till the wood and rock and greensward that they pressed
    • Grew soft and fresh and warm,
    • And the field bloomed beneath her innocent eyes,
    • And balmy grew the skies,
    • And calm the wind and storm,
    • While she with lips just weaned went prattling on!
    • Thus to a world as blind and deaf as stone
    • The light and glory of the heavens were shown.
  • • When she in years and virtue grew apace,
    • And reached the age of adolescence green,
    • I do believe such glory and such grace
    • The sun had never seen!
    • Her eyes with modesty and joy were filled,
    • Her speech with health and happiness did glow,
    • Till every other tongue would soon be stilled
    • If it should seek to tell what thou dost know!
    • Her countenance did shine with heavenly light,
    • And with its dazzling beauty blind your sight,
    • And from her earthly tenement a fire
    • Did come to fill thy heart with such desire
    • That none did ever burn with flame so bright!
    • But when her sudden parting I did see,
    • Methought it must bring bitter days to thee.
    • cccxxv

  Petrarch’s grief is expressed with great tenderness and grace in a sonnet to a nightingale mourning its mate, and in another to a little feathered wanderer in the dark days of winter.

  Quel rosigniuol, che sì soave piagne

  • That nightingale who doth so softly mourn
  • His little ones, perchance, or loving mate,
  • In lays melodious from a heart forlorn,
  • And fills the air with notes disconsolate—
  • Through the long night he seems to stay with me
  • To talk to me of all my grief and pain.
  • It was my fault these eyes could never see
  • That e’en o’er heavenly spirits death might reign!
  • Him that is sure, how easy to betray!
  • Her two fair eyes, far brighter than the sun—
  • Who would have thought to see them senseless clay?
  • Now do I know the course my life must run;
  • How I shall live, and weep, and clearly see
  • That here no precious thing can stay with me.
  • cccxi

  Vago augelletto che cantando vai

  • Thou little wandering bird of plaintive lay
  • Mourning thy brighter time of past delight,
  • Who seest behind thee summer and the day,
  • And close beside thee winter and the night;
  • If thou couldst understand my evil state,
  • As thine own keen affliction thou dost know,
  • Thou’dst come unto this breast disconsolate,
  • And we would each divide the other’s woe.
  • I know not if our sorrows equal be,
  • Perchance the mate thou mournest liveth still,
  • While death and heaven so churlish were to me;
  • Yet these dark days, this season sad and chill
  • With memories of my sweet and bitter years,
  • Move me to talk with thee and share thy tears.
  • cccliii

  In another sonnet he sends his verses to her tomb.

  Ite, rime dolenti, al duro sasso

  • Go, mourning rhymes, unto the senseless stone
  • That hides my precious treasure in the ground;
  • There call her, she will answer from her throne,
  • Although her body to the earth is bound.
  • Tell her that I am weary of my days,
  • Tossing for ever on this angry sea;
  • I fain must follow, step by step, the ways
  • She trod, and gather leaves of memory.
  • Only of her, living or dead, I sing
  • (Nay she will always live—immortal made),
  • That the dull world shall with her praises ring,
  • And bring her sweet renown that will not fade.
  • O may she run to meet me when I die,
  • And call, and lead me to her home on high
  • cccxxxiii

  So deep is his grief that he believes he could not live except for that which is his greatest consolation, the appearance of Laura in his dreams.

  Ripensando a quel ch’ oggi il cielo onora

  • When I do think on her fair countenance—
  • The soft inclining of that head of gold,
  • Her angel’s voice, her smile and tender glance
  • Which once did warm my heart that now is cold;
  • I know that still alive I could not be,
  • If she, of women fairest and most pure,
  • Came not in dreams at early morn to me,
  • The time when every dream is true and sure.
  • What sweet and chaste and holy welcoming!
  • And how intently doth she bend her ear
  • To the long story of my suffering,
  • Until the garish daylight doth appear!
  • Then—for she knows the way—she seeks the skies,
  • The tears still glistening in her tender eyes.
  • cccxliii

  But there are times when the dreams will not come, and the poet thus remonstrates:

  Dolce mio caro e precïoso pegno

  • O pledge of mine, precious and sweet and dear,
  • Whom heaven doth guard, tho’ earth doth keep thy clay,
  • Why should thy kindly pity disappear—
  • Thou who hast been of all my life the stay?
  • For it was once thy wont to make my sleep
  • Worthy thy shadowy presence. Now I mourn
  • Without thee, comfortless. Who still doth keep
  • Thine image from my side? Surely such scorn
  • Dwells not in heaven, though sometimes here below
  • A gentle heart doth feed on other’s pain,
  • And Love in his own realm doth overthrow.
  • Thou who dost see and know my sorrow vain,
  • And who alone canst bring my heart relief,
  • Come in my dreams once more and calm my grief.
  • cccxl

  There is a speedy answer to his prayer.

  Deh qual pietà, qual angel fu sì presto

  • What pitying soul, what angel kind and fleet,
  • Carried to heaven the tidings of my grief?
  • For now my lady cometh, fair and sweet,
  • With all her comely ways, for my relief;
  • To still my heart and calm my choking breath.
  • Her pride is gone, all gentleness is she;
  • So gracious that I loose the bonds of death,
  • And live once more, and life is ecstasy!
  • Blest is the soul that could my memory bless
  • With those fond names we two alone did know;
  • She said—her face all filled with tenderness—
  • ‘Dear faithful heart! How do I feel thy woe;
  • ’Twas for our good that I thy love did shun,’
  • And added words that might have stayed the sun.
  • cccxli

  But his visions of Laura are not confined to those that visit him in sleep. In fancy he meets her in heaven.

  Levommi il mio penser in parte ov’ era

  • She whom I seek, no more on earth abides;
  • So I did lift my longing thought to where
  • She dwells with those whom heaven’s third circle1 hides,
  • And there I saw her, gentle and most fair.
  • She took my hand and said, ‘Thou’lt be with me
  • Within this sphere, unless desire shall stray.
  • Yes; I am she who made such war with thee,
  • And ere the evening came did end her day.
  • My bliss no human mind can ever know;
  • Only I long for thee and for that veil2
  • Which thou didst love and which remains below.’
  • Why dropped her hand? Why did her sweet voice fail?
  • When at the sound of words so chaste and kind
  • In heaven with her I fain had stayed behind.
  • cccii

  Thus does he imagine her entrance into heaven:

  Li angeli eletti, e l’anime beate

  • The chosen angels and the spirits blest,
  • Inhabitants of heaven, on the day
  • When first my lady passed, around her pressed,
  • And marvelling, among themselves did say:
  • ‘What light is this? What beauty rare and sweet?
  • So fair a soul, such queenly majesty
  • Ascending from the world to this high seat
  • Never before in heaven did we see.’
  • And though with her new home she seemed content,
  • And no soul there more perfect was than she,
  • From time to time backward her gaze was bent
  • To watch if I might come, and wait for me.
  • Thus heavenward my thoughts and hopes I lift,
  • And dream I hear her pray my feet be swift.
  • cccxlvi

  But toward the close of the Canzoniere the feelings of religion are again uppermost in Petrarch’s mind, and he laments the wasted days of this earthly passion and implores Divine aid to redeem his soul in its final hour.

  I’ vo piangendo i miei passati tempi

  • I go lamenting all my wasted days.
  • That I consumed loving a mortal thing,
  • Nor had the will my languid soul to raise,
  • That for a loftier flight had ample wing.
  • O Thou invisible, immortal King,
  • Thou who dost know my shameful sins and base,
  • Help Thou my spirit frail and wandering!
  • Strengthen its weakness with Thy boundless grace!
  • So that although I lived in storm and war,
  • I die at peace in port, and though in vain
  • My stay on earth, my parting may be fair!
  • In death and these few years that yet remain,
  • May Thy strong hand be near to succour me!
  • Thou know’st I have no hope except in Thee!
  • ccclxv

  Still more clearly are his religious aspirations and longings expressed in his celebrated ‘Hymn to the Virgin’ with which he closes his Canzoniere, with the evident desire that this shall be regarded as the expression of his final resolution and his hope of heaven.

  Vergine bella, che di sol vestita

  • • O Virgin fair, who in the sun arrayed,
    • And crowned with stars, to a greater Sun did’st bring
    • Such joy that He in thee His light did hide!
    • Deep love impels me that of thee I sing.
    • But how shall I begin without thy aid,
    • Or that of Him who in thy womb did bide?
    • I call on one who answereth alway
    • When simple faith we show.
    • Virgin, if extreme woe
    • In things of earth thou wouldst with joy repay,
    • In my hard struggle be thy succour given!
    • O hear me while I pray,
    • Though I be clay,
    • And thou the queen of heaven!
  • • O virgin sage and of the blessed number
    • Of those wise virgins honoured by their Lord,
    • Yea, thou the first with brightest lamp of all!
    • Thou shield of the afflicted from the sword
    • Of evil fortune and in death’s deep slumber,
    • Rescue and victory come at thy call;
    • Thou refuge from the passions, blind and dark,
    • Of frail mortality!
    • Virgin, in agony
    • Thy fair eyes saw each nail and cruel mark
    • Upon the body of thy precious Son.
    • Look on my desperate state!
    • Disconsolate
    • To thee for help I run.
  • • O virgin pure, perfect in every part;
    • Daughter and mother of thy gentle Child,
    • Sunbeam on earth, bright gem in heaven’s array!
    • The Father’s Son and thine, O undefiled,
    • Through thee (window of heaven that thou art!)
    • Came to redeem us at the final day!
    • And God among all dwellings of the earth
    • Selected thee alone,
    • O virgin, who the moan
    • Of hapless Eve hast turned to joy and mirth;
    • O make me worthy His unending love,
    • Thou who in glory drest,
    • Honoured and blest,
    • Art crowned in heaven above.
  • • O virgin holy, filled with every grace;
    • Who by thy deep and true humility
    • Didst rise to heaven, where thou my prayer dost hear!
    • Thou hast brought forth the Fount of Piety,
    • The Sun of Justice, by whose shining grace
    • An age in errors dark grows bright and clear.
    • Three precious names united are in thee:
    • Mother and wife and child!
    • O virgin undefiled,
    • Bride of the King whose love hath set us free
    • From all our bonds and our poor world hath blest;
    • By His wounds’ holy balm
    • O may He calm
    • My heart and give it rest!
  • • Virgin, who wast in all the world unique
    • Enamouring heaven with thy comeliness,
    • No other near or like thy perfect state!
    • Pure thoughts and gracious deeds thy life did bless,
    • And thou thy fruitful maidenhood and meek
    • A living shrine to God didst consecrate!
    • By thee my sad life can with joy resound,
    • If thou but ask thy Child,
    • Virgin devout and mild,
    • Where sin abounded grace shall more abound;
    • My spirit’s knees in orisons I bend,
    • Be thou my guide, I pray;
    • My devious way
    • Bring to a happy end.
  • • O shining virgin, steadfast evermore!
    • Thou radiant star above life’s stormy sea,
    • And every faithful mariner’s trusty guide!
    • In this wild tempest turn thy thoughts to me.
    • See how I am beset! No helm nor oar!
    • What shrieks of death are near on every side!
    • My soul despairing puts her trust in thee.
    • Sin will I not deny;
    • Virgin, to thee I cry,
    • Let not my pangs delight thine enemy!
    • ’Twas to redeem our sins, remember well,
    • That God took on afresh
    • Our human flesh
    • Within thy virgin cell.
  • • Virgin, how many were the tears I shed,
    • How many years I prayed and longed and sighed!
    • What was my guerdon? Grief and sorrow vain.
    • Since I was born where Arno’s stream doth glide,
    • From land to land my restless feet have sped,
    • And life was naught but bitterness and pain.
    • For mortal charms and gracious ways and dear
    • Have clogged my heart and mind.
    • O virgin holy, kind,
    • Delay not. Haply ’tis my final year.
    • My days like flying arrows speed away!
    • In sin and misery
    • They swiftly flee
    • And death alone doth stay.
  • • Virgin, I mourn for one that now is clay,
    • Who, living, filled mine eyes with many a tear,
    • Yet of my thousand woes not one could see!
    • And had she known them all, the griefs that were
    • Would still have been; since any other way
    • To me were death, to her were infamy.
    • Thou queen of heaven, O goddess virginal—
    • Thus may I name thee aright—
    • Virgin of clearer sight
    • Than ours, thou knowest all! Though others fail,
    • The task is easy for thy powers supreme;
    • End, then, my grief and woe,
    • Thy grace bestow,
    • And my poor soul redeem.
  • • Virgin, my only hope doth rest in thee!
    • I know that thou wilt help my sad estate.
    • Forsake me not upon death’s dark defile!
    • Look not on me but Him who did create!
    • Though I be naught, His image lives in me,
    • And that must win thy care for one so vile!
    • My Gorgon sin hath turned me into stone.
    • Vain humours I distil.
    • Virgin, do thou but fill
    • With tears devout this aching heart and lone;
    • That at the end my love may holier be,
    • Without the taint of earth,
    • Which at its birth
    • Was wild idolatry.
  • • O Virgin meek, and of all pride the foe;
    • Thy lowly birth win thee to hear my song;
    • Have pity on an humble contrite heart!
    • If with such constancy I could so long
    • On one frail mortal clod my love bestow,
    • What might I do for thee, God’s counterpart!
    • If by thy hand I now may rise again
    • From out my low estate,
    • Virgin, I consecrate
    • Unto thy service tongue and heart and brain,
    • My thoughts, my songs, my sighs and anxious fears!
    • Guide me in better ways
    • And crown with praise
    • These new desires and tears.
  • • My hour draws on, it is not far away
    • (Thus fleeting time doth run);
    • Virgin, thou only one!
    • Upon my heart remorse and death do prey!
    • Unto thy Son, true man, true God, commend
    • My soul; to Him I cleave.
    • May He receive
    • My spirit at the end.
    • ccclxvi

  Macaulay says of this ode, ‘It is perhaps the finest hymn in the world. His devout veneration receives an exquisitely poetical character from the delicate perception of the sex and loveliness of his idol.’

  In his very first sonnet, which he evidently wrote after all the rest and as an explanation of the whole, Petrarch thus speaks of the emptiness and vanity of his passion, but feels sure that those who have known love in their own experience will find pity and pardon for his changing moods.

  Voi ch’ ascoltate in rime sparse il suono

  • O ye who hear in these my scattered rhymes
  • The sound of sighs that on my heart did prey,
  • Drawn from the errors of those youthful times
  • When I was other than I am to-day:
  • Where’er ye be who love by proof have known,
  • I sure shall pity find and pardon free
  • For changing moods wherein I laugh or moan
  • With empty hopes or vain despondency.
  • Amid the multitude, I clearly see
  • Of idle jest I long have been the theme,
  • Until I blush at my simplicity,
  • And all the fruit of love is bitter shame
  • And vain repentance, till it clearly seems
  • The things that charm the world are idle dreams.
  • i

  Some time after these lyrics had been completed, the example of Dante’s Divina Commedia (which earlier in life he had refrained from reading lest he should imitate it) inspired Petrarch to undertake a longer poem in which Laura should be the pervading figure as Beatrice had been in Dante’s great work. The Trionfi, or Triumphs (of Love, Chastity, Death, Fame, Time, and Eternity), were the result. The poem as a whole was not equal to the sonnets, odes, ballads, and madrigals of the Canzoniere, but it contains much that entitles it to a creditable rank in literature, and there is one passage so delicate and beautiful that it may well form a fitting conclusion to this little book of selections from his poems. He thus describes the death of Laura as it presented itself to his imagination in the Trionfo della Morte.

  • • Not like a flame that by the wind is spent,
    • But one that of itself doth fade away,
    • She did depart in peace, her soul content;
  • • As if it were some soft and gentle ray
    • Whose nourishment hath failed, which waneth slow,
    • Yet keepeth to the end its wonted way.
  • • Not pallid she, but whiter than the snow
    • That in the calm air on a hill-side lies,
    • She rests like one who doth aweary grow.
  • • A slumber sweet, falling on tired eyes,
    • A spirit parting from its earthly place:
    • Of these the witless speak and say, ‘She dies,’
  • • And death seems beautiful in her fair face.

  APPENDIX I
  LAURA

  Who was Laura? This question has given rise to the liveliest controversies. Some of the commentators say that she was not flesh and blood at all, but a symbol, an abstraction, an allegorical representation of poetry, of virtue, of philosophy, or what you will. Others declare that there were many Lauras, the objects of Petrarch’s love poems. Others can give her age, her birthplace, and her characteristics, but do not assume to know her name or her ancestry. Some say she was unmarried, others that she was a matron, the mother of many children. Some declare she was the daughter of Henry of Chiabaux, Lord of Cabrières, others that she belonged to the family of the Baux Adhemar de Cavaillon, &c. Probably the majority of the students of Petrarch accept the results of the arguments and documents of the Abbé de Sade in his Memoirs for the Life of Petrarch, and believe she was the daughter of Audibert de Noves and the wife of Hugues de Sade. Among these divergent views, which is correct?

  That Laura was not a mere creation of Petrarch’s fancy is shown by Petrarch himself in a letter, written December 21, 1335, to his friend, Bishop James Colonna, who had jestingly denied her existence.

  ‘Would to God’, he says, ‘that my Laura were an imaginary person and that my passion for her were only feigned! Alas, it is a madness! How difficult and grievous it would be to feign it for a long time, and what extravagance to act a play like this! One can counterfeit illness in conduct, voice, and gesture, but one cannot give himself the air and colour of a sick person. How many times have you been a witness to my pallor and my torments! I know well that you only speak in irony.’1

  Laura’s actual existence is also shown in a poetical epistle to this same friend, written in Latin, probably in 1338, shortly after Petrarch’s return from Rome and his emigration to Vaucluse.

  ‘Exceedingly dear to me is a woman (mulier) who is known for her virtue and her noble blood. My songs have glorified and have spread her fame afar. My mind ever returns to her and she ever assails me with new grief of love, and it does not seem as if she will ever renounce her dominion over me.’

  He describes his efforts to shake off the yoke, and his wanderings through distant lands and his flight to the sequestered valley he has chosen for his abode. Yet even here his beloved one visits him in sleep and demands him back as her slave. Then his limbs stiffen and the blood runs to his heart from all his veins, and he awakens in consternation bathed in tears, springs from his couch, and before the dawn, flees from the house and wanders over mountains and groves, looking around him in fear lest he should meet her in his wandering.2

  Equally conclusive as to the actual existence of Laura are the three books written by Petrarch in 1343, De Contemptu Mundi, in the form of dialogues between himself and St. Augustine. This work, which he also called his ‘Secret’, was not originally intended for publication, and it was in the nature of an intimate and frank confession of his own shortcomings and weaknesses. St. Augustine, after exhorting him to meditate on death, and after reproaching him for his vanity, ambition, cupidity, and incontinence, as well as a certain pessimism in his nature (acidia), expresses his astonishment that a man of Petrarch’s talent could devote a great part of his life to the adoration of a mere mortal woman. Petrarch answers with enthusiastic praise of his beloved, and Augustine replies that if he were once to see her lying dead he would be ashamed of his passion. Petrarch declares he hopes this dreadful sight will be spared him as he is the elder of the two, and Augustine answers that the body of his beloved has been already greatly weakened by her illnesses and her frequent anxieties.1

  Petrarch answers that his own health is also shaken by cares and that he hopes to die before her. He insists that his love is pure and believes that he sins only in its excess. All that he has been he owes to her. Augustine declares that this belief is a dangerous illusion, and that his mortal love had separated him from the love of heavenly things. Petrarch declared that it is not the body but the soul of his beloved with which he is enamoured, that with her increasing age her body became less beautiful but her spirit constantly developed and his love increased. Augustine asks if he would have loved her if she had been ugly. Petrarch answers that he would have done this only if the beauty of her spirit could have been set before his eyes. ‘Therefore’, answers Augustine, ‘you have loved only her visible body although her spiritual graces have helped to maintain your passion.’ Petrarch finally admits that he loves her body as well as her soul. Augustine reminds him that in his youth his fear of God and his love of religion was much greater than at present, and says Petrarch must admit that the change occurred when his love began. Augustine asks how it happened that his beloved did not lift him again to virtue. Petrarch answers that she had done all she could by example, admonition and reproaches, that in spite of his efforts he had never obtained from her the least favour to the disparagement of her honour, and that when she saw that nothing could restrain him and that he was going headlong to destruction, she preferred to abandon rather than to follow him. Augustine now reminds Petrarch that he has admitted his unlawful desires which he had just now denied, and adds that lovers know not what they will nor what they say. Petrarch declared that these desires had ceased, and that for this he is grateful to this lady. Augustine says that his flame is perhaps enfeebled but that it is not extinguished, and he reminds the poet that he has had a portrait of the lady made by a skilful painter and that he carries it everywhere with him, and that he extends his affection to everything that bears her name, and goes about with the laurel tree in his head and on his lips as if he were a priest of Apollo or a dweller on the banks of the Peneus. Why did he seek with such eagerness that laurel crown which was formerly the reward of the poets? It was the connexion of laurel and Laura which made him cross the seas and mountains and submit to an examination at Naples and receive this crown at Rome. How can a man with such a passion be mindful of God? Petrarch now admits all and asks what he shall do not to despair of salvation. Augustine answers that he must seek all other means of cure, and recommends a change of scene. Petrarch says he has already tried this in vain. But Augustine insists he has done this without the necessary resolution not to look back and to break finally with the past. Petrarch asks if there are not other remedies. Augustine answers that Cicero names satiety, shame, and reflection. The first he will not consider, but under the second head he asks Petrarch if he has not seen himself in a mirror and has not perceived any change in his appearance. Petrarch admits his grey hairs, and Augustine seeks to shame him into the belief that he is too old to play the rôle of a lover.

  The saint also recommends reflection. Petrarch should consider the loftiness of the spirit, the weakness of the body, and the shortness of life. He should further reflect how inflexible his beloved has shown herself toward him, and he should encourage himself to devote his life to better things.

  Augustine next reproaches Petrarch for his excessive desire for fame and immortality and admonishes him not to prefer this to virtue. Finally he urges the poet to let his epic Africa remain unfinished and devote himself to the contemplation of his approaching death and the transitory character of all earthly things.1

  After Petrarch had gone to Italy, ‘Socrates’, the poet’s intimate friend, urgently entreats him to return to Avignon, and Petrarch thus replies in a letter written in 1345. ‘To make me change my purpose, you put before my eyes the errors of my youth, which I ought to forget, a passion whose torments have made me take flight because I had no other resource, the frivolous attractions of a perishable beauty with which I have occupied myself far too much.’2

  The love poems of Petrarch themselves testify to Laura’s actual existence in a way he could hardly simulate with such effect if she were an imaginary being. A mere ‘symbol’ would hardly be born and die at a particular day of a particular year, nor wear gloves, nor be kissed by a prince at a public festival, nor be kept at home by jealousy, nor tempt its lover to suicide, nor be the subject of a score of incidents in his poems which are applicable to a woman only and not to a spirit nor an imaginary being.

  Moreover, after these poems had long since been written and after the woman they celebrated had long been mourned in them as dead, the poet tells us near the close of his own life, in his ‘Letter to Posterity’, that in his youth he had been the prey of a very ardent love, but honourable, and his only one, and that he would have suffered from it still longer if death, cruel but salutary, had not extinguished it.

  The foregoing extracts clearly demonstrate that Laura actually existed, and show us quite plainly the character of Petrarch’s passion for her.

  Nor was she multifarious, but single. There is no good reason to believe that Petrarch in his poems intended to designate, as several commentators believe, now one person and now another as the object of his passion. The evidence is the other way. His incontinence, indeed, he confesses in his letters, in his dialogue with St. Augustine, in his epistle to posterity, and elsewhere, but he recognizes only a single ideal love worthy to be celebrated in his poems.

  Another controversy exists among the commentators of Petrarch as to whether Laura was married or single. Those who insist that she was a young girl when he first saw her and remained unmarried, refer to a sonnet (cxc), Una candida cerva: ‘A white doe, with golden horns, appeared to me above the green meadow between two streams int he shade of a laurel at sunrise in the springtime. . . . She had written around her fair collar, “Let no one touch me, my Caesar saw fit to make me free.” ’ The deer was sacred to Diana, and this sonnet doubtless referred to Laura’s chastity and to the resistance which she offered to Petrarch’s passion. The inscription might well mean that her Caesar (God) had freed her from human frailty, and it need not at all follow that she was unmarried. To deduce a biographical fact from an obscure allegory like this may be very misleading.

  Another sonnet speaks of the time when Love gave Petrarch his first wound, and the ‘tresses now wound in pearls and gems, but then unbound, which she scattered so sweetly and gathered again in such graceful ways that his mind trembles as he thinks of it. Afterwards’, he adds, ‘time twisted it in stronger knots.’ This might be construed into an inference that she was then unmarried, and that it was only afterwards that she was bedecked with the pearls and gems that matrons might wear. But are there no times when even those who are entitled to bedeck themselves with jewels may still go without them? The unsatisfactory nature of such conclusions is apparent.

  Another argument is this: Would her husband have suffered Petrarch during a long period of years thus to testify to his passion in these numerous poems, most of which were well known at the time? Would the Church have permitted it in one who had already taken holy orders? At the present day such an argument would be a strong one, but the fourteenth century in France was quite different from the twentieth century in England and America. In France even to-day a young girl of the higher classes, educated usually in a convent, sees nothing of the world before her marriage. Marriage is usually an affair of convenience managed by the parents, and whatever there be for her of love or romance in life comes afterwards. This was so at that time in Provence. The marriage settlements still preserved show the business character of matrimony as then existing. We find that the adoration and the songs of the troubadours and the minnesingers were directed almost without exception to married women and not to maidens. This was the day of the tourney and the courts of love.

  The Abbé de Sade gives an instance.1 Agnes of Navarre, wife of Phoebus, Count of Foix, is in love with William of Machaut, one of the best French poets of the age of Petrarch. She makes verses for him which breathe her passion. She desires him to publish in his own the circumstances of their love. He is jealous without reason. She sends to him a priest to whom she has confessed, who certifies not only to the truth of her feeling toward him but also her fidelity and the injustice of his suspicions. Yet Agnes of Navarre was a virtuous princess of unblemished reputation. Such was the spirit of the age, and Petrarch has in many instances taken the lays of the troubadours as the models of his love poems.

  Those who recall the cicisbeo of later Venetian days and the cavaliere servente who attended upon almost every lady of fashion in Italy in still more recent times, will find little difficulty in understanding that there was nothing extraordinary in Petrarch’s love for a married woman during the corrupt period when the Roman court was at Avignon and when even those in clerical orders took part in the gallantries which were all but universal.

  Petrarch himself in another place reproaches the men of Avignon who quietly let their wives be carried off from them.2 The husband of Laura, however, as we shall see elsewhere, does not appear to have been quite so indifferent as this.

  The reasons for believing that Laura was a married woman are very strong. As Hallam says, there is no passage in Petrarch whether in poetry or prose which speaks of Laura as a maiden or gives her the usual appellations of an unmarried woman, puella in Latin or donzella in Italian, not even in his poem ‘The Triumph of Chastity’, where so obvious an opportunity presented itself of celebrating her virginity. On the contrary she is always called donna or madonna in Italian and mulier in Latin, the generic names for ‘woman’ and ‘lady’. Dante, just before Petrarch’s time, distinguishes clearly between donna and donaella, and Petrarch somewhere would certainly have called Laura donzella had she been unmarried. Moreover, Laura’s resistance to the passion of her lover during more than twenty years of devotion, retaining his affection yet denying her favours, is much more easily explained by the insurmountable obstacle of her marriage than in any other way. As Hallam remarks, ‘From all we know of the age of Petrarch the only astonishment is the persevering virtue of Laura. The troubadours boast of much better success with Provençal ladies.’

  But far more conclusive are two sonnets in which Petrarch complains of the jealousy which deprives him of her company. One of these is the following:

  Liete e pensose, accompagnate e sole

  • ‘Ye dames, who go conversing on your way,
  • Joyous yet sad, together, yet alone,
  • O tell me of my life, my death, my own;
  • Why is she absent? Whither doth she stray?’
  • ‘Joyous our memories of her, but to-day
  • We sorrow for her gracious company,
  • Which envy keeps from us and jealousy,
  • Those passions that on others’ welfare prey.’
  • ‘Who shall make laws to fetter lovers true?’
  • ‘Their bodies, not their souls, can anger bind,
  • This doth she know and this we too may find,
  • Oft in the face the heart is plain to view,
  • Now doth her beauty fade in grief and fears,
  • And her fair eyes are wet with dew of tears.’
  • ccxxii

  Now who could be jealous of her and at the same time have the power to restrain her liberty except her husband?

  In the dialogue between Petrarch and St. Augustine, the saint says, ‘Corpus eius crebris ptbus exhaustum.’ The contracted word ptbus has been rendered perturbationibus, ‘anxieties’, and partubus, ‘child-bearings’, and Hallam in his Middle Ages1 insists that partubus is much the better Latin. If Petrarch’s Laura was indeed Laura de Sade, who had eleven children, this interpretation of the words of St. Augustine would be appropriate.

  In several of Petrarch’s sonnets he speaks of the precious stones which she wears, of the pearls which she bound in her hair, and of her rich and costly dresses. At the time when he wrote, the unmarried woman did not usually wear pearls nor precious stones. They were simply clothed and appeared but little in the world. Taken all together, the reasons for believing Laura to be a married woman seem quite conclusive.

  But to what family did she belong, where was she born, where did she live, what was her age when she and Petrarch met? There is a curious silence upon these matters in the writings of Petrarch both in prose and verse. He describes certain incidents which must have identified her to her contemporaries, as for instance in the following sonnet, when, upon a festal occasion, a certain prince, in whose honour it was given (perhaps Charles of Luxemburg, afterwards Emperor of Germany), selected her from among the other guests, drew her to him, and kissed her forehead and her eyes as a tribute to her beauty.

  Real natura, angelico intelletto

  • It was a royal heart, a noble mind,
  • Clear soul, and ready eye with vision keen,
  • Quick foresight and a happy thought combined,
  • And all most worthy of his state serene.
  • Amid a goodly group of women fair
  • Chosen to deck a stately festal day,
  • His eye discerned what face beyond compare
  • Was the most perfect in that cluster gay.
  • Others, in rank and fortune proud and high,
  • He, with the motion of his hand, dismissed,
  • Then drew her to himself and graciously,
  • In fair salute, her eyes and brow he kissed.
  • While, mid the applause and joy of all the rest,
  • This sweet strange deed with envy filled my breast.1
  • ccxxxviii

  But these contemporaries, as well as Petrarch himself, have said so little from which we can at this time determine her identity that they could hardly have concealed it better if there had been a conspiracy of silence. Subsequent investigators have laboured with great diligence to unravel the mystery.

  Among the first of these was Velutello of Lucca, who travelled to Avignon near the beginning of the sixteenth century and found that there was a tradition in that city that Laura belonged to the family of De Sade. Velutello had several conferences with Gabriel de Sade, a man very old and very noble, who told him that Laura was the daughter of John de Sade, who had his property at Gravesand, two leagues from Avignon, where he passed the summer; but as his informant said she lived about the year 1360 or 1370, Velutello prematurely gave up his inquiries in that direction, and visiting the little village of Cabrières, he examined the baptismal register there, and among several Lauras, found one, the daughter of Henry of Chiabaux, who was baptized June 14, 1314, and he concluded that this was the Laura in question, and placed her meeting with Petrarch at L’Isle, a town between the two arms of the Sorgue, on Good Friday, 1327, upon her return from a pilgrimage to Vaucluse. But there are several reasons against such a conclusion. If this was Petrarch’s Laura, she was only twelve years and nine months old when Petrarch met her, a very early age for her to inspire such a passion.

  In Petrarch’s dialogue with St. Augustine, Petrarch says, ‘She will grow old with me,’ and the saint refers to the small number of years in which he is her senior. But at the time of the meeting in 1327, Petrarch, who was born in 1304, would have been nearly twice her age and the words of St. Augustine would have been inappropriate. Moreover, in the note written by Petrarch, shortly after her death, on the manuscript copy of his Virgil, now in the Ambrosian Library at Milan, he says: ‘Laura, distinguished by her own virtues and long celebrated in my songs, first appeared to my eyes in the days of my youth in the year of our Lord 1327, the 6th day of the month of April, in the church of Santa Clara at Avignon in the morning hour; and in the same city, in the same month of April, on the same 6th day and at the same first hour but in the year 1348, that light was withdrawn from the light of day when I by chance was then at Verona, ignorant, alas! of my fate.’1

  If this note is genuine (as seems now established) Petrarch did not meet her at L’Isle. Moreover, the calendar shows that the 6th of April of that year was not Good Friday and hence there would have been no returning group of pilgrims from Vaucluse on that morning. Moreover, Velutello discovered that Henry of Chiabaux was a man of slender means, while Petrarch all through his poems describes everywhere the rich garb and jewellery worn by his lady. Velutello declared, moreover, that Laura de Chiabaux remained unmarried. We have already seen that this in all probability was not true of Petrarch’s Laura.

  The views of the Abbé de Sade appear to be better sustained. They are in brief as follows. Laura was the daughter of a nobleman, Audibert de Noves and his wife Ermessende. She was born at Avignon in 1307, and married January 16, 1325, Hugues de Sade, the son of a prominent man who had been repeatedly mayor of Avignon, and she received as a legacy from her father the sum of 6,000 tournois, about $15,000, then a large amount, as well as two dresses, one green and one scarlet, a silver wreath, &c. Laura de Sade had eleven children, and died, a victim to the plague, April 6, 1348, having made her will three days before. She was buried in the Franciscan church in the suburbs of Avignon.

  This hypothesis is supported by the following facts. Firstly, the age of Laura de Noves appears to correspond with the observation made in the dialogue with St. Augustine that she was but few years his junior. The contract of marriage, which the Abbé de Sade claims to have copied from the family records, is dated January 16, 1325, and she would probably have been about 18 years of age at that time, being born not far from 1307.

  Secondly, Petrarch speaks of her green dress with violets when he first saw her, and there are many allusions to this green dress in his sonnets. In the marriage contract two dresses were given her, one green, the other scarlet, and Paul de Sade, her father-in-law, in his will acknowledges that he received these dresses.

  Thirdly, Petrarch tells us that his Laura was of noble blood. Now the father of Laura de Noves was the descendant of an earlier Audibert de Noves, who was, up to the year 1222, chancellor of Raymond, sixth Count of Toulouse. He held the first rank at Noves, a town two leagues from Avignon, and also had a house in that city.

  Fourthly, in Petrarch’s note on the Virgil manuscript, he says she died at Avignon, April 6, 1348, and was buried the same day at evening in the Franciscan church. In one of his sonnets he also gives the same date for her death, and in his eleventh eclogue, as well as in one of his letters and in one of his odes, he gives us to understand that she died of the plague, which seems confirmed by the fact that in his manuscript note he says she was buried on the day of her death, which would only occur if there were some special reason, such as an epidemic.

  On April 3, Laura de Sade made her will, stating that she was sound in mind though ill in body. The family records also show that she could not have lived very long after this, because on November 19, 1348, her husband married Verdaine de Trentelivres.

  In her will she chooses as her burial-place the Church of the Lesser Brothers (the Franciscans) in the city of Avignon, in which church the family of De Sade had built a chapel dedicated to St. Anne, and under this Hugues de Sade had built another, the Chapel of the Cross, where the family arms were sculptured, a star with eight rays. Here he was buried, and here also was buried Verdaine, his second wife.1

  In 1533 a body was exhumed in this chapel and a leaden box found in the grave, containing a medal bearing the figure of a woman with the letters M. L. M. J.,2 and also a sonnet of which the following is a close but unrhymed translation:

  Qui riposan quei caste e felici ossa

  • Here do repose those chaste and blessed bones
  • Of a spirit gentle and unique on earth.
  • Hard stone! thou hast with thee beneath the earth
  • True honour, fame, and beauty! Death hath shaken,
  • Moved and uprooted from the laurel green
  • Its fresh root and the prize of my long strife
  • Of twenty years (and more, if my sad thought
  • Errs not) and shuts it in a narrow grave.
  • A blessed plant in town of Avignon
  • Was born and died, and here with her doth lie
  • The pen, the stylus, ink and power of thought.
  • O delicate limbs! and thou, O living face,
  • Which dost inflame and slay me while I kneel,
  • Let each pray God He welcome thee in peace.1

  This sonnet sounds like an impudent forgery. Cardinal Bembo, to whom it was submitted in 1533, declared that these verses were not only below the marvellous and almost divine genius of Petrarch, but that even the most mediocre poet would disavow them, and that the most common laws of Italian poetry were violated. Moreover, Petrarch was far away in Italy at the time Laura was buried.

  The interpretation given to the four letters on the medal, M. L. M. J., Madonna Laura morta jace, ‘Madonna Laura lies dead’,2 also seems absurd.

  Moreover, the originals of the family records and other documents by which the Abbé de Sade supports all his contentions, and verbatim copies of which he inserts in his memoirs, no longer exist. He had the copies certified by lawyers and citizens of Avignon as genuine, but this fact, as well as their great detail and their remarkable concurrence with what is known of Laura’s personality and life, has awakened mistrust rather than confidence. Laura de Sade was the ancestor of the family to which the Abbé belonged, and there has been a strong suspicion that these documents are not all genuine, although their manufacture may not have been due to the Abbé himself but to those from whom he may have innocently received them.

  The fact of the De Sade chapel, however, in the Franciscan church seems established, and that Petrarch’s Laura was buried in that church appears from the memorandum on the Virgil manuscript.

  Velutello, as we have seen, says that some two hundred years after her death he found that the opinion was current in Avignon that Petrarch’s Laura was Laura de Sade, which of itself is a pretty strong circumstance, and even if the documents are fictitious it may well be that they were manufactured in order to give conclusive proof of that which was only a probability without them. On the whole, the De Sade hypothesis seems more likely to be true than any other.

  Where was Laura born? This question, too, is contested. In one of his earlier sonnets (iv,Quel ch’ infinita providenzia et arte) Petrarch compares the birth of Laura to that of the Messiah. Bethlehem, he says, was preferred to Rome as the birthplace of the Saviour, so now from a little town, piccolo borgo, God gives this new light to the world.

  • He showed no grace to Rome when He was born,
  • But to Judea. Thus it ever pleased Him
  • To lift humility to the highest station.
  • Now from a little town a sun He gave us
  • Such that both nature and the place give thanks
  • So fair a woman to the world was born.

  What was the ‘little town’ to which Petrarch refers in these lines? His biographer, Dr. Gustav Koerting, believes that it was Avignon, for which the poet had so great a contempt in comparison with his beloved Rome, with which it is here contrasted, and this may have been the case, though at the beginning of the fourteenth century, when Laura was born, it was still a considerable city and it was greatly extended and largely rebuilt after it became the seat of the papal Court. La Crusca defines a borgo as a street or collection of houses not surrounded by city walls, and more properly the suburbs or faubourg of a walled city. Villani gives the name of borgi to the faubourgs of Florence, therefore the Abbé de Sade claims that Laura was born in that faubourg of Avignon where the Franciscan convent was located, and he says that near the city gate leading to this faubourg, and close to an inn called the ‘White Horse’, there was still existing in the sixteenth century a house built of yellow stone, before which the Sorgue passed, which was called the house of Madame Laura, and where tradition said she was born.

  Lorenzo Mascetta, in his work The Canzoniere of Petrarch arranged chronologically, has an elaborate and laboured introductory article on Laura, in which he seeks to deduce the principal events of her life from the poems of Petrarch, taking certain lines from one poem and putting them side by side with lines from another in a very ingenious manner. His arguments are far from convincing, however, since they imply too great precision on the part of Petrarch in poems where the poet’s fancy as well as the demands of verse and rhyme require much latitude. He believes that it was impossible that Avignon was the small town referred to, although in a letter in Latin verse to Bishop Colonna Petrarch speaks of her birthplace as a ‘beloved city’. Neither of these terms Mascetta considers applicable to Avignon, and after considering many other extracts he concludes that she was born in the spring of 1314, in the town of L’Isle, not far from Avignon, where the two branches of the Sorgue separate and form an island, and that she was buried also in the Franciscan convent there. The difficulty with this hypothesis is that the latter part of it contradicts entirely the memorandum of Petrarch in his Virgil manuscript.

  In some of the old texts and editions certain verses are found beginning thus:

  • Where Sorgue and Durance into a greater vessel
  • Together join their waters, clear and turbid,
  • There once was my academy and Parnassus
  • And there unto my eyes that light was born, &c.

  Since the Sorgue and Durance both flow into the Rhône close to Avignon, De Sade believes that Avignon is intended. Mascetta insists that the verses are an imposture, and that the family of De Sade was very generous in securing literary support to its claims of descent from Petrarch’s Laura. While it cannot be said, even if she was the daughter of Audibert de Noves, that the place of her birth has been satisfactorily established, yet here too the probabilities would seem to favour the contention of De Sade, that Avignon, the city where she lived and died, was also the place where she was born.

  APPENDIX II
  ‘EPISTLE TO POSTERITY’1

  ‘Francis Petrarch to Posterity—Greeting’

  ‘Perhaps, future reader, you may have heard somewhat about me, doubtful though it may be whether a name so humble and obscure as mine is likely to travel far in point either of time or space. Perhaps, even, you may wish to know what sort of man I was, or what was the fate of my works, and of those in particular whose reputation may have reached you, or whose name, however faintly, you may have heard.

  ‘As to the first point, indeed, men’s opinions will differ; for nearly every one speaks pretty much, not as truth but as inclination urges: there are no bounds either to eulogy or to blame. One of the human family like yourself, I was but a child of earth and mortal; of an origin neither particularly illustrious nor humble, my family, as Augustus Caesar says of himself, was ancient. Nature gave me neither a bad nor an immodest disposition, had not the contagion of social intercourse injured it. Youth deceived me; manhood carried me away; but old age corrected me, and by experience taught me thoroughly that truth which I had long before studied, namely, that youth and pleasure are vanities. Of a truth the Fashioner of every age and time suffers poor mortals, who are puffed up about nothing, at times to go astray, that they may realize, though late, the remembrance of their sins.

  ‘My body, when I was a young man, was not remarkable for strength, but had acquired considerable dexterity. I do not pride myself on any excellence of form, beyond such as might be pleasing to a man of greener years. My complexion was lively, half-way between fair and dusk. My eyes were sparkling, and for a long time my sight was extremely keen, until it failed me unexpectedly when past my sixtieth year; so that I was forced, much against the grain, to have recourse to spectacles. Old age came at last upon a body which had never known what illness was, and besieged it with the accustomed array of diseases.

  ‘I was born of honourable parents of the city of Florence. Their fortune was scanty, and, to tell the truth, verging towards poverty; but they were exiles from their country. I was born in exile at Arezzo, on Monday, July 20, 1304. Riches I held in sovereign contempt, not because I did not wish to have them, but because I hated the labour and anxiety which are the inseparable companions of wealth. I cared not for abundance of sumptuous repasts; on the contrary, with humble fare and common food I led a more enjoyable life than all the successors of Apicius, with their most exquisite dishes. Banquets, as they are called—or rather eating entertainments, inimical alike to modesty and good manners—have always been displeasing to me. I have counted it an irksome and a useless thing to invite others to such gatherings, and no less so to be invited by others. But to associate with my friends has been so agreeable to me, that I have held nothing more grateful than their arrival, nor have ever willingly broken bread without a companion. Nothing displeased me more than show, not only because it is bad and contrary to humility, but because it is irksome and an enemy of repose. In youth I felt the pains of love, vehement in the extreme, but constant to one object and honourable; and I should have felt them longer had not death—bitter, indeed, but useful—extinguished the flame as it was beginning to subside. As for the looser indulgences of appetite, would indeed that I could say I was a stranger to them altogether; but if I should so say, I should lie. This I can safely affirm, that although I was hurried away to them by the fervour of my age and temperament, their vileness I have always inwardly execrated. Soon, indeed, as I approached my fortieth year, while I still retained sufficient ardour and vigour, I repelled these weaknesses entirely from my thoughts and my remembrance, as if I had never known them. And this I count among my earliest happy recollections, thanking God, who has freed me, while yet my powers were unimpaired and strong, from this so vile and always hateful servitude.

  ‘But I pass on to other matters. I was conscious of pride in others, but not in myself; and insignificant as I might be in reality, I was always more insignificant in my own estimation. My irritable temper often injured myself, but it never injured others. Honourable and trusty friendships I keenly sought and cultivated—I fearlessly boast that, so far as I know, I speak the truth. Although easily provoked, I was ready to forget offences, and mindful of kind actions. I was favoured with the familiar intercourse of princes and kings, and with the friendships of the great to an extent that excited the envy of others. But it is the penalty of men who grow old that they have to deplore the death of their friends. The most illustrious sovereigns of my own times loved and honoured me—why, I can hardly say; it is for them, not me, to explain; but as I lived with some of them on the same terms on which they lived with me I suffered not at all from the eminence of their rank, but rather derived from it great benefits. Yet many of those whom I dearly loved, I avoided; so great was my innate love of liberty that I studiously shunned any one whose very name might seem to restrict my freedom.

  ‘My mind was rather well balanced than acute; adapted to every good and wholesome study, but especially prone to philosophy and poetry. And yet even this I neglected, as time went on, through the pleasure I took in sacred literature. I felt a hidden sweetness in that subject, which at times I had despised; and I reserved poetry as a mere accomplishment. I devoted myself singly, amid a multitude of subjects, to the knowledge of antiquity; since the age in which I lived was almost distasteful to me—so much so that, had it not been for the love of those who were very dear to me, I should always have wished to have been born at any other time, and to forget the present, ever struggling to engraft myself upon the past. Accordingly, I delighted in historians—not, however, being in any way the less offended at their contradictions, but following, when in doubt, that path which verisimilitude or the authority due to the writer pointed out.

  ‘As a speaker, some have said I was clear and powerful; but, as it seemed to myself, weak and obscure. Nor indeed in ordinary conversation with my friends or acquaintances did I ever aspire to eloquence; and I wonder that Augustus Caesar took pains to excel in conversation. But when the subject itself, or the place, or the hearer seemed otherwise to demand it, I made somewhat of an effort—though with what success I know not; let those judge of that in whose presence I spoke. So that I have lived well, I care but little how I talked: it is a windy sort of glory to seek fame from the mere glitter of words.

  ‘My time, whether by fortune or inclination, was thus divided. The first year of my life, and that not wholly, I spent at Arezzo, where nature first made me see the light, the six following years at Incisa, a small estate of my father’s fourteen miles from Florence. My eighth year, after my mother had been recalled from exile, I spent at Pisa; my ninth and subsequent years in transalpine Gaul, on the left bank of the Rhône. Avignon was the city’s name, where the Roman Pontiff maintains, and has long maintained, the Church of Christ, although a few years ago Urban V seemed to have returned to his true home. But his intention miscarried even in his lifetime, for (what affects me most) he gave it up, as if repenting of his good work. Had only he lived a little longer, he would doubtless have known what I thought of his departure. The pen was already in my hands, when suddenly he found his glorious resolution cut short with his life. Alas! how happily might he have died before the altar of Peter, and in his own home! For whether his successors had remained in the august see, and completed the work he would have begun, or whether they had departed from it, his merit would have been the more illustrious, and their fault the more conspicuous to the world. But this is a tedious and irrelevant complaint.

  ‘There, then, by the banks of that windy river, I spent my boyhood under my parents’ care, and afterwards the whole period of my early youth, abandoned to my own caprices; not, however, without long intervals of absence. For during this time I stayed for four whole years at Carpentras, a small town lying near Avignon on the east; and in these two places I learned a smattering of grammar, and as much of dialectics and rhetoric as the age could afford—as much, that is to say, as is wont to be taught in the schools; though how little that is, you know, dear reader, well enough. Thence I went to Montpellier to study law, where I spent another four years; thence to Bologna; and there I remained three years, and attended lectures on the whole corpus of civil law; being then a young man of great promise, as many thought, if I persevered in my work. But I abandoned that study altogether; and shortly afterwards I lost my parents. I abandoned it, not because the authority of the laws was irksome to me, which doubtless is great, and redolent of that Roman antiquity in which I delight, but because the practice of those laws is depraved by the wickedness of men. I was disgusted at the thought of having to study thoroughly that which I was resolved not to turn to dishonourable, and could scarcely turn to honourable, uses, for such prudery would have been attributed to ignorance. Accordingly, in my twenty-second year I returned home. By home I mean that exile at Avignon where I had been since the close of my childhood; for custom is second nature. There I had already begun to be known, and my acquaintance to be sought by men of eminence, though why I confess now I know not, and wonder. At that time, indeed, I was not surprised at seeming to myself, after the fashion common to men of my age, well worthy of all honour. I was sought after, above all, by the illustrious and noble family of the Colonnas, who then frequented—I should rather say adorned—the Court of Rome. Especially, I was invited, and I was held in honour—undeserved, certainly, at that time, if not also now—by that illustrious and incomparable man, Giacomo Colonna, then Bishop of Lombes, whose equal I know not if I have seen, or am likely to see. In Gascony, at the foot of the Pyrenees, I spent an almost heavenly summer, in the delightful society of my lord and our companions—so delightful that I always sigh when thinking of that time. Returning thence, I remained for many years with his brother John, the Cardinal Colonna, not, as it were, under a patron, but under a father—nay, not even that, say rather a most affectionate brother, with whom I lived as at home and in my own house.

  ‘At that time a youthful longing drove me to travel through France and Germany; and although other reasons were invented, in order to recommend my going in the eyes of my elders, yet the real reason was my ardour and eagerness for new scenes. In that journey I first saw Paris, and took delight in finding out for myself what reports were true and what were false about that city. Returning thence, I went to Rome, a city I had longed to see from my infancy. Stephen Colonna, the noble-minded father of that family, and a man equal to the ancients, I loved so dearly, and was so kindly welcomed by him in return, that there was scarcely any difference between myself and any one of his sons. The love and affection of this excellent man continued towards me in unbroken tenor to the last hour of his life, and survive in me still, nor shall ever desert me till I die.

  ‘Returning again from Rome, and being ill able to endure the hatred and weariness implanted in my mind in that most wearisome abode of Avignon, seeking some by-way of retirement as a port of refuge, I found a valley, tiny in size but solitary and agreeable, called Vaucluse, fifteen miles from Avignon, where the Sorga, the king of streams, takes its source. Charmed with the sweetness of the spot, I betook myself thither with my books. It would be a long story were I to proceed to trace at length my life there for many, many years. The sum of it all is this, that nearly every work that I have published was either finished, or begun, or conceived there. Those works have been so numerous as to exercise and fatigue me even to this day. For my mind, like my body, was remarkable rather for dexterity than strength; and thus I found many things easy to meditate which I neglected afterwards as difficult to carry out. Here the very aspect of the neighbourhood suggested to me to attempt a bucolic poem, a pastoral, as well as the two books on “Solitary Life” dedicated to Philip, a man great at all times, but then a humble Bishop of Cavaillon, now the bishop of a much greater diocese, and a cardinal, who is now the sole survivor of all my old friends, and who loved, and still loves me, not episcopally, so to speak, as Ambrosius loved Augustine, but as a brother.

  ‘As I roamed about those hills, on the sixth day of the great week, it occurred to me, and I determined, to write a poem in heroic verse on Scipio Africanus the Elder, him, I mean, whose marvellous name was always dear to me from my first boyhood. What I then began, ardent with the impulse of the moment, I soon discontinued under the distraction of other cares; but from the name of the subject I gave the title of Africa to the book—a work which, I know not by what fortune, its own or mine, was a favourite with many before it was generally known.

  ‘While I was thus spinning out my leisure in that retreat, on one and the same day I received letters both from the Senate at Rome and from the Chancellor of the University of Paris, sending rival invitations to me—the former from Rome, the latter from Paris—to accept the laurel crown of poetry. Elated with pride, as was natural with a young man at these proposals, and judging myself worthy of the honour, inasmuch as men of such eminence had thought so, yet weighing not my own merit, but the testimonies of others, I hesitated, nevertheless, for awhile as to which invitation I should prefer to accept. On this matter I wrote to Cardinal Colonna, whom I have mentioned, asking his advice; for he was so near a neighbour that although I had written to him late, I received his answer before nine o’clock the next day. I followed the advice he gave me, and my answers to him are still extant. Accordingly, I set out; and although, as is the way young men, I was a very partial judge of my own productions, still I scrupled to follow the testimony given by myself, or of those by whom I was invited—though doubtless they would not have invited me, had they not judged me worthy of the honour thus offered. I determined, therefore, to land first at Naples, where I sought out that distinguished king and philosopher, Robert—not more illustrious as a sovereign than as a man of letters, and unique in his age as a king and a friend of science and virtue—for the purpose of enabling him to express his personal opinion about me. His flattering estimate of me, and the kindly welcome he gave me, are matters now of wonder to me; and you, reader, if you had seen it, would wonder too. When he heard the cause of my arrival, he was marvellously delighted, reflecting as he did on my youthful confidence, and thinking perhaps that the honour which I was seeking was not without some advantage to his own reputation, inasmuch as I had chosen him of all men as the sole competent judge of my abilities. Why should I say more? After innumerable colloquies on various subjects, and after having shown to him the “Africa”, with which he was so delighted as to ask me, as a great kindness, to dedicate it to himself—a request which I could not and certainly did not wish to refuse—he appointed a certain day for the matter on which I had come, and detained me from noon till evening. And as the time fell short from the abundance of matter, he did the same thing on the two following days, and thus for three whole days I shook off my ignorance, and on the third day he adjudged me worthy of the laurel crown. He offered it to me at Naples, and even urged me with entreaties to accept it. My affection for Rome prevailed over the gracious solicitation of so illustrious a king; and thus, seeing my purpose was inflexible, he gave me letters and dispatches to the Senate of Rome, in which he expressed his judgement of me in highly flattering terms. And, indeed, what was then the judgement of the king agreed with that of many others, and especially with my own, though at this day I differ from the estimate then formed of me by him, as well as by myself and others. Affection for me and the partiality of the age swayed him more than respect for the truth. So I came (to Rome), and however unworthy, yet trusting and relying upon so high a sanction, I received the laurel crown while I was still but an unfledged scholar, amid the utmost rejoicings of the Romans who were able to take part in the ceremony. I have written letters on this subject both in verse and in prose. This laurel crown gained for me no knowledge, but a great deal of envy. But this story also has strayed beyond its limits.

  ‘Departing from Rome, I went to Parma, and stayed some time with the Lords of Correggio, who were the best of men and most liberally disposed towards myself, but sadly at enmity among each other; and who at that time were ruling in such a fashion as the city had never experienced before within the memory of man, nor I believe will ever in this age experience again. Mindful of the honour I had accepted, and anxious lest it might seem to have been conferred upon an unworthy recipient, having one day, after climbing by chance a mountain in the neighbourhood, been suddenly struck with the appearance of the place, I turned my pen once more to the interrupted poem of “Africa” and finding that fervour rekindled which had appeared quite laid to sleep, I wrote a little that very day. I added afterwards a little day by day, until, after returning to Parma and obtaining a retired and quiet house, which I subsequently bought and still retain, my intense ardour, which even now I am amazed at, enabled me before long to bring the work to a conclusion. Returning thence, I sought once more the Sorga and my transalpine solitude, just as I was turning my back on my four-and-thirtieth year1 ; having spent a long while at Parma and Verona, being welcomed with affection everywhere, thank God—far more so, indeed, than I deserved.

  ‘After a long while, having gained the favour of a most worthy man and one whose equal, I think, did not exist among the nobles of that age—I mean Giacomo di Carrara—I was urged by him with such pressing entreaties, addressed to me for several years both through messengers and letters even across the Alps, when I was in those parts, and wherever I chanced to be in Italy, to embrace his friendship, that I resolved at length to pay him a visit, and to discover the reason of this urgent solicitation from a man so eminent and a stranger to myself. I came, therefore, tardily indeed, to Padua, where I was received by that man of illustrious memory not only with courtesy, but as happy spirits are welcomed in heaven; with such abundant joy and such inestimable kindness and affection, that I must fain suppress it in silence, being hopeless of doing justice to it in words. Knowing, among many other things, that I had embraced from boyhood the clerical life, and with a view to attach me the more closely not only to himself but also to his country, he caused me to be appointed a Canon of Padua; and, in short, if his life had only been longer there would then have been an end of my wandering and my travels. But, alas! there is nothing lasting among mortals, and if aught of sweetness chanced to present itself in life soon comes the bitter end, and it is gone. When, ere two years had been completed, God took him from me, his country, and the world, He took away one of whom neither I, nor his country, nor the world (my love to him does not deceive me) were worthy. And although he was succeeded by a son, conspicuous alike for his sagacity and renown, and who, following in his father’s footsteps, always held me in affection and honour, nevertheless, when I had lost one whose age was more congenial to my own, I returned again to France, not caring to remain where I was, my object being not so much the longing to revisit places I had seen a thousand times before, as a desire, common to all men in trouble, of ministering to the ennui of life by a change of scene.’

  APPENDIX III
  CATALOGUE OF PETRARCH’S WORKS

  The number of his Latin works is very large. Those that are written in prose include (a) seven treatises of a philosophical and religious character; (b) four that are historical and geographical; (c) three polemical writings; (d) four orations; (e) two works of an autobiographical character; (f) four collections of letters; (g) some psalms and prayers; and (h) the translation of Boccaccio’s story of Griselda.

  (a) His so-called philosophical works comprise his treatises concerning:

  (1) ‘The Antidotes for Good and Evil Fortune’ (De Remediis Utriusque Fortunae).

  (2) ‘The Solitary Life’ (De Vita Solitaria).

  (3) ‘The Repose of the Cloister’ (De Otio Religiosorum).

  (4) ‘The Best Methods of Administering a State’ (De Republica optime administranda).

  (5) ‘The Duty and Virtues of a General’ (De Officio et Virtutibus Imperatoris).

  (6) ‘The Means of Avoiding Avarice’ (De Avaritia Vitanda).

  (7) ‘True Wisdom’ (De Vera Sapientia).

  (b) His historical and geographical works comprise:

  (1) ‘Remarkable Occurrences’ (De Rebus Memorandis).

  (2) ‘Lives of Celebrated Men’ (De Viris Illustribus Vitae).

  (3) Epitome of the ‘Lives of Celebrated Men’ (Vita rum Virorum Illustrium Epitome).

  (4) ‘Handbook of a Syrian Journey’ (Itinerarium Syriacum).

  (c) His polemical writings comprise:

  (1) ‘Invectives against a Certain Physician’ (Contra Medicum quendam Invectivae).

  (2) ‘Defence against the Calumnies of an Anonymous Frenchman’ (Contra cuiusdam Anonymi Galli Calumnias Apologia).

  (3) ‘Dissertation concerning his own Ignorance and that of many’ (De sui ipsius et multorum Ignorantia).

  (d) His orations embrace his

  (1) Speech on receiving the laurel crown.

  (2) Speech to the Council of Venice.

  (3) Speech at Novara.

  (4) Speech at Paris to King John and his Court.

  (e) His works of an autobiographical character comprise:

  (1) ‘Letter to Posterity’ (Epistola ad Posteros). See Appendix II.

  (2) ‘Dialogues with St. Augustine concerning Contempt of the World’ (De Contemptu Mundi). See Appendix I.

  (f) His collections of letters embrace:

  (1) ‘Concerning Familiar Things’ (De Rebus Familiaribus).

  (2) ‘Miscellaneous Letters’ (Variae).

  (3) ‘Letters without a Title’ (Sine Titulo).

  (4) ‘Letters of Old Age’ (De Rebus Senilibus).

  (g) His Latin poems comprise:

  (1) His epic ‘Africa’.

  (2) Twelve Eclogues, containing in allegorical form bitter criticisms of the Court of Avignon.

  (3) His poetical Epistles.

  In the Italian language only one specimen of his prose writings exists, his speech at Milan, considered by many a translation of an address originally delivered in Latin.

  His Italian poems included in his Canzoniere comprise:

  (a) Lyrics.

  (1) ‘In the Life of Madonna Laura.’

  (2) ‘On the Death of Madonna Laura.’

  (3) ‘On Miscellaneous Subjects.’

  These are all found together in a single Vatican manuscript.

  (b) His epic poem, the ‘Triumphs’ of

  (1) Love.

  (2) Chastity.

  (3) Death.

  (4) Fame.

  (5) Eternity.1

  INDEX OF FIRST LINES

  Italian

  	page
  A qualunque animale alberga in terra	138
  Amor et io si pien’ di meraviglia	163
  Amor, se vuo’ ch’ i’ torni al giogo antico	176
  Beato in sogno, e di languir contento	168
  Chiare, fresche e dolci acque	158
  Deh qual pietà, qual angel fu sì presto	185
  Di pensier in pensier, di monte in monte	155
  Dolce mio caro e precïoso pegno	185
  Due rose fresche e còlte in paradiso	135
  E perchè un poco nel parlar mi sfogo	140
  Era il giorno ch’al sol si scoloraro	130
  Erano i capei d’oro a l’aura sparsi	167
  Fiamma dal ciel su le tue treccie piova	45
  Fuggendo la pregione ove Amor m’ebbe	151
  Gentil mia donna, i’ veggio	142
  Già fiammeggiava l’amorosa stella	141
  Il dì che costei nacque, eran le stelle	180
  Il mio adversario, in cui veder solete	134
  In mezzo di duo amanti, onesta, altera	136
  In nobil sangue vita umile e queta	165
  In qual parte del ciel, in quale idea	163
  Io son sì stanco sotto il fascio antico	148
  Italia mia, ben che ’l parlar sia indarno	101
  Ite, rime dolenti, al duro sasso	183
  I’ vidi in terra angelici costumi	162
  I’ vo pensando, e nel penser m’ assale	115
  I’ vo piangendo i miei passati tempi	187
  La bella donna che cotanto amavi	147
  La donna che ’l mio cor nel viso porta	145
  L’ardente nodo ov’ io fui d’ ora in ora	109
  L’aspetto sacro de la terra vostra	145
  Lassare il velo o per sole o per ombra	130
  Levommi il mio penser in parte ov’ era	186
  Li angeli eletti, e l’anime beate	187
  Liete e pensose, accompagnate e sole	205
  Mille fïate, o dolce mia guerrera	132
  Ne la stagion che ’l ciel rapido inchina	140
  Nè per sereno ciel ir vaghe stelle	174
  Non al suo amante più Dïana piacque	133
  Non come fiamma, che per forza è spenta	195
  Nova angeletta sovra l’ale accorta	133
  Occhi miei, oscurato è ’l nostro sole	172
  Oimè il bel viso, oimè il soave sguardo	170
  Orso, e’ non furon mai fiumi nè stagni	131
  Or vedi, Amor, che giovenetta donna	134
  Ovunque gli occhi volgo	157
  Pace non trovo, e non ho da far guerra	125, 166
  Padre del ciel; dopo i perduti giorni	146
  Passa la nave mia colma d’oblio	149
  Per ch’ al viso d’Amor portava insegna	150
  Per mezz’ i boschi inospiti e selvaggi	154
  Poi che voi et io più volte abbiam provato	148
  Pommi ove ’l sole occide i fiori e l’erba	161
  Qual paura ho quando mi torna a mente	169
  Quando fra l’ altre donne ad ora ad ora	137
  Quando giunse a Simon l’alto concetto	151
  Quanta invidia io ti porto, avara terra	171
  Quanto più m’avicino al giorno extremo	165
  Quel ch’ infinita providenzia et arte	213
  Quel rosigniuol, che sì soave piagne	182
  Quel vago impallidir, che ’l dolce riso	153
  Qui riposan quei caste e felici ossa	211
  Real natura, angelico intelletto	207
  Ripensando a quel ch’ oggi il cielo onora	184
  Rotta è l’alta colonna e ’l verde lauro	173
  S’amor non è, che dunque è quel ch’ io sento?	123
  Se ’l pensier che mi strugge	157
  Sento l’aura mia antica, e i dolci colli	175
  S’ io avesse pensato che sì care	178
  Solea de la fontana di mia vita	179
  Solea lontana in sonno consolarme	170
  Spirto gentil che quelle membra reggi	99
  Stiamo, Amor, a veder la gloria nostra	164
  Tacer non posso, e temo non adopre	180
  Tutta la mia fiorita e verde etade	175
  Una candida cerva sopra l’erba	202
  Una Donna più bella assai che ’l sole	106
  Vago augelletto che cantando vai	183
  Vergine bella, che di sol vestita	188
  Voi ch’ ascoltate in rime sparse il suono	194
  Volgendo gli occhi al mio novo colore	152
  Zefiro torna, e ’l bel tempo rimena	124, 125, 173

  English

  A fire from heaven rain upon thy head	45
  A lady fairer far than is the day	106
  A thousand times to make my peace I sought	132
  A wondrous little angel, wise of wing	133
  After long years, escaping from the cell	151
  Again with gladsome feet Zephyr returns	173
  Ah, that sweet face! Alas! that soft regard	170
  An equal flame over our hearts did steal	111
  At last my blossoming and vernal age	175
  Bearing love’s ensigns on her shining face	150
  Because I must a little ease my pain	140
  Broken the column tall and laurel green	173
  Choice Spirit! that dost stir the mortal clay	99
  Clear, fresh, sweet waters	158
  Father in heaven, lo! these wasted days	146
  Flung to the breezes was her golden hair	167
  From fancy unto fancy, peak to peak	155
  From my life’s fountain I was wont to stray	179
  Go, mourning rhymes, unto the senseless stone	183
  Had I but known how welcome were the rhymes	178
  Happy in dreams; content in languishing	168
  He showed no grace to Rome when He was born	213
  Here do repose those chaste and blessed bones	211
  Here upon earth I saw those heavenly charms	162
  I am so weary of the heavy load	148
  I feel the soft breeze on my cheek; I see	175
  I find no peace, and all my warre is done	125
  I find no peace, yet am not armed for war	166
  I go lamenting all my wasted days	187
  If love it is not, what is this I feel	123
  If no love is, O God, what fele I so	123
  If thou would’st bend me to thy yoke anew	176
  In what bright spot of heaven did it bide	163
  It was a royal heart, a noble mind	207
  It was the day when the sun’s heavy rays	130
  Lady, I have not seen you draw aside	130
  Look, God of Love! a woman young and fair	134
  Love, let us stand our glory to behold	164
  My bark the raging surges overwhelm	149
  My glittering rival in whose fickle face	134
  My Italy! though speech may be in vain	101
  My lady stood between her lovers twain	136
  My love was wont to comfort me in dreams.	170
  Neither the stars that wander through the sky	174
  Not like a flame that by the wind is spent	195
  O eyes of mine, our sun is dark to-day	172
  O gentle lady mine	142
  O love! we need no further marvel seek	163
  O pledge of mine, precious and sweet and dear	185
  O sordid earth, what envy do I bear	171
  O Virgin fair, who in the sun arrayed	188
  Only of her, living or dead I sing	106
  Orso, there never was a pool nor stream	131
  O ye who hear in these my scattered rhymes	194
  Put me where all things wither in the sun	161
  She whom I seek, no more on earth abides	186
  Since you and I full many a proof can bring	148
  That nightingale who doth so softly mourn	182
  That pallid hue, which clothed her gentle smile	153
  The closer I draw near that final day	165
  The chosen angels and the spirits blest	187
  The day that she was born, those stars did shine	180
  The lady fair whom thou didst greatly love	147
  The lady who holds my heart in her fair face	145
  The sacred face of your dear land I see	145
  The soote season, that bud and bloom forth brings	125
  The star of Love already was ablaze	141
  Thou little wandering bird of plaintive lay	183
  Thoughtful I go, and in my communings	115
  Through forests inhospitable and drear	154
  Tranquil and meek her life, noble her blood	165
  Turning your eyes upon that ashen hue	152
  Two roses fresh that grew in Paradise	135
  Unto whatever creature dwells on earth	138
  What pitying soul, what angel kind and fleet	185
  When all unclad, within the waters cool	133
  When, day by day, midst other women fair	137
  When I do think on her fair countenance	184
  Where’er I turn mine eyes	157
  While Simon mastered his conception high	151
  With what keen dread do I recall the day	169
  Ye dames, who go conversing on your way	205

  Printed in England.

  [1 ]Foscolo, p. 93.

  [2 ]Mascetta, Introduction, p. xiii.

  [1 ]De Sade, Introduction, p. cii.

  [2 ]Ibid., p. cxi.

  [1 ]Ibid., i. p. 87.

  [1 ]Vol. iii, p. 514.

  [1 ]The name was later changed to Petrarca, perhaps for euphony, though the reason is not definitely known. The name Petracco is a familiar variation of ‘Peter’ (Koerting, p. 49). Sismondi observes (vol. iii, p. 511) that this family did not yet have its own name, as was the case in those times with many of the families of the common people.

  [1 ]Jerrold, p. 4.

  [2 ]Ibid., p. 5.

  [1 ]Jerrold, p. 9; Calthrop, p. 19.

  [1 ]Koerting, p. 75.

  [1 ]Jerrold, p. 14.

  [1 ]Koerting, p. 78.

  [2 ]De Sade, vol. i, pp. 154-5.

  [1 ]See Appendix I.

  [1 ]Jerrold, p. 32.

  [2 ]Ibid., p. 33.

  [1 ]Reeve, pp. 86, 87.

  [1 ]De Sade, i. p. 290.

  [1 ]Reeve, pp. 87-9.

  [1 ]pp. 49-50.

  [1 ]Koerting, pp. 133-4.

  [1 ]Calthrop, p. 160 et seq.

  [1 ]Koerting, p. 140.

  [1 ]Koerting, p. 150.

  [2 ]Gibbon’s Roman Empire, chap. 70.

  [1 ]Jerrold, p. 65.

  [1 ]Jerrold, p. 67.

  [1 ]Koerting, p. 172.

  [2 ]Jerrold, p. 69.

  [3 ]Gibbon’s Roman Empire, chap. 70.

  [1 ]Koerting, p. 204.

  [2 ]See xci,infra, p. 147.

  [1 ]Calthrop, p. 115.

  [1 ]Sismondi, iii. p. 516.

  [1 ]Jerrold, p. 78.

  [1 ]Reeve, p. 115.

  [1 ]Ward, p. 142.

  [2 ]Calthrop, p. 134.

  [1 ]Ward. p. 147.

  [1 ]De Sade, ii. p. 456.

  [1 ]De Sade, vol. iii, Appendix, p. 31.

  [1 ]The third visit was on his way to Naples, the fourth on his return from that city.

  [1 ]De Sade, iii. pp. 248-9.

  [1 ]‘Strages minime flenda est,’ Koerting, p. 309.

  [1 ]De Sade, iii. p. 302.

  [1 ]Calthrop, pp. 180-1.

  [1 ]Ward, p. 170.

  [1 ]Reeve, p. 129.

  [1 ]De Sade, iii. pp. 412-13.

  [1 ]De Sade, iii. pp. 449-51.

  [1 ]De Sade, iii. pp. 508-12.

  [1 ]Calthrop, p. 216.

  [1 ]Ward, p. 188.

  [2 ]Foscolo, p. 149.

  [1 ]Jerrold, p. 233.

  [1 ]Ward, p. 207.

  [1 ]De Sade, iii. pp. 655-6.

  [2 ]Ibid., iii. p. 660.

  [1 ]De Sade, iii. p. 756.

  [1 ]Koerting, pp. 429-33.

  [1 ]Reeve, pp. 139-40.

  [1 ]De Sade, iii. p. 789.

  [1 ]De Sade, iii. p. 792.

  [2 ]By some of the commentators the composition of this letter is assigned to a much earlier period, viz. while he was at Vaucluse in 1351-2. From the contents of the letter itself, referring to his old age, and to the failure of his eyesight after he had passed his sixtieth year, this seems impossible.

  [3 ]See Appendix II.

  [1 ]Koerting, pp. 455-6.

  [1 ]Foscolo, p. 156; Koerting, p. 515.

  [1 ]The arms of the families opposed to the Colonna, viz.: bears, of the Orsini; eagles, of the counts of Tusculum; wolves, of another branch of the same family; lions, of the Savelli; serpents, of the Gaetani (Carducci).

  [2 ]The Colonna family.

  [3 ]Rome.

  [4 ]The Pope.

  [1 ]The Bavarians were the first German mercenaries in Italy.

  [2 ]In sign of collusive surrender to save themselves in a war for which they cared nothing.

  [1 ]Carducci thinks this refers to the exaggerated reputation for courage and military skill attributed to the Germans.

  [1 ]Lady Dacre’s translation furnished the suggestion of the last three lines.

  [1 ]cclxix,Rotta è l’alta colonna.

  [1 ]Calthrop, p. 202.

  [1 ]Calthrop, p. 202.

  [1 ]Ibid., p. 203.

  [1 ]It is not clear from the text which of the two sang these words. They were apparently taken from some song current at that time.

  [1 ]Piumati, 38.

  [1 ]p. 139.

  [1 ]See Appendix I.

  [2 ]I use Jerrold’s translation, p. 155.

  [1 ]Jerrold, p. 163.

  [1 ]Koerting, pp. 549, 555.

  [1 ]Encyclopaedia Britannica, Petrarch.

  [1 ]p. 220.

  [1 ]Reeve, p. 1.

  [1 ]Reeve, p. 3.

  [2 ]History of English Poetry, Sec. 15.

  [1 ]The Arte of English Poesie, ed. Arber, 1869, Book I, ch. 31, p. 74.

  [2 ]Henry VIII.

  [3 ]Surrey’s Poems, p. 3.

  [1 ]Actaeon is here incorrectly designated by Petrarch as Diana’s lover.

  [1 ]Venus.

  [2 ]Callisto, a nymph beloved by Jupiter and transformed into a star in the Great Bear.

  [1 ]For the last two lines I am indebted to Lady Dacre’s translation.

  [1 ]Of joy and sorrow.

  [1 ]One of the commentators believes that Petrarch here hints at the attractions of another. This seems unwarranted.

  [1 ]Of joy and sorrow.

  [1 ]The swallow and nightingale into which the unhappy daughters of Tereus were transformed.
  
  This sonnet was imitated in English at a very early date by Henry, Earl of Surrey; see Introduction, p. 125.

  [1 ]Circle of Venus.

  [2 ]Her mortal body.

  [1 ]De Sade, i. p. 283.

  [2 ]Koerting, pp. 689-92.

  [1 ]De Sade insists that the word contracted in various manuscripts to ptubs is partubus, ‘childbirths’. Others render it perturbationibus, ‘anxieties’.

  [1 ]Koerting, pp. 639-46.

  [2 ]De Sade, ii. p. 236.

  [1 ]Vol. i, p. 118.

  [2 ]De Sade, ii. 481, note b.

  [1 ]Chap. ix, Part 2, note.

  [1 ]This seems inconsistent with the hypothesis that the prince in question was Charles of Luxemburg, since Petrarch in another place tells us that he had not met Charles at this time. Yet the envy he speaks of may have been that which he felt when first hearing afterwards of the occurrence described in this sonnet, at which he may not have been present.

  [1 ]De Sade, vol. iii, appendix, p. 31.

  [1 ]De Sade, vol. i, appendix, pp. 9-12.

  [2 ]Ibid., pp. 13, 14.

  [1 ]De Sade, vol. iii, appendix, p. 41.

  [2 ]Ibid., vol. i, appendix, p. 14.

  [1 ]Translation in Reeve’s Petrarch, p. 17.

  [1 ]This date is incorrect. Petrarch was thirty-eight when he returned to Vaucluse in 1342.

  [1 ]Koerting, pp. 528, 529, 530.

• Back to Top

  6: 6. Desiderius Erasmus, In Praise of Folly

  Desiderius Erasmus (1469-1536) was a Christian, humanist scholar; the first editor of the New Testament; a classicist; and a leading voice in the theological debates of the early Reformation in northern Europe. He contended with the reformer Martin Luther (1483-1546), emphasizing the importance of free will in human actions against Luther’s belief in the absolute bondage of the will to sin. In addition, Erasmus sought middle ground in the conflict between Luther and Pope Adrian VI (1522-1523) and tried to reconcile the two. In this work, the personification of Folly comes to earth to expose the follies, foibles, and failings of humans. It has been illustrated with 77 woodcuts by Hans Holbein.

  See the entry about Erasmus in the Goodrich Seminar Room.

  Desiderius Erasmus, Erasmus in Praise of Folly, illustrated with many curious cuts, designed, drawn, and etched by Hans Holbein, with portrait, life of Erasmus, and his epistle to Sir Thomas More (London: Reeves & Turner, 1876).

  Accessed from oll.libertyfund.org/title/551 on 2007-12-03

  The text is in the public domain.

  ---

  THE LIFE of ERASMUS.

  ERASMUS, so deservedly famous for his admirable writings, the vast extent of his learning, his great candour and moderation, and for being one of the chief restorers of the Latin tongue on this side the Alps, was born at Rotterdam, on the 28th of October, in the year 1467. The anonymous author of his life commonly printed with his Colloquies (of the London edition) is pleased to tell us that de anno quo natus est apud Batavos, non constat. And if he himself wrote the life which we find before the Elzevir edition, said to be Erasmo autore, he does not particularly mention the year in which he was born, but places it circa annum 67 supra millesimum quadringentesimum. Another Latin life, which is prefixed to the above-mentioned London edition, fixes it in the year 1465; as does his epitaph at Basil. But as the inscription on his statue at Rotterdam, the place of his nativity, may reasonably be supposed the most authentic, we have followed that.

  His mother was the daughter of a physician at Sevenbergen in Holland, with whom his father contracted an acquaintance, and had correspondence with her on promise of marriage, and was actually contracted to her. His father’s name was Gerard; he was the youngest of ten brothers, without one sister coming between; for which reason his parents (according to the superstition of the times) designed to consecrate him to the church. His brothers liked the notion, because, as the church then governed all, they hoped, if he rose in his profession, to have a sure friend to advance their interest; but no importunities could prevail on Gerard to turn ecclesiastic. Finding himself continually pressed upon so disagreeable a subject, and not able longer to bear it, he was forced to fly from his native country, leaving a letter for his friends, in which he acquainted them with the reason of his departure, and that he should never trouble them any more. Thus he left her who was to be his wife big with child, and made the best of his way to Rome. Being an admirable master of the pen, he made a very genteel livelihood by transcribing most authors of note (for printing was not in use). He for some time lived at large, but afterwards applied close to study, made great progress in the Greek and Latin languages, and in the civil law; for Rome at that time was full of learned men. When his friends knew he was at Rome, they sent him word that the young gentlewoman whom he had courted for a wife was dead; upon which, in a melancholy fit, he took orders, and turned his thoughts wholly to the study of divinity. He returned to his own country, and found to his grief that he had been imposed upon; but it was too late to think of marriage, so he dropped all farther pretensions to his mistress; nor would she after this unlucky adventure be induced to marry.

  The son took the name of Gerard after his father, which in German signifies amiable, and (after the fashion of the learned men of that age, who affected to give their names a Greek or Latin turn) his was turned into Erasmus, which in Greek has the same signification. He was chorister of the cathedral church of Utrecht till he was nine years old; after which he was sent to Deventer to be instructed by the famous Alexander Hegius, a Westphalian. Under so able a master he proved an extraordinary proficient; and it is remarkable that he had such a strength of memory as to be able to say all Terence and Horace by heart. He was now arrived to the thirteenth year of his age, and had been continually under the watchful eye of his mother, who died of the plague then raging at Deventer. The contagion daily increasing, and having swept away the family where he boarded, he was obliged to return home. His father Gerard was so concerned at her death that he grew melancholy, and died soon after: neither of his parents being much above forty when they died.

  Erasmus had three guardians assigned him, the chief of whom was Peter Winkel, schoolmaster of Goude; and the fortune left him was amply sufficient for his support, if his executors had faithfully discharged their trust. Although he was fit for the university, his guardians were averse to sending him there, as they designed him for a monastic life, and therefore removed him to Bois-le-duc, where, he says, he lost near three years, living in a Franciscan convent. The professor of humanity in this convent, admiring his rising genius, daily importuned him to take the habit, and be of their order. Erasmus had no great inclination for the cloister; not that he had the least dislike to the severities of a pious life, but he could not reconcile himself to the monastic profession; he therefore urged his rawness of age, and desired farther to consider better of the matter. The plague spreading in those parts, and he having struggled a long time with a quartan ague, obliged him to return home.

  His guardians employed those about him to use all manner of arguments to prevail on him to enter the order of monk; sometimes threatening, and at other times making use of flattery and fair speeches. When Winkel, his guardian, found him not to be moved from his resolution, he told him that he threw up his guardianship from that moment. Young Erasmus replied, that he took him at his word, since he was old enough now to look out for himself. When Winkel found that threats did not avail, he employed his brother, who was the other guardian, to see what he could effect by fair means. Thus he was surrounded by them and their agents on all sides. By mere accident, Erasmus went to visit a religious house belonging to the same order, in Emaus or Steyn, near Goude, where he met with one Cornelius, who had been his companion at Deventer; and though he had not himself taken the habit, he was perpetually preaching up the advantages of a religious life, as the convenience of noble libraries, the helps of learned conversation, retirement from the noise and folly of the world, and the like. Thus at last he was induced to pitch upon this convent. Upon his admission they fed him with great promises, to engage him to take the holy cloth; and though he found almost everything fall short of his expectation, yet his necessities, and the usage he was threatened with if he abandoned their order, prevailed with him, after his year of probation, to profess himself a member of their fraternity. Not long after this, he had the honour to be known to Henry a Bergis, bishop of Cambray, who having some hopes of obtaining a cardinal’s hat, wanted one perfectly master of Latin to solicit this affair for him; for this purpose Erasmus was taken into the bishop’s family, where he wore the habit of his order. The bishop not succeeding in his expectation at Rome, proved fickle and wavering in his affection; therefore Erasmus prevailed with him to send him to Paris, to prosecute his studies in that famous university, with the promise of an annual allowance, which was never paid him. He was admitted into Montague College, but indisposition obliged him to return to the bishop, by whom he was honourably entertained. Finding his health restored, he made a journey to Holland, intending to settle there, but was persuaded to go a second time to Paris; where, having no patron to support him, himself says, he rather made a shift to live, than could be said to study. He next visited England, where he was received with great respect; and as appears by several of his letters, he honoured it next to the place of his nativity. In a letter to Andrelinus, inviting him to England, he speaks highly of the beauty of the English ladies, and thus describes their innocent freedom: “When you come into a gentleman’s house you are allowed the favour to salute them, and the same when you take leave.” He was particularly acquainted with Sir Thomas More, Colet, dean of Saint Paul’s, Grocinus, Linacer, Latimer, and many others of the most eminent of that time; and passed some years at Cambridge. In his way for France he had the misfortune to be stripped of everything; but he did not revenge this injury by any unjust reflection on the country. Not meeting with the preferment he expected, he made a voyage to Italy, at that time little inferior to the Augustan age for learning. He took his doctor of divinity degree in the university of Turin; stayed about a year in Bologna; afterward went to Venice, and there published his book of Adages from the press of the famous Aldus. He removed to Padua, and last to Rome, where his fame had arrived long before him. Here he gained the friendship of all the considerable persons of the city, nor could have failed to have made his fortune, had he not been prevailed upon by the great promises of his friends in England to return thither on Henry VIIIth coming to the crown. He was taken into favour by Warham, archbishop of Canterbury, who gave him the living of Aldington, in Kent; but whether Erasmus was wanting in making his court to Wolsey, or whether the cardinal viewed him with a jealous eye, because he was a favourite of Warham, between whom and Wolsey there was perpetual clashing, we know not; however, being disappointed, Erasmus went to Flanders, and by the interest of Chancellor Sylvagius, was made counsellor to Charles of Austria, afterward Charles V., emperor of Germany. He resided several years at Basil; but on the mass being abolished in that city by the Reformation, he retired to Friberg in Alsace, where he lived seven years. Having been for a long time afflicted with the gout, he left Friberg, and returned to Basil. Here the gout soon left him, but he was seized by a dysentery, and after labouring a whole month under that disorder, died on the 22nd of July, 1536, in the house of Jerome Frobenius, son of John, the famous printer. He was honourably interred, and the city of Basil still pays the highest respect to the memory of so great a man.

  Erasmus was the most facetious man, and the greatest critic of his age. He carried on a reformation in learning at the same time he advanced that of religion; and promoted a purity of style as well as simplicity of worship. This drew on him the hatred of the ecclesiastics, who were no less bigotted to their barbarisms in language and philosophy, than they were to their superstitious and gaudy ceremonies in religion; they murdered him in their dull treatises, libelled him in their wretched sermons, and in their last and most effectual efforts of malice, they joined some of their own execrable stuff to his compositions: of which he himself complains in a letter addressed to the divines of Louvain. He exposed with great freedom the vices and corruptions of his own church, yet never would be persuaded to leave her communion. The papal policy would never have suffered Erasmus to have taken so unbridled a range in the reproof and censure of her extravagancies, but under such circumstances, when the public attack of Luther imposed on her a prudential necessity of not disobliging her friends, that she might with more united strength oppose the common enemy; and patiently bore what at any other time she would have resented. Perhaps no man has obliged the public with a greater number of useful volumes than our author; though several have been attributed to him which he never wrote. His book of Colloquies has passed through more editions than any of his others: Moreri tells us a bookseller in Paris sold twenty thousand at one impression.

  

  ERASMUS’S EPISTLE to Sir THOMAS MORE.

  IN my late travels from Italy into England, that I might not trifle away my time in the rehearsal of old wives’ fables, I thought it more pertinent to employ my thoughts in reflecting upon some past studies, or calling to remembrance several of those highly learned, as well as smartly ingenious, friends I had here left behind, among whom you (dear Sir) were represented as the chief; whose memory, while absent at this distance, I respect with no less a complacency than I was wont while present to enjoy your more intimate conversation, which last afforded me the greatest satisfaction I could possibly hope for. Having therefore resolved to be a doing, and deeming that time improper for any serious concerns, I thought good to divert myself with drawing up a panegyrick upon Folly. How! what maggot (say you) put this in your head? Why, the first hint, Sir, was your own surname of More, which comes as near the literal sound of the word,* as you yourself are distant from the signification of it, and that in all men’s judgments is vastly wide. In the next place, I supposed that this kind of sporting wit would be by you more especially accepted of, by you, Sir, that are wont with this sort of jocose raillery (such as, if I mistake not, is neither dull nor impertinent) to be mightily pleased, and in your ordinary converse to approve yourself a Democritus junior: for truly, as you do from a singular vein of wit very much dissent from the common herd of mankind; so, by an incredible affability and pliableness of temper, you have the art of suiting your humour with all sorts of companies. I hope therefore you will not only readily accept of this rude essay as a token from your friend, but take it under your more immediate protection, as being dedicated to you, and by that title adopted for yours, rather than to be fathered as my own. And it is a chance if there be wanting some quarrelsome persons that will shew their teeth, and pretend these fooleries are either too buffoon-like for a grave divine, or too satyrical for a meek christian, and so will exclaim against me as if I were vamping up some old farce, or acted anew the Lucian again with a peevish snarling at all things. But those who are offended at the lightness and pedantry of this subject, I would have them consider that I do not set myself for the first example of this kind, but that the same has been oft done by many considerable authors. For thus several ages since, Homer wrote of no more weighty a subject than of a war between the frogs and mice, Virgil of a gnat and a pudding-cake, and Ovid of a nut. Polycrates commended the cruelty of Busiris; and Isocrates, that corrects him for this, did as much for the injustice of Glaucus. Favorinus extolled Thersites, and wrote in praise of a quartan ague. Synesius pleaded in behalf of baldness; and Lucian defended a sipping fly. Seneca drollingly related the deifying of Claudius; Plutarch the dialogue betwixt Gryllus and Ulysses; Lucian and Apuleius the story of an ass; and somebody else records the last will of a hog, of which St. Hierom makes mention. So that if they please, let themselves think the worst of me, and fancy to themselves that I was all this while a playing at push-pin, or riding astride on a hobby-horse. For how unjust is it, if when we allow different recreations to each particular course of life, we afford no diversion to studies; especially when trifles may be a whet to more serious thoughts, and comical matters may be so treated of, as that a reader of ordinary sense may possibly thence reap more advantage than from some more big and stately argument: as while one in a long-winded oration descants in commendation of rhetoric or philosophy, another in a fulsome harangue sets forth the praise of his nation, a third makes a zealous invitation to a holy war with the Turks, another confidently sets up for a fortune-teller, and a fifth states questions upon mere impertinences. But as nothing is more childish than to handle a serious subject in a loose, wanton style, so is there nothing more pleasant than so to treat of trifles, as to make them seem nothing less than what their name imports. As to what relates to myself, I must be forced to submit to the judgment of others; yet, except I am too partial to be judge in my own case, I am apt to believe I have praised Folly in such a manner as not to have deserved the name of fool for my pains. To reply now to the objection of satyricalness, wits have been always allowed this privilege, that they might be smart upon any transactions of life, if so be their liberty did not extend to railing; which makes me wonder at the tender-eared humour of this age, which will admit of no address without the prefatory repetition of all formal titles; nay, you may find some so preposterously devout, that they will sooner wink at the greatest affront against our Saviour, than be content that a prince, or a pope, should be nettled with the least joke or gird, especially in what relates to their ordinary customs. But he who so blames men’s irregularities as to lash at no one particular person by name, does he (I say) seem to carp so properly as to teach and instruct? And if so, how am I concerned to make any farther excuse? Beside, he who in his strictures points indifferently at all, he seems not angry at one man, but at all vices.

  Therefore, if any singly complain they are particularly reflected upon, they do but betray their own guilt, at least their cowardice. Saint Hierom dealt in the same argument at a much freer and sharper rate; nay, and he did not sometimes refrain from naming the persons: whereas I have not only stifled the mentioning any one person, but have so tempered my style, as the ingenious reader will easily perceive I aimed at diversion rather than satire. Neither did I so far imitate Juvenal, as to rake into the sink of vices to procure a laughter, rather than create a hearty abhorrence. If there be any one that after all remains yet unsatisfied, let him at least consider that there may be good use made of being reprehended by Folly, which since we have feigned as speaking, we must keep up that character which is suitable to the person introduced.

  But why do I trouble you, Sir, with this needless apology, you that are so peculiar a patron; as, though the cause itself be none of the best, you can at least give it the best protection. Farewell.

  On the Argument and Design of the following Oration.

  • WHATE’ER the modern satyrs o’ th’ stage,
  • To jerk the failures of a sliding age,
  • Have lavishly expos’d to public view,
  • For a discharge to all from envy due,
  • Here in as lively colours naked lie,
  • With equal wit, and more of modesty,
  • Those poets, with their free disclosing arts,
  • Strip vice so near to its uncomely parts,
  • Their libels prove but lessons, and they teach
  • Those very crimes which they intend t’ impeach:
  • While here so wholesome all, tho’ sharp t’ th’ taste,
  • So briskly free, yet so resolv’dly chaste;
  • The virgin naked as her god of bows,
  • May read or hear when blood at highest flows;
  • Nor more expense of blushes thence arise,
  • Than while the lect’ring matron does advise
  • To guard her virtue, and her honour prize.
  • Satire and panegyric, distant be,
  • Yet jointly here they both in one agree.
  • The whole’s a sacrifice of salt and fire;
  • So does the humour of the age require,
  • To chafe the touch, and so foment desire.
  • As doctrine-dangling preachers lull asleep
  • Their unattentive pent-up fold of sheep;
  • The opiated milk glues up the brain,
  • And th’ babes of grace are in their cradles lain;
  • While mounted Andrews, bawdy, bold, and loud,
  • Like cocks, alarm all the drowsy crowd,
  • Whose glittering ears are prick’d as bolt-upright,
  • As sailing hairs are hoisted in a fright.
  • So does it fare with croaking spawns o’ th’ press,
  • The mould o’ th’ subject alters the success;
  • What’s serious, like sleep, grants writs of ease,
  • Satire and ridicule can only please;
  • As if no other animals could gape,
  • But the biting badger, or the snick’ring ape.
  • Folly by irony’s commended here,
  • Sooth’d, that her weakness may the more appear.
  • Thus fools, who trick’d, in red and yellow shine,
  • Are made believe that they are wondrous fine,
  • When all’s a plot t’ expose them by design.
  • The largesses of Folly here are strown.
  • Like pebbles, not to pick, but trample on.
  • Thus Spartans laid their soaking slaves before
  • The boys, to justle, kick, and tumble o’er:
  • Not that the dry-lipp’d youngsters might combine
  • To taste and know the mystery of wine,
  • But wonder thus at men transform’d to swine;
  • And th’ power of such enchantment to escape,
  • Timely renounce the devil of the grape.
  • So here,
  • Though Folly speaker be, and argument,
  • Wit guides the tongue, wisdom’s the lecture meant.

  ERASMUS’s Praise of FOLLY.
  An oration, of feigned matter, spoken byFollyin her own person.

  HOW slightly soever I am esteemed in the common vogue of the world, (for I well know how disingenuously Folly is decried, even by those who are themselves the greatest fools,) yet it is from my influence alone that the whole universe receives her ferment of mirth and jollity: of which this may be urged as a convincing argument, in that as soon as I appeared to speak before this numerous assembly all their countenances were gilded over with a lively sparkling pleasantness: you soon welcomed me with so encouraging a look, you spurred me on with so cheerful a hum, that truly in all appearance, you seem now flushed with a good dose of reviving nectar, when as just before you sate drowsy and melancholy, as if you were lately come out of some hermit’s cell. But as it is usual, that as soon as the sun peeps from her eastern bed, and draws back the curtains of the darksome night; or as when, after a hard winter, the restorative spring breathes a more enlivening air, nature forthwith changes her apparel, and all things seem to renew their age; so at the first sight of me you all unmask, and appear in more lively colours. That therefore which expert orators can scarce effect by all their little artifice of eloquence, to wit, a raising the attentions of their auditors to a composedness of thought, this a bare look from me has commanded. The reason why I appear in this odd kind of garb, you shall soon be informed of, if for so short a while you will have but the patience to lend me an ear; yet not such a one as you are wont to hearken with to your reverend preachers, but as you listen withal to mountebanks, buffoons, and merry-andrews; in short, such as formerly were fastened to Midas, as a punishment for his affront to the god Pan. For I am now in a humour to act awhile the sophist, yet not of that sort who undertake the drudgery of tyrannizing over school boys, and teach a more than womanish knack of brawling; but in imitation of those ancient ones, who to avoid the scandalous epithet of wise, preferred this title of sophists; the task of these was to celebrate the worth of gods and heroes. Prepare therefore to be entertained with a panegyrick, yet not upon Hercules, Solon, or any other grandee, but on myself, that is, upon Folly.

  

  And here I value not their censure that pretend it is foppish and affected for any person to praise himself: yet let it be as silly as they please, if they will but allow it needful: and indeed what is more befitting than that Folly should be the trumpet of her own praise, and dance after her own pipe? for who can set me forth better than myself? or who can pretend to be so well acquainted with my condition?

  And yet farther, I may safely urge, that all this is no more than the same with what is done by several seemingly great and wise men, who with a new-fashioned modesty employ some paltry orator or scribbling poet, whom they bribe to flatter them with some high-flown character, that shall consist of mere lies and shams; and yet the persons thus extolled shall bristle up, and, peacock-like, bespread their plumes, while the impudent parasite magnifies the poor wretch to the skies, and proposes him as a complete pattern of all virtues, from each of which he is yet as far distant as heaven itself from hell: what is all this in the mean while, but the tricking up a daw in stolen feathers; a labouring to change the black-a-moor’s hue, and the drawing on a pigmy’s frock over the shoulders of a giant.

  Lastly, I verify the old observation, that allows him a right of praising himself, who has nobody else to do it for him: for really, I cannot but admire at that ingratitude, shall I term it, or blockishness of mankind, who when they all willingly pay to me their utmost devoir, and freely acknowledge their respective obligations; that notwithstanding this, there should have been none so grateful or complaisant as to have bestowed on me a commendatory oration, especially when there have not been wanting such as at a great expense of sweat, and loss of sleep, have in elaborate speeches, given high encomiums to tyrants, agues, flies, baldness, and such like trumperies.

  I shall entertain you with a hasty and unpremeditated, but so much the more natural discourse. My venting it ex tempore, I would not have you think proceeds from any principles of vain glory by which ordinary orators square their attempts, who (as it is easy to observe) when they are delivered of a speech that has been thirty years a conceiving, nay, perhaps at last, none of their own, yet they will swear they wrote it in a great hurry, and upon very short warning: whereas the reason of my not being provided beforehand is only because it was always my humour constantly to speak that which lies uppermost. Next, let no one be so fond as to imagine, that I should so far stint my invention to the method of other pleaders, as first to define, and then divide my subject, i.e., myself. For it is equally hazardous to attempt the crowding her within the narrow limits of a definition, whose nature is of so diffusive an extent, or to mangle and disjoin that, to the adoration whereof all nations unitedly concur. Beside, to what purpose is it to lay down a definition for a faint resemblance, and mere shadow of me, while appearing here personally, you may view me at a more certain light? And if your eye-sight fail not, you may at first blush discern me to be her whom the Greeks term Μωρία, the Latins stultitia.

  But why need I have been so impertinent as to have told you this, as if my very looks did not sufficiently betray what I am; or supposing any be so credulous as to take me for some sage matron or goddess of wisdom, as if a single glance from me would not immediately correct their mistake, while my visage, the exact reflex of my soul, would supply and supersede the trouble of any other confessions: for I appear always in my natural colours, and an unartificial dress, and never let my face pretend one thing, and my heart conceal another; nay, and in all things I am so true to my principles, that I cannot be so much as counterfeited, even by those who challenge the name of wits, yet indeed are no better than jackanapes tricked up in gawdy clothes, and asses strutting in lions’ skins; and how cunningly soever they carry it, their long ears appear, and betray what they are. These in troth are very rude and disingenuous, for while they apparently belong to my party, yet among the vulgar they are so ashamed of my relation, as to cast it in others’ dish for a shame and reproach: wherefore since they are so eager to be accounted wise, when in truth they are extremely silly, what, if to give them their due, I dub them with the title of wise fools: and herein they copy after the example of some modern orators, who swell to that proportion of conceitedness, as to vaunt themselves for so many giants of eloquence, if with a double-tongued fluency they can plead indifferently for either side, and deem it a very doughty exploit if they can but interlard a Latin sentence with some Greek word, which for seeming garnish they crowd in at a venture; and rather than be at a stand for some cramp words, they will furnish up a long scroll of old obsolete terms out of some musty author, and foist them in, to amuse the reader with, that those who understand them may be tickled with the happiness of being acquainted with them: and those who understand them not, the less they know the more they may admire; whereas it has been always a custom to those of our side to contemn and undervalue whatever is strange and unusual, while those that are better conceited of themselves will nod and smile, and prick up their ears, that they may be thought easily to apprehend that, of which perhaps they do not understand one word. And so much for this; pardon the digression, now I return.

  

  Of my name I have informed you, Sirs; what additional epithet to give you I know not, except you will be content with that of most foolish; for under what more proper appellation can the goddess Folly greet her devotees? But since there are few acquainted with my family and original, I will now give you some account of my extraction.

  First then, my father was neither the chaos, nor hell, nor Saturn, nor Jupiter, nor any of those old, worn out, grandsire gods, but Plutus, the very same that, maugre Homer, Hesiod, nay, in spite of Jove himself, was the primary father of the universe; at whose alone beck, for all ages, religion and civil policy, have been successively undermined and re-established; by whose powerful influence war, peace, empire, debates, justice, magistracy, marriage, leagues, compacts, laws, arts, (I have almost run myself out of breath, but) in a word, all affairs of church and state, and business of private concern, are severally ordered and administered; without whose assistance all the Poets’ gang of deities, nay, I may be so bold as to say the very majordomos of heaven, would either dwindle into nothing, or at least be confined to their respective homes without any ceremonies of devotional address: whoever he combats with as an enemy, nothing can be armour-proof against his assaults; and whosoever he sides with as a friend, may grapple at even hand with Jove, and all his bolts. Of such a father I may well brag; and he begot me, not of his brain, as Jupiter did the hag Pallas, but of a pretty young nymph, famed for wit no less than beauty: and this feat was not done amidst the embraces of dull nauseous wedlock, but what gave a greater gust to the pleasure, it was done at a stolen bout, as we may modestly phrase it. But to prevent your mistaking me, I would have you understand that my father was not that Plutus in Aristophanes, old, dry, withered, sapless and blind; but the same in his younger and brisker days, and when his veins were more impregnated, and the heat of his youth somewhat higher inflamed by a chirping cup of nectar, which for a whet to his lust he had just before drank very freely of at a merry-meeting of the gods. And now presuming you may be inquisitive after my birth-place (the quality of the place we are born in, being now looked upon as a main ingredient of gentility), I was born neither in the floating Delo’s, nor on the frothy sea, nor in any of these privacies, where too forward mothers are wont to retire for an undiscovered delivery; but in the fortune islands, where all things grow without the toil of husbandry, wherein there is no drudgery, no distempers, no old age, where in the fields grow no daffodills, mallows, onions, pease, beans, or such kind of trash, but there give equal divertisement to our sight and smelling, rue, all-heal, bugloss, marjoram, herb of life, roses, violets, hyacinth, and such like fragrances as perfume the gardens of Adonis. And being born amongst these delights, I did not, like other infants, come crying into the world, but perked up, and laughed immediately in my mother’s face. And there is no reason I should envy Jove for having a she-goat to his nurse, since I was more creditably suckled by two jolly nymphs; the name of the first drunkenness, one of Bacchus’s offspring, the other ignorance, the daughter of Pan; both which you may here behold among several others of my train and attendants, whose particular names, if you would fain know, I will give you in short. This, who goes with a mincing gait, and holds up her head so high, is Self-Love. She that looks so spruce, and makes such a noise and bustle, is Flattery. That other, which sits hum-drum, as if she were half asleep, is called Forgetfulness. She that leans on her elbow, and sometimes yawningly stretches out her arms, is Laziness. This, that wears a plighted garland of flowers, and smells so perfumed, is Pleasure. The other, which appears in so smooth a skin, and pampered-up flesh, is Sensuality. She that stares so wildly, and rolls about her eyes, is Madness. As to those two gods whom you see playing among the lasses the name of the one is Intemperance, the other Sound Sleep. By the help and service of this retinue I bring all things under the verge of my power, lording it over the greatest kings and potentates.

  

  You have now heard of my descent, my education, and my attendance; that I may not be taxed as presumptuous in borrowing the title of a goddess, I come now in the next place to acquaint you what obliging favours I everywhere bestow, and how largely my jurisdiction extends: for if, as one has ingenuously noted, to be a god is no other than to be a benefactor to mankind; and if they have been thought deservedly deified who have invented the use of wine, corn, or any other convenience for the well-being of mortals, why may not I justly bear the van among the whole troop of gods, who in all, and toward all, exert an unparalleled bounty and beneficence?

  For instance, in the first place, what can be more dear and precious than life itself? and yet for this are none beholden, save to me alone. For it is neither the spear of throughly-begotten Pallas, nor the buckler of cloud-gathering Jove, that multiplies and propagates mankind: but that prime father of the universe, who at a displeasing nod makes heaven itself to tremble, he (I say) must lay aside his frightful ensigns of majesty, and put away that grim aspect wherewith he makes the other gods to quake, and, stage player-like, must lay aside his usual character, if he would do that, the doing whereof he cannot refrain from, i.e., getting of children. The next place to the gods is challenged by the Stoicks; but give me one as stoical as ill-nature can make him, and if I do not prevail on him to part with his beard, that bush of wisdom, (though no other ornament than what nature in more ample manner has given to goats,) yet at least he shall lay by his gravity, smooth up his brow, relinquish his rigid tenets, and in despite of prejudice become sensible of some passion in wanton sport and dallying. In a word, this dictator of wisdom shall be glad to take Folly for his diversion, if ever he would arrive to the honour of a father. And why should I not tell my story out? To proceed then: is it the head, the face, the breasts, the hands, the ears, or other more comely parts, that serve for instruments of generation? I trow not, but it is that member of our body which is so odd and uncouth as can scarce be mentioned without a smile. This part, I say, is that fountain of life, from which originally spring all things in a truer sense than from the elemental seminary. Add to this, what man would be so silly as to run his head into the collar of a matrimonial noose, if (as wise men are wont to do) he had before-hand duly considered the inconveniences of a wedded life? Or indeed what woman would open her arms to receive the embraces of a husband, if she did but forecast the pangs of child-birth, and the plague of being a nurse? Since then you owe your birth to the bride-bed, and (what was preparatory to that) the solemnizing of marriage to my waiting-woman Madness, you cannot but acknowledge how much you are indebted to me. Beside, those who had once dearly bought the experience of their folly, would never re-engage themselves in the same entanglement by a second match, if it were not occasioned by the forgetfulness of past dangers. And Venus herself (whatever Lucretius pretends to the contrary), cannot deny, but that without my assistance, her procreative power would prove weak and ineffectual. It was from my sportive and tickling recreation that proceeded the old crabbed philosophers, and those who now supply their stead, the mortified monks and friars; as also kings, priests, and popes, nay, the whole tribe of poetic gods, who are at last grown so numerous, as in the camp of heaven (though ne’er so spacious), to jostle for elbow room. But it is not sufficient to have made it appear that I am the source and original of all life, except I likewise shew that all the benefits of life are equally at my disposal. And what are such? Why, can any one be said properly to live to whom pleasure is denied? You will give me your assent; for there is none I know among you so wise shall I say, or so silly, as to be of a contrary opinion. The Stoics indeed contemn, and pretend to banish pleasure; but this is only a dissembling trick, and a putting the vulgar out of conceit with it, that they may more quietly engross it to themselves: but I dare them now to confess what one stage of life is not melancholy, dull, tiresome, tedious, and uneasy, unless we spice it with pleasure, that hautgoust of Folly. Of the truth whereof the never enough to be commended Sophocles is sufficient authority, who gives me the highest character in that sentence of his,

  
  
  

  To know nothing is the sweetest life.

  Yet abating from this, let us examine the case more narrowly. Who knows not that the first scene of infancy is far the most pleasant and delightsome? What then is it in children that makes us so kiss, hug, and play with them, and that the bloodiest enemy can scarce have the heart to hurt them; but their ingredients of innocence and Folly, of which nature out of providence did purposely compound and blend their tender infancy, that by a frank return of pleasure they might make some sort of amends for their parents’ trouble, and give in caution as it were for the discharge of a future education; the next advance from childhood is youth, and how favourably is this dealt with; how kind, courteous, and respectful are all to it? and how ready to become serviceable upon all occasions? And whence reaps it this happiness? Whence indeed, but from me only, by whose procurement it is furnished with little of wisdom, and so with the less of disquiet? And when once lads begin to grow up, and attempt to write man, their prettiness does then soon decay, their briskness flags, their humours stagnate, their jollity ceases, and their blood grows cold; and the farther they proceed in years, the more they grow backward in the enjoyment of themselves, till waspish old age comes on, a burden to itself as well as others, and that so heavy and oppressive, as none would bear the weight of, unless out of pity to their sufferings. I again intervene, and lend a helping-hand, assisting them at a dead lift, in the same method the poets feign their gods to succour dying men, by transforming them into new creatures, which I do by bringing them back, after they have one foot in the grave, to their infancy again; so as there is a great deal of truth couched in that old proverb, Once an old man, and twice a child. Now if any one be curious to understand what course I take to effect this alteration, my method is this: I bring them to my well of forgetfulness, (the fountain whereof is in the Fortunate Islands, and the river Lethe in hell but a small stream of it), and when they have there filled their bellies full, and washed down care, by the virtue and operation whereof they become young again. Ay, but (say you) they merely dote, and play the fool: why yes, this is what I mean by growing young again: for what else is it to be a child than to be a fool and an idiot? It is the being such that makes that age so acceptable: for who does not esteem it somewhat ominous to see a boy endowed with the discretion of a man, and therefore for the curbing of too forward parts we have a disparaging proverb, Soon ripe, soon rotten? And farther, who would keep company or have any thing to do with such an old blade, as, after the wear and harrowing of so many years should yet continue of as clear a head and sound a judgment as he had at any time been in his middle-age; and therefore it is great kindness of me that old men grow fools, since it is hereby only that they are freed from such vexations as would torment them if they were more wise; they can drink briskly, bear up stoutly, and lightly pass over such infirmities, as a far stronger constitution could scarce master. Sometime, with the old fellow in Plautus, they are brought back to their horn-book again, to learn to spell their fortune in love. Most wretched would they needs be if they had but wit enough to be sensible of their hard condition; but by my assistance, they carry off all well, and to their respective friends approve themselves good, sociable, jolly companions. Thus Homer makes aged Nestor famed for a smooth oily-tongued orator, while the delivery of Achilles was but rough, harsh, and hesitant; and the same poet elsewhere tells us of old men that sate on the walls, and spake with a great deal of flourish and elegance. And in this point indeed they surpass and outgo children, who are pretty forward in a softly, innocent prattle, but otherwise are too much tongue-tied, and want the other’s most acceptable embellishment of a perpetual talkativeness. Add to this, that old men love to be playing with children, and children delight as much in them, to verify the proverb, that Birds of a feather flock together. And indeed what difference can be discerned between them, but that the one is more furrowed with wrinkles, and has seen a little more of the world than the other? For otherwise their whitish hair, their want of teeth, their smallness of stature, their milk diet, their bald crowns, their prattling, their playing, their short memory, their heedlessness, and all their other endowments, exactly agree; and the more they advance in years, the nearer they come back to their cradle, till like children indeed, at last they depart the world, without any remorse at the loss of life, or sense of the pangs of death.

  

  And now let any one compare the excellency of my metamorphosing power to that which Ovid attributes to the gods; their strange feats in some drunken passions we will omit for their credit sake, and instance only in such persons as they pretend great kindness for; these they transformed into trees, birds, insects, and sometimes serpents; but alas, their very change into somewhat else argues the destruction of what they were before; whereas I can restore the same numerical man to his pristine state of youth, health and strength; yea, what is more, if men would but so far consult their own interest, as to discard all thoughts of wisdom, and entirely resign themselves to my guidance and conduct, old age should be a paradox, and each man’s years a perpetual spring. For look how your hard plodding students, by a close sedentary confinement to their books, grow mopish, pale, and meagre, as if, by a continual wrack of brains, and torture of invention, their veins were pumped dry, and their whole body squeezed sapless; whereas my followers are smooth, plump, and bucksome, and altogether as lusty as so many bacon-hogs, or sucking calves; never in their career of pleasure be arrested with old age, if they could but keep themselves untainted from the contagiousness of wisdom, with the leprosy whereof, if at any time they are infected, it is only for prevention, lest they should otherwise have been too happy.

  

  For a more ample confirmation of the truth of what foregoes, it is on all sides confessed, that Folly is the best preservative of youth, and the most effectual antidote against age. And it is a never-failing observation made of the people of Brabant, that, contrary to the proverb of Older and wiser, the more ancient they grow, the more fools they are; and there is not any one country, whose inhabitants enjoy themselves better, and rub through the world with more ease and quiet. To these are nearly related, as well by affinity of customs, as of neighbourhood, my friends the Hollanders: mine I may well call them, for they stick so close and lovingly to me, that they are styled fools to a proverb, and yet scorn to be ashamed of their name. Well, let fond mortals go now in a needless quest of some Medea, Circe, Venus, or some enchanted fountain, for a restorative of age, whereas the accurate performance of this feat lies only within the ability of my art and skill.

  It is I only who have the receipt of making that liquor wherewith Memnon’s daughter lengthened out her grandfather’s declining days: it is I that am that Venus, who so far restored the languishing Phaon, as to make Sappho fall deeply in love with his beauty. Mine are those herbs, mine those charms, that not only lure back swift time, when past and gone, but what is more to be admired, clip its wings, and prevent all farther flight. So then, if you will all agree to my verdict, that nothing is more desirable than the being young, nor any thing more loathed than contemptible old age, you must needs acknowledge it as an unrequitable obligation from me, for fencing off the one, and perpetuating the other.

  But why should I confine my discourse to the narrow subject of mankind only? View the whole heaven itself, and then tell me what one of that divine tribe would not be mean and despicable, if my name did not lend him some respect and authority. Why is Bacchus always painted as a young man, but only because he is freakish, drunk, and mad; and spending his time in toping, dancing, masking, and revelling, seems to have nothing in the least to do with wisdom? Nay, so far is he from the affectation of being accounted wise, that he is content, all the rights of devotion which are paid unto him should consist of apishness and drollery. Farther, what scoffs and jeers did not the old comedians throw upon him? O swinish punch-gut god, say they, that smells rank of the sty he was sowed up in, and so on. But prithee, who in this case, always merry, youthful, soaked in wine, and drowned in pleasure, who, I say, in such a case, would change conditions, either with the lofty menace-looking Jove, the grave, yet timorous Pan, the stately Pallas, or indeed any one other of heaven’s landlords? Why is Cupid feigned as a boy, but only because he is an under-witted whipster, that neither acts nor thinks any thing with discretion? Why is Venus adored for the mirror of beauty, but only because she and I claim kindred, she being of the same complexion with my father Plutus, and therefore called by Homer the Golden Goddess? Beside, she imitates me in being always a laughing, if either we believe the poets, or their near kinsmen the painters, the first mentioning, the other drawing her constantly in that posture. Add farther, to what deity did the Romans pay a more ceremonial respect than to Flora, that bawd of obscenity? And if any one search the poets for an historical account of the gods, he shall find them all famous for lewd pranks and debaucheries. It is needless to insist upon the miscarriages of others, when the lecherous intrigues of Jove himself are so notorious, and when the pretendedly chaste Diana so oft uncloaked her modesty to run a hunting after her beloved Endimion. But I will say no more, for I had rather they should be told of their faults by Momus, who was want formerly to sting them with some close reflections, till nettled by his abusive raillery, they kicked him out of heaven for his sauciness of daring to reprove such as were beyond correction: and now in his banishment from heaven he finds but cold entertainment here on earth, nay, is denied all admittance into the court of princes, where notwithstanding my handmaid Flattery finds a most encouraging welcome: but this petulant monitor being thrust out of doors, the gods can now more freely rant and revel, and take their whole swinge of pleasure. Now the beastly Priapus may recreate himself without contradiction in lust and filthiness; now the sly Mercury may, without discovery, go on in his thieveries, and nimble-fingered juggles; the sooty Vulcan may now renew his wonted custom of making the other gods laugh by his hopping so limpingly, and coming off with so many dry jokes, and biting repartees. Silenus, the old doting lover, to shew his activity, may now dance a frisking jig, and the nymphs be at the same sport naked. The goatish satyrs may make up a merry ball, and Pan, the blind harper may put up his bagpipes, and sing bawdy catches, to which the gods, especially when they are almost drunk, shall give a most profound attention. But why would I any farther rip open and expose the weakness of the gods, a weakness so childish and absurd, that no man can at the same time keep his countenance, and make a relation of it? Now therefore, like Homer’s wandering muse, I will take my leave of heaven, and come down again here below, where we shall find nothing happy, nay, nothing tolerable, without my presence and assistance. And in the first place consider how providently nature has took care that in all her works there should be some piquant smack and relish of Folly: for since the Stoics define wisdom to be conducted by reason, and folly nothing else but the being hurried by passion, lest our life should otherwise have been too dull and inactive, that creator, who out of clay first tempered and made us up, put into the composition of our humanity more than a pound of passions to an ounce of reason; and reason he confined within the narrow cells of the brain, whereas he left passions the whole body to range in. Farther, he set up two sturdy champions to stand perpetually on the guard, that reason might make no assault, surprise, nor in-road: anger, which keeps its station in the fortress of the heart; and lust, which like the signs Virgo and Scorpio, rules the belly and secret members. Against the forces of these two warriors how unable is reason to bear up and withstand, every day’s experience does abundantly witness; while let reason be never so importunate in urging and reinforcing her admonitions to virtue, yet the passions bear all before them, and by the least offer of curb or restraint grow but more imperious, till reason itself, for quietness sake, is forced to desist from all further remonstrance.

  

  But because it seemed expedient that man, who was born for the transaction of business, should have so much wisdom as should fit and capacitate him for the discharge of his duty herein, and yet lest such a measure as is requisite for this purpose might prove too dangerous and fatal, I was advised with for an antidote, who prescribed this infallible receipt of taking a wife, a creature so harmless and silly, and yet so useful and convenient, as might mollify and make pliable the stiffness and morose humour of man. Now that which made Plato doubt under what genus to rank woman, whether among brutes or rational creatures, was only meant to denote the extreme stupidness and Folly of that sex, a sex so unalterably simple, that for any of them to thrust forward, and reach at the name of wise, is but to make themselves the more remarkable fools, such an endeavour, being but a swimming against the stream, nay, the turning the course of nature, the bare attempting whereof is as extravagant as the effecting of it is impossible: for as it is a trite proverb, That an ape will be an ape, though clad in purple; so a woman will be a woman, i.e., a fool, whatever disguise she takes up. And yet there is no reason women should take it amiss to be thus charged; for if they do but rightly consider they will find it is to Folly they are beholden for those endowments, wherein they so far surpass and excel man; as first, for their unparalleled beauty, by the charm whereof they tyrannize over the greatest tyrants; for what is it but too great a smatch of wisdom that makes men so tawny and thick-skinned, so rough and prickly-bearded, like an emblem of winter or old age, while women have such dainty smooth cheeks, such a low gentle voice, and so pure a complexion, as if nature had drawn them for a standing pattern of all symmetry and comeliness? Beside, what greater or juster aim and ambition have they than to please their husbands? In order where-unto they garnish themselves with paint, washes, curls, perfumes, and all other mysteries of ornament; yet after all they become acceptable to them only for their Folly. Wives are always allowed their humour, yet it is only in exchange for titillation and pleasure, which indeed are but other names for Folly; as none can deny, who consider how a man must hug, and dandle, and kittle, and play a hundred little tricks with his bed-fellow when he is disposed to make that use of her that nature designed her for. Well, then, you see whence that greatest pleasure (to which modesty scarce allows a name), springs and proceeds.

  

  But now some blood-chilled old men, that are more for wine than wenching, will pretend, that in their opinion the greatest happiness consists in feasting and drinking. Grant it be so; yet certainly in the most luxurious entertainments it is Folly must give the sauce and relish to the daintiest cates and delicacies; so that if there be no one of the guests naturally fool enough to be played upon by the rest, they must procure some comical buffoon, that by his jokes, and flouts, and blunders shall make the whole company split themselves with laughing: for to what purpose were it to be stuffed and crammed with so many dainty bits, savoury dishes, and toothsome rarities, if after all this epicurism of the belly, the eyes, the ears, and the whole mind of man, were not as well foistred and relieved with laughing, jesting, and such like divertisements, which like second courses serve for the promoting of digestion? And as to all those shooing horns of drunkenness, the keeping every one his man, the throwing hey-jinks, the filling of bumpers, the drinking two in a hand, the beginning of mistress’ healths; and then the roaring out of drunken catches, the calling in a fiddler, the leading out every one his lady to dance, and such like riotous pastimes, these were not taught or dictated by any of the wise men of Greece, but of Gotham rather, being my invention, and by me prescribed as the best preservative of health: each of which, the more ridiculous it is, the more welcome it finds. And indeed to jog sleepingly through the world, in a dumpish melancholy posture cannot properly be said to live, but to be wound up as it were in a windingsheet before we are dead, and so to be shuffled quick into a grave, and buried alive.

  

  But there are yet others perhaps that have no gust in this sort of pleasure, but place their greatest content in the enjoyment of friends, telling us that true friendship is to be preferred before all other acquirements; that it is a thing so useful and necessary, as the very elements could not long subsist without a natural combination; so pleasant that it affords as warm an influence as the sun itself; so honest, (if honesty in this case deserve any consideration), that the very philosophers have not stuck to place this as one among the rest of their different sentiments of the chiefest good. But what if I make it appear that I also am the main spring and original of this endearment? Yes, I can easily demonstrate it, and that not by crabbed syllogisms, or a crooked and unintelligible way of arguing, but can make it (as the proverb goes) As plain as the nose on your face. Well then, to scratch and curry one another, to wink at a friend’s faults; nay, to cry up some failings for virtuous and commendable, is not this the next door to the being a fool? When one looking stedfastly in his mistress’s face, admires a mole as much as a beauty spot; when another swears his lady’s stinking breath is a most redolent perfume; and at another time the fond parent hugs the squint-eyed child, and pretends it is rather a becoming glance and winning aspect than any blemish of the eye-sight, what is all this but the very height of Folly? Folly (I say) that both makes friends and keeps them so. I speak of mortal men only, among whom there are none but have some small faults; he is most happy that has fewest. If we pass to the gods, we shall find that they have so much of wisdom, as they have very little of friendship; nay, nothing of that which is true and hearty. The reason why men make a greater improvement in this virtue, is only because they are more credulous and easy natured; for friends must be of the same humour and inclinations too, or else the league of amity, though made with never so many protestations, will be soon broke. Thus grave and morose men seldom prove fast friends; they are too captious and censorious, and will not bear with one another’s infirmities; they are as eagle sighted as may be in the espial of others’ faults, while they wink upon themselves, and never mind the beam in their own eyes. In short, man being by nature so prone to frailties, so humoursome and cross-grained, and guilty of so many slips and miscarriages, there could be no firm friendship contracted, except there be such an allowance made for each other’s defaults, which the Greeks term Ἐυήθεια, and we may construe good nature, which is but another word for Folly. And what? Is not Cupid, that first father of all relation, is not he stark blind, that as he cannot himself distinguish of colours, so he would make us as mope-eyed in judging falsely of all love concerns, and wheedle us into a thinking that we are always in the right? Thus every Jack sticks to his own Jill; every tinker esteems his own trull; and the hob-nailed suiter prefers Joan the milk-maid before any of my lady’s daughters. These things are true, and are ordinarily laughed at, and yet, however ridiculous they seem, it is hence only that all societies receive their cement and consolidation.

  

  The same which has been said of friendship is much more applicable to a state of marriage, which is but the highest advance and improvement of friendship in the closest bond of union. Good God! What frequent divorces, or worse mischief, would oft sadly happen, except man and wife, were so discreet as to pass over light occasions of quarrel with laughing, jesting, dissembling, and such like playing the fool? Nay, how few matches would go forward, if the hasty lover did but first know how many little tricks of lust and wantonness (and perhaps more gross failings) his coy and seemingly bashful mistress had oft before been guilty of? And how fewer marriages, when consummated, would continue happy, if the husband were not either sottishly insensible of, or did not purposely wink at and pass over the lightness and forwardness of his good-natured wife? This peace and quietness is owing to my management, for there would otherwise be continual jars, and broils, and mad doings, if want of wit only did not at the same time make a contented cuckold and a still house; if the cuckoo sing at the back door, the unthinking cornute takes no notice of the unlucky omen of others’ eggs being laid in his own nest, but laughs it over, kisses his dear spouse, and all is well. And indeed it is much better patiently to be such a hen-pecked frigot, than always to be wracked and tortured with the grating surmises of suspicion and jealousy. In fine, there is no one society, no one relation men stand in, would be comfortable, or indeed tolerable, without my assistance; there could be no right understanding betwixt prince and people, lord and servant, tutor and pupil, friend and friend, man and wife, buyer and seller, or any persons however otherwise related, if they did not cowardly put up small abuses, sneakingly cringe and submit, or after all fawningly scratch and flatter each other. This you will say is much, but you shall yet hear what is more; tell me then, can any one love another that first hates himself? Is it likely any one should agree with a friend that is first fallen out with his own judgment? Or is it probable he should be any way pleasing to another, who is a perpetual plague and trouble to himself? This is such a paradox that none can be so mad as to maintain. Well, but if I am excluded and barred out, every man would be so far from being able to bear with others, that he would be burthensome to himself, and consequently incapable of any ease or satisfaction. Nature, that toward some of her products plays the step-mother rather than the indulgent parent, has endowed some men with that unhappy peevishness of disposition, as to nauseate and dislike whatever is their own, and much admire what belongs to other persons, so as they cannot in any wise enjoy what their birth or fortunes have bestowed upon them: for what grace is there in the greatest beauty, if it be always clouded with frowns and sulliness? Or what vigour in youth, if it be harassed with a pettish, dogged, waspish, ill humour? None, sure. Nor indeed can there be any creditable acquirement of ourselves in any one station of life, but we should sink without rescue into misery and despair, if we were not buoyed up and supported by self-love, which is but the elder sister (as it were) of Folly, and her own constant friend and assistant. For what is or can be more silly than to be lovers and admirers of ourselves? And yet if it were not so there will be no relish to any of our words or actions. Take away this one property of a fool, and the orator shall become as dumb and silent as the pulpit he stands in; the musician shall hang up his untouched instruments on the wall; the completest actors shall be hissed off the stage; the poet shall be burlesqued with his own doggrel rhymes; the painter shall himself vanish into an imaginary landscape; and the physician shall want food more than his patients do physic. In short, without self-love, instead of beautiful, you shall think yourself an old beldam of fourscore; instead of youthful, you shall seem just dropping into the grave; instead of eloquent, a mere stammerer; and in lieu of gentle and complaisant, you shall appear like a downright country clown; it being so necessary that every one should think well of himself before he can expect the good opinion of others. Finally, when it is the main and essential part of happiness to desire to be no other than what we already are; this expedient is again wholly owing to self-love, which so flushes men with a good conceit of their own, that no one repents of his shape, of his wit, of his education, or of his country; so as the dirty half-drowned Hollander would not remove into the pleasant plains of Italy, the rude Thracian would not change his boggy soil for the best seat in Athens, nor the brutish Scythian quit his thorny deserts to become an inhabitant of the Fortunate Islands. And oh the incomparable contrivance of nature, who has ordered all things in so even a method that wherever she has been less bountiful in her gifts, there she makes it up with a larger dose of self-love, which supplies the former defects, and makes all even. To enlarge farther, I may well presume to aver, that there are no considerable exploits performed, no useful arts invented, but what I am the respective author and manager of: as first, what is more lofty and heroical than war? and yet, what is more foolish than for some petty, trivial affront, to take such a revenge as both sides shall be sure to be losers, and where the quarrel must be decided at the price of so many limbs and lives? And when they come to an engagement, what service can be done by such pale-faced students, as by drudging at the oars of wisdom, have spent all their strength and activity? No, the only use is of blunt sturdy fellows that have little of wit, and so the more of resolution; except you would make a soldier of such another Demosthenes as threw down his arms when he came within sight of the enemy, and lost that credit in the camp which he gained in the pulpit. But counsel, deliberation, and advice (say you), are very necessary for the management of war: very true, but not such counsel as shall be prescribed by the strict rules of wisdom and justice; for a battle shall be more successfully fought by serving-men, porters, bailiffs, padders, rogues, gaol-birds, and such like tag-rags of mankind, than by the most accomplished philosophers; which last, how unhappy they are in the management of such concerns, Socrates (by the oracle adjudged to be the wisest of mortals) is a notable example; who when he appeared in the attempt of some public performance before the people, he faltered in the first onset, and could never recover himself, but was hooted and hissed home again: yet this philosopher was the less a fool, for refusing the appellation of wise, and not accepting the oracle’s compliment; as also for advising that no philosophers should have any hand in the government of the commonwealth; he should have likewise at the same time, added, that they should be banished all human society. And what made this great man poison himself to prevent the malice of his accusers? What made him the instrument of his own death, but only his excessiveness of wisdom? whereby, while he was searching into the nature of clouds, while he was plodding and contemplating upon ideas, while he was exercising his geometry upon the measure of a flea, and diving into the recesses of nature, for an account how little insects, when they were so small, could make so great a buzz and hum; while he was intent upon these fooleries he minded nothing of the world, or its ordinary concerns.

  

  Next to Socrates comes his scholar Plato, a famous orator indeed, that could be so dashed out of countenance by an illiterate rabble, as to demur, and hawk, and hesitate, before he could get to the end of one short sentence. Theophrastus was such another coward, who beginning to make an oration, was presently struck down with fear, as if he had seen some ghost, or hobgoblin. Isocrates was so bashful and timorous, that though he taught rhetoric, yet he could never have the confidence to speak in public. Cicero, the master of Roman eloquence, was wont to begin his speeches with a low, quivering voice, just like a school-boy, afraid of not saying his lesson perfect enough to escape whipping: and yet Fabius commends this property of Tully as an argument of a considerate orator, sensible of the difficulty of acquitting himself with credit: but what hereby does he do more than plainly confess that wisdom is but a rub and impediment to the well management of any affair? How would these heroes crouch, and shrink into nothing, at the sight of drawn swords, that are thus quashed and stunned at the delivery of bare words?

  

  Now then let Plato’s fine sentence be cried up, that “happy are those commonwealths where either philosophers are elected kings, or kings turn philosophers.” Alas, this is so far from being true, that if we consult all historians for an account of past ages, we shall find no princes more weak, nor any people more slavish and wretched, than where the administrations of affairs fell on the shoulders of some learned bookish governor. Of the truth whereof, the two Catos are exemplary instances: the first of which embroiled the city, and tired out the senate by his tedious harangues of defending himself, and accusing others; the younger was an unhappy occasion of the loss of the peoples’ liberty, while by improper methods he pretended to maintain it. To these may be added Brutus, Cassius, the two Gracchi, and Cicero himself, who was no less fatal to Rome, than his parallel Demosthenes was to Athens: as likewise Marcus Antoninus, whom we may allow to have been a good emperor, yet the less such for his being a philosopher; and certainly he did not do half that kindness to his empire by his own prudent management of affairs, as he did mischief by leaving such a degenerate successor as his son Commodus proved to be; but it is a common observation, that A wise father has many times a foolish son, nature so contriving it, lest the taint of wisdom, like hereditary distempers, should otherwise descend by propagation. Thus Tully’s son Marcus, though bred at Athens, proved but a dull, insipid soul; and Socrates his children had (as one ingeniously expresses it) “more of the mother than the father,” a phrase for their being fools. However, it were the more excusable, though wise men are so awkward and unhandy in the ordering of public affairs, if they were not so bad, or worse in the management of their ordinary and domestic concerns; but alas, here they are much to seek: for place a formal wise man at a feast, and he shall, either by his morose silence put the whole table out of humour, or by his frivolous questions disoblige and tire out all that sit near him. Call him out to dance, and he shall move no more nimbly than a camel: invite him to any public performance, and by his very looks he shall damp the mirth of all the spectators, and at last be forced, like Cato, to leave the theatre, because he cannot unstarch his gravity, nor put on a more pleasant countenance. If he engage in any discourse, he either breaks off abruptly, or tires out the patience of the whole company, if he goes on: if he have any contract, sale, or purchase to make, or any other worldly business to transact, he behaves himself more like a senseless stock than a rational man; so as he can be of no use nor advantage to himself, to his friends, or to his country; because he knows nothing how the world goes, and is wholly unacquainted with the humour of the vulgar, who cannot but hate a person so disagreeing in temper from themselves.

  

  And indeed the whole proceedings of the world are nothing but one continued scene of Folly, all the actors being equally fools and madmen; and therefore if any be so pragmatically wise as to be singular, he must even turn a second Timon, or man-hater, and by retiring into some unfrequented desert, become a recluse from all mankind.

  But to return to what I first proposed, what was it in the infancy of the world that made men, naturally savage, unite into civil societies, but only flattery, one of my chiefest virtues? For there is nothing else meant by the fables of Amphion and Orpheus with their harps; the first making the stones jump into a well-built wall, the other inducing the trees to pull their legs out of the ground, and dance the morrice after him. What was it that quieted and appeased the Roman people, when they brake out into a riot for the redress of grievances? Was it any sinewy starched oration? No, alas, it was only a silly, ridiculous story, told by Menenius Agrippa, how the other members of the body quarrelled with the belly, resolving no longer to continue her drudging caterers, till by the penance they thought thus in revenge to impose, they soon found their own strength so far diminished, that paying the cost of experiencing a mistake, they willingly returned to their respective duties. Thus when the rabble of Athens murmured at the exaction of the magistrates, Themistocles satisfied them with such another tale of the fox and the hedge-hog; the first whereof being stuck fast in a miry bog, the flies came swarming about him, and almost sucked out all his blood, the latter officiously offers his service to drive them away; no, says the fox, if these which are almost glutted be frighted off, there will come a new hungry set that will be ten times more greedy and devouring: the moral of this he meant applicable to the people, who if they had such magistrates removed as they complained of for extortion, yet their successors would certainly be worse.

  With what highest advances of policy could Sertorius have kept the Barbarians so well in awe, as by a white hart, which he pretended was presented to him by Diana, and brought him intelligence of all his enemies’ designs? What was Lycurgus his grand argument for demonstrating the force of education, but only the bringing out two whelps of the same bitch, differently brought up, and placing before them a dish, and a live hare; the one, that had been bred to hunting, ran after the game; while the other, whose kennel had been a kitchen, presently fell a licking the platter. Thus the before-mentioned Sertorius made his soldiers sensible that wit and contrivance would do more than bare strength, by setting a couple of men to the plucking off two horses’ tails; the first pulling at all in one handful, tugged in vain; while the other, though much the weaker, snatching off one by one, soon performed his appointed task.

  Instances of like nature are Minos and king Numa, both which fooled the people into obedience by a mere cheat and juggle; the first by pretending he was advised by Jupiter, the latter by making the vulgar believe he had the goddess Ægeria assistant to him in all debates and transactions. And indeed it is by such wheedles that the common people are best gulled and imposed upon.

  For farther, what city would ever submit to the rigorous laws of Plato, to the severe injunctions of Aristotle? or the more unpracticable tenets of Socrates? No, these would have been too straight and galling, there not being allowance enough made for the infirmities of the people.

  To pass to another head, what was it made the Decii so forward to offer themselves up as a sacrifice for an atonement to the angry gods, to rescue and stipulate for their indebted country? What made Curtius, on a like occasion, so desperately to throw away his life, but only vainglory, that is condemned, and unanimously voted for a main branch of Folly by all wise men? What is more unreasonable and foppish (say they) than for any man, out of ambition to some office, to bow, to scrape and cringe to the gaping rabble, to purchase their favour by bribes and donatives, to have their names cried up in the streets, to be carried about as it were for a fine sight upon the shoulders of the crowd, to have their effigies carved in brass, and put up in the market place for a monument of their popularity? Add to this, the affectation of new titles and distinctive badges of honour; nay, the very deifying of such as were the most bloody tyrants. These are so extremely ridiculous, that there is need of more than one Democritus to laugh at them. And yet hence only have been occasioned those memorable achievements of heroes, that have so much employed the pens of many laborious writers.

  It is Folly that, in a several dress, governs cities, appoints magistrates, and supports judicatures; and, in short, makes the whole course of man’s life a mere children’s play, and worse than push-pin diversion. The invention of all arts and sciences are likewise owing to the same cause: for what sedentary, thoughtful men would have beat their brains in the search of new and unheard-of-mysteries, if not egged on by the bubbling hopes of credit and reputation? They think a little glittering flash of vain-glory is a sufficient reward for all their sweat, and toil, and tedious drudgery, while they that are supposedly more foolish, reap advantage of the others’ labours.

  And now since I have made good my title to valour and industry, what if I challenge an equal share of wisdom? How! this (you will say) is absurd and contradictory; the east and west may as soon shake hands as Folly and Wisdom be reconciled. Well, but have a little patience and I will warrant you I will make out my claim. First then, if wisdom (as must be confessed) is no more than a readiness of doing good, and an expedite method of becoming serviceable to the world, to whom does this virtue more properly belong? To the wise man, who partly out of modesty, partly out of cowardice, can proceed resolutely in no attempt; or to the fool, that goes hand over head, leaps before he looks, and so ventures through the most hazardous undertaking without any sense or prospect of danger? In the undertaking any enterprize the wise man shall run to consult with his books, and daze himself with poring upon musty authors, while the dispatchful fool shall rush bluntly on, and have done the business, while the other is thinking of it. For the two greatest lets and impediments to the issue of any performance are modesty, which casts a mist before men’s eyes; and fear, which makes them shrink back, and recede from any proposal: both these are banished and cashiered by Folly, and in their stead such a habit of fool-hardiness introduced, as mightily contributes to the success of all enterprizes. Farther, if you will have wisdom taken in the other sense, of being a right judgment of things, you shall see how short wise men fall of it in this acceptation.

  First, then, it is certain that all things, like so many Janus’s, carry a double face, or rather bear a false aspect, most things being really in themselves far different from what they are in appearance to others: so as that which at first blush proves alive, is in truth dead; and that again which appears as dead, at a nearer view proves to be alive: beautiful seems ugly, wealthy poor, scandalous is thought creditable, prosperous passes for unlucky, friendly for what is most opposite, and innocent for what is hurtful and pernicious. In short, if we change the tables, all things are found placed in a quite different posture from what just before they appeared to stand in.

  If this seem too darkly and unintelligibly expressed, I will explain it by the familiar instance of some great king or prince, whom every one shall suppose to swim in a luxury of wealth, and to be a powerful lord and master; when, alas, on the one hand he has poverty of spirit enough to make him a mere beggar, and on the other side he is worse than a galley-slave to his own lusts and passions.

  If I had a mind farther to expatiate, I could enlarge upon several instances of like nature, but this one may at present suffice.

  Well, but what is the meaning (will some say) of all this? Why, observe the application. If any one in a play-house be so impertinent and rude as to rifle the actors of their borrowed clothes, make them lay down the character assumed, and force them to return to their naked selves, would not such a one wholly discompose and spoil the entertainment? And would he not deserve to be hissed and thrown stones at till the pragmatical fool could learn better manners? For by such a disturbance the whole scene will be altered: such as acted the men will perhaps appear to be women: he that was dressed up for a young brisk lover, will be found a rough old fellow; and he that represented a king, will remain but a mean ordinary servingman. The laying things thus open is marring all the sport, which consists only in counterfeit and disguise. Now the world is nothing else but such another comedy, where every one in the tire-room is first habited suitably to the part he is to act; and as it is successively their turn, out they come on the stage, where he that now personates a prince, shall in another part of the same play alter his dress, and become a beggar, all things being in a mask and particular disguise, or otherwise the play could never be presented. Now if there should arise any starched, formal don, that would point at the several actors, and tell how this, that seems a petty god, is in truth worse than a brute, being made captive to the tyranny of passion; that the other, who bears the character of a king, is indeed the most slavish of serving-men, in being subject to the mastership of lust and sensuality; that a third, who vaunts so much of his pedigree, is no better than a bastard for degenerating from virtue, which ought to be of greatest consideration in heraldry, and so shall go on in exposing all the rest; would not any one think such a person quite frantic, and ripe for bedlam? For as nothing is more silly than preposterous wisdom, so is there nothing more indiscreet than an unreasonable reproof. And therefore he is to be hooted out of all society that will not be pliable, conformable, and willing to suit his humour with other men’s, remembering the law of clubs and meetings, that he who will not do as the rest must get him out of the company. And it is certainly one great degree of wisdom for every one to consider that he is but a man, and therefore he should not pitch his soaring thoughts beyond the level of mortality, but imp the wings of his towering ambition, and obligingly submit and condescend to the weakness of others, it being many times a piece of complaisance to go out of the road for company’s sake. No (say you), this is a grand piece of Folly: true, but yet all our living is no more than such kind of fooling: which though it may seem harsh to assert, yet it is not so strange as true.

  

  For the better making it out it might perhaps be requisite to invoke the aid of the muses, to whom the poets devoutly apply themselves upon far more slender occasions. Come then and assist, ye Heliconian lasses, while I attempt to prove that there is no method for an arrival at wisdom, and consequently no track to the goal of happiness, without the instructions and directions of Folly.

  And here, in the first place it has been already acknowledged, that all the passions are listed under my regiment, since this is resolved to be the only distinction betwixt a wise man and a fool, that this latter is governed by passion, the other guided by reason: and therefore the Stoics look upon passions no other than as the infection and malady of the soul that disorders the constitution of the whole man, and by putting the spirits into a feverish ferment many times occasion some mortal distemper. And yet these, however decried, are not only our tutors to instruct us towards the attainment of wisdom, but even bolden us likewise, and spur us on to a quicker dispatch of all our undertakings. This, I suppose, will be stomached by the stoical Seneca, who pretends that the only emblem of wisdom is the man without passion; whereas the supposing any person to be so, is perfectly to unman him, or else transforming him into some fabulous deity that never was, nor ever will be; nay, to speak more plain, it is but the making him a mere statue, immoveable, senseless, and altogether inactive. And if this be their wise man, let them take him to themselves, and remove him into Plato’s commonwealth, the new Atlantis, or some other-like fairy land. For who would not hate and avoid such a person as should be deaf to all the dictates of common sense? that should have no more power of love or pity than a block or stone, that remains heedless of all dangers? that thinks he can never mistake, but can foresee all contingencies at the greatest distance, and make provision for the worst presages? that feeds upon himself and his own thoughts, that monopolises health, wealth, power, dignity, and all to himself? that loves no man, nor is beloved of any? that has the impudence to tax even divine providence of ill contrivance, and proudly grudges, nay, tramples under foot all other men’s reputation; and this is he that is the Stoic’s complete wise man. But prithee what city would choose such a magistrate? what army would be willing to serve under such a commander? or what woman would be content with such a do-little husband? who would invite such a guest? or what servant would be retained by such a master? The most illiterate mechanic would in all respects be a more acceptable man, who would be frolicsome with his wife, free with his friends, jovial at a feast, pliable in converse, and obliging to all company. But I am tired out with this part of my subject, and so must pass to some other topics.

  

  And now were any one placed on that tower, from whence Jove is fancied by the poets to survey the world, he would all around discern how many grievances and calamities our whole life is on every side encompassed with: how unclean our birth, how troublesome our tendance in the cradle, how liable our childhood is to a thousand misfortunes, how toilsome and full of drudgery our riper years, how heavy and uncomfortable our old age, and lastly, how unwelcome the unavoidableness of death. Farther, in every course of life how many wracks there may be of torturing diseases, how many unhappy accidents may casually occur, how many unexpected disasters may arise, and what strange alterations may one moment produce? Not to mention such miseries as men are mutually the cause of, as poverty, imprisonment, slander, reproach, revenge, treachery, malice, cousenage, deceit, and so many more, as to reckon them all would be as puzzling arithmetic as the numbering of the sands.

  

  How mankind became environed with such hard circumstances, or what deity imposed these plagues, as a penance on rebellious mortals, I am not now at leisure to enquire: but whoever seriously takes them into consideration must needs commend the valour of the Milesian virgins, who voluntarily killed themselves to get rid of a troublesome world: and how many wise men have taken the same course of becoming their own executioners; among whom, not to mention Diogenes, Xenocrates, Cato, Cassius, Brutus, and other heroes, the self-denying Chiron is never enough to be commended; who, when he was offered by Apollo the privilege of being exempted from death, and living on to the world’s end, he refused the enticing proposal, as deservedly thinking it a punishment rather than a reward.

  But if all were thus wise you see how soon the world would be unpeopled, and what need there would be of a second Prometheus, to plaister up the decayed image of mankind. I therefore come and stand in this gap of danger, and prevent farther mischief; partly by ignorance, partly by inadvertence; by the oblivion of whatever would be grating to remember, and the hopes of whatever may be grateful to expect, together palliating all griefs with an intermixture of pleasure; whereby I make men so far from being weary of their lives, that when their thread is spun to its full length, they are yet unwilling to die, and mighty hardly brought to take their last farewell of their friends. Thus some decrepit old fellows, that look as hollow as the grave into which they are falling, that rattle in the throat at every word they speak, that can eat no meat but what is tender enough to suck, that have more hair on their beard than they have on their head, and go stooping toward the dust they must shortly return to; whose skin seems already drest into parchment, and their bones already dried to a skeleton; these shadows of men shall be wonderful ambitious of living longer, and therefore fence off the attacks of death with all imaginable sleights and impostures; one shall new dye his grey hairs, for fear their colour should betray his age; another shall spruce himself up in a light periwig; a third shall repair the loss of his teeth with an ivory set; and a fourth perhaps shall fall deeply in love with a young girl, and accordingly court her with as much of gaiety and briskness as the liveliest spark in the whole town: and we cannot but know, that for an old man to marry a young wife without a portion, to be a cooler to other men’s lust, is grown so common, that it is become the a-la-mode of the times. And what is yet more comical, you shall have some wrinkled old women, whose very looks are a sufficient antidote to lechery, that shall be canting out, Ah, life is a sweet thing, and so run a caterwauling, and hire some strong-backed stallions to recover their almost lost sense of feeling; and to set themselves off the better, they shall paint and daub their faces, always stand a tricking up themselves at their looking-glass, go naked-necked, bare-breasted, be tickled at a smutty jest, dance among the young girls, write love-letters, and do all the other little knacks of decoying hotblooded suitors; and in the meanwhile, however they are laughed at, they enjoy themselves to the full, live up to their hearts’ desire, and want for nothing that may complete their happiness. As for those that think them herein so ridiculous, I would have them give an ingenuous answer to this one query, whether if folly or hanging were left to their choice, they had not much rather live like fools, than die like dogs? But what matter is it if these things are resented by the vulgar? Their ill word is no injury to fools, who are either altogether insensible of any affront, or at least lay it not much to heart. If they were knocked on the head, or had their brains dashed out, they would have some cause to complain; but alas, slander, calumny, and disgrace, are no other way injurious than as they are interpreted; nor otherwise evil, than as they are thought to be so: what harm is it then if all persons deride and scoff you, if you bear but up in your own thoughts, and be yourself thoroughly conceited of your deserts? And prithee, why should it be thought any scandal to be a fool, since the being so is one part of our nature and essence; and as so, our not being wise can no more reasonably be imputed as a fault, than it would be proper to laugh at a man because he cannot fly in the air like birds and fowls; because he goes not on all four as beasts of the field; because he does not wear a pair of visible horns as a crest on his forehead, like bulls or stags: by the same figure we may call a horse unhappy, because he was never taught his grammar; and an ox miserable, for that he never learnt to fence: but sure as a horse for not knowing a letter is nevertheless valuable, so a man, for being a fool, is never the more unfortunate, it being by nature and providence so ordained for each.

  

  Ay, but (say our patrons of wisdom) the knowledge of arts and sciences is purposely attainable by men, that the defect of natural parts may be supplied by the help of acquired: as if it were probable that nature, which had been so exact and curious in the mechanism of flowers, herbs, and flies, should have bungled most in her masterpiece, and made man as it were by halves, to be afterward polished and refined by his own industry, in the attainment of such sciences as the Egyptians feigned were invented by their god Theuth, as a sure plague and punishment to mankind, being so far from augmenting their happiness, that they do not answer that end they were first designed for, which was the improvement of memory, as Plato in his Phædrus does wittily observe.

  In the first golden age of the world there was no need of these perplexities; there was then no other sort of learning but what was naturally collected from every man’s common sense, improved by an easy experience. What use could there have been of grammar, when all men spoke the same mother-tongue, and aimed at no higher pitch of oratory, than barely to be understood by each other? What need of logic, when they were too wise to enter into any dispute? Or what occasion for rhetoric, where no difference arose to require any laborious decision? And as little reason had they to be tied up by any laws, since the dictates of nature and common morality were restraint and obligation sufficient: and as to all the mysteries of providence, they made them rather the object of their wonder, than their curiosity; and therefore were not so presumptuous as to dive into the depths of nature, to labour for the solving all phenomena in astronomy, or to wrack their brains in the splitting of entities, and unfolding the nicest speculations, judging it a crime for any man to aim at what is put beyond the reach of his shallow apprehension.

  Thus was ignorance, in the infancy of the world, as much the parent of happiness as it has been since of devotion: but as soon as the golden age began by degrees to degenerate into more drossy metals, then were arts likewise invented; yet at first but few in number, and those rarely understood, till in farther process of time the superstition of the Chaldeans, and the curiosity of the Grecians, spawned so many subtleties, that now it is scarce the work of an age to be thoroughly acquainted with all the criticisms in grammar only. And among all the several Arts, those are proportionably most esteemed that come nearest to weakness and folly. For thus divines may bite their nails, and naturalists may blow their fingers, astrologers may know their own fortune is to be poor, and the logician may shut his fist and grasp the wind.

  
  • While all these hard-named fellows cannot make
  • So great a figure as a single quack.

  And in this profession, those that have most confidence, though the least skill, shall be sure of the greatest custom; and indeed this whole art as it is now practised, is but one incorporated compound of craft and imposture.

  Next to the physician comes (he, who perhaps will commence a suit with me for not being placed before him, I mean) the lawyer, who is so silly as to be ignoramus to a proverb, and yet by such are all difficulties resolved, all controversies determined, and all affairs managed so much to their own advantage, that they get those estates to themselves which they are employed to recover for their clients: while the poor divine in the mean time shall have the lice crawl upon his thread-bare gown, before, by all his sweat and drudgery, he can get money enough to purchase a new one. As those arts therefore are most advantageous to their respective professors which are farthest distant from wisdom, so are those persons incomparably most happy that have least to do with any at all, but jog on in the common road of nature, which will never mislead us, except we voluntarily leap over those boundaries which she has cautiously set to our finite beings. Nature glitters most in her own plain, homely garb, and then gives the greatest lustre when she is unsullied from all artificial garnish.

  Thus if we enquire into the state of all dumb creatures, we shall find those fare best that are left to nature’s conduct: as to instance in bees, what is more to be admired than the industry and contrivance of these little animals? What architect could ever form so curious a structure as they give a model of in their inimitable combs? What kingdom can be governed with better discipline than they exactly observe in their respective hives? While the horse, by turning a rebel to nature, and becoming a slave to man, undergoes the worst of tyranny: he is sometimes spurred on to battle so long till he draw his guts after him for trapping, and at last falls down, and bites the ground instead of grass; not to mention the penalty of his jaws being curbed, his tail docked, his back wrung, his sides spur-galled, his close imprisonment in a stable, his rapshin and fetters when he runs a grass, and a great many other plagues, which he might have avoided, if he had kept to that first station of freedom which nature placed him in. How much more desirable is the unconfined range of flies and birds, who living by instinct, would want nothing to complete their happiness, if some well-employed Domitian would not persecute the former, nor the sly fowler lay snares and gins for the entrapping of the other? And if young birds, before their unfledged wings can carry them from their nests, are caught, and pent up in a cage, for the being taught to sing, or whistle, all their new tunes make not half so sweet music as their wild notes, and natural melody: so much does that which is but rough-drawn by nature surpass and excel all the additional paint and varnish of art. And we cannot sure but commend and admire that Pythagorean cock, which (as Lucian relates) had been successively a man, a woman, a prince, a subject, a fish, a horse, and a frog; after all his experience, he summed up his judgment in this censure, that man was the most wretched and deplorable of all creatures, all other patiently grazing within the enclosures of nature, while man only broke out, and strayed beyond those safer limits, which he was justly confined to. And Gryllus is to be adjudged wiser than the much counselling Ulysses, in as much as when by the enchantment of Circe he had been turned into a hog, he would not lay down his swinishness, nor forsake his beloved sty, to run the peril of a hazardous voyage. For a farther confirmation whereof I have the authority of Homer, that captain of all poetry, who, as he gives to mankind in general, the epithet of wretched and unhappy, so he bestows in particular upon Ulysses the title of miserable, which he never attributes to Paris, Ajax, Achilles, or any other of the commanders; and that for this reason, because Ulysses was more crafty, cautious, and wise, than any of the rest.

  

  As those therefore fall shortest of happiness that reach highest at wisdom, meeting with the greater repulse for soaring beyond the boundaries of their nature, and without remembering themselves to be but men, like the fallen angels, daring them to vie with Omnipotence, and giant-like scale heaven with the engines of their own brain; so are those most exalted in the road of bliss that degenerate nearest into brutes, and quietly divest themselves of all use and exercise of reason.

  And this we can prove by a familiar instance. As namely, can there be any one sort of men that enjoy themselves better than those which we call idiots, changelings, fools and naturals? It may perhaps sound harsh, but upon due consideration it will be found abundantly true, that these persons in all circumstances fare best, and live most comfortably; as first, they are void of all fear, which is a very great privilege to be exempted from; they are troubled with no remorse, nor pricks of conscience; they are not frighted with any bugbear stories of another world; they startle not at the fancied appearance of ghosts, or apparitions; they are not wracked with the dread of impending mischiefs, nor bandied with the hopes of any expected enjoyments: in short, they are unassaulted by all those legions of cares that war against the quiet of rational souls; they are ashamed of nothing, fear no man, banish the uneasiness of ambition, envy, and love; and to add the reversion of a future happiness to the enjoyment of a present one, they have no sin neither to answer for; divines unanimously maintaining, that a gross and unavoidable ignorance does not only extenuate and abate from the aggravation, but wholly expiate the guilt of any immorality.

  Come now then as many of you as challenge the respect of being accounted wise, ingenuously confess how many insurrections of rebellious thoughts, and pangs of a labouring mind, ye are perpetually thrown and tortured with; reckon up all those inconveniences that you are unavoidably subject to, and then tell me whether fools, by being exempted from all these embroilments, are not infinitely more free and happy than yourselves? Add to this, that fools do not barely laugh, and sing, and play the good-fellow alone to themselves: but as it is the nature of good to be communicative, so they impart their mirth to others, by making sport for the whole company they are at any time engaged in, as if providence purposely designed them for an antidote to melancholy: whereby they make all persons so fond of their society, that they are welcomed to all places, hugged, caressed, and defended, a liberty given them of saying or doing anything; so well beloved, that none dares to offer them the least injury; nay, the most ravenous beasts of prey will pass them by untouched, as if by instinct they were warned that such innocence ought to receive no hurt. Farther, their converse is so acceptable in the court of princes, that few kings will banquet, walk, or take any other diversion, without their attendance; nay, and had much rather have their company, than that of their gravest counsellors, whom they maintain more for fashion-sake than good-will; nor is it so strange that these fools should be preferred before graver politicians, since these last, by their harsh, sour advice, and ill-timing the truth, are fit only to put a prince out of the humour, while the others laugh, and talk, and joke, without any danger of disobliging.

  

  It is one farther very commendable property of fools, that they always speak the truth, than which there is nothing more noble and heroical. For so, though Plato relate it as a sentence of Alcibiades, that in the sea of drunkenness truth swims uppermost, and so wine is the only teller of truth, yet this character may more justly be assumed by me, as I can make good from the authority of Euripides, who lays down this as an axiom μωρὰ μωρός λέγει, Children and fools always speak the truth. Whatever the fool has in his heart he betrays it in his face; or what is more notifying, discovers it by his words: while the wise man, as Euripides observes, carries a double tongue; the one to speak what may be said, the other what ought to be; the one what truth, the other what the time requires: whereby he can in a trice so alter his judgment, as to prove that to be now white, which he had just before swore to be black; like the satyr at his porridge, blowing hot and cold at the same breath; in his lips professing one thing, when in his heart he means another.

  Furthermore, princes in their greatest splendour seem upon this account unhappy, in that they miss the advantage of being told the truth, and are shammed off by a parcel of insinuating courtiers, that acquit themselves as flatterers more than as friends. But some will perchance object, that princes do not love to hear the truth, and therefore wise men must be very cautious how they behave themselves before them, lest they should take too great a liberty in speaking what is true, rather than what is acceptable. This must be confessed, truth indeed is seldom palatable to the ears of kings; yet fools have so great a privilege as to have free leave, not only to speak bare truths, but the most bitter ones too; so as the same reproof, which had it come from the mouth of a wise man would have cost him his head, being blurted out by a fool, is not only pardoned, but well taken, and rewarded. For truth has naturally a mixture of pleasure, if it carry with it nothing of offence to the person whom it is applied to; and the happy knack of ordering it so is bestowed only on fools. ’Tis for the same reason that this sort of men are more fondly beloved by women, who like their tumbling them about, and playing with them, though never so boisterously; pretending to take that only in jest, which they would have to be meant in earnest, as that sex is very ingenious in palliating, and dissembling the bent of their wanton inclinations.

  But to return. An additional happiness of these fools appears farther in this, that when they have run merrily on to their last stage of life, they neither find any fear nor feel any pain to die, but march contentedly to the other world, where their company sure must be as acceptable as it was here upon earth.

  Let us draw now a comparison between the condition of a fool and that of a wise man, and see how infinitely the one outweighs the other.

  Give me any instance then of a man as wise as you can fancy him possible to be, that has spent all his younger years in poring upon books, and trudging after learning, in the pursuit whereof he squanders away the pleasantest time of his life in watching, sweat, and fasting; and in his latter days he never tastes one mouthful of delight, but is always stingy, poor, dejected, melancholy, burthensome to himself, and unwelcome to others, pale, lean, thin-jawed, sickly, contracting by his sedentariness such hurtful distempers as bring him to an untimely death, like roses plucked before they shatter. Thus have you the draught of a wise man’s happiness, more the object of a commiserating pity, than of an ambitioning envy.

  

  But now again come the croaking Stoics, and tell me in mood and figure, that nothing is more miserable than the being mad: but the being a fool is the being mad, therefore there is nothing more miserable than the being a fool. Alas, this is but a fallacy, the discovery whereof solves the force of the whole syllogism. Well then, they argue subtlely, ’tis true; but as Socrates in Plato makes two Venuses and two Cupids, and shews how their actions and properties ought not to be confounded; so these disputants, if they had not been mad themselves, should have distinguished between a double madness in others: and there is certainly a great difference in the nature as well as in the degrees of them, and they are not both equally scandalous: for Horace seems to take delight in one sort, when he says:—

  Does welcome frenzy make me thus mistake?

  And Plato in his Phædon ranks the madness of poets, of prophets, and of lovers among those properties which conduce to a happy life. And Virgil, in the sixth Æneid, gives this epithet to his industrious Æneas:—

  If you will proceed to these your mad attempts.

  And indeed there is a two-fold sort of madness; the one that which the furies bring from hell; those that are herewith possessed are hurried on to wars and contentions, by an inexhaustible thirst of power and riches, inflamed to some infamous and unlawful lust, enraged to act the parricide, seduced to become guilty of incest, sacrilege, or some other of those crimson-dyed crimes; or, finally, to be so pricked in conscience as to be lashed and stung with the whips and snakes of grief and remorse. But there is another sort of madness that proceeds from Folly, so far from being any way injurious or distasteful that it is thoroughly good and desirable; and this happens when by a harmless mistake in the judgment of things the mind is freed from those cares which would otherwise gratingly afflict it, and smoothed over with a content and satisfaction it could not under other circumstances so happily enjoy. And this is that comfortable apathy or insensibleness which Cicero, in an epistle to his friend Atticus, wishes himself master of, that he might the less take to heart those insufferable outrages committed by the tyrannizing triumvirate, Lepidus, Antonius, and Augustus. That Grecian likewise had a happy time of it, who was so frantic as to sit a whole day in the empty theatre laughing, shouting, and clapping his hands, as if he had really seen some pathetic tragedy acted to the life, when indeed all was no more than the strength of imagination, and the efforts of delusion, while in all other respects the same person behaved himself very discreetly was,

  
  • Sweet to his friends, to his wife, obliging, kind,
  • And so averse from a revengeful mind,
  • That had his men unsealed his bottled wine,
  • He would not fret, nor doggedly repine.

  And when by a course of physic he was recovered from this frenzy, he looked upon his cure so far from a kindness, that he thus reasons the case with his friends:

  • This remedy, my friends, is worse i’ th’ main
  • Than the disease, the cure augments the pain;
  • My only hope is a relapse again.

  And certainly they were the more mad of the two who endeavoured to bereave him of so pleasing a delirium, and recall all the aches of his head by dispelling the mists of his brain.

  I have not yet determined whether it be proper to include all the defects of sense and understanding under the common genius of madness. For if anyone be so short-sighted as to take a mule for an ass, or so shallowpated as to admire a paltry ballad for an elegant poem, he is not thereupon immediately censured as mad. But if anyone let not only his senses but his judgment be imposed upon in the most ordinary common concerns, he shall come under the scandal of being thought next door to a madman. As suppose any one should hear an ass bray, and should take it for ravishing music; or if any one, born a beggar, should fancy himself as great as a prince, or the like. But this sort of madness, if (as is most usual) it be accompanied with pleasure, brings a great satisfaction both to those who are possessed with it themselves, and those who deride it in others, though they are not both equally frantic. And this species of madness is of larger extent than the world commonly imagines. Thus the whole tribe of madmen make sport among themselves, while one laughs at another; he that is more mad many times jeering him that is less so. But indeed the greater each man’s madness is, the greater is his happiness, if it be but such a sort as proceeds from an excess of folly, which is so epidemical a distemper that it is hard to find any one man so uninfected as not to have sometimes a fit or two of some sort of frenzy. There is only this difference between the several patients, he that shall take a broom-stick for a strait-bodied woman is without more ado sentenced for a madman, because this is so strange a blunder as very seldom happens; whereas he whose wife is a common jilt, that keeps a warehouse free for all customers, and yet swears she is as chaste as an untouched virgin, and hugs himself in his contented mistake, is scarce taken notice of, because he fares no worse than a great many more of his goodnatured neighbours. Among these are to be ranked such as take an immoderate delight in hunting, and think no music comparable to the sounding of horns and the yelping of beagles; and were they to take physic, would no question think the most sovereign virtues to be in the album Græcum of a dog’s turd. When they have run down their game, what strange pleasure they take in cutting of it up! Cows and sheep may be slaughtered by common butchers, but what is killed in hunting must be broke up by none under a gentleman, who shall throw down his hat, fall devoutly on his knees, and drawing out a slashing hanger (for a common knife is not good enough), after several ceremonies shall dissect all the parts as artificially as the best skilled anatomist, while all that stand round shall look very intently, and seem to be mightily surprised with the novelty, though they have seen the same an hundred times before; and he that can but dip his finger, and taste of the blood, shall think his own bettered by it: and though the constant feeding on such diet does but assimilate them to the nature of those beasts they eat of, yet they will swear that venison is meat for princes, and that their living upon it makes them as great as emperors.

  

  Near a kin to these are such as take a great fancy for building: they raise up, pull down, begin anew, alter the model, and never rest till they run themselves out of their whole estate, taking up such a compass for buildings, till they leave themselves not one foot of land to live upon, nor one poor cottage to shelter themselves from cold and hunger: and yet all the while are mighty proud of their contrivances, and sing a sweet requiem to their own happiness.

  To these are to be added those plodding virtuosos, that plunder the most inward recesses of nature for the pillage of a new invention, and rake over sea and land for the turning up some hitherto latent mystery; and are so continually tickled with the hopes of success, that they spare for no cost nor pains, but trudge on, and upon a defeat in one attempt, courageously tack about to another, and fall upon new experiments, never giving over till they have calcined their whole estate to ashes, and have not money enough left unmelted to purchase one crucible or limbeck. And yet after all, they are not so much discouraged, but that they dream fine things still, and animate others what they can to the like undertakings; nay, when their hopes come to the last gasp, after all their disappointments, they have yet one salvo for their credit, that:—

  In great exploits our bare attempts suffice.

  And so inveigh against the shortness of their life, which allows them not time enough to bring their designs to maturity and perfection.

  Whether dice-players may be so favourably dealt with as to be admitted among the rest is scarce yet resolved upon: but sure it is hugely vain and ridiculous, when we see some persons so devoutly addicted to this diversion, that at the first rattle of the box their heart shakes within them, and keeps consort with the motion of the dice: they are egg’d on so long with the hopes of always winning, till at last, in a literal sense, they have thrown away their whole estate, and made shipwreck of all they have, scarce escaping to shore with their own clothes to their backs; thinking it in the meanwhile a great piece of religion to be just in the payment of their stakes, and will cheat any creditor sooner than him who trusts them in play: and that poring old men, that cannot tell their cast without the help of spectacles, should be sweating at the same sport; nay, that such decrepit blades, as by the gout have lost the use of their fingers, should look over, and hire others to throw for them. This indeed is prodigiously extravagant; but the consequence of it ends so oft in downright madness, that it seems rather to belong to the furies than to folly.

  

  The next to be placed among the regiment of fools are such as make a trade of telling or inquiring after incredible stories of miracles and prodigies: never doubting that a lie will choke them, they will muster up a thousand several strange relations of spirits, ghosts, apparitions, raising of the devil, and such like bugbears of superstition, which the farther they are from being probably true, the more greedily they are swallowed, and the more devoutly believed. And these absurdities do not only bring an empty pleasure, and cheap divertisement, but they are a good trade, and procure a comfortable income to such priests and friars as by this craft get their gain. To these again are nearly related such others as attribute strange virtues to the shrines and images of saints and martyrs, and so would make their credulous proselytes believe, that if they pay their devotion to St. Christopher in the morning, they shall be guarded and secured the day following from all dangers and misfortunes: if soldiers, when they first take arms, shall come and mumble over such a set prayer before the picture of St. Barbara, they shall return safe from all engagements: or if any pray to Erasmus on such particular holidays, with the ceremony of wax candles, and other fopperies, he shall in a short time be rewarded with a plentiful increase of wealth and riches. The Christians have now their gigantic St. George, as well as the pagans had their Hercules; they paint the saint on horseback, and drawing the horse in splendid trappings, very gloriously accoutred, they scarce refrain in a literal sense from worshipping the very beast.

  What shall I say of such as cry up and maintain the cheat of pardons and indulgences? that by these compute the time of each soul’s residence in purgatory, and assign them a longer or shorter continuance, according as they purchase more or fewer of these paltry pardons, and saleable exemptions? Or what can be said bad enough of others, who pretend that by the force of such magical charms, or by the fumbling over their beads in the rehearsal of such and such petitions (which some religious impostors invented, either for diversion, or what is more likely for advantage), they shall procure riches, honour, pleasure, health, long life, a lusty old age, nay, after death a sitting at the right hand of our Saviour in His kingdom; though as to this last part of their happiness, they care not how long it be deferred, having scarce any appetite toward a tasting the joys of heaven, till they are surfeited, glutted with, and can no longer relish their enjoyments on earth. By this easy way of purchasing pardons, any notorious highwayman, any plundering soldier, or any bribe-taking judge, shall disburse some part of their unjust gains, and so think all their grossest impieties sufficiently atoned for; so many perjuries, lusts, drunkenness, quarrels, bloodsheds, cheats, treacheries, and all sorts of debaucheries, shall all be, as it were, struck a bargain for, and such a contract made, as if they had paid off all arrears, and might now begin upon a new score.

  

  And what can be more ridiculous, than for some others to be confident of going to heaven by repeating daily those seven verses out of the Psalms, which the devil taught St. Bernard, thinking thereby to have put a trick upon him, but that he was over-reached in his cunning.

  Several of these fooleries, which are so gross and absurd, as I myself am even ashamed to own, are practised and admired, not only by the vulgar, but by such proficients in religion as one might well expect should have more wit.

  From the same principles of folly proceeds the custom of each country’s challenging their particular guardian-saint; nay, each saint has his distinct office allotted to him, and is accordingly addressed to upon the respective occasions: as one for the tooth-ache, a second to grant an easy delivery in child-birth, a third to help persons to lost goods, another to protect seamen in a long voyage, a fifth to guard the farmer’s cows and sheep, and so on; for to rehearse all instances would be extremely tedious.

  There are some more catholic saints petitioned to upon all occasions, as more especially the Virgin Mary, whose blind devotees think it manners now to place the mother before the Son.

  And of all the prayers and intercessions that are made to these respective saints the substance of them is no more than downright Folly. Among all the trophies that for tokens of gratitude are hung upon the walls and ceilings of churches, you shall find no relics presented as a memorandum of any that were ever cured of Folly, or had been made one dram the wiser. One perhaps after shipwreck got safe to shore; another recovered when he had been run through by an enemy; one, when all his fellow-soldiers were killed upon the spot, as cunningly perhaps as cowardly, made his escape from the field; another, while he was a hanging, the rope broke, and so he saved his neck, and renewed his licence for practising his old trade of thieving; another broke gaol, and got loose; a patient, against his physician’s will, recovered of a dangerous fever; another drank poison, which putting him into a violent looseness, did his body more good than hurt, to the great grief of his wife, who hoped upon this occasion to have become a joyful widow; another had his waggon overturned, and yet none of his horses lamed; another had caught a grievous fall, and yet recovered from the bruise; another had been tampering with his neighbour’s wife, and escaped very narrowly from being caught by the enraged cuckold in the very act. After all these acknowledgments of escapes from such singular dangers, there is none (as I have before intimated) that return thanks for being freed from Folly; Folly being so sweet and luscious, that it is rather sued for as a happiness, than deprecated as a punishment. But why should I launch out into so wide a sea of superstitions?

  • Had I as many tongues as Argus eyes,
  • Briareus hands, they all would not suffice
  • Folly in all her shapes t’epitomize.

  Almost all Christians being wretchedly enslaved to blindness and ignorance, which the priests are so far from preventing or removing, that they blacken the darkness, and promote the delusion; wisely foreseeing that the people (like cows, which never give down their milk so well as when they are gently stroked), would part with less if they knew more, their bounty proceeding only from a mistake of charity. Now if any grave wise man should stand up, and unseasonably speak the truth, telling every one that a pious life is the only way of securing a happy death; that the best title to a pardon of our sins is purchased by a hearty abhorrence of our guilt, and sincere resolutions of amendment; that the best devotion which can be paid to any saints is to imitate them in their exemplary life: if he should proceed thus to inform them of their several mistakes, there would be quite another estimate put upon tears, watchings, masses, fastings, and other severities, which before were so much prized, as persons will now be vexed to lose that satisfaction they formerly found in them.

  

  In the same predicament of fools are to be ranked such, as while they are yet living, and in good health, take so great a care how they shall be buried when they die, that they solemnly appoint how many torches, how many escutcheons, how many gloves to be given, and how many mourners they will have at their funeral; as if they thought they themselves in their coffins could be sensible of what respect was paid to their corpse; or as if they doubted they should rest a whit the less quiet in the grave if they were with less state and pomp interred.

  Now though I am in so great haste, as I would not willingly be stopped or detained, yet I cannot pass by without bestowing some remarks upon another sort of fools; who, though their first descent was perhaps no better than from a tapster or tinker, yet highly value themselves upon their birth and parentage. One fetches his pedigree from Æneas, another from Brute, a third from king Arthur: they hang up their ancestors’ worm-eaten pictures as records of antiquity, and keep a long list of their predecessors, with an account of all their offices and titles, while they themselves are but transcripts of their forefathers’ dumb statues, and degenerate even into those very beasts which they carry in their coat of arms as ensigns of their nobility: and yet by a strong presumption of their birth and quality, they live not only the most pleasant and unconcerned themselves, but there are not wanting others too who cry up these brutes almost equal to the gods. But why should I dwell upon one or two instances of Folly, when there are so many of like nature. Conceitedness and self-love making many by strength of Fancy believe themselves happy, when otherwise they are really wretched and despicable. Thus the most ape-faced, ugliest fellow in the whole town, shall think himself a mirror of beauty: another shall be so proud of his parts, that if he can but mark out a triangle with a pair of compasses, he thinks he has mastered all the difficulties of geometry, and could outdo Euclid himself. A third shall admire himself for a ravishing musician, though he have no more skill in the handling of any instrument than a pig playing on the organs: and another that rattles in the throat as hoarse as a cock crows, shall be proud of his voice, and think he sings like a nightingale.

  

  There is another very pleasant sort of madness, whereby persons assume to themselves whatever of accomplishment they discern in others. Thus the happy rich churl in Seneca, who had so short a memory, as he could not tell the least story without a servant standing by to prompt him, and was at the same time so weak that he could scarce go upright, yet he thought he might adventure to accept a challenge to a duel, because he kept at home some lusty, sturdy fellows, whose strength he relied upon instead of his own.

  It is almost needless to insist upon the several professors of arts and sciences, who are all so egregiously conceited, that they would sooner give up their title to an estate in lands, than part with the reversion of their wits: among these, more especially stage-players, musicians, orators, and poets, each of which, the more of duncery they have, and the more of pride, the greater is their ambition: and how notoriously soever dull they be, they meet with their admirers; nay, the more silly they are the higher they are extolled; Folly (as we have before intimated) never failing of respect and esteem. If therefore every one, the more ignorant he is, the greater satisfaction he is to himself, and the more commended by others, to what purpose is it to sweat and toil in the pursuit of true learning, which shall cost so many gripes and pangs of the brain to acquire, and when obtained, shall only make the laborious student more uneasy to himself, and less acceptable to others?

  As nature in her dispensation of conceitedness has dealt with private persons, so has she given a particular smatch of self-love to each country and nation. Upon this account it is that the English challenge the prerogative of having the most handsome women, of the being most accomplished in the skill of music, and of keeping the best tables: the Scotch brag of their gentility, and pretend the genius of their native soil inclines them to be good disputants: the French think themselves remarkable for complaisance and good breeding: the Sorbonists of Paris pretend before any others to have made the greatest proficiency in polemic divinity: the Italians value themselves for learning and eloquence; and, like the Grecians of old, account all the world barbarians in respect of themselves; to which piece of vanity the inhabitants of Rome are more especially addicted, pretending themselves to be owners of all those heroic virtues, which their city so many ages since was deservedly famous for. The Venetians stand upon their birth and pedigree. The Grecians pride themselves in having been the first inventors of most arts, and in their country being famed for the product of so many eminent philosophers. The Turks, and all the other refuse of Mahometism, pretend they profess the only true religion, and laugh at all Christians for superstitious, narrow-souled fools. The Jews to this day expect their Messias as devoutly as they believe in their first prophet Moses. The Spaniards challenge the repute of being accounted good soldiers. And the Germans are noted for their tall, proper stature, and for their skill in magick. But not to mention any more, I suppose you are already convinced how great an improvement and addition to the happiness of human life is occasioned by self-love: next step to which is flattery; for as self-love is nothing but the coaxing up of ourselves, so the same currying and humouring of others is termed flattery.

  

  Flattery, it is true, is now looked upon as a scandalous name, but it is by such only as mind words more than things. They are prejudiced against it upon this account, because they suppose it justles out all truth and sincerity? whereas indeed its property is quite contrary, as appears from the examples of several brute creatures. What is more fawning than a spaniel? And yet what is more faithful to his master? What is more fond and loving than a tame squirrel? And yet what is more sporting and inoffensive? This little frisking creature is kept up in a cage to play withal, while lions, tigers, leopards, and such other savage emblems of rapine and cruelty are shewn only for state and rarity, and otherwise yield no pleasure to their respective keepers.

  There is indeed a pernicious destructive sort of flattery wherewith rookers and sharks work their several ends upon such as they can make a prey of, by decoying them into traps and snares beyond recovery: but that which is the effect of folly is of a much different nature; it proceeds from a softness of spirit, and a flexibleness of good humour, and comes far nearer to virtue than that other extreme of friendship, namely, a stiff, sour, dogged moroseness: it refreshes our minds when tired, enlivens them when melancholy, reinforces them when languishing, invigorates them when heavy, recovers them when sick, and pacifies them when rebellious: it puts us in a method how to procure friends, and how to keep them; it entices children to swallow the bitter rudiments of learning; it gives a new ferment to the almost stagnated souls of old men; it both reproves and instructs principles without offence under the mask of commendation: in short, it makes every man fond and indulgent of himself, which is indeed no small part of each man’s happiness, and at the same time renders him obliging and complaisant in all company, where it is pleasant to see how the asses rub and scratch one another.

  This again is a great accomplishment to an orator, a greater to a physician, and the only one to a poet: in fine, it is the best sweetener to all afflictions, and gives a true relish to the otherwise insipid enjoyments of our whole life. Ay, but (say you) to flatter is to deceive; and to deceive is very harsh and hurtful: no, rather just contrary; nothing is more welcome and bewitching than the being deceived. They are much to be blamed for an undistinguishing head, that make a judgment of things according to what they are in themselves, when their whole nature consists barely in the opinions that are had of them. For all sublunary matters are enveloped in such a cloud of obscurity, that the short-sightedness of human understanding, cannot pry through and arrive to any comprehensive knowledge of them: hence the sect of academic philosophers have modestly resolved, that all things being no more than probable, nothing can be known as certain; or if there could, yet would it but interrupt and abate from the pleasure of a more happy ignorance. Finally, our souls are so fashioned and moulded, that they are sooner captivated by appearances, than by real truths; of which, if any one would demand an example, he may find a very familiar one in churches, where, if what is delivered from the pulpit be a grave, solid, rational discourse, all the congregation grow weary, and fall asleep, till their patience be released; whereas if the screecher (pardon the impropriety of the word, the prater I would have said) be zealous, in his thumps of the cushion, antic gestures, and spend his glass in the telling of pleasant stories, his beloved shall then stand up, tuck their hair behind their ears, and be very devoutly attentive. So among the saints, those are most resorted to who are most romantic and fabulous: as for instance, a poetic St. George, a St. Christopher, or a St. Barbara, shall be oftener prayed to than St. Peter, St. Paul, nay, perhaps than Christ himself; but this, it is possible, may more properly be referred to another place.

  

  In the mean while observe what a cheap purchase of happiness is made by the strength of fancy. For whereas many things even of inconsiderable value, would cost a great deal of pains and perhaps pelf, to procure; opinion spares charges, and yet gives us them in as ample a manner by conceit, as if we possessed them in reality. Thus he who feeds on such a stinking dish of fish, as another must hold his nose at a yard’s distance from, yet if he feed heartily, and relish them palateably, they are to him as good as if they were fresh caught: whereas on the other hand, if any one be invited to never so dainty a joul of sturgeon, if it go against his stomach to eat any, he may sit a hungry, and bite his nails with greater appetite than his victuals. If a woman be never so ugly and nauseous, yet if her husband can but think her handsome, it is all one to him as if she really were so: if any man have never so ordinary and smutty a draught, yet if he admires the excellency of it, and can suppose it to have been drawn by some old Apelles, or modern Vandyke, he is as proud of it as if it had really been done by one of their hands. I knew a friend of mine that presented his bride with several false and counterfeit stones, making her believe that they were right jewels, and cost him so many hundred thousand crowns; under his mistake the poor woman was as choice of pebbles, and painted glass, as if they had been so many natural rubies and diamonds, while the subtle husband saved a great deal in his pocket, and yet made his wife as well pleased as if he had been at ten hundred times the cost. What difference is there between them that in the darkest dungeon, can with a platonic brain survey the whole world in idea, and him that stands in the open air, and takes a less deluding prospect of the universe? If the beggar in Lucian, that dreamt he was a prince, had never waked, his imaginary kingdom had been as great as a real one. Between him therefore that truly is happy, and him that thinks himself so, there is no perceivable distinction; or if any, the fool has the better of it: first, because his happiness costs him less, standing him only in the price of a single thought; and then, secondly, because he has more fellow-companions and partakers of his good fortune: for no enjoyment is comfortable where the benefit is not imparted to others; nor is any one station of life desirable, where we can have no converse with persons of the same condition with ourselves: and yet this is the hard fate of wise men, who are grown so scarce, that like Phœnixes, they appear but one in an age. The Grecians, it is true, reckoned up seven within the narrow precincts of their own country; yet I believe, were they to cast up their accounts anew, they would not find a half, nay, not a third part, of one in far larger extent.

  

  Farther, when among the several good properties of Bacchus this is looked upon as the chief, namely, that he drowns the cares and anxieties of the mind, though it be indeed but for a short while; for after a small nap, when our brains are a little settled, they all return to their former corrodings: how much greater is the more durable advantage which I bring? while by one uninterrupted fit of being drunk in conceit, I perpetually cajole the mind with riots, revels, and all the excess and energy of joy.

  

  Add to this, that I am so communicative and bountiful, as to let no one particular person pass without some token of my favour; whereas other deities bestow their gifts sparingly to their elect only. Bacchus has not thought fit that every soil should bear the same juice-yielding grape: Venus has not given to all a like portion of beauty: Mercury endows but few with the knack of an accomplished eloquence: Hercules gives not to all the same measure of wealth and riches: Jupiter has ordained but a few to be born to a kingdom: Mars in battle gives a complete victory but to one party; nay, he often makes them both losers: Apollo does not answer the expectation of all that consult his oracles: Jove oft thunders: Phœbus sometimes shoots the plague, or some other infection, at the point of his darts: and Neptune swallows down more than he bears up: not to mention their Ve-Jupiters, their Plutos, their Ate goddess of loss, their evil geniuses, and such other monsters of divinity, as had more of the hangman than the god in them, and were worshipped only to deprecate that hurt which used to be inflicted by them: I say, not to mention these, I am that high and mighty goddess, whose liberality is of as large an extent as her omnipotence: I give to all that ask: I never appear sullen, nor out of humour, nor ever demand any atonement or satisfaction for the omission of any ceremonious punctilio in my worship: I do not storm or rage, if mortals, in their addresses to the other gods pass me by unregarded, without the acknowledgment of any respect or application: whereas all the other gods are so scrupulous and exact, that it often proves less dangerous manfully to despise them, than sneakingly to attempt the difficulty of pleasing them. Thus some men are of that captious, froward humour, that a man had better be wholly strangers to them, than never so intimate friends.

  Well, but there are none (say you) build any altars, or dedicate any temple to Folly. I admire (as I have before intimated) that the world should be so wretchedly ungrateful. But I am so good natured as to pass by and pardon this seeming affront, though indeed the charge thereof, as unnecessary, may well be saved; for to what purpose should I demand the sacrifice of frankincense, cakes, goats, and swine, since all persons everywhere pay me that more acceptable service, which all divines agree to be more effectual and meritorious, namely, an imitation of my communicable attributes? I do not therefore any way envy Diana for having her altars bedewed with human blood: I think myself then most religiously adored, when my respective devotees (as is their usual custom) conform themselves to my practice, transcribe my pattern, and so live the copy of me their original. And truly this pious devotion is not so much in use among christians as is much to be wished it were: for how many zealous votaries are there that pay so profound respect to the Virgin Mary, as to place lighted tapers even at noon day upon her altars? And yet how few of them copy after her untouched chastity, her modesty, and her other commendable virtues, in the imitation whereof consists the truest esteem of divine worship? Farther, why should I desire a temple, since the whole world is but one ample continued choir, entirely dedicated to my use and service? Nor do I want worshippers at any place where the earth wants not inhabitants. And as to the manner of my worship, I am not yet so irrecoverably foolish, as to be prayed to by proxy, and to have my honour intermediately bestowed upon senseless images and pictures, which quite subvert the true end of religion; while the unwary supplicants seldom distinguish betwixt the things themselves and the objects they represent. The same respect in the meanwhile is paid to me in a more legitimate manner; for to me there are as many statues erected as there are moving fabrics of mortality; every person, even against his own will, carrying the image of me, i.e., the signal of Folly instamped on his countenance. I have not therefore the least tempting inducement to envy the more seeming state and splendour of the other gods, who are worshipped at set times and places; as Phœbus at Rhodes, Venus in her Cyprian isle, Juno in the city Argos, Minerva at Athens, Jupiter on the hill Olympus, Neptune at Tarentum, and Priapus in the town of Lampsacum; while my worship extending as far as my influence, the whole world is my one altar, whereon the most valuable incense and sacrifice is perpetually offered up.

  

  But lest I should seem to speak this with more of confidence than truth, let us take a nearer view of the mode of men’s lives, whereby it will be rendered more apparently evident what largesses I everywhere bestow, and how much I am respected and esteemed of persons, from the highest to the basest quality. For the proof whereof, it being too tedious to insist upon each particular, I shall only mention such in general as are most worthy the remark, from which by analogy we may easily judge of the remainder. And indeed to what purpose would it be singly to recount the commonalty and rabble of mankind, who beyond all question are entirely on my side? and for a token of their vassalage do wear my livery in so many older shapes, and more newly invented modes of Folly, that the lungs of a thousand Democrituses would never hold out to such a laughter as this subject would excite; and to these thousand must be superadded one more, to laugh at them as much as they do at the other.

  

  It is indeed almost incredible to relate what mirth, what sport, what diversion, the grovelling inhabitants here on earth give to the aboveseated gods in heaven: for these exalted deities spend their fasting sober hours in listening to those petitions that are offered up, and in succouring such as they are appealed to by for redress; but when they are a little entered at a glass of nectar, they then throw off all serious concerns, and go and place themselves on the ascent of some promontory in heaven, and from thence survey the little mole-hill of earth. And trust me, there cannot be a more delightsome prospect, than to view such a theatre so stuffed and crammed with swarms of fools. One falls desperately in love, and the more he is slighted the more does his spaniel-like passion increase; another is wedded to wealth rather than to a wife; a third pimps for his own spouse, and is content to be a cuckold so he may wear his horns gilt; a fourth is haunted with a jealousy of his visiting neighbours; another sobs and roars, and plays the child, for the death of a friend or relation; and lest his own tears should not rise high enough to express the torrent of his grief, he hires other mourners to accompany the corpse to the grave, and sing its requiem in sighs and lamentations; another hypocritically weeps at the funeral of one whose death at heart he rejoices for; here a gluttonous cormorant, whatever he can scrape up, thrusts all into his guts to pacify the cryings of a hungry stomach; there a lazy wretch sits yawning and stretching, and thinks nothing so desirable as sleep and idleness; some are extremely industrious in other men’s business, and sottishly neglectful of their own; some think themselves rich because their credit is great, though they can never pay, till they break, and compound for their debts; one is so covetous that he lives poor to die rich; one for a little uncertain gain will venture to cross the roughest seas, and expose his life for the purchase of a livelihood; another will depend on the plunders of war, rather than on the honest gains of peace; some will close with and humour such warm old blades as have a good estate, and no children of their own to bestow it upon; others practice the same art of wheedling upon good old women, that have hoarded and coffered up more bags than they know how to dispose of; both of these sly flatteries make fine sport for the gods, when they are beat at their own weapons, and (as oft happens) are gulled by those very persons they intended to make a prey of. There is another sort of base scoundrels in gentility, such scraping merchants, who although, for the better vent of their commodities they lie, swear, cheat, and practice all the intrigues of dishonesty, yet think themselves no way inferior to persons of the highest quality, only because they have raked together a plentiful estate; and there are not wanting such insinuating hangers on, as shall caress and compliment them with the greatest respect, in hopes to go snacks in some of their dishonest gains; there are others so infected with the philosophical paradox of banishing property, and having all things in common, that they make no conscience of fastening on, and purloining whatever they can get, and converting it to their own use and possession; there are some who are rich only in wishes, and yet while they barely dream of vast mountains of wealth, they are as happy as if their imaginary fancies commenced real truths; some put on the best side outermost, and starve themselves at home to appear gay and splendid abroad; one with an open-handed freedom spends all he lays his fingers on; another with a logic-fisted gripingness catches at and grasps all he can come within the reach of; one apes it about in the streets to court popularity; another consults his ease, and sticks to the confinement of a chimney-corner; many others are tugging hard at law for a trifle, and drive on an endless suit, only to enrich a deferring judge, or a knavish advocate; one is for new-modelling a settled government; another is for some notable heroical attempt; and a third by all means must travel a pilgrim to Rome, Jerusalem, or some shrine of a saint elsewhere, though he have no other business than the paying of a formal impertinent visit, leaving his wife and children to fast, while he himself forsooth is gone to pray. In short, if (as Lucian fancies Menippus to have done heretofore,) any man could now again look down from the orb of the moon, he would see thick swarms as it were of flies and gnats, that were quarrelling with each other, justling, fighting, fluttering, skipping, playing, just new produced, soon after decaying, and then immediately vanishing; and it can scarce be thought how many tumults and tragedies so inconsiderate a creature as man does give occasion to, and that in so short a space as the small span of life; subject to so many casualties, that the sword, pestilence, and other epidemic accidents, shall many times sweep away whole thousands at a brush.

  

  But hold; I should but expose myself too far, and incur the guilt of being roundly laughed at, if I proceed to enumerate the several kinds of the folly of the vulgar. I shall confine therefore my following discourse only to such as challenge the repute of wisdom, and seemingly pass for men of the soundest intellectuals. Among whom the Grammarians present themselves in the front, a sort of men who would be the most miserable, the most slavish, and the most hateful of all persons, if I did not in some way alleviate the pressures and miseries of their profession by blessing them with a bewitching sort of madness: for they are not only liable to those five curses, which they so oft recite from the first five verses of Homer, but to five hundred more of a worse nature; as always damned to thirst and hunger, to be choked with dust in their unswept schools (schools, shall I term them, or rather elaboratories, nay, bridewells, and houses of correction?), to wear out themselves in fret and drudgery; to be deafened with the noise of gaping boys; and in short, to be stifled with heat and stench; and yet they cheerfully dispense with all these inconveniences, and, by the help of a fond conceit, think themselves as happy as any men living: taking a great pride and delight in frowning and looking big upon the trembling urchins, in boxing, slashing, striking with the ferula, and in the exercise of all their other methods of tyranny; while thus lording it over a parcel of young, weak chits, they imitate the Cuman ass, and think themselves as stately as a lion, that domineers over all the inferior herd. Elevated with this conceit, they can hold filth and nastiness to be an ornament; can reconcile their nose to the most intolerable smells; and finally, think their wretched slavery the most arbitrary kingdom, which they would not exchange for the jurisdiction of the most sovereign potentate: and they are yet more happy by a strong persuasion of their own parts and abilities; for thus when their employment is only to rehearse silly stories, and poetical fictions, they will yet think themselves wiser than the best experienced philosopher; nay, they have an art of making ordinary people, such as their school boys’ fond parents, to think them as considerable as their own pride has made them. Add hereunto this other sort of ravishing pleasure: when any of them has found out who was the mother of Anchises, or has lighted upon some old unusual word, such as bubsequa, bovinator, manticulator, or other like obsolete cramp terms; or can, after a great deal of poring, spell out the inscription of some battered monument; Lord! what joy, what triumph, what congratulating their success, as if they had conquered Africa, or taken Babylon the Great! When they recite some of their frothy, bombast verses, if any happen to admire them, they are presently flushed with the least hint of commendation, and devoutly thank Pythagoras for his grateful hypothesis, whereby they are now become actuated with a descent of Virgil’s poetic soul. Nor is any divertisement more pleasant, than when they meet to flatter and curry one another; yet they are so critical, that if any one hap to be guilty of the least slip, or seeming blunder, another shall presently correct him for it, and then to it they go in a tongue-combat, with all the fervour, spleen, and eagerness imaginable. May Priscian himself be my enemy if what I am now going to say be not exactly true. I knew an old Sophister that was a Grecian, a latinist, a mathematician, a philosopher, a musician, and all to the utmost perfection, who, after threescore years’ experience in the world, had spent the last twenty of them only in drudging to conquer the criticisms of grammar, and made it the chief part of his prayers, that his life might be so long spared till he had learned how rightly to distinguish betwixt the eight parts of speech, which no grammarian, whether Greek or Latin, had yet accurately done. If any chance to have placed that as a conjunction which ought to have been used as an adverb, it is a sufficient alarm to raise a war for doing justice to the injured word. And since there have been as many several grammars, as particular grammarians (nay, more, for Aldus alone wrote five distinct grammars for his own share), the schoolmaster must be obliged to consult them all, sparing for no time nor trouble, though never so great, lest he should be otherwise posed in an unobserved criticism, and so by an irreparable disgrace lose the reward of all his toil. It is indifferent to me whether you call this folly or madness, since you must needs confess that it is by my influence these school-tyrants, though in never so despicable a condition, are so happy in their own thoughts, that they would not change fortunes with the most illustrious Sophi of Persia.

  

  The Poets, however somewhat less beholden to me, own a professed dependence on me, being a sort of lawless blades, that by prescription claim a license to a proverb, while the whole intent of their profession is only to smooth up and tickle the ears of fools, that by mere toys and fabulous shams, with which (however ridiculous) they are so bolstered up in an airy imagination, as to promise themselves an everlasting name, and promise, by their balderdash, at the same time to celebrate the never-dying memory of others. To these rapturous wits self-love and flattery are never-failing attendants; nor do any prove more zealous or constant devotees to folly.

  The Rhetoricians likewise, though they are ambitious of being ranked among the Philosophers, yet are apparently of my faction, as appears among other arguments, by this more especially; in that among their several topics of completing the art of oratory, they all particularly insist upon the knack of jesting, which is one species of folly; as is evident from the books of oratory wrote to Herennius, put among Cicero’s work, but done by some other unknown author; and in Quintilian, that great master of eloquence, there is one large chapter spent in prescribing the methods of raising laughter: in short, they may well attribute a great efficacy to folly, since on any argument they can many times by a slight laugh over what they could never seriously confute.

  Of the same gang are those scribbling fops, who think to eternize their memory by setting up for authors: among which, though they are all some way indebted to me, yet are those more especially so, who spoil paper in blotting it with mere trifles and impertinences. For as to those graver drudgers to the press, that write learnedly, beyond the reach of an ordinary reader, who durst submit their labours to the review of the most severe critic, these are not so liable to be envied for their honour, as to be pitied for their sweat and slavery. They make additions, alterations, blot out, write anew, amend, interline, turn it upside down, and yet can never please their fickle judgment, but that they shall dislike the next hour what they penned the former; and all this to purchase the airy commendations of a few understanding readers, which at most is but a poor reward for all their fastings, watchings, confinements, and brain-breaking tortures of invention. Add to this the impairing of their health, the weakening of their constitution, their contracting sore eyes, or perhaps turning stark blind; their poverty, their envy, their debarment from all pleasures, their hastening on old age, their untimely death, and what other inconveniences of a like or worse nature can be thought upon: and yet the recompense for all this severe penance is at best no more than a mouthful or two of frothy praise. These, as they are more laborious, so are they less happy than those other hackney scribblers which I first mentioned, who never stand much to consider, but write what comes next at a venture, knowing that the more silly their composures are, the more they will be bought up by the greater number of readers, who are fools and blockheads: and if they hap to be condemned by some few judicious persons, it is an easy matter by clamour to drown their censure, and to silence them by urging the more numerous commendations of others. They are yet the wisest who transcribe whole discourses from others, and then reprint them as their own. By doing so they make a cheap and easy seizure to themselves of that reputation which cost the first author so much time and trouble to procure. If they are at any time pricked a little in conscience for fear of discovery, they feed themselves however with this hope, that if they be at last found plagiaries, yet at least for some time they have the credit of passing for the genuine authors. It is pleasant to see how all these several writers are puffed up with the least blast of applause, especially if they come to the honour of being pointed at as they walk along the streets, when their several pieces are laid open upon every book-seller’s stall, when their names are embossed in a different character upon the title-page, sometime only with the two first letters, and sometime with fictious cramp terms, which few shall understand the meaning of; and of those that do, all shall not agree in their verdict of the performance; some censuring, others approving it, men’s judgments being as different as their palates, that being toothsome to one which is unsavoury and nauseous to another: though it is a sneaking piece of cowardice for authors to put feigned names to their works, as if, like bastards of their brain, they were afraid to own them. Thus one styles himself Telemachus, another Stelenus, a third Polycrates, another Thrasymachus, and so on. By the same liberty we may ransack the whole alphabet, and jumble together any letters that come next to hand. It is farther very pleasant when these coxcombs employ their pens in writing congratulatory epistles, poems, and panegyricks, upon each other, wherein one shall be complimented with the title of Alcæus, another shall be charactered for the incomparable Callimachus; this shall be commended for a completer orator than Tully himself; a fourth shall be told by his fellow-fool that the divine Plato comes short of him for a philosophic soul. Sometime again they take up the cudgels, and challenge out an antagonist, and so get a name by a combat at dispute and controversy, while the unwary readers draw sides according to their different judgments: the longer the quarrel holds the more irreconcilable it grows; and when both parties are weary, they each pretend themselves the conquerors, and both lay claim to the credit of coming off with victory. These fooleries make sport for wise men, as being highly absurd, ridiculous and extravagant. True, but yet these paper-combatants, by my assistance, are so flushed with a conceit of their own greatness, that they prefer the solving of a syllogism before the sacking of Carthage; and upon the defeat of a poor objection carry themselves more triumphant than the most victorious Scipio.

  

  Nay, even the learned and more judicious, that have wit enough to laugh at the other’s folly, are very much beholden to my goodness; which (except ingratitude have drowned their ingenuity), they must be ready upon all occasions to confess. Among these I suppose the lawyers will shuffle in for precedence, and they of all men have the greatest conceit of their own abilities. They will argue as confidently as if they spoke gospel instead of law; they will cite you six hundred several precedents, though not one of them come near to the case in hand; they will muster up the authority of judgments, deeds, glosses, and reports, and tumble over so many musty records, that they make their employ, though in itself easy, the greatest slavery imaginable; always accounting that the best plea which they have took most pains for.

  To these, as bearing great resemblance to them, may be added logicians and sophisters, fellows that talk as much by rote as a parrot; who shall run down a whole gossiping of old women, nay, silence the very noise of a belfry, with louder clappers than those of the steeple; and if their unappeasable clamorousness were their only fault it would admit of some excuse; but they are at the same time so fierce and quarrelsome, that they will wrangle bloodily for the least trifle, and be so over intent and eager, that they many times lose their game in the chase and fright away that truth they are hunting for. Yet self-conceit makes these nimble disputants such doughty champions, that armed with three or four close-linked syllogisms, they shall enter the lists with the greatest masters of reason, and not question the foiling of them in an irresistible baffle: nay, their obstinacy makes them so confident of their being in the right, that all the arguments in the world shall never convince them to the contrary.

  

  Next to these come the philosophers in their long beards and short cloaks, who esteem themselves the only favourites of wisdom, and look upon the rest of mankind as the dirt and rubbish of the creation: yet these men’s happiness is only a frantic craziness of brain; they build castles in the air, and infinite worlds in a vacuum. They will give you to a hair’s breadth the dimensions of the sun, moon, and stars, as easily as they would do that of a flaggon or pipkin: they will give a punctual account of the rise of thunder, of the origin of winds, of the nature of eclipses, and of all the other abstrusest difficulties in physics, without the least demur or hesitation, as if they had been admitted into the cabinet council of nature, or had been eye-witnesses to all the accurate methods of creation; though alas nature does but laugh at all their puny conjectures; for they never yet made one considerable discovery, as appears in that they are unanimously agreed in no one point of the smallest moment; nothing so plain or evident but what by some or other is opposed and contradicted. But though they are ignorant of the artificial contexture of the least insect, they vaunt however, and brag that they know all things, when indeed they are unable to construe the mechanism of their own body: nay, when they are so purblind as not to be able to see a stone’s cast before them, yet they shall be as sharp-sighted as possible in spying-out ideas, universals, separate forms, first matters, quiddities, formalities, and a hundred such like niceties, so diminutively small, that were not their eyes extremely magnifying, all the art of optics could never make them discernible. But they then most despise the low grovelling vulgar when they bring out their parallels, triangles, circles, and other mathematical figures, drawn up in battalia, like so many spells and charms of conjuration in muster, with letters to refer to the explication of the several problems; hereby raising devils as it were, only to have the credit of laying them, and amusing the ordinary spectators into wonder, because they have not wit enough to understand the juggle. Of these some undertake to profess themselves judicial astrologers, pretending to keep correspondence with the stars, and so from their information can resolve any query; and though it is all but a presumptuous imposture, yet some to be sure will be so great fools as to believe them.

  The divines present themselves next; but it may perhaps be most safe to pass them by, and not to touch upon so harsh a string as this subject would afford. Beside, the undertaking may be very hazardous; for they are a sort of men generally very hot and passionate; and should I provoke them, I doubt not would set upon me with a full cry, and force me with shame to recant, which if I stubbornly refuse to do, they will presently brand me for a heretic, and thunder out an excommunication, which is their spiritual weapon to wound such as lift up a hand against them. It is true, no men own a less dependence on me, yet have they reason to confess themselves indebted for no small obligations. For it is by one of my properties, self-love, that they fancy themselves, with their elder brother Paul, caught up into the third heaven, from whence, like shepherds indeed, they look down upon their flock, the laity, grazing as it were, in the vales of the world below. They fence themselves in with so many surrounders of magisterial definitions, conclusions, corollaries, propositions explicit and implicit, that there is no falling in with them; or if they do chance to be urged to a seeming non-plus, yet they find out so many evasions, that all the art of man can never bind them so fast, but that an easy distinction shall give them a starting-hole to escape the scandal of being baffled. They will cut asunder the toughest argument with as much ease as Alexander did the gordian knot; they will thunder out so many rattling terms as shall fright an adversary into conviction. They are exquisitely dexterous in unfolding the most intricate mysteries; they will tell you to a title all the successive proceedings of Omnipotence in the creation of the universe; they will explain the precise manner of original sin being derived from our first parents; they will satisfy you in what manner, by what degrees, and in how long a time, our Saviour was conceived in the Virgin’s womb, and demonstrate in the consecrated wafer how accidents may subsist without a subject. Nay, these are accounted trivial, easy questions; they have yet far greater difficulties behind, which notwithstanding they solve with as much expedition as the former; as namely, whether supernatural generation requires any instant of time for its acting? whether Christ, as a son, bears a double specifically distinct relation to God the Father, and his virgin mother? whether this proposition is possible to be true, the first person of the Trinity hated the second? whether God, who took our nature upon him in the form of a man, could as well have become a woman, a devil, a beast, a herb, or a stone? and were it so possible that the Godhead had appeared in any shape of an inanimate substance, how he should then have preached his gospel? or how have been nailed to the cross? whether if St. Peter had celebrated the eucharist at the same time our Saviour was hanging on the cross, the consecrated bread would have been transubstantiated into the same body that remained on the tree? whether in Christ’s corporal presence in the sacramental wafer, his humanity be not abstracted from his Godhead? whether after the resurrection we shall carnally eat and drink as we do in this life? There are a thousand other more sublimated and refined niceties of notions, relations, quantities, formalities, quiddities, hæccities, and such like abstrusities, as one would think no one could pry into, except he had not only such cat’s eyes as to see best in the dark, but even such a piercing faculty as to see through an inch-board, and spy out what really never had any being. Add to these some of their tenets and opinions, which are so absurd and extravagant, that the wildest fancies of the Stoicks which they so much disdain and decry as paradoxes, seem in comparison just and rational; as their maintaining, that it is a less aggravating fault to kill a hundred men, than for a poor cobbler to set a stitch on the sabbath-day; or, that it is more justifiable to do the greatest injury imaginable to others, than to tell the least lie ourselves. And these subtleties are alchymized to a more refined sublimate by the abstracting brains of their several schoolmen; the Realists, the Nominalists, the Thomists, the Albertists, the Occamists, the Scotists; these are not all, but the rehearsal of a few only, as a specimen of their divided sects; in each of which there is so much of deep learning, so much of unfathomable difficulty, that I believe the apostles themselves would stand in need of a new illuminating spirit, if they were to engage in any controversy with these new divines. St. Paul, no question, had a full measure of faith; yet when he lays down faith to be the substance of things not seen, these men carp at it for an imperfect definition, and would undertake to teach the apostles better logic. Thus the same holy author wanted for nothing of the grace of charity, yet (say they) he describes and defines it but very inaccurately, when he treats of it in the thirteenth chapter of his first epistle to the Corinthians. The primitive disciples were very frequent in administering the holy sacrament, breaking bread from house to house; yet should they be asked of the Terminus a quo and the Terminus ad quem, the nature of transubstantiation? the manner how one body can be in several places at the same time? the difference betwixt the several attributes of Christ in heaven, on the cross, and in the consecrated bread? what time is required for the transubstantiating the bread into flesh? how it can be done by a short sentence pronounced by the priest, which sentence is a species of discreet quantity, that has no permanent punctum? Were they asked (I say) these, and several other confused queries, I do not believe they could answer so readily as our mincing school-men now-a-days take a pride to do. They were well acquainted with the Virgin Mary, yet none of them undertook to prove that she was preserved immaculate from original sin, as some of our divines very hotly contend for. St. Peter had the keys given to him, and that by our Saviour himself, who had never entrusted him except he had known him capable of their manage and custody; and yet it is much to be questioned whether Peter was sensible of that subtlety broached by Scotus, that he may have the key of knowledge effectually for others, who has no knowledge actually in himself. Again, they baptized all nations, and yet never taught what was the formal, material, efficient, and final cause of baptism, and certainly never dreamt of distinguishing between a delible and an indelible character in this sacrament. They worshipped in the spirit, following their master’s injunction, God is a spirit, and they which worship him, must worship him in spirit, and in truth; yet it does not appear that it was ever revealed to them how divine adoration should be paid at the same time to our blessed Saviour in heaven, and to his picture here below on a wall, drawn with two fingers held out, a bald crown, and a circle round his head. To reconcile these intricacies to an appearance of reason requires three-score years’ experience in metaphysics.

  

  Farther, the apostles often mention Grace, yet never distinguish between gratia, gratis data, and gratia gratificans. They earnestly exhort us likewise to good works, yet never explain the difference between Opus operans, and Opus operatum. They very frequently press and invite us to seek after charity, without dividing it into infused and acquired, or determining whether it be a substance or an accident, a created or an uncreated being. They detested sin themselves, and warned others from the commission of it; and yet I am sure they could never have defined so dogmatically, as the Scotists have since done. St. Paul, who in other’s judgment is no less the chief of the apostles, than he was in his own the chief of sinners, who being bred at the feet of Gamaliel, was certainly more eminently a scholar than any of the rest, yet he often exclaims against vain philosophy, warns us from doting about questions and strifes of words, and charges us to avoid profane and vain babblings, and oppositions of science falsely so called; which he would not have done, if he had thought it worth his while to have become acquainted with them, which he might soon have been, the disputes of that age being but small, and more intelligible sophisms, in reference to the vastly greater intricacies they are now improved to. But yet, however, our scholastic divines are so modest, that if they meet with any passage in St. Paul, or any other penman of holy writ, which is not so well modelled, or critically disposed of, as they could wish, they will not roughly condemn it, but bend it rather to a favorable interpretation, out of reverence to antiquity, and respect to the holy scriptures; though indeed it were unreasonable to expect anything of this nature from the apostles, whose lord and master had given unto them to know the mysteries of God, but not those of philosophy. If the same divines meet with anything of like nature unpalatable in St. Chrysostom, St. Basil, St. Hierom, or others of the fathers, they will not stick to appeal from their authority, and very fairly resolve that they lay under a mistake. Yet these ancient fathers were they who confuted both the Jews and Heathens, though they both obstinately adhered to their respective prejudices; they confuted them (I say), yet by their lives and miracles, rather than by words and syllogisms; and the persons they thus proselyted were downright honest, well meaning people, such as understood plain sense better than any artificial pomp of reasoning: whereas if our divines should now set about the gaining converts from paganism by their metaphysical subtleties, they would find that most of the persons they applied themselves to were either so ignorant as not at all to apprehend them, or so impudent as to scoff and deride them; or finally, so well skilled at the same weapons, that they would be able to keep their pass, and fence off all assaults of conviction: and this last way the victory would be altogether as hopeless, as if two persons were engaged of so equal strength, that it were impossible any one should overpower the other.

  

  If my judgment might be taken, I would advise Christians, in their next expedition to a holy war, instead of those many unsuccessful legions, which they have hitherto sent to encounter the Turks and Saracens, that they would furnish out their clamorous Scotists, their obstinate Occamists, their invincible Albertists, and all their forces of tough, crabbed and profound disputants: the engagement, I fancy, would be mighty pleasant, and the victory we may imagine on our side not to be questioned. For which of the enemies would not veil their turbants at so solemn an appearance? Which of the fiercest Janizaries would not throw away his scimitar, and all the half-moons be eclipsed by the interposition of so glorious an army?

  I suppose you mistrust I speak all this by way of jeer and irony; and well I may, since among divines themselves there are some so ingenious as to despise these captious and frivolous impertinences: they look upon it as a kind of profane sacrilege, and a little less than blasphemous impiety, to determine of such niceties in religion, as ought rather to be the subject of an humble and uncontradicting faith, than of a scrupulous and inquisitive reason: they abhor a defiling the mysteries of Christianity with an intermixture of heathenish philosophy, and judge it very improper to reduce divinity to an obscure speculative science, whose end is such a happiness as can be gained only by the means of practice. But alas, those notional divines, however condemned by the soberer judgment of others, are yet mightily pleased with themselves, and are so laboriously intent upon prosecuting their crabbed studies, that they cannot afford so much time as to read a single chapter in any one book of the whole bible. And while they thus trifle away their mis-spent hours in trash and babble, they think that they support the Catholic Church with the props and pillars of propositions and syllogisms, no less effectually than Atlas is feigned by the poets to sustain on his shoulders the burden of a tottering world. Their privileges, too, and authority are very considerable: they can deal with any text of scripture as with a nose of wax, knead it into what shape best suits their interest; and whatever conclusions they have dogmatically resolved upon, they would have them as irrepealably ratified as Solon’s laws, and in as great force as the very decrees of the papal chair. If any be so bold as to remonstrate to their decisions, they will bring him on his knees to a recantation of his impudence. They shall pronounce as irrevocably as an oracle, this proposition is scandalous, that irreverent; this has a smack of heresy, and that is bald and improper; so that it is not the being baptised into the church, the believing of the scriptures, the giving credit to St. Peter, St. Paul, St. Hierom, St. Augustin, nay, or St. Thomas Aquinas himself, that shall make a man a Christian, except he have the joint suffrage of these novices in learning, who have blessed the world no doubt with a great many discoveries, which had never come to light, if they had not struck the fire of subtlety out of the flint of obscurity. These fooleries sure must be a happy employ.

  

  Farther, they make as many partitions and divisions in hell and purgatory, and describe as many different sorts and degrees of punishment as if they were very well acquainted with the soil and situation of those infernal regions. And to prepare a seat for the blessed above, they invent new orbs, and a stately empyrean heaven, so wide and spacious as if they had purposely contrived it, that the glorified saints might have room enough to walk, to feast, or to take any recreation.

  

  With these, and a thousand more such like toys, their heads are more stuffed and swelled than Jove, when he went big of Pallas in his brain, and was forced to use the midwifery of Vulcan’s axe to ease him of his teeming burden. Do not wonder, therefore, that at public disputations they bind their heads with so many caps one over another; for this is to prevent the loss of their brains, which would otherwise break out from their uneasy confinement. It affords likewise a pleasant scene of laughter, to listen to these divines in their hotly managed disputations; to see how proud they are of talking such hard gibberish, and stammering out such blundering distinctions, as the auditors perhaps may sometimes gape at, but seldom apprehend: and they take such a liberty in their speaking of Latin, that they scorn to stick at the exactness of syntax or concord; pretending it is below the majesty of a divine to talk like a pedagogue, and be tied to the slavish observance of the rules of grammar. Finally, they take a vast pride, among other citations, to allege the authority of their respective master, which word they bear as profound a respect to as the Jews did to their ineffable tetragrammaton, and therefore they will be sure never to write it any otherwise than in great letters, MAGISTER NOSTER; and if any happen to invert the order of the words, and say, noster magister, instead of magister noster, they will presently exclaim against him as a pestilent heretic and underminer of the catholic faith.

  The next to these are another sort of brainsick fools, who style themselves monks and of religious orders, though they assume both titles very unjustly: for as to the last, they have very little religion in them; and as to the former, the etymology of the word monk implies a solitariness, or being alone; whereas they are so thick abroad that we cannot pass any street or alley without meeting them. Now I cannot imagine what one degree of men would be more hopelessly wretched, if I did not stand their friend, and buoy them up in that lake of misery, which by the engagements of a holy vow they have voluntarily immerged themselves in. But when these sort of men are so unwelcome to others, as that the very sight of them is thought ominous, I yet make them highly in love with themselves, and fond admirers of their own happiness. The first step whereunto they esteem a profound ignorance, thinking carnal knowledge a great enemy to their spiritual welfare, and seem confident of becoming greater proficients in divine mysteries the less they are poisoned with any human learning. They imagine that they bear a sweet consort with the heavenly choir, when they tone out their daily tally of psalms, which they rehearse only by rote, without permitting their understanding or affections to go along with their voice. Among these some make a good profitable trade of beggary, going about from house to house, not like the apostles, to break, but to beg, their bread; nay, thrust into all public-houses, come aboard the passage-boats, get into the travelling waggons, and omit no opportunity of time or place for the craving people’s charity; doing a great deal of injury to common highway beggars by interloping in their traffic of alms. And when they are thus voluntarily poor, destitute, not provided with two coats, nor with any money in their purse, they have the impudence to pretend that they imitate the first disciples, whom their master expressly sent out in such an equipage. It is pretty to observe how they regulate all their actions as it were by weight and measure to so exact a proportion, as if the whole loss of their religion depended upon the omission of the least punctilio. Thus they must be very critical in the precise number of knots to the tying on of their sandals; what distinct colours their respective habits, and what stuff made of; how broad and long their girdles; how big, and in what fashion, their hoods; whether their bald crowns be to a hair’s-breadth of the right cut; how many hours they must sleep, at what minute rise to prayers, &c. And these several customs are altered according to the humours of different persons and places. While they are sworn to the superstitious observance of these trifles, they do not only despise all others, but are very inclinable to fall out among themselves; for though they make profession of an apostolic charity, yet they will pick a quarrel, and be implacably passionate for such poor provocations, as the girting on a coat the wrong way, for the wearing of clothes a little too darkish coloured, or any such nicety not worth the speaking of. Some are so obstinately superstitious that they will wear their upper garment of some coarse dog’s hair stuff, and that next their skin as soft as silk: but others on the contrary will have linen frocks outermost, and their shirts of wool, or hair. Some again will not touch a piece of money, though they make no scruple of the sin of drunkenness, and the lust of the flesh. All their several orders are mindful of nothing more than of their being distinguished from each other by their different customs and habits. They seem indeed not so careful of becoming like Christ, and of being known to be his disciples, as the being unlike to one another, and distinguishable for followers of their several founders. A great part of their religion consists in their title: some will be called cordeliers, and these subdivided into capuchines, minors, minims, and mendicants; some again are styled Benedictines, others of the order of St. Bernard, others of that of St. Bridget; some are Augustin monks, some Willielmites, and others Jacobists, as if the common name of Christian were too mean and vulgar. Most of them place their greatest stress for salvation on a strict conformity to their foppish ceremonies, and a belief of their legendary traditions; wherein they fancy to have acquitted themselves with so much of supererogation, that one heaven can never be a condign reward for their meritorious life; little thinking that the Judge of all the earth at the last day shall put them off, with a who hath required these things at your hands; and call them to account only for the stewardship of his legacy, which was the precept of love and charity. It will be pretty to hear their pleas before the great tribunal: one will brag how he mortified his carnal appetite by feeding only upon fish: another will urge that he spent most of his time on earth in the divine exercise of singing psalms: a third will tell how many days he fasted, and what severe penance he imposed on himself for the bringing his body into subjection: another shall produce in his own behalf as many ceremonies as would load a fleet of merchant-men: a fifth shall plead that in threescore years he never so much as touched a piece of money, except he fingered it through a thick pair of gloves: a sixth, to testify his former humility, shall bring along with him his sacred hood, so old and nasty, that any seaman had rather stand bare headed on the deck, than put it on to defend his ears in the sharpest storms: the next that comes to answer for himself shall plead, that for fifty years together, he had lived like a sponge upon the same place, and was content never to change his homely habitation: another shall whisper softly, and tell the judge he has lost his voice by a continual singing of holy hymns and anthems: the next shall confess how he fell into a lethargy by a strict, reserved, and sedentary life: and the last shall intimate that he has forgot to speak, by having always kept silence, in obedience to the injunction of taking heed lest he should have offended with his tongue. But amidst all their fine excuses our Saviour shall interrupt them with this answer, Woe unto you, scribes and pharisees, hypocrites, verily I know you not; I left you but one precept, of loving one another, which I do not hear any one plead he has faithfully discharged: I told you plainly in my gospel, without any parable, that my father’s kingdom was prepared not for such as should lay claim to it by austerities, prayers, or fastings, but for those who should render themselves worthy of it by the exercise of faith, and the offices of charity: I cannot own such as depend on their own merits without a reliance on my mercy: as many of you therefore as trust to the broken reeds of your own deserts may even go search out a new heaven, for you shall never enter into that, which from the foundations of the world was prepared only for such as are true of heart. When these monks and friars shall meet with such a shameful repulse, and see that ploughmen and mechanics are admitted into that kingdom, from which they themselves are shut out, how sneakingly will they look, and how pitifully slink away? Yet till this last trial they had more comfort of a future happiness, because more hopes of it than any other men. And these persons are not only great in their own eyes, but highly esteemed and respected by others, especially those of the order of mendicants, whom none dare to offer any affront to, because as confessors they are intrusted with all the secrets of particular intrigues, which they are bound by oath not to discover; yet many times, when they are almost drunk, they cannot keep their tongue so far within their head, as not to be babbling out some hints, and shewing themselves so full, that they are in pain to be delivered. If any person give them the least provocation they will sure to be revenged of him, and in their next public harangue give him such shrewd wipes and reflections, that the whole congregation must needs take notice at whom they are levelled; nor will they ever desist from this way of declaiming, till their mouth be stopped with a bribe to hold their tongue. All their preaching is mere stage-playing, and their delivery the very transports of ridicule and drollery. Good Lord! how mimical are their gestures? What heights and falls in their voice? What toning, what bawling, what singing, what squeaking, what grimaces, making of mouths, apes’ faces, and distorting of their countenance; and this art of oratory as a choice mystery, they convey down by tradition to one another. The manner of it I may adventure thus farther to enlarge upon. First, in a kind of mockery they implore the divine assistance, which they borrowed from the solemn custom of the poets: then if their text suppose be of charity, they shall take their exordium as far off as from a description of the river Nile in Egypt; or if they are to discourse of the mystery of the Cross, they shall begin with a story of Bell and the Dragon; or perchance if their subject be of fasting, for an entrance to their sermon they shall pass through the twelve signs of the zodiac; or lastly, if they are to preach of faith, they shall address themselves in a long mathematical account of the quadrature of the circle. I myself once heard a great fool (a great scholar I would have said) undertaking in a laborious discourse to explain the mystery of the Holy Trinity; in the unfolding whereof, that he might shew his wit and reading, and together satisfy itching ears, he proceeded in a new method, as by insisting on the letters, syllables, and proposition, on the concord of noun and verb, and that of noun substantive, and noun adjective; the auditors all wondered, and some mumbled to themselves that hemistitch of Horace,

  
  
  

  Why all this needless trash?

  But at last he brought it thus far, that he could demonstrate the whole Trinity to be represented by these first rudiments of grammar, as clearly and plainly as it was possible for a mathematician to draw a triangle in the sand: and for the making of this grand discovery, this subtle divine had plodded so hard for eight months together, that he studied himself as blind as a beetle, the intenseness of the eye of his understanding overshadowing and extinguishing that of his body; and yet he did not at all repent him of his blindness, but thinks the loss of his sight an easy purchase for the gain of glory and credit.

  I heard at another time a grave divine, of fourscore years of age at least, so sour and hard-favoured, that one would be apt to mistrust that it was Scotus Redivivus; he taking upon him to treat of the mysterious name, JESUS, did very subtly pretend that in the very letters was contained, whatever could be said of it: for first, its being declined only with three cases, did expressly point out the trinity of persons, then that the nominative ended in S, the accusative in M, and the ablative in U, did imply some unspeakable mystery, viz., that in words of those initial letters Christ was the summus, or beginning, the medius, or middle, and the ultimus, or end of all things. There was yet a more abstruse riddle to be explained, which was by dividing the word JESUS into two parts, and separating the S in the middle from the two extreme syllables, making a kind of pentameter, the word consisting of five letters: and this intermedial S being in the Hebrew alphabet called sin, which in the English language signifies what the Latins term peccatum, was urged to imply that the holy Jesus should purify us from all sin and wickedness. Thus did the pulpiteer cant, while all the congregation, especially the brotherhood of divines, were so surprised at his odd way of preaching, that wonder served them, as grief did Niobe, almost turned them into stones. I among the rest (as Horace describes Priapus viewing the enchantments of the two sorceresses, Canidia and Sagane) could no longer contain, but let fly a cracking report of the operation it had upon me. These impertinent introductions are not without reason condemned; for of old, whenever Demosthenes among the Greeks, or Tully among the Latins, began their orations with so great a digression from the matter in hand, it was always looked upon as improper and unelegant, and indeed, were such a long-fetched exordium any token of a good invention, shepherds and ploughmen might lay claim to the title of men of greatest parts, since upon any argument it is easiest for them to talk what is least to the purpose. These preachers think their preamble (as we may well term it), to be the most fashionable, when it is farthest from the subject they propose to treat of, while each auditor sits and wonders what they drive at, and many times mutters out the complaint of Virgil:—

  Whither does all this jargon tend?

  In the third place, when they come to the division of their text, they shall give only a very short touch at the interpretation of the words, when the fuller explication of their sense ought to have been their only province. Fourthly, after they are a little entered, they shall start some theological queries, far enough off from the matter in hand, and bandy it about pro and con till they lose it in the heat of scuffle. And here they shall cite their doctors invincible, subtle, seraphic, cherubic, holy, irrefragable, and such like great names to confirm their several assertions. Then out they bring their syllogisms, their majors, their minors, conclusions, corollaries, suppositions, and distinctions, that will sooner terrify the congregation into an amazement, than persuade them into a conviction. Now comes the fifth act, in which they must exert their utmost skill to come off with applause. Here therefore they fall a telling some sad lamentable story out of their legend, or some other fabulous history, and this they descant upon allegorically, tropologically, and analogically; and so they draw to a conclusion of their discourse, which is a more brain-sick chimera than ever Horace could describe in his De Arte Poetica, when he began:—

  Humano Capiti, &c.

  Their praying is altogether as ridiculous as their preaching; for imagining that in their addresses to heaven they should set out in a low and tremulous voice, as a token of dread and reverence, they begin therefore with such a soft whispering as if they were afraid any one should overhear what they said; but when they are gone a little way, they clear up their pipes by degrees, and at last bawl out so loud as if, with Baal’s priests, they were resolved to awake a sleeping god; and then again, being told by rhetoricians that heights and falls, and a different cadency in pronunciation, is a great advantage to the setting off any thing that is spoken, they will sometimes as it were mutter their words inwardly, and then of a sudden hollo them out, and be sure at last, in such a flat, faltering tone as if their spirits were spent, and they had run themselves out of breath. Lastly, they have read that most systems of rhetoric treat of the art of exciting laughter; therefore for the effecting of this they will sprinkle some jests and puns that must pass for ingenuity, though they are only the froth and folly of affectedness. Sometimes they will nibble at the wit of being satyrical, though their utmost spleen is so toothless, that they suck rather than bite, tickle rather than scratch or wound: nor do they ever flatter more than at such times as they pretend to speak with greatest freedom.

  Finally, all their actions are so buffoonish and mimical, that any would judge they had learned all their tricks of mountebanks and stage-players, who in action it is true may perhaps outdo them, but in oratory there is so little odds between both, that it is hard to determine which seems of longest standing in the schools of eloquence. Yet these preachers, however ridiculous, meet with such hearers, who admire them as much as the people of Athens did Demosthenes, or the citizens of Rome could do Cicero: among which admirers are chiefly shopkeepers, and women, whose approbation and good opinion they only court; because the first, if they are humoured, give them some snacks out of unjust gain; and the last come and ease their grief to them upon all pinching occasions, especially when their husbands are any ways cross or unkind.

  Thus much I suppose may suffice to make you sensible how much these cell-hermits and recluses are indebted to my bounty; who when they tyrannize over the consciences of the deluded laity with fopperies, juggles, and impostures, yet think themselves as eminently pious as St. Paul, St. Anthony, or any other of the saints; but these stage-divines, not less ungrateful disowners of their obligations to folly, than they are impudent pretenders to the profession of piety, I willingly take my leave of, and pass now to kings, princes, and courtiers, who paying me a devout acknowledgment, may justly challenge back the respect of being mentioned and taken notice of by me. And first, had they wisdom enough to make a true judgment of things, they would find their own condition to be more despicable and slavish than that of the most menial subjects. For certainly none can esteem perjury or parricide a cheap purchase for a crown, if he does but seriously reflect on that weight of cares a princely diadem is loaded with. He that sits at the helm of government acts in a public capacity, and so must sacrifice all private interest to the attainment of the common good; he must himself be conformable to those laws his prerogative exacts, or else he can expect no obedience paid them from others; he must have a strict eye over all his inferior magistrates and officers, or otherwise it is to be doubted they will but carelessly discharge their respective duties. Every king, within his own territories, is placed for a shining example as it were in the firmament of his wide-spread dominions, to prove either a glorious star of benign influence, if his behaviour be remarkably just and innocent, or else to impend as a threatening comet, if his blazing power be pestilent and hurtful. Subjects move in a darker sphere, and so their wanderings and failings are less discernible; whereas princes, being fixed in a more exalted orb, and encompassed with a brighter dazzling lustre, their spots are more apparently visible, and their eclipses, or other defects, influential on all that is inferior to them. Kings are baited with so many temptations and opportunities to vice and immorality, such as are high feeding, liberty, flattery, luxury, and the like, that they must stand perpetually on their guard, to fence off those assaults that are always ready to be made upon them. In fine, abating from treachery, hatred, dangers, fear, and a thousand other mischiefs impending on crowned heads, however uncontrollable they are this side heaven, yet after their reign here they must appear before a supremer judge, and there be called to an exact account for the discharge of that great stewardship which was committed to their trust. If princes did but seriously consider (and consider they would if they were but wise) these many hardships of a royal life, they would be so perplexed in the result of their thoughts thereupon, as scarce to eat or sleep in quiet. But now by my assistance they leave all these cares to the gods, and mind only their own ease and pleasure, and therefore will admit none to their attendance but who will divert them with sport and mirth, lest they should otherwise be seized and damped with the surprisal of sober thoughts. They think they have sufficiently acquitted themselves in the duty of governing, if they do but ride constantly a hunting, breed up good race-horses, sell places and offices to those of the courtiers that will give most for them, and find out new ways for invading of their people’s property, and hooking in a larger revenue to their own exchequer; for the procurement whereof they will always have some pretended claim and title; that though it be manifest extortion, yet it may bear the show of law and justice: and then they daub over their oppression with a submissive, flattering carriage, that they may so far insinuate into the affections of the vulgar, as they may not tumult nor rebel, but patiently crouch to burdens and exactions. Let us feign now a person ignorant of the laws and constitutions of that realm he lives in, an enemy to the public good, studious only for his own private interest, addicted wholly to pleasures and delights, a hater of learning, a professed enemy to liberty and truth, careless and unmindful of the common concerns, taking all the measures of justice and honesty from the false beam of self-interest and advantage, after this hang about his neck a gold chain, for an intimation that he ought to have all virtues linked together; then set a crown of gold and jewels on his head, for a token that he ought to overtop and outshine others in all commendable qualifications; next, put into his hand a royal sceptre for a symbol of justice and integrity; lastly, clothe him with purple, for an hieroglyphic of a tender love and affection to the commonwealth. If a prince should look upon this portraiture, and draw a comparison between that and himself, certainly he would be ashamed of his ensigns of majesty, and be afraid of being laughed out of them.

  

  Next to kings themselves may come their courtiers, who, though they are for the most part a base, servile, cringing, low-spirited sort of flatterers, yet they look big, swell great, and have high thoughts of their honour and grandeur. Their confidence appears upon all occasions; yet in this one thing they are very modest, in that they are content to adorn their bodies with gold, jewels, purple, and other glorious ensigns of virtue and wisdom, but leave their minds empty and unfraught; and taking the resemblance of goodness to themselves, turn over the truth and reality of it to others. They think themselves mighty happy in that they can call the king master, and be allowed the familiarity of talking with him; that they can volubly rehearse his several titles of august highness, supereminent excellence, and most serene majesty, that they can boldly usher in any discourse, and that they have the complete knack of insinuation and flattery; for these are the arts that make them truly genteel and noble. If you make a stricter enquiry after their other endowments, you shall find them mere sots and dolts. They will sleep generally till noon, and then their mercenary chaplains shall come to their bed-side, and entertain them perhaps with a short morning prayer. As soon as they are drest they must go to breakfast, and when that is done, immediately to dinner. When the cloth is taken away, then to cards, dice, tables, or some such like diversion. After this they must have one or two afternoon banquets, and so in the evening to supper. When they have supped then begins the game of drinking; the bottles are marshalled, the glasses ranked, and round go the healths and bumpers till they are carried to bed. And this is the constant method of passing away their hours, days, months, years, and ages. I have many times took great satisfaction by standing in the court, and seeing how the tawdry butterflies vie upon one another: the ladies shall measure the height of their humours by the length of their trails, which must be borne up by a page behind. The nobles justle one another to get nearest to the king’s elbow, and wear gold chains of that weight and bigness as require no less strength to carry than they do wealth to purchase.

  

  And now for some reflections upon popes, cardinals, and bishops, who in pomp and splendour have almost equalled if not outgone secular princes. Now if any one consider that their upper crotchet of white linen is to signify their unspotted purity and innocence; that their forked mitres, with both divisions tied together by the same knot, are to denote the joint knowledge of the Old and New Testament; that their always wearing gloves, represents their keeping their hands clean and undefiled from lucre and covetousness; that the pastoral staff implies the care of a flock committed to their charge; that the cross carried before them expresses their victory over all carnal affections; he (I say) that considers this, and much more of the like nature, must needs conclude they are entrusted with a very weighty and difficult office. But alas, they think it sufficient if they can but feed themselves; and as to their flock, either commend them to the care of Christ himself, or commit them to the guidance of some inferior vicars and curates; not so much as remembering what their name of bishop imports, to wit, labour, pains, and diligence, but by base simoniacal contracts, they are in a profane sense Episcopi, i.e., overseers of their own gain and income.

  

  So cardinals, in like manner, if they did but consider that the church supposes them to succeed in the room of the apostles; that therefore they must behave themselves as their predecessors, and so not be lords, but dispensers of spiritual gifts, of the disposal whereof they must one day render a strict account: or if they would but reflect a little on their habit, and thus reason with themselves, what means this white upper garment, but only an unspotted innocence? What signifies my inner purple, but only an ardent love and zeal to God? What imports my outermost pall, so wide and long that it covers the whole mule when I ride, nay, should be big enough to cover a camel, but only a diffusive charity, that should spread itself for a succour and protection to all, by teaching, exhorting, comforting, reproving, admonishing, composing of differences, courageously withstanding wicked princes, and sacrificing for the safety of our flock our life and blood, as well as our wealth and riches; though indeed riches ought not to be at all possessed by such as boast themselves successors to the apostles, who were poor, needy, and destitute: I say, if they did but lay these considerations to heart they would never be so ambitious of being created to this honour, they would willingly resign it when conferred upon them, or at least would be as industrious, watchful and laborious, as the primitive apostles were.

  Now as to the popes of Rome, who pretend themselves Christ’s vicars, if they would but imitate his exemplary life, in the being employed in an unintermitted course of preaching; in the being attended with poverty, nakedness, hunger, and a contempt of this world; if they did but consider the import of the word pope, which signifies a father; or if they did but practice their surname of most holy, what order or degrees of men would be in a worse condition? There would be then no such vigorous making of parties, and buying of votes, in the conclave upon a vacancy of that see: and those who by bribery, or other indirect courses, should get themselves elected, would never secure their sitting firm in the chair by pistol, poison, force, and violence. How much of their pleasure would be abated if they were but endowed with one dram of wisdom? Wisdom, did I say? Nay, with one grain of that salt which our Saviour bid them not lose the savour of. All their riches, all their honour, their jurisdictions, their Peter’s patrimony, their offices, their dispensations, their licences, their indulgences, their long train and attendants (see in how short a compass I have abbreviated all their marketing of religion); in a word, all their perquisites would be forfeited and lost; and in their room would succeed watchings, fastings, tears, prayers, sermons, hard studies, repenting sighs, and a thousand such like severe penalties: nay, what’s yet more deplorable, it would then follow, that all their clerks, amanuenses, notaries, advocates, proctors, secretaries, the offices of grooms, ostlers, serving-men, pimps (and somewhat else, which for modesty’s sake I shall not mention); in short, all these troops of attendants, which depend on his holiness, would all lose their several employments. This indeed would be hard, but what yet remains would be more dreadful: the very Head of the Church, the spiritual prince, would then be brought from all his splendour to the poor equipage of a scrip and staff. But all this is upon the supposition only that they understood what circumstances they are placed in; whereas now, by a wholesome neglect of thinking, they live as well as heart can wish: whatever of toil and drudgery belongs to their office that they assign over to St. Peter, or St. Paul, who have time enough to mind it; but if there be any thing of pleasure and grandeur, that they assume to themselves, as being hereunto called: so that by my influence no sort of people live more to their own ease and content. They think to satisfy that Master they pretend to serve, our Lord and Saviour, with their great state and magnificence, with the ceremonies of instalments, with the titles of reverence and holiness, and with exercising their episcopal function only in blessing and cursing. The working of miracles is old and out-dated; to teach the people is too laborious; to interpret scripture is to invade the prerogative of the schoolmen; to pray is too idle; to shed tears is cowardly and unmanly; to fast is too mean and sordid; to be easy and familiar is beneath the grandeur of him, who, without being sued to and intreated, will scarce give princes the honour of kissing his toe; finally, to die for religion is too self-denying; and to be crucified as their Lord of Life, is base and ignominious. Their only weapons ought to be those of the Spirit; and of these indeed they are mighty liberal, as of their interdicts, their suspensions, their denunciations, their aggravations, their greater and lesser excommunications, and their roaring bulls, that fright whomever they are thundered against; and these most holy fathers never issue them out more frequently than against those, who, at the instigation of the devil, and not having the fear of God before their eyes, do feloniously and maliciously attempt to lessen and impair St. Peter’s patrimony: and though that apostle tells our Saviour in the gospel, in the name of all the other disciples, we have left all, and followed you, yet they challenge as his inheritance, fields, towns, treasures, and large dominions; for the defending whereof, inflamed with a holy zeal, they fight with fire and sword, to the great loss and effusion of Christian blood, thinking they are apostolical maintainers of Christ’s spouse, the church, when they have murdered all such as they call her enemies; though indeed the church has no enemies more bloody and tyrannical than such impious popes, who give dispensations for the not preaching of Christ; evacuate the main effect and design of our redemption by their pecuniary bribes and sales; adulterate the gospel by their forced interpretations, and undermining traditions; and lastly, by their lusts and wickedness grieve the Holy Spirit, and make their Saviour’s wounds to bleed anew. Farther, when the Christian church has been all along first planted, then confirmed, and since established by the blood of her martyrs, as if Christ her head would be wanting in the same methods still of protecting her, they invert the order, and propagate their religion now by arms and violence, which was wont formerly to be done only with patience and sufferings. And though war be so brutish, as that it becomes beasts rather than men; so extravagant, that the poets feigned it an effect of the furies; so licentious, that it stops the course of all justice and honesty, so desperate, that it is best waged by ruffians and banditti, and so unchristian, that it is contrary to the express commands of the gospel; yet maugre all this, peace is too quiet, too inactive, and they must be engaged in the boisterousness of war. Among which undertaking popes, you shall have some so old that they can scarce creep, and yet they will put on a young, brisk resolution, will resolve to stick at no pains, to spare no cost, nor to waive any inconvenience, so they may involve laws, religion, peace, and all other concerns, whether sacred or civil, in unappeasable tumults and distractions. And yet some of their learned fawning courtiers will interpret this notorious madness for zeal, and piety, and fortitude, having found out the way how a man may draw his sword, and sheathe it in his brother’s bowels, and yet not offend against the duty of the second table, whereby we are obliged to love our neighbours as ourselves. It is yet uncertain whether these Romish fathers have taken example from, or given precedent to, such other German bishops, who omitting their ecclesiastical habit, and other ceremonies, appear openly armed cap-a-pie, like so many champions and warriors, thinking no doubt that they come short of the duty of their function, if they die in any other place than the open field, fighting the battles of the Lord. The inferior clergy, deeming it unmannerly not to conform to their patrons and diocesans, devoutly tug and fight for their tithes with syllogisms and arguments, as fiercely as with swords, sticks, stones, or anything that came next to hand. When they read the rabbies, fathers, or other ancient writings, how quick-sighted are they in spying out any sentences, that they may frighten the people with, and make them believe that more than the tenth is due, passing by whatever they meet with in the same authors that minds them of the duty and difficulty of their own office. They never consider that their shaven crown is a token that they should pare off and cut away all the superfluous lusts of this world, and give themselves wholly to divine meditation; but instead of this, our bald-pated priests think they have done enough, if they do but mumble over such a fardel of prayers; which it is a wonder if God should hear or understand, when they whisper them so softly, and in so unknown a language, which they can scarce hear or understand themselves. This they have in common with other mechanics, that they are most subtle in the craft of getting money, and wonderfully skilled in their respective dues of tithes, offerings, perquisites, &c. Thus they are all content to reap the profit, but as to the burden, that they toss as a ball from one hand to another, and assign it over to any they can get or hire: for as secular princes have their judges and subordinate ministers to act in their name, and supply their stead; so ecclesiastical governors have their deputies, vicars, and curates, nay, many times turn over the whole care of religion to the laity. The laity, supposing they have nothing to do with the church (as if their baptismal vow did not initiate them members of it), make it over to the priests; of the priests again, those that are secular, thinking their title implies them to be a little too profane, assign this task over to the regulars, the regulars to the monks, the monks bandy it from one order to another, till it light upon the mendicants; they lay it upon the carthusians, which order alone keeps honesty and piety among them, but really keep them so close that no body ever yet could see them. Thus the Popes thrusting only their sickle into the harvest of profit, leave all the other toil of spiritual husbandry to the bishops, the bishops bestow it upon the pastors, the pastors on their curates, and the curates commit it to the mendicants, who return it again to such as well know how to make good advantage of the flock, by the benefit of their fleece.

  

  But I would not be thought purposely to expose the weaknesses of popes and priests, lest I should seem to recede from my title, and make a satire instead of a panegyric: nor let anyone imagine that I reflect on good princes, by commending of bad ones: I did this only in brief, to shew that there is no one particular person can lead a comfortable life, except he be entered of my society, and retain me for his friend. Nor indeed can it be otherwise, since fortune, that empress of the world, is so much in league and amity with me, that to wise men she is always stingy, and sparing of her gifts, but is profusely liberal and lavish to fools. Thus Timotheus, the Athenian commander, in all his expeditions, was a mirror of good luck, because he was a little underwitted; from him was occasioned the Grecian proverb, Ἢ εὕδοντος κύρτος ἁιρει, The net fills, though the fisherman sleeps; there is also another favourable proverb, γλαὺξ ἵπταται, The owl flies, an omen of success. But against wise men are pointed these ill-aboding proverbs, Ἐν τετράδι γεννηθέντας, Born under a bad planet; equum habet seianum, He cannot ride the forehorse; aurum tholosanum, Ill-gotten goods will never prosper; and more to the same purpose. But I forbear from any farther proverbializing, lest I should be thought to have rifled my Erasmus’s adages. To return, therefore, fortune we find still favouring the blunt, and flushing the forward; strokes and smoothes up fools, crowning all their undertakings with success; but wisdom makes her followers bashful, sneaking, and timorous, and therefore you see that they are commonly reduced to hard shifts, must grapple with poverty, cold and hunger, must lie recluse, despised, and unregarded, while fools roll in money, are advanced to dignities and offices, and in a word, have the whole world at command. If any one think it happy to be a favourite at court, and to manage the disposal of places and preferments, alas, this happiness is so far from being attainable by wisdom, that the very suspicion of it would put a stop to all advancement. Has any man a mind to raise himself a good estate? Alas what dealer in the world would ever get a farthing, if he be so wise as to scruple at perjury, blush at a lie, or stick at any fraud and over-reaching.

  

  Farther, does any one appear a candidate for any ecclesiastical dignity? Why, an ass, or a plough-jobber, shall sooner gain it than a wise man. Again, are you in love with any handsome lady? Alas, women-kind are so addicted to folly, that they will not at all listen to the courtship of a wise suitor. Finally, wherever there is any preparation made for mirth and jollity, all wise men are sure to be excluded the company, lest they should stint the joy, and damp the frolic. In a word, to what side soever we turn ourselves, to popes, princes, judges, magistrates, friends, enemies, rich or poor, all their concerns are managed by money, which because it is undervalued by wise men, therefore, in revenge to be sure, it never comes at them.

  

  But now, though my praise and commendation might well be endless, yet it is requisite I should put some period to my speech. I’ll therefore draw toward an end, when I have first confirmed what I have said by the authority of several authors. Which by way of farther proof I shall insist upon, partly, that I may not be thought to have said more in my own behalf than what will be justified by others; and partly, that the lawyers may not check me for citing no precedents nor allegations. To imitate them therefore I will produce some reports and authorities, though perhaps like theirs too, they are nothing to the purpose.

  First then, it is confessed almost to a proverb, that the art of dissembling is a very necessary accomplishment; and therefore it is a common verse among school-boys:—

  • To feign the fool when fit occasions rise,
  • Argues the being more completely wise.

  It is easy therefore to collect how great a value ought to be put upon real folly, when the very shadow, and bare imitation of it, is so much esteemed. Horace, who in his epistles thus styles himself:—

  • My sleek-skinn’d corpse as smooth as if I lie
  • ’Mong th’ fatted swine of Epicurus’s sty.

  This poet (I say) gives this advice in one of his odes:—

  Short Folly with your counsels mix.

  The epithet of short, it is true, is a little improper. The same poet again has this passage elsewhere:—

  Well-timed Folly has a sweet relish.

  And in another place:—

  • I’d rather much be censured for a fool,
  • Than feel the lash and smart of wisdom’s school.

  Homer praises Telemachus as much as any one of his heroes, and yet he gives him the epithet of Νηπιος, Silly: and the Grecians generally use the same word to express children, as a token of their innocence. And what is the argument of all Homer’s Iliads, but only, as Horace observes:—

  They kings and subjects dotages contain?

  How positive also is Tully’s commendation that all places are filled with fools? Now every excellence being to be measured by its extent, the goodness of folly must be of as large compass as those universal places she reaches to. But perhaps christians may slight the authority of a heathen. I could therefore, if I pleased, back and confirm the truth hereof by the citations of several texts of scripture; though herein it were perhaps my duty to beg leave of the divines, that I might so far intrench upon their prerogative. Supposing a grant, the task seems so difficult as to require the invocation of some aid and assistance; yet because it is unreasonable to put the muses to the trouble and expense of so tedious a journey, especially since the business is out of their sphere, I shall choose rather (while I am acting the divine, and venturing in their polemic difficulties), to wish myself for such time animated with Scotus, his bristling and prickly soul, which I would not care how afterwards it returned to his body, though for refinement it were stopped at a purgatory by the way. I cannot but wish that I might wholly change my character, or at least that some grave divine, in my stead, might rehearse this part of the subject for me; for truly I suspect that somebody will accuse me of plundering the closets of those reverend men, while I pretend to so much divinity, as must appear in my following discourse. Yet however, it may not seem strange, that after so long and frequent a converse, I have gleaned some scraps from the divines; since Horace’s wooden god by hearing his master read Homer, learned some words of Greek; and Lucian’s cock, by long attention, could readily understand what any man spoke. But now to the purpose, wishing myself success.

  Ecclesiastes doth somewhere confess that there are an infinite number of fools. Now when he speaks of an infinite number, what does he else but imply, that herein is included the whole race of mankind, except some very few, which I know not whether ever any one had yet the happiness to see?

  

  The prophet Jeremiah speaks yet more plainly in his tenth chapter, where he saith, that Every man is brutish in his knowledge. He just before attributes wisdom to God alone, saying, that the Wise men of the nations are altogether brutish and foolish. And in the preceding chapter he gives this seasonable caution, Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom: the reason is obvious, because no man hath truly any whereof to glory. But to return to Ecclesiastes, when he saith, Vanity of vanities, all is vanity, what else can we imagine his meaning to be, than that our whole life is nothing but one continued interlude of Folly? This confirms that assertion of Tully, which is delivered in that noted passage we but just now mentioned, namely, that All places swarm with fools. Farther, what does the son of Sirach mean when he saith in Ecclesiasticus, that the Fool is changed as the moon, while the Wise man is fixed as the sun, than only to hint out the folly of all mankind; and that the name of wise is due to no other but the all-wise God? for all interpreters by Moon understand mankind, and by Sun that fountain of all light, the Almighty. The same sense is implied in that saying of our Saviour in the gospel, There is none good but one, that is God: for if whoever is not wise must be consequently a fool, and if, according to the Stoics, every man be wise so far only as he is good, the meaning of the text must be, all mortals are unavoidably fools; and there is none wise but one, that is God. Solomon also in the fifteenth chapter of his proverbs hath this expression, Folly is joy to him that is destitute of wisdom; plainly intimating, that the wise man is attended with grief and vexation, while the foolish only roll in delight and pleasure. To the same purpose is that saying of his in the first chapter of Ecclesiastes, In much wisdom is much grief; and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow. Again, it is confessed by the same preacher in the seventh chapter of the same book, That the heart of the wise is in the house of mourning, but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth. This author himself had never attained to such a portion of wisdom, if he had not applied himself to a searching out the frailties and infirmities of human nature; as, if you believe not me, may appear from his own words in his first chapter, I gave my heart toknow wisdom, and to know madness and folly; where it is worthy to be observed that as to the order of words, Folly for its advantage is put in the last place. Thus Ecclesiastes wrote, and thus indeed did an ecclesiastical method require; namely, that what has the precedence in dignity should come hindmost in rank and order, according to the tenor of that evangelical precept, The last shall be first, and the first shall be last. And in Ecclesiasticus likewise (whoever was author of the holy book which bears that name) in the forty-fourth chapter, the excellency of folly above wisdom is positively acknowledged; the very words I shall not cite, till I have the advantage of an answer to a question I am proposing, this way of interrogating being frequently made use of by Plato in his dialogues between Socrates, and other disputants: I ask you then, what is it we usually hoard and lock up, things of greater esteem and value, or those which are more common, trite, and despicable? Why are you so backward in making an answer? Since you are so shy and reserved, I’ll take the Greek proverb for a satisfactory reply; namely, τὴν ἐπὶ θύραις ὑδρίαν, Foul water is thrown down the sink; which saying, that no person may slight it, may be convenient to advertise that it comes from no meaner an author than that oracle of truth, Aristotle himself. And indeed there is no one on this side Bedlam so mad as to throw out upon the dunghill his gold and jewels, but rather all persons have a close repository to preserve them in, and secure them under all the locks, bolts, and bars, that either art can contrive, or fears suggest: whereas the dirt, pebbles, and oyster-shells, that lie scattered in the streets, ye trample upon, pass by, and take no notice of. If then what is more valuable be coffered up, and what less so lies unregarded, it follows, that accordingly Folly should meet with a greater esteem than wisdom, because that wise author advises us to the keeping close and concealing the first, and exposing or laying open the other: as take him now in his own words, Better is he that hideth his folly than him that hideth his wisdom. Beside, the sacred text does oft ascribe innocence and sincerity to fools, while the wise man is apt to be a haughty scorner of all such as he thinks or censures to have less wit than himself: for so I understand that passage in the tenth chapter of Ecclesiastes, When he that is a fool walketh by the way, his wisdom faileth him, and he saith to every one that he is a fool. Now what greater argument of candour or ingenuity can there be, than to demean himself equal with all others, and not think their deserts any way inferior to his own. Folly is no such scandalous attribute, but that the wise Agur was not ashamed to confess it, in the thirtieth chapter of Proverbs: Surely I am more brutish than any man, and have not the understanding of a man. Nay, St. Paul himself, that great doctor of the Gentiles, writing to his Corinthians, readily owns the name, saying, If any man speak as a fool, I am more; as if to have been less so had been a reproach and disgrace. But perhaps I may be censured for mis-interpreting this text by some modern annotators, who like crows pecking at one another’s eyes, find fault, and correct all that went before them, pretend each their own glosses to contain the only true and genuine explication; among whom my Erasmus (whom I cannot but mention with respect) may challenge the second place, if not the precedency. This citation (say they) is purely impertinent; the meaning of the apostle is far different from what you dream of: he would not have these words so understood, as if he desired to be thought a greater fool than the rest, but only when he had before said, Are they ministers of Christ? so am I: as if the equalling himself herein to others had been too little, he adds, I am more, thinking a bare equality not enough, unless he were even superior to those he compares himself with. This he would have to be believed as true; yet lest it might be thought offensive, as bordering too much on arrogance and conceit, he tempers and alleviates it by the covert of Folly. I speak (says he) as a fool, knowing it to be the peculiar privilege of fools to speak the truth, without giving offence. But what St. Paul’s thoughts were when he wrote this, I leave for them to determine. In my own judgment at least I prefer the opinion of the good old tun-bellied divines, with whom it’s safer and more creditable to err, than to be in the right with smattering, raw, novices.

  

  Nor indeed should any one mind the late critics any more than the senseless chattering of a daw: especially since one of the most eminent of them (whose name I advisedly conceal, lest some of our wits should be taunting him with the Greek proverb, Ὄνος πρὸς λύραν, ad lyram asinus) magisterially and dogmatically descanting upon his text [are they the ministers of Christ? (I speak as a fool) I am more] makes a distinct chapter, and (which without good store of logic he could never have done) adds a new section, and then gives this paraphrase, which I shall verbatim recite, that you may have his words materially, as well as formally his sense (for that’s one of their babbling distinctions). [I speak as a fool] that is, if the equalling myself to those false apostles would have been construed as the vaunt of a fool, I will willingly be accounted a greater fool, by taking place of them, and openly pleading, that as to their ministry, I not only come up even with them, but outstrip and go beyond them: though this same commentator a little after, as it were forgetting what he had just before delivered, tacks about and shifts to another interpretation.

  

  But why do I insist upon any one particular example, when in general it is the public charter of all divines, to mould and bend the sacred oracles till they comply with their own fancy, spreading them (as Heaven by its Creator) like a curtain, closing together, or drawing them back, as they please? Thus indeed St. Paul himself minces and mangles some citations he makes use of, and seems to wrest them to a different sense from what they were first intended for, as is confessed by the great linguist, St. Hierom. Thus when that apostle saw at Athens the inscription of an altar, he draws from it an argument for the proof of the christian religion; but leaving out great part of the sentence, which perhaps if fully recited might have prejudiced his cause, he mentions only the two last words viz., To the unknown God; and this too not without alteration, for the whole inscription runs thus: To the Gods of Asia, Europe, and Africa, to all foreign and unknown Gods.

  ’Tis an imitation of the same pattern, I will warrant you, that our young divines, by leaving out four or five words in a place, and putting a false construction on the rest, can make any passage serviceable to their own purpose; though from the coherence of what went before, or follows after, the genuine meaning appears to be either wide enough, or perhaps quite contradictory to what they would thrust and impose upon it. In which knack the divines are grown now so expert, that the lawyers themselves begin to be jealous of an encroachment upon what was formerly their sole privilege and practice. And indeed what can they despair of proving, since the fore-mentioned commentator (I had almost blundered out his name, but that I am restrained by fear of the same Greek proverbial sarcasm) did upon a text of St. Luke put an interpretation, no more agreeable to the meaning of the place, than one contrary quality is to another? The passage is this, when Judas’s treachery was preparing to be executed, and accordingly it seemed requisite that all the disciples should be provided to guard and secure their assaulted master, our Saviour, that he might piously caution them against reliance for his delivery on any worldly strength, asks them, whether in all their embassy they lacked anything, when he had sent them out so unfurnished for the performance of a long journey, that they had not so much as shoes to defend their feet from the injuries of flints and thorns, or a scrip to carry a meal’s meat in; and when they had answered that they lacked nothing, he adds, But now he that hath a purse let him take it, and likewise a scrip; and he that hath no sword let him sell his garment, and buy one. Now when the whole doctrine of our Saviour inculcates nothing more frequently than meekness, patience, and a contempt of this world, is it not plain what the meaning of the place is? Namely, that he might now dismiss his ambassadors in a more naked, defenceless condition, he does not only advise them to take no thought for shoes or scrip, but even commands them to part with the very clothes from their back, that so they might have the less incumbrance and entanglement in the going through their office and function. He cautions them, it is true, to be furnished with a sword, yet not such a carnal one as rogues and highwaymen make use of for murder and bloodshed, but with the sword of the Spirit, which pierces through the heart, and searches out the innermost retirements of the soul, lopping off all our lust, and corrupt affections, and leaving nothing in possession of our breast but piety, zeal, and devotion: this (I say) in my opinion is the most natural interpretation. But see how that divine misunderstands the place; by sword (says he) is meant, defence against persecution; by scrip, or purse, a sufficient quantity of provision; as if Christ had, by considering better of it, changed his mind in reference to that mean equipage, which he had before sent his disciples in, and therefore came now to a recantation of what he had formerly instituted: or as if he had forgot what in time past he had told them, Blessed are you when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and say all manner of evil against you for my sake. Render not evil for evil, for blessed are the meek, not the cruel: as if he had forgot that he encouraged them by the examples of sparrows and lilies to take no thought for the morrow; he gives them now another lesson, and charges them, rather than go without a sword, to sell their garment, and buy one; as if the going cold and naked were more excusable than the marching unarmed. And as this author thinks all means which are requisite for the prevention or retaliation of injuries to be implied under the name of sword, so under that of scrip, he would have everything to be comprehended, which either the necessity or conveniency of life requires.

  

  Thus does this provident commentator furnish out the disciples with halberts, spears, and guns, for the enterprise of preaching Christ crucified; he supplies them at the same time with pockets, bags, and portmanteaus, that they might carry their cupboards as well as their bellies always about them: he takes no notice how our Saviour afterwards rebukes Peter for drawing that sword which he had just before so strictly charged him to buy; nor that it is ever recorded that the primitive Christians did by no ways withstand their heathen persecutors otherwise than with tears and prayers, which they would have exchanged more effectually for swords and bucklers, if they had thought this text would have borne them out.

  There is another, and he of no mean credit, whom for respect to his person I shall forbear to name, who commenting upon that verse in the prophet Habakkuk (I saw the tents of Cushan in affliction, and the curtains of the land of Midian did tremble), because tents were sometimes made of skins, he pretended that the word tents did here signify the skin of St. Bartholomew, who was flayed for a martyr.

  I myself was lately at a divinity disputation (where I very often pay my attendance), where one of the opponents demanded a reason why it should be thought more proper to silence all heretics by sword and faggot, rather than convert them by moderate and sober arguments? A certain cynical old blade, who bore the character of a divine, legible in the frowns and wrinkles of his face, not without a great deal of disdain answered, that it was the express injunction of St. Paul himself, in those directions to Titus (A man that is an heretic, after the first and second admonition, reject), quoting it in Latin, where the word reject is devita, while all the auditory wondered at this citation, and deemed it no way applicable to his purpose; he at last explained himself, saying, that devita signified de vita tollendum hereticum, a heretic must be slain. Some smiled at his ignorance, but others approved of it as an orthodox comment. And however some disliked that such violence should be done to so easy a text, our hair-splitting and irrefragable doctor went on in triumph. To prove it yet (says he) more undeniably, it is commanded in the old law [Thoushalt not suffer a witch to live]: now then every Maleficus, or witch, is to be killed, but an heretic is Maleficus, which in the Latin translation is put for a witch, ergo, &c. All that were present wondered at the ingenuity of the person, and very devoutly embraced his opinion, never dreaming that the law was restrained only to magicians, sorcerers, and enchanters: for otherwise, if the word Maleficus signified what it most naturally implies, every evil-doer, then drunkenness and whoredom were to meet with the same capital punishment as witchcraft. But why should I squander away my time in a too tedious prosecution of this topic, which if drove on to the utmost would afford talk to eternity? I aim herein at no more than this, namely, that since those grave doctors take such a swinging range and latitude, I, who am but a smattering novice in divinity, may have the larger allowance for any slips or mistakes.

  Now therefore I return to St. Paul, who uses these expressions [Ye suffer fools gladly], applying it to himself; and again [As a fool receive me], and [That which I speak, I speak not after the Lord, but as it were foolishly]; and in another place [We are fools for Christ’s sake]. See how these commendations of Folly are equal to the author of them, both great and sacred. The same holy person does yet enjoin and command the being a fool, as a virtue of all others most requisite and necessary: for, says he [If any man seem to be wise in this world, let him become a fool, that he may be wise]. Thus St. Luke records, how our Saviour, after his resurrection, joining himself with two of his disciples travelling to Emmaus, at his first salutation he calls them fools, saying [O fools, and slow of heart to believe]. Nor may this seem strange in comparison to what is yet farther delivered by St. Paul, who adventures to attribute something of Folly even to the all-wise God himself [The foolishness of God (says he) is wiser than men]; in which text St. Origen would not have the word foolishness any way referred to men, or applicable to the same sense, wherein is to be understood that other passage of St. Paul [The preaching of the cross to them that perish, foolishness]. But why do I put myself to the trouble of citing so many proofs, since this one may suffice for all, namely, that in those mystical psalms wherein David represents the type of Christ, it is there acknowledged by our Saviour, in way of confession, that even he himself was guilty of Folly; Thou (says he) O God knowest my foolishness? Nor is it without some reason that fools for their plainness and sincerity of heart have always been most acceptable to God Almighty. For as the princes of this world have shrewdly suspected, and carried a jealous eye over such of their subjects as were the most observant, and deepest politicians (for thus Cæsar was afraid of the plodding Cassius, and Brutus, thinking himself secure enough from the careless drinking Anthony; Nero likewise mistrusted Seneca, and Dionysius would have been willingly rid of Plato), whereas they can all put greater confidence in such as are of less subtlety and contrivance. So our Saviour in like manner dislikes and condemns the wise and crafty, as St. Paul does expressly declare in these words, God hath chosen the foolish things of the world; and again, it pleased God by foolishness to save the world; implying that by wisdom it could never have been saved. Nay, God himself testifies as much when he speaks by the mouth of his prophet, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and bring to nought the understanding of the learned. Again, our Saviour does solemnly return his Father thanks for that he had hidden the mysteries of salvation from the wise, and revealed them to babes, i.e., to fools; for the original word νηπίοις, being opposed to σοϕοɩ̂ς, if one signify wise, the other must foolish. To the same purpose did our blessed Lord frequently condemn and upbraid the scribes, pharisees, and lawyers, while he carries himself kind and obliging to the unlearned multitude: for what otherwise can be the meaning of that tart denunciation, Woe unto you scribes and pharisees, than woe unto you wise men, whereas he seems chiefly delighted with children, women, and illiterate fishermen.

  

  We may farther take notice, that among all the several kinds of brute creatures he shews greatest liking to such as are farthest distant from the subtlety of the fox. Thus in his progress to Jerusalem he chose to ride sitting upon an ass, though, if he pleased, he might have mounted the back of a lion with more of state, and as little of danger. The Holy Spirit chose rather likewise to descend from heaven in the shape of a simple gall-less dove, than that of an eagle, kite, or other more lofty fowl.

  Thus all along in the holy scriptures there are frequent metaphors and similitudes of the most inoffensive creatures, such as stags, hinds, lambs, and the like. Nay, those blessed souls that in the day of judgment are to be placed at our Saviour’s right hand are called sheep, which are the most senseless and stupid of all cattle, as is evidenced by Aristotle’s Greek proverb, προβάτων ἤθος, a sheepishness of temper, i.e., a dull, blockish, sleepy, unmanly humour. Yet of such a flock Christ is not ashamed to profess himself the shepherd. Nay, he would not only have all his proselytes termed sheep, but even he himself would be called a lamb; as when John the Baptist seeth Jesus coming unto him, he saith, Behold the Lamb of God; which same title is very often given to our Saviour in the apocalypse.

  All this amounts to no less than that all mortal men are fools, even the righteous and godly as well as sinners; nay, in some sense our blessed Lord himself, who, although he was thewisdom of the Father, yet to repair the infirmities of fallen man, he became in some measure a partaker of human Folly, when he took our nature upon him, and was found in fashion as a man; or when God made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him. Nor would he heal those breaches our sins had made by any other method than by the foolishness of the cross, published by the ignorant and unlearned apostles, to whom he frequently recommends the excellence of Folly, cautioning them against the infectiousness of wisdom, by the several examples he proposes them to imitate, such as children, lilies, sparrows, mustard, and such like beings, which are either wholly inanimate, or at least devoid of reason and ingenuity, guided by no other conduct than that of instinct, without care, trouble, or contrivance. To the same intent the disciples were warned by their lord and master, that when they should be brought unto the synagogues, and unto magistrates and powers, they shall take no thought how, or what thing they should answer, nor what they should say: they were again strictly forbid to enquireinto the times and seasons, or to place any confidence in their own abilities, but to depend wholly upon divine assistance.

  At the first peopling of paradise the Almighty had never laid so strict a charge on our father Adam to refrain from eating of the tree of knowledge except he had thereby forewarned that the taste of knowledge would be the bane of all happiness. St. Paul says expressly, that knowledge puffeth up, i.e., it is fatal and poisonous. In pursuance whereunto St. Bernard interprets that exceeding high mountain whereon the devil had erected his seat to have been the mountain of knowledge. And perhaps this may be another argument which ought not to be omitted, namely, that Folly is acceptable, at least excusable, with the gods, inasmuch, as they easily pass by the heedless failures of fools, while the miscarriages of such as are known to have more wit shall very hardly obtain a pardon; nay, when a wise man comes to sue for an acquitment from any guilt, he must shroud himself under the patronage and pretext of Folly. For thus in the twelfth of Numbers Aaron entreats Moses to stay the leprosy of his sister Miriam, saying, alas, my Lord,I beseech thee lay not the sin upon us, wherein we have done foolishly. Thus, when David spared Saul’s life, when he found him sleeping in a tent of Hachilah, not willing to stretch forth his hand against the Lord’s anointed, Saul excuses his former severity by confessing, Behold, I have played the fool, and have erred exceedingly. David also himself in much the same form begs the remission of his sin from God Almighty with this prayer, Lord, I pray thee take away the iniquity of thy servant, for I have done very foolishly; as if he could not have hoped otherwise to have his pardon granted except he petitioned for it under the covert and mitigation of Folly. The agreeable practice of our Saviour is yet more convincing, who, when he hung upon the cross, prayed for his enemies, saying, Father, forgive them, urging no other plea in their behalf than that of their ignorance, for they know not what they do. To the same effect St. Paul in his first epistle to Timothy acknowledges he had been a blasphemer and a persecutor, But (saith he) I obtained mercy, because I did it ignorantly in unbelief. Now what is the meaning of the phrase [I did it ignorantly] but only this? My fault was occasioned from a misinformed Folly, not from a deliberate malice. What signifies [I obtained mercy] but only that I should not otherwise have obtained it had not folly and ignorance been my vindication? To the same purpose is that other passage in the mysterious Psalmist, which I forgot to mention in its proper place, namely, Oh remember not the sins and offences of my youth! the word which we render offences, is in Latin ignorantias, ignorances. Observe, the two things he alleges in his excuse are, first, his rawness of age, to which Folly and want of experience are constant attendants: and secondly, his ignorances, expressed in the plural number for an enhancement and aggravation of his foolishness.

  

  But that I may not wear out this subject too far, to draw now towards a conclusion, it is observable that the christian religion seems to have some relation to Folly, and no alliance at all with wisdom. Of the truth whereof, if you desire farther proof than my bare word you may please, first, to consider, that children, women, old men, and fools, led as it were by a secret impulse of nature, are always most constant in repairing to church, and most zealous, devout and attentive in the performance of the several parts of divine service; nay, the first promulgators of the gospel, and the first converts to christianity, were men of plainness and simplicity, wholly unacquainted with secular policy or learning.

  Farther, there are none more silly, or nearer their wits’ end, than those who are too superstitiously religious: they are profusely lavish in their charity; they invite fresh affronts by an easy forgiveness of past injuries; they suffer themselves to be cheated and imposed upon by laying claim to the innocence of the dove; they make it the interest of no person to oblige them, because they will love, and do good to their enemies, as much as to the most endearing friends; they banish all pleasure, feeding upon the penance of watching, weeping, fasting, sorrow and reproach; they value not their lives, but with St. Paul, wish to be dissolved, and covet the fiery trial of martyrdom: in a word, they seem altogether so destitute of common sense, that their soul seems already separated from the dead and inactive body. And what else can we imagine all this to be than downright madness? It is the less strange therefore that at the feast of Pentecost the apostles should be thought drunk with new wine; or that St. Paul was censured by Festus to have been beside himself.

  And since I have had the confidence to go thus far, I shall venture yet a little forwarder, and be so bold as to say thus much more: all that final happiness, which christians, through so many rubs and briars of difficulties, contend for, is at last no better than a sort of folly and madness. This, no question, will be thought extravagantly spoke; but consider awhile, and deliberately state the case.

  First, then, the christians so far agree with the Platonists as to believe that the body is no better than a prison or dungeon for the confinement of the soul. That therefore, while the soul is shackled to the walls of flesh, her soaring wings are impeded, and all her enlivening faculties clogged and fettered by the gross particles of matter, so that she can neither freely range after, nor, when happily overtook, can quietly contemplate her proper object of truth.

  

  Farther, Plato defines philosophy to be the meditation of death, because the one performs the same office with the other; namely, withdraws the mind from all visible and corporeal objects; therefore while the soul does patiently actuate the several organs and members of the body, so long is a man accounted of a good and sound disposition; but when the soul, weary of her confinement, struggles to break jail, and fly beyond her cage of flesh and blood, then a man is censured at least for being magotty and crackbrained; nay, if there be any defect in the external organs it is then termed downright madness. And yet many times persons thus affected shall have prophetic ecstacies of foretelling things to come, shall in a rapture talk languages they never before learned, and seem in all things actuated by somewhat divine and extraordinary; and all this, no doubt, is only the effect of the soul’s being more released from its engagement to the body, whereby it can with less impediment exert the energy of life and motion. From hence, no question, has sprung an observation of like nature, confirmed now into a settled opinion, that some long experienced souls in the world,before their dislodging, arrive to the height of prophetic spirits.

  If this disorder arise from an intemperance in religion, and too high a strain of devotion, though it be of a somewhat differing sort, yet it is so near akin to the former, that a great part of mankind apprehend it as a mere madness; especially when persons of that superstitious humour are so pragmatical and singular as to separate and live apart as it were from all the world beside: so as they seem to have experienced what Plato dreams to have happened between some, who, enclosed in a dark cave, did only ruminate on the ideas and abstracted speculations of entities; and one other of their company, who had got abroad into the open light, and at his return tells them what a blind mistake they had lain under; that he had seen the substance of what their dotage of imagination reached only in shadow; that therefore he could not but pity and condole their deluding dreams, while they on the other side no less bewail his frenzy, and turn him out of their society for a lunatic and madman.

  Thus the vulgar are wholly taken up with those objects that are most familiar to their senses, beyond which they are apt to think all is but fairy-land; while those that are devoutly religious scorn to set their thoughts or affections on any things below, but mount their soul to the pursuit of incorporeal and invisible beings. The former, in their marshalling the requisites of happiness, place riches in the front, the endowments of the body in the next rank, and leave the accomplishments of the soul to bring up the rear; nay, some will scarce believe there is any such thing at all as the soul, because they cannot literally see a reason of their faith; while the other pay their first fruits of service to that most simple and incomprehensible Being, God, employ themselves next in providing for the happiness of that which comes nearest to their immortal soul, being not at all mindful of their corrupt bodily carcases, and slighting money as the dirt and rubbish of the world; or if at any time some urging occasions require them to become entangled in secular affairs, they do it with regret, and a kind of ill-will, observing what St. Paul advises his Corinthians, having wives, and yet being as though they had none; buying, and yet remaining as though they possessed not.

  There are between these two sorts of persons many differences in several other respects. As first, though all the senses have the same mutual relation to the body, yet some are more gross than others; as those five corporeal ones, of touching, hearing, smelling, seeing, tasting, whereas some again are more refined, and less adulterated with matter; such are the memory, the understanding, and the will. Now the mind will be always most ready and expedite at that to which it is naturally most inclined. Hence is it that a pious soul, employing all its power and abilities in the pressing after such things as are farthest removed from sense, is perfectly stupid and brutish in the management of any worldly affairs; while on the other side, the vulgar are so intent upon their business and employment, that they have not time to bestow one poor thought upon a future eternity. From such ardour of divine meditation was it that Saint Bernard in his study drank oil instead of wine, and yet his thoughts were so taken up that he never observed the mistake.

  Farther, among the passions of the soul, some have a greater communication with the body than others; as lust, the desire of meat and sleep, anger, pride, and envy; with these the pious man is in continual war, and irreconcileable enmity, while the vulgar cherish and foment them as the best comforts of life.

  There are other affections of a middle nature, common and innate to every man; such are love to one’s country, duty to parents, love to children, kindness to friends, and such like; to these the vulgar pay some respect, but the religious endeavour to supplant and eradicate from their soul, except they can raise and sublimate them to the most refined pitch of virtue; so as to love or honour their parents, not barely under that character (for what did they do more than generate a body? nay, even for that we are primarily beholden to God, the first parent of all mankind), but as good men only, upon whom is imprinted the lively image of that divine nature, which they esteem as the chief and only good, beyond whom nothing deserves to be beloved, nothing desired.

  By the same rule they measure all the other offices or duties of life; in each of which, whatever is earthly and corporeal, shall, if not wholly rejected, yet at least be put behind what faith makes the substance of things not seen. Thus in the sacraments, and all other acts of religion, they make a difference between the outward appearance or body of them, and the more inward soul or spirit. As to instance, in fasting, they think it very ineffectual to abstain from flesh, or debar themselves of a meal’s meat (which yet is all the vulgar understand by his duty), unless they likewise restrain their passions, subdue their anger, and mortify their pride; that the soul being thus disengaged from the entanglement of the body, may have a better relish to spiritual objects, and take an antepast of heaven. Thus (say they) in the holy Eucharist, though the outward form and ceremonies are not wholly to be despised, yet are these prejudicial, at least unprofitable, if as bare signs only they are not accompanied with the thing signified, which is the body and blood of Christ, whose death, till his second coming, we are hereby to represent by the vanquishing and burying our vile affections that they may arise to a newsness of life, and be united first to each other, then all to Christ.

  These are the actions and meditations of the truly pious person: while the vulgar place all their religion in crowding up close to the altar, in listening to the words of the priest, and in being very circumspect at the observance of each trifling ceremony. Nor is it in such cases only as we have here given for instances, but through his whole course of life, that the pious man, without any regard to the baser materials of the body, spends himself wholly in a fixed intentness upon spiritual, invisible, and eternal objects.

  Now since these persons stand off, and keep at so wide a distance between themselves, it is customary for them both to think each other mad: and were I to give my opinion to which of the two the name does most properly belong, I should, I confess, adjudge it to the religious; of the reasonableness whereof you may be farther convinced if I proceed to demonstrate what I formerly hinted at, namely, that that ultimate happiness which religion proposes is no other than some sort of madness.

  First, therefore, Plato dreamed somewhat of this nature when he tells us that the madness of lovers was of all other dispositions of the body most desirable; for he who is once thoroughly smitten with this passion, lives no longer within himself, but has removed his soul to the same place where he has settled his affections, and loses himself to find the object he so much dotes upon: this straying now, and wandering of a soul from its own mansion, what is it better than a plain transport of madness? What else can be the meaning of those proverbial phrases, non est apud se, he is not himself; ad te redi, recover yourself; and sibi redditus est, he is come again to himself? And accordingly as love is more hot and eager, so is the madness thence ensuing more incurable, and yet more happy. Now what shall be that future happiness of glorified saints, which pious souls here on earth so earnestly groan for, but only that the spirit, as the more potent and prevalent victor, shall over-master and swallow up the body; and that the more easily, because while here below, the several members, by being mortified, and kept in subjection, were the better prepared for this separating change; and afterward the spirit itself shall be lost, and drowned in the abyss of beatific vision, so as the whole man will be then perfectly beyond all its own bounds, and be no otherwise happy than as transported into ecstasy and wonder, it feels some unspeakable influence from that omnipotent Being, which makes all things completely blessed, by assimilating them to his own likeness. Now although this happiness be then only consummated, when souls at the general resurrection shall be re-united to their bodies, and both be clothed with immortality; yet because a religious life is but a continued meditation upon, and as it were a transcript of the joys of heaven, therefore to such persons there is allowed some relish and foretaste of that pleasure here, which is to be their reward hereafter. And although this indeed be but a small pittance of satisfaction compared with that future inexhaustible fountain of blessedness, yet does it abundantly over-balance all worldly delights, were they all in conjunction set off to their best advantage; so great is the precedency of spiritual things before corporeal, of invisible before material and visible. This is what the apostle gives an eloquent description of, where he says by way of encouragement, that eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor hath it entered into the heart of man to conceive those things which God hath prepared for them that love him. This likewise is that better part which Mary chose, which shall not be taken from her, but perfected and completed by her mortal putting on immortality.

  Now those who are thus devoutly affected (though few there are so), undergo somewhat of strange alteration, which very nearly approaches to madness; they speak many things at an abrupt and incoherent rate, as if they were actuated by some possessing demon; they make an inarticulate noise, without any distinguishable sense or meaning; they sometimes screw and distort their faces to uncouth and antic looks; at one time beyond measure cheerful, then as immoderately sullen; now sobbing, then laughing, and soon after sighing, as if they were perfectly distracted, and out of their senses. If they have any sober intervals of coming to themselves again, like St. Paul they then confess, that they were caught up they know not where, whether in the body, or out of the body, they cannot tell; as if they had been in a dead sleep or trance, they remember nothing of what they have heard, seen, said, or done: this they only know, that their past delusion was a most desirable happiness; that therefore they bewail nothing more than the loss of it, nor wish for any greater joy than the quick return of it, and more durable abode for ever. And this (as I have said) is the foretaste or anticipation of future blessedness.

  

  But I doubt I have forgot myself, and have already transgressed the bounds of modesty. However, if I have said anything too confidently or impertinently, be pleased to consider that it was spoke by Folly, and that under the person of a woman; yet at the same time remember the applicableness of that Greek proverb:—

  A fool oft speaks a seasonable truth:

  Unless you will be so witty as to object that this makes no apology for me, because the word ἀνὴρ signifies a man, not a woman, and consequently my sex debars me from the benefit of that observation.

  I perceive now, that, for a concluding treat, you expect a formal epilogue, and the summing up of all in a brief recitation; but I will assure you, you are grossly mistaken if you suppose that after such a hodge-podge medley of speech I should be able to recollect anything I have delivered. Beside, as it is an old proverb, μισωˆ μνὰμοναν συμπόταν: I hate a pot-companion with a good memory; so indeed I may as truly say, μισωˆ μνὰμοναν ἀκροατήν: I hate a hearer that will carry any thing away with him. Wherefore, in short:—

  • Farewell! live long, drink deep, be jolly,
  • Ye most illustrious votaries of folly!

  A POEM on the foregoing WORK.

  • THERE’S ne’er a blade of honour in the town,
  • But if you chance to term him fool and clown,
  • Straight satisfaction cries, and then with speed
  • The time, the place, and rapier’s length’s decreed.
  • Prodigious fops, I’ll swear, which can’t agree
  • To be call’d what’s their happiness to be:
  • Blest Idiots!
  • That in an humble sphere securely move,
  • And there the sweets of a safe dulness prove,
  • Nor envy the proud heights of those who range above.
  • Folly, sure friend of a misguided will,
  • Affords a kind excuse for doing ill;
  • And Socrates, that prudent, thinking tool,
  • Had the gods lik’d him would have prov’d a fool.
  • Methinks our author, when without a flaw,
  • The graces of his mistress he does draw,
  • Wishes (if Metempsychosis be true,
  • And souls do change their case, and act anew),
  • In his next life he only might aspire
  • To the few brains of some soft country squire,
  • Whose head with such like rudiments is fraught,
  • As in his youth his careful grannum taught.
  • And now (dear friend) how shall we to thy brow
  • Pay all those laurels which we justly owe?
  • For thou fresh honours to the work dost bring,
  • And to the theme: nor seems that pleasing thing,
  • Which he so well in Latin has express’d,
  • Less comical in English garments dress’d;
  • Thy sentences are all so clearly wrought,
  • And so exactly plac’d in every thought,
  • That, which is more oblig’d we scarce can see
  • The subject by thine author, or himself by thee.

  FINIS.

  [* ]Μωρία.

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  7: 7. Martin Luther, Hymns

  Martin Luther (1483-1546), an Augustinian priest, biblical scholar, and linguist, was born and died in Eisleben, Saxony, a duchy in northwestern Germany. His attack on ecclesiastical abuses, the Ninety-five Theses, signaled the beginning of the Protestant Reformation. Like Saint Augustine, the founder of his order, Luther was racked by self-doubt and the uncertainty of his own salvation. Particularly troubling to him was the nature of divine justice. Luther’s reading of Augustine and Saint Paul led him to conclude that God’s justice lay in his punishment of sin. Further, his reading of the Gospels convinced him that God demanded more than outward obedience (conformity to the law); he also wanted love and inner purity, all this under pain of divine justice. In this scheme, however, God was more easily feared than loved, which seemed to be in conflict with the spirit of Christianity. Moreover, Luther was tormented with self-doubt about his own ability to fulfill God’s expectations. His participation in the rituals of the Catholic church did nothing to alleviate his anguish, and he came to believe that something was fundamentally wrong with the church as governed by Rome. The essence of Luther’s rebellion lay in his doctrine of justification by faith. He came to believe that faith was not the product of man’s fear of divine justice; rather, divine justice (justification) came through true faith, and salvation (divine grace) was the just reward for faith. Divine justice, then, was not related to punishment but was a positive, loving act. This view fit with Luther’s understanding of Christianity and became the essence of Reformation theology. Other reforms such as the number and significance of the sacraments and the role of the clergy sprang from Luther’s interpretation of the Bible.

  One of Luther’s best loved hymns Ein’ feste Burg ist unser Gott (A strong tower and refuge is our God):

  Ein’ feste Burg ist unser Gott, Ein’ gute Wehr und Waffen, Er hilft uns frei aus aller Noth, Die uns jetzt hat betroffen. Der alt’ böse Feind, Mit Ernst er’s jetzt meint: Gross Macht und viel List, Sein’ grausam Rüstung ist, Auf Erd’ ist nicht sein gleichen.

  Strong tower and refuge is our God, Right goodly shield and weapon; He helps us free in every need, That hath us now o’ertaken. The old evil foe, Means us deadly woe; Deep guile and great might Are his dread arms in fight; On earth is not his equal.

  Martin Luther, Dr. Martin Luther’s Deutsche Geistliche Lieder. The Hymns of Martin Luther set to their original Melodies with an English version, ed. Leonard Woolsey Bacon and Nathan H. Allen (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1884).

  Accessed from oll.libertyfund.org/title/754 on 2007-12-03

  The text is in the public domain.

  ---

  INTRODUCTION.

  A FIT motto for the history of the Reformation would be those words out of the history of the Day of Pentecost, “How hear we, every man in our own tongue wherein we were born . . . . the wonderful works of God!” The ruling thought of the pre-reformation period was not more the maintenance of one Holy Roman Church than of one Holy Roman Empire, each of which was to comprehend all Christendom. The language of the Roman Church and Empire was the sacred language in comparison with which the languages of men’s common speech were reckoned common and unclean. The coming-in of the Reformation was the awakening of individual life, by enforcing the sense of each man’s direct responsibility to God; but it was equally the quickening of a true national life. In the light of the new era, the realization of the promise of the oneness of the Church was no longer to be sought in the universal dominance of a hierarchical corporation; nor was the “mystery” proclaimed by Paul, that “the nations were fellow-heirs and of one body,” to be fulfilled in the subjugation of all nations to a central potentate. According to the spirit of the Reformation, the One Church was to be, not a corporation, but a communion—the communion of saints; and the unity of mankind, in its many nations, was to be a unity of the spirit in the bond of mutual peace.

  The two great works of Martin Luther were those by which he gave to the common people a vernacular Bible and vernacular worship, that through the one, God might speak directly to the people; and in the other, the people might speak directly to God. Luther’s Bible and Luther’s Hymns gave life not only to the churches of the Reformation, but to German nationality and the German language.

  Concerning the hymns of Luther the words of several notable writers are on record, and are worthy to be prefixed to the volume of them.

  Says Spangenberg, yet in Luther’s life-time, in his Preface to the Cithara Lutheri, 1545:

  “One must certainly let this be true, and remain true, that among all Mastersingers from the days of the Apostles until now, Luther is and always will be the best and most accomplished; in whose hymns and songs one does not find a vain or needless word. All flows and falls in the sweetest and neatest manner, full of spirit and doctrine, so that his every word gives outright a sermon of his own, or at least a singular reminiscence. There is nothing forced, nothing foisted in or patched up, nothing fragmentary. The rhymes are easy and good, the words choice and proper, the meaning clear and intelligible, the melodies lovely and hearty, and in summâ all is so rare and majestic, so full of pith and power, so cheering and comforting, that, in sooth, you will not find his equal, much less his master.”*

  The following words have often been quoted from Samuel Taylor Coleridge:

  “Luther did as much for the Reformation by his hymns as by his translation of the Bible. In Germany the hymns are known by heart by every peasant; they advise, they argue from the hymns, and every soul in the church praises God like a Christian, with words which are natural and yet sacred to his mind.”

  A striking passage in an article by Heine in the Revue des Deux Mondes for March, 1834, is transcribed by Michelet in his Life of Luther:

  “Not less remarkable, not less significant than his prose works, are Luther’s poems, those stirring songs which, as it were, escaped from him in the very midst of his combats and his necessities like a flower making its way from between rough stones, or a moonbeam gleaming amid dark clouds. Luther loved music; indeed, he wrote treatises on the art. Accordingly his versification is highly harmonious, so that he may be called the Swan of Eisleben. Not that he is by any means gentle or swan-like in the songs which he composed for the purpose of exciting the courage of the people. In these he is fervent, fierce. The hymn which he composed on his way to Worms, and which he and his companions chanted as they entered that city,† is a regular war-song. The old cathedral trembled when it heard these novel sounds. The very rooks flew from their nests in the towers. That hymn, the Marseillaise of the Reformation, has preserved to this day its potent spell over German hearts.”

  The words of Thomas Carlyle are not less emphatic, while they penetrate deeper into the secret of the power of Luther’s hymns:

  “The great Reformer’s love of music and poetry, it has often been remarked, is one of the most significant features in his character. But indeed if every great man is intrinsically a poet, an idealist, with more or less completeness of utterance, which of all our great men, in these modern ages, had such an endowment in that kind as Luther? He it was, emphatically, who stood based on the spiritual world of man, and only by the footing and power he had obtained there, could work such changes on the material world. As a participant and dispenser of divine influence, he shows himself among human affairs a true connecting medium and visible messenger between heaven and earth, a man, therefore, not only permitted to enter the sphere of poetry, but to dwell in the purest centre thereof, perhaps the most inspired of all teachers since the Apostles. Unhappily or happily, Luther’s poetic feeling did not so much learn to express itself in fit words, that take captive every ear, as in fit actions, wherein, truly under still more impressive manifestations, the spirit of spheral melody resides and still audibly addresses us. In his written poems, we find little save that strength of one ‘whose words,’ it has been said, ‘were half-battles’* —little of that still harmony and blending softness of union which is the last perfection of strength—less of it than even his conduct manifested. With words he had not learned to make music—it was by deeds of love or heroic valor that he spoke freely. Nevertheless, though in imperfect articulation, the same voice, if we listen well, is to be heard also in his writings, in his poems. The one entitled Ein’ Feste Burg, universally regarded as the best, jars upon our ears; yet there is something in it like the sound of Alpine avalanches, or the first murmur of earthquakes, in the very vastness of which dissonance a higher unison is revealed to us. Luther wrote this song in times of blackest threatenings, which, however, could in no sense become a time of despair. In these tones, rugged and broken as they are, do we hear the accents of that summoned man, who answered his friends’ warning not to enter Worms, in this wise:—‘Were there as many devils in Worms as these tile roofs, I would on’; of him who, alone in that assemblage before all emperors and principalities and powers, spoke forth these final and forever memorable words,—‘It is neither safe nor prudent to do aught against conscience. Till such time as either by proofs from holy Scripture, or by fair reason or argument, I have been confuted and convicted, I cannot and will not recant. Here I stand—I cannot do otherwise—God be my help, Amen.’ It is evident enough that to this man all popes, cardinals, emperors, devils, all hosts and nations were but weak, weak as the forest with all its strong trees might be to the smallest spark of electric fire.”

  In a very different style of language, but in a like strain of eulogy, writes Dr. Merle d’Aubigné, in the third volume of his History of the Reformation:

  “The church was no longer composed of priests and monks; it was now the congregation of believers. All were to take part in worship, and the chanting of the clergy was to be succeeded by the psalmody of the people. Luther, accordingly, in translating the psalms, thought of adapting them to be sung by the church. Thus a taste for music was diffused throughout the nation. From Luther’s time, the people sang; the Bible inspired their songs. Poetry received the same impulse. In celebrating the praises of God, the people could not confine themselves to mere translations of ancient anthems. The souls of Luther and of several of his contemporaries, elevated by their faith to thoughts the most sublime, excited to enthusiasm by the struggles and dangers by which the church at its birth was unceasingly threatened, inspired by the poetic genius of the Old Testament and by the faith of the New, ere long gave vent to their feelings in hymns, in which all that is most heavenly in poetry and music was combined and blended. Hence the revival, in the sixteenth century, of hymns, such as in the first century used to cheer the martyrs in their sufferings. We have seen Luther, in 1523, employing it to celebrate the martyrs at Brussels; other children of the Reformation followed his footsteps; hymns were multiplied; they spread rapidly among the people, and powerfully contributed to rouse it from sleep.”

  It is not difficult to come approximately at the order of composition of Luther’s hymns. The earliest hymn-book of the Reformation—if not the earliest of all printed hymn-books—was published at Wittenberg in 1524, and contained eight hymns, four of them from the pen of Luther himself; of the other four not less than three were by Paul Speratus, and one of these three, the hymn Es ist das Heil, which caused Luther such delight when sung beneath his window by a wanderer from Prussia.* Three of Luther’s contributions to this little book were versions of Psalms—the xii, xiv, and cxxx—and the fourth was that touching utterance of personal religious experience, Nun freut euch, lieben Christen g’mein. But the critics can hardly be mistaken in assigning as early a date to the ballad of the Martyrs of Brussels. Their martyrdom took place July 1, 1523, and the “New Song” must have been inspired by the story as it was first brought to Wittenberg, although it is not found in print until the Enchiridion, which followed the Eight Hymns, later in the same year, from the press of Erfurt, and contained fourteen of Luther’s hymns beside the four already published.

  In the hymn-book published in 1525 by the composer Walter, Luther’s friend, were six more of the Luther hymns. And in 1526 appeared the “German Mass and Order of Divine Service,” containing “the German Sanctus,” a versification of Isaiah vi. Of the remaining eleven, six appeared first in the successive editions of Joseph Klug’s hymn-book, Wittenberg, 1535 and 1543.

  It is appropriate to the commemorative character of the present edition that in it the hymns should be disposed in chronological order.

  The tunes which are here printed with the hymns of Luther are of those which were set to them during his lifetime. Some of them, like the hymns to which they were set, are derived from the more ancient hymnody of the German and Latin churches. Others, as the tunes Vom Himmel hoch, Ach Gott vom Himmel, and Christ unser Herr zum Jordan kam, are conjectured to have been originally secular airs. But that many of the tunes that appeared simultaneously and in connection with Luther’s hymns were original with Luther himself, there seems no good reason to doubt. Luther’s singular delight and proficiency in music are certified by a hundred contemporary testimonies. His enthusiasm for it overflows in his Letters and his Table Talk. He loved to surround himself with accomplished musicians, with whom he would practise the intricate motets of the masters of that age; and his critical remarks on their several styles are on record. At least one autograph document proves him to have been a composer of melodies to his own words: one may see, appended to von Winterfeld’s fine quarto edition of Luther’s hymns (Leipzig, 1840) a fac-simile of the original draft of Vater Unser, with a melody sketched upon a staff of five lines, and then cancelled, evidently by a hand practised in musical notation. But perhaps the most direct testimony to his actual work as a composer is found in a letter from the composer John Walter, capellmeister to the Elector of Saxony, written in his old age for the express purpose of embodying his reminiscences of his illustrious friend as a church-musician.

  “It is to my certain knowledge,” writes Walter, “that that holy man of God, Luther, prophet and apostle to the German nation, took great delight in music, both in choral and in figural composition. With whom I have passed many a delightful hour in singing; and oftentimes have seen the dear man wax so happy and merry in heart over the singing as that it was well-nigh impossible to weary or content him therewithal. And his discourse concerning music was most noble.

  “Some forty years ago, when he would set up the German Mass at Wittenberg, he wrote to the Elector of Saxony and Duke Johannsen, of illustrious memory, begging to invite to Wittenberg the old musician Conrad Rupff and myself, to consult with him as to the character and the proper notation of the Eight Tones; and he finally himself decided to appropriate the Eighth Tone to the Epistle and the Sixth Tone to the Gospel, speaking on this wise: Our Lord Christ is a good Friend, and his words are full of love; so we will take the Sixth Tone for the Gospel. And since Saint Paul is a very earnest apostle we will set the Eighth Tone to the Epistle. So he himself made the notes over the Epistles, and the Gospels, and the Words of Institution of the true Body and Blood of Christ, and sung them over to me to get my judgment thereon. He kept me three weeks long at Wittenberg, to write out the notes over some of the Gospels and Epistles, until the first German Mass was sung in the parish church. And I must needs stay to hear it, and take with me a copy of the Mass to Torgau and present it to His Grace the Elector from Doctor Luther.

  “Furthermore, he gave orders to re-establish the Vespers, which in many places were fallen into disuse, with short plain choral hymns for the students and boys; withal, that the charity-scholars, collecting their bread, should sing from door to door Latin Hymns, Anthems and Responses, appropriate to the season. It was no satisfaction to him that the scholars should sing in the streets nothing but German songs. . . . The most profitable songs for the common multitude are the plain psalms and hymns, both Luther’s and the earlier ones; but the Latin songs are useful for the learned and for students. We see, and hear, and clearly apprehend how the Holy Ghost himself wrought not only in the authors of the Latin hymns, but also in Luther, who in our time has had the chief part both in writing the German choral hymns, and in setting them to tunes; as may be seen, among others in the German Sanctus (Jesaia dem Propheten das geschah) how masterly and well he has fitted all the notes to the text, according to the just accent and concent. At the time, I was moved by His Grace to put the question how or where he had got this composition, or this instruction; whereupon the dear man laughed at my simplicity, and said: I learned this of the poet Virgil, who has the power so artfully to adapt his verses and his words to the story he is telling; in like manner must Music govern all its notes and melodies by the text.”*

  It seems superfluous to add to this testimony the word of Sleidan, the nearly contemporary historian, who says expressly concerning “Ein’ feste Burg” that Luther made for it a tune singularly suited to the words, and adapted to stir the heart.† If ever there were hymn and tune that told their own story of a common and simultaneous origin, without need of confirmation by external evidence, it is these.

  To an extent quite without parallel in the history of music, the power of Luther’s tunes, as well as of his words, is manifest after three centuries, over the masters of the art, as well as over the common people. Peculiarly is this true of the great song Ein’ feste Burg, which Heine not vainly predicted would again be heard in Europe in like manner as of old. The composers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries practised their elaborate artifices upon it. The supreme genius of Sebastian Bach made it the subject of study.‡ And in our own times it has been used with conspicuous effect in Mendelssohn’s Reformation Symphony, in an overture by Raff, in the noble Festouverture of Nicolai, and in Wagner’s Kaisermarsch; and is introduced with recurring emphasis in Meyerbeer’s masterpiece of The Huguenots.

  It is needless to say that the materials of this Birth-day Edition of Luther’s Hymns and Tunes have been prepared in profusion by the diligence of German scholars. But very thankful acknowledgments are also due to English translators, who have made this work possible within the very scanty time allotted to it. Full credit is given in the table of contents for the help derived from these various translators. But the exigencies of this volume were peculiarly severe, inasmuch as the translation was to be printed over against the original, and also under the music. Not even Mr. Richard Massie’s careful work would always bear this double test; so that I have found myself compelled, in most cases, to give up the attempt to follow any translation exactly; and in some instances have reluctantly attempted a wholly new version.

  The whole credit of the musical editorship belongs to my accomplished associate, Mr. Nathan H. Allen, without whose ready resource and earnest labor the work would have been impossible within the limits of time necessarily prescribed. In the choice of harmonies for these ancient tunes, he has wisely preferred, in general, the arrangements of the older masters. The critical musician will see, and will not complain, that the original modal structure of the melodies is sometimes affected by the harmonic treatment.

  And now the proper conclusion to this Introduction, which, like the rest of the volume, is in so slight a degree the work of the editor, is to add the successive prefaces from the pen of Luther which accompanied successive hymn-books published during his life-time and under his supervision.

  leonard woolsey bacon.

  Luther’s First Preface.

  To the “Geystliche Gsangbüchlin, Erstlich zu Wittenberg, und volgend durch Peter schöffern getruckt, im jar m. d. xxv.

  Autore Ioanne Walthero.”

  That it is good, and pleasing to God, for us to sing spiritual songs is, I think, a truth whereof no Christian can be ignorant; since not only the example of the prophets and kings of the Old Testament (who praised God with singing and music, poesy and all kinds of stringed instruments) but also the like practice of all Christendom from the beginning, especially in respect to psalms, is well known to every one: yea, St. Paul doth also appoint the same (1 Cor xiv.) and command the Colossians, in the third chapter, to sing spiritual songs and psalms from the heart unto the Lord, that thereby the word of God and Christian doctrine be in every way furthered and practised.

  Accordingly, to make a good beginning and to encourage others who can do it better, I have myself, with some others, put together a few hymns, in order to bring into full play the blessed Gospel, which by God’s grace hath again risen: that we may boast, as Moses doth in his song (Exodus xv.) that Christ is become our praise and our song, and that, whether we sing or speak, we may not know anything save Christ our Saviour, as St. Paul saith (1 Cor. ii.).

  These songs have been set in four parts, for no other reason than because I wished to provide our young people (who both will and ought to be instructed in music and other sciences) with something whereby they might rid themselves of amorous and carnal songs, and in their stead learn something wholesome, and so apply themselves to what is good with pleasure, as becometh the young.

  Beside this, I am not of opinion that all sciences should be beaten down and made to cease by the Gospel, as some fanatics pretend; but I would fain see all the arts, and music in particular, used in the service of Him who hath given and created them.

  Therefore I entreat every pious Christian to give a favorable reception to these hymns, and to help forward my undertaking, according as God hath given him more or less ability. The world is, alas, not so mindful and diligent to train and teach our poor youth, but that we ought to be forward in promoting the same. God grant us his grace. Amen.

  Luther’s Second Preface.

  To the Funeral Hymns: “Christliche Geseng, Lateinisch und Deubsch, zum Begrebnis. Wittemberg, Anno m. d. xlii.”

  dr. martin luther to the christian reader.

  St. Paul writes to the Thessalonians, that they should not sorrow for the dead as others who have no hope, but should comfort one another with God’s word, as they who have a sure hope of life and of the resurrection of the dead.

  For that they should sorrow who have no hope is not to be wondered at, nor indeed are they to be blamed for it, since, being shut out from the faith of Christ, they must either regard and love the present life only, and be loth to lose it, or after this life look for everlasting death and the wrath of God in hell, and be unwilling to go thither.

  But we Christians who from all this have been redeemed by the precious blood of the Son of God, should exercise and wont ourselves in faith to despise death, to look on it as a deep, sound, sweet sleep, the coffin no other than the bosom of our Lord Christ, or paradise, the grave nought but a soft couch of rest; as indeed it is in the sight of God, as he saith in St. John, xi., “our friend Lazarus sleepeth;” Matthew ix., “the maid is not dead but sleepeth.”

  In like manner also St. Paul, 1 Cor. xv., doth put out of sight the unlovely aspect of death in our perishing body, and bring forward nought but the lovely and delightsome view of life, when he saith: “It is sown in corruption; it is raised in incorruption; it is sown in dishonor (that is, in a loathsome and vile form); it is raised in glory: it is sown in weakness; it is raised in power: it is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body.”

  Accordingly have we, in our churches, abolished, done away, and out-and-out made an end of the popish horrors, such as wakes, masses for the soul, obsequies, purgatory, and all other mummeries for the dead, and will no longer have our churches turned into wailing-places and houses of mourning, but, as the primitive Fathers called them, “Cemeteries,” that is, resting and sleeping places.

  We sing, withal, beside our dead and over their graves, no dirges nor lamentations, but comforting songs of the forgiveness of sins, of rest, sleep, life and resurrection of the departed believers, for the strengthening of our faith, and the stirring up of the people to a true devotion.

  For it is meet and right to give care and honor to the burial of the dead, in a manner worthy of that blessed article of our creed, the resurrection of the dead, and to the spite of that dreadful enemy, death, who doth so shamefully and continually prey upon us, in every horrid way and shape.

  Accordingly, as we read, the holy patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, and the rest, kept their burials with great pomp, and ordered them with much diligence; and afterwards the kings of Judah held splendid ceremonials over the dead, with costly incense of all manner of precious herbs, thereby to hide the offense and shame of death, and acknowledge and glorify the resurrection of the dead, and so to comfort the weak in faith and the sorrowful.

  In like manner, even down to this present, have Christians ever been wont to do honorably by the bodies and the graves of the dead, decorating them, singing beside them and adorning them with monuments. Of all importance is that doctrine of the resurrection, that we be firmly grounded therein; for it is our lasting, blessed, eternal comfort and joy, against death, hell, the devil and all sorrow of heart.

  As a good example of what should be used for this end, we have taken the sweet music or melodies which under popish rule are in use at wakes, funerals and masses for the dead, some of which we have printed in this little book; and it is in our thought, as time shall serve, to add others to them, or have this done by more competent hands. But we have set other words thereto, such as shall adorn our doctrine of the resurrection, not that of purgatory with its pains and expiations, whereby the dead may neither sleep nor rest. The notes and melodies are of great price; it were pity to let them perish; but the words to them were unchristian and uncouth, so let these perish.

  It is just as in other matters they do greatly excel us, having splendid rites of worship, magnificent convents and abbeys; but the preachings and doctrines heard therein do for the most part serve the devil and dishonor God; who nevertheless is Lord and God over all the earth, and should have of everything the fairest, best and noblest.

  Likewise have they costly shrines of gold and silver, and images set with gems and jewels; but within are dead men’s bones, as foul and corrupt as in any charnel-house. So also have they costly vestments, chasubles, palliums, copes, hoods, mitres, but what are they that be clothed therewithal? slow-bellies, evil wolves, godless swine, persecuting and dishonoring the word of God.

  Just in the same way have they much noble music, especially in the abbeys and parish churches, used to adorn most vile, idolatrous words. Wherefore we have undressed these idolatrous, lifeless, crazy words, stripping off the noble music, and putting it upon the living and holy word of God, wherewith to sing, praise and honor the same, that so the beautiful ornament of music, brought back to its right use, may serve its blessed Maker and his Christian people; so that he shall be praised and glorified, and that we by his holy word impressed upon the heart with sweet songs, be builded up and confirmed in the faith. Hereunto help us God the Father, Son and Holy Ghost. Amen.

  Yet is it not our purpose that these precise notes be sung in all the churches. Let each church keep its own notes according to its book and use. For I myself do not listen with pleasure in cases where the notes to a hymn or a responsorium have been changed, and it is sung amongst us in a different way from what I have been used to from my youth. The main point is the correcting of the words, not of the music.*

  Luther’s Third Preface.

  To the Hymn-book printed at Wittenberg by Joseph Klug, 1543.

  There are certain who, by their additions to our hymns, have clearly shown that they far excel me in this matter, and may well be called my masters. But some, on the other hand, have added little of value. And inasmuch as I see that there is no limit to this perpetual amending by every one indiscriminately according to his own liking, so that the earliest of our hymns are more perverted the more they are printed, I am fearful that it will fare with this little book as it has ever fared with good books, that through tampering by incompetent hands it may get to be so overlaid and spoiled that the good will be lost out of it, and nothing be kept in use but the worthless.

  We see in the first chapter of St. Luke that in the beginning every one wanted to write a gospel, until among the multitude of gospels the true Gospel was wellnigh lost. So has it been with the works of St. Jerome and St. Augustine, and with many other books. In short, there will always be tares sown among the wheat.

  In order as far as may be to avoid this evil, I have once more revised this book, and put our own hymns in order by themselves with name attached, which formerly I would not do for reputation’s sake, but am now constrained to do by necessity, lest strange and unsuitable songs come to be sold under our name. After these, are arranged the others, such as we deem good and useful.

  I beg and beseech all who prize God’s pure word that henceforth without our knowledge and consent no further additions or alterations be made in this book of ours; and that when it is amended without our knowledge, it be fully understood to be not our book published at Wittenberg. Every man can for himself make his own hymn-book, and leave this of ours alone without additions; as we here beg, beseech and testify. For we like to keep our coin up to our own standard, debarring no man from making better for himself. Now let God’s name alone be praised, and our name not sought. Amen.

  Luther’s Fourth Preface.

  To Valentine Bapst’s Hymn-book, Leipzig, 1545.

  The xcvi Psalm saith: “Sing to the Lord a new song; sing to the Lord, all the earth.” The service of God in the old dispensation, under the law of Moses, was hard and wearisome. Many and divers sacrifices had men to offer, of all that they possessed, both in house and in field, which the people, being idle and covetous, did grudgingly or for some temporal advantage; as the prophet Malachi saith, chap. i., “who is there even among you that would shut the doors for naught? neither do ye kindle fires on my altars for naught.” But where there is such an idle and grudging heart there can be no singing, or at least no singing of anything good. Cheerful and merry must we be in heart and mind, when we would sing. Therefore hath God suffered such idle and grudging service to perish, as he saith further: “I have no pleasure in you, saith the Lord of Hosts, neither will I accept an offering at your hand: for from the rising of the sun even to the going down of the same, my name shall be great among the Gentiles; and in every place incense shall be offered in my name and a pure offering; for my name shall be great among the heathen, saith the Lord of Hosts.”

  So that now in the New Testament there is a better service, whereof the psalm speaketh: “Sing to the Lord a new song; sing to the Lord all the earth.” For God hath made our heart and mind joyful through his dear Son whom he hath given for us to redeem us from sin,death and the devil. Who earnestly believes this cannot but sing and speak thereof with joy and delight, that others also may hear and come. But whoso will not speak and sing thereof, it is a sign that he doth not believe it, and doth not belong to the cheerful New Testament but to the dull and joyless Old Testament.

  Therefore it is well done on the part of the printers that they are diligent to print good hymns, and make them agreeable to the people with all sorts of embellishments, that they may be won to this joy in believing and gladly sing of it. And inasmuch as this edition of Valtin Bapst [Pope] is prepared in fine style, God grant that it may bring great hurt and damage to that Roman Bapst who by his accursed, intolerable and abominable ordinances has brought nothing into the world but wailing, mourning and misery. Amen.

  I must give notice that the song which is sung at funerals,

  “Nun lasst uns den Leib begraben,”

  which bears my name is not mine, and my name is henceforth not to stand with it. Not that I reject it, for I like it very much, and it was made by a good poet, Johannes Weis* by name, only a little visionary about the Sacrament; but I will not appropriate to myself another man’s work.

  Also in the De Profundis, read thus:

  Des muss dich fürchten jedermann.

  Either by mistake or of purpose this is printed in most books

  Des muss sich fürchten jedermann.

  Ut timearis. The Hebrew reading is as in Matthew xv.: “In vain do they fear me teaching doctrines of men.” See also Psalms xiv. and liii.: “They call not on the Lord; there feared they where no fear was.” That is, they may have much show of humiliation and bowing and bending in worship where I will have no worship. Accordingly this is the meaning in this place: Since forgiveness of sins is nowhere else to be found but only with thee, so must they let go all idolatry, and come with a willing heart bowing and bending before thee, creeping up to the cross, and have thee alone in honor, and take refuge in thee, and serve thee, as living by thy grace and not by their own righteousness, etc.

  A Preface to All Good Hymn-Books.
  By Dr. Martin Luther. From Joseph Klug’s Hymn-Book, Wittenberg, 1543.

  • • Lady Musick Speaketh.
    • Of all the joys that are on earth
    • Is none more dear nor higher worth,
    • Than what in my sweet songs is found
    • And instruments of various sound.
  • • Where friends and comrades sing in tune,
    • All evil passions vanish soon;
    • Hate, anger, envy, cannot stay,
    • All gloom and heartache melt away;
    • The lust of wealth, the cares that cling,
    • Are all forgotten while we sing.
  • • Freely we take our joy herein,
    • For this sweet pleasure is no sin,
    • But pleaseth God far more, we know,
    • Than any joys the world can show;
    • The Devil’s work it doth impede,
    • And hinders many a deadly deed.
  • • Se fared it with King Saul of old;
    • When David struck his harp of gold,
    • So sweet and clear its tones rang out,
    • Saul’s murderous thoughts were put to rout.
  • • The heart grows still when I am heard,
    • And opens to God’s Truth and Word;
    • So are we by Elisha taught,
    • Who on the harp the Spirit sought.
  • • The best time of the year is mine,
    • When all the little birds combine
    • To sing until the earth and air
    • Are filled with sweet sounds everywhere;
    • And most the tender nightingale
    • Makes joyful every wood and dale,
    • Singing her love-song o’er and o’er,
    • For which we thank her evermore.
  • • But yet more thanks are due from us
    • To the dear Lord who made her thus,
    • A singer apt to touch the heart,
    • Mistress of all my dearest art.
    • To God she sings by night and day,
    • Unwearied, praising Him alway;
    • Him I, too, laud in every song,
    • To whom all thanks and praise belong.

    • Translation byCatharine Winkworth.

  A Warning by Dr. Martin Luther.

  • • Viel falscher Meister itzt Lieder tichten
    • Sihe dich fuer und lern sie recht richten
    • Wo Gott hin bawet sein Kirch und sein wort
    • Da will der Tenfel sein mit trug und mord.

    • Wittenberg, 1543; Leipzig, 1545.

  • • False masters now abound, who songs indite;
    • Beware of them, and learn to judge them right:
    • Where God builds up his Church and Word, hard by
    • Satan is found with murder and a lie.

    • Translation by R. Massie.

  From The “Eight Songs,” Wittenberg, 1524.

  I.

  Nun freut euch, lieben Christen g’mein.
  Dear Christians, One and All rejoice.

  A Song of Thanksgiving for the great Benefits which God in Christ has manifested to us.

  Translation in part from R. Massie.

  First Melody, 1524.

  Harmony by H. Schein, 1627.

  Second Melody from Klug’s Gesangbuch, 1543.

  Harmony by M. Praetorius, 1610.

  This choral is commonly known under the title, “Es ist gewisslich an der Zeit,” and, in a modified form, in England and America, as “Luther’s Judgment Hymn,” from its association with a hymn of W. B. Collyer, partly derived from the German, and not written by Luther.

  

  Nun freut euch, lieben Christen g’mein.

  • • 1Nun freut euch, lieben Christen g’mein,
    • Und lasst uns fröhlich springen,
    • Dass wir getrost und all in ein
    • Mit Lust und Liebe singen:
    • Was Gott an uns gewendet hat,
    • Und seine süsse Wunderthat,
    • Gar theur hat er’s erworben.
  • • 2Dem Teufel ich gefangen lag,
    • Im Tod war ich verloren,
    • Mein’ Sünd’ mich quälet Nacht und Tag,
    • Darin war ich geboren,
    • Ich fiel auch immer tiefer d’rein,
    • Es war kein gut’s am Leben mein,
    • Die Sünd’ hat mich besessen.
  • • 3Mein’ gute Wert’ die galten nicht,
    • Es war mit ihm verdorben;
    • Der frei Will’ hasset Gottes G’richt,
    • Er war zum Gut’n erstorben;
    • Die Angst mich zu verzweifeln trieb,
    • Dass nichts denn Sterben bei mir blieb,
    • Zur Hölle musst ich sinken.
  • • 4Da jammert’s Gott in Ewigkeit
    • Mein Elend über Massen,
    • Er dacht’ an sein’ Barmherzigkeit,
    • Er wollt’ mir helfen lassen;
    • Er wandt’ zu mir das Vaterherz,
    • Es war bei ihm fürwahr kein Scherz,
    • Er liess sein Bestes kosten.
  • • 5Er sprach zu seinem lieben Sohn:
    • Die Zeit ist hier zu ’rbarmen,
    • Fahr’ hin mein’s Herzens werthe Kron’
    • Und sei das Heil dem Armen,
    • Und hilf ihm aus der Sünden Noth,
    • Erwürg’ für ihn den bittern Tod
    • Und lass’ ihn mit dir leben.
  • • 6Der Sohn dem Vater g’horsam ward,
    • Er kam zu mir auf Erden,
    • Von einer Jungfrau rein und zart,
    • Er sollt’ mein Bruder werden.
    • Gar heimlich führt er sein’ Gewalt,
    • Er ging in meiner armen G’stalt,
    • Den Teufel wollt’ er fangen.
  • • 7Er sprach zu mir: halt’ dich an mich,
    • Es soll dir jetzt gelingen,
    • Ich geb’ mich selber ganz für dich,
    • Da will ich für dich ringen;
    • Denn ich bin dein und du bist mein,
    • Und wo ich bleib’, da sollst du sein,
    • Uns soll der Feind nicht scheiden.
  • • 8Vergiessen wird er mir mein Blut,
    • Dazu mein Leben rauben,
    • Das leid’ ich alles dir zu gut,
    • Das halt’ mit festem Glauben.
    • Den Tod vorschlingt das Leben mein,
    • Mein’ Unschuld trägt die Sünde dein,
    • Da bist du selig worden.
  • • 9Gen Himmel zu dem Vater mein
    • Jahr’ ich von diesem Leben,
    • Da will ich sein der Meister dein,
    • Den Geist will ich dir geben,
    • Der dich in Trübniss trösten soll
    • Und lehren mich erkennen wohl,
    • Und in der Wahrheit leiten.
  • • 10Was ich gethan hab’ und gelehrt,
    • Das sollst du thun und lehren,
    • Damit das Reich Gott’s werd’ gemehrt
    • Zu Lob’ und seinen Ehren;
    • Und hüt’ dich vor der Menschen G’satz,
    • Davon verdirbt der edle Schatz,
    • Das lass’ ich dir zur Letze.

  Dear Christians, One and All rejoice.

  • • 1Dear Christians, one and all rejoice,
    • With exultation springing,
    • And with united heart and voice
    • And holy rapture singing,
    • Proclaim the wonders God hath done,
    • How his right arm the victory won;
    • Right dearly it hath cost him.
  • • 2Fast bound in Satan’s chains I lay,
    • Death brooded darkly o’er me;
    • Sin was my torment night and day,
    • Therein my mother bore me.
    • Deeper and deeper still I fell,
    • Life was become a living hell,
    • So firmly sin possessed me.
  • • 3My good works could avail me naught,
    • For they with sin were stainéd;
    • Free-will against God’s judgment fought,
    • And dead to good remainéd.
    • Grief drove me to despair, and I
    • Had nothing left me but to die,
    • To hell I fast was sinking.
  • • 4God saw, in his eternal grace,
    • My sorrow out of measure;
    • He thought upon his tenderness—
    • To save was his good pleasure.
    • He turn’d to me a Father’s heart-
    • Not small the cost—to heal my smart
    • He gave his best and dearest.
  • • 5He spake to his beloved Son:
    • ’Tis time to take compassion;
    • Then go, bright jewel of my crown,
    • And bring to man salvation;
    • From sin and sorrow set him free,
    • Slay bitter death for him, that he
    • May live with thee forever.
  • 6The Son delighted to obey,
  • And born of Virgin mother,
  • Awhile on this low earth did stay
  • That he might be my brother.
  • His mighty power he hidden bore,
  • A servant’s form like mine he wore,
  • To bind the devil captive.
  • 7To me he spake: cling fast to me,
  • Thou’lt win a triumph worthy;
  • I wholly give myself for thee,
  • I strive and wrestle for thee;
  • For I am thine, thou mine also;
  • And where I am thou art. The foe
  • Shall never more divide us.
  • 8For he shall shed my precious blood,
  • Me of my life bereaving;
  • All this I suffer for thy good;
  • Be steadfast and believing.
  • My life from death the day shall win,
  • My righteousness shall bear thy sin,
  • So art thou blest forever.
  • 9Now to my Father I depart,
  • From earth to heaven ascending;
  • Thence heavenly wisdom to impart,
  • The Holy Spirit sending.
  • He shall in trouble comfort thee,
  • Teach thee to know and follow me,
  • And to the truth conduct thee.
  • 10What I have done and taught, do thou
  • To do and teach endeavor;
  • So shall my kingdom flourish now,
  • And God be praised forever.
  • Take heed lest men with base alloy
  • The heavenly treasure should destroy.
  • This counsel I bequeath thee.

  II.

  Ach Gott, vom Himmel sieh’ darein.
  Look down, O Lord, from Heaven behold.

  Psalm XII.—“Salvum me fac, Domine.”

  Translation chiefly from Frances Elizabeth Cox, in “Hymns from the German.”

  First Melody, 1524, is the tune of the hymn of Paul Speratus, “Es ist das Heil uns kommen her,” the singing of which under Luther’s window at Wittenberg is related to have made so deep an impression on the Reformer.

  The anecdote is confirmed by the fact that in the “Eight Songs,” Luther’s three versions of Psalms are all set to this tune.

  Harmony by A. Haupt, 1869.

  Second Melody from Klug’s Gesangbuch, 1543.

  Harmony by Haupt, 1869.

  This is the tune in common use with this psalm in northern Germany.

  

  Ach Gott, vom Himmel sieh’ darein.

  • • 1Ach Gott, vom Himmel sieh’ darein
    • Und lass’ dich des erbarmen,
    • Wie wenig sind der Heil’gen dein,
    • Verlassen sind wir Armen:
    • Dein Wort man lässt nicht haben wahr,
    • Der Glaub’ ist auch verloschen gar
    • Bei allen Menschenkindern.
  • • 2Sie lehren eitel falsche List,
    • Was eigen Witz erfindet,
    • Ihr Herz nicht eines Sinnes ist
    • In Gottes Wort gegründet;
    • Der wählet dies, der Ander das,
    • Sie trennen uns ohn’ alle Maas
    • Und gleissen schön von aussen.
  • • 3Gott woll’ ausrotten alle Lahr,
    • Die falschen Schein uns lehren;
    • Dazu ihr’ Zung’ stolz offenbar
    • Spricht: Trotz, wer will’s uns wehren?
    • Wir haben Recht und Macht allein,
    • Was wir setzen das gilt gemein,
    • Wer ist der uns soll meistern?
  • • 4Darum spricht Gott, Ich muss auf sein,
    • Die Armen sind verstöret,
    • Ihr Seufzen dringt zu mir herein,
    • Ich hab’ ihr’ Klag’ erhöret.
    • Mein heilsam Wort soll auf dem Plan,
    • Getrost und frisch sie greifen an
    • Und sein die Kraft der Armen.
  • • 5Das Silber durch’s Feuer siebenmal
    • Bewährt, wird lauter funden:
    • Am Gottes Wort man warten soll
    • Desgleichen alle Stunden:
    • Es will durch’s Kreuz bewähret sein,
    • Da wird sein’ Kraft erkannt und Schein
    • Und leucht’t stark in die Lande.
  • • 6Das wollst du, Gott, bewahren rein
    • Für diesem argen G’schlechte,
    • Und lass uns dir befohlen sein,
    • Das sich’s in uns nicht flechte,
    • Der gottlos’ Hauf’ sich umher findt,
    • Wo diese lose Leute sind
    • In deinem Volk erhaben.

  Look down, O Lord, from Heaven behold.

  • • 1Look down, O Lord, from heaven behold,
    • And let thy pity waken!
    • How few the flock within thy fold,
    • Neglected and forsaken!
    • Almost thou’lt seek for faith in vain,
    • And those who should thy truth maintain
    • Thy Word from us have taken.
  • • 2With frauds which they themselves invent
    • Thy truth they have confounded;
    • Their hearts are not with one consent
    • On thy pure doctrine grounded;
    • And, whilst they gleam with outward show,
    • They lead thy people to and fro,
    • In error’s maze astounded.
  • • 3God surely will uproot all those
    • With vain deceits who store us,
    • With haughty tongue who God oppose,
    • And say, “Who’ll stand before us?
    • By right or might we will prevail;
    • What we determine cannot fail,
    • For who can lord it o’er us?”
  • • 4For this, saith God, I will arise,
    • These wolves my flock are rending;
    • I’ve heard my people’s bitter sighs
    • To heaven my throne ascending:
    • Now will I up, and set at rest
    • Each weary soul by fraud opprest,
    • The poor with might defending.
  • • 5The silver seven times tried is pure
    • From all adulteration;
    • So, through God’s word, shall men endure
    • Each trial and temptation:
    • Its worth gleams brighter through the cross,
    • And, purified from human dross,
    • It shines through every nation.
  • • 6Thy truth thou wilt preserve, O Lord,
    • From this vile generation;
    • Make us to lean upon thy word,
    • With calm anticipation.
    • The wicked walk on every side
    • When, ’mid thy flock, the vile abide
    • In power and exaltation.

  III.

  Es spricht der Unweisen Mund wohl.
  The Mouth of Fools doth God confess.

  Psalm XIV.—“Dixit insipiens in corde suo, Non est Deus.”

  Translation from R. Massie.

  Melody from Walter’s Gesangbuch, 1525.

  Harmony by M. Praetorius, 1610.

  
  • • 1Es spricht der Unweisen Mund wohl:
    • Den rechten Gott wir meinen;
    • Doch ist ihr Herz Unglaubens voll,
    • Mit That sie ihn berneinen.
    • Ihr Wesen ist verderbet zwar,
    • Für Gott ist es ein Gräuel gar,
    • Es thut ihr’r Keiner kein gut.
  • • 2Gott selbst vom Himmel sah herab
    • Auf aller Menschen Kinder,
    • Zu schauen sie er sich begab,
    • Ob er Jemand wird finden,
    • Der sein’n Verstand gerichtet hätt
    • Mit Ernst, nach Gottes Worten thät
    • Und fragt nach seinem Willen.
  • • 3Da war Niemand auf rechter Bahn,
    • Sie war’n all’ ausgeschritten;
    • Ein Jeder ging nach seinem Wahn
    • Und hielt verlor’ne Sitten.
    • Es that ihm Keiner doch kein gut,
    • Wie wohl gar viel betrog der Muth,
    • Ihr Thun sollt’ Gott gefallen.
  • • 4Wie lang wollen unwissend sein
    • Die solche Müh aufladen,
    • Und fressen dafür das Volk mein
    • Und nähr’n sich mit sei’m Schaden?
    • Es steht ihr Trauen nicht auf Gott,
    • Sie rufen ihm nicht in der Noth,
    • Sie woll’n sich selbst versorgen.
  • • 5Darum ist ihr Herz nimmer still
    • Und steht allzeit in Forchten;
    • Gott bei den Frommen bleiben will,
    • Dem sie mit Glauben g’horchen.
    • Ihr aber schmäht des Armen Rath,
    • Und höhnet alles, was er sagt,
    • Dass Gott sein Trost ist worden.
  • • 6Wer soll Israel dem Armen
    • Zu Zion Heil erlangen?
    • Gott wird sich sein’s Volk’s erbarmen
    • Und lösen, sie gefangen.
    • Das wird er thun durch seinen Sohn,
    • Davon wird Jakob Wonne ha’n
    • Und Israel sich freuen.
  • • 1The mouth of fools doth God confess,
    • But while their lips draw nigh him
    • Their heart is full of wickedness,
    • And all their deeds deny him.
    • Corrupt are they, and every one
    • Abominable deeds hath done;
    • There is not one well-doer.
  • • 2The Lord looked down from his high tower
    • On all mankind below him,
    • To see if any owned his power,
    • And truly sought to know him;
    • Who all their understanding bent
    • To search his holy Word, intent
    • To do his will in earnest.
  • • 3But none there was who walked with God,
    • For all aside had slidden,
    • Delusive paths of folly trod,
    • And followed lusts forbidden;
    • Not one there was who practiced good,
    • And yet they deemed, in haughty mood,
    • Their deeds must surely please him.
  • • 4How long, by folly blindly led,
    • Will ye oppress the needy,
    • And eat my people up like bread?
    • So fierce are ye, and greedy!
    • In God they put no trust at all,
    • Nor will on him in trouble call,
    • But be their own providers.
  • • 5Therefore their heart is never still,
    • A falling leaf dismays them;
    • God is with him who doth his will,
    • Who trusts him and obeys Him;
    • But ye the poor man’s hope despise,
    • And laugh at him, e’en when he cries,
    • That God is his sure comfort.
  • • 6Who shall to Israel’s outcast race
    • From Zion bring salvation?
    • God will himself at length show grace,
    • And loose the captive nation;
    • That will he do by Christ their King;
    • Let Jacob then be glad and sing,
    • And Israel be joyful.

  IV.

  Aus tiefer Noth schrei’ ich zu dir.
  Out of the Deep I Cry to Thee.

  Psalm CXXX.—“De profundis clamavi ad te.”

  Translation by Arthur Tozer Russel.

  First Melody from Walter’s Gesangbuch, 1525.

  Harmony by John Sebastian Bach, about 1725.

  Second Melody in Wolfgang Köphl’s Gesangbuch, 1537, and in George Rhau’s, 1544.

  Harmony by A. Haupt, 1869.

  

  Aus tiefer Noth schrei’ ich zu dir.

  • • 1Aus tiefer Noth schrei’ ich zu dir,
    • Herr Gott, erhör’ mein Rufen,
    • Dein gnädig’ Ohren kehr zu mir,
    • Und meiner Bitt’ sie öffnen.
    • Denn so du willst das sehen an,
    • Was Sünd’ und Unrecht ist gethan,
    • Wer kann, Herr, vor dir bleiben?
  • • 2Bei dir gilt nichts denn Gnad’ und Gunst
    • Die Sünde zu vergeben.
    • Es ist doch unser Thun umsonst,
    • Auch in dem besten Leben.
    • Vor dir Niemand sich rühmen kann,
    • Des muss dich fürchten Jedermann
    • Und deiner Gnade leben.
  • • 3Darum auf Gott will hoffen ich,
    • Auf mein Verdienst nicht bauen,
    • Auf ihn mein Herz soll lassen sich,
    • Und seiner Güte trauen,
    • Die mir zusagt sein werthes Wort,
    • Das ist mein Trost und treuer Hort,
    • Des will ich allzeit harren.
  • • 4Und ob es währt bis in die Nacht
    • Und wieder an den Morgen,
    • Doch soll mein Herz an Gottes Macht
    • Verzweifeln nicht noch sorgen,
    • So thu’ Israel rechter Art,
    • Der aus dem Geist erzeuget ward,
    • Und seines Gott’s erharre.
  • • 5Ob bei uns ist der Sünden viel,
    • Bei Gott ist viel mehr Gnaden;
    • Sein’ Hand zu helfen hat kein Ziel,
    • Wie gross auch sei der Schaden.
    • Er ist allein der gute Hirt,
    • Der Israel erlö en wird
    • Aus seinen Sünden allen.

  Out of the Deep I Gry to Thee.

  • • 1Out of the deep I cry to thee;
    • O Lord God, hear my crying:
    • Incline thy gracious ear to me,
    • With prayer to thee applying.
    • For if thou fix thy searching eye
    • On all sin and iniquity,
    • Who, Lord, can stand before thee?
  • • 2But love and grace with thee prevail,
    • O God, our sins forgiving;
    • The holiest deeds can naught avail
    • Of all before thee living.
    • Before thee none can boast him clear;
    • Therefore must each thy judgment fear,
    • And live on thy compassion.
  • • 3For this, my hope in God shall rest,
    • Naught building on my merit;
    • My heart confides, of him possest,
    • His goodness stays my spirit.
    • His precious word assureth me;
    • My solace, my sure rock is he,
    • Whereon my soul abideth.
  • • 4And though I wait the livelong night
    • And till the morn returneth,
    • My heart undoubting trusts his might
    • Nor in impatience mourneth.
    • Born of his Spirit, Israel
    • In the right way thus fareth well,
    • And on his God reposeth.
  • • 5What though our sins are manifold?
    • Supreme his mercy reigneth;
    • No limit can his hand withhold,
    • Where evil most obtaineth.
    • He the good Shepherd is alone,
    • Who Israel will redeem and own,
    • Forgiving all transgression.

  From the “Eight Songs,” Wittenberg, 1524.

  V.

  Ein neues Lied wir heben an.
  By Help of God I fain would tell.

  A Song of the Two Christian Martyrs burnt at Brussels by the Sophists of Louvain in the year MDXXII [July 1, 1523].

  “A Song of the Two Christian Martyrs, burnt at Brussels by the Sophists of Louvain. Which took place in the year 1522.”

  [The real date of the event was July 1, 1523; and the ballad gives every token of having been inspired by the first announcement of the story.

  The excellent translation of Mr. Massie has been conformed more closely to the original in the third and fourth stanzas; also, by a felicitous quatrain from the late Dr. C. T. Brooks, in the tenth stanza.]

  Translation principally that of R. Massie.

  Melody in Walter’s Gesangbuch, 1525.

  Harmony by M. Praetorius, 1610.

  

  Ein neues Lied wir heben an.

  • • 1Ein neues Lied wir heben an,
    • Das walt’ Gott unser Herre,
    • Zu singen was Gott hat gethan
    • Zu seinem Lob und Ehre.
    • Zu Brüssel in dem Niederland
    • Wohl durch zween junge Knaben
    • Hat er sein Wunder g’macht bekannt,
    • Die er mit seinen Gaben
    • So reichlich hat gezieret.
  • • 2Der Erst’ recht wohl Johannes heisst,
    • So reich an Gottes Hulden;
    • Sein Bruder Heinrich nach dem Geist,
    • Ein rechter Christ ohn’ Schulden.
    • Von dieser Welt geschieden sind,
    • Sie ha’n die Kron’ erworben,
    • Recht wie die frommen Gottes Kind
    • Für sein Wort sind gestorben,
    • Sein’ Märt’rer sind sie worden.
  • • 3Der alte Feind sie fangen liess,
    • Erschreckt sie lang mit Dräuen,
    • Das Wort Gott man sie lenken hiess,
    • Mit List auch wollt’ sie täuben,
    • Von Löwen der Sophisten viel,
    • Mit ihrer Kunst verloren,
    • Versammelt er zu diesem Spiel;
    • Der Geist sie macht zu Thoren,
    • Sie konnten nichts gewinnen.
  • • 4Sie sungen süss, sie sungen sau’r,
    • Versuchten manche Listen;
    • Die Knaben standen wie ein’ Mau’r,
    • Veracht’ten die Sophisten.
    • Den alten Feind das sehr verdross,
    • Dass er war überwunden
    • Von solchen Jungen, er so gross;
    • Er ward voll Zorn von Stunden,
    • Gedacht’ sie zu verbrennen.
  • • 5Sie raubten ihn’n das Klosterkleid,
    • Die Weih’ sie ihn’n auch nahmen;
    • Die Knaben waren des bereit,
    • Sie sprachen fröhlich: Amen!
    • Sie dankten ihrem Vater, Gott,
    • Dass sie los sollten werden
    • Des Teufels Larvenspiel und Spott,
    • Darin durch falsche Berden
    • Die Welt er gar betreuget.
  • • 6Da schickt Gott durch sein Gnad’ also,
    • Dass sie recht Priester worden:
    • Sich selbst ihm mussten opfern da
    • Und geh’n im Christen Orden,
    • Der Welt ganz abgestorben sein,
    • Die Heuchelei ablegen,
    • Zum Himmel kommen frei und rein,
    • Die Möncherei ausfegen
    • Und Menschen Tand hie lassen.
  • • 7Man schrieb ihn’n für ein Brieflein klein,
    • Das hiess man sie selbst lesen,
    • Die Stüd’ sie zeigten alle drein,
    • Was ihr Glaub’ war gewesen.
    • Der höchste Irrthum dieser war:
    • Man muss allein Gott glauben,
    • Der Mensch leugt und treugt immerdar,
    • Dem soll man nichts vertrauen;
    • Dess mussten sie verbrennen.
  • • 8Zwei grosse Feur sie zünd’ten an,
    • Die Knaben sie her brachten,
    • Es nahm gross Wunder Jedermann,
    • Dass sie solch’ Pein veracht’ten,
    • Mit Freuden sie sich gaben drein,
    • Mit Gottes Lob und Singen,
    • Der Muth ward den Sophisten klein
    • Für diesen neuen Dingen,
    • Da sich Gott liess so merken.
  • • 9Der Schimpf sie nun gereuet hat,
    • Sie wollten’s gern schön machen;
    • Sie thürn nicht rühmen sich der That
    • Sie bergen fast die Sachen,
    • Die Schand’ im Herzen beisset sie
    • Und klagen’s ihr’n Genossen,
    • Doch kann der Geist nicht schweigen hie:
    • Des Habels Blut vergossen,
    • Es muss den Kain melden.
  • • 10Die Aschen will nicht lassen ab,
    • Sie stäubt in allen Landen;
    • Hie hilft kein Bach, Loch, Grub’ noch Grab,
    • Sie macht den Feind zu Schanden.
    • Die er im Leben durch den Mord
    • Zu schweigen hat gedrungen,
    • Die muss er todt an allem Ort
    • Mit aller Stimm’ und Zungen
    • Gar frühlich lassen singen.
  • • 11Noch lassen sie ihr Lügen nicht,
    • Den grossen Mord zu schmücken,
    • Sie gehen für ein falsch Gedicht,
    • Ihr G’wissen thut sie drücken,
    • Die Heil’gen Gott’s auch nach dem Tod
    • Von ihn’n gelästert werden,
    • Sie sagen: in der letzten Noth
    • Die Knaben noch auf Erden
    • Sich sollen ha’n umkehret.
  • • 12Die lass man lügen immerhin,
    • Sie haben’s keinen Frommen,
    • Wir sollen danken Gott darin,
    • Sein Wort ist wiederkommen.
    • Der Sommer ist hart für der Thür
    • Der Winter ist vergangen,
    • Die zarten Blümlein geh’n herfür:
    • Der das hat angefangen,
    • Der wird es wohl vollenden.

  By Help of God I fain would tell.

  • • 1By help of God I fain would tell
    • A new and wondrous story,
    • And sing a marvel that befell
    • To his great praise and glory.
    • At Brussels in the Netherlands
    • He hath his banner lifted,
    • To show his wonders by the hands
    • Of two youths, highly gifted
    • With rich and heavenly graces.
  • • 2One of these youths was calléd John,
    • And Henry was the other;
    • Rich in the grace of God was one,
    • A Christian true his brother.
    • For God’s dear Word they shed their blood,
    • And from the world departed
    • Like bold and pious sons of God;
    • Faithful and lion-hearted,
    • They won the crown of martyrs.
  • • 3The old Arch-fiend did them immure,
    • To terrify them seeking;
    • They bade them God’s dear Word abjure,
    • And fain would stop their speaking.
    • From Louvain many Sophists came,
    • Deep versed in human learning,
    • God’s Spirit foiled them at their game
    • Their pride to folly turning.
    • They could not but be losers.
  • • 4They spake them fair, they spake them foul,
    • Their sharp devices trying.
    • Like rocks stood firm each brave young soul
    • The Sophists’ art defying.
    • The enemy waxed fierce in hate,
    • And for their life-blood thirsted;
    • He fumed and chafed that one so great
    • Should by two babes be worsted,
    • And straightway sought to burn them.
  • • 5Their monkish garb from them they take,
    • And gown of ordination;
    • The youths a cheerful Amen spake,
    • And showed no hesitation.
    • They thanked their God that by his aid
    • They now had been denuded
    • Of Satan’s mock and masquerade,
    • Whereby he had deluded
    • The world with false pretences.
  • • 6Thus by the power of grace they were
    • True priests of God’s own making,
    • Who offered up themselves e’en there,
    • Christ’s holy orders taking;
    • Dead to the world, they cast aside
    • Hypocrisy’s sour leaven,
    • That penitent and justified
    • They might go clean to heaven,
    • And leave all monkish follies.
  • • 7They then were told that they must read
    • A note which was dictated;
    • They straightway wrote their fate and creed,
    • And not one jot abated.
    • Now mark their heresy! “We must
    • In God be firm believers;
    • In mortal men not put our trust,
    • For they are all deceivers;”
    • For this they must be burned!
  • • 8Two fires were lit; the youths were brought,
    • But all were seized with wonder
    • To see them set the flames at naught,
    • And stood as struck with thunder.
    • With joy they came in sight of all,
    • And sang aloud God’s praises;
    • The Sophists’ courage waxéd small
    • Before such wondrous traces
    • Of God’s almighty finger.
  • • 9The scandal they repent, and would
    • Right gladly gloss it over;
    • They dare not boast their deed of blood,
    • But seek the stain to cover.
    • They feel the shame within their breast,
    • And charge therewith each other;
    • But now the Spirit cannot rest,
    • For Abel ’gainst his brother
    • Doth cry aloud for vengeance.
  • • 10Their ashes will not rest; world-wide
    • They fly through every nation.
    • No cave nor grave, no turn nor tide,
    • Can hide th’ abomination.
    • The voices which with cruel hands
    • They put to silence living,
    • Are heard, though dead, throughout all lands
    • Their testimony giving,
    • And loud hosannas singing.
  • • 11From lies to lies they still proceed,
    • And feign forthwith a story
    • To color o’er the murderous deed;
    • Their conscience pricks them sorely.
    • These saints of God e’en after death
    • They slandered, and asserted
    • The youths had with their latest breath
    • Confessed and been converted,
    • Their heresy renouncing.
  • • 12Then let them still go on and lie,
    • They cannot win a blessing;
    • And let us thank God heartily,
    • His Word again possessing.
    • Summer is even at our door,
    • The winter now has vanished,
    • The tender flowerets spring once more,
    • And he, who winter banished,
    • Will send a happy summer.

  VI.

  Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland.
  Saviour of the Heathen, known.

  From the Ambrosian Christmas Hymn, “Veni, Redemptor, Gentium.”

  Translation in part by R. Massie.

  Melody derived from that of the Latin hymn, in Walter’s Gesangbuch, 1525.

  Harmony from “The Choral Book for England,” by Sterndale Bennett and Otto Goldschmidt, 1865.

  
  • • 1Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland,
    • Der Jungfrauen Kind erkannt,
    • Dass sich wunder alle Welt,
    • Gott solch’ Geburt ihm bestellt.
  • • 2Nicht von Mann’s Blut noch von Fleisch,
    • Allein von dem heil’gen Geist
    • Ist Gott’s Wort worden ein Mensch,
    • Und blüht ein Frucht Weibes Fleisch.
  • • 3Der Jungfrau Leib schwanger ward
    • Doch blieb Keuschheit rein bewahrt,
    • Leucht herfür manch Tugend schon,
    • Gott da war in seinem Thron.
  • • 4Er ging aus der Kammer sein,
    • Dem kön’glichen Saal so rein,
    • Gott von Art und Mensch ein Held
    • Sein’n Weg er zu laufen eilt.
  • • 5Sein Lauf kam vom Vater her
    • Und kehrt wieder zum Vater,
    • Fuhr hinunter zu der Hüll’
    • Und wieder zu Gottes Stuhl.
  • • 6Der du bist dem Vater gleich,
    • Führ hinaus den Sieg im Fleisch,
    • Dass dein ewig Gottes G’walt
    • In uns das krank Fleisch enthalt.
  • • 7Dein’ Krippen glänzt hell und klar,
    • Die Nacht giebt ein neu Licht dar,
    • Dunkel muss nicht kommen d’rein
    • Der Glaub’ bleibt immer im Schein.
  • • 8Lob sei Gott dem Vater g’than,
    • Lob sei Gott dem ein’gen Sohn,
    • Lob sei Gott dem heil’gen Geist,
    • Immer und in Ewigkeit.
  • • 1Saviour of the heathen, known
    • As the promised virgin’s Son;
    • Come thou wonder of the earth,
    • God ordained thee such a birth.
  • • 2Not of flesh and blood the son,
    • Offspring of the Holy One,
    • Born of Mary ever-blest,
    • God in flesh is manifest.
  • • 3Cherished is the Holy Child
    • By the mother undefiled;
    • In the virgin, full of grace,
    • God has made his dwelling-place.
  • • 4Lo! he comes! the Lord of all
    • Leaves his bright and royal hall;
    • God and man, with giant force,
    • Hastening to run his course.
  • • 5To the Father whence he came
    • He returns with brighter fame;
    • Down to hell he goes alone,
    • Then ascends to God’s high throne.
  • • 6Thou, the Father’s equal, win
    • Victory in the flesh o’er sin;
    • So shall man, though weak and frail,
    • By the indwelling God prevail.
  • • 7On thy lowly manger night
    • Sheds a pure unwonted light;
    • Darkness must not enter here,
    • Faith abides in sunshine clear.
  • • 8Praise be to the Father done,
    • Praise be to the only Son,
    • Praises to the Spirit be,
    • Now and to eternity.

  VII.

  Christum wir sollen loben schon.
  Now praise we Christ, the Holy One.

  From the Hymn “A solis ortûs cardine.”

  Translation by R. Massie.

  Melody that of the Latin hymn.

  Harmony by M. Praetorius, 1609.

  
  • • 1Christum wir sollen loben schon
    • Der reinen Magd Marien Sohn,
    • So weit die liebe Sonne leucht’t
    • Und an aller Welt Ende reicht.
  • • 2Der selig Schöpfer aller Ding’
    • Zog an ein’s Knechtes Leib gering,
    • Dass er das Fleisch durch’s Fleisch erwürb’,
    • Und sein’ Geschöpf nicht all’s verdürb’.
  • • 3Die göttlich Gnad’ vom Himmel gross
    • Sich in die keusche Mutter goss;
    • Ein Mägdlein trug ein heimlich Pfand,
    • Das der Natur war unbekannt.
  • • 4Das züchtig Haus des Herzens zart
    • Gar bald ein Tempel Gottes ward,
    • Die kein Mann rühret noch erkannt’,
    • Von Gott’s Wort man sie schwanger fand.
  • • 5Die edle Mutter hat gebor’n,
    • Den Gabriel verhiess zuvorn,
    • Den Sanct Johann’s mit Springen zeigt,
    • Da er noch lag im Mutter Leib.
  • • 6Er lag im Heu mit Armuth gross,
    • Die Krippen hart ihn nicht verdross,
    • Es ward ein kleine Milch sein Speis’,
    • Der nie kein Vöglein hungern liess.
  • • 7Des Himmels Chör’ sich freuen drob,
    • Und die Engel singen Gott Lob,
    • Den armen Hirten wird vermeld’t
    • Der Hirt und Schöpfer aller Welt.
  • • 8Lob, Ehr und Dank sei dir gesagt,
    • Christe gebor’n von reinen Magd,
    • Mit Vater und dem heil’gen Geist
    • Von nun an bis in Ewigkeit!
  • • 1Now praise we Christ, the Holy One,
    • The spotless virgin Mary’s Son,
    • Far as the blesséd sun doth shine,
    • E’en to the world’s remote confine.
  • • 2He, who himself all things did make,
    • A servant’s form vouchsafed to take,
    • That He as man mankind might win,
    • And save His creatures from their sin.
  • • 3The grace of God, th’Almighty Lord,
    • On the chaste mother was outpoured;
    • A virgin pure and undefiled
    • In wondrous wise conceived a child.
  • • 4The holy maid became th’ abode
    • And temple of the living God;
    • And she, who knew not man, was blest
    • With God’s own Word made manifest.
  • • 5The noble mother bare a Son,
    • For so did Gabriel’s promise run,
    • Whom John confest and leapt with joy,
    • Ere yet the mother knew her boy.
  • • 6In a rude manger, stretched on hay,
    • In poverty content he lay;
    • With milk was fed the Lord of all,
    • Who feeds the ravens when they call.
  • • 7Th’ angelic choir rejoice, and raise
    • Their voice to God in songs of praise;
    • To humble shepherds is proclaimed
    • The Shepherd who the world hath framed.
  • • 8Honor to thee, O Christ, be paid,
    • Pure offspring of a holy maid,
    • With Father and with Holy Ghost,
    • Till time in time’s abyss be lost.

  VIII.

  Gelobet sei’st du, Jesu Christ.
  All Praise to Jesus’ hallowed Name.

  The first stanza an ancient German Christmas Hymn. Six stanzas added by Luther.

  Translation chiefly by R. Massie.

  Ancient German Church Melody.

  Harmony by A. Haupt, 1869.

  
  • • 1Gelobet sei’st du, Jesu Christ,
    • Dass du Mensch geboren bist
    • Von einer Jungfrau, das ist wahr,
    • Dess freuet sich der Engel Schaar.
    • Kyrioleis.
  • • 2Des ew’gen Vaters einzig Kind
    • Jetzt man in der Krippen findt,
    • In unser armes Fleisch und Blut
    • Verkleidet sich das ewig Gut.
    • Kyrioleis.
  • • 3Den aller Welt Kreis nie beschloss,
    • Der liegt in Marien Schooss,
    • Er ist ein Kindlein worden klein,
    • Der alle Ding erhält allein.
    • Kyrioleis.
  • • 4Das ewig Licht geht da herein,
    • Gibt der Welt ein’n neuen Schein;
    • Es leucht’t wohl mitten in der Nacht
    • Und uns des Lichtes Kinder macht.
    • Kyrioleis.
  • • 5Der Sohn des Vaters, Gott von Art,
    • Ein Gast in der Werlet ward,
    • Und führt uns aus dem Jammerthal;
    • Er macht uns Erben in sei’m Saal.
    • Kyrioleis.
  • • 6Er ist auf Erden kommen arm,
    • Dass er unser sich erbarm’,
    • Und in dem Himmel machet reich
    • Und seinen lieben Engeln gleich.
    • Kyrioleis.
  • • 7Das hat er alles uns gethan,
    • Sein’ gross’ Lieb’ zu zeigen an.
    • Dess freu’ sich alle Christenheit
    • Und dank’ ihm des in Ewigkeit.
    • Kyrioleis.
  • • 1All praise to Jesus’ hallowed name
    • Who of virgin pure became
    • True man for us! The angels sing
    • As the glad news to earth they bring.
    • Hallelujah!
  • • 2Th’ eternal Father’s only Son
    • For a manger leaves his throne.
    • Disguised in our poor flesh and blood
    • See now the everlasting Good.
    • Hallelujah!
  • • 3He whom the world could not inwrap
    • Yonder lies in Mary’s lap;
    • He is become an infant small,
    • Who by his might upholdeth all.
    • Hallelujah!
  • • 4Th’ eternal Light, come down from heaven,
    • Hath to us new sunshine given;
    • It shineth in the midst of night,
    • And maketh us the sons of light.
    • Hallelujah!
  • • 5The Father’s Son, God everblest,
    • In the world became a guest;
    • He leads us from this vale of tears,
    • And makes us in his kingdom heirs.
    • Hallelujah!
  • • 6He came to earth so mean and poor,
    • Man to pity and restore,
    • And make us rich in heaven above,
    • Equal with angels through his love.
    • Hallelujah!
  • • 7All this he did to show his grace
    • To our poor and sinful race;
    • For this let Christendom adore
    • And praise his name for evermore.
    • Hallelujah!

  IX.

  Christ lag in Todesbanden.
  Christ was laid in Death’s strong Bands.

  “Christ ist erstanden.”

  —[Gebessert. D. Martin Luther.]

  Melody derived from that of the older German hymn.

  Harmony by Bennett and Goldschmidt, 1865.

  
  • • 1Christ lag in Todesbanden
    • Für unser’ Sünd’ gegeben;
    • Der ist wieder erstanden
    • Und hat uns bracht das Leben:
    • Dess wir sollen fröhlich sein,
    • Gott loben und dankbar sein,
    • Und singen Halleluja!
    • Halleluja!
  • • 2Den Tod Niemand zwingen konnt’
    • Bei allen Menschenkindern;
    • Das macht alles unser Sünd’,
    • Kein’ Unschuld war zu finden
    • Davon kam der Tod so bald
    • Und nahm über uns Gewalt,
    • Hielt uns in sei’m Reich gefangen.
    • Halleluja!
  • • 3Jesus Christus, Gottes Sohn,
    • An unser Statt ist kommen,
    • Und hat die Sünde abgethan,
    • Damit dem Tod genommen
    • All sein Recht und sein’ Gewalt,
    • Da bleibt nichts denn Tod’s Gestalt,
    • Den Stachel hat er verloren.
    • Halleluja!
  • • 4Es war ein wunderlich Krieg,
    • Da Tod und Leben rungen;
    • Das Leben behielt den Sieg,
    • Es hat den Tod verschlungen.
    • Die Schrift hat verkündet das,
    • Wie ein Tod den andern frass,
    • Ein Spott aus dem Tod ist worden.
    • Halleluja!
  • • 5Hie ist das recht’ Osterlamm,
    • Davon Gott hat geboten,
    • Das ist an des Kreuzes Stamm
    • In heisser Lieb’ gebraten,
    • Dess Blut zeichnet unser’ Thür,
    • Das hält der Glaub’ dem Tod für,
    • Der Würger kann uns nicht rühren.
    • Halleluja!
  • • 6So feiern wir das hoh’ Fest
    • Mit Herzens Freud’ und Wonne,
    • Das uns der Herr scheinen lässt,
    • Er ist selber die Sonne,
    • Der durch seiner Gnaden Glanz
    • Erleucht’t uns’re Herzen ganz,
    • Der Sünden Nacht ist vergangen.
    • Halleluja!
  • • 7Wir essen und leben wohl
    • In rechten Osterfladen,
    • Der alt’ Sauerteig nicht soll
    • Sein bei dem Wort der Gnaden,
    • Christus will die Koste sein
    • Und speisen die Seel’ allein,
    • Der Glaub’ will kein’s Andern Leben.
    • Halleluja!
  • • 1Christ was laid in Death’s strong bands
    • For our transgressions givén.
    • Risen, at God’s right hand he stands
    • And brings us life from heavén.
    • Therefore let us joyful be
    • Praising God right thankfully
    • With loud songs of Hallelujah!
    • Hallelujah!
  • • 2None o’er Death could victory win;
    • O’er all mankind he reignéd.
    • ’Twas by reason of our sin;
    • There was not one unstainéd.
    • Thus came Death upon us all,
    • Bound the captive world in thrall,
    • Held us ’neath his dread dominion.
    • Hallelujah!
  • • 3Jesus Christ, God’s only Son,
    • To our low state descending,
    • All our sins away hath done
    • Death’s power forever ending.
    • Ruined all his right and claim
    • Left him nothing but the name,
    • For his sting is lost forever.
    • Hallelujah!
  • • 4Strange and dreadful was the fray,
    • When Death and Life contended;
    • But ’twas Life that won the day,
    • And Death’s dark sway was ended.
    • Holy Scripture plainly saith,
    • Death is swallowed up of Death,
    • Put to scorn and led in triumph.
    • Hallelujah!
  • • 5This, the Paschal Lamb, the Christ,
    • Whom God so freely gave us,
    • On the cross is sacrificed
    • In flames of love to save us.
    • On our door the blood-mark;—Faith
    • Holds it in the face of Death.
    • The Destroyer can not harm us.
    • Hallelujah!
  • • 6Therefore let us keep the feast
    • With heartfelt exultation;
    • God to shine on us is pleased,
    • The Sun of our salvation.
    • On our hearts, with heavenly grace,
    • Beams the brightness of his face,
    • And the night of sin has vanished.
    • Hallelujah!
  • • 7Eat th’ unleavened bread to-day,
    • And drink the paschal chalice;
    • From God’s pure word put away
    • The leaven of guile and malice.
    • Christ alone our souls will feed;
    • He is meat and drink indeed.
    • Faith no other life desireth.
    • Hallelujah!

  X.

  Komm, Gott Schöpfer, Heiliger Geist.
  Come, God Creator, Holy Ghost.

  From the Hymn, “Veni, Creator Spiritus,” ascribed to Charlemagne.

  Melody of the eighth century.

  Harmony by John Sebastian Bach.

  
  • • 1Komm, Gott Schöpfer, heiliger Geist,
    • Besuch’ das Herz der Menschen dein,
    • Mit Gnaden sie füll’, wie du weisst,
    • Dass dein Geschöpf vorhin sein.
  • • 2Denn du bist der Tröster genannt,
    • Des Allerhöchsten Gabe theuer,
    • Ein’ geistlich’ Salb’ an uns gewandt,
    • Ein lebend Brunn, Lieb’ und Feuer.
  • • 3Zünd’ uns ein Licht an im Verstand,
    • Gib uns in’s Herz der Liebe Brunst,
    • Das schwach’ Fleisch’ in uns, dir bekannt,
    • Erhalt’ fest’ dein’ Kräft’ und Gunst.
  • • 4Du bist mit Gaben siebenfalt
    • Der Finger an Gott’s rechter Hand;
    • Des Vaters Wort giebst du gar bald
    • Mit Zungen in alle Land.
  • • 5Des Feindes List treibt von uns fern,
    • Den Fried’ schaff’ bei uns deine Gnad’,
    • Dass wir dein’m Leiten folgen gern,
    • Und meiden der Seelen Schad’.
  • • 6Lehr’ uns den Vater kennen wohl,
    • Dazu Jesum Christ seinen Sohn,
    • Dass wir des Glaubens werden voll,
    • Dich beider Geist zu verstehen.
  • • 7Gott Vater sei Lob und dem Sohn,
    • Der von den Todten auferstund;
    • Dem Tröster sei dasselb’ gethan
    • In Ewigkeit alle Stund’.
  • • 1Come, God Creator, Holy Ghost,
    • And visit thou these souls of men;
    • Fill them with graces, as thou dost,
    • Thy creatures make pure again.
  • • 2For Comforter thy name we call.
    • Sweet gift of God most high above,
    • A holy unction to us all
    • O Fount of life, Fire of love.
  • • 3Our minds illumine and refresh,
    • Deep in our hearts let love burn bright;
    • Thou know’st the weakness of our flesh;
    • And strengthen us with thy might.
  • • 4Thou with thy wondrous sevenfold gifts
    • The finger art of God’s right hand;
    • The Father’s word thou sendest swift
    • On tongues of fire to each land.
  • • 5Drive far from us our wily foe;
    • Grant us thy blesséd peace within,
    • That in thy footsteps we may go,
    • And shun the dark ways of sin.
  • • 6Teach us the Father well to know,
    • Likewise his only Son our Lord,
    • Thyself to us believing show,
    • Spirit of both, aye adored.
  • • 7Praise to the Father, and the Son
    • Who from the dead is risen again;
    • Praise to the Comforter be done
    • Both now and ever. Amen.

  XI.

  Jesus Christus unser Heiland, der den Tod.
  Jesus Christ, who came to save.

  A Song of Praise for Easter.

  Melody first published by Klug, 1543, and Bapst, 1545.

  Harmony after John Sebastian Bach.

  
  • • 1Jesus Christus unser Heiland,
    • Der den Tod überwand,
    • Ist auferstanden,
    • Die Sünd’ hat er gefangen.
    • Kyrie eleison!
  • • 2Der ohn’ Sünden war gebor’n,
    • Trug für uns Gottes Zorn,
    • Hat uns versöhnet,
    • Dass Gott uns sein’ Huld gönner.
    • Kyrie eleison!
  • • 3Tod, Sünd’, Leben und Genad,
    • All’s in Händen er hat,
    • Er kann erretten
    • Alle, die zu ihm treten.
    • Kyrie eleison!
  • • 1Jesus Christ, who came to save,
    • And overcame the grave,
    • Is now arisen,
    • And sin hath bound in prison.
    • Kyri’ eleison!
  • • 2Who withoutén sin was found,
    • Bore our transgression’s wound.
    • He is our Saviour,
    • And brings us to God’s favor.
    • Kyri’ eleison!
  • • 3Life and mercy, sin and death,
    • All in his hands he hath;
    • Them he’ll deliver,
    • Who trust in him forever.
    • Kyri’ eleison!

  XII.

  Komm, heiliger Geist, Herre Gott.
  Come, Holy Spirit, Lord our God.

  “Veni, Sancte Spiritus, gebessert durch D. Martin Luther.” The last two stanzas added by Luther’s hand.

  The first stanza translated from the Latin hymn ascribed to King Robert of France (A. D. 991), is traced to a service-book of the church in Basel, of the year 1514.

  Translation chiefly that of Arthur Tozer Russell.

  Original Latin Melody.

  Harmony after Erythraeus, 1609.

  

  Komm, heiliger Geist, Herre Gott.

  • • 1Komm, heiliger Geist, Herre Gott,
    • Erfüll’ mit deiner Gnaden Gut
    • Deiner Gläubigen Herz, Muth und Sinn;
    • Dein brünst’ge Lieb’ entzünd’ in ihn’n.
    • O Herr, durch deines Lichtes Glast
    • Zu dem Glauben versammelt hast
    • Das Volk aus aller Welt Zungen,
    • Das sei dir, Herr, zu Lob gesungen,
    • Halleluja! Halleluja!
  • • 2Du heiliges Licht, edler Hort,
    • Lass uns leuchten des Lebens Wort,
    • Und lehr’ uns Gott recht erkennen,
    • Von Herzen Vater ihn nennen.
    • O Herr, behüt’ vor fremder Lehr,
    • Dass wir nicht Meister suchen mehr
    • Denn Jesum mit rechtem Glauben,
    • Und ihm aus ganzer Macht vertrauen.
    • Halleluja! Halleluja!
  • • 3Du heilige Brunst, süsser Trost,
    • Nun hilf uns fröhlich und getrost
    • In deinem Dienst beständig bleiben,
    • Die Trübsal uns nicht abtreiben.
    • O Herr, durch dein’ Kraft uns bereit’
    • Und stärk des Fleisches Blödigkeit,
    • Dass wir hier ritterlich ringen,
    • Durch Tod und Leben zu dir dringen.
    • Halleluja! Halleluja!

  Come, Holy Spirit, Lord our God.

  • • 1Come, Holy Spirit, Lord our God,
    • And pour thy gifts of grace abroad;
    • Thy faithful people fill with blessing,
    • Love’s fire their hearts possessing.
    • O Lord, thou by thy heavenly light
    • Dost gather and in faith unite
    • Through all the world a holy nation
    • To sing to thee with exultation,
    • Hallelujah! Hallelujah!
  • • 2O holiest Light! O Rock adored!
    • Give us thy light, thy living word,
    • To God himself our spirits leading,
    • With him as children pleading.
    • From error, Lord, our souls defend,
    • That they on Christ alone attend;
    • In him with faith unfeigned abiding,
    • In him with all their might confiding.
    • Hallelujah! Hallelujah!
  • • 3O holiest Fire! O Source of rest!
    • Grant that with joy and hope possest,
    • And in thy service kept forever,
    • Naught us from thee may sever.
    • Lord, may thy power prepare each heart;
    • To our weak nature strength impart,
    • Onward to press, our foes defying,
    • To thee, through living and through dying.
    • Hallelujah! Hallelujah!

  Note.—The first stanza is found in a service-book of the church of Basel, of the year 1514. The irregularities of the German versification may be explained in part by the two-fold authorship, in this and other hymns.

  XIII.

  Diess sind die heil’gen zehn Gebot’.
  That Man a godly Life might live.

  The Ten Commandments.

  Translation chiefly by R. Massie.

  
  • • 1Diess sind die heil’gen zehn Gebot’,
    • Die uns gab unser Herre Gott
    • Durch Mosen, seinen Diener treu,
    • Hoch auf dem Berg Sinai.
    • Kyrioleis!
  • • 2Ich bin allein dein Gott der Herr,
    • Kein’ Götter sollst du haben mehr,
    • Du sollt mir ganz vertrauen dich,
    • Von Herzengrund lieben mich.
    • Kyrioleis!
  • • 3Du sollt nicht brauchen zu Unehr’n
    • Den Namen Gottes, deines Herrn;
    • Du sollt nicht preisen recht noch gut,
    • Ohn’ was Gott selbst red’t und thut.
    • Kyrioleis!
  • • 4Du sollt heil’gen den stebent’ Tag,
    • Dass du und dein Haus ruhen mag,
    • Du sollt von dei’m Thun lassen ab,
    • Das Gott sein Werk in dir hab’.
    • Kyrioleis!
  • • 5Du sollt ehr’n und gehorsam sein
    • Dem Vater und der Mutter dein,
    • Und wo dein Hand ihn’n dienen kann,
    • So wirst du lang’s Leben han.
    • Kyrioleis!
  • • 6Du sollt nicht tödten zorniglich,
    • Nicht hassen noch selbst rächen dich,
    • Geduld haben und sanften Muth
    • Und auch dem Feind thun das Gut’.
    • Kyrioleis!
  • • 7Dein’ Eh’ sollt du bewahren rein,
    • Dass auch dein Herz kein andere mein’,
    • Und halten keusch das Leben dein
    • Mit Zucht und Mässigkeit fein.
    • Kyrioleis!
  • • 8Du sollt nicht stehlen Geld noch Gut,
    • Nicht wuchern Jemands Schweiss und Blut;
    • Du sollt aufthun dein’ milde Hand
    • Den Armen in deinem Land.
    • Kyrioleis!
  • • 9Du sollt kein falscher Zeuge sein,
    • Nicht lügen auf den Nächsten dein,
    • Sein’ Unschuld sollt auch retten du
    • Und seine Schand’ decken zu.
    • Kyrioleis!
  • • 10Du sollt dein’s Nächsten Weib und Haus
    • Begehren nicht, noch etwas d’raus,
    • Du sollt ihm wünschen alles Gut’,
    • Wie dir dein Herz selber thut.
    • Kyrioleis!
  • • 11Die Gebot, all’ uns geben sind,
    • Dass du dein Sünd’, o Menschenkind,
    • Erkennen sollt, und lernen wohl,
    • Wie man für Gott leben soll.
    • Kyrioleis!
  • • 12Das helf’ uns der Herr Jesus Christ,
    • Der unser Mittler worden ist:
    • Es ist mit unserm Thun verlor’n,
    • Verdienen doch eitel Zorn.
    • Kyrioleis!
  • • 1That man a godly life might live,
    • God did these ten commandments give
    • By his true servant Moses, high
    • Upon the mount Sinai.
    • Have mercy, Lord.
  • • 2I am thy God and Lord alone,
    • No other God besides me own;
    • On my great mercy venture thee,
    • With all thy heart love thou me.
    • Have mercy, Lord.
  • • 3By idle word and speech profane
    • Take not my holy name in vain;
    • And praise not aught as good and true
    • But what God doth say and do.
    • Have mercy, Lord.
  • • 4Hallow the day which God hath blest,
    • That thou and all thy house may rest;
    • Keep hand and heart from labor free,
    • That God may so work in thee.
    • Have mercy, Lord.
  • • 5Give to thy parents honor due,
    • Be dutiful and loving too;
    • And help them when their strength decays;
    • So shalt thou have length of days.
    • Have mercy, Lord.
  • • 6Kill thou not out of evil will,
    • Nor hate, nor render ill for ill;
    • Be patient and of gentle mood,
    • And to thy foe do thou good.
    • Have mercy, Lord.
  • • 7Be faithful to thy marriage vows,
    • Thy heart give only to thy spouse;
    • Keep thy life pure, and lest thou sin
    • Keep thyself with discipline.
    • Have mercy, Lord.
  • • 8Steal not; oppressive acts abhor;
    • Nor wring their life-blood from the poor;
    • But open wide thy loving hand
    • To all the poor in the land.
    • Have mercy, Lord.
  • • 9Bear not false witness, nor belie
    • Thy neighbor by foul calumny;
    • Defend his innocence from blame,
    • With charity hide his shame.
    • Have mercy, Lord.
  • • 10Thy neighbor’s wife desire thou not,
    • His house, nor aught that he hath got;
    • But wish that his such good may be
    • As thy heart doth wish for thee.
    • Have mercy, Lord.
  • • 11God these commandments gave, therein
    • To show thee, son of man, thy sin,
    • And make thee also well perceive
    • How man for God ought to live.
    • Have mercy, Lord.
  • • 12Help us, Lord Jesus Christ, for we
    • A Mediator have in thee;
    • Without thy help our works so vain
    • Merit naught but endless pain.
    • Have mercy, Lord.

  XIV.

  Jesus Christus unser Heiland, der von uns.
  Christ, who freed our Souls from Danger.

  “Improved” from the Communion Hymn of John Huss, “Jesus Christus, noster Salus.”

  Translated from “Jesus Christus nostra salus,” hymn of John Huss.

  Translation by R. Massie.

  Melody in Walter, 1525.

  Harmony in von Tucher, 1848.

  
  • • 1Jesus Christus unser Heiland,
    • Der von uns den Zorn Gottes wandt’,
    • Durch das bitter’ Leiden sein
    • Half er uns aus der Hölle Pein.
  • • 2Dass wir nimmer dess vergessen,
    • Gab er uns sein’ Leib zu essen,
    • Verborgen im Brot so klein,
    • Und zu trinken sein Blut im Wein.
  • • 3Wer sich zu dem Tisch will machen,
    • Der hab wohl acht auf sein’ Sachen:
    • Wer unwürdig hiezu geht,
    • Für das Leben den Tod empfäht.
  • • 4Du sollt Gott den Vater preisen,
    • Dass er dich so wohl wollt’ speisen,
    • Und für deine Missethat
    • In den Tod sein’n Sohn geben hat.
  • • 5Du sollt glauben und nicht wanken,
    • Dass ein’ Speise sei den Kranken,
    • Den’n ihr Herz’ von Sünden schwer
    • Und für Angst ist betrübet sehr.
  • • 6Solch’ gross’ Gnad’ und Barmherzigkeit
    • Sucht ein Herz in grosser Arbeit:
    • Ist dir wohl, so bleib’ davon,
    • Dass du nicht kriegest bösen Lohn.
  • • 7Er spricht selber: Kommt ihr Armen,
    • Lasst mich über euch erbarmen:
    • Kein Arzt ist dem Starken noth,
    • Sein’ Kunst wird an ihm gar ein Spott.
  • • 8Hätt’st du dir was konnt erwerben,
    • Was dürst’ dann ich für dich sterben?
    • Dieser Tisch auch dir nicht gilt,
    • So du selber dir helfen willt.
  • • 9Glaubst du das von Herzen Grunde
    • Und bekennest mit dem Munde,
    • So bist du recht wohl geschickt
    • Und die Speise dein’ Seel’ erquickt.
  • • 10Die Frucht soll auch nicht ausbleiben:
    • Deinen Nächsten sollt du lieben,
    • Dass er dein geniessen kann,
    • Wie dein Gott hat an dir gethan.
  • • 1Christ, who freed our souls from danger,
    • And hath turned away God’s anger,
    • Suffered pains no tongue can tell,
    • To redeem us from pains of hell.
  • • 2That we never might forget it,
    • Take my flesh, he said, and eat it,
    • Hidden in this piece of bread,
    • Drink my blood in this wine, he said.
  • • 3Whoso to this board repaireth,
    • Take good heed how he prepareth;
    • Death instead of life shall he
    • Find, who cometh unworthily.
  • • 4Praise the Father, God in heavén,
    • Who such dainty food hath givén,
    • And for misdeeds thou hast done
    • Gave to die his belovéd Son.
  • • 5Trust God’s Word; it is intended
    • For the sick who would be mended;
    • Those whose heavy-laden breast
    • Groans with sin, and is seeking rest.
  • • 6To such grace and mercy turneth
    • Every soul that truly mourneth;
    • Art thou well? Avoid this board,
    • Else thou reapest an ill reward.
  • • 7Lo! he saith himself, “Ye weary,
    • Come to me, and I will cheer ye;”
    • Needless were the leech’s skill
    • To the souls that be strong and well.
  • • 8Couldst thou earn thine own salvation,
    • Useless were my death and passion;
    • Wilt thou thine own helper be?
    • No meet table is this for thee.
  • • 9If thou this believest truly,
    • And confession makest duly,
    • Thou a welcome guest art here,
    • This rich banquet thy soul shall cheer.
  • • 10Sweet henceforth shall be thy labor,
    • Thou shalt truly love thy neighbor
    • So shall he both taste and see
    • What thy Saviour hath done in thee.

  XV.

  Gott sei gelobet und gebenedeiet.
  May God be praised henceforth and blest forever.

  Translation by R. Massie, amended.

  Melody derived from some older one, 1525.

  Harmony by H. Schein, 1627.

  

  Gott sei gelobet und gebenedeiet.

  • • 1Gott sei gelobet und gebenedeiet,
    • Der uns selber hat gespeiset
    • Mit seinem Fleische und mit seinem Blute,
    • Das gib uns, Herr Gott, zu gute.
    • Kyrieleison!
    • Herr, durch deinen heiligen Leichnam,
    • Der von deiner Mutter Maria kam,
    • Und das heilige Blut,
    • Hilf uns, Herr, aus aller Noth.
    • Kyrieleison!
  • • 2Der heilig’ Leichnam ist für uns gegeben
    • Zum Tod, dass wir dadurch leben,
    • Nicht grösser’ Güte konnte er uns schenken,
    • Dabei wir sein soll’n gebenken.
    • Kyrieleison!
    • Herr, dein Lieb’ so gross dich zwungen hat,
    • Dass dein Blut an uns gross Wunder that
    • Und bezahlt unser Schuld,
    • Dass uns Gott ist worden hold.
    • Kyrieleison!
  • • 3Gott geb’ uns Allen seiner Gnade Segen,
    • Dass wir gehen auf seinen Wegen,
    • In rechter Lieb’ und brüderlicher Treue,
    • Dass uns die Speis’ nicht gereue.
    • Kyrieleison!
    • Herr, dein heilig’ Geist uns nimmer lass,
    • Der uns geb’ zu halten rechte Mass,
    • Dass dein’ arm’ Christenheit
    • Leb’ in Fried’ und Einigkeit.
    • Kyrieleison!

  May God be praised henceforth and blest forever.

  • • 1May God be prais’d henceforth and blest forever!
    • Who, himself both gift and giver,
    • With his own flesh and blood our souls doth nourish;
    • May they grow thereby and flourish!
    • Kyri’ eleison!
    • By thy holy body, Lord, the same
    • Which from thine own mother Mary came,
    • By the drops thou didst bleed,
    • Help us in the hour of need!
    • Kyri’ eleison!
  • • 2Thou hast to death thy holy body given,
    • Life to win for us in heaven;
    • By stronger love, dear Lord, thou couldst not bind us,
    • Whereof this should well remind us.
    • Kyri’ eleison!
    • Lord, thy love constrain’d thee for our good
    • Mighty things to do by thy dear blood;
    • Thou hast paid all we owed,
    • Thou hast made our peace with God.
    • Kyri’ eleison!
  • • 3May God bestow on us his grace and blessing,
    • That, his holy footsteps tracing,
    • We walk as brethren dear in love and union,
    • Nor repent this sweet communion.
    • Kyri’ eleison!
    • Let not us the Holy Ghost forsake;
    • May he grant that we the right way take;
    • That thy poor church may see
    • Days of peace and unity.
    • Kyri’ eleison!

  XVI.

  Es wollt’ uns Gott genädig sein.
  May God unto us gracious be.

  Psalm LXVII.—“Deus misereatur nostri.”

  Translation by Arthur Tozer Russell.

  Melody in Köphl, Strassburg, 1538.

  Harmony, A. Haupt, 1869.

  

  Es wollt’ uns Gott genädig sein.

  • • 1Es wollt’ uns Gott genädig sein,
    • Und seinen Segen geben,
    • Sein Antlitz uns mit hellem Schein
    • Erleucht’ zum ew’gen Leben,
    • Dass wir erkennen seine Werk’
    • Und was ihm b’liebt auf Erden,
    • Und Jesus Christus Heil und Stärk’
    • Bekannt den Heiden werden
    • Und sie zu Gott bekehren.
  • • 2So danken, Gott, und loben dich
    • Die Heiden überalle,
    • Und alle Welt die freue sich
    • Und sing’ mit grossem Schalle,
    • Dass du auf Erden Richter bist
    • Und lasst die Sünd’ nicht walten,
    • Dein Wort die Hut und Weide ist,
    • Die alles Volk erhalten,
    • In rechter Bahn zu wallen.
  • • 3Es danke, Gott, und lobe dich
    • Das Volk in guten Thaten;
    • Das Land bringt Frucht und bessert sich,
    • Dein Wort ist wohl gerathen.
    • Uns segen’ Vater und der Sohn,
    • Uns segen’ Gott der heilig’ Geist,
    • Dem alle Welt die Ehre thu,
    • Für ihm sich fürchte allermeist,
    • Nun sprecht von Herzen, Amen!

  May God unto us gracious be.

  • • 1May God unto us gracious be,
    • And grant to us his blessing;
    • Lord, show thy face to us, through thee
    • Eternal life possessing:
    • That all thy work and will, o God,
    • To us may be revealéd,
    • And Christ’s salvation spread abroad
    • To heathen lands unsealéd,
    • And unto God convert them.
  • • 2Thine over all shall be the praise
    • And thanks of every nation,
    • And all the world with joy shall raise
    • The voice of exultation.
    • For thou the sceptre, Lord, dost wield
    • Sin to thyself subjecting;
    • Thy Word, thy people’s pasture-field,
    • And fence their feet protecting,
    • Them in the way preserveth.
  • • 3Thy fold, O God, shall bring to thee
    • The praise of holy living;
    • Thy word shall richly fruitful be,
    • And earth shall yield thanksgiving.
    • Bless us, O Father! bless, O Son!
    • Grant, Holy Ghost, thy blessing!
    • Thee earth shall honor—thee alone,
    • Thy fear all souls possessing.
    • Now let our hearts say, Amen.

  XVII.

  Wohl dem, der in Gottes Furcht steht.
  Happy the Man who feareth God.

  Psalm CXXVIII.—“Beati omnes qui timent Dominum.”

  Translation by R. Massie.

  First Melody, of 1525.

  Harmony by Gesius, 1605.

  Second Melody, of 1537.

  Harmony by Landgraf Moritz, 1612.

  

  Wohl dem, der in Gottes Furcht steht.

  • • 1Wohl dem, der in Gottesfurcht steht,
    • Und der auf seinem Wege geht;
    • Dein eigen Hand dich nähren soll,
    • So lebst du recht und geht dir wohl.
  • • 2Dein Weib wird in dei’m Hause sein
    • Wie ein’ Reben voll Trauben fein,
    • Und dein’ Kinder um deinen Tisch
    • Wie Oelpflanzen, gesund und frisch.
  • • 2Sich so reich Segen hängt dem an,
    • Wo in Gottes Furcht lebt ein Mann,
    • Von ihm lässt der alt’ Fluch und Zorn,
    • Den Menschenkindern angebor’n.
  • • 4Aus Zion wird Gott segnen dich,
    • Dass du wirst schauen stetiglich
    • Das Glück der Stadt Jerusalem,
    • Für Gott in Gnaden angenehm.
  • • 5Fristen wird er das Leben dein
    • Und mit Güte stets bei dir sein,
    • Dass du sehen wirst Kindes Kind
    • Und dass Israel Friede findt.

  Happy the Man who feareth God.

  • • 1Happy the man who feareth God,
    • Whose feet his holy ways have trod;
    • Thine own good hand shall nourish thee,
    • And well and happy shalt thou be.
  • • 2Thy wife shall, like a fruitful vine,
    • Fill all thy house with clusters fine;
    • Thy children all be fresh and sound,
    • Like olive-plants thy table round.
  • • 3Lo! to the man these blessings cleave
    • Who in God’s holy fear doth live;
    • From him the ancient curse hath fled
    • By Adam’s race inherited.
  • • 4Out of Mount Zion God shall send,
    • And crown with joy thy latter end;
    • That thou Jerusalem mayst see,
    • In favor and prosperity.
  • • 5He shall be with thee in thy ways,
    • And give thee health and length of days;
    • Yea, thou shalt children’s children see,
    • And peace on Israel shall be.

  XVIII.

  Mitten wir im Leben sind.
  Though in Midst of Life we be.

  The first stanza from Media vita in morte sumus. Notker, A. D. 912.

  Translation by R. Massie.

  Melody (not from the Latin), 1525.

  Harmony by Erythraeus, 1608.

  

  Mitten wir im Leben sind.

  • • 1Mitten wir im Leben sind
    • Mit dem Tod umpfangen,
    • Wen such’n wir der Hülfe thu’,
    • Dass wir Gnad’ erlangen?
    • Das bist du, Herr, alleine.
    • Uns reuet unser’ Missethat,
    • Die dich, Herr, erzürnet hat.
    • Heiliger Herre Gott,
    • Heiliger, starker Gott,
    • Heiliger, barmherziger Heiland,
    • Du ewiger Gott!
    • Lass uns nicht versinken
    • In der bittern Todesnoth.
    • Kyrieleison!
  • • 2Mitten in den Tod ansieht
    • Uns der Höllen Rachen;
    • Wer will uns aus solcher Noth
    • Frei und ledig machen?
    • Das thust du, Herr, alleine.
    • Es jammert dein’ Barmherzigkeit
    • Unser’ Süud’ und grosses Leid.
    • Heiliger Herre Gott!
    • Heiliger, starker Gott!
    • Heiliger, barmherziger Heiland!
    • Du ewiger Gott!
    • Lass uns nicht verzagen
    • Für der tiefen Höllenglut.
    • Kyrieleison!
  • • 3Mitten in der Höllen Angst
    • Unser’ Klag’ uns treiben;
    • Wo soll’n wir denn fliehen hin,
    • Da wir mögen bleiben?
    • Zu dir, Herr Christ, alleine.
    • Vergossen ist dein theures Blut,
    • Das g’nug für die Sünde thut.
    • Heiliger Herre Gott!
    • Heiliger, starker Gott!
    • Heiliger, barmherziger Heiland!
    • Du ewiger Gott!
    • Lass uns nicht entfallen
    • Von des rechten Glaubens Trost.
    • Kyrieleison!

  Though in Midst of Life we be.

  • • 1Though in midst of life we be,
    • Snares of death surround us;
    • Where shall we for succor flee,
    • Lest our foes confound us?
    • To thee alone, our Saviour.
    • We mourn our grievous sin which hath
    • Stirr’d the fire of thy fierce wrath.
    • Holy and gracious God!
    • Holy and mighty God!
    • Holy and all-merciful Saviour!
    • Thou eternal God!
    • Save us, Lord, from sinking
    • In the deep and bitter flood.
    • Kyrie eleison.
  • • 2Whilst in midst of death we be,
    • Hell’s grim jaws o’ertake us;
    • Who from such distress will free.
    • Who secure will make us?
    • Thou only, Lord, canst do it!
    • It moves thy tender heart to see
    • Our great sin and misery.
    • Holy and gracious God!
    • Holy and mighty God!
    • Holy and all merciful Saviour!
    • Thou eternal God!
    • Let not hell dismay us
    • With its deep and burning flood.
    • Kyrie eleison.
  • • 3Into hell’s fierce agony
    • Sin doth headlong drive us:
    • Where shall we for succor flee,
    • Who, O, who will hide us?
    • Thou only, blesséd Saviour.
    • Thy precious blood was shed to win
    • Peace and pardon for our sin.
    • Holy and gracious God!
    • Holy and mighty God!
    • Holy and all-merciful Saviour!
    • Let us not, we pray,
    • From the true faith’s comfort
    • Fall in our last need away.
    • Kyrie eleison.

  From Walter’s Gesangbuch, 1525.

  XIX.

  Nun bitten wir den heiligen Geist.
  Now pray we all God, the Comforter.

  The first stanza from an ancient German hymn. The other stanzas added by Luther.

  Translation by Arthur Tozer Russell.

  Melody, 1525.

  Harmony by A. Haupt, 1869.

  
  • • 1Nun bitten wir den heiligen Geist
    • Um den rechten Glauben allermeist,
    • Dass er uns behüte an unserm Ende,
    • Wann wir heimfahr’n aus diesem Elende.
    • Kyrioleis!
  • • 2Du werthes Licht, gib uns deinen Schein,
    • Lehr’ uns Jesum Christ kennen allein,
    • Dass wir an ihm bleiben, dem treuen Heiland,
    • Der uns bracht hat zum rechten Vaterland.
    • Kyrioleis!
  • • 3Du füsse Lieb’, schenk uns deine Gunst,
    • Lass uns empfinden der Liebe Brunst,
    • Dass wir uns von Herzen einander lieben
    • Und in Frieden auf einem Sinn bleiben.
    • Kyrioleis!
  • • 4Du höchster Tröster in aller Noth,
    • Hilf, dass wir nicht fürchten Schand noch Tod,
    • Dass in uns die Sinne nicht verzagen,
    • Wenn der Feind wird das Leben verklagen.
    • Kyrioleis!
  • • 1Now pray we all God, the Comforter,
    • Into every heart true faith to pour
    • And that he defend us, Till death here end us,
    • When for heaven we leave this world of sorrow.
    • Have mercy, Lord.
  • • 2Shine into us, O most holy Light,
    • That we Jesus Christ may know aright;
    • Stayed on him forever, Our only Saviour,
    • Who to our true home again hath brought us.
    • Have mercy, Lord.
  • • 3Spirit of love, now our spirits bless;
    • Them with thy own heavenly fire possess;
    • That in heart uniting, In peace delighting,
    • We may henceforth all be one in spirit.
    • Have mercy, Lord.
  • • 4Our highest comfort in all distress!
    • O let naught with fear our hearts oppress:
    • Give us strength unfailing O’er fear prevailing,
    • When th’ accusing foe would overwhelm us.
    • Have mercy, Lord.

  XX.

  Mit Fried’ und Freud’ ich fahr’ dahin.
  In Peace and Joy I now depart.

  A Song of Simeon, “Nunc Dimittis.”

  Melody, 1525.

  Harmony by M. Praetorius, 1610.

  
  • • 1Mit Fried’ und Freud’ ich fahr’ dahin,
    • In Gottes Wille,
    • Getrost ist mir mein Herz und Sinn,
    • Sanst und stille.
    • Wie Gott mir verheissen hat:
    • Der Tod ist mein Schlaf worden.
  • • 2Das macht Christus, wahr Gottes Sohn,
    • Der treue Heiland,
    • Den du mich, Herr, hast sehen lan
    • Und macht bekannt,
    • Dass er sei das Leben
    • Und Heil in Noth und Sterben.
  • • 3Den hast du Allen fürgestellt
    • Mit grossen Gnaden;
    • Zu seinem Reich die ganze Welt
    • Heissen laden
    • Durch dein theuer heilsam Wort,
    • An allem Ort erschollen.
  • • 4Er ist das Heil und selig Licht
    • Für alle Heiden,
    • Zu ’rleuchten, die dich kennen nicht
    • Und zu weiden,
    • Er ist dein’s Volks Israel
    • Der Preis, Ehr’, Freud’ und Wonne.
  • • 1In peace and joy I now depart,
    • At God’s disposing;
    • For full of comfort is my heart,
    • Soft reposing.
    • So the Lord hath promis’d me,
    • And death is but a slumber.
  • • 2’Tis Christ that wrought this work for me,
    • The faithful Saviour;
    • Whom thou hast made mine eyes to see
    • By thy favor.
    • In him I behold my life,
    • My help in need and dying.
  • • 3Him thou hast unto all set forth,
    • Their great salvation,
    • And to his kingdom called the earth—
    • Every nation.
    • By thy dear, health-giving word,
    • In every land resounding.
  • • 4He is the Health and blesséd Light
    • Of lands benighted;
    • By him are they who dwelt in night
    • Fed and lighted.
    • While his Israel’s hope he is,
    • Their joy, reward and glory.

  XXI.

  Mensch, willt du leben seliglich.
  Wilt thou, O Man, live happily.

  The Ten Commandments, abridged.

  Translation by R. Massie, adapted.

  Melody, 1525.

  Harmony by H. Schein, 1627.

  
  • • 1Mensch, willt du leben seliglich,
    • Und bei Gott bleiben ewiglich,
    • Sollt du halten die zehn Gebot,
    • Die uns geben unser Gott.
    • Kyrioleis!
  • • 2Dein Gott allein und Herr bin ich,
    • Kein ander Gott soll irren dich;
    • Trauen soll mir das Herze dein,
    • Mein eigen Reich sollt du sein.
    • Kyrioleis!
  • • 3Du sollt mein’n Namen ehren schon
    • Und in der Noth mich rufen an,
    • Du sollt heil’gen den Sabbath-Tag,
    • Das ich in dir wirken mag.
    • Kyrioleis!
  • • 4Dem Vater und der Mutter dein
    • Sollt du nach mir gehorsam sein;
    • Niemand tödten noch zornig sein,
    • Und deine Eh’ halten rein.
    • Kyrioleis!
  • • 5Du sollt ein’m andern steblen nicht,
    • Auf Niemand falsches zeugen icht;
    • Deines Nächsten Weib nicht begehr’n
    • Und all sein’s Gut’s gern entbehr’n.
    • Kyrioleis!
  • • 1Wilt thou, O man, live happily,
    • And dwell with God eternally,
    • The ten commandments keep, for thus
    • Our God himself biddeth us.
    • Kyr’ eleison!
  • • 2I am the Lord and God! take heed
    • No other god doth thee mislead;
    • Thy heart shall trust alone in me,
    • My kingdom then thou shalt be.
    • Kyr’ eleison!
  • • 2Honor my name in word and deed,
    • And call on me in time of need:
    • Hallow the Sabbath, that I may
    • Work in thy heart on that day.
    • Kyr’ eleison!
  • • 4Obedient always, next to me,
    • To father and to mother be;
    • Kill no man: even anger dread;
    • Keep sacred thy marriage-bed.
    • Kyr’ eleison!
  • • 5Steal not, nor do thy neigbor wrong
    • By bearing witness with false tongue;
    • Thy neighbor’s wife desire thou not,
    • Nor grudge him aught he hath got.
    • Kyr’ eleison!

  XXII.

  Gott der Vater wohn’ uns bei.
  God the Father, with us stay.

  Adapted from an ancient German Litany.

  An ancient Litany-hymn of the German churches, much used in Passion-week and in the processions before Ascension-day by Luther “gebessert und christlich corrigyret.”

  Ancient German Melody.

  Harmony by Landgraf Moritz, 1612.

  

  Gott der Vater wohn’ uns bei.

  • • 1Gott der Vater wohn’ uns bei
    • Und lass uns nicht verderben,
    • Mach’ uns aller Sünden frei
    • Und helf’ uns selig sterben.
    • Für dem Teufel uns bewahr,
    • Halt’ uns bei festem Glauben,
    • Und auf dich lass uns bauen,
    • Aus Herzen Grund vertrauen,
    • Dir uns lassen ganz und gar;
    • Mit allen rechten Christen
    • Entfliehen Teufels Listen,
    • Mit Waffen Gott’s uns fristen.
    • Amen! Amen! das sei wahr,
    • So singen wir, Halleluja!
  • • 2Jesus Christus wohn’ uns bei
    • Und lass uns nicht verderben,
    • Mach’ uns aller Sünden frei
    • Und helf’ uns selig sterben.
    • Für dem Teufel uns bewahr,
    • Halt’ uns bei festem Glauben,
    • Und auf dich lass uns bauen,
    • Aus Herzen Grund vertrauen,
    • Dir uns lassen ganz und gar;
    • Mit allen rechten Christen
    • Entflieh’n des Teufels Listen,
    • Mit Waffen Gott’s uns fristen.
    • Amen! Amen! das sei wahr,
    • So singen wir, Halleluja!
  • • 3Der heilig’ Geist wohn uns bei,
    • Und lass uns nicht verberben,
    • Mach’ uns aller Sünden frei
    • Und helf’ uns selig sterben.
    • Für dem Teufel uns bewahr,
    • Halt’ uns bei festem Glauben,
    • Und auf dich lass uns bauen,
    • Aus Herzen Grund vertrauen,
    • Dir uns lassen ganz und gar;
    • Mit allen rechten Christen
    • Entfliehen Teufels Listen,
    • Mit Waffen Gott’s uns fristen.
    • Amen! Amen! das sei wahr,
    • So singen wir, Halleluja!

  God the Father, with us stay.

  • • 1God, the Father, with us stay,
    • Nor suffer us to perish;
    • All our sins O take away,
    • Us dying; cheer and cherish.
    • From the power of hell defend;
    • This grace to us be granted:—
    • Upon thee to be planted,
    • In heartfelt faith undaunted,
    • Trusting thee unto the end;
    • With saints of every nation,
    • Escaping hell’s temptation,
    • Kept by the Lord’s salvation.
    • Amen! Amen! Answer send!
    • So sing we all Hallelujah!
  • • 2Jesus, Saviour with us stay,
    • Nor suffer us to perish;
    • All our sins O take away,
    • Us dying, cheer and cherish.
    • From the power of hell defend;
    • This grace to us be granted:—
    • Upon thee to be planted,
    • In heartfelt faith undaunted,
    • Trusting thee unto the end;
    • With saints of every nation,
    • Escaping hell’s temptation,
    • Kept by the Lord’s salvation.
    • Amen! Amen! Answer send!
    • So sing we all Hallelujah!
  • • 3Holy Spirit, with us stay,
    • Nor suffer us to perish;
    • All our sins O take away,
    • Us dying, cheer and cherish.
    • From the power of hell defend;
    • This grace to us be granted:—
    • Upon thee to be planted,
    • In heartfelt faith undaunted,
    • Trusting thee unto the end;
    • With saints of every nation,
    • Escaping hell’s temptation,
    • Kept by the Lord’s salvation.
    • Amen! Amen! Answer send!
    • So sing we all Hallelujah!

  XXIII.

  Wir glauben All’ an einen Gott.
  We all believe in one true God.

  This hymn and tune were intended by Luther to be sung as the Creed during the morning service (“the German Mass”), and remained in such use for a long time.

  The Creed. “Das deutsche patrem.”

  Melody, 1525.

  Harmony from an ancient source.

  
  • • 1Wir glauben All’ an einen Gott,
    • Schöpfer Himmels und der Erden,
    • Der sich zum Vater geben hat,
    • Dass wir seine Kinder werden.
    • Er will uns allzeit ernähren,
    • Leib und Seel’ auch wohl bewahren,
    • Allem Unfall will er wehren,
    • Kein Leid soll uns widerfahren,
    • Er sorget für uns, hüt’t und wacht,
    • Es steht Alles in seiner Macht.
  • • 2Wir glauben auch an Jesum Christ,
    • Seinen Sohn und unser’n Herren,
    • Der ewig bei dem Vater ist,
    • Gleicher Gott von Macht und Ehren,
    • Von Maria der Jungfrauen
    • Ist ein wahrer Mensch geboren
    • Durch den heil’gen Geist im Glauben,
    • Für uns, die wir war’n verloren,
    • Am Kreuz gestorben, und vom Tod
    • Wieder auferstanden durch Gott.
  • • 3Wir glauben an den heil’gen Geist,
    • Gott mit Vater und dem Sohne,
    • Der aller Blöden Tröster heisst
    • Und mit Gaben zieret schöne
    • Die ganz’ Christenheit auf Erden,
    • Hält in einem Sinn gar eben,
    • Hie all’ Sünd’ vergeben werden,
    • Das Fleisch soll auch wieder leben.
    • Nach diesem Elend ist bereit
    • Uns ein Leben in Ewigkeit.
  • • 1We all believe in one true God,
    • Maker of the earth and heaven,
    • The Father who to us the power
    • To become his sons hath given.
    • He will us at all times nourish,
    • Soul and body, guard us, guide us,
    • ’Mid all harms will keep and cherish,
    • That no ill shall ever betide us.
    • He watches o’er us day and night;
    • All things are governed by his might.
  • • 2And we believe in Jesus Christ,
    • Lord and Son of God confesséd,
    • From everlasting days with God,
    • In like power and glory blesséd.
    • By the Holy Ghost conceivéd,
    • Born of Mary, virgin mother,
    • That to lost men who believéd
    • He should Saviour be and brother;
    • Was crucified, and from the grave,
    • Through God, is risén, strong to save.
  • • 3We in the Holy Ghost believe,
    • Who with Son and Father reigneth,
    • One true God. He, the Comforter,
    • Feeble souls with gifts sustaineth.
    • All his saints, in every nation,
    • With one heart this faith receiving,
    • From all sin obtain salvation,
    • From the dust of death reviving.
    • These sorrows past, there waits in store
    • For us, the life for evermore.

  XXIV.

  Wär’ Gott nicht mit uns.
  Had God not come, may Israel say.

  Psalm CXXIV.—“Nisi quia Dominus.”

  Translation by R. Massie.

  Melody, 1525.

  Harmony by M. Praetorius, 1610.

  

  Wär’ Gott nicht mit uns.

  • • 1Wär’ Gott nicht mit uns diese Zeit,
    • So soll Israel sagen,
    • Wär’ Gott nicht mit uns diese Zeit,
    • Wir hätten musst verzagen:
    • Die so ein armes Häuflein sind,
    • Veracht’t von so viel Menschen-Kind,
    • Die an uns setzen alle.
  • • 2Auf uns ist so zornig ihr Sinn,
    • Wo Gott hätt’ das zugeben,
    • Verschlungen hätten sie uns hin
    • Mit ganzem Leib und Leben.
    • Wir wär’n als die ein’ Fluth ersäuft
    • Und über die gross’ Wasser läuft
    • Und mit Gewalt verschwemmet.
  • • 3Gott Lob und Dank, der nicht zugab,
    • Dass ihr Schlund uns mücht’ fangen,
    • Wie ein Vogel des Stricks kommt ab,
    • Ist nnser’ Seel’ entgangen.
    • Strick ist entzwei, und wir sind frei,
    • Des Herren Namen steht uns bei,
    • Des Gott’s Himmels und Erden.

  Had God not come, may Israel say.

  • • 1Had God not come, may Israel say,
    • Had God not come to aid us,
    • Our enemies on that sad day
    • Would surely have dismayed us;
    • A remnant now, and handful small,
    • Held in contempt and scorn by all
    • Who cruelly oppress us.
  • • 2Their furious wrath, did God permit,
    • Would surely have consumed us,
    • And in the deep and yawning pit
    • With life and limb entombed us;
    • Like men o’er whom dark waters roll,
    • The streams had gone e’en o’er our soul,
    • And mightily o’erwhelmed us.
  • • 3Thanks be to God, who from the pit
    • Snatched us, when it was gaping;
    • Our souls, like birds that break the net,
    • To the blue skies escaping;
    • The snare is broken—we are free!
    • The Lord our helper praiséd be,
    • The God of earth and heaven.

  From The German Mass, 1526.

  XXV.

  Jesaia, dem Propheten, das geschah.
  These Things the Seer Isaiah did befall.

  The German Sanctus. Written for Luther’s German Mass, 1526.

  Isaiah VI, 1–4.

  The German Sanctus.

  Translation by R. Massie.

  Melody, 1526.

  Harmony by Erythraeus, 1608.

  

  In “Form Und Ordnung Geistlicher Gesang,” Augsburg, 1529.

  XXVI.

  Ein’ feste Burg ist unser Gott.
  Strong Tower and Refuge is our God.

  Psalm XLVI.—“Deus noster refugium et virtus.”

  Melody, 1529.

  Harmony by

  

  Note.—The perfectly regular though rugged versification of the original text (8,7; 8,7; 5,5,5,6,7.) has been modified in later editions by an attempt to extend the shorter lines by one syllable. The genuine text is here given, and the English version is conformed to it.

  Ein’ feste Burg ist unser Gott.

  • • 1Ein’ feste Burg ist unser Gott,
    • Ein’ gute Wehr und Waffen,
    • Er hilft uns frei aus aller Noth,
    • Die uns jetzt hat betroffen.
    • Der alt’ böse Feind,
    • Mit Ernst er’s jetzt meint:
    • Gross Macht und viel List,
    • Sein’ grausam Rüstung ist,
    • Auf Erd’ ist nicht sein gleichen.
  • • 2Mit unser’ Macht ist nichts gethan,
    • Wir sind gar bald verloren,
    • Es streit’t für uns der rechte Mann,
    • Den Gott hat selbst erkoren.
    • Fragst du, wer der ist?
    • Er heisst Jesu Christ,
    • Der Herr Zebaoth,
    • Und ist kein ander’ Gott,
    • Das Feld muss er behalten.
  • • 3Und wenn die Welt voll Teufel wär,
    • Und wollt’ uns gar verschlingen,
    • So fürchten wir uns nicht so sehr,
    • Es soll uns doch gelingen.
    • Der Fürst dieser Welt,
    • Wie saur er sich stellt
    • Thut er uns doch nicht,
    • Das macht, er ist gericht’t;
    • Ein Wörtlein kann ihn fällen.
  • • 4Das Wort sie sollen lassen stahn,
    • Und kein’n Dank dazu haben;
    • Er ist bei uns wohl auf dem Plan
    • Mit seinem Geist und Gaben.
    • Nehmen sie den Leib,
    • Gut, Ehr’, Kind und Weib,
    • Lass fahren dahin,
    • Sie haben’s kein’n Gewinn,
    • Das Reich muss uns doch bleiben.

  Strong Tower and Refuge is our God.

  • • 1Strong tower and refuge is our God,
    • Right goodly shield and weapon;
    • He helps us free in every need,
    • That hath us now o’ertaken.
    • The old evil foe,
    • Means us deadly woe;
    • Deep guile and great might
    • Are his dread arms in fight;
    • On earth is not his equal.
  • • 2With our own might we nothing can,
    • Soon are we lost and fallen;
    • But for us fights the righteous man,
    • Whom God himself hath callen.
    • Ask ye, Who is this?
    • Jesus Christ it is,
    • Our sole King and Lord,
    • As God of Hosts adored;
    • He holds the field forever.
  • • 3Though earth all full of devils were,
    • Wide roaring to devour us;
    • Yet fear we no such grievous fear,
    • They shall not overpower us.
    • This world’s prince may still
    • Scowl fierce as he will,
    • He can harm us none,
    • He’s judged; the deed is done;
    • One little word can fell him.
  • • 4His Word they still shall let abide,
    • And little thank have for it;
    • Through all the fight he’s on our side
    • With his good gifts and Spirit.
    • Take they then our life,
    • Wealth, fame, child and wife,
    • Let these all be gone,
    • No triumph have they won.
    • The kingdom ours remaineth.

  In A Collection Of “Geistliche Lieder,” Wittenberg, 1533.

  XXVII.

  Verleih’ uns Frieden gnädiglich.
  In these our Days so perilous.

  “Da pacem Domine.”

  Translation by R. Massie, amended.

  Melody, 1533? 1543.

  Harmony by Erythraeus, 1608.

  
  • • Verleih’ uns Frieden gnädiglich,
    • Herr Gott, zu unser’n Zeiten,
    • Es ist doch ja kein Ander’ nicht,
    • Der für uns könnte streiten,
    • Denn du, unser Gott alleine.
  • • In these our days so perilous,
    • Lord, peace in mercy send us;
    • No God but thee can fight for us,
    • No God but thee defend us;
    • Thou our only God and Saviour.

  XXVIII.

  Herr Gott, dich loben wir.
  Lord God, thy Praise we sing.

  Te Deum Laudamus. For two Choirs.

  Translation by R. Massie, amended.

  Melody derived from the Latin.

  Harmony by Landgraf Moritz, 1612.

  

  From Joseph Klug’s Gesangsbuch, 1535?

  XXIX.

  Vom Himmel hoch da komm ich her.
  From Heaven above to Earth I come.

  A Christmas Song.Luke, ii.

  “A Children’s Christmas Song of the little child Jesus, taken from the second chapter of Luke, by Dr. Martin Luther.” Said to have been written by him for his little son Hans.

  Translation from Miss Winkworth, amended.

  Melody, 1535? 1543.

  Harmony by

  
  • • 1Vom Himmel hoch da komm ich her,
    • Ich bring’ euch gute neue Mähr,
    • Der guten Mähr bring ich so viel,
    • Davon ich sing’n und sagen will.
  • • 2Euch ist ein Kindlein heut’ gebor’n
    • Von einer Jungfrau auserkor’n,
    • Ein Kindelein so zart und fein,
    • Das soll eu’r Freud und Wonne sein.
  • • 3Es ist der Herr Christ unser Gott,
    • Der will euch führ’n aus aller Noth,
    • Er will eu’r Heiland selber sein,
    • Von allen Sünden machen rein.
  • • 4Er bringt euch alle Seligkeit,
    • Die Gott der Vater hat bereit’t,
    • Dass ihr mit uns im Himmelreich
    • Sollt leben nun und ewiglich.
  • • 5So merket nun das Zeichen recht,
    • Die Krippen, Windelein so schlecht
    • Da findet ihr das Kind gelegt,
    • Das alle Welt erhält und trägt.
  • • 6Dess lasst uns Alle fröhlich sein
    • Und mit den Hirten geh’n hinein,
    • Zu seh’n was Gott uns hat bescheert,
    • Mit seinem lieben Sohn verehrt.
  • • 7Merk auf, mein Herz, und sieh dort hin:
    • Was liegt doch in dem Krippelein?
    • Wess ist das schöne Kindelein?
    • Es ist das liebe Jesulein.
  • • 8Bis willekomm, du edler Gast,
    • Den Sünder nicht verschmähet hast,
    • Und kömmst in Elend her zu mir,
    • Wie soll ich immer danken dir?
  • • 9Ach Herr, du Schöpfer aller Ding’,
    • Wie bist du worden so gering,
    • Dass du da liegst auf dürrem Gras,
    • Davon ein Rind und Esel ass.
  • • 10Uud wär’ die Welt vielmal so weit,
    • Von Edelstein und Gold bereit’t,
    • So wär sie doch dir viel zu klein,
    • Zu sein ein enges Wiegelein.
  • • 11Der Sammet und die Seiden dein,
    • Das ist grob Heu und Windelein,
    • Darauf du Kön’g so gross und reich
    • Herprangst, als wärs dein Himmelreich.
  • • 12Das hat also gefallen dir,
    • Die Wahrheit anzuzeigen mir:
    • Wie aller Welt Macht, Ehr und Gut
    • Für dir nichts gilt, nichts hilft noch thut.
  • • 13Ach, mein herzliebes Jesulein,
    • Mach dir ein rein sanft Bettelein,
    • Zu ruhen in mein’s Herzens Schrein,
    • Dass ich nimmer vergesse dein.
  • • 14Davon ich allzeit fröhlich sei,
    • Zu springen, singen immer frei
    • Das rechte Susannine* schon,
    • Mit Herzen Lust den süssen Ton.
  • • 15Lob, Ehr sei Gott im höchsten Thron,
    • Der uns schenkt seinen ein’gen Sohn,
    • Des freuen sich der Engel Schaar
    • Und singen uns solch’s neues Jahr.
  • • 1From heaven above to earth I come,
    • To bear good news to every home;
    • Glad tidings of great joy I bring,
    • Whereof I now will say and sing.
  • • 2To you, this night, is born a child
    • Of Mary, chosen Mother mild;
    • This tender child of lowly birth,
    • Shall be the joy of all your earth.
  • • 3’Tis Christ our God, who far on high
    • Had heard your sad and bitter cry;
    • Himself will your salvation be,
    • Himself from sin will make you free.
  • • 4He brings those blessings long ago
    • Prepared by God for all below;
    • That in his heavenly kingdom blest
    • You may with us forever rest.
  • • 5These are the tokens ye shall mark,
    • The swaddling-clothes and manger dark;
    • There shall ye find the young child laid,
    • By whom the heavens and earth were made.
  • • 6Now let us all, with gladsome cheer,
    • Follow the shepherds, and draw near
    • To see this wondrous gift of God,
    • Who hath his own dear Son bestowed.
  • • 7Give heed, my heart, lift up thine eyes!
    • What is it in yon manger lies?
    • Who is this child, so young and fair?
    • The blessed Christ-child lieth there!
  • • 8Welcome to earth, thou noble guest,
    • Through whom e’en wicked men are blest!
    • Thou com’st to share our misery,
    • What can we render, Lord, to thee!
  • • 9Ah, Lord, who hast created all,
    • How hast thou made thee weak and small,
    • To lie upon the coarse dry grass,
    • The food of humble ox and ass.
  • • 10And were the world ten times as wide,
    • With gold and jewels beautified,
    • It would be far too small to be
    • A little cradle, Lord, for thee.
  • • 11Thy silk and velvet are coarse hay,
    • Thy swaddling bands the mean array,
    • With which even thou, a King so great,
    • Art clad as with a robe of state.
  • • 12Thus hath it pleased thee to make plain
    • The truth to us, poor fools and vain,
    • That this world’s honor, wealth and might
    • Are naught and worthless in thy sight.
  • • 13Ah, dearest Jesus, holy child,
    • Make thee a bed, soft, undefiled,
    • Here in my poor heart’s inmost shrine,
    • That I may evermore be thine.
  • • 14My heart for very joy doth leap,
    • My lips no more can silence keep,
    • I too must sing, with joyful tongue,
    • That sweetest ancient cradle song:—
  • • 15Glory to God in highest heaven,
    • Who unto man his Son hath given,
    • While angels sing, with pious mirth,
    • A glad New Year to all the earth.

  XXX.

  Sie ist mir lieb, die werthe Magd.
  Dear is to me the holy Maid.

  Founded on the twelfth chapter of the Revelation.

  A song concerning the Holy Christian Church—Revelation xii. 1–6.

  Translation by R. Massie.

  Melody in Babst, 1545.

  Harmony by M. Praetorius, 1610.

  
  • • 1Sie ist mir lieb, die werthe Magd,
    • Und kann ihr’r nicht vergessen,
    • Lob’, Ehr’ und Zucht von ihr man sagt,
    • Sie hat mein Herz besessen.
    • Ich bin ihr hold,
    • Und wenn ich sollt
    • Gross Unglück han,
    • Da liegt nichts an;
    • Sie will mich des ergötzen
    • Mit ihrer Lieb’ und Treu an mir,
    • Die sie zu mir will setzen,
    • Und thun all mein Begier.
  • • 2Sie trägt von Gold so rein ein’ Kron
    • Da leuchten ihn zivölf Sterne,
    • Ihr Kleid ist wie die Sonne schön
    • Das glänzet hell und ferne,
    • Und auf dem Mon’
    • Ihr’ Füsse ston
    • Sie ist die Braut,
    • Dem Herrn vertraut,
    • Ihr ist weh, und muss g’bären
    • Ein schönes Kind, den edlen Sohn,
    • Und aller Welt ein’n Herren,
    • Dem sie ist unterthon.
  • • 3Das thut dem alten Drachen Zorn
    • Und will das Kind verschlingen;
    • Sein Toben ist doch ganz verlor’n,
    • Es kann ihm nicht gelingen:
    • Das Kind ist doch
    • Gen Himmel hoch
    • Genommen hin,
    • Und lässet ihn
    • Auf Erden fast sehr wüthen;
    • Die Mutter muss gar sein allein,
    • Doch will sie Gott behüten,
    • Und der recht’ Vater sein.
  • • 1Dear is to me the holy Maid,—
    • I never can forget her;
    • For glorious things of her are said;
    • Than life I love her better:
    • So dear and good,
    • That if I should
    • Afflicted be,
    • It moves not me;
    • For she my soul will ravish
    • With constancy and love’s pure fire,
    • And with her bounty lavish
    • Fulfil my heart’s desire.
  • • 2She wears a crown of purest gold,
    • Twelve shining stars attend her;
    • Her raiment, glorious to behold,
    • Surpasses far in splendor
    • The sun at noon;
    • Upon the moon
    • She stands, the Bride
    • Of him who died:
    • Sore travail is upon her;
    • She bringeth forth a noble Son
    • Whom all the world doth honor;
    • She bows before his throne.
  • • 3Thereat the Dragon raged, and stood
    • With open mouth before her;
    • But vain was his attempt, for God
    • His buckler broad threw o’er her.
    • Up to his throne
    • He caught his Son,
    • But left the foe
    • To rage below.
    • The mother, sore afflicted,
    • Alone into the desert fled,
    • There by her God protected,
    • By her true Father fed.

  In Köphl’s Gesangbuch, Strassburg, 1535? 1538?

  XXXI.

  Vater unser im Himmelreich.
  Our Father, Thou in Heaven above.

  “Das Vaterunser, kurtz und gut ausgelegt, und in gesangsweise gebracht, durch D. Martin Luther.” The Lord’s Prayer, paraphrased.

  The Lord’s Prayer paraphrased.

  Translation by C. Winkworth, in “Choral Book for England,” amended.

  Melody, 1535?

  Harmony by A. Haupt, 1869.

  [In Winterfeld’s edition of Luther’s hymns, Leipzig, 1840, may be found a fac-simile of Luther’s autograph draft of this paraphrase, including the cancelled draft of a tune for it.]

  
  • • 1Vater unser im Himmelreich,
    • Der du uns alle heissest gleich
    • Brüder sein, und dich rufen an
    • Und willt das Beten von uns han:
    • Gieb dass nicht bei allein der Mund,
    • Hilf dass es geh von Herzens Grund.
  • • 2Geheiligt werd der Name dein,
    • Dein Wort bei uns hilf halten rein,
    • Dass auch wir leben heiliglich,
    • Nach deinem Namen würdiglich.
    • Behüt uns, Herr, für falscher Lehr,
    • Das arm verführet Volk bekehr.
  • • 3Es komm dein Reich zu dieser Zeit
    • Und dort hernach in Ewigkeit;
    • Der heilig Geist uns wohne bei,
    • Mit seinen Gaben mancherlei;
    • Des Satans Zorn und gross Gewalt
    • Zerbrich, für ihm dein’ Kirch’ erhalt.
  • • 4Dein Will gescheh’, Herr Gott, zugleich
    • Auf Erden wie im Himmelreich,
    • Gib uns Geduld in Leidenszeit,
    • Gehorsam sein in Lieb und Leid,
    • Wehr und steu’r allem Fleisch und Blut,
    • Das wider deinen Willen thut.
  • • 5Gib uns heut unser täglich Brot
    • Und was man darf zur Leibes Noth;
    • Behüt uns, Herr, für Unfried, Streit,
    • Für Seuchen und für theuer Zeit,
    • Dass wir in gutem Frieden stehn
    • Der Sorg und Geizens müssig gehen.
  • • 6All unser Schuld’ vergib uns, Herr,
    • Dass sie uns nicht betrüben mehr,
    • Wie wir auch unsern Schuldigern
    • Ihr Schuld und Fehl vergeben gern;
    • Zu dienen mach uns all bereit
    • In rechter Lieb und Einigkeit.
  • • 7Führ uns, Herr, in Versuchung nicht,
    • Wenn uns der böse Feind ansicht
    • Zur linken und zur rechten Hand,
    • Hilf uns thun starken Widerstand;
    • Im Glauben fest und wohlgerüst’t
    • Und durch des heil’gen Geistes Trost.
  • • 8Von allem Uebel uns erlös,
    • Es sind die Zeit und Tage bös;
    • Erlös uns vom ewigen Tod
    • Und tröst uns in der letzten Noth.
    • Bescher uns auch ein selig’s End,
    • Nimm unser Seel in deine Händ’.
  • • 9Amen, das ist: es werde wahr;
    • Stärk unsern Glauben immerdar,
    • Auf dass wir ja nicht zweifeln dran,
    • Dass wir hiermit gebeten han;
    • Auf dein Wort in dem Namen dein,
    • So sprechen wir das Amen fein.
  • • 1Our Father, thou in heaven above,
    • Who biddest us to dwell in love,
    • As brethren of one family,
    • And cry for all we need to thee;
    • Teach us to mean the words we say,
    • And from the inmost heart to pray.
  • • 2All hallowed be thy name, O Lord!
    • O let us firmly keep thy Word,
    • And lead, according to thy name,
    • A holy life, untouched by blame;
    • Let no false teachings do us hurt,—
    • All poor deluded souls convert.
  • • 3Thy kingdom come! Thine let it be
    • In time, and through eternity!
    • O let thy Holy Spirit dwell
    • With us, to rule and guide us well;
    • From Satan’s mighty power and rage
    • Preserve thy Church from age to age.
  • • 4Thy will be done on earth, O Lord,
    • As where in heaven thou art adored!
    • Patience in time of grief bestow,
    • Thee to obey through weal and woe;
    • Our sinful flesh and blood control
    • That thwart thy will within the soul.
  • • 5Give us this day our daily bread,
    • Let us be duly clothed and fed,
    • And keep thou from our homes afar
    • Famine and pestilence and war,
    • That we may live in godly peace,
    • Unvexed by cares and avarice.
  • • 6Forgive our sins, O Lord, that they
    • No more may vex us, day by day,
    • As we forgive their trespasses
    • Who unto us have done amiss;
    • Thus let us dwell in charity,
    • And serve each other willingly.
  • • 7Into temptation lead us not;
    • And when the foe doth war and plot
    • Against our souls on every hand,
    • Then, armed with faith, O may we stand
    • Against him as a valiant host,
    • Through comfort of the Holy Ghost.
  • • 8Deliver us from evil, Lord!
    • The days are dark and foes abroad;
    • Redeem us from eternal death;
    • And when we yield our dying breath,
    • Console us, grant us calm release,
    • And take our souls to thee in peace.
  • • 9Amen! that is, So let it be!
    • Strengthen our faith and trust in thee,
    • That we may doubt not, but believe
    • That what we ask we shall receive;
    • Thus in thy name and at thy word
    • We say Amen, now hear us, Lord!

  In Klug’s Gesangbuch, 1543.

  XXXII.

  Von Himmel kam der Engel Schaar.
  To Shepherds, as they watched by Night.

  A second Christmas Song, to the Tune, “Vom Himmel hoch.”

  A shorter Christmas Song.

  Translation by R. Massie.

  Melody, 1543.

  
  • • 1Von Himmel kam der Engelschaar,
    • Erschien den Hirten offenbar;
    • Sie sagten ihn: Ein Kindlein zart
    • Das liegt dort in der Krippen hart.
  • • 2Zu Bethlehem in Davids Stadt,
    • Wie Micha das verkündet hat,
    • Es ist der Herre Jesus Christ
    • Der euer aller Heiland ist.
  • • 3Des sollt ihr billig fröhlich sein,
    • Dass Gott mit euch ist worden ein;
    • Er ist gebor’n eu’r Fleisch und Blut,
    • Eu’r Bruder ist das ewig Gut.
  • • 4Was kann euch thun die Sünd’ und Tod?
    • Ihr habt mit euch den wahren Gott.
    • Lasst zürnen Teufel und die Höll’
    • Gott’s Sohn ist ’worden eu’r Gesell.
  • • 5Er will und kann euch lassen nicht,
    • Setz’t ihr auf ihn eu’r Zuversicht;
    • Es mögen euch viel fechten an
    • Dem sei Trotz, der’s nicht lassen kann.
  • • 6Zuletzt muss ihr doch haben recht,
    • Ihr seid nun ’worden Gott’s Geschlecht;
    • Dess danket Gott in Ewigkeit,
    • Geduldig, fröhlich, alle Zeit.
  • • 1To shepherds, as they watched by night,
    • Appeared a troop of angels bright;
    • Behold the tender babe, they said,
    • In yonder lowly manger laid.
  • • 2At Bethlehem, in David’s town,
    • As Micah did of old make known;—
    • ’Tis Jesus Christ, your Lord and King,
    • Who doth to all salvation bring.
  • • 3Rejoice ye, then, that through his Son
    • God is with sinners now at one;
    • Made like yourselves of flesh and blood,
    • Your brother is th’ eternal Good.
  • • 4What harm can sin and death then do?
    • The true God now abides with you:
    • Let hell and Satan chide and chafe,
    • God is your fellow—ye are safe.
  • • 5Not one he will nor can forsake
    • Who him his confidence doth make:
    • Let all his wiles the tempter try,
    • You may his utmost powers defy.
  • • 6You must prevail at last, for ye
    • Are now become God’s family:
    • To God forever give ye praise,
    • Patient and cheerful all your days.

  XXXIII.

  Erhalt uns, Herr, bei deinem Wort.
  Lord, keep us in Thy Word and Work.

  A Children’s Song against the two arch-enemies of Christ and his Holy Church.

  Melody, 1543.

  Harmony by W. Sterndale Bennett, 1865.

  
  • • 1Erhalt’ uns, Herr, bei deinem Wort
    • Und steure deine Feinde Mord,
    • Die Jesum Christum deinen Sohn,
    • Wollen stürzen von deinem Thron.
  • • 2Beweis’ dein Macht, Herr Jesu Christ,
    • Der du Herr allen Herren bist;
    • Beschirm’ dein’ arme Christenheit,
    • Dass sie dich lob’ in Ewigkeit.
  • • 3Gott heil’ger Geist, du Trüster werth,
    • Gieb’ dei’m Volk ein’rlei Sinn’ auf Erd’
    • Steh bei uns in der letzten Noth,
    • G’leit uns ins Leben aus dem Tod.
  • • 1Lord, keep us in thy word and work,
    • Restrain the murderous Pope and Turk,
    • Who fain would tear from off thy throne
    • Christ Jesus, thy belovéd Son.
  • • 2Lord Jesus Christ, thy power make known,
    • For thou art Lord of lords alone.
    • Shield thy poor Christendom, that we
    • May evermore sing praise to thee.
  • • 3God, Holy Ghost, our joy thou art,
    • Give to thy flock on earth one heart.
    • Stand by us in our latest need,
    • And us from death to glory lead.

  Note.—To these three stanzas by Luther, three more have been added by a later hand.

  XXXIV.

  Christ, unser Herr, zum Jordan kam.
  To Jordan came our Lord the Christ.

  This melody, known also by the title, “Es soll uns Gott genädig sein,” is supposed to have been taken from a secular tune of much earlier date.

  A Spiritual Song concerning our Holy Baptism.

  Translation by R. Massie, amended.

  Melody, 1525, first adapted to “Es wollt’ uns Gott genadig sein;” supposed to be derived from an old secular melody.

  Harmony by A. Haupt, 1869.

  
  • • 1Christ, unser Herr, zum Jordan kam
    • Nach seines Vaters Willen,
    • Von Sanct Johann’s die Taufe nahm,
    • Sein Werk und Amt zu ’rfüllen.
    • Da wollt’ er stiften uns ein Bad,
    • Zu waschen uns von Sünden,
    • Ersäufen auch den bittern Tod
    • Durch sein selbst Blut und Wunden,
    • Es galt ein neues Leben.
  • • 2So hört und merket alle wohl,
    • Was Gott heisst selbst die Taufe,
    • Und was ein Christen glauben soll,
    • Zu meiden Ketzer Haufen:
    • Gott spricht und will, das Wasser sei
    • Doch nicht allein schlecht Wasser,
    • Sein heilig’s Wort ist auch dabei
    • Mit reichem Geist ohn’ Massen,
    • Der ist allhie der Täufer.
  • • 3Solch’s hat er uns beweiset klar,
    • Mit Bildern und mit Worten,
    • Des Vaters Stimm man offenbar
    • Daselbst am Jordan hörte.
    • Er sprach: das ist mein lieber Sohn,
    • An dem ich hab’ Gefallen,
    • Den will ich euch befohlen han,
    • Dass ihr ihn höret alle
    • Und folget seinen Lehren.
  • • 4Auch Gottes Sohn hie selber steht
    • In seiner zarten Menschheit,
    • Der heilig’ Geist hernieder fährt
    • In Taubenbild verkleidet;
    • Dass wir nicht sollen zweifeln d’ran,
    • Wenn wir getaufet werden,
    • All’ drei Person getaufet han,
    • Damit bei uns auf Erden
    • Zu wohnen sich ergeben.
  • • 5Sein’ Jünger heisst der Herre Christ:
    • Geht hin all’ Welt zu lehren,
    • Dass sie verlor’n in Sünden ist,
    • Sich soll zur Busse kehren;
    • Wer glaubet und sich taufen lässt,
    • Soll dadurch selig werden,
    • Ein neugeborner Mensch er heisst,
    • Der nicht mehr könne sterben,
    • Das Himmelreich soll erben,
  • • 6Wer nicht glaubt dieser grossen G’nad,
    • Der bleibt in seinen Sünden,
    • Und ist verdammt zum ew’gen Tod
    • Tief in der Hüllen Grunde,
    • Nichts hilft sein’ eigen’ Heiligkeit,
    • All’ sein Thun ist verloren.
    • Die Erbsünd’ macht’s zur Nichtigkeit,
    • Darin er ist geboren,
    • Vermag ihm selbst nichts helfen.
  • • 7Das Aug’ allein das Wasser sieht,
    • Wie Menschen Wasser giessen,
    • Der Glaub’ im Geist die Kraft versteht
    • Des Blutes Jesu Christi,
    • Und ist für ihm ein’ rothe Fluth
    • Von Christus Blut gefärbet,
    • Die allen Schaden heilen thut
    • Von Adam her geerbet,
    • Auch von uns selbst begangen.
  • • 1To Jordan came our Lord the Christ,
    • To do God’s pleasure willing,
    • And there was by Saint John baptized,
    • All righteousness fulfilling;
    • There did he consecrate a bath
    • To wash away transgression,
    • And quench the bitterness of death
    • By his own blood and passion;
    • He would a new life give us.
  • • 2So hear ye all, and well perceive
    • What God doth call baptism,
    • And what a Christian should believe
    • Who error shuns and schism:
    • That we should water use, the Lord
    • Declareth it his pleasure;
    • Not simple water, but the Word
    • And Spirit without measure;
    • He is the true Baptizer.
  • • 3To show us this, he hath his word
    • With signs and symbols given;
    • On Jordan’s banks was plainly heard
    • The Father’s voice from heaven:
    • “This is my well-belovéd Son,
    • In whom my soul delighteth;
    • Hear him.” Yea, hear him every one
    • Whom he himself inviteth,
    • Hear and obey his teaching.
  • • 4In tender manhood Jesus straight
    • To holy Jordan wendeth;
    • The Holy Ghost from heaven’s gate
    • In dovelike shape descendeth;
    • That thus the truth be not denied,
    • Nor should our faith e’er waver,
    • That the Three Persons all preside
    • At Baptism’s holy laver,
    • And dwell with the believer.
  • • 5Thus Jesus his disciples sent:
    • Go, teach ye every nation,
    • That lost in sin they must repent,
    • And flee from condemnation:
    • He that believes and is baptized,
    • Obtains a mighty blessing;
    • A new-born man, no more he dies,
    • Eternal life possessing,
    • A joyful heir of heaven.
  • • 6Who in this mercy hath not faith,
    • Nor aught therein discerneth,
    • Is yet in sin, condemned to death,
    • And fire that ever burneth;
    • His holiness avails him not,
    • Nor aught which he is doing;
    • His inborn sin brings all to naught,
    • And maketh sure his ruin;
    • Himself he cannot succor.
  • • 7The eye of sense alone is dim,
    • And nothing sees but water;
    • Faith sees Christ Jesus, and in him
    • The lamb ordained for slaughter;
    • She sees the cleansing fountain red
    • With the dear blood of Jesus,
    • Which from the sins inherited
    • From fallen Adam frees us,
    • And from our own misdoings.

  XXXV.

  Was fürcht’st du, Feind Herodus, sehr?
  Why, Herod, unrelenting Foe.

  From the Hymn of Cælius Sedelius, of the Fifth Century, “Herodes hostis impie.”

  Herodes hostis impie, by Sedelius in the 5th century.

  Translation by R. Massie.

  Harmony by M. Praetorius, 1609.

  
  • • 1Was fürcht’st du, Feind Herodes, sehr,
    • Dass uns gebor’n kommt Christ der Herr?
    • Er sucht kein sterblich Königreich,
    • Der zu uns bringt sein Himmelreich.
  • • 2Dem Stern die Weisen folgen nach,
    • Solch’ Licht zum rechten Licht sie bracht’;
    • Sie zeigen mit den Gaben drei,
    • Dies Kind, Gott, Mensch, und König sei.
  • • 3Die Tauf’ im Jordan an sich nahm
    • Das himmelische Gottes Lamm,
    • Dadurch, der nie kein’ Sünde that,
    • Von Sünden uns gewaschen hat.
  • • 4Ein Wunderwert da neu geschah;
    • Sechs steinern’ Krüge man da sah
    • Voll Wasser, das verlor sein Art,
    • Rother Wein durch sein Wort d’raus ward.
  • • 5Lob, Ehr’ und Dank sei dir gesagt,
    • Christ, gebor’n von der reinen Magd,
    • Mit Vater und dem beiligen Geist
    • Von nun an bis in Ewigkeit.
  • • 1Why, Herod, unrelenting foe,
    • Doth the Lord’s coming move thee so?
    • He doth no earthly kingdom seek
    • Who brings his kingdom to the meek.
  • • 2Led by the star, the wise men find
    • The Light that lightens all mankind;
    • The threefold presents which they bring
    • Declare him God, and Man, and King.
  • • 3In Jordan’s sacred waters stood
    • The meek and heavenly Lamb of God,
    • And he who did no sin, thereby
    • Cleansed us from all inquity!
  • • 4And now a miracle was done:
    • Six waterpots stood there of stone;
    • Christ spake the word with power divine,
    • The water reddened into wine.
  • • 5All honor unto Christ be paid,
    • Pure offspring of the holy maid,
    • With Father and with Holy Ghost,
    • Till time in endless time be lost.

  XXXVI.

  Der du bist Drei in Einigkeit.
  Thou, who art Three in Unity.

  An imitation from the Gregorian hymn, “O lux beata trinitas.”

  Translation adapted from R. Massie.

  Original Latin Melody.

  Harmony in von Tucher, 18—.

  
  • • 1Der du bist drei in Einigkeit,
    • Ein wahrer Gott von Ewigkeit;
    • Die Sonn’ mit dem Tag von uns weicht:
    • Lass leuchten uns dein göttlich Licht.
  • • 2Des Morgens, Gott, dich loben wir,
    • Des Abends auch beten für dir,
    • Unser armes Lied rühmt dich
    • Jetzt und immer und ewiglich.
  • • 3Gott Vater, dem sei ewig Ehr,
    • Gott Sohn der ist der einig’ Herr,
    • Und dem Tröster heiligen Geist,
    • Von nun an bis in Ewigkeit.
  • • 1Thou who art Three in Unity,
    • True God from all eternity,
    • The sun is fading from our sight,
    • Shine thou on us with heavenly light.
  • • 2We praise thee with the dawning day,
    • To thee at evening also pray,
    • With our poor song we worship thee
    • Now, ever and eternally.
  • • 3Let God the Father be adored,
    • And God the Son, the only Lord,
    • And equal adoration be,
    • Eternal Comforter, to thee.

  [* ]Quoted in the Christian Examiner, 1860, p. 240; transcribed by the Rev. Bernhard Pick in “Luther as a Hymnist,” p. 23; Philadelphia, 1875.

  [† ]The popular impression that the hymn “Ein’ feste Burg” was produced in these circumstances is due, doubtless, to a parallel in the third stanza, to the famous saying imputed to Luther on the eve of the Diet of Worms: “I’ll go, be there as many devils in the city as there be tiles on the roofs.” The time of its composition was in the year 1529, just before the Diet of Augsburg. If not written in his temporary refuge, the noble “Burg” or “Festung” of Coburg, it must often have been sung there by him; and it was sung, says Merle d’Aubigné, “during the Diet, not only at Augsburg, but in all the churches of Saxony.”

  [* ]This much-quoted phrase is from Richter. It is reported as an expression of Melanchthon, looking on Luther’s picture, “Fulmina erant singula verba tua.”

  [* ]Merle d’Aubigné, History of the Reformation, Vol. III.

  [* ]This interesting and characteristic document was printed first in the Syntagma Musicum of Michael Praetorius, many of whose harmonies are to be found in this volume. It has been repeatedly copied since. I take it from Rambach, “Ueber D. Martin Luthers Verdienst um den Kirchengesang, oder Darstellung desjenigen was er als Liturg, als Liederdichter und Tonsetzer zur Verbesserung des öffentlichen Gottesdienstes geleistet hat. Hamburg, 1813.”

  [† ]Quoted in Rambach, p. 215.

  [‡ ]In more than one of his cantatas, especially that for the Reformationsfest.

  [* ][Then follow selections of Scripture recommended as suitable for epitaphs.]

  [* ]Luther’s mistake for Michael Weysse, author of a Moravian hymn-book of 1531.

  [* ]d. h. Wiegenlieblein.

• Back to Top

  8: 8. William Shakespeare, Macbeth

  William Shakespeare (1564-1616) is probably the best known poet and playwright of the English language. He is considered by many to be the greatest poet and dramatist of all time. The plays he wrote nearly four hundred years ago for a small theater in London are now performed in more countries and more often than those of any other playwright. His works can be divided into comedies, histories, and tragedies. In his tragedies, such as Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth, Shakespeare explored the depths of human existence, delving into issues of morality, character, and spirit. He was especially sensitive to the problems of individual responsibility in the exercise of power, underscoring the conflicting aspects of loyalty to family, friends, God, and country. These themes are particularly prevalent in his historical dramas such as Richard II and Henry V.

  See the entry about Shakespeare in the Goodrich Seminar Room.

  William Shakespeare, The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (The Oxford Shakespeare), ed. with a glossary by W.J. Craig M.A. (Oxford University Press, 1916).

  Accessed from oll.libertyfund.org/title/1647 on 2007-12-03

  The text is in the public domain.

  ---

  MACBETH

  DRAMATIS PERSONÆ.

  DUNCAN,	King of Scotland.
  MALCOLM, }	his Sons.
  DONALBAIN, }
  MACBETH, }	Generals of the King’s Army.
  BANQUO, }
  MACDUFF, }	Noblemen of Scotland.
  LENNOX, }
  ROSS, }
  MENTEITH, }
  ANGUS, }
  CAITHNESS, }
  FLEANCE,	Son to Banquo.
  SIWARD,	Earl of Northumberland, General of the English Forces.
  YOUNG SIWARD,	his Son.
  SEYTON,	an Officer attending Macbeth.
  Boy, Son to Macduff.
  An English Doctor.
  A Scotch Doctor.
  A Sergeant.
  A Porter.
  An Old Man.
  LADY MACBETH.
  LADY MACDUFF.
  Gentlewoman attending on Lady Macbeth.
  HECATE and Three Witches.
  Lords, Gentlemen, Officers, Soldiers, Murderers, Attendants, and Messengers. The Ghost of Banquo, and other Apparitions.

  Scene.—Scotland; England.

  ACT I.

  Scene I.—

  A desert Heath.

  Thunder and lightning. Enter three Witches.

  First Witch.

  When shall we three meet again

  In thunder, lightning, or in rain?

  Sec. Witch.

  When the hurlyburly’s done,

  When the battle’s lost and won.

  Third Witch.

  That will be ere the set of sun.

  First Witch.

  Where the place?

  Sec. Witch.

  Upon the heath.

  Third Witch.

  There to meet with Macbeth.

  First Witch.

  I come, Graymalkin!

  Sec. Witch.

  Paddock calls.

  Third Witch.

  Anon.

  All.

  Fair is foul, and foul is fair:

  Hover through the fog and filthy air.

  [Exeunt.

  Scene II.—

  A Camp near Forres.

  Alarum within. EnterKing Duncan, Malcolm, Donalbain, Lennox,with Attendants, meeting a bleeding Sergeant.

  Dun.

  What bloody man is that? He can report,

  As seemeth by his plight, of the revolt

  The newest state.

  Mal.

  This is the sergeant

  Who, like a good and hardy soldier fought

  ’Gainst my captivity. Hail, brave friend!

  Say to the king the knowledge of the broil

  As thou didst leave it.

  Serg.

  Doubtful it stood;

  As two spent swimmers, that do cling together

  And choke their art. The merciless Macdonwald—

  Worthy to be a rebel, for to that

  The multiplying villanies of nature

  Do swarm upon him—from the western isles

  Of kerns and gallowglasses is supplied;

  And fortune, on his damned quarrel smiling,

  Show’d like a rebel’s whore: but all’s too weak;

  For brave Macbeth,—well he deserves that name,—

  Disdaining fortune, with his brandish’d steel,

  Which smok’d with bloody execution,

  Like valour’s minion carv’d out his passage

  Till he fac’d the slave;

  Which ne’er shook hands, nor bade farewell to him,

  Till he unseam’d him from the nave to the chaps,

  And fix’d his head upon our battlements.

  Dun.

  O valiant cousin! worthy gentleman!

  Serg.

  As whence the sun ’gins his reflection

  Shipwracking storms and direful thunders break,

  So from that spring whence comfort seem’d to come

  Discomfort swells. Mark, King of Scotland, mark:

  No sooner justice had with valour arm’d

  Compell’d these skipping kerns to trust their heels,

  But the Norweyan lord surveying vantage,

  With furbish’d arms and new supplies of men

  Began a fresh assault.

  Dun.

  Dismay’d not this

  Our captains, Macbeth and Banquo?

  Serg.

  Yes;

  As sparrows eagles, or the hare the lion.

  If I say sooth, I must report they were

  As cannons overcharg’d with double cracks;

  So they

  Doubly redoubled strokes upon the foe:

  Except they meant to bathe in reeking wounds,

  Or memorize another Golgotha,

  I cannot tell—

  But I am faint, my gashes cry for help.

  Dun.

  So well thy words become thee as thy wounds;

  They smack of honour both. Go, get him surgeons.

  [Exit Sergeant, attended.

  EnterRoss.

  Who comes here?

  Mal.

  The worthy Thane of Ross.

  Len.

  What a haste looks through his eyes! So should he look

  That seems to speak things strange.

  Ross.

  God save the king!

  Dun.

  Whence cam’st thou, worthy thane?

  Ross.

  From Fife, great king;

  Where the Norweyan banners flout the sky

  And fan our people cold. Norway himself,

  With terrible numbers,

  Assisted by that most disloyal traitor,

  The Thane of Cawdor, began a dismal conflict;

  Till that Bellona’s bridegroom, lapp’d in proof,

  Confronted him with self-comparisons,

  Point against point, rebellious arm ’gainst arm,

  Curbing his lavish spirit: and, to conclude,

  The victory fell on us.—

  Dun.

  Great happiness!

  Ross.

  That now

  Sweno, the Norways’ king, craves composition;

  Nor would we deign him burial of his men

  Till he disbursed, at Saint Colme’s Inch,

  Ten thousand dollars to our general use.

  Dun.

  No more that Thane of Cawdor shall deceive

  Our bosom interest. Go pronounce his present death,

  And with his former title greet Macbeth.

  Ross.

  I’ll see it done.

  Dun.

  What he hath lost noble Macbeth hath won.

  [Exeunt.

  Scene III.—

  A Heath.

  Thunder. Enter the three Witches.

  First Witch.

  Where hast thou been, sister?

  Sec. Witch.

  Killing swine.

  Third Witch.

  Sister, where thou?

  First Witch.

  A sailor’s wife had chestnuts in her lap,

  And munch’d, and munch’d, and munch’d: ‘Give me,’ quoth I:

  ‘Aroint thee, witch!’ the rump-fed ronyon cries.

  Her husband’s to Aleppo gone, master o’ the Tiger:

  But in a sieve I’ll thither sail,

  And, like a rat without a tail,

  I’ll do, I’ll do, and I’ll do.

  Sec. Witch.

  I’ll give thee a wind.

  First Witch.

  Thou’rt kind.

  Third Witch.

  And I another.

  First Witch.

  I myself have all the other;

  And the very ports they blow,

  All the quarters that they know

  I’ the shipman’s card.

  I’ll drain him dry as hay:

  Sleep shall neither night nor day

  Hang upon his pent-house lid;

  He shall live a man forbid.

  Weary se’nnights nine times nine

  Shall he dwindle, peak and pine:

  Though his bark cannot be lost,

  Yet it shall be tempest-tost.

  Look what I have.

  Sec. Witch.

  Show me, show me.

  First Witch.

  Here I have a pilot’s thumb,

  Wrack’d as homeward he did come.

  [Drum within.

  Third Witch.

  A drum! a drum!

  Macbeth doth come.

  All.

  The weird sisters, hand in hand,

  Posters of the sea and land,

  Thus do go about, about:

  Thrice to thine, and thrice to mine,

  And thrice again, to make up nine.

  Peace! the charm’s wound up.

  EnterMacbethandBanquo.

  Macb.

  So foul and fair a day I have not seen.

  Ban.

  How far is ’t call’d to Forres? What are these,

  So wither’d and so wild in their attire,

  That look not like th’ inhabitants o’ the earth,

  And yet are on ’t? Live you? or are you aught

  That man may question? You seem to understand me,

  By each at once her choppy finger laying

  Upon her skinny lips: you should be women,

  And yet your beards forbid me to interpret

  That you are so.

  Macb.

  Speak, if you can: what are you?

  First Witch.

  All hail, Macbeth! hail to thee, Thane of Glamis!

  Sec. Witch.

  All hail, Macbeth! hail to thee, Thane of Cawdor!

  Third Witch.

  All hail, Macbeth! that shalt be king hereafter.

  Ban.

  Good sir, why do you start, and seem to fear

  Things that do sound so fair? I’ the name of truth,

  Are ye fantastical, or that indeed

  Which outwardly ye show? My noble partner

  You greet with present grace and great prediction

  Of noble having and of royal hope,

  That he seems rapt withal: to me you speak not.

  If you can look into the seeds of time,

  And say which grain will grow and which will not,

  Speak then to me, who neither beg nor fear

  Your favours nor your hate.

  First Witch.

  Hail!

  Sec. Witch.

  Hail!

  Third Witch.

  Hail!

  First Witch.

  Lesser than Macbeth, and greater.

  Sec. Witch.

  Not so happy, yet much happier.

  Third Witch.

  Thou shalt get kings, though thou be none:

  So, all hail, Macbeth and Banquo!

  First Witch.

  Banquo and Macbeth, all hail!

  Macb.

  Stay, you imperfect speakers, tell me more:

  By Sinel’s death I know I am Thane of Glamis;

  But how of Cawdor? the Thane of Cawdor lives,

  A prosperous gentleman; and to be king

  Stands not within the prospect of belief

  No more than to be Cawdor. Say, from whence

  You owe this strange intelligence? or why

  Upon this blasted heath you stop our way

  With such prophetic greeting? Speak, I charge you.

  [Witches vanish.

  Ban.

  The earth hath bubbles, as the water has,

  And these are of them. Whither are they vanish’d?

  Macb.

  Into the air, and what seem’d corporal melted

  As breath into the wind. Would they had stay’d!

  Ban.

  Were such things here as we do speak about?

  Or have we eaten on the insane root

  That takes the reason prisoner?

  Macb.

  Your children shall be kings.

  Ban.

  You shall be king.

  Macb

  And Thane of Cawdor too; went it not so?

  Ban.

  To the self-same tune and words. Who’s here?

  EnterRossandAngus.

  Ross.

  The king hath happily receiv’d, Macbeth,

  The news of thy success; and when he reads

  Thy personal venture in the rebels’ fight,

  His wonders and his praises do contend

  Which should be thine or his. Silenc’d with that,

  In viewing o’er the rest o’ the self-same day,

  He finds thee in the stout Norweyan ranks,

  Nothing afeard of what thyself didst make,

  Strange images of death. As thick as hail

  Came post with post, and every one did bear

  Thy praises in his kingdom’s great defence,

  And pour’d them down before him.

  Ang.

  We are sent

  To give thee from our royal master thanks;

  Only to herald thee into his sight,

  Not pay thee.

  Ross.

  And, for an earnest of a greater honour,

  He bade me, from him, call thee Thane of Cawdor:

  In which addition, hail, most worthy thane!

  For it is thine.

  Ban.

  What! can the devil speak true?

  Macb.

  The Thane of Cawdor lives: why do you dress me

  In borrow’d robes?

  Ang.

  Who was the thane lives yet;

  But under heavy judgment bears that life

  Which he deserves to lose. Whether he was combin’d

  With those of Norway, or did line the rebel

  With hidden help or vantage, or that with both

  He labour’d in his country’s wrack, I know not;

  But treasons capital, confess’d and prov’d,

  Have overthrown him.

  Macb.

  [Aside.] Glamis, and Thane of Cawdor:

  The greatest is behind. [ToRossandAngus.] Thanks for your pains.

  [ToBanquo.] Do you not hope your children shall be kings,

  When those that gave the Thane of Cawdor to me

  Promis’d no less to them?

  Ban.

  That, trusted home,

  Might yet enkindle you unto the crown,

  Besides the Thane of Cawdor. But ’tis strange:

  And oftentimes, to win us to our harm,

  The instruments of darkness tell us truths,

  Win us with honest trifles, to betray’s

  In deepest consequence.

  Cousins, a word, I pray you.

  Macb.

  [Aside.] Two truths are told,

  As happy prologues to the swelling act

  Of the imperial theme. I thank you, gentlemen.

  [Aside.] This supernatural soliciting

  Cannot be ill, cannot be good; if ill,

  Why hath it given me earnest of success,

  Commencing in a truth? I am Thane of Cawdor:

  If good, why do I yield to that suggestion

  Whose horrid image doth unfix my hair

  And make my seated heart knock at my ribs,

  Against the use of nature? Present fears

  Are less than horrible imaginings;

  My thought, whose murder yet is but fantastical,

  Shakes so my single state of man that function

  Is smother’d in surmise, and nothing is

  But what is not.

  Ban.

  Look, how our partner’s rapt.

  Macb.

  [Aside] If chance will have me king, why, chance may crown me,

  Without my stir.

  Ban.

  New honours come upon him,

  Like our strange garments, cleave not to their mould

  But with the aid of use.

  Macb.

  [Aside.] Come what come may,

  Time and the hour runs through the roughest day.

  Ban.

  Worthy Macbeth, we stay upon your leisure.

  Macb.

  Give me your favour: my dull brain was wrought

  With things forgotten. Kind gentlemen, your pains

  Are register’d where every day I turn

  The leaf to read them. Let us toward the king.

  Think upon what hath chanc’d; and, at more time,

  The interim having weigh’d it, let us speak

  Our free hearts each to other.

  Ban.

  Very gladly.

  Macb.

  Till then, enough. Come, friends.

  [Exeunt.

  Scene IV.—

  Forres. A Room in the Palace.

  Flourish. EnterDuncan, Malcolm, Donalbain, Lennox,and Attendants.

  Dun.

  Is execution done on Cawdor? Are not

  Those in commission yet return’d?

  Mal.

  My liege,

  They are not yet come back; but I have spoke

  With one that saw him die; who did report

  That very frankly he confess’d his treasons,

  Implor’d your highness’ pardon and set forth

  A deep repentance. Nothing in his life

  Became him like the leaving it; he died

  As one that had been studied in his death

  To throw away the dearest thing he ow’d,

  As ’twere a careless trifle.

  Dun.

  There’s no art

  To find the mind’s construction in the face:

  He was a gentleman on whom I built

  An absolute trust.

  EnterMacbeth, Banquo, RossandAngus.

  O worthiest cousin!

  The sin of my ingratitude even now

  Was heavy on me. Thou art so far before

  That swiftest wing of recompense is slow

  To overtake thee; would thou hadst less deserv’d,

  That the proportion both of thanks and payment

  Might have been mine! only I have left to say,

  More is thy due than more than all can pay.

  Macb.

  The service and the loyalty I owe,

  In doing it, pays itself. Your highness’ part

  Is to receive our duties: and our duties

  Are to your throne and state, children and servants;

  Which do but what they should, by doing everything

  Safe toward your love and honour.

  Dun.

  Welcome hither:

  I have begun to plant thee, and will labour

  To make thee full of growing. Noble Banquo,

  That hast no less deserv’d, nor must be known

  No less to have done so, let me infold thee

  And hold thee to my heart.

  Ban.

  There if I grow,

  The harvest is your own.

  Dun.

  My plenteous joys

  Wanton in fulness, seek to hide themselves

  In drops of sorrow. Sons, kinsmen, thanes,

  And you whose places are the nearest, know

  We will establish our estate upon

  Our eldest, Malcolm, whom we name hereafter

  The Prince of Cumberland; which honour must

  Not unaccompanied invest him only,

  But signs of nobleness, like stars, shall shine

  On all deservers. From hence to Inverness,

  And bind us further to you.

  Macb.

  The rest is labour, which is not us’d for you:

  I’ll be myself the harbinger, and make joyful

  The hearing of my wife with your approach;

  So, humbly take my leave.

  Dun.

  My worthy Cawdor!

  Macb.

  [Aside.] The Prince of Cumberland! that is a step

  On which I must fall down, or else o’er-leap,

  For in my way it lies. Stars, hide your fires!

  Let not light see my black and deep desires;

  The eye wink at the hand; yet let that be

  Which the eye fears, when it is done, to see.

  [Exit.

  Dun.

  True, worthy Banquo; he is full so valiant,

  And in his commendations I am fed;

  It is a banquet to me. Let’s after him,

  Whose care is gone before to bid us welcome:

  It is a peerless kinsman.

  [Flourish. Exeunt.

  Scene V.—

  Inverness.Macbeth’sCastle.

  EnterLady Macbeth,reading a letter.

  They met me in the day of success; and I have learned by the perfectest report, they have more in them than mortal knowledge. When I burned in desire to question them further, they made themselves air, into which they vanished. Whiles I stood rapt in the wonder of it, came missives from the king, who all-hailed me, ‘Thane of Cawdor;’ by which title, before, these weird sisters saluted me, and referred me to the coming on of time, with, ‘Hail, king that shall be!’ This have I thought good to deliver thee, my dearest partner of greatness, that thou mightest not lose the dues of rejoicing, by being ignorant of what greatness is promised thee. Lay it to thy heart, and farewell.

  Glamis thou art, and Cawdor; and shalt be

  What thou art promis’d. Yet do I fear thy nature;

  It is too full o’ the milk of human kindness

  To catch the nearest way; thou wouldst be great,

  Art not without ambition, but without

  The illness should attend it; what thou wouldst highly,

  That thou wouldst holily; wouldst not play false,

  And yet wouldst wrongly win; thou’dst have, great Glamis,

  That which cries, ‘Thus thou must do, if thou have it;’

  And that which rather thou dost fear to do

  Than wishest should be undone. Hie thee hither,

  That I may pour my spirits in thine ear,

  And chastise with the valour of my tongue

  All that impedes thee from the golden round,

  Which fate and metaphysical aid doth seem

  To have thee crown’d withal.

  Enter a Messenger.

  What is your tidings?

  Mess.

  The king comes here to-night.

  Lady M.

  Thou’rt mad to say it.

  Is not thy master with him? who, were’t so,

  Would have inform’d for preparation.

  Mess.

  So please you, it is true: our thane is coming;

  One of my fellows had the speed of him,

  Who, almost dead for breath, had scarcely more

  Than would make up his message.

  Lady M.

  Give him tending;

  He brings great news.—[Exit Messenger.] The raven himself is hoarse

  That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan

  Under my battlements. Come, you spirits

  That tend on mortal thoughts! unsex me here,

  And fill me from the crown to the toe top full

  Of direst cruelty; make thick my blood,

  Stop up the access and passage to remorse,

  That no compunctious visitings of nature

  Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between

  The effect and it! Come to my woman’s breasts,

  And take my milk for gall, you murdering ministers,

  Wherever in your sightless substances

  You wait on nature’s mischief! Come, thick night,

  And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell,

  That my keen knife see not the wound it makes,

  Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark,

  To cry, ‘Hold, hold!’

  EnterMacbeth.

  Great Glamis! worthy Cawdor!

  Greater than both, by the all-hail hereafter!

  Thy letters have transported me beyond

  This ignorant present, and I feel now

  The future in the instant.

  Macb.

  My dearest love,

  Duncan comes here to-night.

  Lady M.

  And when goes hence?

  Macb.

  To-morrow, as he purposes.

  Lady M.

  O! never

  Shall sun that morrow see.

  Your face, my thane, is as a book where men

  May read strange matters. To beguile the time,

  Look like the time; bear welcome in your eye,

  Your hand, your tongue: look like the innocent flower,

  But be the serpent under’t. He that’s coming

  Must be provided for; and you shall put

  This night’s great business into my dispatch;

  Which shall to all our nights and days to come

  Give solely sovereign sway and masterdom.

  Macb.

  We will speak further.

  Lady M.

  Only look up clear;

  To alter favour ever is to fear.

  Leave all the rest to me.

  [Exeunt.

  Scene VI.—

  The Same. Before the Castle.

  Hautboys and torches. EnterDuncan, Malcolm, Donalbain, Banquo, Lennox, Macduff, Ross, Angus,and Attendants.

  Dun.

  This castle hath a pleasant seat; the air

  Nimbly and sweetly recommends itself

  Unto our gentle senses.

  Ban.

  This guest of summer,

  The temple-haunting martlet, does approve

  By his lov’d mansionry that the heaven’s breath

  Smells wooingly here: no jutty, frieze,

  Buttress, nor coign of vantage, but this bird

  Hath made his pendent bed and procreant cradle:

  Where they most breed and haunt, I have observ’d

  The air is delicate.

  EnterLady Macbeth.

  Dun.

  See, see, our honour’d hostess!

  The love that follows us sometime is our trouble,

  Which still we thank as love. Herein I teach you

  How you shall bid God ’eyld us for your pains,

  And thank us for your trouble.

  Lady M.

  All our service,

  In every point twice done, and then done double,

  Were poor and single business, to contend

  Against those honours deep and broad wherewith

  Your majesty loads our house: for those of old,

  And the late dignities heap’d up to them,

  We rest your hermits.

  Dun.

  Where’s the Thane of Cawdor?

  We cours’d him at the heels, and had a purpose

  To be his purveyor; but he rides well,

  And his great love, sharp as his spur, hath holp him

  To his home before us. Fair and noble hostess,

  We are your guest to-night.

  Lady M.

  Your servants ever

  Have theirs, themselves, and what is theirs, in compt,

  To make their audit at your highness’ pleasure,

  Still to return your own.

  Dun.

  Give me your hand;

  Conduct me to mine host: we love him highly,

  And shall continue our graces towards him.

  By your leave, hostess.

  [Exeunt.

  Scene VII.—

  The Same. A Room in the Castle.

  Hautboys and torches. Enter, and pass over the stage, a Sewer, and divers Servants with dishes and service. Then, enterMacbeth.

  Macb.

  If it were done when ’tis done, then ’twere well

  It were done quickly; if the assassination

  Could trammel up the consequence, and catch

  With his surcease success; that but this blow

  Might be the be-all and the end-all here,

  But here, upon this bank and shoal of time,

  We’d jump the life to come. But in these cases

  We still have judgment here; that we but teach

  Bloody instructions, which, being taught, return

  To plague the inventor; this even-handed justice

  Commends the ingredients of our poison’d chalice

  To our own lips. He’s here in double trust:

  First, as I am his kinsman and his subject,

  Strong both against the deed; then, as his host,

  Who should against his murderer shut the door,

  Not bear the knife myself. Besides, this Duncan

  Hath borne his faculties so meek, hath been

  So clear in his great office, that his virtues

  Will plead like angels trumpet-tongu’d against

  The deep damnation of his taking-off;

  And pity, like a naked new-born babe,

  Striding the blast, or heaven’s cherubin, hors’d

  Upon the sightless couriers of the air,

  Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye,

  That tears shall drown the wind. I have no spur

  To prick the sides of my intent, but only

  Vaulting ambition, which o’er-leaps itself

  And falls on the other.—

  EnterLady Macbeth.

  How now! what news?

  Lady M.

  He has almost supp’d: why have you left the chamber?

  Macb.

  Hath he ask’d for me?

  Lady M.

  Know you not he has?

  Macb.

  We will proceed no further in this business:

  He hath honour’d me of late; and I have bought

  Golden opinions from all sorts of people,

  Which would be worn now in their newest gloss,

  Not cast aside so soon.

  Lady M.

  Was the hope drunk,

  Wherein you dress’d yourself? hath it slept since,

  And wakes it now, to look so green and pale

  At what it did so freely? From this time

  Such I account thy love. Art thou afeard

  To be the same in thine own act and valour

  As thou art in desire? Wouldst thou have that

  Which thou esteem’st the ornament of life,

  And live a coward in thine own esteem,

  Letting ‘I dare not’ wait upon ‘I would,’

  Like the poor cat i’ the adage?

  Macb.

  Prithee, peace.

  I dare do all that may become a man;

  Who dares do more is none.

  Lady M.

  What beast was’t, then,

  That made you break this enterprise to me?

  When you durst do it then you were a man;

  And, to be more than what you were, you would

  Be so much more the man. Nor time nor place

  Did then adhere, and yet you would make both:

  They have made themselves, and that their fitness now

  Does unmake you. I have given suck, and know

  How tender ’tis to love the babe that milks me:

  I would, while it was smiling in my face,

  Have pluck’d my nipple from his boneless gums,

  And dash’d the brains out, had I so sworn as you

  Have done to this.

  Macb.

  If we should fail,—

  Lady M.

  We fail!

  But screw your courage to the sticking-place,

  And we’ll not fail. When Duncan is asleep,

  Whereto the rather shall his day’s hard journey

  Soundly invite him, his two chamberlains

  Will I with wine and wassail so convince

  That memory, the warder of the brain,

  Shall be a fume, and the receipt of reason

  A limbeck only; when in swinish sleep

  Their drenched natures lie, as in a death,

  What cannot you and I perform upon

  The unguarded Duncan? what not put upon

  His spongy officers, who shall bear the guilt

  Of our great quell?

  Macb.

  Bring forth men-children only;

  For thy undaunted mettle should compose

  Nothing but males. Will it not be receiv’d,

  When we have mark’d with blood those sleepy two

  Of his own chamber and us’d their very daggers,

  That they have done’t?

  Lady M.

  Who dares receive it other,

  As we shall make our griefs and clamour roar

  Upon his death?

  Macb.

  I am settled, and bend up

  Each corporal agent to this terrible feat.

  Away, and mock the time with fairest show:

  False face must hide what the false heart doth know.

  [Exeunt.

  ACT II.

  Scene I.—

  Inverness. Court within the Castle.

  EnterBanquoandFleance,with a Servant bearing a torch before him

  Ban.

  How goes the night, boy?

  Fle.

  The moon is down; I have not heard the clock.

  Ban.

  And she goes down at twelve.

  Fle.

  I take’t, ’tis later, sir.

  Ban.

  Hold, take my sword. There’s husbandry in heaven;

  Their candles are all out. Take thee that too.

  A heavy summons lies like lead upon me,

  And yet I would not sleep: merciful powers!

  Restrain in me the cursed thoughts that nature

  Gives way to in repose.

  EnterMacbeth,and a Servant with a torch.

  Give me my sword.—

  Who’s there?

  Macb.

  A friend.

  Ban.

  What, sir! not yet at rest? The king’s a-bed:

  He hath been in unusual pleasure, and

  Sent forth great largess to your offices.

  This diamond he greets your wife withal,

  By the name of most kind hostess; and shut up

  In measureless content.

  Macb.

  Being unprepar’d,

  Our will became the servant to defect,

  Which else should free have wrought.

  Ban.

  All’s well.

  I dreamt last night of the three weird sisters:

  To you they have show’d some truth.

  Macb.

  I think not of them:

  Yet, when we can entreat an hour to serve,

  We would spend it in some words upon that business,

  If you would grant the time.

  Ban.

  At your kind’st leisure.

  Macb.

  If you shall cleave to my consent, when ’tis,

  It shall make honour for you.

  Ban.

  So I lose none

  In seeking to augment it, but still keep

  My bosom franchis’d and allegiance clear,

  I shall be counsell’d.

  Macb.

  Good repose the while!

  Ban.

  Thanks, sir: the like to you.

  [ExeuntBanquoandFleance.

  Macb.

  Go bid thy mistress, when my drink is ready

  She strike upon the bell. Get thee to bed.

  [Exit Servant.

  Is this a dagger which I see before me,

  The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee:

  I have thee not, and yet I see thee still.

  Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible

  To feeling as to sight? or art thou but

  A dagger of the mind, a false creation,

  Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain?

  I see thee yet, in form as palpable

  As this which now I draw.

  Thou marshall’st me the way that I was going;

  And such an instrument I was to use.

  Mine eyes are made the fools o’ the other senses,

  Or else worth all the rest: I see thee still;

  And on thy blade and dudgeon gouts of blood,

  Which was not so before. There’s no such thing:

  It is the bloody business which informs

  Thus to mine eyes. Now o’er the one half-world

  Nature seems dead, and wicked dreams abuse

  The curtain’d sleep; witchcraft celebrates

  Pale Hecate’s offerings; and wither’d murder,

  Alarum’d by his sentinel, the wolf,

  Whose howl’s his watch, thus with his stealthy pace,

  With Tarquin’s ravishing strides, toward his design

  Moves like a ghost. Thou sure and firm-set earth,

  Hear not my steps, which way they walk, for fear

  Thy very stones prate of my whereabout,

  And take the present horror from the time,

  Which now suits with it. Whiles I threat he lives:

  Words to the heat of deeds too cold breath gives.

  [A bell rings.

  I go, and it is done; the bell invites me.

  Hear it not, Duncan; for it is a knell

  That summons thee to heaven or to hell.

  [Exit.

  Scene II.—

  The Same.

  EnterLady Macbeth.

  Lady M.

  That which hath made them drunk hath made me bold,

  What hath quench’d them hath given me fire. Hark!

  Peace!

  It was the owl that shriek’d, the fatal bellman,

  Which gives the stern’st good-night. He is about it:

  The doors are open, and the surfeited grooms

  Do mock their charge with snores: I have drugg’d their possets,

  That death and nature do contend about them,

  Whether they live or die.

  Macb.

  [Within.] Who’s there? what, ho!

  Lady M.

  Alack! I am afraid they have awak’d,

  And ’tis not done; the attempt and not the deed

  Confounds us. Hark! I laid their daggers ready;

  He could not miss them. Had he not resembled

  My father as he slept I had done ’t. My husband!

  EnterMacbeth.

  Macb.

  I have done the deed. Didst thou not hear a noise?

  Lady M.

  I heard the owl scream and the crickets cry.

  Did not you speak?

  Macb.

  When?

  Lady M.

  Now.

  Macb.

  As I descended?

  Lady M.

  Ay.

  Macb.

  Hark!

  Who lies i’ the second chamber?

  Lady M.

  Donalbain.

  Macb.

  [Looking on his hands] This is a sorry sight.

  Lady M.

  A foolish thought to say a sorry sight.

  Macb.

  There’s one did laugh in ’s sleep, and one cried ‘Murder!’

  That they did wake each other: I stood and heard them;

  But they did say their prayers, and address’d them

  Again to sleep.

  Lady M.

  There are two lodg’d together.

  Macb.

  One cried ‘God bless us!’ and ‘Amen’ the other:

  As they had seen me with these hangman’s hands.

  Listening their fear, I could not say ‘Amen,’

  When they did say ‘God bless us!’

  Lady M.

  Consider it not so deeply.

  Macb.

  But wherefore could not I pronounce ‘Amen?’

  I had most need of blessing, and ‘Amen’

  Stuck in my throat.

  Lady M.

  These deeds must not be thought

  After these ways; so, it will make us mad.

  Macb.

  Methought I heard a voice cry ‘Sleep no more!

  Macbeth does murder sleep,’ the innocent sleep,

  Sleep that knits up the ravell’d sleave of care,

  The death of each day’s life, sore labour’s bath,

  Balm of hurt minds, great nature’s second course,

  Chief nourisher in life’s feast,—

  Lady M.

  What do you mean?

  Macb.

  Still it cried, ‘Sleep no more!’ to all the house:

  ‘Glamis hath murder’d sleep, and therefore Cawdor

  Shall sleep no more, Macbeth shall sleep no more!’

  Lady M.

  Who was it that thus cried? Why, worthy thane,

  You do unbend your noble strength to think

  So brainsickly of things. Go get some water,

  And wash this filthy witness from your hand.

  Why did you bring these daggers from the place?

  They must lie there: go carry them, and smear

  The sleepy grooms with blood.

  Macb.

  I’ll go no more:

  I am afraid to think what I have done;

  Look on ’t again I dare not.

  Lady M.

  Infirm of purpose!

  Give me the daggers. The sleeping and the dead

  Are but as pictures; ’tis the eye of childhood

  That fears a painted devil. If he do bleed,

  I’ll gild the faces of the grooms withal;

  For it must seem their guilt.

  [Exit. Knocking within.

  Macb.

  Whence is that knocking?

  How is’t with me, when every noise appals me?

  What hands are here! Ha! they pluck out mine eyes.

  Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood

  Clean from my hand? No, this my hand will rather

  The multitudinous seas incarnadine,

  Making the green one red.

  Re-enterLady Macbeth.

  Lady M.

  My hands are of your colour, but I shame

  To wear a heart so white.—[Knocking within.] I hear a knocking

  At the south entry; retire we to our chamber;

  A little water clears us of this deed;

  How easy is it, then! Your constancy

  Hath left you unattended. [Knocking within.] Hark! more knocking.

  Get on your night-gown, lest occasion call us,

  And show us to be watchers. Be not lost

  So poorly in your thoughts.

  Macb.

  To know my deed ’twere best not know myself.

  [Knocking within.

  Wake Duncan with thy knocking! I would thou couldst!

  [Exeunt.

  Scene III.—

  The Same.

  Knocking within. Enter a Porter.

  Porter.

  Here’s a knocking, indeed! If a man were porter of hell-gate he should have old turning the key. [Knocking within.] Knock, knock, knock! Who’s there, i’ the name of Beelzebub? Here’s a farmer that hanged himself on the expectation of plenty: come in time; have napkins enough about you; here you’ll sweat for ’t. [Knocking within.] Knock, knock! Who’s there i’ the other devil’s name! Faith, here’s an equivocator, that could swear in both the scales against either scale; who committed treason enough for God’s sake, yet could not equivocate to heaven: O! come in, equivocator. [Knocking within.] Knock, knock, knock! Who’s there? Faith, here’s an English tailor come hither for stealing out of a French hose: come in, tailor; here you may roast your goose. [Knocking within.] Knock, knock; never at quiet! What are you? But this place is too cold for hell. I’ll devil-porter it no further: I had thought to have let in some of all professions, that go the primrose way to the everlasting bonfire. [Knocking within.] Anon, anon! I pray you, remember the porter.

  [Opens the gate.

  EnterMacduffandLennox.

  Macd.

  Was it so late, friend, ere you went to bed,

  That you do lie so late?

  Port.

  Faith, sir, we were carousing till the second cock; and drink, sir, is a great provoker of three things.

  Macd.

  What three things does drink especially provoke?

  Port.

  Marry, sir, mose-painting, sleep, and urine. Lechery, sir, it provokes, and unprovokes; it provokes the desire, but it takes away the performance. Therefore much drink may be said to be an equivocator with lechery; it makes him, and it mars him; it sets him on, and it takes him off; it persuades him, and disheartens him; makes him stand to, and not stand to; in conclusion, equivocates him in a sleep, and, giving him the lie, leaves him.

  Macd.

  I believe drink gave thee the lie last night.

  Port.

  That it did, sir, i’ the very throat o’ me: but I requited him for his lie; and, I think, being too strong for him, though he took up my legs sometime, yet I made a shift to cast him.

  Macd.

  Is thy master stirring?

  EnterMacbeth.

  Our knocking has awak’d him; here he comes.

  Len.

  Good morrow, noble sir.

  Macb.

  Good morrow, both.

  Macd.

  Is the king stirring, worthy thane?

  Macb.

  Not yet.

  Macd.

  He did command me to call timely on him:

  I have almost slipp’d the hour.

  Macb.

  I’ll bring you to him.

  Macd.

  I know this is a joyful trouble to you;

  But yet ’tis one.

  Macb.

  The labour we delight in physics pain.

  This is the door.

  Macd.

  I’ll make so bold to call,

  For ’tis my limited service.

  [Exit.

  Len.

  Goes the king hence to-day?

  Macb.

  He does: he did appoint so.

  Len.

  The night has been unruly: where we lay,

  Ourchimneys were blown down; and, as they say,

  Lamentings heard i’ the air; strange screams of death,

  And prophesying with accents terrible

  Of dire combustion and confus’d events

  New hatch’d to the woeful time. The obscure bird

  Clamour’d the livelong night: some say the earth

  Was feverous and did shake.

  Macb.

  ’Twas a rough night.

  Len.

  My young remembrance cannot parallel

  A fellow to it.

  Re-enterMacduff.

  Macd.

  O horror! horror! horror! Tongue nor heart

  Cannot conceive nor name thee!

  Macb.

  What’s the matter?

  Len.

  What’s the matter?

  Macd.

  Confusion now hath made his masterpiece!

  Most sacrilegious murder hath broke ope

  The Lord’s anointed temple, and stole thence

  The life o’ the building!

  Macb.

  What is ’t you say? the life?

  Len.

  Mean you his majesty?

  Macd.

  Approach the chamber, and destroy your sight

  With a new Gorgon: do not bid me speak;

  See, and then speak yourselves.

  [ExeuntMacbethandLennox.

  Awake! awake!

  Ring the alarum-bell. Murder and treason!

  Banquo and Donalbain! Malcolm! awake!

  Shake off this downy sleep, death’s counterfeit,

  And look on death itself! up, up, and see

  The great doom’s image! Malcolm! Banquo!

  As from your graves rise up, and walk like sprites,

  To countenance this horror! Ring the bell.

  [Bell rings.

  EnterLady Macbeth.

  Lady M.

  What’s the business,

  That such a hideous trumpet calls to parley

  The sleepers of the house? speak, speak!

  Macd.

  O gentle lady!

  ’Tis not for you to hear what I can speak;

  The repetition in a woman’s ear

  Would murder as it fell.

  EnterBanquo.

  O Banquo! Banquo!

  Our royal master’s murder’d!

  Lady M.

  Woe, alas!

  What! in our house?

  Ban.

  Too cruel any where.

  Dear Duff, I prithee, contradict thyself,

  And say it is not so.

  Re-enterMacbethandLennox.

  Macb.

  Had I but died an hour before this chance

  I had liv’d a blessed time; for, from this instant,

  There’s nothing serious in mortality,

  All is but toys; renown and grace is dead,

  The wine of life is drawn, and the mere lees

  Is left this vault to brag of.

  EnterMalcolmandDonalbain.

  Don.

  What is amiss?

  Macb.

  You are, and do not know ’t:

  The spring, the head, the fountain of your blood

  Is stopp’d; the very source of it is stopp’d.

  Macd.

  Your royal father’s murder’d.

  Mal.

  O! by whom?

  Len.

  Those of his chamber, as it seem’d, had done ’t:

  Their hands and faces were all badg’d with blood;

  So were their daggers, which unwip’d we found

  Upon their pillows: they star’d, and were distracted; no man’s life

  Was to be trusted with them.

  Macb.

  O! yet I do repent me of my fury,

  That I did kill them.

  Macd.

  Wherefore did you so?

  Macb.

  Who can be wise, amaz’d, temperate and furious,

  Loyal and neutral, in a moment? No man:

  The expedition of my violent love

  Outran the pauser, reason. Here lay Duncan,

  His silver skin lac’d with his golden blood;

  And his gash’d stabs look’d like a breach in nature

  For ruin’s wasteful entrance: there, the murderers,

  Steep’d in the colours of their trade, their daggers

  Unmannerly breech’d with gore: who could refrain,

  That had a heart to love, and in that heart

  Courage to make ’s love known?

  Lady M.

  Help me hence, ho!

  Macd.

  Look to the lady.

  Mal.

  [Aside toDonalbain.] Why do we hold our tongues,

  That most may claim this argument for ours:

  Don.

  [Aside toMalcolm.] What should be spoken

  Here where our fate, hid in an auger-hole,

  May rush and seize us? Let’s away: our tears

  Are not yet brew’d.

  Mal.

  [Aside toDonalbain.] Nor our strong sorrow

  Upon the foot of motion.

  Ban.

  Look to the lady:

  [Lady Macbethis carried out.

  And when we have our naked frailties hid,

  That suffer in exposure, let us meet,

  And question this most bloody piece of work,

  To know it further. Fears and scruples shake us:

  In the great hand of God I stand, and thence

  Against the undivulg’d pretence I fight

  Of treasonous malice.

  Macd.

  And so do I.

  All.

  So all.

  Macb.

  Let’s briefly put on manly readiness,

  And meet i’ the hall together.

  All.

  Well contented.

  [Exeunt all butMalcolmandDonalbain.

  Mal.

  What will you do? Let’s not consort with them:

  To show an unfelt sorrow is an office

  Which the false man does easy. I’ll to England.

  Don.

  To Ireland, I; our separated fortune

  Shall keep us both the safer: where we are,

  There’s daggers in men’s smiles: the near in blood,

  The nearer bloody.

  Mal.

  This murderous shaft that’s shot

  Hath not yet lighted, and our safest way

  Is to avoid the aim: therefore, to horse;

  And let us not be dainty of leave-taking,

  But shift away: there’s warrant in that theft

  Which steals itself when there’s no mercy left.

  [Exeunt.

  Scene IV.—

  The Same. Without the Castle.

  EnterRossand an Old Man.

  Old Man.

  Threescore and ten I can remember well;

  Within the volume of which time I have seen

  Hours dreadful and things strange, but this sore night

  Hath trifled former knowings.

  Ross.

  Ah! good father,

  Thou seest, the heavens, as troubled with man’s act,

  Threaten his bloody stage: by the clock ’tis day,

  And yet dark night strangles the travelling lamp.

  Is ’t night’s predominance, or the day’s shame,

  That darkness does the face of earth entomb,

  When living light should kiss it?

  Old Man.

  ’Tis unnatural,

  Even like the deed that’s done. On Tuesday last,

  A falcon, towering in her pride of place,

  Was by a mousing owl hawk’d at and kill’d.

  Ross.

  And Duncan’s horses,—a thing most strange and certain,—

  Beauteous and swift, the minions of their race,

  Turn’d wild in nature, broke their stalls, flung out,

  Contending ’gainst obedience, as they would

  Make war with mankind.

  Old Man.

  ’Tis said they eat each other.

  Ross.

  They did so; to the amazement of mine eyes,

  That look’d upon ’t. Here comes the good Macduff.

  EnterMacduff.

  How goes the world, sir, now?

  Macd.

  Why, see you not?

  Ross.

  Is ’t known who did this more than bloody deed?

  Macd.

  Those that Macbeth hath slain.

  Ross.

  Alas, the day!

  What good could they pretend?

  Macd.

  They were suborn’d.

  Malcolm and Donalbain, the king’s two sons,

  Are stol’n away and fled, which puts upon them

  Suspicion of the deed.

  Ross.

  ’Gainst nature still!

  Thriftless ambition, that wilt ravin up

  Thine own life’s means! Then ’tis most like

  The sovereignty will fall upon Macbeth.

  Macd.

  He is already nam’d, and gone to Scone

  To be invested.

  Ross.

  Where is Duncan’s body?

  Macd.

  Carried to Colmekill;

  The sacred storehouse of his predecessors

  And guardian of their bones.

  Ross.

  Will you to Scone?

  Macd.

  No, cousin, I’ll to Fife.

  Ross.

  Well, I will thither.

  Macd.

  Well, may you see things well done there: adieu!

  Lest our old robes sit easier than our new!

  Ross.

  Farewell, father.

  Old Man.

  God’s benison go with you; and with those

  That would make good of bad, and friends of foes!

  [Exeunt.

  ACT III.

  Scene I.—

  Forres. A Room in the Palace.

  EnterBanquo.

  Ban.

  Thou hast it now: King, Cawdor, Glamis, all,

  As the weird women promis’d; and, I fear,

  Thou play’dst most foully for ’t; yet it was said

  It should not stand in thy posterity,

  But that myself should be the root and father

  Of many kings. If there come truth from them,—

  As upon thee, Macbeth, their speeches shine,—

  Why, by the verities on thee made good,

  May they not be my oracles as well,

  And set me up in hope? But, hush! no more.

  Sennet sounded. EnterMacbeth,as king;Lady Macbeth,as queen;Lennox, Ross, Lords, Ladies, and Attendants.

  Macb.

  Here’s our chief guest.

  Lady M.

  If he had been forgotten

  It had been as a gap in our great feast,

  And all-thing unbecoming.

  Macb.

  To-night we hold a solemn supper, sir,

  And I’ll request your presence.

  Ban.

  Let your highness

  Command upon me; to the which my duties

  Are with a most indissoluble tie

  For ever knit.

  Macb.

  Ride you this afternoon?

  Ban.

  Ay, my good lord.

  Macb.

  We should have else desir’d your good advice—

  Which still hath been both grave and prosperous—

  In this day’s council; but we’ll take to-morrow.

  Is ’t far you ride?

  Ban.

  As far, my lord, as will fill up the time

  ’Twixt this and supper; go not my horse the better,

  I must become a borrower of the night

  For a dark hour or twain.

  Macb.

  Fail not our feast.

  Ban.

  My lord, I will not.

  Macb.

  We hear our bloody cousins are bestow’d

  In England and in Ireland, not confessing

  Their cruel parricide, filling their hearers

  With strange invention; but of that to-morrow,

  When therewithal we shall have cause of state

  Craving us jointly. Hie you to horse; adieu

  Till you return at night. Goes Fleance with you?

  Ban.

  Ay, my good lord: our time does call upon ’s.

  Macb.

  I wish your horses swift and sure of foot;

  And so I do commend you to their backs.

  Farewell.

  [ExitBanquo.

  Let every man be master of his time

  Till seven at night; to make society

  The sweeter welcome, we will keep ourself

  Till supper-time alone; while then, God be with you!

  [Exeunt all butMacbethand an Attendant.

  Sirrah, a word with you. Attend those men

  Our pleasure?

  Atten.

  They are, my lord, without the palace gate.

  Macb.

  Bring them before us. [Exit Attendant.] To be thus is nothing;

  But to be safely thus. Our fears in Banquo

  Stick deep, and in his royalty of nature

  Reigns that which would be fear’d: ’tis much he dares,

  And, to that dauntless temper of his mind,

  He hath a wisdom that doth guide his valour

  To act in safety. There is none but he

  Whose being I do fear; and under him

  My genius is rebuk’d, as it is said

  Mark Antony’s was by Cæsar. He chid the sisters

  When first they put the name of king upon me,

  And bade them speak to him; then, prophet-like,

  They hail’d him father to a line of kings.

  Upon my head they plac’d a fruitless crown,

  And put a barren sceptre in my gripe,

  Thence to be wrench’d with an unlineal hand,

  No son of mine succeeding. If ’t be so,

  For Banquo’s issue have I fil’d my mind;

  For them the gracious Duncan have I murder’d;

  Put rancours in the vessel of my peace

  Only for them; and mine eternal jewel

  Given to the common enemy of man,

  To make them kings, the seed of Banquo kings!

  Rather than so, come fate into the list,

  And champion me to the utterance! Who’s there?

  Re-enter Attendant, with two Murderers.

  Now go to the door, and stay there till we call.

  [Exit Attendant.

  Was it not yesterday we spoke together?

  First Mur.

  It was, so please your highness.

  Macb.

  Well then, now

  Have you consider’d of my speeches? Know

  That it was he in the times past which held you

  So under fortune, which you thought had been

  Our innocent self. This I made good to you

  In our last conference, pass’d in probation with you,

  How you were borne in hand, how cross’d, the instruments,

  Who wrought with them, and all things else that might

  To half a soul and to a notion craz’d

  Say, ‘Thus did Banquo.’

  First Mur.

  You made it known to us.

  Macb.

  I did so; and went further, which is now

  Our point of second meeting. Do you find

  Your patience so predominant in your nature

  That you can let this go? Are you so gospell’d

  To pray for this good man and for his issue,

  Whose heavy hand hath bow’d you to the grave

  And beggar’d yours for ever?

  First Mur.

  We are men, my liege.

  Macb.

  Ay, in the catalogue ye go for men;

  As hounds and greyhounds, mongrels, spaniels, curs,

  Shoughs, water-rugs, and demi-wolves, are clept

  All by the name of dogs: the valu’d file

  Distinguishes the swift, the slow, the subtle,

  The housekeeper, the hunter, every one

  According to the gift which bounteous nature

  Hath in him clos’d; whereby he does receive

  Particular addition, from the bill

  That writes them all alike: and so of men.

  Now, if you have a station in the file,

  Not i’ the worst rank of manhood, say it;

  And I will put that business in your bosoms,

  Whose execution takes your enemy off,

  Grapples you to the heart and love of us,

  Who wear our health but sickly in his life,

  Which in his death were perfect.

  Sec. Mur.

  I am one, my liege,

  Whom the vile blows and buffets of the world

  Have so incens’d that I am reckless what

  I do to spite the world.

  First Mur.

  And I another,

  So weary with disasters, tugg’d with fortune,

  That I would set my life on any chance,

  To mend it or be rid on ’t.

  Macb.

  Both of you

  Know Banquo was your enemy.

  Sec. Mur.

  True, my lord.

  Macb.

  So is he mine; and in such bloody distance

  That every minute of his being thrusts

  Against my near’st of life: and though I could

  With bare-fac’d power sweep him from my sight

  And bid my will avouch it, yet I must not,

  For certain friends that are both his and mine,

  Whose loves I may not drop, but wail his fall

  Whom I myself struck down; and thence it is

  That I to your assistance do make love,

  Masking the business from the common eye

  For sundry weighty reasons.

  Sec. Mur.

  We shall, my lord,

  Perform what you command us.

  First Mur.

  Though our lives—

  Macb.

  Your spirits shine through you. Within this hour at most

  I will advise you where to plant yourselves,

  Acquaint you with the perfect spy o’ the time,

  The moment on ’t; for ’t must be done to-night,

  And something from the palace; always thought

  That I require a clearness: and with him—

  To leave no rubs nor botches in the work—

  Fleance his son, that keeps him company,

  Whose absence is no less material to me

  Than is his father’s, must embrace the fate

  Of that dark hour. Resolve yourselves apart;

  I’ll come to you anon.

  Sec. Mur.

  We are resolv’d, my lord.

  Macb.

  I’ll call upon you straight: abide within.

  [Exeunt Murderers.

  It is concluded: Banquo, thy soul’s flight,

  If it find heaven, must find it out to-night.

  [Exit.

  Scene II.—

  The Same. Another Room in the Palace.

  EnterLady Macbethand a Servant.

  Lady M.

  Is Banquo gone from court?

  Serv.

  Ay, madam, but returns again to-night.

  Lady M.

  Say to the king, I would attend his leisure

  For a few words.

  Serv.

  Madam, I will.

  [Exit.

  Lady M.

  Nought’s had, all’s spent,

  Where our desire is got without content:

  ’Tis safer to be that which we destroy

  Than by destruction dwell in doubtful joy.

  EnterMacbeth.

  How now, my lord! why do you keep alone,

  Of sorriest fancies your companions making,

  Using those thoughts which should indeed have died

  With them they think on? Things without all remedy

  Should be without regard: what’s done is done.

  Macb.

  We have scotch’d the snake, not kill’d it:

  She’ll close and be herself, whilst our poor malice

  Remains in danger of her former tooth.

  But let the frame of things disjoint, both the worlds suffer,

  Ere we will eat our meal in fear, and sleep

  In the affliction of these terrible dreams

  That shake us nightly. Better be with the dead,

  Whom we, to gain our peace, have sent to peace,

  Than on the torture of the mind to lie

  In restless ecstasy. Duncan is in his grave;

  After life’s fitful fever he sleeps well;

  Treason has done his worst: nor steel, nor poison,

  Malice domestic, foreign levy, nothing

  Can touch him further.

  Lady M.

  Come on;

  Gentle my lord, sleek o’er your rugged looks;

  Be bright and jovial among your guests to-night.

  Macb.

  So shall I, love; and so, I pray, be you.

  Let your remembrance apply to Banquo;

  Present him eminence, both with eye and tongue:

  Unsafe the while, that we

  Must lave our honours in these flattering streams,

  And make our faces vizards to our hearts,

  Disguising what they are.

  Lady M.

  You must leave this.

  Macb.

  O! full of scorpions is my mind, dear wife;

  Thou know’st that Banquo and his Fleance lives.

  Lady M.

  But in them nature’s copy’s not eterne.

  Macb.

  There’s comfort yet; they are assailable;

  Then be thou jocund. Ere the bat hath flown

  His cloister’d flight, ere, to black Hecate’s summons

  The shard-borne beetle with his drowsy hums

  Hath rung night’s yawning peal, there shall be done

  A deed of dreadful note.

  Lady M.

  What’s to be done?

  Macb.

  Be innocent of the knowledge, dearest chuck,

  Till thou applaud the deed. Come, seeling night,

  Scarf up the tender eye of pitiful day,

  And with thy bloody and invisible hand

  Cancel and tear to pieces that great bond

  Which keeps me pale! Light thickens, and the crow

  Makes wing to the rooky wood;

  Good things of day begin to droop and drowse,

  Whiles night’s black agents to their preys do rouse.

  Thou marvell’st at my words: but hold thee still;

  Things bad begun make strong themselves by ill:

  So, prithee, go with me.

  [Exeunt.

  Scene III —

  The Same. A Park, with a Road leading to the Palace.

  Enter three Murderers.

  First Mur.

  But who did bid thee join with us?

  Third Mur.

  Macbeth.

  Sec. Mur.

  He needs not our mistrust, since he delivers

  Our offices and what we have to do

  To the direction just.

  First Mur.

  Then stand with us.

  The west yet glimmers with some streaks of day:

  Now spurs the lated traveller apace

  To gain the timely inn; and near approaches

  The subject of our watch.

  Third Mur.

  Hark! I hear horses.

  Ban.

  [Within.] Give us a light there, ho!

  Sec. Mur.

  Then ’tis he: the rest

  That are within the note of expectation

  Already are i’ the court.

  First Mur

  His horses go about.

  Third Mur.

  Almost a mile; but he does usually,

  So all men do, from hence to the palace gate

  Make it their walk.

  Sec. Mur.

  A light, a light!

  Third Mur.

  ’Tis he.

  First Mur.

  Stand to ’t.

  EnterBanquoandFleance,with a torch.

  Ban.

  It will be rain to-night.

  First Mur.

  Let it come down.

  [They set uponBanquo.

  Ban.

  O, treachery! Fly, good Fleance, fly, fly, fly!

  Thou mayst revenge. O slave!

  [Dies.Fleanceescapes.

  Third Mur

  Who did strike out the light?

  First Mur.

  Was ’t not the way?

  Third Mur.

  There’s but one down; the son is fled.

  Sec. Mur.

  We have lost

  Best half of our affair.

  First Mur.

  Well, let’s away, and say how much is done.

  [Exeunt.

  Scene IV.—

  The Same. A Room of State in the Palace.

  A Banquet prepared. EnterMacbeth, Lady Macbeth, Ross, Lennox, Lords, and Attendants.

  Macb.

  You know your own degrees; sit down: at first and last,

  The hearty welcome.

  Lords.

  Thanks to your majesty.

  Macb.

  Ourself will mingle with society

  And play the humble host.

  Our hostess keeps her state, but in best time

  We will require her welcome.

  Lady M.

  Pronounce it for me, sir, to all our friends;

  For my heart speaks they are welcome.

  Enter First Murderer, to the door.

  Macb.

  See, they encounter thee with their hearts’ thanks;

  Both sides are even: here I’ll sit i’ the midst:

  Be large in mirth; anon, we’ll drink a measure

  The table round. [Approaching the door.] There’s blood upon thy face.

  Mur.

  ’Tis Banquo’s, then.

  Macb.

  ’Tis better thee without than he within.

  Is he dispatch’d?

  Mur.

  My lord, his throat is cut; that I did for him.

  Macb.

  Thou art the best o’ the cut-throats; yet he’s good

  That did the like for Fleance: if thou didst it,

  Thou art the nonpareil.

  Mur.

  Most royal sir,

  Fleance is ’scap’d.

  Macb.

  Then comes my fit again: I had else been perfect;

  Whole as the marble, founded as the rock,

  As broad and general as the casing air:

  But now I am cabin’d, cribb’d, confin’d, bound in

  To saucy doubts and fears. But Banquo’s safe?

  Mur.

  Ay, my good lord; safe in a ditch he bides,

  With twenty trenched gashes on his head;

  The least a death to nature.

  Macb.

  Thanks for that.

  There the grown serpent lies: the worm that’s fled

  Hath nature that in time will venom breed,

  No teeth for the present. Get thee gone; to-morrow

  We’ll hear ourselves again.

  [Exit Murderer.

  Lady M.

  My royal lord,

  You do not give the cheer: the feast is sold

  That is not often vouch’d, while ’tis a-making,

  ’Tis given with welcome: to feed were best at home;

  From thence, the sauce to meat is ceremony;

  Meeting were bare without it.

  Macb.

  Sweet remembrancer!

  Now good digestion wait on appetite,

  And health on both!

  Len.

  May it please your highness sit?

  [The Ghost ofBanquoenters, and sits inMacbeth’splace.

  Macb.

  Here had we now our country’s honour roof’d,

  Were the grac’d person of our Banquo present;

  Who may I rather challenge for unkindness

  Than pity for mischance!

  Ross.

  His absence, sir,

  Lays blame upon his promise. Please ’t your highness

  To grace us with your royal company.

  Macb.

  The table’s full.

  Len.

  Here is a place reserv’d, sir.

  Macb.

  Where?

  Len.

  Here, my good lord. What is ’t that moves your highness?

  Macb.

  Which of you have done this?

  Lords.

  What, my good lord?

  Macb.

  Thou canst not say I did it: never shake

  Thy gory locks at me.

  Ross.

  Gentlemen, rise; his highness is not well.

  Lady M.

  Sit, worthy friends: my lord is often thus,

  And hath been from his youth: pray you, keep seat;

  The fit is momentary; upon a thought

  He will again be well. If much you note him

  You shall offend him and extend his passion:

  Feed and regard him not. Are you a man?

  Macb.

  Ay, and a bold one, that dare look on that

  Which might appal the devil.

  Lady M.

  O proper stuff!

  This is the very painting of your fear;

  This is the air-drawn dagger which, you said,

  Led you to Duncan. O! these flaws and starts—

  Impostors to true fear—would well become

  A woman’s story at a winter’s fire,

  Authoriz’d by her grandam. Shame itself!

  Why do you make such faces? When all’s done

  You look but on a stool.

  Macb.

  Prithee, see there! behold! look! lo! how say you?

  Why, what care I? If thou canst nod, speak too.

  If charnel-houses and our graves must send

  Those that we bury back, our monuments

  Shall be the maws of kites.

  [Ghost disappears.

  Lady M.

  What! quite unmann’d in folly?

  Macb.

  If I stand here, I saw him.

  Lady M.

  Fie, for shame!

  Macb.

  Blood hath been shed ere now, i’ the olden time,

  Ere human statute purg’d the gentle weal;

  Ay, and since too, murders have been perform’d

  Too terrible for the ear: the times have been,

  That, when the brains were out, the man would die,

  

  Macbeth, by R. Westall.

  And there an end; but now they rise again,

  With twenty mortal murders on their crowns,

  And push us from our stools: this is more strange

  Than such a murder is.

  Lady M.

  My worthy lord,

  Your noble friends do lack you.

  Macb.

  I do forget.

  Do not muse at me, my most worthy friends;

  I have a strange infirmity, which is nothing

  To those that know me. Come, love and health to all;

  Then, I’ll sit down. Give me some wine; fill full.

  I drink to the general joy of the whole table,

  And to our dear friend Banquo, whom we miss;

  Would he were here! to all, and him, we thirst,

  And all to all.

  Lords.

  Our duties, and the pledge.

  Re-enter Ghost.

  Macb.

  Avaunt! and quit my sight! Let the earth hide thee!

  Thy bones are marrowless, thy blood is cold;

  Thou hast no speculation in those eyes

  Which thou dost glare with.

  Lady M.

  Think of this, good peers,

  But as a thing of custom: ’tis no other;

  Only it spoils the pleasure of the time.

  Macb.

  What man dare, I dare:

  Approach thou like the rugged Russian bear,

  The arm’d rhinoceros, or the Hyrcan tiger;

  Take any shape but that, and my firm nerves

  Shall never tremble: or be alive again,

  And dare me to the desart with thy sword;

  If trembling I inhabit then, protest me

  The baby of a girl. Hence, horrible shadow!

  Unreal mockery, hence!

  [Ghost vanishes.

  Why, so; being gone,

  I am a man again. Pray you, sit still.

  Lady M.

  You have displac’d the mirth, broke the good meeting,

  With most admir’d disorder.

  Macb.

  Can such things be

  And overcome us like a summer’s cloud,

  Without our special wonder? You make me strange

  Even to the disposition that I owe,

  When now I think you can behold such sights,

  And keep the natural ruby of your cheeks,

  When mine are blanch’d with fear.

  Ross.

  What sights, my lord?

  Lady M.

  I pray you, speak not; he grows worse and worse;

  Question enrages him. At once, good-night:

  Stand not upon the order of your going,

  But go at once.

  Len.

  Good-night; and better health

  Attend his majesty!

  Lady M.

  A kind good-night to all!

  [Exeunt Lords and Attendants.

  Macb.

  It will have blood, they say; blood will have blood:

  Stones have been known to move and trees to speak;

  Augurs and understood relations have

  By maggot-pies and choughs and rooks brought forth

  The secret’st man of blood. What is the night?

  Lady M.

  Almost at odds with morning, which is which.

  Macb.

  How sayst thou, that Macduff denies his person

  At our great bidding?

  Lady M.

  Did you send to him, sir?

  Macb.

  I hear it by the way; but I will send.

  There’s not a one of them but in his house

  I keep a servant fee’d. I will to-morrow—

  And betimes I will—to the weird sisters:

  More shall they speak; for now I am bent to know,

  By the worst means, the worst. For mine own good

  All causes shall give way: I am in blood

  Stepp’d in so far, that, should I wade no more,

  Returning were as tedious as go o’er.

  Strange things I have in head that will to hand,

  Which must be acted ere they may be scann’d.

  Lady M.

  You lack the season of all natures, sleep.

  Macb.

  Come, we’ll to sleep. My strange and self-abuse

  Is the initiate fear that wants hard use:

  We are yet but young in deed.

  [Exeunt.

  Scene V.—

  A Heath.

  Thunder. Enter the three Witches, meetingHecate.

  First Witch.

  Why, how now, Hecate! you look angerly.

  Hec.

  Have I not reason, beldams as you are,

  Saucy and overbold? How did you dare

  To trade and traffic with Macbeth

  In riddles and affairs of death;

  And I, the mistress of your charms,

  The close contriver of all harms,

  Was never call’d to bear my part,

  Or show the glory of our art?

  And, which is worse, all you have done

  Hath been but for a wayward son,

  Spiteful and wrathful; who, as others do,

  Loves for his own ends, not for you.

  But make amends now: get you gone,

  And at the pit of Acheron

  Meet me i’ the morning: thither he

  Will come to know his destiny:

  Your vessels and your spells provide,

  Your charms and every thing beside.

  I am for the air; this night I’ll spend

  Unto a dismal and a fatal end:

  Great business must be wrought ere noon:

  Upon the corner of the moon

  There hangs a vaporous drop profound;

  I’ll catch it ere it come to ground:

  And that distill’d by magic sleights

  Shall raise such artificial sprites

  As by the strength of their illusion

  Shall draw him on to his confusion:

  He shall spurn fate, scorn death, and bear

  His hopes ’bove wisdom, grace, and fear;

  And you all know security

  Is mortals’ chiefest enemy.

  [Song within, ‘Come away, come away,’ &c.

  Hark! I am call’d; my little spirit, see,

  Sits in a foggy cloud, and stays for me.

  [Exit.

  First Witch.

  Come, let’s make haste; she’ll soon be back again.

  [Exeunt.

  Scene VI.—

  Forres. A Room in the Palace.

  EnterLennoxand another Lord.

  Len.

  My former speeches have but hit your thoughts,

  Which can interpret further: only, I say,

  Things have been strangely borne. The gracious Duncan

  Was pitied of Macbeth: marry, he was dead:

  And the right-valiant Banquo walk’d too late;

  Whom, you may say, if ’t please you, Fleance kill’d,

  For Fleance fled: men must not walk too late.

  Who cannot want the thought how monstrous

  It was for Malcolm and for Donalbain

  To kill their gracious father? damned fact!

  How it did grieve Macbeth! did he not straight

  In pious rage the two delinquents tear,

  That were the slaves of drink and thralls of sleep?

  Was not that nobly done? Ay, and wisely too;

  For ’twould have anger’d any heart alive

  To hear the men deny ’t. So that, I say,

  He has borne all things well; and I do think

  That, had he Duncan’s sons under his key,—

  As, an ’t please heaven, he shall not,—they should find

  What ’twere to kill a father; so should Fleance.

  But, peace! for from broad words, and ’cause he fail’d.

  His presence at the tyrant’s feast, I hear,

  Macduff lives in disgrace. Sir, can you tell

  Where he bestows himself?

  Lord.

  The son of Duncan,

  From whom this tyrant holds the due of birth,

  Lives in the English court, and is receiv’d

  Of the most pious Edward with such grace

  That the malevolence of fortune nothing

  Takes from his high respect. Thither Macduff

  Is gone to pray the holy king, upon his aid

  To wake Northumberland and war-like Siward:

  That, by the help of these—with him above

  To ratify the work—we may again

  Give to our tables meat, sleep to our nights,

  Free from our feasts and banquets bloody knives,

  Do faithful homage and receive free honours;

  All which we pine for now. And this report

  Hath so exasperate the king that he

  Prepares for some attempt at war.

  Len.

  Sent he to Macduff?

  Lord.

  He did: and with an absolute, ‘Sir, not I,’

  The cloudy messenger turns me his back,

  And hums, as who should say, ‘You’ll rue the time

  That clogs me with this answer.’

  Len.

  And that well might

  Advise him to a caution to hold what distance

  His wisdom can provide. Some holy angel

  Fly to the court of England and unfold

  His message ere he come, that a swift blessing

  May soon return to this our suffering country

  Under a hand accurs’d!

  Lord.

  I’ll send my prayers with him!

  [Exeunt.

  ACT IV.

  Scene I.—

  A Cavern. In the middle, a boiling Cauldron.

  Thunder. Enter the three Witches.

  First Witch.

  Thrice the brinded cat hath mew’d.

  Sec. Witch.

  Thrice and once the hedge-pig whin’d.

  Third Witch.

  Harper cries: ’Tis time, ’tis time.

  First Witch.

  • Round about the cauldron go,
  • In the poison’d entrails throw.
  • Toad, that under cold stone
  • Days and nights hast thirty-one
  • Swelter’d venom sleeping got,
  • Boil thou first i’ the charmed pot.

  All.

  • Double, double toil and trouble;
  • Fire burn and cauldron bubble.

  Sec. Witch.

  • Fillet of a fenny snake,
  • In the cauldron boil and bake;
  • Eye of newt, and toe of frog,
  • Wool of bat, and tongue of dog,
  • Adder’s fork, and blind-worm’s sting,
  • Lizard’s leg, and howlet’s wing,
  • For a charm of powerful trouble,
  • Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.

  All.

  • Double, double toil and trouble;
  • Fire burn and cauldron bubble.

  Third Witch.

  • Scale of dragon, tooth of wolf,
  • Witches’ mummy, maw and gulf
  • Of the ravin’d salt-sea shark,
  • Root of hemlock digg’d i’ the dark,
  • Liver of blaspheming Jew,
  • Gall of goat, and slips of yew
  • Sliver’d in the moon’s eclipse,
  • Nose of Turk, and Tartar’s lips,
  • Finger of birth-strangled babe
  • Ditch-deliver’d by a drab,
  • Make the gruel thick and slab:
  • Add thereto a tiger’s chaudron,
  • For the ingredients of our cauldron.

  All.

  • Double, double toil and trouble;
  • Fire burn and cauldron bubble.

  Sec. Witch.

  • Cool it with a baboon’s blood,
  • Then the charm is firm and good.

  EnterHecate.

  Hec.

  • O! well done! I commend your pains,
  • And every one shall share i’ the gains.
  • And now about the cauldron sing,
  • Like elves and fairies in a ring,
  • Enchanting all that you put in.
  • [Music and a song, ‘Black Spirits,’ &c.

  Sec. Witch.

  • By the pricking of my thumbs,
  • Something wicked this way comes.
  • Open, locks,
  • Whoever knocks.

  EnterMacbeth.

  Macb.

  How now, you secret, black, and mid-night hags!

  What is ’t you do?

  All.

  A deed without a name.

  Macb.

  I conjure you, by that which you profess,—

  Howe’er you come to know it,—answer me:

  Though you untie the winds and let them fight

  Against the churches; though the yesty waves

  Confound and swallow navigation up;

  Though bladed corn be lodg’d and trees blown down;

  Though castles topple on their warders’ heads;

  Though palaces and pyramids do slope

  Their heads to their foundations; though the treasure

  Of Nature’s germens tumble all together,

  Even till destruction sicken; answer me

  To what I ask you.

  First Witch.

  Speak.

  Sec. Witch.

  Demand.

  Third Witch.

  We’ll answer.

  First Witch.

  Say if thou’dst rather hear it from our mouths,

  Or from our masters’?

  Macb.

  Call ’em: let me see ’em.

  First Witch.

  • Pour in sow’s blood, that hath eaten
  • Her nine farrow; grease, that’s sweaten
  • From the murderer’s gibbet throw
  • Into the flame.

  All.

  • Come, high or low;
  • Thyself and office deftly show.

  Thunder. First Apparition of an armed Head.

  Macb.

  Tell me, thou unknown power,—

  First Witch.

  He knows thy thought:

  Hear his speech, but say thou nought.

  First App.

  Macbeth! Macbeth! Macbeth! beware Macduff;

  Beware the Thane of Fife. Dismiss me. Enough.

  [Descends.

  Macb.

  Whate’er thou art, for thy good caution thanks;

  Thou hast harp’d my fear aright. But one word more,—

  First Witch.

  He will not be commanded: here’s another,

  More potent than the first.

  Thunder. Second Apparition, a bloody Child.

  Sec. App.

  Macbeth! Macbeth! Macbeth!—

  Macb.

  Had I three ears, I’d hear thee.

  Sec. App.

  Be bloody, bold, and resolute; laugh to scorn

  The power of man, for none of woman born

  Shall harm Macbeth.

  [Descends.

  Macb.

  • Then live, Macduff: what need I fear of thee?
  • But yet I’ll make assurance double sure,
  • And take a bond of fate: thou shalt not live;
  • That I may tell pale-hearted fear it lies,
  • And sleep in spite of thunder.

  Thunder. Third Apparition, a Child crowned, with a tree in his hand.

  What is this,

  That rises like the issue of a king,

  And wears upon his baby brow the round

  And top of sovereignty?

  All.

  Listen, but speak not to ’t.

  Third App.

  Be lion-mettled, proud, and take no care

  Who chafes, who frets or where conspirers are:

  Macbeth shall never vanquish’d be until

  Great Birnam wood to high Dunsinane hill

  Shall come against him.

  [Descends.

  Macb.

  That will never be:

  Who can impress the forest, bid the tree

  Unfix his earth-bound root? Sweet bodements! good!

  Rebellion’s head, rise never till the wood

  Of Birnam rise, and our high-plac’d Macbeth

  Shall live the lease of nature, pay his breath

  To time and mortal custom. Yet my heart

  Throbs to know one thing: tell me—if your art

  Can tell so much,—shall Banquo’s issue ever

  Reign in this kingdom?

  All.

  Seek to know no more.

  Macb.

  I will be satisfied: deny me this,

  And an eternal curse fall on you! Let me know.

  Why sinks that cauldron? and what noise is this?

  [Hautboys.

  First Witch.

  Show!

  Sec. Witch.

  Show!

  Third Witch.

  Show!

  All.

  Show his eyes, and grieve his heart;

  Come like shadows, so depart.

  A show of Eight Kings; the last with a glass in his hand:Banquo’s Ghost following.

  Macb.

  Thou art too like the spirit of Banquo; down!

  Thy crown does sear mine eyeballs: and thy hair,

  Thou other gold-bound brow, is like the first:

  A third is like the former. Filthy hags!

  Why do you show me this? A fourth! Start, eyes!

  What! will the line stretch out to the crack of doom?

  Another yet? A seventh! I’ll see no more:

  And yet the eighth appears, who bears a glass

  Which shows me many more; and some I see

  That two-fold balls and treble sceptres carry.

  Horrible sight! Now, I see, ’tis true;

  For the blood-bolter’d Banquo smiles upon me,

  And points at them for his.

  [Apparitions vanish.

  What! is this so?

  First Witch.

  Ay, sir, all this is so: but why

  Stands Macbeth thus amazedly?

  Come, sisters, cheer we up his sprites,

  And show the best of our delights.

  I’ll charm the air to give a sound,

  While you perform your antick round,

  That this great king may kindly say,

  Our duties did his welcome pay.

  [Music. The Witches dance, and then vanish withHecate.

  Macb.

  Where are they? Gone? Let this pernicious hour

  Stand aye accursed in the calendar!

  Come in, without there!

  EnterLennox.

  Len.

  What’s your Grace’s will?

  Macb.

  Saw you the weird sisters?

  Len.

  No, my lord.

  Macb.

  Came they not by you?

  Len.

  No indeed, my lord.

  Macb.

  Infected be the air whereon they ride,

  And damn’d all those that trust them! I did hear

  The galloping of horse: who was ’t came by?

  Len.

  ’Tis two or three, my lord, that bring you word

  Macduff is fled to England.

  Macb.

  Fled to England!

  Len.

  Ay, my good lord.

  Macb.

  Time, thou anticipat’st my dread exploits;

  The flighty purpose never is o’ertook

  Unless the deed go with it; from this moment

  The very firstlings of my heart shall be

  The firstlings of my hand. And even now,

  To crown my thoughts with acts, be it thought and done:

  The castle of Macduff I will surprise;

  Seize upon Fife; give to the edge of the sword

  His wife, his babes, and all unfortunate souls

  That trace him in his line. No boasting like a fool;

  This deed I’ll do, before this purpose cool:

  But no moresights! Where are these gentlemen?

  Come, bring me where they are.

  [Exeunt.

  Scene II.—

  Fife.Macduff’sCastle.

  EnterLady Macduff,her Son, andRoss.

  L. Macd.

  What had he done to make him fly the land?

  Ross.

  You must have patience, madam.

  L. Macd.

  He had none:

  His flight was madness: when our actions do not,

  Our fears do make us traitors.

  Ross.

  You know not

  Whether it was his wisdom or his fear.

  L. Macd.

  Wisdom! to leave his wife, to leave his babes,

  His mansion and his titles in a place

  From whence himself does fly? He loves us not;

  He wants the natural touch; for the poor wren,

  The most diminutive of birds, will fight—

  Her young ones in her nest—against the owl.

  All is the fear and nothing is the love;

  As little is the wisdom, where the flight

  So runs against all reason.

  Ross.

  My dearest coz,

  I pray you, school yourself: but, for your husband,

  He is noble, wise, judicious, and best knows

  The fits o’ the season. I dare not speak much further:

  But cruel are the times, when we are traitors

  And do not know ourselves, when we hold rumour

  From what we fear, yet know not what we fear,

  But float upon a wild and violent sea

  Each way and move. I take my leave of you:

  Shall not be long but I’ll be here again.

  Things at the worst will cease, or else climb upward

  To what they were before. My pretty cousin,

  Blessing upon you!

  L. Macd.

  Father’d he is, and yet he’s fatherless.

  Ross.

  I am so much a fool, should I stay longer,

  It would be my disgrace, and your discomfort:

  I take my leave at once.

  [Exit.

  L. Macd.

  Sirrah, your father’s dead:

  And what will you do now? How will you live?

  Son.

  As birds do, mother.

  L. Macd.

  What! with worms and flies?

  Son.

  With what I get, I mean; and so do they.

  L. Macd.

  Poor bird! thou’dst never fear the net nor lime,

  The pit-fall nor the gin.

  Son.

  Why should I, mother? Poor birds they are not set for.

  My father is not dead, for all your saying.

  L. Macd.

  Yes, he is dead: how wilt thou do for a father?

  Son.

  Nay, how will you do for a husband?

  L. Macd.

  Why, I can buy me twenty at any market.

  Son.

  Then you’ll buy ’em to sell again.

  L. Macd.

  Thou speak’st with all thy wit; and yet, i’ faith,

  With wit enough for thee.

  Son.

  Was my father a traitor, mother?

  L. Macd.

  Ay, that he was.

  Son.

  What is a traitor?

  L. Macd.

  Why, one that swears and lies.

  Son.

  And be all traitors that do so?

  L. Macd.

  Every one that does so is a traitor, and must be hanged.

  Son.

  And must they all be hanged that swear and lie?

  L. Macd.

  Every one.

  Son.

  Who must hang them?

  L. Macd.

  Why, the honest men.

  Son.

  Then the liars and swearers are fools, for there are liars and swearers enow to beat the honest men, and hang up them.

  L. Macd.

  Now God help thee, poor monkey!

  But how wilt thou do for a father?

  Son.

  If he were dead, you’d weep for him: if you would not, it were a good sign that I should quickly have a new father.

  L. Macd.

  Poor prattler, how thou talk’st!

  Enter a Messenger.

  Mess.

  Bless you, fair dame! I am not to you known,

  Though in your state of honour I am perfect.

  I doubt some danger does approach you nearly:

  If you will take a homely man’s advice,

  Be not found here; hence, with your little ones.

  To fright you thus, methinks, I am too savage;

  To do worse to you were fell cruelty,

  Which is too nigh your person. Heaven preserve you!

  I dare abide no longer.

  [Exit.

  L. Macd.

  Whither should I fly?

  I have done no harm. But I remember now

  I am in this earthly world, where, to do harm

  Is often laudable, to do good sometime

  Accounted dangerous folly; why then, alas!

  Do I put up that womanly defence,

  To say I have done no harm?

  Enter Murderers.

  What are these faces?

  Mur.

  Where is your husband?

  L. Macd.

  I hope in no place so unsanctified

  Where such as thou mayst find him.

  Mur.

  He’s a traitor.

  Son.

  Thou liest, thou shag-hair’d villain.

  Mur.

  What! you egg.

  Young fry of treachery!

  [Stabbing him.

  Son.

  He has killed me, mother:

  Run away, I pray you!

  [Dies.

  [ExitLady Macduff,crying ‘Murder,’ and pursued by the Murderers.

  Scene III.—

  England. Before theKing’sPalace.

  EnterMalcolmandMacduff.

  Mal.

  Let us seek out some desolate shade, and there

  Weep our sad bosoms empty.

  Macd.

  Let us rather

  Hold fast the mortal sword, and like good men

  Bestride our down-fall’n birthdom; each new morn

  New widowshowl, new orphans cry, new sorrows

  Strike heaven on the face, that it resounds

  As if it felt with Scotland and yell’d out

  Like syllable of dolour.

  Mal.

  What I believe I’ll wail,

  What know believe, and what I can redress,

  As I shall find the time to friend, I will.

  What you have spoke, it may be so perchance.

  This tyrant, whosesole name blisters our tongues,

  Was once thought honest: you have lov’d him well;

  He hath not touch’d you yet. I am young; but something

  You may deserve of him through me, and wisdom

  To offer up a weak, poor, innocent lamb

  To appease an angry god.

  Macd.

  I am not treacherous.

  Mal.

  But Macbeth is.

  A good and virtuous nature may recoil

  In an imperial charge. But I shall crave your pardon;

  That which you are my thoughts cannot transpose;

  Angels are bright still, though the brightest fell;

  Though all things foul would wear the brows of grace,

  Yet grace must still look so.

  Macd.

  I have lost my hopes.

  Mal.

  Perchance even there where I did find my doubts.

  Why in that rawness left you wife and child—

  Those precious motives, those strong knots of love—

  Without leave-taking? I pray you,

  Let not my jealousies be your dishonours,

  But mine own safeties: you may be rightly just,

  Whatever I shall think.

  Macd.

  Bleed, bleed, poor country!

  Great tyranny, lay thou thy basis sure,

  For goodness dares not check thee! wear thou thy wrongs;

  The title is affeer’d! Fare thee well, lord:

  I would not be the villain that thou think’st

  For the whole space that’s in the tyrant’s grasp,

  And the rich East to boot.

  Mal.

  Be not offended:

  I speak not as in absolute fear of you.

  I think our country sinks beneath the yoke;

  It weeps, it bleeds, and each new day a gash

  Is added to her wounds: I think withal,

  There would be hands uplifted in my right;

  And here from gracious England have I offer

  Of goodly thousands: but, for all this,

  When I shall tread upon the tyrant’s head,

  Or wear it on my sword, yet my poor country

  Shall have more vices than it had before,

  More suffer, and more sundry ways than ever,

  By him that shall succeed.

  Macd.

  What should he be?

  Mal.

  It is myself I mean; in whom I know

  All the particulars of vice so grafted,

  That, when they shall be open’d, black Macbeth

  Will seem as pure as snow, and the poor state

  Esteem him as a lamb, being compar’d

  With my confineless harms.

  Macd.

  Not in the legions

  Of horrid hell can come a devil more damn’d

  In evils to top Macbeth.

  Mal.

  I grant him bloody,

  Luxurious, avaricious, false, deceitful,

  Sudden, malicious, smacking of every sin

  That has a name; but there’s no bottom, none,

  In my voluptuousness: your wives, your daughters,

  Your matrons, and your maids, could not fill up

  The cistern of my lust; and my desire

  All continent impediments would o’erbear

  That did oppose my will; better Macbeth

  Than such an one to reign.

  Macd.

  Boundless intemperance

  In nature is a tyranny; it hath been

  Th’ untimely emptying of the happy throne,

  And fall of many kings. But fear not yet

  To take upon you what is yours; you may

  Convey your pleasures in a spacious plenty,

  And yet seem cold, the time you may so hoodwink.

  We have willing dames enough; there cannot be

  That vulture in you, to devour so many

  As will to greatness dedicate themselves,

  Finding it so inclin’d.

  Mal.

  With this there grows

  In my most ill-compos’d affection such

  A stanchless avarice that, were I king,

  I should cut off the nobles for their lands,

  Desire his jewels and this other’s house;

  And my more-having would be as a sauce

  To make me hunger more, that I should forge

  Quarrels unjust against the good and loyal,

  Destroying them for wealth.

  Macd.

  This avarice

  Sticks deeper, grows with more pernicious root

  Than summer-seeming lust, and it hath been

  The sword of our slain kings: yet do not fear;

  Scotland hath foisons to fill up your will,

  Of your mere own; all these are portable,

  With other graces weigh’d.

  Mal.

  But I have none: the king-becoming graces,

  As justice, verity, temperance, stableness,

  Bounty, perseverance, mercy, lowliness,

  Devotion, patience, courage, fortitude,

  I have no relish of them, but abound

  In the division of each several crime,

  Acting it many ways. Nay, had I power, I should

  Pour the sweet milk of concord into hell,

  Uproar the universal peace, confound

  All unity on earth.

  Macd.

  O Scotland, Scotland!

  Mal.

  If such a one be fit to govern, speak:

  I am as I have spoken.

  Macd.

  Fit to govern!

  No, not to live. O nation miserable,

  With an untitled tyrant bloody-scepter’d,

  When shalt thou see thy wholesome days again,

  Since that the truest issue of thy throne

  By his own interdiction stands accurs’d,

  And does blaspheme his breed? Thy royal father

  Was a most sainted king; the queen that bore thee,

  Oft’ner upon her knees than on her feet,

  Died every day she liv’d. Fare thee well!

  These evils thou repeat’st upon thyself

  Have banish’d me from Scotland. O my breast,

  Thy hope ends here!

  Mal.

  Macduff, this noble passion,

  Child of integrity, hath from my soul

  Wip’d the black scruples, reconcil’d my thoughts

  To thy good truth and honour. Devilish Macbeth

  By many of these trains hath sought to win me

  Into his power, and modest wisdom plucks me

  From over-credulous haste; but God above

  Deal between thee and me! for even now

  I put myself to thy direction, and

  Unspeak mine own detraction, here abjure

  The taints and blames I laid upon myself,

  For strangers to my nature. I am yet

  Unknown to woman, never was forsworn,

  Scarcely have coveted what was mine own;

  At no time broke my faith, would not betray

  The devil to his fellow, and delight

  No less in truth than life; my first false speaking

  Was this upon myself. What I am truly,

  Is thine and my poor country’s to command;

  Whither indeed, before thy here-approach,

  Old Siward, with ten thousand war-like men,

  Already at a point, was setting forth.

  Now we’ll together, and the chance of goodness

  Be like our warranted quarrel. Why are you silent?

  Macd.

  Such welcome and unwelcome things at once

  ’Tis hard to reconcile.

  Enter a Doctor.

  Mal.

  Well; more anon. Comes the king forth, I pray you?

  Doct.

  Ay, sir; there are a crew of wretched souls

  That stay his cure; their malady convinces

  The great assay of art; but, at his touch,

  Such sanctity hath heaven given his hand,

  They presently amend.

  Mal.

  I thank you, doctor.

  [Exit Doctor.

  Macd.

  What’s the disease he means?

  Mal.

  ’Tis call’d the evil:

  A most miraculous work in this good king,

  Which often, since my here-remain in England,

  I have seen him do. How he solicits heaven,

  Himself best knows; but strangely-visited people,

  All swoln and ulcerous, pitiful to the eye,

  The mere despair of surgery, he cures;

  Hanging a golden stamp about their necks,

  Put on with holy prayers; and ’tis spoken

  To the succeeding royalty he leaves

  The healing benediction. With this strange virtue,

  He hath a heavenly gift of prophecy,

  And sundry blessings hang about his throne

  That speak him full of grace.

  Macd.

  See, who comes here?

  Mal.

  My countryman; but yet I know him not.

  EnterRoss.

  Macd.

  My ever-gentle cousin, welcome hither.

  Mal.

  I know him now. Good God, betimes remove

  The means that make us strangers!

  Ross.

  Sir, amen.

  Macd.

  Stands Scotland where it did?

  Ross.

  Alas! poor country;

  Almost afraid to know itself. It cannot

  Be call’d our mother, but our grave; where nothing,

  But who knows nothing, is once seen to smile;

  Where sighs and groans and shrieks that rent the air

  Are made, not mark’d; where violent sorrow seems

  A modern ecstasy; the dead man’s knell

  Is there scarce ask’d for who; and good men’s lives

  Expire before the flowers in their caps,

  Dying or ere they sicken.

  Macd.

  O! relation

  Too nice, and yet too true!

  Mal.

  What’s the newest grief?

  Ross.

  That of an hour’s age doth hiss the speaker;

  Each minute teems a new one.

  Macd.

  How does my wife?

  Ross.

  Why, well.

  Macd.

  And all my children?

  Ross.

  Well too.

  Macd.

  The tyrant has not batter’d at their peace?

  Ross.

  No; they were well at peace when I did leave ’em.

  Macd.

  Be not a niggard of your speech: how goes ’t?

  Ross.

  When I came hither to transport the tidings,

  Which I have heavily borne, there ran a rumour

  Of many worthy fellows that were out;

  Which was to my belief witness’d the rather

  For that I saw the tyrant’s power a-foot.

  Now is the time of help; your eye in Scotland

  Would create soldiers, make our women fight,

  To doff their dire distresses.

  Mal.

  Be ’t their comfort,

  We are coming thither. Gracious England hath

  Lent us good Siward and ten thousand men;

  An older and a better soldier none

  That Christendom gives out.

  Ross.

  Would I could answer

  This comfort with the like! But I have words

  That would be howl’d out in the desert air,

  Where hearing should not latch them.

  Macd.

  What concern they?

  The general cause? or is it a fee-grief

  Due to some single breast?

  Ross.

  No mind that’s honest

  But in it shares some woe, though the main part

  Pertains to you alone.

  Macd.

  If it be mine

  Keep it not from me; quickly let me have it.

  Ross.

  Let not your ears despise my tongue for ever,

  Which shall possess them with the heaviest sound

  That ever yet they heard.

  Macd.

  Hum! I guess at it.

  Ross.

  Your castle is surpris’d; your wife and babes

  Savagely slaughter’d; to relate the manner,

  Were, on the quarry of these murder’d deer,

  To add the death of you.

  Mal.

  Merciful heaven!

  What! man; ne’er pull your hat upon your brows;

  Give sorrow words; the grief that does not speak

  Whispers the o’er-fraught heart and bids it break.

  Macd.

  My children too?

  Ross.

  Wife, children, servants, all

  That could be found.

  Macd.

  And I must be from thence!

  My wife kill’d too?

  Ross.

  I have said.

  Mal.

  Be comforted:

  Let’s make us medicine of our great revenge,

  To cure this deadly grief.

  Macd.

  He has no children. All my pretty ones?

  Did you say all? O hell-kite! All?

  What! all my pretty chickens and their dam

  At one fell swoop?

  Mal.

  Dispute it like a man.

  Macd.

  I shall do so;

  But I must also feel it as a man:

  I cannot but remember such things were,

  That were most precious to me. Did heaven look on,

  And would not take their part? Sinful Macduff!

  They were all struck for thee. Naught that I am,

  Not for their own demerits, but for mine,

  Fell slaughter on their souls. Heaven rest them now!

  Mal.

  Be this the whetstone of your sword: let grief

  Convert to anger; blunt not the heart, enrage it.

  Macd.

  O! I could play the woman with mine eyes,

  And braggart with my tongue. But, gentle heavens,

  Cut short all intermission; front to front

  Bring thou this fiend of Scotland and myself;

  Within my sword’s length set him; if he ’scape,

  Heaven forgive him too!

  Mal.

  This tune goes manly.

  Come, go we to the king; our power is ready;

  Our lack is nothing but our leave. Macbeth

  Is ripe for shaking, and the powers above

  Put on their instruments. Receive what cheer you may;

  The night is long that never finds the day.

  [Exeunt.

  ACT V.

  Scene I.—

  Dunsinane. A Room in the Castle.

  Enter a Doctor of Physic and a Waiting-Gentle-woman.

  Doct.

  I have two nights watched with you, but can perceive no truth in your report. When was it she last walked?

  Gen.

  Since his majesty went into the field, I have seen her rise from her bed, throw her night-gown upon her, unlock her closet, take forth paper, fold it, write upon ’t, read it, afterwards seal it, and again return to bed; yet all this while in a most fast sleep.

  Doct.

  A great perturbation in nature, to receive at once the benefit of sleep and do the effects of watching! In this slumbery agitation, besides her walking and other actual performances, what, at any time, have you heard her say?

  Gen.

  That, sir, which I will not report after her.

  Doct.

  You may to me, and ’tis most meet you should.

  Gen.

  Neither to you nor any one, having no witness to confirm my speech.

  EnterLady Macbeth,with a taper.

  Lo you! here she comes. This is her very guise; and, upon my life, fast asleep. Observe her; stand close.

  Doct.

  How came she by that light?

  Gen.

  Why, it stood by her: she has light by her continually; ’tis her command.

  Doct.

  You see, her eyes are open.

  Gen.

  Ay, but their sense is shut.

  Doct.

  What is it she does now? Look, how she rubs her hands.

  Gen.

  It is an accustomed action with her, to seem thus washing her hands. I have known her to continue in this a quarter of an hour.

  Lady M.

  Yet here’s a spot.

  Doct.

  Hark! she speaks. I will set down what comes from her, to satisfy my remembrance the more strongly.

  Lady M.

  Out, damned spot! out, I say! One; two: why, then, ’tis time to do’t. Hell is murky! Fie, my lord, fie! a soldier, and afeard? What need we fear who knows it, when none can call our power to account? Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him?

  Doct.

  Do you mark that?

  Lady M.

  The Thane of Fife had a wife: where is she now? What! will these hands ne’er be clean? No more o’ that, my lord, no more o’ that: you mar all with this starting.

  Doct.

  Go to, go to; you have known what you should not.

  Gen.

  She has spoke what she should not, I am sure of that: Heaven knows what she has known.

  Lady M.

  Here’s the smell of the blood still: all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand. Oh! oh! oh!

  Doct.

  What a sigh is there! The heart is sorely charged.

  Gen.

  I would not have such a heart in my bosom for the dignity of the whole body.

  Doct.

  Well, well, well.

  Gen.

  Pray God it be, sir.

  Doct.

  This disease is beyond my practice: yet I have known those which have walked in their sleep who have died holily in their beds.

  Lady M.

  Wash your hands, put on your night-gown; look not so pale. I tell you yet again, Banquo’s buried; he cannot come out on ’s grave.

  Doct.

  Even so?

  Lady M.

  To bed, to bed: there’s knocking at the gate. Come, come, come, come, give me your hand. What’s done cannot be undone.

  To bed, to bed, to bed.

  [Exit.

  Doct.

  Will she go now to bed?

  Gen.

  Directly.

  Doct.

  Foul whisperings are abroad. Unnatural deeds

  Do breed unnatural troubles; infected minds

  To their deaf pillows will discharge their secrets;

  More needs she the divine than the physician.

  God, God forgive us all! Look after her;

  Remove from her the means of all annoyance,

  And still keep eyes upon her. So, good-night:

  My mind she has mated, and amaz’d my sight.

  I think, but dare not speak.

  Gen.

  Good-night, good doctor.

  [Exeunt.

  Scene II.—

  The Country near Dunsinane.

  Enter, with drum and colours,Menteith, Caithness, Angus, Lennox,and Soldiers.

  Ment.

  The English power is near, led on by Malcolm,

  His uncle Siward, and the good Macduff.

  Revenges burn in them; for their dear causes

  Would to the bleeding and the grim alarm

  Excite the mortified man.

  Ang.

  Near Birnam wood

  Shall we well meet them; that way are they coming.

  Caith.

  Who knows if Donalbain be with his brother?

  Len.

  For certain, sir, he is not: I have a file

  Of all the gentry: there is Siward’s son,

  And many unrough youths that even now

  Protest their first of manhood.

  Ment.

  What does the tyrant?

  Caith.

  Great Dunsinane he strongly fortifies.

  Some say he’s mad; others that lesser hate him

  Do call it valiant fury; but, for certain,

  He cannot buckle his distemper’d cause

  Within the belt of rule.

  Ang.

  Now does he feel

  His secret murders sticking on his hands;

  Now minutely revolts upbraid his faith-breach;

  Those he commands move only in command,

  Nothing in love; now does he feel his title

  Hang loose about him, like a giant’s robe

  Upon a dwarfish thief.

  Ment.

  Who then shall blame

  His pester’d senses to recoil and start,

  When all that is within him does condemn

  Itself for being there?

  Caith.

  Well, march we on,

  To give obedience where ’tis truly ow’d;

  Meet we the medicine of the sickly weal,

  And with him pour we in our country’s purge

  Each drop of us.

  Len.

  Or so much as it needs

  To dew the sovereign flower and drown the weeds.

  Make we our march towards Birnam.

  [Exeunt, marching.

  Scene III.—

  Dunsinane. A Room in the Castle.

  EnterMacbeth, Doctor, and Attendants.

  Macb.

  Bring me no more reports; let them fly all:

  Till Birnam wood remove to Dunsinane

  I cannot taint with fear. What’s the boy Malcolm?

  Was he not born of woman? The spirits that know

  All mortal consequences have pronounc’d me thus:

  ‘Fear not, Macbeth; no man that’s born of woman

  Shall e’er have power upon thee.’ Then fly, false thanes,

  And mingle with the English epicures:

  The mind I sway by and the heart I bear

  Shall never sag with doubt nor shake with fear.

  Enter a Servant.

  The devil damn thee black, thou cream-fac’d loon!

  Where gott’st thou that goose look?

  Serv

  There is ten thousand—

  Macb.

  Geese, villain?

  Serv.

  Soldiers, sir.

  Macb.

  Go, prick thy face, and over-red thy fear,

  Thou lily-liver’d boy. What soldiers, patch?

  Death of thy soul! those linen cheeks of thine

  Are counsellors to fear. What soldiers, wheyface?

  Serv.

  The English force, so please you.

  Macb.

  Take thy face hence. [Exit Servant.] Seyton!—I am sick at heart

  When I behold—Seyton, I say!—This push

  Will cheer me ever or disseat me now.

  I have liv’d long enough: my way of life

  Is fall’n into the sear, the yellow leaf;

  And that which should accompany old age,

  As honour, love, obedience, troops of friends,

  I must not look to have; but, in their stead,

  Curses, not loud but deep, mouth-honour, breath,

  Which the poor heart would fain deny, and dare not.

  Seyton!

  EnterSeyton.

  Sey.

  What is your gracious pleasure?

  Macb.

  What news more?

  Sey.

  All is confirm’d, my lord, which was reported.

  Macb.

  I’ll fight till from my bones my flesh be hack’d.

  Give me my armour.

  Sey.

  ’Tis not needed yet.

  Macb.

  I’ll put it on.

  Send out more horses, skirr the country round;

  Hang those that talk of fear. Give me mine armour.

  How does your patient, doctor?

  Doct.

  Not so sick, my lord,

  As she is troubled with thick-coming fancies,

  That keep her from her rest.

  Macb.

  Cure her of that:

  Canst thou not minister to a mind diseas’d,

  Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow,

  Raze out the written troubles of the brain,

  And with some sweet oblivious antidote

  Cleanse the stuff’d bosom of that perilous stuff

  Which weighs upon the heart?

  Doct.

  Therein the patient

  Must minister to himself.

  Macb.

  Throw physic to the dogs; I’ll none of it.

  Come, put mine armour on; give me my staff.

  Seyton, send out.—Doctor, the thanes fly from me.—

  Come, sir, dispatch.—If thou couldst, doctor, cast

  The water of my land, find her disease,

  And purge it to a sound and pristine health,

  I would applaud thee to the very echo,

  That should applaud again.—Pull ’t off, I say.—

  What rhubarb, senna, or what purgative drug

  Would scour these English hence? Hear’st thou of them?

  Doct.

  Ay, my good lord; your royal preparation

  Makes us hear something.

  Macb.

  Bring it after me.

  I will not be afraid of death and bane

  Till Birnam forest come to Dunsinane.

  Doct.

  [Aside.] Were I from Dunsinane away and clear,

  Profit again should hardly draw me here.

  [Exeunt.

  Scene IV.—

  Country near Birnam Wood.

  Enter, with drum and colours,Malcolm,OldSiwardand his Son, Macduff, Menteith, Catthness, Angus, Lennox, Ross, and Soldiers marching.

  Mal.

  Cousins, I hope the days are near at hand

  That chambers will be safe.

  Men.

  We doubt it nothing.

  Siw.

  What wood is this before us?

  Men.

  The wood of Birnam.

  Mal.

  Let every soldier hew him down a bough

  And bear ’t before him: thereby shall we shadow

  The numbers of our host, and make discovery

  Err in report of us.

  Sold.

  It shall be done.

  Siw.

  We learn no other but the confident tyrant

  Keeps still in Dunsinane, and will endure

  Our setting down before ’t.

  Mal.

  ’Tis his main hope;

  For where there is advantage to be given,

  Both more and less have given him the revolt,

  And none serve with him but constrained things

  Whose hearts are absent too.

  Macd.

  Let our just censures

  Attend the true event, and put we on

  Industrious soldiership.

  Siw.

  The time approaches

  That will with due decision make us know

  What we shall say we have and what we owe.

  Thoughts speculative their unsure hopes relate,

  But certain issue strokes must arbitrate,

  Towards which advance the war.

  [Exeunt, marching.

  Scene V.—

  Dunsinane. Within the Castle.

  Enter, with drum and colours,Macbeth, Seyton,and Soldiers.

  Macb.

  Hang out our banners on the outward walls;

  The cry is still, ‘They come;’ our castle’s strength

  Will laugh a siege to scorn; here let them lie

  Till famine and the ague eat them up;

  Were they not forc’d with those that should be ours,

  We might have met them dareful, beard to beard,

  And beat them backward home.

  [A cry of women within.

  What is that noise?

  Sey.

  It is the cry of women, my good lord.

  [Exit.

  Macb.

  I have almost forgot the taste of fears.

  The time has been my senses would have cool’d

  To hear a night-shriek, and my fell of hair

  Would at a dismal treatise rouse and stir

  As life were in ’t. I have supp’d full with horrors;

  Direness, familiar to my slaughterous thoughts,

  Cannot once start me.

  Re-enterSeyton.

  Wherefore was that cry?

  Sey.

  The queen, my lord, is dead.

  Macb.

  She should have died hereafter;

  There would have been a time for such a word.

  To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,

  Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,

  To the last syllable of recorded time;

  And all our yesterdays have lighted fools

  The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!

  Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player

  That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,

  And then is heard no more; it is a tale

  Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,

  Signifying nothing.

  Enter a Messenger.

  Thou com’st to use thy tongue; thy story quickly.

  Mess.

  Gracious my lord,

  I should report that which I say I saw,

  But know not how to do it.

  Macb.

  Well, say, sir.

  Mess.

  As I did stand my watch upon the hill,

  I look’d towards Birnam, and anon, methought,

  The wood began to move.

  Macb.

  Liar and slave!

  Mess.

  Let me endure your wrath if’t be not so:

  Within this three mile may you see it coming;

  I say, a moving grove.

  Macb.

  If thou speak’st false,

  Upon the next tree shalt thou hang alive,

  Till famine cling thee; if thy speech be sooth,

  I care not if thou dost for me as much.

  I pull in resolution and begin

  To doubt the equivocation of the fiend

  That lies like truth; ‘Fear not, till Birnam wood

  Do come to Dunsinane;’ and now a wood

  Comes toward Dunsinane. Arm, arm, and out!

  If this which he avouches does appear,

  There is nor flying hence, nor tarrying here.

  I ’gin to be aweary of the sun,

  And wish the estate o’ the world were now undone.

  Ring the alarum-bell! Blow, wind! come, wrack!

  At least we’ll die with harness on our back.

  [Exeunt.

  Scene VI.—

  The Same. A Plain before the Castle.

  Enter, with drum and colours,Malcolm,OldSiward, Macduff,&c., and their Army, with boughs.

  Mal.

  Now near enough; your leavy screens throw down,

  And show like those you are. You, worthy uncle,

  Shall, with my cousin, your right-noble son,

  Lead our first battle; worthy Macduff and we

  Shall take upon ’s what else remains to do,

  According to our order.

  Siw.

  Fare you well.

  Do we but find the tyrant’s power to-night,

  Let us be beaten, if we cannot fight.

  Macd.

  Make all our trumpets speak; give them all breath,

  Those clamorous harbingers of blood and death.

  [Exeunt.

  Scene VII.—

  The Same. Another Part of the Plain.

  Alarums. EnterMacbeth.

  Macb.

  They have tied me to a stake; I cannot fly,

  But bear-like I must fight the course. What’s he

  That was not born of woman? Such a one

  Am I to fear, or none.

  Enter YoungSiward.

  Young Siw.

  What is thy name?

  Macb.

  Thou’lt be afraid to hear it.

  Young Siw.

  No; though thou call’st thyself a hotter name

  Than any is in hell.

  Macb.

  My name’s Macbeth.

  Young Siw.

  The devil himself could not pronounce a title

  More hateful to mine ear.

  Macb.

  No, nor more fearful.

  Young Siw.

  Thou liest, abhorred tyrant; with my sword

  I’ll prove the lie thou speak’st.

  [They fight and YoungSiwardis slain.

  Macb.

  Thou wast born of woman:

  But swords I smile at, weapons laugh to scorn,

  Brandish’d by man that’s of a woman born.

  [Exit.

  Alarums. EnterMacduff.

  Macd.

  That way the noise is. Tyrant, show thy face:

  If thou be’st slain and with no stroke of mine,

  My wife and children’s ghosts will haunt me still.

  I cannot strike at wretched kerns, whose arms

  Are hir’d to bear their staves: either thou, Macbeth,

  Or else my sword with an unbatter’d edge

  I sheathe again undeeded. There thou shouldst be;

  By this great clatter, one of greatest note

  Seems bruited. Let me find him, fortune!

  And more I beg not.

  [Exit. Alarums.

  EnterMalcolmand OldSiward.

  Siw

  This way, my lord; the castle’s gently render’d:

  The tyrant’s people on both sides do fight;

  The noble thanes do bravely in the war;

  The day almost itself professes yours,

  And little is to do.

  Mal.

  We have met with foes

  That strike beside us.

  Siw.

  Enter, sir, the castle.

  [Exeunt. Alarums.

  Re-enterMacbeth.

  Macb.

  Why should I play the Roman fool, and die

  On mine own sword? whiles I see lives, the gashes

  Do better upon them.

  Re-enterMacduff.

  Macd.

  Turn, hell-hound, turn!

  Macb.

  Of all men else I have avoided thee:

  But get thee back, my soul is too much charg’d

  With blood of thine already.

  Macd.

  I have no words;

  My voice is in my sword, thou bloodier villain

  Than terms can give thee out!

  [They fight.

  Macb.

  Thou losest labour:

  As easy mayst thou the intrenchant air

  With thy keen sword impress as make me bleed:

  Let fall thy blade on vulnerable crests;

  I bear a charmed life, which must not yield

  To one of woman born.

  Macd.

  Despair thy charm;

  And let the angel whom thou still hast serv’d

  Tell thee, Macduff was from his mother’s womb

  Untimely ripp’d.

  Macb.

  Accursed be that tongue that tells me so,

  For it hath cow’d my better part of man:

  And be these juggling fiends no more believ’d,

  That palter with us in a double sense;

  That keep the word of promise to our ear,

  And break it to our hope. I’ll not fight with thee.

  Macd.

  Then yield thee, coward,

  And live to be the show and gaze o’ the time:

  We’ll have thee, as our rarer monsters are,

  Painted upon a pole, and underwrit,

  ‘Here may you see the tyrant.’

  Macb.

  I will not yield,

  To kiss the ground before young Malcolm’s feet,

  And to be baited with the rabble’s curse.

  Though Birnam wood be come to Dunsinane,

  And thou oppos’d, being of no woman born,

  Yet I will try the last: before my body

  I throw my war-like shield. Lay on, Macduff,

  And damn’d be him that first cries, ‘Hold, enough!’

  [Exeunt, fighting.

  Retreat. Flourish. Re-enter, with drum and colours,Malcolm,OldSiward, Ross, Thanes, and Soldiers.

  Mal.

  I would the friends we miss were safe arriv’d.

  Siw.

  Some must go off; and yet, by these I see,

  So great a day as this is cheaply bought.

  Mal.

  Macduff is missing, and your noble son.

  Ross.

  Your son, my lord, has paid a soldier’s debt:

  He only liv’d but till he was a man;

  The which no sooner had his prowess confirm’d

  In the unshrinking station where he fought,

  But like a man he died.

  Siw.

  Then he is dead?

  Ross.

  Ay, and brought off the field. Your cause of sorrow

  Must not be measur’d by his worth, for then

  It hath no end.

  Siw.

  Had he his hurts before?

  Ross.

  Ay, on the front.

  Siw.

  Why then, God’s soldier be he!

  Had I as many sons as I have hairs,

  I would not wish them to a fairer death:

  And so, his knell is knoll’d.

  Mal.

  He’s worth more sorrow,

  And that I’ll spend for him.

  Siw.

  He’s worth no more;

  They say, he parted well, and paid his score:

  And so, God be with him! Here comes newer comfort.

  Re-enterMacduff,withMacbeth’shead.

  Macd.

  Hail, king! for so thou art. Behold, where stands

  The usurper’s cursed head: the time is free:

  I see thee compass’d with thy kingdom’s pearl,

  That speak my salutation in their minds;

  Whose voices I desire aloud with mine;

  Hail, King of Scotland!

  All.

  Hail, King of Scotland!

  [Flourish.

  Mal.

  We shall not spend a large expense of time

  Before we reckon with your several loves,

  And make us even with you. My thanes and kinsmen,

  Henceforth be earls, the first that ever Scotland

  In such an honour nam’d. What’s more to do,

  Which would be planted newly with the time,

  As calling home our exil’d friends abroad

  That fled the snares of watchful tyranny;

  Producing forth the cruel ministers

  Of this dead butcher and his fiend-like queen,

  Who, as ’tis thought, by self and violent hands

  Took off her life; this, and what needful else

  That calls upon us, by the grace of Grace

  We will perform in measure, time, and place:

  So, thanks to all at once and to each one,

  Whom we invite to see us crown’d at Scone.

  [Flourish. Exeunt.

• Back to Top

  9: 9. John Locke, The Two Treatises of Civil Government

  John Locke (b. 1632, Wrington, Somerset, England; d. 1704, Oates, Essex) is considered one of the first philosophers of the Enlightenment and the father of liberalism. Although it would not be correct to say that Locke favored democracy, he did advocate limits on the power of the sovereign, confining that person’s authority to the protection of the individual’s natural rights to life, liberty, and property.

  The majority of Locke’s liberal positions can be found in his extensive essay entitled The Two Treatises of Government (1689). The first treatise refutes the arguments in favor of the divine rights of kings propounded by Sir Robert Filmer (1588-1653) in his work, Patriarcha. It is the second treatise that contains the essentials of Locke’s political theory. Here the philosopher put forward his famous ethical argument regarding the hypothetical state of nature in which humans enjoyed most of their natural rights without the state. From this fundamental assumption stem most of Locke’s theories. The fact that property could be freely exchanged, sold, or accumulated in that natural condition led Locke to argue that governments ought not interfere with most aspects of the economy and society. Moreover, no people living in a natural state of freedom would consent to have all their liberty taken away. Therefore, government requires the consent of the people, and this makes all government conditional. The role of the state should be limited to protecting life, liberty, and property from those few predatory members of the human race whom Locke referred to as the “quarrelsome and the contentious.” Since the role of government is limited, its power should also be limited.

  See the entry about Locke in the Goodrich Seminar Room.

  John Locke, Two Treatises of Government, ed. Thomas Hollis (London: A. Millar et al., 1764).

  Accessed from oll.libertyfund.org/title/222 on 2007-12-03

  The text is in the public domain.

  ---

  

  IOHN LOCKE

  The present Edition of this Book has not only been collated with the first three Editions, which were published during the Author’s Life, but also has the Advantage of his last Corrections and Improvements, from a Copy delivered by him to Mr. Peter Coste, communicated to the Editor, and now lodged in Christ College, Cambridge.

  TWO TREATISES OF GOVERNMENT. IN THE FORMER THE FALSE PRINCIPLES AND FOUNDATION OF SIR ROBERT FILMER AND HIS FOLLOWERS ARE DETECTED AND OVERTHROWN.

  THE LATTER IS AN ESSAY CONCERNING THE TRUE ORIGINAL EXTENT AND END OF CIVIL GOVERNMENT.

  PREFACE

  Reader, thou hast here the beginning and end of a discourse concerning government; what fate has otherwise disposed of the papers that should have filled up the middle, and were more than all the rest, it is not worth while to tell thee. These, which remain, I hope are sufficient to establish the throne of our great restorer, our present King William; to make good his title, in the consent of the people, which being the only one of all lawful governments, he has more fully and clearly, than any prince in Christendom; and to justify to the world the people of England, whose love of their just and natural rights, with their resolution to preserve them, saved the nation when it was on the very brink of slavery and ruin. If these papers have that evidence, I slatter myself is to be found in them, there will be no great miss of those which are lost, and my reader may be satisfied without them: for I imagine, I shall have neither the time, nor inclination to repeat my pains, and fill up the wanting part of my answer, by tracing Sir Robert again, through all the windings and obscurities, which are to be met with in the several branches of his wonderful system. The king, and body of the nation, have since so throughly confuted his Hypothesis, that I suppose no body hereafter will have either the confidence to appear against our common safety, and be again an advocate for slavery; or the weakness to be deceived with contradictions dressed up in a popular stile, and well-turned periods: for if any one will be at the pains, himself, in those parts, which are here untouched, to strip Sir Robert’s discourses of the flourish of doubtful expressions, and endeavour to reduce his words to direct, positive, intelligible propositions, and then compare them one with another, he will quickly be satisfied, there was never so much glib nonsense put together in well-sounding English. If he think it not worth while to examine his works all thro’, let him make an experiment in that part, where he treats of usurpation; and let him try, whether he can, with all his skill, make Sir Robert intelligible, and consistent with himself, or common sense. I should not speak so plainly of a gentleman, long since past answering, had not the pulpit, of late years, publicly owned his doctrine, and made it the current divinity of the times. It is necessary those men, who taking on them to be teachers, have so dangerously misled others, should be openly shewed of what authority this their Patriarch is, whom they have so blindly followed, that so they may either retract what upon so ill grounds they have vented, and cannot be maintained; or else justify those principles which they preached up for gospel; though they had no better an author than an English courtier: for I should not have writ against Sir Robert, or taken the pains to shew his mistakes, inconsistencies, and want of (what he so much boasts of, and pretends wholly to build on) scripture-proofs, were there not men amongst us, who, by crying up his books, and espousing his doctrine, save me from the reproach of writing against a dead adversary. They have been so zealous in this point, that, if I have done him any wrong, I cannot hope they should spare me. I wish, where they have done the truth and the public wrong, they would be as ready to redress it, and allow its just weight to this reflection, viz. that there cannot be done a greater mischief to prince and people, than the propagating wrong notions concerning government; that so at last all times might not have reason to complain of the Drum Ecclesiastic. If any one, concerned really for truth, undertake the confutation of my Hypothesis, I promise him either to recant my mistake, upon fair conviction; or to answer his difficulties. But he must remember two things.

  First, That cavilling here and there, at some expression, or little incident of my discourse, is not an answer to my book.

  Secondly, That I shall not take railing for arguments, nor think either of these worth my notice, though I shall always look on myself as bound to give satisfacton to any one, who shall appear to be conscientiously scrupulous in the point, and shall shew any just grounds for his scruples.

  I have nothing more, but to advertise the reader, that Observations stands for Observations on Hobbs, Milton, &c. and that a bare quotation of pages always means pages of his Patriarcha, Edition 1680.

  OF GOVERNMENT

  BOOK I

  Chap. I.

  §. 1.

  Slavery is so vile and miserable an estate of man, and so directly opposite to the generous temper and courage of our nation; that it is hardly to be conceived, that an Englishman, much less a gentleman, should plead for it. And truly I should have taken Sir Robert Filmer’s Patriarcha, as any other treatise, which would persuade all men, that they are slaves, and ought to be so, for such another exercise of wit, as was his who writ the encomium of Nero; rather than for a serious discourse meant in earnest, had not the gravity of the title and epistle, the picture in the front of the book, and the applause that followed it, required me to believe, that the author and publisher were both in earnest. I therefore took it into my hands with all the expectation, and read it through with all the attention due to a treatise that made such a noise at its coming abroad, and cannot but confess my self mightily surprised, that in a book, which was to provide chains for all mankind, I should find nothing but a rope of sand, useful perhaps to such, whose skill and business it is to raise a dust, and would blind the people, the better to mislead them; but in truth not of any force to draw those into bondage, who have their eyes open, and so much sense about them, as to consider, that chains are but an ill wearing, how much care soever hath been taken to file and polish them.

  §. 2.

  If any one think I take too much liberty in speaking so freely of a man, who is the great champion of absolute power, and the idol of those who worship it; I beseech him to make this small allowance for once, to one, who, even after the reading of Sir Robert’s book, cannot but think himself, as the laws allow him, a freeman: and I know no fault it is to do so, unless any one better skilled in the fate of it, than I, should have it revealed to him, that this treatise, which has lain dormant so long, was, when it appeared in the world, to carry, by strength of its arguments, all liberty out of it; and that from thenceforth our author’s short model was to be the pattern in the mount, and the perfect standard of politics for the future. His system lies in a little compass, it is no more but this,

  • That all government is absolute monarchy.
  • And the ground he builds on, is this,
  • That no man is born free.

  §. 3.

  In this last age a generation of men has sprung up amongst us, that would flatter princes with an opinion, that they have a divine right to absolute power, let the laws by which they are constituted, and are to govern, and the conditions under which they enter upon their authority, be what they will, and their engagements to observe them never so well ratified by solemn oaths and promises. To make way for this doctrine, they have denied mankind a right to natural freedom; whereby they have not only, as much as in them lies, exposed all subjects to the utmost misery of tyranny and oppression, but have also unsettled the titles, and shaken the thrones of princes: (for they too, by these mens system, except only one, are all born slaves, and by divine right are subjects to Adam’s right heir;) as if they had designed to make war upon all government, and subvert the very foundations of human society, to serve their present turn.

  §. 4.

  However we must believe them upon their own bare words, when they tell us, we are all born slaves, and we must continue so, there is no remedy for it; life and thraldom we enter’d into together, and can never be quit of the one, till we part with the other. Scripture or reason I am sure do not any where say so, notwithstanding the noise of divine right, as if divine authority hath subjected us to the unlimited will of another. An admirable state of mankind, and that which they have not had wit enough to find out till this latter age. For, however Sir Robert Filmer seems to condemn the novelty of the contrary opinion, Patr. p. 3. yet I believe it will be hard for him to find any other age, or country of the world, but this, which has asserted monarchy to be jure divino. And he confesses, Patr. p. 4. That Heyward, Blackwood, Barclay, and others, that have bravely vindicated the right of kings in most points, never thought of this, but with one consent admitted the natural liberty and equality of mankind.

  §. 5.

  By whom this doctrine came at first to be broached, and brought in fashion amongst us, and what sad effects it gave rise to, I leave to historians to relate, or to the memory of those, who were contemporaries with Sibthorp and Manwering, to recollect. My business at present is only to consider what Sir Robert Filmer, who is allowed to have carried this argument farthest, and is supposed to have brought it to perfection, has said in it; for from him every one, who would be as fashionable as French was at court, has learned, and runs away with this short system of politics, viz. Men are not born free, and therefore could never have the liberty to choose either governors, or forms of government. Princes have their power absolute, and by divine right; for slaves could never have a right to compact or consent. Adam was an absolute monarch, and so are all princes ever since.

  CHAP. II.
  Of Paternal and Regal Power.

  §. 6.

  SIR Robert Filmer’s great position is, that men are not naturally free. This is the foundation on which his absolute monarchy stands, and from which it erects itself to an height, that its power is above every power, caput inter nubila, so high above all earthly and human things, that thought can scarce reach it; that promises and oaths, which tye the infinite Deity, cannot confine it. But if this foundation fails, all his fabric falls with it, and governments must be left again to the old way of being made by contrivance, and the consent of men (Άνϧϛωπίνη ϰτίσιϛ) making use of their reason to unite together into society. To prove this grand position of his, he tells us, p. 12. Menare born in subjection to their parents, and therefore cannot be free. And this authority of parents, he calls royal authority, p. 12, 14. Fatherly authority, right of fatherhood, p. 12, 20. One would have thought he would, in the beginning of such a work as this, on which was to depend the authority of princes, and the obedience of subjects, have told us expresly, what that fatherly authority is, have defined it, though not limited it, because in some other treatises of his he tells us, it is unlimited, and* unlimitable; he should at least have given us such an account of it, that we might have had an entire notion of this fatherhood, or fatherly authority, whenever it came in our way in his writings: this I expected to have found in the first chapter of his Patriarcha. But instead thereof, having, 1. en passant, made his obeysance to the arcana imperii, p. 5. 2. made his compliment to the rights and liberties of this, or any other nation, p. 6. which he is going presently to null and destroy; and, 3. made his leg to those learned men, who did not see so far into the matter as himself, p. 7. he comes to fall on Bellarmine, p. 8. and, by a victory over him, establishes his fatherly authority beyond any question. Bellarmine being routed by his own confession, p. 11. the day is clear got, and there is no more need of any forces: for having done that, I observe not that he states the question, or rallies up any arguments to make good his opinion, but rather tells us the story, as he thinks fit, of this strange kind of domineering phantom, called the fatherhood, which whoever could catch, presently got empire, and unlimited absolute power. He assures us how this fatherhood began in Adam, continued its course, and kept the world in order all the time of the patriarchs till the flood, got out of the ark with Noah and his sons, made and supported all the kings of the earth till the captivity of the Israelites in Egypt, and then the poor fatherhood was under hatches, till God, by giving the Israelites kings, re-established the ancient and prime right of the lineal succession in paternal government. This is his business from p. 12. to 19. And then obviating an objection, and clearing a difficulty or two with one half reason, p. 23. to confirm the natural right of regal power, he ends the first chapter. I hope it is no injury to call an half quotation an half reason; for God says, Honour thy father and mother; but our author contents himself with half, leaves out thymother quite, as little serviceable to his purpose. But of that more in another place.

  §. 7.

  I do not think our author so little skilled in the way of writing discourses of this nature, nor so careless of the point in hand, that he by over-sight commits the fault, that he himself, in his Anarchy of a mixed Monarchy, p. 239. objects to Mr. Hunton in these words: Where first I charge the author, that he hath not given us any definition, or description of monarchy in general; for by the rules of method he should have first defined. And by the like rule of method Sir Robert should have told us, what his fatherhood or fatherly authority is, before he had told us, in whom it was to be found, and talked so much of it. But perhaps Sir Robert found, that this fatherly authority, this power of fathers, and of kings, for he makes them both the same, p. 24. would make a very odd and frightful figure, and very disagreeing with what either children imagine of their parents, or subjects of their kings, if he should have given us the whole draught together in that gigantic form, he had painted it in his own fancy; and therefore, like a wary physician, when he would have his patient swallow some harsh or corrosive liquor, he mingles it with a large quantity of that which may dilute it; that the scattered parts may go down with less feeling, and cause less aversion.

  §. 8.

  Let us then endeavour to find what account he gives us of this fatherly authority, as it lies scattered in the several parts of his writings. And first, as it was vested in Adam, he says, Not only Adam, but the succeeding patriarchs, had, by right of fatherhood, royal authority over their children, p. 12. This lordship which Adam by command had over the whole world, and by right descending from him the patriarchs did enjoy, was as large and ample as the absolute dominion of any monarch, which hath been since the creation, p. 13. Dominion of life and death, making war, and concluding peace, p. 13. Adam and the patriarchs had absolute power of life and death, p. 35. Kings, in the right of parents, succeed to the exercise of supreme jurisdiction, p. 19. As kingly power is by the law of God, so it hath no inferior law to limit it; Adam was lord of all, p. 40. The father of a family governs by no other law, than by his own will, p. 78. The superiority of princes is above laws, p. 79. The unlimited jurisdiction of kings is so amply described by Samuel, p. 80. Kings are above the laws, p. 93. And to this purpose see a great deal more which our author delivers in Bodin’s words: It is certain, that all laws, privileges, and grants of princes, have no force, but during their life; if they be not ratified by the express consent, or by sufferance of the prince following, especially privileges, Observations, p. 279. The reason why laws have been also made by kings, was this; when kings were either busied with wars, or distracted with public cares, so that every private man could not have access to their persons, to learn their wills and pleasure, then were laws of necessity invented, that so every particular subject might find his prince’s pleasure decyphered unto him in the tables of his laws, p. 92. In a monarchy, the king must by necessity be above the laws, p. 100. A perfect kingdom is that, wherein the king rules all things according to his own will, p. 100. Neither common nor statute laws are, or can be, any diminution of that general power, which kings have over their people by right of fatherhood, p. 115. Adam was the father, king, and lord over his family; a son, a subject, and a servant or slave, were one and the same thing at first. The father had power to dispose or sell his children or servants; whence we find, that the first reckoning up of goods in scripture, the man-servant and the maid-servant, are numbred among the possessions and substance of the owner, as other goods were, Observations, Pref. God also hath given to the father a right or liberty, to alien his power over his children to any other; whence we find the sale and gift of children to have much been in use in the beginning of the world, when men had their servants for a possession and an inheritance, as well as other goods; whereupon we find the power of castrating and making eunuchs much in use in old times, Observations,p. 155. Law is nothing else but the will of him that hath the power of the supreme father, Observations, p. 223. It was God’s ordinance that the supremacy should be unlimited in Adam, and as large as all the acts of his will; and as in him so in all others that have supreme power, Observations, p. 245.

  §. 9.

  I have been fain to trouble my reader with these several quotations in our author’s own words, that in them might be seen his own description of his fatherly authority, as it lies scattered up and down in his writings, which he supposes was first vested in Adam, and by right belongs to all princes ever since. This fatherly authority then, or right of fatherhood, in our author’s sense, is a divine unalterable right of sovereignty, whereby a father or a prince hath an absolute, arbitrary, unlimited, and unlimitable power over the lives, liberties, and estates of his children and subjects; so that he may take or alienate their estates, sell, castrate, or use their persons as he pleases, they being all his slaves, and he lord or proprietor of every thing, and his unbounded will their law.

  §. 10.

  Our author having placed such a mighty power in Adam, and upon that supposition sounded all government, and all power of princes, it is reasonable to expect, that he should have proved this with arguments clear and evident, suitable to the weightiness of the cause; that since men had nothing else left them, they might in slavery have such undeniable proofs of its necessity, that their consciences might be convinced, and oblige them to submit peaceably to that absolute dominion, which their governors had a right to exercise over them. Without this, what good could our author do, or pretend to do, by erecting such an unlimited power, but flatter the natural vanity and ambition of men, too apt of itself to grow and encrease with the possession of any power? and by persuading those, who, by the consent of their fellowmen, are advanced to great, but limited, degrees of it, that by that part which is given them, they have a right to all, that was not so; and therefore may do what they please, because they have authority to do more than others, and so tempt them to do what is neither for their own, nor the good of those under their care; whereby great mischiefs cannot but follow.

  §. 11.

  The sovereignty of Adam, being that on which, as a sure basis, our author builds his mighty absolute monarchy, I expected, that in his Patriarcha, this his main supposition would have been proved, and established with all that evidence of arguments, that such a fundamental tenet required; and that this, on which the great stress of the business depends, would have been made out with reasons sufficient to justify the confidence with which it was assumed. But in all that treatise, I could find very little tending that way; the thing is there so taken for granted, without proof, that I could scarce believe myself, when, upon attentive reading that treatise, I found there so mighty a structure raised upon the bare supposition of this foundation: for it is scarce credible, that in a discourse, where he pretends to confute the erroneous principle of man’s natural freedom, he should do it by a bare supposition of Adam’s authority, without offering any proof for that authority. Indeed he confidently says, that Adam had royal authority, p. 12, and 13. Absolute lordship and dominion of life and death, p. 13. An universal monarchy, p. 33. Absolute power of life and death, p. 35. He is very frequent in such assertions; but, what is strange, in all his whole Patriarcha I find not one pretence of a reason to establish this his great foundation of government; not any thing that looks like an argument, but these words: To confirm this natural right of regal power, we find in the Decalogue, that the law which enjoyns obedience to kings, is delivered in the terms, Honour thy father, as if all power were originally in the father. And why may I not add as well, that in the Decalogue, the law that enjoyns obedience to queens, is delivered in the terms of Honour thy mother, as if all power were originally in the mother? The argument, as Sir Robert puts it, will hold as well for one as the other: but of this, more in its due place.

  §. 12.

  All that I take notice of here, is, that this is all our author says in this first, or any of the following chapters, to prove the absolute power of Adam, which is his great principle: and yet, as if he had there settled it upon sure demonstration, he begins his second chapter with these words, By conferring these proofs and reasons, drawn from the authority of the scripture. Where those proofs and reasons for Adam’s sovereignty are, bating that of Honour thy father, above mentioned, I confess, I cannot find; unless what he says, p. 11. In these words we have an evident confession, viz. of Bellarmine, that creation made man prince of his posterity, must be taken for proofs and reasons drawn from scripture, or for any sort of proof at all: though from thence by a new way of inference, in the words immediately following, he concludes, the royal authority of Adam sufficiently settled in him.

  §. 13.

  If he has in that chapter, or any where in the whole treatise, given any other proofs of Adam’s royal authority, other than by often repeating it, which, among some men, goes for argument, I desire any body for him to shew me the place and page, that I may be convinced of my mistake, and acknowledge my oversight. If no such arguments are to be found, I beseech those men, who have so much cried up this book, to consider, whether they do not give the world cause to suspect, that it is not the force of reason and argument, that makes them for absolute monarchy, but some other by interest, and therefore are resolved to applaud any author, that writes in favour of this doctrine, whether he support it with reason or no. But I hope they do not expect, that rational and indifferent men should be brought over to their opinion, because this their great doctor of it, in a discourse made on purpose, to set up the absolute monarchical power of Adam, in opposition to the natural freedom of mankind, has said so little to prove it, from whence it is rather naturally to be concluded, that there is little to be said.

  §. 14.

  But that I might omit no care to inform myself in our author’s full sense, I consulted his Observations on Aristotle, Hobbes, &c. to see whether in disputing with others he made use of any arguments for this his darling tenet of Adam’s sovereignty; since in his treatise of the Natural Power of Kings, he hath been so sparing of them. In his Observations on Mr. Hobbes’s Leviathan, I think he has put, in short, all those arguments for it together, which in his writings I find him any where to make use of: his words are these: If God created only Adam, and of a piece of him made the woman, and if by generationfrom them two, as parts of them, all mankind be propagated: if also God gave to Adam not only the dominion over the woman and the children that should issue from them, but also over all the earth to subdue it, and over all the creatures on it, so that as long as Adam lived, no man could claim or enjoy any thing but by donation, assignation or permission from him, I wonder, &c. Observations, 165. Here we have the sum of all his arguments, for Adam’s sovereignty and against natural freedom, which I find up and down in his other treatises: and they are these following; God’s creation of Adam, the dominion he gave him over Eve, and the dominion he had as father over his children: all which I shall particularly consider.

  CHAP. III.
  Of Adam’s Title to Sovereignty by Creation.

  §. 15.

  SIR Robert, in his preface to his Observations on Aristotle’s politics, tells us, A natural freedom of mankind cannot be supposed without the denial of the creation of Adam: but how Adam’s being created, which was nothing but his receiving a being immediately from omnipotence and the hand of God, gave Adam a sovereignty over any thing, I cannot see, nor consequently understand, how a supposition of natural freedom isa denial of Adam’s creation, and would be glad any body else (since our author did not vouchsafe us the favour) would make it out for him: for I find no difficulty to suppose the freedom of mankind, though I have always believed the creation of Adam. He was created, or began to exist, by God’s immediate power, without the intervention of parents or the pre-existence of any of the same species to beget him, when it pleased God he should; and so did the lion, the king of beasts, before him, by the same creating power of God: and if bare existence by that power, and in that way, will give dominion, without any more ado, our author, by this argument, will make the lion have as good a title to it, as he, and certainly the antienter. No! for Adam had his title by the appointment of God, says our author in another place. Then bare creation gave him not dominion, and one might have supposed mankind free without the denying the creation of Adam, since it was God’s appointment made him monarch.

  §. 16.

  But let us see, how he puts his creation and this appointment together. By the appointment of God, says Sir Robert, as soon as Adam was created, he was monarch of the world, though he had no subjects; for though there could not be actual government till there were subjects, yet by the right of nature it was due to Adam to be governor of his posterity:though not in act, yet at least in habit, Adam was a king from his creation. I wish he had told us here, what he meant by God’s appointment: for whatsoever providence orders, or the law of nature directs, or positive revelation declares, may be said to be by God’s appointment: but I suppose it cannot be meant here in the first sense, i. e. by providence; because that would be to say no more, but that as soon as Adam was created he was de facto monarch, because by right of nature it was due to Adam, to be governor of his posterity. But he could not de facto be by providence constituted the governor of the world, at a time when there was actually no government, no subjects to be governed, which our author here confesses. Monarch of the world is also differently used by our author; for sometimes he means by it a proprietor of all the world exclusive of the rest of mankind, and thus he does in the same page of his preface before cited: Adam, says he, being commanded to multiply and people the earth, and to subdue it, and having dominion given him over all creatures, was thereby the monarch of the whole world; none of his posterity had any right to possess any thing but by his grant or permission, or by succession from him. 2. Let us understand then by monarch proprietor of the world, and by appointment God’s actual donation, and revealed positive grant made to Adam, i. Gen. 28. as we see Sir Robert himself does in this parallel place, and then his argument will stand thus, by the positive grant of God: as soon as Adam was created, he was proprietor of the world, because by the right of nature it was due to Adam to be governor of his posterity. In which way of arguing there are two manifest falsehoods. First, It is false, that God made that grant to Adam, as soon as he was created, since, tho’ it stands in the text immediately after his creation, yet it is plain it could not be spoken to Adam, till after Eve was made and brought to him: and how then could he be monarch by appointment as soon as created, especially since he calls, if I mistake not, that which God says to Eve, iii. Gen. 16, the original grant of government, which not being till after the fall, when Adam was somewhat, at least in time, and very much distant in condition, from his creation, I cannot see, how our author can say in this sense, that by God’s appointment, as soon as Adam was created, he was monarch of the world. Secondly, were it true that God’s actual donation appointed Adam monarch of the world as soon as he was created, yet the reason here given for it would not prove it; but it would always be a false inference, that God, by a positive donation, appointed Adam monarch of the world, because by right of nature it was due to Adam to be governor of his posterity: for having given him the right of government by nature, there was no need of a positive donation; at least it will never be a proof of such a donation.

  §. 17.

  On the other side the matter will not be much mended, if we understand by God’s appointment the law of nature, (though it be a pretty harsh expression for it in this place) and by monarch of the world, sovereign ruler of mankind: for then the sentence under consideration must run thus: By the law of nature, as soon as Adam was created he was governor of mankind, for by right of nature it was due to Adam to be governor of his posterity; which amounts to this, he was governor by right of nature, because he was governor by right of nature: but supposing we should grant, that a man is by nature governor of his children, Adam could not hereby be monarch as soon as created: for this right of nature being founded in his being their father, how Adam could have a natural right to be governor, before he was a father, when by being a father only he had that right, is, methinks, hard to conceive, unless he will have him to be a father before he was a father, and to have a title before he had it.

  §. 18.

  To this foreseen objection, our author answers very logically, he was governor in habit, and not in act: a very pretty way of being a governor without government, a father without children, and a king without subjects. And thus Sir Robert was an author before he writ his book; not in act it is true, but in habit; for when he had once published it, it was due to him by the right of nature, to be an author, as much as it was to Adam to be governor of his children, when he had begot them: and if to be such a monarch of the world, an absolute monarch in habit, but not in act, will serve the turn, I should not much envy it to any of Sir Robert’s friends, that he thought fit graciously to bestow it upon, though even this of act and habit, if it signified any thing but our author’s skill in distinctions, be not to his purpose in this place. For the question is not here about Adam’s actual exercise of government, but actually having a title to be governor. Government, says our author, was due to Adam by the right of nature: what is this right of nature? A right fathers have over their children by begetting them; generatione jus acquiritur parentibus in liberos, says our author out of Grotius, Observations, 223. The right then follows the begetting as arising from it; so that, according to this way of reasoning or distinguishing of our author, Adam, as soon as he was created, had a title only in habit, and not in act, which in plain English is, he had actually no title at all.

  §. 19.

  To speak less learnedly, and more intelligibly, one may say of Adam, he was in a possibility of being governor, since it was possible he might beget children, and thereby acquire that right of nature, be it what it will, to govern them, that accrues from thence: but what connection has this with Adam’s creation, to make him say, that as soon as he was created, he was monarch of the world? for it may be as well said of Noah, that as soon as he was born, he was monarch of the world, since he was in possibility (which in our author’s sense is enough to make a monarch, a monarch in habit,) to outlive all mankind, but his own posterity. What such necessary connection there is betwixt Adam’s creation and his right to government, so that a natural freedom of mankind cannot be supposed without the denial of the creation of Adam, I confess for my part I do not see; nor how those words, by the appointment, &c. Observations, 254. how ever explained, can be put together, to make any tolerable sense, at least to establish this position, with which they end, viz. Adam was a king from his creation; a king, says our author, not in act, but in habit, i. e. actually no king at all.

  §. 20.

  I fear I have tired my reader’s patience, by dwelling longer on this passage, than the weightiness of any argument in it seems to require: but I have unavoidably been engaged in it by our author’s way of writing, who, hudling several suppositions together, and that in doubtful and general terms, makes such a medly and confusion, that it is impossible to shew his mistakes, without examining the several senses wherein his words may be taken, and without seeing how, in any of these various meanings, they will consist together, and have any truth in them: for in this present passage before us, how can any one argue against this position of his, that Adam was a king from his creation, unless one examine, whether the words, from his creation, be to be taken, as they may, for the time of the commencement of his government, as the foregoing words import, as soon as he was created he was monarch; or, for the cause of it, as he says, p. 11. creation made man prince of his posterity? how farther can one judge of the truth of his being thus king, till one has examined whether king be to be taken, as the words in the beginning of this passage would persuade, on supposition of his private dominion, which was, by God’s positive grant, monarch of the world by appointment; or king on supposition of his fatherly power over his off-spring, which was by nature, due by the right of nature; whether, I say, king be to be taken in both, or one only of these two senses, or in neither of them, but only this, that creation made him prince, in a way different from both the other? For though this assertion, that Adam was king from his creation, be true in no sense, yet it stands here as an evident conclusion drawn from the preceding words, though in truth it be but a bare assertion joined to other assertions of the same kind, which confidently put together in words of undetermined and dubious meaning, look like a sort of arguing, when there is indeed neither proof nor connection: a way very familiar with our author: of which having given the reader a taste here, I shall, as much as the argument will permit me, avoid touching on hereafter; and should not have done it here, were it not to let the world see, how incoherences in matter, and suppositions without proofs put handsomely together in good words and a plausible stile, are apt to pass for strong reason and good sense, till they come to be looked into with attention.

  CHAP. IV.
  Of Adam’s Title to Sovereignty by Donation, Gen. i. 28.

  §. 21.

  HAVING at last got through the foregoing passage, where we have been so long detained, not by the force of arguments and opposition, but the intricacy of the words, and the doubtfulness of the meaning; let us go on to his next argument, for Adam’s sovereignty. Our author tells us in the words of Mr. Selden, that Adam by donation from God, Gen. i. 28. was made the general lord of all things, not without such a private dominion to himself, as without his grant did exclude his children. This determination of Mr. Selden, says our author, isconsonant to the history of the Bible, and natural reason, Observations, 210. And in his Pref. to his Observations on Aristotle, he says thus, The first government in the world was monarchical in the father of all flesh, Adam being commanded to multiply and people the earth, and to subdue it, and having dominion given him over all creatures, was thereby the monarch of the whole world: none of his posterity had any right to possess any thing, but by his grant or permission, or by succession from him: The earth, saith the Psalmist, hath he given to the children of men, which shew the title comes from fatherhood.

  §. 22.

  Before I examine this argument, and the text on which it is founded, it is necessary to desire the reader to observe, that our author, according to his usual method, begins in one sense, and concludes in another; he begins here with Adam’s propriety, or private dominion, by donation; and his conclusion is, which shew the title comes from fatherhood.

  §. 23.

  But let us see the argument. The words of the text are these; and God blessed them, and God said unto them, be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth, i. Gen. 28. from whence our author concludes, that Adam, having here dominion given him over all creatures, was thereby the monarch of thewhole world: whereby must be meant, that either this grant of God gave Adam property, or as our author calls it, private dominion over the earth, and all inferior or irrational creatures, and so consequently that he was thereby monarch; or 2dly, that it gave him rule and dominion over all earthly creatures whatsoever, and thereby over his children; and so he was monarch: for, as Mr. Selden has properly worded it, Adam was made general lord of all things, one may very clearly understand him, that he means nothing to be granted to Adam here but property, and therefore he says not one word of Adam’s monarchy. But our author says, Adam was hereby monarch of the world, which, properly speaking, signifies sovereign ruler of all the men in the world; and so Adam, by this grant, must be constituted such a ruler. If our author means otherwise, he might with much clearness have said, that Adam was hereby proprietor of the whole world. But he begs your pardon in that point: clear distinct speaking not serving every where to his purpose, you must not expect it in him, as in Mr. Selden, or other such writers.

  §. 24.

  In opposition therefore to our author’s doctrine, that Adam was monarch of the whole world, founded on this place, I shall shew,

  1. That by this grant, i. Gen. 28. God gave no immediate power to Adam over men, over his children, over those of his own species; and so he was not made ruler, or monarch, by this charter.

  2. That by this grant God gave him not private dominion over the inferior creatures, but right in common with all mankind; so neither was he monarch, upon the account of the property here given him.

  §. 25.

  1. That this donation, i. Gen. 28. gave Adam no power over men, will appear if we consider the words of it: for since all positive grants convey no more than the express words they are made in will carry, let us see which of them here will comprehend mankind, or Adam’s posterity; and those, I imagine, if any, must be these, every living thing that moveth: the words in Hebrew are, השמרה היה i. e. Bestiam Reptantem, of which words the scripture itself is the best interpreter: God having created the fishes and fowls the 5th day, the beginning of the 6th, he creates the irrational inhabitants of the dry land, which, v. 24. are described in these words, let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind; cattle and creeping things, and beasts of the earth, after his kind, and, v. 2. and God made the beasts of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth on the earth after his kind: here, in the creation of the brute inhabitants of the earth, he first speaks of them all under one general name, of living creatures, and then afterwards divides them into three ranks, 1. Cattle, or such creatures as were or might be tame, and so be the private possession of particular men; 2. היח which, ver. 24, and 25. in our Bible, is translated beasts, and by the Septuagint θηϛία, wild beasts, and is the same word, that here in our text, ver. 28. where we have this great charter to Adam, is translated living thing, and is also the same word used, Gen. ix. 2. where this grant is renewed to Noah, and there likewise translated beast. 3. The third rank were the creeping animals, which ver. 24, and 25. are comprised under the word, השמרח, the same that is used here, ver. 28. and is translated moving, but in the former verses creeping, and by the Septuagint in all these places, ἑρπετἀ, or reptils; from whence it appears, that the words which we translate here in God’s donation, ver.28. living creatures moving, are the same, which in the history of the creation, ver. 24, 25. signify two ranks of terrestrial creatures, viz. wild beasts and reptils, and are so understood by the Septuagint.

  §. 26.

  When God had made the irrational animals of the world, divided into three kinds, from the places of their habitation, viz. fishes of the sea, fowls of the air, and living creatures of the earth, and these again into cattle, wild beasts, and reptils, he considers of making man, and the dominion he should have over the terrestrial world, ver. 26. and then he reckons up the inhabitants of these three kingdoms, but in the terrestrial leaves out the second rank היח or wild beasts: but here, ver. 28. where he actually exercises this design, and gives him this dominion, the text mentions the fishes of the sea, and fowls of the air, and the terrestrial creatures in the words that signify the wild beasts and reptils, though translated living thing that moveth, leaving out cattle. In both which places, though the word that signifies wild beasts be omitted in one, and that which signifies cattle in the other, yet, since God certainly executed in one place, what he declares he designed in the other, we cannot but understand the same in both places, and have here only an account, how the terrestrial irrational animals, which were already created and reckoned up at their creation, in three distinct ranks of cattle, wild beasts, and reptils, were here, ver. 28. actually put under the dominion of man, as they were designed, ver. 26. nor do these words contain in them the least appearance of any thing that can be wrested to signify God’s giving to one man dominion over another, to Adam over his posterity.

  §. 27.

  And this further appears from Gen. ix. 2. where God renewing this charter to Noah and his sons, he gives them dominion over the fowls of the air, and the fishes of the sea, and the terrestrial creatures, expressed by היח and שמרר wild beasts and reptils, the same words that in the text before us, i. Gen. 28. are translated every moving thing, that moveth on the earth, which by no means can comprehend man, the grant being made to Noah and his sons, all the men then living, and not to one part of men over another: which is yet more evident from the very next words, ver. 3. where God gives every שמר every moving thing, the very words used, ch. i. 28. to them for food. By all which it is plain that God’s donation to Adam, ch. i. 28. and his designation, ver. 26. and his grant again to Noah and his sons, refer to and contain in them neither more nor less than the works of the creation the 5th day, and the beginning of the 6th, as they are set down from the 20th to 26th ver. inclusively of the 1st ch. and so comprehend all the species of irrational animals of the terraqueous globe, tho’ all the words, whereby they are expressed in the history of their creation, are no where used in any of the following grants, but some of them omitted in one, and some in another. From whence I think it is past all doubt, that man cannot be comprehended in this grant, nor any dominion over those of his own species be conveyed to Adam. All the terrestrial irrational creatures are enumerated at their creation, ver. 25. under the names beasts of the earth, cattle and creeping things; but man, being not then created, was not contained under any of those names; and therefore, whether we understand the Hebrew words right or no, they cannot be supposed to comprehend man, in the very same history, and the very next verses following, especially since that Hebrew word שמר which, if any in this donation to Adam, ch. i. 28. must comprehend man, is so plainly used in contradistinction to him, as Gen. vi. 20. vii. 14, 21, 23. Gen. viii. 17, 19. And if God made all mankind slaves to Adam and his heirs by giving Adam dominion over every living thing that moveth on the earth, ch. i. 28. as our author would have it, methinks Sir Robert should have carried his monarchical power one step higher, and satisfied the world, that princes might eat their subjects too, since God gave as full power to Noah and his heirs, ch. ix. 2. to eat every living thing that moveth, as he did to Adam to have dominion over them, the Hebrew words in both places being the same.

  §. 28.

  David, who might be supposed to understand the donation of God in this text, and the right of kings too, as well as our author in his comment on this place, as the learned and judicious Ainsworth calls it, in the 8th Psalm, finds here no such charter of monarchical power, his words are, Thou hast made him, i. e. man, the Son of man, a little lower than the angels; thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands; thou hast put allthings under his feet, all sheep and oxen, and the beasts of the field, and the fowls of the air, and fish of the sea, and whatsover passeth thro’ the paths of the sea. In which words, if any one can find out, that there is meant any monarchical power of one man over another, but only the dominion of the whole species of mankind, over the inferior species of creatures, he may, for aught I know, deserve to be one of Sir Robert’s monarchs in habit, for the rareness of the discovery. And by this time, I hope it is evident, that he that gave dominion over every living thing that moveth on the earth, gave Adam no monarchical power over those of his own species, which will yet appear more fully in the next thing I am to shew.

  §. 29.

  2. Whatever God gave by the words of this grant, i. Gen. 28. it was not to Adam in particular, exclusive of all other men: whatever dominion he had thereby, it was not a private dominion, but a dominion in common with the rest of mankind. That this donation was not made in particular to Adam, appears evidently from the words of the text, it being made to more than one; for it was spoken in the plural number, God blessed them, and said unto them, Have dominion. God says unto Adam and Eve, Have dominion; thereby, says our author, Adam was monarch of the world: but the grant being to them, i. e. spoke to Eve also, as many interpreters think with reason, that these words were not spoken till Adam had his wife, must not she thereby be lady, as well as he lord of the world? If it be said, that Eve was subjected to Adam, it seems she was not so subjected to him, as to hinder her dominion over the creatures, or property in them: for shall we say that God ever made a joint grant to two, and one only was to have the benefit of it?

  §. 30.

  But perhaps it will be said, Eve was not made till afterward: grant it so, what advantage will our author get by it? The text will be only the more directly against him, and shew that God, in this donation, gave the world to mankind in common, and not to Adam in particular. The word them in the text must include the species of man, for it is certain them can by no means signify Adam alone. In the 26th verse, where God declares his intention to give this dominion, it is plain he meant, that he would make a species of creatures, that should have dominion over the other species of this terrestrial globe: the words are, And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness, and let them have dominion over the fish, &c. They then were to have dominion. Who? even those who were to have the image of God, the individuals of that species of man, that he was going to make; for that them should signify Adam singly, exclusive of the rest that should be in the world with him, is against both scripture and all reason: and it cannot possibly be made sense, if man in the former part of the verse do not signify the same with them in the latter; only man there, as is usual, is taken for the species, and them the individuals of that species: and we have a reason in the very text. God makes him in his own image, after his own likeness; makes him an intellectual creature, and so capable of dominion: for wherein soever else the image of God consisted, the intellectual nature was certainly a part of it, and belonged to the whole species, and enabled them to have dominion over the inferior creatures; and therefore David says in the 8th Psalm above cited, Thou hast made him little lower than the angels, thou hast made him to have dominion. It is not of Adam king David speaks here, for verse 4. it is plain, it is of man, and the son of man, of the species of mankind.

  §. 31.

  And that this grant spoken to Adam was made to him, and the whole species of man, is clear from our author’s own proof out of the Psalmist. The earth, faith the Psalmist, hath he given to the children of men; which shews the title comes from fatherhood. These are Sir Robert’s words in the preface before cited, and a strange inference it is he makes; God hath given the earth to the children of men, ergo the title comes from fatherhood. It is pity the propriety of the Hebrew tongue had not used fathers of men, instead of children of men, to express mankind: then indeed our author might have had the countenance of the sound of the words, to have placed the title in the fatherhood. But to conclude, that the fatherhood had the right to the earth, because God gave it to the children of men, is a way of arguing peculiar to our author: and a man must have a great mind to go contrary to the sound as well as sense of the words, before he could light on it. But the sense is yet harder, and more remote from our author’s purpose: for as it stands in his preface, it is to prove Adam’s being monarch, and his reasoning is thus, God gave the earth to the children of men, ergo Adam was monarch of the world. I defy any man to make a more pleasant conclusion than this, which cannot be excused from the most obvious absurdity, till it can be shewn, that by children of men, he who had no father, Adam alone is signified; but whatever our author does, the scripture speaks not nonsense.

  §. 32.

  To maintain this property and private dominion of Adam, our author labours in the following page to destroy the community granted to Noah and his sons, in that parallel place, ix. Gen. 1, 2, 3. and he endeavours to do it two ways.

  1. Sir Robert would persuade us against the express words of the scripture, that what was here granted to Noah, was not granted to his sons in common with him. His words are, As for the general community between Noah and his sons, which Mr. Selden will have to be granted to them, ix. Gen. 2. the text doth not warrant it. What warrant our author would have, when the plain express words of scripture, not capable of another meaning, will not satisfy him, who pretends to build wholly on scripture, is not easy to imagine. The text says, God blessed Noah and his sons, and said unto them, i. e. as our author would have it, unto him: for, faith he, although the sons are there mentioned with Noah in the blessing, yet it may best be understood, with a subordination or benediction in succession, Observations, 211. That indeed is best, for our author to be understood, which best serves to his purpose; but that truly may best be understood by any body else, which best agrees with the plain construction of the words, and arises from the obvious meaning of the place; and then with subordination and in succession, will not be best understood, in a grant of God, where he himself put them not, nor mentions any such limitation. But yet, our author has reasons, why it may best be understood so. The blessing, says he in the following words, might truly be fulfilled, if the sons, either under or after their father, enjoyed a private dominion, Observations, 211. which is to say, that a grant, whose express words give a joint title in present (for the text says, into your hands they are delivered) may best be understood with a subordination or in succession; because it is possible, that in subordination, or in succession, it may be enjoyed. Which is all one as to say, that a grant of any thing in present possession may best be understood of reversion; because it is possible one may live to enjoy it in reversion. If the grant be indeed to a father and to his sons after him, who is so kind as to let his children enjoy it presently in common with him, one may truly say, as to the event one will be as good as the other; but it can never be true, that what the express words grant in possession, and in common, may best be understood, to be in reversion. The sum of all his reasoning amounts to this: God did not give to the sons of Noah the world in common with their father, because it was possible they might enjoy it under, or after him. A very good sort of argument against an express text of scripture: but God must not be believed, though he speaks it himself, when he says he does any thing, which will not consist with Sir Robert’s hypothesis.

  §. 33.

  For it is plain, however he would exclude them, that part of this benediction, as he would have it in succession, must needs be meant to the sons, and not to Noah himself at all: Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, says God, in this blessing. This part of the benediction, as appears by the sequel, concerned not Noah himself at all; for we read not of any children he had after the flood; and in the following chapter, where his posterity is reckoned up, there is no mention of any; and so this benediction in succession was not to take place till 350 years after: and to save our author’s imaginary monarchy, the peopling of the world must be deferred 350 years; for this part of the benediction cannot be understood with subordination, unless our author will say, that they must ask leave of their father Noah to lie with their wives. But in this one point our author is constant to himself in all his discourses, he takes great care there should be monarchs in the world, but very little that there should be people; and indeed his way of government is not the way to people the world: for how much absolute monarchy helps to fulfil this great and primary blessing of God Almighty, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, which contains in it the improvement too of arts and sciences, and the conveniences of life, may be seen in those large and rich countries which are happy under the Turkish government, where are not now to be found one third, nay in many, if not most parts of them one thirtieth, perhaps I might say not one hundredth of the people, that were formerly, as will easily appear to any one, who will compare the accounts we have of it at this time, with antient history. But this by the by.

  §. 34.

  The other parts of this benediction, or grant, are so expressed, that they must needs be understood to belong equally to them all; as much to Noah’s sons as to Noah himself, and not to his sons with a subordination, or in succession. The fear of you, and the dread of you, says God, shall be upon every beast, &c. Will any body but our author say, that the creatures feared and stood in awe of Noah only, and not of his sons without his leave, or till after his death? And the following words, into your hands they are delivered, are they to be understood as our author says, if your father please, or they shall be delivered into your hands hereafter? If this be to argue from scripture, I know not what may not be proved by it; and I can scarce see how much this differs from that fiction and fansie, or how much a surer foundation it will prove, than the opinions of philosophers and poets, which our author so much condemns in his preface.

  §. 35.

  But our author goes on to prove, that it may best be understood with a subordination, or a benediction in succession; for, says he, it is not probable that the private dominion which God gave to Adam, and by his donation, assignation, or cession to his children, was abrogated, and a community of all things instituted between Noah and his sons——Noah was left the sole heir of the world; why should it be thoughtthat God would disinberit him of his birth-right, and make him of all men in the world the only tenant in common with his children? Observations, 211.

  §. 36.

  The prejudices of our own ill-grounded opinions, however by us called probable, cannot authorise us to understand scripture contrary to the direct and plain meaning of the words. I grant, it is not probable, that Adam’s private dominion was here abrogated: because it is more than improbable, (for it will never be proved) that ever Adam had any such private dominion: and since parallel places of scripture are most probable to make us know how they may be best understood, there needs but the comparing this blessing here to Noah and his sons after the flood, with that to Adam after the creation, i. Gen. 28. to assure any one that God gave Adam no such private dominion. It is probable, I confess, that Noah should have the same title, the same property and dominion after the flood, that Adam had before it: but since private dominion cannot consist with the blessing and grant God gave to him and his sons in common, it is a sufficient reason to conclude, that Adam had none, especially since in the donation made to him, there are no words that express it, or do in the least favour it; and then let my reader judge whether it may best be understood, when in the one place there is not one word for it, not to say what has been above proved, that the text itself proves the contrary; and in the other, the words and sense are directly against it.

  §. 37.

  But our author says, Noah was the sole heir of the world; why should it be thought that God would disinherit him of his birth-right? Heir, indeed, in England, signifies the eldest son, who is by the law of England to have all his father’s land; but where God ever appointed any such heir of the world, our author would have done well to have shewed us; and how God disinherited him of his birth-right, or what harm was done him if God gave his sons a right to make use of a part of the earth for the support of themselves and families, when the whole was not only more than Noah himself, but infinitely more than they all could make use of, and the possessions of one could not at all prejudice, or, as to any use, streighten that of the other.

  §. 38.

  Our author probably foreseeing he might not be very successful in persuading people out of their senses, and, say what he could, men would be apt to believe the plain words of scripture, and think, as they saw, that the grant was spoken to Noah and his sons jointly; he endeavours to insinuate, as if this grant to Noah conveyed no property, no dominion; because, subduing the earth and dominion over the creatures are therein omitted, nor the earth once named. And therefore, says he, there is a considerabledifference between these two texts; the first blessing gave Adam a dominion over the earth and all creatures; the latter allows Noah liberty to use the living creatures for food: here is no alteration or diminishing of his title to a property of all things, but an enlargement only of his commons, Observations, 211. So that in our author’s sense, all that was said here to Noah and his sons, gave them no dominion, no property, but only enlarged the commons; their commons, I should say, since God says, to you are they given, though our author says his; for as for Noah’s sons, they, it seems, by Sir Robert’s appointment, during their father’s life-time, were to keep fasting days.

  §. 39.

  Any one but our author would be mightily suspected to be blinded with prejudice, that in all this blessing to Noah and his sons, could see nothing but only an enlargement of commons: for as to dominion, which our author thinks omitted, the fear of you, and the dread of you, says God, shall be upon every beast, which I suppose expresses the dominion, or superiority was designed man over the living creatures, as fully as may be; for in that fear and dread seems chiefly to consist what was given to Adam over the inferior animals; who, as absolute a monarch as he was, could not make bold with a lark or rabbet to satisfy his hunger, and had the herbs but in common with the beasts, as is plain from i Gen. 2, 9, and 30. In the next place, it is manifest that in this blessing to Noah and his sons, property is not only given in clear words, but in a larger extent than it was to Adam. Into your hands they are given, says God to Noah and his sons; which words, if they give not property, nay, property in possession, it will be hard to find words that can; since there is not a way to express a man’s being possessed of any thing more natural, nor more certain, than to say, it is delivered into his hands. And ver. 3. to shew, that they had then given them the utmost property man is capable of, which is to have a right to destroy any thing by using it; Every moving thing that liveth, saith God, shall be meat for you; which was not allowed to Adam in his charter. This our author calls, a liberty of using them for food, and only an enlargement of commons, but no alteration of property, Observations, 211. What other property man can have in the creatures, but the liberty of using them, is hard to be understood: so that if the first blessing, as our author says, gave Adam dominion over the creatures, and the blessing to Noah and his sons, gave them such a liberty to use them, as Adam had not; it must needs give them something that Adam with all his sovereignty wanted, something that one would be apt to take for a greater property; for certainly he has no absolute dominion over even the brutal part of the creatures; and the property he has in them is very narrow and scanty, who cannot make that use of them, which is permitted to another. Should any one who is absolute lord of a country, have bidden our author subdue the earth, and given him dominion over the creatures in it, but not have permitted him to have taken a kid or a lamb out of the flock, to satisfy his hunger, I guess, he would scarce have thought himself lord or proprietor of that land, or the cattle on it; but would have found the difference between having dominion, which a shepherd may have, and having full property as an owner. So that, had it been his own case, Sir Robert, I believe, would have thought here was an alteration, nay, an enlarging of property; and that Noah and his children had by this grant, not only property given them, but such a property given them in the creatures, as Adam had not: For however, in respect of one another, men may be allowed to have propriety in their distinct portions of the creatures; yet in respect of God the maker of heaven and earth, who is sole lord and proprietor of the whole world, man’s propriety in the creatures is nothing but that liberty to use them, which God has permitted; and so man’s property may be altered and enlarged, as we see it was here, after the flood, when other uses of them are allowed, which before were not. From all which I suppose it is clear, that neither Adam, nor Noah, had any private dominion, any property in the creatures, exclusive of his posterity, as they should successively grow up into need of them, and come to be able to make use of them.

  §. 40.

  Thus we have examined our author’s argument for Adam’s monarchy, founded on the blessing pronounced, i. Gen. 28. Wherein I think it is impossible for any sober reader, to find any other but the setting of mankind above the other kinds of creatures, in this habitable earth of ours. It is nothing but the giving to man, the whole species of man, as the chief inhabitant, who is the image of his Maker, the dominion over the other creatures. This lies so obvious in the plain words, that any one, but our author, would have thought it necessary to have shewn, how these words, that seemed to say the quite contrary, gave Adam monarchical absolute power over other men, or the sole property in all the creatures; and methinks in a business of this moment, and that whereon he builds all that follows, he should have done something more than barely cite words, which apparently make against him; for I confess, I cannot see any thing in them, tending to Adam’s monarchy, or private dominion, but quite the contrary. And I the less deplore the dulness of my apprehension herein, since I find the apostle seems to have as little notion of any such private dominion of Adam as I, when he says, God gives us all things richly to enjoy, which he could not do, if it were all given away already, to Monarch Adam, and the monarchs his heirs and successors. To conclude, this text is so far from proving Adam sole proprietor, that, on the contrary, it is a confirmation of the original community of all things amongst the sons of men, which appearing from this donation of God, as well as other places of scripture, the sovereignty of Adam, built upon his private dominion, must fall, not having any foundation to support it.

  §. 41.

  But yet, if after all, any one will needs have it so, that by this donation of God, Adam was made sole proprietor of the whole earth, what will this be to his sovereignty? and how will it appear, that propriety in land gives a man power over the life of another? or how will the possession even of the whole earth, give any one a sovereign arbitrary authority over the persons of men? The most specious thing to be said, is, that he that is proprietor of the whole world, may deny all the rest of mankind food, and so at his pleasure starve them, if they will not acknowledge his sovereignty, and obey his will. If this were true, it would be a good argument to prove, that there never was any such property, that God never gave any such private dominion; since it is more reasonable to think, that God, who bid mankind increase and multiply, should rather himself give them all a right to make use of the food and raiment, and other conveniences of life, the materials whereof he had so plentifully provided for them; than to make them depend upon the will of a man for their subsistence, who should have power to destroy them all when he pleased, and who, being no better than other men, was in succession likelier, by want and the dependence of a scanty fortune, to tie them to hard service, than by liberal allowance of the conveniences of life to promote the great design of God, increase and multiply: he that doubts this, let him look into the absolute monarchies of the world, and see what becomes of the conveniences of life, and the multitudes of people.

  §. 42.

  But we know God hath not left one man so to the mercy of another, that he may starve him if he please: God the Lord and Father of all has given no one of his children such a property in his peculiar portion of the things of this world, but that he has given his needy brother a right to the surplusage of his goods; so that it cannot justly be denied him, when his pressing wants call for it: and therefore no man could ever have a just power over the life of another by right of property in land or possessions; since it would always be a sin, in any man of estate, to let his brother perish for want of affording him relief out of his plenty. As justice gives every man a title to the product of his honest industry, and the fair acquisitions of his ancestors descended to him; so charity gives every man a title to so much out of another’s plenty, as will keep him from extreme want, where he has no means to subsist otherwise: and a man can no more justly make use of another’s necessity, to force him to become his vassal, by with-holding that relief, God requires him to afford to the wants of his brother, than he that has more strength can seize upon a weaker, master him to his obedience, and with a dagger at his throat offer him death or slavery.

  §. 43.

  Should any one make so perverse an use of God’s blessings poured on him with a liberal hand; should any one be cruel and uncharitable to that extremity, yet all this would not prove that propriety in land, even in this case, gave any authority over the persons of men, but only that compact might; since the authority of the rich proprietor, and the subjection of the needy beggar, began not from the possession of the Lord, but the confent of the poor man, who preferred being his subject to starving. And the man he thus submits to, can pretend to no more power over him, than he has consented to, upon compact. Upon this ground a man’s having his stores filled in a time of scarcity, having money in his pocket, being in a vessel at sea, being able to swim, &c. may as well be the foundation of rule and dominion, as being possessor of all the land in the world; any of these being sufficient to enable me to save a man’s life, who would perish if such assistance were denied him; and any thing, by this rule, that may be an oocasion of working upon another’s necessity, to save his life, or any thing dear to him, at the rate of his freedom, may be made a foundation of sovereignty, as well as property. From all which it is clear, that though God should have given Adam private dominion, yet that private dominion could give him no sovereignty; but we have already sufficiently proved, that God gave him no private dominion.

  CHAP. V.
  Of Adam’s Title to Sovereignty by the Subjection of Eve.

  §. 44.

  THE next place of scripture we find our author builds his monarchy of Adam on, is iii. Gen. 26. And thy defire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee. Here we have (says he) the original grant of government, from whence he concludes, in the following part of the page, Observations, 244. That the supreme power is settled in the fatherhood, and limited to one kind of government, that is, to monarchy. For let his premises be what they will, this is always the conclusion; let rule, in any text, be but once named, and presently absolute monarchy is by divine right established. If any one will but carefully read our author’s own reasoning from these words, Observations, 244. and consider, among other things, the line and posterity of Adam, as he there brings them in, he will find some difficulty to make sense of what he says; but we will allow this at present to his peculiar way of writing, and consider the force of the text in hand. The words are the curse of God upon the woman, for having been the first and forwardest in the disobedience; and if we will consider the occasion of what God says here to our first parents, that he was denouncing judgment, and declaring his wrath against them both, for their disobedience, we cannot suppose that this was the time, wherein God was granting Adam prerogatives and privileges, investing him with dignity and authority, elevating him to dominion and monarchy: for though, as a helper in the temptation, Eve was laid below him, and so he had accidentally a superiority over her, for her greater punishment; yet he too had his share in the fall, as well as the sin, and was laid lower, as may be seen in the following verses; and it would be hard to imagine, that God, in the same breath, should make him universal monarch over all mankind, and a day-labourer for his life; turn him out of paradise to till the ground, ver. 23. and at the same time advance him to a throne, and all the privileges and ease of absolute power.

  §. 45.

  This was not a time, when Adam could expect any favours, any grant of privileges, from his offended Maker. If this be the original grant of government, as our author tells us, and Adam was now made monarch, whatever Sir Robert would have him, it is plain, God made him but a very poor monarch, such an one, as our author himself would have counted it no great privilege to be. God sets him to work for his living, and seems rather to give him a spade into his hand, to subdue the earth, than a sceptre to rule over its inhabitants. In the sweat of thy face thou shalt eat thy bread, says God to him, ver. 19. This was unavoidable, may it perhaps be answered, because he was yet without subjects, and had nobody to work for him; but afterwards, living as he did above 900 years, he might have people enough, whom he might command, to work for him; no, says God, not only whilst thou art without other help, save thy wife, but as long as thou livest, shalt thou live by thy labour, In the sweat of thy face, shalt thou eat thy bread, till thou return unto the ground, for out of it wast thou taken, for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return, v. 19. It will perhaps be answered again in favour of our author, that these words are not spoken personally to Adam, but in him, as their representative, to all mankind, this being a curse upon mankind, because of the fall.

  §. 46.

  God, I believe, speaks differently from men, because he speaks with more truth, more certainty: but when he vouchsafes to speak to men, I do not think he speaks differently from them, in crossing the rules of language in use amongst them: this would not be to condescend to their capacities, when he humbles himself to speak to them, but to lose his design in speaking what, thus spoken, they could not understand. And yet thus must we think of God, if the interpretations of scripture, necessary to maintain our author’s doctrine, must be received for good: for by the ordinary rules of language, it will be very hard to understand what God says, if what he speaks here, in the singular number, to Adam, must be understood to be spoken to all mankind, and what he says in the plural number, i. Gen. 26, and 28. must be understood of Adam alone, exclusive of all others, and what he says to Noah and his sons jointly, must be understood to be meant to Noah alone, Gen. ix.

  §. 47.

  Farther it is to be noted, that these words here of iii. Gen. 16. which our author calls the original grant of government, were not spoken to Adam, neither indeed was there any grant in them made to Adam, but a punishment laid upon Eve: and if we will take them as they were directed in particular to her, or in her, as their representative, to all other women, they will at most concern the female sex only, and import no more, but that subjection they should ordinarily be in to their husbands: but there is here no more law to oblige a woman to such a subjection, if the circumstances either of her condition, or contract with her husband, should exempt her from it, than there is, that she should bring forth her children in sorrow and pain, if there could be found a remedy for it, which is also a part of the same curse upon her: for the whole verse runs thus, Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children, and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee. It would, I think, have been a hard matter for any body, but our author, to have found out a grant of monarchical government to Adam in these words, which were neither spoke to, nor of him: neither will any one, I suppose, by these words, think the weaker sex, as by a law, so subjected to the curse contained in them, that it is their duty not to endeavour to avoid it. And will any one say, that Eve, or any other woman, sinned, if she were brought to bed without those multiplied pains God threatens her here with? or that either of our queens, Mary or Elizabeth, had they married any of their subjects, had been by this text put into a political subjection to him? or that he thereby should have had monarchical rule over her? God, in this text, gives not, that I see, any authority to Adam over Eve, or to men over their wives, but only foretels what should be the woman’s lot, how by his providence he would order it so, that she should be subject to her husband, as we see that generally the laws of mankind and customs of nations have ordered it so; and there is, I grant, a foundation in nature for it.

  §. 48.

  Thus when God says of Jacob and Esau, that the elder should serve the younger, xxv. Gen. 23. no body supposes that God hereby made Jacob Esau’s sovereign, but foretold what should de facto come to pass.

  But if these words here spoke to Eve must needs be understood as a law to bind her and all other women to subjection, it can be no other subjection than what every wife owes her husband; and then if this be the original grant of government and the foundation of monarchical power, there will be as many monarchs as there are husbands: if therefore these words give any power to Adam, it can be only a conjugal power, not political; the power that every husband hath to order the things of private concernment in his family, as proprietor of the goods and land there, and to have his will take place before that of his wife in all things of their common concernment; but not a political power of life and death over her, much less over any body else.

  §. 49.

  This I am sure: if our author will have this text to be a grant, the original grantof government, political government, he ought to have proved it by some better arguments than by barely saying, that thy desire shall be unto thy husband, was a law whereby Eve, and all that should come of her, were subjected to the absolute monarchical power of Adam and his heirs. Thy desire shall be to thy husband, is too doubtful an expression, of whose signification interpreters are not agreed, to build so confidently on, and in a matter of such moment, and so great and general concernment: but our author, according to his way of writing, having once named the text, concludes presently without any more ado, that the meaning is as he would have it. Let the words rule and subject be but found in the text or margent, and it immediately signifies the duty of a subject to his prince; the relation is changed, and though God says husband, Sir Robert will have it king; Adam has presently absolute monarchical power over Eve, and not only over Eve, but all that should come of her, though the scripture says not a word of it, nor our author a word to prove it. But Adam must for all that be an absolute monarch, and so down to the end of the chapter. And here I leave my reader to consider, whether my bare saying, without offering any reasons to evince it, that this text gave not Adam that absolute monarchical power, our author supposes, be not as sufficient to destroy that power, as his bare assertion is to establish it, since the text mentions neither prince nor people, speaks nothing of absolute or monarchical power, but the subjection of Eve to Adam, a wife to her husband. And he that would trace our author so all through, would make a short and sufficient answer to the greatest part of the grounds he proceeds on, and abundantly consute them by barely denying; it being a sufficient answer to assertions without proof, to deny them without giving a reason. And therefore should I have said nothing but barely denied, that by this text the supreme power was settled and founded by God himself, in the fatherhood, limited to monarchy, and that to Adam’s person and heirs, all which our author notably concludes from these words, as may be seen in the same page, Observations, 244. it had been a sufficient answer: should I have desired any sober man only to have read the text, and considered to whom, and on what occasion it was spoken, he would no doubt have wondered how our author found out monarchical absolute power in it, had he not had an exceeding good faculty to find it himself, where he could not shew it others. And thus we have examined the two places of scripture, all that I remember our author brings to prove Adam’s sovereignty, that supremacy, which he says, it was God’s ordinance should be unlimited in Adam, and as large as all the acts of his will, Observations, 254. viz. i. Gen. 28. and iii. Gen. 16. one whereof signifies only the subjection of the inferior ranks of creatures to mankind, and the other the subjection that is due from a wife to her husband, both far enough from that which subjects owe the governors of political societies.

  CHAP. VI.
  Of Adam’s Title to Sovereignty by Fatherhood.

  §. 50.

  THERE is one thing more, and then I think I have given you all that our author brings for proof of Adam’s sovereignty, and that is a supposition of a natural right of dominion over his children, by being their father: and this title of fatherhood he is so pleased with, that you will find it brought in almost in every page; particularly he says, not only Adam, but the succeeding patriarchs had by right of fatherhood royal authority over their children, p. 12. And in the same page, this subjection of children being the fountain of all regal authority, &c. This being, as one would think by his so frequent mentioning it, the main basis of all his frame, we may well expect clear and evident reason for it, since he lays it down as a position necessary to his purpose, that every man that is born is so far from being free, that by his very birth he becomes a subject of him thatbegets him, Observations, 156. so that Adam being the only man created, and all ever since being begotten, no body has been born free. If we ask how Adam comes by this power over his children, he tells us here it is by begetting them: and so again, Observations, 223. this natural dominion of Adam, says he, may be proved out of Grotius himself, who teacheth, that generatione jus acquiritur parentibus in liberos. And indeed the act of begetting being that which makes a man a father, his right of a father over his children can naturally arise from nothing else.

  §. 51.

  Grotius tells us not here how far this jus in liberos, this power of parents over their children extends; but our author, always very clear in the point, assures us, it is supreme power, and like that of absolute monarchs over their slaves, absolute power of life and death. He that should demand of him, how, or for what reason it is, that begetting a child gives the father such an absolute power over him, will find him answer nothing: we are to take his word for this, as well as several other things; and by that the laws of nature and the constitutions of government must stand or fall. Had he been an absolute monarch, this way of talking might have suited well enough; proratione voluntas might have been of force in his mouth; but in the way of proof or argument is very unbecoming, and will little advantage his plea for absolute monarchy. Sir Robert has too much lessened a subject’s authority to leave himself the hopes of establishing any thing by his bare saying it; one slave’s opinion without proof is not of weight enough to dispose of the liberty and fortunes of all mankind. If all men are not, as I think they are, naturally equal, I am sure all slaves are; and then I may without presumption oppose my single opinion to his; and be confident that my saying, that begetting of children makes them not slaves to their fathers, as certainly sets all mankind free, as his affirming the contrary makes them all slaves. But that this position, which is the foundation of all their doctrine, who would have monarchy to be jure divino, may have all fair play, let us hear what reasons others give for it, since our author offers none.

  §. 52.

  The argument, I have heard others make use of, to prove that fathers, by begetting them, come by an absolute power over their children, is this; that fathers have a power over the lives of their children, because they give them life and being, which is the only proof it is capable of: since there can be no reason, why naturally one man should have any claim or pretence of right over that in another, which was never his, which he bestowed not, but was received from the bounty of another. 1. I answer, that every one who gives another any thing, has not always thereby a right to take it away again. But 2. They who say the father gives life to his children, are so dazzled with the thoughts of monarchy, that they do not, as they ought, remember God, who is the author and giver of life: it is in him alone we live, move, and have our being. How can he be thought to give life to another, that knows not wherein his own life consists? Philosophers are at a loss about it after their most diligent enquiries; and anatomists, after their whole lives and studies spent in dissections, and diligent examining the bodies of men, confess their ignorance in the structure and use of many parts of man’s body, and in that operation wherein life consists in the whole. And doth the rude plough-man, or the more ignorant voluptuary, frame or fashion such an admirable engine as this is, and then put life and sense into it? Can any man say, he formed the parts that are necessary to the life of his child? or can he suppose himself to give the life, and yet not know what subject is fit to receive it, nor what actions or organs are necessary for its reception or preservation?

  §. 53.

  To give life to that which has yet no being, is to frame and make a living creature, fashion the parts, and mould and suit them to their uses, and having proportioned and fitted them together, to put into them a living soul. He that could do this, might indeed have some pretence to destroy his own workmanship. But is there any one so bold, that dares thus far arrogate to himself the incomprehensible works of the almighty? Who alone did at first, and continues still to make a living soul, he alone can breathe in the breath of life. If any one thinks himself an artist at this, let him number up the parts of his child’s body which he hath made, tell me their uses and operations, and when the living and rational soul began to inhabit this curious structure, when sense began, and how this engine, which he has framed, thinks and reasons: if he made it, let him, when it is out of order, mend it, at least tell wherein the defects lie. Shall he that made the eye not see? says the Psalmist, Psalm xciv. 9. See these men’s vanities! the structure of that one part is sufficient to convince us of an all-wise contriver, and he has so visible a claim to us as his workmanship, that one of the ordinary appellations of God in scripture is, God our Maker, and the Lord our Maker. And therefore though our author, for the magnifying his fatherhood, be pleased to say, Observations, 159. That even the power which God himself exerciseth over mankind is by right of fatherhood, yet this fatherhood is such an one as utterly excludes all pretence of title in earthly parents; for he is king, because he is indeed maker of us all, which no parents can pretend to be of their children.

  §. 54.

  But had men skill and power to make their children, it is not so slight a piece of workmanship, that it can be imagined, they could make them without designing it. What father of a thousand, when he begets a child, thinks farther than the satisfying his present appetite? God in his infinite wisdom has put strong defires of copulation into the constitution of men, thereby to continue the race of mankind, which he doth most commonly without the intention, and often against the consent and will of the begetter. And indeed those who desire and design children, are but the occasions of their being, and when they design and wish to beget them, do little more towards their making, than Deucalion and his wife in the fable did towards the making of mankind, by throwing pebbles over their heads.

  §. 55.

  But grant that the parents made their children, gave them life and being, and that hence there followed an absolute power. This would give the father but a joint dominion with the mother over them: for no body can deny but that the woman hath an equal share, if not the greater, as nourishing the child a long time in her own body out of her own substance: there it is fashioned, and from her it receives the materials and principles of its constitution: and it is so hard to imagine the rational soul should presently inhabit the yet unformed embrio, as soon as the father has done his part in the act of generation, that if it must be supposed to derive any thing from the parents, it must certainly owe most to the mother. But be that as it will, the mother cannot be denied an equal share in begetting of the child, and so the absolute authority of the father will not arise from hence. Our author indeed is of another mind; for he says, We know that God at the creation gave the sovereignty to the man over the woman, as being the nobler and principal agent in generation, Observations, 172. I remember not this in my Bible; and when the place is brought where God at the creation gave the sovereignty to man over the woman, and that for this reason, because he is the nobler and principal agent in generation, it will be time enough to consider, and answer it. But it is no new thing for our author to tell us his own fancies for certain and divine truths, tho’ there be often a great deal of difference between his and divine revelations; for God in the scripture says, his father and his mother that begot him.

  §. 56.

  They who alledge the practice of mankind, for exposing or selling their children, as a proof of their power over them, are with Sir Robert happy arguers; and cannot but recommend their opinion, by founding it on the most shameful action, and most unnatural murder, human nature is capable of. The dens of lions and nurseries of wolves know no such cruelty as this: these savage inhabitants of the desert obey God and nature in being tender and careful of their off-spring: they will hunt, watch, fight, and almost starve for the preservation of their young; never part with them; never forsake them, till they are able to shift for themselves. And is it the privilege of man alone to act more contrary to nature than the wild and most untamed part of the creation? doth God forbid us under the severest penalty, that of death, to take away the life of any man, a stranger, and upon provocation? and does he permit us to destroy those, he has given us the charge and care of; and by the dictates of nature and reason, as well as his revealed command, requires us to preserve? He has in all the parts of the creation taken a peculiar care to propagate and continue the several species of creatures, and makes the individuals act so strongly to this end, that they sometimes neglect their own private good for it, and seem to forget that general rule, which nature teaches all things, of self-preservation; and the preservation of their young, as the strongest principle in them, over-rules the constitution of their particular natures. Thus we see, when their young stand in need of it, the timorous become valiant, the fierce and savage kind, and the ravenous tender and liberal.

  §. 57.

  But if the example of what hath been done, be the rule of what ought to be, history would have furnished our author with instances of this absolute fatherly power in its height and perfection, and he might have shewed us in Peru, people that begot children on purpose to fatten and eat them. The story is so remarkable, that I cannot but set it down in the author’s words. “In some provinces, says he, they were so liquorish after man’s flesh, that they would not have the patience to stay till the breath was out of the body, but would suck the blood as it ran from the wounds of the dying man; they had public shambles of man’s flesh, and their madness herein was to that degree, that they spared not their own children, which they had begot on strangers taken in war: for they made their captives their mistresses, and choicely nourished the children they had by them, till about thirteen years old they butchered and eat them; and they served the mothers after the same fashion, when they grew past child bearing, and ceased to bring them any more roasters,” Garcilasso de la Vega hist. des Yncas de Peru, l. i. c. 12.

  §. 58.

  Thus far can the busy mind of man carry him to a brutality below the level of beasts, when he quits his reason, which places him almost equal to angels. Nor can it be otherwise in a creature, whose thoughts are more than the sands, and wider than the ocean, where fancy and passion must needs run him into strange courses, if reason, which is his only star and compass, be not that he steers by. The imagination is always restless, and suggests variety of thoughts, and the will, reason being laid aside, is ready for every extravagant project; and in this state, he that goes farthest out of the way, is thought fittest to lead, and is sure of most followers: and when fashion hath once established what folly or craft began, custom makes it sacred, and it will be thought impudence, or madness, to contradict or question it. He that will impartially survey the nations of the world, will find so much of their religions, governments and manners, brought in and continued amongst them by these means, that he will have but little reverence for the practices which are in use and credit amongst men; and will have reason to think, that the woods and forests, where the irrational untaught inhabitants keep right by following nature, are fitter to give us rules, than cities and palaces, where those that call themselves civil and rational, go out of their way, by the authority of example. If precedents are sufficient to establish a rule in this case, our author might have found in holy writ children sacrificed by their parents, and this amongst the people of God themselves: the Psalmist tells us, Psal. cvi. 38. They shed innocent blood, even the blood of their sons and of their daughters, whom they sacrificed unto the idols of Canaan. But God judged not of this by our author’s rule, nor allowed of the authority of practice against his righteous law; but as it follows there, the land was polluted with blood; therefore was the wrath of the Lord kindled against his people, insomuch that he abborred his own inheritance. The killing of their children, though it were fashionable, was charged on them as innocent blood, and so had in the account of God the guilt of murder, as the offering them to idols had the guilt of idolatry.

  §. 59.

  Be it then, as Sir Robert says, that anciently it was usual for men to sell and castrate their children, Observations, 155. Let it be, that they exposed them; add to it, if you please, for this is still greater power, that they begat them for their tables, to fat and eat them: if this proves a right to do so, we may, by the same argument, justify adultery, incest and sodomy, for there are examples of these too, both ancient and modern; sins, which I suppose have their principal aggravation from this, that they cross the main intention of nature, which willeth the increase of mankind, and the continuation of the species in the highest perfection, and the distinction of families, with the security of the marriage bed, as necessary thereunto.

  §. 60.

  In confirmation of this natural authority of the father, our author brings a lame proof from the positive command of God in scripture: his words are, To confirm the natural right of regal power, we find in the Decalogue, that the law which enjoins obedience to kings, is delivered in the terms, Honour thy father, p. 23. Whereas many confess, that government only in the abstract, is the ordinance of God, they are not able to prove any such ordinance in the scripture, but only in the fatherly power; and therefore we find the commandment, that enjoins obedience to superiors, given in the terms, Honour thy father; so that not only the power and right of government, but the form of the power governing, and the person having the power, are all the ordinances of God. The first father had not only simply power, but power monarchical, as he was father immediately from God, Observations, 254. To the same purpose, the same law is cited by our author in several other places, and just after the same fashion; that is, and mother, as apochryphal words, are always left out; a great argument of our author’s ingenuity, and the goodness of his cause, which required in its defender zeal to a degree of warmth, able to warp the sacred rule of the word of God, to make it comply with his present occasion; a way of proceeding not unusual to those, who embrace not truths because reason and revelation offer them, but espouse tenets and parties for ends different from truth, and then resolve at any rate to defend them; and so do with the words and sense of authors, they would fit to their purpose, just as Procrustes did with his guests, lop or stretch them, as may best fit them to the size of their notions: and they always prove like those so served, deformed, lame, and useless.

  §. 61.

  For had our author set down this command without garbling, as God gave it, and joined mother to father, every reader would have seen, that it had made directly against him; and that it was so far from establishing the monarchical power of the father, that it set up the mother equal with him, and enjoined nothing but what was due in common, to both father and mother: for that is the constant tenor of the scripture, Honour thy father and thy mother, Exod. xx. He that smiteth his father or mother, shall surely be put to death, xxi. 15. He that curseth his father or mother, shall surely be put to death, ver. 17. Repeated Lev. xx. 9. and by our Saviour, Matth. xv. 4. Ye shall fear every man his mother and his father, Lev. xix. 3. If a man have a rebellious son, which will not obey the voice of his father, or the voice of his mother; then shall his father and his mother lay hold on him, and say, This our son is stubbornand rebellious, he will not obey our voice, Deut. xxi. 18, 19, 20, 21. Cunsed be he that setteth light by his father or his mother, xxviii. 16. My son, hear the instructions of thy father, and forsake not the law of thy mother, are the words of Solomon, a king who was not ignorant of what belonged to him as a father or a king; and yet he joins father and mother together, in all the instructions he gives children quite thro’ his book of Proverbs. Woe unto him, that sayeth unto his father, What begettest thou, or to the woman, What hast thou brought forth? Isa. xi. ver. 10. In thee have they set light by father or mother, Ezek. xxviii. 2. And it shall come to pass, that when any shall yet prophesy, then his father and his mother that begat him, shall say unto him, Thou shalt not live, and his father and his mother that begat him, shall thrust him through when he prophesieth, Zech. xiii. 3. Here not the father only, but the father and mother jointly, had power in this case of life and death. Thus ran the law of the Old Testament, and in the New they are likewise joined, in the obedience of their children, Eph. vi. 1. The rule is, Children, obey your parents; and I do not remember, that I any where read, Children, obey your father, and no more: the scripture joins mother too in that homage, which is due from children; and had there been any text, where the honour or obedience of children had been directed to the father alone, it is not likely that our author, who pretends to build all upon scripture, would have omitted it: nay, the scripture makes the authority of father and mother, in respect of those they have begot, so equal, that in some places it neglects even the priority of order, which is thought due to the father, and the mother is put first, as Lev. xix. 3. from which so constantly joining father and mother together, as is found quite through the scripture, we may conclude that the honour they have a title to from their children, is one common right belonging so equally to them both, that neither can claim it wholly, neither can be excluded.

  §. 62.

  One would wonder then how our author infers from the 5th commandment, that all power was originally in the father; how he finds monarchical power of government settled and fixed by the commandment, Honour thy father and thy mother. If all the honour due by the commandment, be it what it will, be the only right of the father, because he, as our author says, has the sovereignty over the woman, as being the nobler and principler agent in generation, why did God afterwards all along join the mother with him, to share in his honour? can the father, by this sovereignty of his, discharge the child from paying this honour to his mother? The scripture gave no such licence to the Jews, and yet there were often breaches wide enough betwixt husband and wife, even to divorce and separation: and, I think, no body will say a child may with-hold honour from his mother, or, as the scripture terms it, set light by her, though his father should command him to do so; no more than the mother could dispense with him for neglecting to honour his father: whereby it is plain, that this command of God gives the father no sovereignty, no supremacy.

  §. 63.

  I agree with our author that the title to this honour is vested in the parents by nature, and is a right which accrues to them by their having begotten their children, and God by many positive declarations has confirmed it to them: I also allow our author’s rule, that in grants and gifts, that have their original from God and nature, as the power of the father, (let me add and mother, for whom God hath joined together, let no man put asunder) no inferior power of men can limit, nor make any law of prescription against them, Observations, 158. so that the mother having, by this law of God, a right to honour from her children, which is not subject to the will of her husband, we see this absolute monarchical power of the father can neither be founded on it, nor consist with it; and he has a power very far from monarchical, very far from that absoluteness our author contends for, when another has over his subjects the same power he hath, and by the same title: and therefore he cannot forbear saying himself that he cannot see how any man’s children can be free from subjection to their parents, p. 12. which, in common speech, I think, signifies mother as well as father, or if parents here signifies only father, it is the first time I ever yet knew it to do so, and by such an use of words one may say any thing.

  §. 64.

  By our author’s doctrine, the father having absolute jurisdiction over his children, has also the same over their issue; and the consequence is good, were it true, that the father had such a power: and yet I ask our author whether the grandfather, by his sovereignty, could discharge the grandchild from paying to his father the honour due to him by the 5th commandment. If the grandfather hath, by right of fatherhood, sole sovereign power in him, and that obedience which is due to the supreme magistrate, be commanded in these words, Honour thy father, it is certain the grandfather might dispense with the grandson’s honouring his father, which since it is evident in common sense he cannot, it follows from hence, that Honour thy father and mother, cannot mean an absolute subjection to a sovereign power, but something else. The right therefore which parents have by nature, and which is confirmed to them by the 5th commandment, cannot be that political dominion, which our author would derive from it: for that being in every civil society supreme somewhere, can discharge any subject from any political obedience to any one of his fellow subjects. But what law of the magistrate can give a child liberty, not to honour his father and mother? It is an eternal law, annexed purely to the relation of parents and children, and so contains nothing of the magistrate’s power in it, nor is subjected to it.

  §. 65.

  Our author says, God hath given to a father a right or liberty to alien his power over his children to any other, Observations, 155. I doubt whether he can alien wholly the right of honour that is due from them: but be that as it will, this I am sure, he cannot alien, and retain the same power. If therefore the magistrate’s sovereignty be, as our author would have it, nothing but the authority of a supreme father, p. 23. it is unavoidable, that if the magistrate hath all this paternal right, as he must have if fatherhood be the fountain of all authority; then the subjects, though fathers, can have no power over their children, no right to honour from them: for it cannot be all in another’s hands, and a part remain with the parents. So that, according to our author’s own doctrine, Honour thy father and mother cannot possibly be understood of political subjection and obedience; since the laws both in the Old and New Testament, that commanded children to honour and obey their parents, were given to such, whose fathers were under civil government, and fellow subjects with them in political societies; and to have bid them honour and obey their parents, in our author’s sense, had been to bid them be subjects to those who had no title to it; the right to obedience from subjects, being all vested in another; and instead of teaching obedience, this had been to foment sedition, by setting up powers that were not. If therefore this command, Honour thy father and mother, concern political dominion, it directly overthrows our author’s monarchy; since it being to be paid by every child to his father, even in society, every father must necessarily have political dominion, and there will be as many sovereigns as there are fathers: besides that the mother too hath her title, which destroys the sovereignty of one supreme monarch. But if Honour thy father and mother mean something distinct from political power, as necessarily it must, it is besides our author’s business, and serves nothing to his purpose.

  §. 66.

  The law that enjoins obedience to kings is delivered, says our author, in the terms, Honour thy father, as if all power were originally in the father, Observations, 254: and that law is also delivered, say I, in the terms, Honour thy mother, as if all power were originally in the mother. I appeal whether the argument be not as good on one side as the other, father and mother being joined all along in the Old and New Testament where-ever honour or obedience is injoined children. Again our author tells us, Observations, 254. that this command, Honour thy father, gives the right to govern, and makes the form of government monarchical. To which I answer, that if by Honour thy father be meant obedience to the political power of the magistrate, it concerns not any duty we owe to our natural fathers, who are subjects; because they, by our author’s doctrine, are divested of all that power, it being placed wholly in the prince, and so being equally subjects and slaves with their children, can have no right, by that title, to any such honour or obedience, as contains in it political subjection: if Honour thy father and mother signifies the duty we owe our natural parents, as by our Saviour’s interpretation, Matth. xv. 4. and all the other mentioned places, it is plain it does, then it cannot concern political obedience, but a duty that is owing to persons, who have no title to sovereignty, nor any political authority as magistrates over subjects. For the person of a private father, and a title to obedience, due to the supreme magistrate, are things inconsistent; and therefore this command, which must necessarily comprehend the persons of our natural fathers, must mean a duty we owe them distinct from our obedience to the magistrate, and from which the most absolute power of princes cannot absolve us. What this duty is, we shall in its due place examine.

  §. 67.

  And thus we have at last got thro’ all, that in our author looks like an argument for that absolute unlimited sovereignty described, sect. 8. which he supposes in Adam; so that mankind ever since have been all born slaves, without any title to freedom. But if creation, which gave nothing but a being, made not Adam prince of his posterity: if Adam, Gen. i. 28. was not constituted lord of mankind, nor had a private dominion given him exclusive of his children, but only a right and power over the earth, and inferiour creatures in common with the children of men; if also Gen. iii. 16. God gave not any political power to Adam over his wife and children, but only subjected Eve to Adam, as a punishment, or foretold the subjection of the weaker sex, in the ordering the common concernments of their families, but gave not thereby to Adam, as to the husband, power of life and death, which necessarily belongs to the magistrate: if fathers by begetting their children acquire no such power ove them; and if the command, Honour thy father and mother, give it not, but only enjoins a duty owing to parents equally, whether subjects or not, and to the mother as well as the father; if all this be so, as I think, by what has been said, is very evident; then man has a natural freedom, notwithstanding all our author confidently says to the contrary; since all that share in the same common nature, faculties and powers, are in nature equal, and ought to partake in the same common rights and privileges, till the manifest appointment of God, who is Lord over all, blessed for ever, can be produced to shew any particular person’s supremacy; or a man’s own consent subjects him to a superiour. This is so plain, that our author confesses, that Sir John Hayward, Blackwood and Barclay, the great vindicators of the right of kings, could not deny it, but admit with one consent the natural liberty and equality of mankind, for a truth unquestionable. And our author hath been so far from producing any thing, that may make good his great position, that Adam was absolute monarch, and so men are not naturally free, that even his own proofs make against him; so that to use his own way of arguing, the first erroneous principle failing, the whole fabric of this vast engine of absolute power and tyranny drops down of itself, and there needs no more to be said in answer to all that he builds upon so false and frail a foundation.

  §. 68.

  But to save others the pains, were there any need, he is not sparing himself to shew, by his own contradictions, the weakness of his own doctrine. Adam’s absolute and sole dominion is that, which he is every where full of, and all along builds on, and yet he tells us, p. 12. that as Adam was lard of his children, so his children under him had a command and power over their own children. The unlimited and undivided sovereignty of Adam’s fatherhood, by our author’s computation, stood but a little while, only during the first generation, but as soon as he had grand-children, Sir Robert could give but a very ill account of it. Adam, as father of his children, faith he, hath an absolute, unlimited royal power over them, and by virtue thereof over those that they begot, and so to all generations; and yet his children, viz. Cain and Seth, have a paternal power over their children at the same time; so that they are at the same time absolute lords, and yet vassals and slaves; Adam has all the authority, as grand-father of the people, and they have a part of it as fathers of a part of them: he is absolute over them and their posterity, by having begotten them, and yet they are absolute over their children by the same title. No, says our author, Adam’s children under him had power over their own children, but still with subordination to the first parent. A good distinction that sounds well, and it is pity it signifies nothing, nor can be reconciled with our author’s words. I readily grant, that supposing Adam’s absolute power over his posterity, any of his children might have from him a delegated, and so a subordinate power over a part, or all the rest: but that cannot be the power our author speaks of here; it is not a power by grant and commission, but the natural paternal power he supposes a father to have over his children. For 1. he says, As Adam was lord of his children, so his children under him had a power over their own children: they were then lords over their own children after the same manner, and by the same title, that Adam was, i. e. by right of generation, by right of fatherhood. 2. It is plain he means the natural power of fathers, because he limits it to be only over their own children; a delegated power has no such limitation, as only over their own children, it might be over others, as well as their own children. 3. If it were a delegated power, it must appear in scripture; but there is no ground in scripture to affirm, that Adam’s children had any other power over theirs, than what they naturally had as fathers.

  §. 69.

  But that he means here paternal power, and no other, is past doubt, from the inference he makes in these words immediately following, I see not then how the children of Adam, or of any man else, can be free from subjection to their parents. Whereby it appears that the power on one side, and the subjection on the other, our author here speaks of, is that natural power and subjection between parents and children: for that which every man’s children owed, could be no other; and that our author always affirms to be absolute and unlimited. This natural power of parents over their children, Adam had over his posterity, says our author; and this power of parents over their children, his children had over theirs in his life-time, says our author also; so that Adam, by a natural right of father, had an absolute unlimited power over all his posterity, and at the same time his children had by the same right absolute unlimited power over theirs. Here then are two absolute unlimited powers existing together, which I would have any body reconcile one to another, or to common sense. For the salvo he has put in of subordination, makes it more absurd: to have one absolute, unlimited, nay unlimitable power in subordination to another, is so manifest a contradiction, that nothing can be more. Adam is absolute prince with the unlimited authority of fatherhood over all his posterity; all his posterity are then absolutely his subjects; and, as our author says, his slaves, children, and grand-children, are equally in this state of subjection and slavery; and yet, says our author, the children of Adam have paternal, i. e. absolute unlimited power over their own children: Which in plain English is, they are slaves and absolute princes at the same time, and in the same government; and one part of the subjects have an absolute unlimited power over the other by the natural right of parentage.

  §. 70.

  If any one will suppose, in favour of our author, that he here meant, that parents, who are in subjection themselves to the absolute authority of their father, have yet some power over their children; I confess he is something nearer the truth: but he will not at all hereby help our author: for he no where speaking of the paternal power, but as an absolute unlimited authority, cannot be supposed to understand any thing else here, unless he himself had limited it, and shewed how far it reached. And that he means here paternal authority in that large extent, is plain from the immediate following words; This subjection of children being, says he, the foundation of all regal authority, p. 12. the subjection then that in the former line, he says, every man is in to his parents, and consequently what Adam’s grand-children were in to their parents, was that which was the fountain of all regal authority, i. e. according to our author, absolute unlimitable authority. And thus Adam’s children had regal authority over their children, whilst they themselves were subjects to their father, and fellow-subjects with their children. But let him mean as he pleases, it is plain he allows Adam’s children to have paternal power, p. 12. as also all other fathers to have paternal powerover their children, Observations, 156. From whence one of these two things will necessarily follow, that either Adam’s children, even in his life-time, had, and so all other fathers have, as he phrases it, p. 12. by right of fatherhood, royal authority over their children, or else, that Adam, by right of fatherhood, had not royal authority. For it cannot be but that paternal power does, or does not, give royal authority to them that have it: if it does not, then Adam could not be sovereign by this title, nor any body else; and then there is an end of all our author’s politics at once: if it does give royal authority, then every one that has paternal power has royal authority; and then, by our author’s patriarchal government, there will be as many kings as there are fathers.

  §. 71.

  And thus what a monarchy he hath set up, let him and his disciples consider. Princes certainly will have great reason to thank him for these new politics, which set up as many absolute kings in every country as there are fathers of children. And yet who can blame our author for it, it lying unavoidably in the way of one discoursing upon our author’s principles? For having placed an absolute power in fathers by right of begetting, he could not easily resolve how much of this power belonged to a son over the children he had begotten; and so it fell out to be a very hard matter to give all the power, as he does, to Adam, and yet allow a part in his life-time to his children, when they were parents, and which he knew not well how to deny them. This makes him so doubtful in his expressions, and so uncertain where to place this absolute natural power, which he calls fatherhood. Sometimes Adam alone has it all, as p. 13. Observations, 244, 245. & Pref.

  Sometimes parents have it, which word scarce signifies the father alone, p. 12, 19.

  Sometimes children during their fathers life-time, as p. 12.

  Sometimes fathers of families, as p. 78, and 79.

  Sometimes fathers indefinitely, Observations, 155.

  Sometimes the heir to Adam, Observations, 253.

  Sometimes the posterity of Adam, 244, 246.

  Sometimes prime fathers, all sons or grand-children of Noah, Observations, 244.

  Sometimes the eldest parents, p. 12.

  Sometimes all kings, p. 19.

  Sometimes all that have supreme power, Observations, 245.

  Sometimes heirs to those first progenitors, who were at first the natural parents of the whole people, p. 19.

  Sometimes an elective king, p. 23.

  Sometimes those, whether a few or a multitude, that govern the common-wealth, p. 23.

  Sometimes he that can catch it, an usurper, p. 23. Observations, 155.

  §. 72.

  Thus this new nothing, that is to carry with it all power, authority, and government; this fatherhood, which is to design the person, and establish the throne of monarchs, whom the people are to obey, may, according to Sir Robert, come into any hands, any how, and so by his politics give to democracy royal authority, and make an usurper a lawful prince. And if it will do all these fine feats, much good do our author and all his followers with their omnipotent fatherhood, which can serve for nothing but to unsettle and destroy all the lawful governments in the world, and to establish in their room disorder, tyranny, and usurpation.

  CHAP. VII.
  Of Fatherhood and Property considered together as Fountains of Sovereignty.

  §. 73.

  In the foregoing chapters we have seen what Adam’s monarchy was, in our author’s opinion, and upon what titles he founded it. The foundations which he lays the chief stress on, as those from which he thinks he may best derive monarchical power to future princes, are two, viz. Fatherhoodand property: and therefore the way he proposes to remove the absurdities and inconveniencies of the doctrine of natural freedom, is, to maintain the natural and private dominion of Adam, Observations, 222. Conformable hereunto, he tells us, the grounds and principles of government necessarily depend upon the original of property, Observations, 108. The subjection of children to their parents is the fountain of all regal authority, p. 12. And all power on earth is either derived or usurped from the fatherly power, there being no other original to be found of any power whatsoever, Observations, 158. I will not stand here to examine how it can be said without a contradiction, that the first grounds and principles of government necessarily depend upon the original of property, and yet, that there is no other original of any power whatsoever, but that of the father: it being hard to understand how there can be no other original but fatherhood, and yet that the grounds and principles of government depend upon the original of property; property and fatherhood being as far different as lord of a manor and father of children. Nor do I see how they will either of them agree with what our author says, Observations, 244. of God’s sentence against Eve, Gen. iii. 16. That it is the original grant of government: so that if that were the original, government had not its original, by our author’s own confession, either from property or fatherhood; and this text, which he brings as a proof of Adam’s power over Eve, necessarily contradicts what he says of the fatherhood, that it is the sole fountain of all power: for if Adam had any such regal power over Eve, as our author contends for, it must be by some other title than that of begetting.

  §. 74.

  But I leave him to reconcile these contradictions, as well as many others, which may plentifully be found in him by any one, who will but read him with a little attention; and shall come now to consider, how these two originals of government, Adam’s natural and private dominion, will consist, and serve to make out and establish the titles of succeeding monarchs, who, as our author obliges them, must all derive their power from these fountains. Let us then suppose Adam made, by God’s donation, lord and sole proprietor of the whole earth, in as large and ample a manner as Sir Robert could wish; let us suppose him also, by right of fatherhood, absolute ruler over his children with an unlimited supremacy; I ask then, upon Adam’s death what becomes of both his natural and private dominion? and I doubt not it will be answered, that they descended to his next heir, as our author tells us in several places. But this way, it is plain, cannot possibly convey both his natural and private dominion to the same person: for should we allow, that all the property, all the estate of the father, ought to descend to the eldest son, (which will need some proof to establish it) and so he has by that title all the private dominion of the father, yet the father’s natural dominion, the paternal power cannot descend to him by inheritance: for it being a right that accrues to a man only by begetting, no man can have this natural dominion over any one he does not beget; unless it can be supposed, that a man can have a right to any thing, without doing that upon which that right is solely founded: for if a father by begetting, and no other title, has natural dominion over his children, he that does not beget them cannot have this natural dominion over them; and therefore be it true or false, that our author says, Observations, 156. That every man that is born, by his very birth becomes a subject to him that begets him, this necessarily follows, viz. That a man by his birth cannot become a subject to his brother, who did not beget him; unless it can be supposed that a man by the very same title can come to be under the natural and absolute dominion of two different men at once; or it be sense to say, that a man by birth is under the natural dominion of his father, only because he begat him, and a man by birth also is under the natural dominion of his eldest brother, though he did not beget him.

  §. 75.

  If then the private dominion of Adam, i. e. his property in the creatures, descended at his death all entirely to his eldest son, his heir; (for, if it did not, there is presently an end of all Sir Robert’s monarchy) and his natural dominion, the dominion a father has over his children by begetting them, belonged immediately, upon Adam’s decease, equally to all his sons who had children, by the same title their father had it, the sovereignty founded upon property, and the sovereignty founded upon fatherhood, come to be divided; since Cain, as heir, had that of property alone; Seth, and the other sons, that of fatherhood equally with him. This is the best can be made of our author’s doctrine, and of the two titles of sovereignty he sets up in Adam: one of them will either signify nothing; or, if they both must stand, they can serve only to confound the rights of princes, and disorder government in his posterity: for by building upon two titles to dominion, which cannot descend together, and which he allows may be separated, (for he yields that Adam’s children had their distinct territories by right of private dominion, Observations, 210.p.40.) he makes it perpetually a doubt upon his principles where the sovereignty is, or to whom we owe our obedience, since fatherhood and property are distinct titles, and began presently upon Adam’s death to be in distinct persons. And which then was to give way to the other?

  §. 76.

  Let us take the account of it, as he himself gives it us. He tells us out of Grotius, That Adam’s children by donation, assignation, or some kind of cession before he was dead, had their distinct territories by right of private dominion; Abel had his flocks and pastures for them: Cain had his fields for corn, and the land of Nod, where he built him a city, Observations, 210. Here it is obvious to demand, which of these two after Adam’s death was sovereign? Cain, says our author, p. 19. By what title? As heir; for heirs to progenitors, who were natural parents of their people, are not only lords of their own children, but also of their brethren, says our author, p. 19. What was Cain heir to? Not the entire possessions, not all that which Adam had private dominion in; for our author allows that Abel, by a title derived from his father, had his distinct territory for pasture by right of private dominion. What then Abel had by private dominion, was exempt from Cain’s dominion: for he could not have private dominion over that which was under the private dominion of another; and therefore his sovereignty over his brother is gone with this private dominion, and so there are presently two sovereigns, and his imaginary title of fatherhood is out of doors, and Cain is no prince over his brother: or else, if Cain retain his sovereignty over Abel, notwithstanding his private dominion, it will follow, that the first grounds and principles of government have nothing to do with property, whatever our author says to the contrary. It is true, Abel did not outlive his father Adam; but that makes nothing to the argument, which will hold good against Sir Robert in Abel’s issue, or in Seth, or any of the posterity of Adam, not descended from Cain.

  §. 77.

  The same inconvenience he runs into about the three sons of Noah, who, as he says, p. 13. had the whole world divided amongst them by their father. I ask then, in which of the three shall we find the establishment of regal power after Noah’s death? If in all three, as our author there seems to say; then it will follow, that regal power is founded in property of land, and follows private dominion, and not in paternal power, or natural dominion; and so there is an end of paternal power as the fountain of regal authority, and the so-much-magnified fatherhood quite vanishes. If the regal power descended to Shem as eldest, and heir to his father, then Noah’s division of the world by lot to his sons, or his ten years sailing about the Mediterranean to appoint each son his part, which our author tells of, p. 15. was labour lost; his division of the world to them, was to ill, or to no purpose: for his grant to Cham and Japhet was little worth, if Shem, notwithstanding this grant, as soon as Noah was dead, was to be lord over them. Or, if this grant of private dominion to them, over their assigned territories, were good, here were set up two distinct sorts of power, not subordinate one to the other, with all those inconveniences which he musters up against the power of the people, Observations, 158. which I shall set down in his own words, only changing property for people. All power on earth is either derived or usurped from the fatherly power, there being no other original to be found of any power whatsoever: for if there should be granted two sorts of power, without any subordination of one to the other, they would be in perpetual strife which should be supreme, for two supremes cannot agree: if the fatherly power be supreme, then the power grounded on private dominion must be subordinate, and depend on it; and if the power grounded on property be supreme, then the fatherly power must submit to it, and cannot be exercised without the licence of the proprietors, which must quite destroy the frame and course of nature. This is his own arguing against two distinct independent powers, which I have set down in his own words, only putting power rising from property, for power of the people; and when he has answered what he himself has urged here against two distinct powers, we shall be better able to see how, with any tolerable sense, he can derive all regal authority from the natural and private dominion of Adam, from fatherhood and property together, which are distinct titles, that do not always meet in the same person; and it is plain, by his own confession, presently separated as soon both as Adam’s and Noah’s death made way for succession: though our author frequently in his writings jumbles them together, and omits not to make use of either, where he thinks it will sound best to his purpose. But the absurdities of this will more fully appear in the next chapter, where we shall examine the ways of conveyance of the sovereignty of Adam, to princes that were to reign after him.

  CHAP. VIII.
  Of the Conveyance of Adam’s sovereign Monarchical Power.

  §. 78.

  SIR Robert, having not been very happy in any proof he brings for the sovereignty of Adam, is not much more fortunate in conveying it to future princes, who, if his politics be true, must all derive their titles from that first monarch. The ways he has assigned, as they lie scattered up and down in his writings, I will set down in his own words: in his preface he tells us, That Adam being monarch of the whole world, none of his posterity had any right to possess any thing, but by his grant or permission, or by succession from him. Here he makes two ways of conveyance of any thing Adam stood possessed of; and those are grants or succession. Again he says, All kings either are, or are tobe reputed, the next heirs to those first progenitors, who were at first the natural parents of the whole people, p. 19. There cannot be any multitude of men whatsoever, but that in it, considered by itself, there is one man amongst them, that in nature hath a right to be the king of all the rest, as being the next heir to Adam, Observations, 253. Here in these places inheritance is the only way he allows of conveying monarchical power to princes. In other places he tells us, Observations, 155. All power on earth is either derived or usurped from the fatherly power, Observations, 158. All kings that now are, or ever were, are or were either fathers of their people, or heirs of such fathers, or usurpers of the right of such fathers, Observations, 253. And here he makes inheritance or usurpation the only ways whereby kings come by this original power: but yet he tells us, This fatherly empire, as it was of itself hereditary, so it was alienable by patent, and seizable by an usurper, Observations, 190. So then here inheritance, grant, or usurpation, will convey it. And last of all, which is most admirable, he tells us, p. 100. It skills not which way kings come by their power, whether by election, donation, succession, or by any other means; for it is still the manner of the government by supreme power, that makes them properly kings, and not the means of obtaining their crowns. Which I think is a full answer to all his whole hypothesis and discourse about Adam’s royal authority, as the fountain from which all princes were to derive theirs: and he might have spared the trouble of speaking so much as he does, up and down, of heirs and inheritance, if to make any one properly a king, needs no more but governing by supreme power, and it matters not by what means he came by it.

  §. 79.

  By this notable way, our author may make Oliver as properly king, as any one else he could think of: and had he had the happiness to live under Massanello’s government, he could not by this his own rule have forborn to have done homage to him, with O king live for ever, since the manner of his government by supreme power, made him properly king, who was but the day before properly a fisherman. And if Don Quixote had taught his squire to govern with supreme authority, our author no doubt could have made a most loyal subject in Sancho Pancha’s island; and he must needs have deserved some preferment in such governments, since I think he is the first politician, who, pretending to settle government upon its true basis, and to establish the thrones of lawful princes, ever told the world, That he was properly a king, whose manner of government was by supreme power, by what means soever he obtained it; which in plain English is to say, that regal and supreme power is properly and truly his, who can by any means seize upon it; and if this be to be properly a king, I wonder how he came to think of, or where he will find, an usurper.

  §. 80.

  This is so strange a doctrine, that the surprise of it hath made me pass by, without their due reflection, the contradictions he runs into, by making sometimes inheritance alone, sometimes only grant or inheritance, sometimes only inheritance or usurpation, sometimes all these three, and at last election, or any other means, added to them, the ways whereby Adam’s royal authority, that is, his right to supreme rule, could be conveyed down to future kings and governors, so as to give them a title to the obedience and subjection of the people. But these contradictions lie so open, that the very reading of our author’s own words will discover them to any ordinary understanding; and though what I have quoted out of him (with abundance more of the same strain and coherence, which might be found in him) might well excuse me from any farther trouble in this argument, yet having proposed to myself, to examine the main parts of his doctrine, I shall a little more particularly consider how inheritance, grant, usurpation or election, can any way make out government in the world upon his principles; or derive to any one a right of empire, from this regal authority of Adam, had it been never so well proved, that he had been absolute monarch, and lord of the whole world.

  CHAP. IX.
  Of Monarchy, by Inheritance from Adam.

  §. 81.

  Though it be never so plain, that there ought to be government in the world, nay, should all men be of our author’s mind, that divine appointment had ordained it to be monarchical; yet, since men cannot obey any thing, that cannot command; and ideas of government in the fancy, though never so perfect, though never so right, cannot give laws, nor prescribe rules to the actions of men; it would be of no behoof for the settling of order, and establishment of government in its exercise and use amongst men, unless there were a way also taught how to know the person, to whom it belonged to have this power, and exercise this dominion over others. It is in vain then to talk of subjection and obedience without telling us whom we are to obey: for were I never so fully persuaded that there ought to be magistracy and rule in the world; yet I am never the less at liberty still, till it appears who is the person that hath right to my obedience; since, if there be no marks to know him by, and distinguish him that hath right to rule from other men, it may be myself, as well as any other. And therefore, though submission to government be every one’s duty, yet since that signifies nothing but submitting to the direction and laws of such men as have authority to command, it is not enough to make a man a subject, to convince him that there is regal power in the world; but there must be ways of designing, and knowing the person to whom this regal power of right belongs: and a man can never be obliged in conscience to submit to any power, unless he can be satisfied who is the person who has a right to exercise that power over him. If this were not so, there would be no distinction between pirates and lawful princes; he that has force is without any more ado to be obeyed, and crowns and scepters would become the inheritance only of violence and rapine. Men too might as often and as innocently change their governors, as they do their physicians, if the person cannot be known who has a right to direct me, and whose prescriptions I am bound to follow. To settle therefore men’s consciences, under an obligation to obedience, it is necessary that they know not only, that there is a power somewhere in the world, but the person who by right is vested with this power over them.

  §. 82.

  How successful our author has been in his attempts, to set up a monarchical absolute power in Adam, the reader may judge by what has been already said; but were that absolute monarchy as clear as our author would desire it, as I presume it is the contrary, yet it could be of no use to the government of mankind now in the world, unless he also make out these two things.

  First, That this power of Adam was not to end with him, but was upon his decease conveyed intire to some other person, and so on to posterity.

  Secondly, That the princes and rulers now on earth are possessed of this power of Adam, by a right way of conveyance derived to them.

  §. 83.

  If the first of these fail, the power of Adam, were it never so great, never so certain, will signify nothing to the present government and societies in the world; but we must seek out some other original of power for the government of politys than this of Adam, or else there will be none at all in the world. If the latter fail, it will destroy the authority of the present governors, and absolve the people from subjection to them, since they, having no better a claim than others to that power, which is alone the fountain of all authority, can have no title to rule over them.

  §. 84.

  Our author, having fancied an absolute sovereignty in Adam, mentions several ways of its conveyance to princes, that were to be his successors; but that which he chiefly insists on, is that of inheritance, which occurs so often in his several discourses; and I having in the foregoing chapter quoted several of these passages, I shall not need here again to repeat them. This sovereignty he erects, as has been said, upon a double foundation, viz. that of property, and that of fatherhood. One was the right he was supposed to have in all creatures, a right to possess the earth with the beasts, and other inferior ranks of things in it, for his private use, exclusive of all other men. The other was the right he was supposed to have, to rule and govern men, all the rest of mankind.

  §. 85.

  In both these rights, there being supposed an exclusion of all other men, it must be upon some reason peculiar to Adam, that they must both be founded.

  That of his property our author supposes to arise from God’s immediate donation, Gen. i. 28. and that of fatherhood from the act of begetting: now in all inheritance, if the heir succeed not to the reason upon which his father’s right was founded, he cannot succeed to the right which followeth from it. For example, Adam had a right of property in the creatures upon the donation and grant of God almighty, who was lord and proprietor of them all: let this be so as our author tells us, yet upon his death his heir can have no title to them, no such right of property in them, unless the same reason, viz. God’s donation, vested a right in the heir too: for if Adam could have had no property in, nor use of the creatures, without this positive donation from God, and this donation were only personally to Adam, his heir could have no right by it; but upon his death it must revert to God, the lord and owner again; for positive grants give no title farther than the express words convey it, and by which only it is held. And thus, if as our author himself contends, that donation, Gen. i. 28. were made only to Adam personally, his heir could not succeed to his property in the creatures; and if it were a donation to any but Adam, let it be shewn, that it was to his heir in our author’s sense, i. e. to one of his children, exclusive of all the rest.

  §. 86.

  But not to follow our author too far out of the way, the plain of the case is this. God having made man, and planted in him, as in all other animals, a strong desire of self-preservation; and furnished the world with things fit for food and raiment, and other necessaries of life, subservient to his design, that man should live and abide for some time upon the face of the earth, and not that so curious and wonderful a piece of workmanship, by his own negligence, or want of necessaries, should perish again, presently after a few moments continuance; God, I say, having made man and the world thus, spoke to him, (that is) directed him by his senses and reason, as he did the inferior animals by their sense and instinct, which were serviceable for his subsistence, and given him as the means of his preservation. And therefore I doubt not, but before these words were pronounced, i. Gen. 28, 29. (if they must be understood literally to have been spoken) and without any such verbal donation, man had a right to an use of the creatures, by the will and grant of God: for the desire, strong desire of preserving his life and being, having been planted in him as a principle of action by God himself, reason, which was the voice of God in him, could not but teach him and assure him, that pursuing that natural inclination he had to preserve his being, he followed the will of his maker, and therefore had a right to make use of those creatures, which by his reason or senses he could discover would be serviceable thereunto. And thus man’s property in the creatures was founded upon the right he had to make use of those things that were necessary or useful to his being.

  §. 87.

  This being the reason and foundation of Adam’s property, gave the same title, on the same ground, to all his children, not only after his death, but in his life-time: so that here was no privilege of his heir above his other children, which could exclude them from an equal right to the use of the inferior creatures, for the comfortable preservation of their beings, which is all the property man hath in them; and so Adam’s sovereignty built on property, or, as our author calls it, private dominion, comes to nothing. Every man had a right to the creatures, by the same title Adam had, viz. by the right every one had to take care of, and provide for their subsistence: and thus men had a right in common, Adam’s children in common with him. But if any one had began, and made himself a property in any particular thing, (which how he, or any one else, could do, shall be shewn in another place) that thing, that possession, if he disposed not otherwise of it by his positive grant, descended naturally to his children, and they had a right to succeed to it, and possess it.

  §. 88.

  It might reasonably be asked here, how come children by this right of possessing, before any other, the properties of their parents upon their decease? for it being personally the parents, when they die, without actually transferring their right to another, why does it not return again to the common stock of mankind? It will perhaps be answered, that common consent hath disposed of it to their children. Common practice, we see indeed, does so dispose of it; but we cannot say, that it is the common consent of mankind; for that hath never been asked, nor actually given; and if common tacit consent hath established it, it would make but a positive, and not a natural right of children to inherit the goods of their parents: but where the practice is universal, it is reasonable to think the cause is natural. The ground then I think to be this. The first and strongest desire God planted in men, and wrought into the very principles of their nature, being that of self-preservation, that is the foundation of a right to the creatures for the particular support and use of each individual person himself. But, next to this, God planted in men a strong desire also of propagating their kind, and continuing themselves in their posterity; and this gives children a title to share in the property of their parents, and a right to inherit their possessions. Men are not proprietors of what they have, meerly for themselves; their children have a title to part of it, and have their kind of right joined with their parents, in the possession which comes to be wholly their’s, when death, having put an end to their parents use of it, hath taken them from their possessions; and this we call inheritance: men being by a like obligation bound to preserve what they have begotten, as to preserve themselves, their issue come to have a right in the goods they are possessed of. That children have such a right, is plain from the laws of God; and that men are convinced that children have such a right, is evident from the law of the land; both which laws require parents to provide for their children.

  §. 89.

  For children being by the course of nature, born weak, and unable to provide for themselves, they have by the appointment of God himself, who hath thus ordered the course of nature, a right to be nourished and maintained by their parents; nay, a right not only to a bare subsistence, but to the conveniencies and comforts of life, as far as the conditions of their parents can afford it. Hence it comes, that when their parents leave the world, and so the care due to their children ceases, the effects of it are to extend as far as possibly they can, and the provisions they have made in their life-time, are understood to be intended, as nature requires they should, for their children, whom, after themselves, they are bound to provide for: though the dying parents, by express words, declare nothing about them, nature appoints the descent of their property to their children, who thus come to have a title, and natural right of inheritance to their fathers goods, which the rest of mankind cannot pretend to.

  §. 90.

  Were it not for this right of being nourished and maintained by their parents, which God and nature has given to children, and obliged parents to as a duty, it would be reasonable, that the father should inherit the estate of his son, and be preferred in the inheritance before his grand-child: for to the grand-father there is due a long score of care and expences laid out upon the breeding and education of his son, which one would think in justice ought to be paid. But that having been done in obedience to the same law, whereby he received nourishment and education from his own parents; this score of education, received from a man’s father, is paid by taking care, and providing for his own children; is paid, I say, as much as is required of payment by alteration of property, unless present necessity of the parents require a return of goods for their necessary support and subsistence: for we are not now speaking of that reverence, acknowledgment, respect and honour, that is always due from children to their parents; but of possessions and commodities of life valuable by money. But though it be incumbent on parents to bring up and provide for their children, yet this debt to their children does not quite cancel the score due to their parents; but only is made by nature preferable to it: for the debt a man owes his father takes place, and gives the father a right to inherit the son’s goods, where, for want of issue, the right of children doth not exclude that title. And therefore a man having a right to be maintained by his children, where he needs it; and to enjoy also the comforts of life from them, when the necessary provision due to them and their children will afford it; if his son die without issue, the father has a right in nature to possess his goods, and inherit his estate, (whatever the municipal laws of some countries may absurdly direct otherwise;) and so again his children and their issue from him; or, for want of such, his father and his issue. But where no such are to be found, i. e. no kindred, there we see the possessions of a private man revert to the community, and so in politic societies come into the hands of the public magistrate; but in the state of nature become again perfectly common, no body having a right to inherit them: nor can any one have a property in them, otherwise than in other things common by nature; of which I shall speak in its due place.

  §. 91.

  I have been the larger, in shewing upon what ground children have a right to succeed to the possession of their fathers properties, not only because by it, it will appear, that if Adam had a property (a titular, insignificant, useless property; for it could be no better, for he was bound to nourish and maintain his children and posterity out of it) in the whole earth and its product, yet all his children coming to have, by the law of nature, and right of inheritance, a joint title, and right of property in it after his death, it could convey no right of sovereignty to any one of his posterity over the rest: since every one having a right of inheritance to his portion, they might enjoy their inheritance, or any part of it in common, or share it, or some parts of it, by division, as it best liked them. But no one could pretend to the whole inheritance, or any sovereignty supposed to accompany it; since a right of inheritance gave every one of the rest, as well as any one, a title to share in the goods of his father. Not only upon this account, I say, have I been so particular in examining the reason of children’s inheriting the property of their fathers, but also because it will give us farther light in the inheritance of rule and power, which in countries where their particular municipal laws give the whole possession of land entirely to the first-born, and descent of power has gone so to men by this custom, some have been apt to be deceived into an opinion, that there was a natural or divine right of primogeniture, to both estate and power; and that the inheritance of both rule over men, and property in things, sprang from the same original, and were to descend by the same rules.

  §. 92.

  Property, whose original is from the right a man has to use any of the inferior creatures, for the subsistence and comfort of his life, is for the benefit and sole advantage of the proprietor, so that he may even destroy the thing, that he has property in by his use of it, where need requires: but government being for the preservation of every man’s right and property, by preserving him from the violence or injury of others, is for the good of the governed: for the magistrate’s sword being for a terror to evil doers, and by that terror to inforce men to observe the positive laws of the society, made conformable to the laws of nature, for the public good, i. e. the good of every particular member of that society, as far as by common rules it can be provided for; the sword is not given the magistrate for his own good alone.

  §. 93.

  Children therefore, as has been shewed, by the dependance they have on their parents for subsistence, have a right of inheritance to their fathers property, as that which belongs to them for their proper good and behoof, and therefore are fitly termed goods, wherein the first-born has not a sole or peculiar right by any law of God and nature, the younger children having an equal title with him, founded on that right they all have to maintenance, support, and comfort from their parents, and on nothing else. But government being for the benefit of the governed, and not the sole advantage of the governors, (but only for their’s with the rest, as they make a part of that politic body, each of whose parts and members are taken care of, and directed in its peculiar functions for the good of the whole, by the laws of society) cannot be inherited by the same title, that children have to the goods of their father. The right a son has to be maintained and provided with the necessaries and conveniences of life out of his father’s stock, gives him a right to succeed to his father’s property for his own good; but this can give him no right to succeed also to the rule, which his father had over other men. All that a child has right to claim from his father is nourishment and education, and the things nature furnishes for the support of life: but he has no right to demand rule or dominion from him: he can subsist and receive from him the portion of good things, and advantages of education naturally due to him, without empire and dominion. That (if his father hath any) was vested in him, for the good and behoof of others: and therefore the son cannot claim or inherit it by a title, which is founded wholly on his own private good and advantage.

  §. 94.

  We must know how the first ruler, from whom any one claims, came by his authority, upon what ground any one has empire, what his title is to it, before we can know who has a right to succeed him in it, and inherit it from him: if the agreement and consent of men first gave a scepter into any one’s hand, or put a crown on his head, that also must direct its descent and conveyance; for the same authority, that made the first a lawful ruler, must make the second too, and so give right of succession: in this case inheritance, or primogeniture, can in its self have no right, no pretence to it, any farther than that consent, which established the form of the government, hath so settled the succession. And thus we see, the succession of crowns, in several countries, places it on different heads, and he comes by right of succession to be a prince in one place, who would be a subject in another.

  §. 95.

  If God, by his positive grant and revealed declaration, first gave rule and dominion to any man, he that will claim by that title, must have the same positive grant of God for his succession: for if that has not directed the course of its descent and conveyance down to others, no body can succeed to this title of the first ruler. Children have no right of inheritance to this; and primogeniture can lay no claim to it, unless God, the author of this constitution, hath so ordained it. Thus we see, the pretensions of Saul’s family, who received his crown from the immediate appointment of God, ended with his reign; and David, by the same title that Saul reigned, viz. God’s appointment, succeeded in his throne, to the exclusion of Jonathan, and all pretensions of paternal inheritance: and if Solomon had a right to succeed his father, it must be by some other title, than that of primogeniture. A cadet, or sister’s son, must have the preference in succession, if he has the same title the first lawful prince had: and in dominion that has its foundation only in the positive appointment of God himself, Benjamin, the youngest, must have the inheritance of the crown, if God so direct, as well as one of that tribe had the first possession.

  §. 96.

  If paternal right, the act of begetting, give a man rule and dominion, inheritance or primogeniture can give no title: for he that cannot succeed to his father’s title, which was begetting, cannot succeed to that power over his brethren, which his father had by paternal right over them. But of this I shall have occasion to say more in another place. This is plain in the mean time, that any government, whether supposed to be at first founded in paternal right, consent of the people, or the positive appointment of God himself, which can supersede either of the other, and so begin a new government upon a new foundation; I say, any government began upon either of these, can by right of succession come to those only, who have the title of him they succeed to: power founded on contract can descend only to him, who has right by that contract: power founded on begetting, he only can have that begets; and power founded on the positive grant or donation of God, he only can have by right of succession, to whom that grant directs it.

  §. 97.

  From what I have said, I think this is clear, that a right to the use of the creatures, being founded originally in the right a man has to subsist and enjoy the conveniencies of life; and the natural right children have to inherit the goods of their parents, being founded in the right they have to the same subsistence and commodities of life, out of the stock of their parents, who are therefore taught by natural love and tenderness to provide for them, as a part of themselves; and all this being only for the good of the proprietor, or heir; it can be no reason for children’s inheriting of rule and dominion, which has another original and a different end. Nor can primogeniture have any pretence to a right of solely inheriting either property or power, as we shall, in its due place, see more fully. It is enough to have shewed here, that Adam’s property, or private dominion, could not convey any sovereignty or rule to his heir, who not having a right to inherit all his father’s possessions, could not thereby come to have any sovereignty over his brethren: and therefore, if any sovereignty on account of his property had been vested in Adam, which in truth there was not, yet it would have died with him.

  §. 98.

  As Adam’s sovereignty, if, by virtue of being proprietor of the world, he had any authority over men, could not have been inherited by any of his children over the rest, because they had the same title to divide the inheritance, and every one had a right to a portion of his father’s possessions; so neither could Adam’s sovereignty by right of fatherhood, if any such he had, descend to any one of his children: for it being, in our author’s account, a right acquired by begetting to rule over those he had begotten, it was not a power possible to be inherited, because the right being consequent to, and built on, an act perfectly personal, made that power so too, and impossible to be inherited: for paternal power, being a natural right rising only from the relation of father and son, is as impossible to be inherited as the relation itself; and a man may pretend as well to inherit the conjugal power the husband, whose heir he is, had over his wife, as he can to inherit the paternal power of a father over his children: for the power of the husband being founded on contract, and the power of the father on begetting, he may as well inherit the power obtained by the conjugal contract, which was only personal, as he may the power obtained by begetting, which could reach no farther than the person of the begetter, unless begetting can be a title to power in him that does not beget.

  §. 99.

  Which makes it a reasonable question to ask, whether Adam, dying before Eve, his heir, (suppose Cain or Seth) should have by right of inheriting Adam’s fatherhood, sovereign power over Eve his mother: for Adam’s fatherhood being nothing but a right he had to govern his children, because he begot them, he that inherits Adam’s fatherhood, inherits nothing, even in our author’s sense, but the right Adam had to govern his children, because he begot them: so that the monarchy of the heir would not have taken in Eve; or if it did, it being nothing but the fatherhood of Adam descended by inheritance, the heir must have right to govern Eve, because Adam begot her; for fatherhood is nothing else.

  §. 100.

  Perhaps it will be said with our author, that a man can alien his power over his child; and what may be transferred by compact, may be possessed by inheritance. I answer, a father cannot alien the power he has over his child: he may perhaps to some degrees forfeit it, but cannot transfer it; and if any other man acquire it, it is not by the father’s grant, but by some act of his own. For example, a father, unnaturally careless of his child, sells or gives him to another man; and he again exposes him; a third man finding him, breeds up, cherishes, and provides for him as his own: I think in this case, no body will doubt, but that the greatest part of filial duty and subjection was here owing, and to be paid to this foster-father; and if any thing could be demanded from the child, by either of the other, it could be only due to his natural father, who perhaps might have forfeited his right to much of that duty comprehended in the command, Honour your parents, but could transfer none of it to another. He that purchased, and neglected the child, got by his purchase and grant of the father, no title to duty or honour from the child; but only he acquired it, who by his own authority, performing the office and care of a father, to the forlorn and perishing infant, made himself, by paternal care, a title to proportionable degrees of paternal power. This will be more easily admitted upon consideration of the nature of paternal power, for which I refer my reader to the second book.

  §. 101.

  To return to the argument in hand; this is evident, That paternal power arising only from begetting, for in that our author places it alone, can neither be transferred nor inherited: and he that does not beget, can no more have paternal power, which arises from thence, than he can have a right to any thing, who performs not the condition, to which only it is annexed. If one should ask, by what law has a father power over his children? it will be answered, no doubt, by the law of nature, which gives such a power over them, to him that begets them. If one should ask likewise, by what law does our author’s heir come by a right to inherit? I think it would be answered, by the law of nature too: for I find not that our author brings one word of scripture to prove the right of such an heir he speaks of. Why then the law of nature gives fathers paternal power over their children, because they did beget them; and the same law of nature gives the same paternal power to the heir over his brethren, who did not beget them: whence it follows, that either the father has not his paternal power by begetting, or else that the heir has it not at all; for it is hard to understand how the law of nature, which is the law of reason, can give the paternal power to the father over his children, for the only reason of begetting; and to the first-born over his brethren without this only reason, i. e. for no reason at all: and if the eldest, by the law of nature, can inherit this paternal power, without the only reason that gives a title to it, so may the youngest as well as he, and a stranger as well as either; for where there is no reason for any one, as there is not, but for him that begets, all have an equal title. I am sure our author offers no reason; and when any body does, we shall see whether it will hold or no.

  §. 102.

  In the mean time it is as good sense to say, that by the law of nature a man has right to inherit the property of another, because he is of kin to him, and is known to be of his blood; and therefore, by the same law of nature, an utter stranger to his blood has right to inherit his estate; as to say that, by the law of nature, he that begets them has paternal power over his children, and therefore, by the law of nature, the heir that begets them not, has this paternal power over them; or supposing the law of the land gave absolute power over their children, to such only who nursed them, and fed their children themselves, could any body pretend, that this law gave any one, who did no such thing, absolute power over those, who were not his children?

  §. 103.

  When therefore it can be shewed, that conjugal power can belong to him that is not an husband, it will also I believe be proved, that our author’s paternal power, acquired by begetting, may be inherited by a son; and that a brother, as heir to his father’s power, may have paternal power over his brethren, and by the same rule conjugal power too: but till then, I think we may rest satisfied, that the paternal power of Adam, this sovereign authority of fatherhood, were there any such, could not descend to, nor be inherited by, his next heir. Fatherly power, I easily grant our author, if it will do him any good, can never be lost, because it will be as long in the world as there are fathers: but none of them will have Adam’s paternal power, or derive their’s from him; but every one will have his own, by the same title Adam had his, viz. by begetting, but not by inheritance, or succession, no more than husbands have their conjugal power by inheritance from Adam. And thus we see, as Adam had no such property, no such paternal power, as gave him sovereign jurisdiction over mankind; so likewise his sovereignty built upon either of these titles, if he had any such, could not have descended to his heir, but must have ended with him. Adam therefore, as has been proved, being neither monarch, nor his imaginary monarchy hereditable, the power which is now in the world, is not that which was Adam’s, since all that Adam could have upon our author’s grounds, either of property or fatherhood, necessarily died with him, and could not be conveyed to posterity by inheritance. In the next place we will consider, whether Adam had any such heir, to inherit his power, as our author talks of.

  CHAP. X.
  Of the Heir to Adam’s Monarchical Power.

  §. 104.

  OUR author tells us, Observations, 253. That it is a truth undeniable, that there cannot be any multitude of men whatsoever, either great or small, tho’ gathered together from the several corners and remotest regions of the world, but that in the same multitude, considered by its self, there is one man amongst them, that in nature hath a right to be king of all the rest, as being the next heir to Adam, and all the other subjects to him: every man by nature is a king or a subject. And again, p. 20. If Adam himself were still living, and now ready to die, it is certain that there is one man, and but one in the world, who is next heir. Let this multitude of men be, if our author pleases, all the princes upon the earth, there will then be, by our author’s rule, one amongst them, that in nature hath a right to be king of all the rest, as being the right heir to Adam; an excellent way to establish the thrones of princes, and settle the obedience of their subjects, by setting up an hundred, or perhaps a thousand titles (if there be so many princes in the world) against any king now reigning, each as good, upon our author’s grounds, as his who wears the crown. If this right of heir carry any weight with it, if it be the ordinance of God, as our author seems to tells us, Observations, 244. must not all be subject to it, from the highest to the lowest? Can those who wear the name of princes, without having the right of being heirs to Adam, demand obedience from their subjects by this title, and not be bound to pay it by the same law? Either governments in the world are not to be claimed, and held by this title of Adam’s heir; and then the starting of it is to no purpose, the being or not being Adam’s heir signifies nothing as to the title of dominion: or if it really be, as our author says, the true title to government and sovereignty, the first thing to be done, is to find out this true heir of Adam, seat him in his throne, and then all the kings and princes of the world ought to come and resign up their crowns and scepters to him, as things that belong no more to them, than to any of their subjects.

  §. 105.

  For either this right in nature, of Adam’s heir, to be king over all the race of men, (for all together they make one multitude) is a right not necessary to the making of a lawful king, and so there may be lawful kings without it, and then kings titles and power depend not on it; or else all the kings in the world but one are not lawful kings, and so have no right to obedience: either this title of heir to Adam is that whereby kings hold their crowns, and have a right to subjection from their subjects, and then one only can have it, and the rest being subjects can require no obedience from other men, who are but their fellow subjects; or else it is not the title whereby kings rule, and have a right to obedience from their subjects, and then kings are kings without it, and this dream of the natural sovereignty of Adam’s heir is of no use to obedience and government: for if kings have a right to dominion, and the obedience of their subjects, who are not, nor can possibly be, heirs to Adam, what use is there of such a title, when we are obliged to obey without it? If kings, who are not heirs to Adam, have no right to sovereignty, we are all free, till our author, or any body for him, will shew us Adam’s right heir. If there be but one heir of Adam, there can be but one lawful king in the world, and no body in conscience can be obliged to obedience till it be resolved who that is; for it may be any one, who is not known to be of a younger house, and all others have equal titles. If there be more than one heir of Adam, every one is his heir, and so every one has regal power: for if two sons can be heirs together, then all the sons are equally heirs, and so all are heirs, being all sons, or sons sons of Adam. Betwixt these two the right of heir cannot stand; for by it either but one only man, or all men are kings. Take which you please, it dissolves the bonds of government and obedience; since, if all men are heirs, they can owe obedience to no body; if only one, no body can be obliged to pay obedience to him, till he be known, and his title made out.

  CHAP. XI.
  Who HEIR?

  §. 106.

  THE great question which in all ages has disturbed mankind, and brought on them the greatest part of those mischiefs which have ruined cities, depopulated countries, and disordered the peace of the world, has been, not whether there be power in the world, nor whence it came, but who should have it. The settling of this point being of no smaller moment than the security of princes, and the peace and welfare of their estates and kingdoms, a reformer of politics, one would think, should lay this sure, and be very clear in it: for if this remain disputable, all the rest will be to very little purpose; and the skill used in dressing up power with all the splendor and temptation absoluteness can add to it, without shewing who has a right to have it, will serve only to give a greater edge to man’s natural ambition, which of its self is but too keen. What can this do but set men on the more eagerly to scramble, and so lay a sure and lasting foundation of endless contention and disorder, instead of that peace and tranquillity, which is the business of government, and the end of human society?

  §. 107.

  This designation of the person our author is more than ordinary obliged to take care of, because he, affirming that the assignment of civil power is by divine institution, hath made the conveyance as well as the power itself sacred: so that no consideration, no act or art of man, can divert it from that person, to whom, by this divine right, it is assigned; no necessity or contrivance can substitute another person in his room: for if the assignment of civil power be by divine institution, and Adam’s heir be he to whom it is thus assigned, as in the foregoing chapter our author tells us, it would be as much sacrilege for any one to be king, who was not Adam’s heir, as it would have been amongst the Jews, for any one to have been priest, who had not been of Aaron’s posterity: for not only the priesthood in general being by divine institution, but the assignment of it to the sole line and posterity of Aaron, made it impossible to be enjoyed or exercised by any one, but those persons who were the off-spring of Aaron: whose succession therefore was carefully observed, and by that the persons who had a right to the priesthood certainly known.

  §. 108.

  Let us see then what care our author has taken, to make us know who is this heir, who by divine institution has a right to be king over all men. The first account of him we meet with is, p. 12. in these words: This subjection of children, being the fountain of all regal authority, by the ordination of God himself; it follows, that civil power, not only in general, is by divine institution, but even the assignment of it, specifically to the eldest parents. Matters of such consequence as this is, should be in plain words, as little liable, as might be, to doubt or equivocation; and I think, if language be capable of expressing any thing distinctly and clearly, that of kindred, and the several degrees of nearness of blood, is one. It were therefore to be wished, that our author had used a little more intelligible expressions here, that we might have better known, who it is, to whom the assignment of civil power is made by divine institution; or at least would have told us what he meant by eldest parents: for I believe, if land had been assigned or granted to him, and the eldest parents of his family, he would have thought it had needed an interpreter; and it would scarce have been known to whom next it belonged.

  §. 109.

  In propriety of speech, (and certainly propriety of speech is necessary in a discourse of this nature) eldest parents signifies either the eldest men and women that have had children, or those who have longest had issue; and then our author’s assertion will be, that those fathers and mothers, who have been longest in the world, or longest fruitful, have by divine institution a right to civil power. If there be any absurdity in this, our author must answer for it: and if his meaning be different from my explication, he is to be blamed, that he would not speak it plainly. This I am sure, parents cannot signify heirs male, nor eldest parents an infant child: who yet may sometimes be the true heir, if there can be but one. And we are hereby still as much at a loss, who civil power belongs to, notwithstanding this assignment by divine institution, as if there had been no such assignment at all, or our author had said nothing of it. This of eldest parents leaving us more in the dark, who by divine institution has a right to civil power, than those who never heard any thing at all of heir, or descent, of which our author is so full. And though the chief matter of his writing be to teach obedience to those, who have a right to it, which he tells us is conveyed by descent, yet who those are, to whom this right by descent belongs, he leaves, like the philosophers stone in politics, out of the reach of any one to discover from his writings.

  §. 110.

  This obscurity cannot be imputed to want of language in so great a master of style as Sir Robert is, when he is resolved with himself what he would say: and therefore, I fear, finding how hard it would be to settle rules of descent by divine institution, and how little it would be to his purpose, or conduce to the clearing and establishing the titles of princes, if such rules of descent were settled, he chose rather to content himself with doubtful and general terms, which might make no ill found in mens ears, who were willing to be pleased with them, rather than offer any clear rules of descent of this fatherhood of Adam, by which men’s consciences might be satisfied to whom it descended, and know the persons who had a right to regal power, and with it to their obedience.

  §. 111.

  How else is it possible, that laying so much stress, as he does, upon descent, and Adam’s heir, next heir, true heir, he should never tell us what heir means, nor the way to know who the next or true heir is? This, I do not remember, he does any where expresly handle; but, where it comes in his way, very warily and doubtfully touches; though it be so necessary, that without it all discourses of government and obedience upon his principles would be to no purpose, and fatherly power, never so well made out, will be of no use to any body. Hence he tells us, Observations, 244. That not only the constitution of power in general, but the limitation of it to one kind, (i. e.) monarchy, and the determination of it to the individual person and line of Adam, are all three ordinances of God; neither Eve nor her children could either limit Adam’s power, or join others with him; and what was given unto Adam was given in his person to his posterity. Here again our author informs us, that the divine ordinance hath limited the descent of Adam’s monarchical power. To whom? To Adam’s line and posterity, says our author. A notable limitation, a limitation to all mankind: for if our author can find any one amongst mankind, that is not of the line and posterity of Adam, he may perhaps tell him, who this next heir of Adam is: but for us, I despair how this limitation of Adam’s empire to his line and posterity will help us to find out one heir. This limitation indeed of our author will save those the labour, who would look for him amongst the race of brutes, if any such there were; but will very little contribute to the discovery of one next heir amongst men, though it make a short and easy determination of the question about the descent of Adam’s regal power, by telling us, that the line and posterity of Adam is to have it, that is, in plain English, any one may have it, since there is no person living that hath not the title of being of the line and posterity of Adam; and while it keeps there, it keeps within our author’s limitation by God’s ordinance. Indeed, p. 19. he tells us, that such heirs are not only lords of their own children, but of their brethren; whereby, and by the words following, which we shall consider anon, he seems to insinuate, that the eldest son is heir; but he no where, that I know, says it in direct words, but by the instances of Cain and Jacob, that there follow, we may allow this to be so far his opinion concerning heirs, that where there are divers children, the eldest son has the right to be heir. That primogeniture cannot give any title to paternal power, we have already shewed. That a father may have a natural right to some kind of power over his children, is easily granted; but that an elder brother has so over his brethren, remains to be proved: God or nature has not any where, that I know, placed such jurisdiction in the first-born; nor can reason find any such natural superiority amongst brethren. The law of Moses gave a double portion of the goods and possessions to the eldest; but we find not any where that naturally, or by God’s institution, superiority or dominion belonged to him, and the instances there brought by our author are but slender proofs of a right to civil power and dominion in the first-born, and do rather shew the contrary.

  §. 112.

  His words are in the forecited place: And therefore we find God told Cain of his brother Abel; his desire shall be subject unto thee, and thou shalt rule over him. To which I answer,

  1. These words of God to Cain, are by many interpreters, with great reason, understood in a quite different sense than what our author uses them in.

  2. Whatever was meant by them, it could not be, that Cain, as elder, had a natural dominion over Abel; for the words are conditional, If thou dost well; and so personal to Cain: and whatever was signified by them, did depend on his carriage, and not follow his birth-right; and therefore could by no means be an establishment of dominion in the first-born in general: for before this Abel had his distinct territories by right of private dominion, as our author himself confesses, Observations, 210. which he could not have had to the prejudice of the heirs title, if by divine institution, Cain as heir were to inherit all his father’s dominion.

  3. If this were intended by God as the charter of primogeniture, and the grant of dominion to elder brothers in general as such, by right of inheritance, we might expect it should have included all his brethren: for we may well suppose, Adam, from whom the world was to be peopled, had by this time, that these were grown up to be men, more sons than these two: whereas Abel himself is not so much as named; and the words in the original can scarce, with any good construction, be applied to him.

  4. It is too much to build a doctrine of so mighty consequence upon so doubtful and obscure a place of scripture, which may be well, nay better, understood in a quite different sense, and so can be but an ill proof, being as doubtful as the thing to be proved by it; especially when there is nothing else in scripture or reason to be found, that favours or supports it.

  §. 113.

  It follows, p. 19. Accordingly when Jacob bought his brother’s birth-right, Isaac blessed him thus; Be lord over thy brethren, and let the sons of thy mother bow before thee. Another instance, I take it, brought by our author to evince dominion due to birth-right, and an admirable one it is: for it must be no ordinary way of reasoning in a man, that is pleading for the natural power of kings, and against all compact, to bring for proof of it, an example, where his own account of it founds all the right upon compact, and settles empire in the younger brother, unless buying and selling be no compact; for he tells us, when Jacob bought his brother’s birthright. But passing by that, let us consider the history itself, with what use our author makes of it, and we shall find these following mistakes about it.

  1. That our author reports this, as if Isaac had given Jacob this blessing, immediately upon his purchasing the birth-right; for he says, when Jacob bought, Isaac blessed him; which is plainly otherwise in the scripture: for it appears, there was a distance of time between, and if we will take the story in the order it lies, it must be no small distance; all Isaac’s sojourning in Gerar, and transactions with Abimelech, Gen. xxvi. coming between; Rebecca being then beautiful, and consequently young; but Isaac, when he blessed Jacob, was old and decrepit: and Esau also complains of Jacob, Gen. xxvii. 36. that two times he had supplanted him; He took away my birth-right, says he, and behold now he hath taken away my blessing; words, that I think signify distance of time and difference of action.

  2. Another mistake of our author’s is, that he supposes Isaac gave Jacob the blessing, and bid him be lord over his brethren, because he had the birth-right; for our author brings this example to prove, that he that has the birth-right, has thereby a right to be lord over his brethren. But it is also manifest by the text, that Isaac had no consideration of Jacob’s having bought the birth-right; for when he blessed him, he considered him not as Jacob, but took him for Esau. Nor did Esau understand any such connection between birth-right and the blessing; for he says, He hath supplanted me these two times, he took away my birth-right, and behold now he hath taken away my blessing: whereas had the blessing, which was to be lord over his brethren, belonged to the birth-right, Esau could not have complained of this second, as a cheat, Jacob having got nothing but what Esau had sold him, when he sold him his birth-right; so that it is plain, dominion, if these words signify it, was not understood to belong to the birth-right.

  §. 114.

  And that in those days of the patriarchs, dominion was not understood to be the right of the heir, but only a greater portion of goods, is plain from Gen. xxi. 10. for Sarah, taking Isaac to be heir, says, Cast out this bondwoman and her son, for the son of this bondwoman shall not be heir with my son: whereby could be meant nothing, but that he should not have a pretence to an equal share of his father’s estate after his death, but should have his portion presently, and be gone. Accordingly we read, Gen. xxv. 5, 6. That Abraham gave all that he had unto Isaac, but unto the sons of the concubines which Abraham had, Abraham gave gifts, and sent them away from Isaac his son, while he yet lived. That is, Abraham having given portions to all his other sons, and sent them away, that which he had reserved, being the greatest part of his substance, Isaac as heir possessed after his death: but by being heir, he had no right to be lord over his brethren; for if he had, why should Sarah endeavour to rob him of one of his subjects, or lessen the number of his slaves, by desiring to have Ishmael sent away?

  §. 115.

  Thus, as under the law, the privilege of birth-right was nothing but a double portion: so we see that before Moses, in the patriarchs time, from whence our author pretends to take his model, there was no knowledge, no thought, that birth-right gave rule or empire, paternal or kingly authority, to any one over his brethren. If this be not plain enough in the story of Isaac and Ishmael, he that will look into 1 Chron. v. 12. may there read these words: Reuben was the first-born; but forasmuch as he defiled his father’s bed, his birth-right was given unto the sons of Joseph, the son of Israel: and the genealogy is not to be reckoned after the birth-right; for Judah prevailed above his brethren, and of him came the chief ruler; but the birth-right was Joseph’s. What this birth-right was, Jacob blessing Joseph, Gen. xlviii. 22. telleth us in these words, Moreover I have given thee one portion above thy brethren, which I took out of the hand of the Amorite, with my sword and with my bow. Whereby it is not only plain, that the birth-right was nothing but a double portion; but the text in Chronicles is express against our author’s doctrine, and shews that dominion was no part of the birth-right; for it tells us, that Joseph had the birth-right, but Judah the dominion. One would think our author were very fond of the very name of birth-right, when he brings this instance of Jacob and Esau, to prove that dominion belongs to the heir over his brethren.

  §. 116.

  1. Because it will be but an ill example to prove, that dominion by God’s ordination belonged to the eldest son, because Jacob the youngest here had it, let him come by it how he would: for if it prove any thing, it can only prove, against our author, that the assignment of dominion to the eldest is not by divine institution, which would then be unalterable: for if by the law of God, or nature, absolute power and empire belongs to the eldest son and his heirs, so that they are supreme monarchs, and all the rest of their brethren slaves, our author gives us reason to doubt whether the eldest son has a power to part with it, to the prejudice of his posterity, since he tells us, Observations, 158. That in grants and gifts that have their original from God or nature, no inferior power of man can limit, or make any law of prescription against them.

  §. 117.

  2. Because this place, Gen. xxvii. 29. brought by our author, concerns not at all the dominion of one brother over the other, nor the subjection of Esau to Jacob: for it is plain in the history, that Esau was never subject to Jacob, but lived apart in mount Seir, where he founded a distinct people and government, and was himself prince over them, as much as Jacob was in his own family. This text, if considered, can never be understood of Esau himself, or the personal dominion of Jacob over him: for the words brethren and sons of thy mother, could not be used literally by Isaac, who knew Jacob had only one brother; and these words are so far from being true in a literal sense, or establishing any dominion in Jacob over Esau, that in the story we find the quite contrary, for Gen. xxxii. Jacob several times calls Esau lord, and himself his servant; and Gen. xxxiii. he bowed himself seven times to the ground to Esau. Whether Esau then were a subject and vassal (nay, as our author tells us, all subjects are slaves) to Jacob, and Jacob his sovereign prince by birth-right, I leave the reader to judge; and to believe if he can, that these words of Isaac, Be lord over thy brethren, and let thy mother’s sons bow down to thee, confirmed Jacob in a sovereignty over Esau, upon the account of the birth-right he had got from him.

  §. 118.

  He that reads the story of Jacob and Esau, will find there was never any jurisdiction or authority, that either of them had over the other after their father’s death: they lived with the friendship and equality of brethren, neither lord, neither slave to his brother; but independent each of other, were both heads of their distinct families, where they received no laws from one another, but lived separately, and were the roots out of which sprang two distinct people under two distinct governments. This blessing then of Isaac, whereon our author would build the dominion of the elder brother, signifies no more, but what Rebecca had been told from God, Gen. xxv. 23. Two nations are in thy womb, and two manner of people shall be separated from thy bowels, and the one people shall be stronger than the other people, and the elder shall serve the younger; and so Jacob blessed Judah, Gen. xlix. and gave him the scepter and dominion, from whence our author might have argued as well, that jurisdiction and dominion belongs to the third son over his brethren, as well as from this blessing of Isaac, that it belonged to Jacob: both these places contain only predictions of what should long after happen to their posterities, and not any declaration of the right of inheritance to dominion in either. And thus we have our author’s two great and only arguments to prove, that heirs are lords over their brethren.

  1. Because God tells Cain, Gen. iv. that however sin might set upon him, he ought or might be master of it: for the most learned interpreters understood the words of sin, and not of Abel, and give so strong reasons for it, that nothing can convincingly be inferred, from so doubtful a text, to our author’s purpose.

  2. Because in this of Gen. xxvii. Isaac foretels that the Israelites, the posterity of Jacob, should have dominion over the Edomites, the posterity of Esau; therefore says our author, heirs are lords of their brethren: I leave any one to judge of the conclusion.

  §. 119.

  And now we see how our author has provided for the descending, and conveyance down of Adam’s monarchical power, or paternal dominion to posterity, by the inheritance of his heir, succeeding to all his father’s authority, and becoming upon his death as much lord as his father was, not only over his own children, but over his brethren, and all descended from his father, and so in infinitum. But yet who this heir is, he does not once tell us; and all the light we have from him in this so fundamental a point, is only, that in his instance of Jacob, by using the word birth-right, as that which passed from Esau to Jacob, he leaves us to guess, that by heir, he means the eldest son; though I do not remember he any where mentions expresly the title of the first-born, but all along keeps himself under the shelter of the indefinite term heir. But taking it to be his meaning, that the eldest son is heir, (for if the eldest be not, there will be no pretence why the sons should not be all heirs alike) and so by right of primogeniture has dominion over his brethren; this is but one step towards the settlement of succession, and the difficulties remain still as much as ever, till he can shew us who is meant by right heir, in all those cases which may happen where the present possessor hath no son. This he silently passes over, and perhaps wisely too: for what can be wiser, after one has affirmed, that the person having that power, as well as the power and form of government, is the ordinance of God, and by divine institution, vid. Observations, 254. p. 12. than to be careful, not to start any question concerning the person, the resolution whereof will certainly lead him into a confession, that God and nature hath determined nothing about him? And if our author cannot shew who by right of nature, or a clear positive law of God, has the next right to inherit the dominion of this natural monarch he has been at such pains about, when he died without a son, he might have spared his pains in all the rest, it being more necessary for the settling men’s consciences, and determining their subjection and allegiance, to shew them who by original right, superior and antecedent to the will, or any act of men, hath a title to this paternal jurisdiction, than it is to shew that by nature there was such a jurisdiction; it being to no purpose for me to know there is such a paternal power, which I ought, and am disposed to obey, unless, where there are many pretenders, I also know the person that is rightfully invested and endowed with it.

  §. 120.

  For the main matter in question being concerning the duty of my obedience, and the obligation of conscience I am under to pay it to him that is of right my lord and ruler, I must know the person that this right of paternal power resides in, and so impowers him to claim obedience from me: for let it be true what he says, p. 12. That civil power not only in general is by divine institution, but even the assignment of it specially to the eldest parents; and Observations, 254. That not only the power or right of government, but the form of the power of governing, and the person having that power, are all the ordinance of God; yet unless he shew us in all cases who is this person, ordained by God, who is this eldest parent; all his abstract notions of monarchical power will signify just nothing, when they are to be reduced to practice, and men are conscientiously to pay their obedience: for paternal jurisdiction being not the thing to be obeyed, because it cannot command, but is only that which gives one man a right which another hath not, and if it come by inheritance, another man cannot have, to command and be obeyed; it is ridiculous to say, I pay obedience to the paternal power, when I obey him, to whom paternal power gives no right to my obedience: for he can have no divine right to my obedience, who cannot shew his divine right to the power of ruling over me, as well as that by divine right there is such a power in the world.

  §. 121.

  And hence not being able to make out any prince’s title to government, as heir to Adam, which therefore is of no use, and had been better let alone, he is fain to resolve all into present possession, and makes civil obedience as due to an usurper, as to a lawful king; and thereby the usurper’s title as good. His words are, Observations, 253. and they deserve to be remembered: If an usurper dispossess the true heir, the subjects obedience to the fatherly power must go along, and wait upon God’s providence. But I shall leave his title of usurpers to be examined in its due place, and desire my sober reader to consider what thanks princes owe such politics as this, which can suppose paternal power (i. e.) a right to government in the hands of a Cade, or a Cromwell; and so all obedience being due to paternal power, the obedience of subjects will be due to them, by the same right, and upon as good grounds, as it is to lawful princes; and yet this, as dangerous a doctrine as it is, must necessarily follow from making all political power to be nothing else, but Adam’s paternal power by right and divine institution, descending from him without being able to shew to whom it descended, or who is heir to it.

  §. 122.

  To settle government in the world, and to lay obligations to obedience on any man’s conscience, it is as necessary (supposing with our author that all power be nothing but the being possessed of Adam’s fatherhood) to satisfy him, who has a right to this power, this fatherhood, when the possessor dies without sons to succeed immediately to it, as it was to tell him, that upon the death of the father, the eldest son had a right to it: for it is still to be remembered, that the great question is, (and that which our author would be thought to contend for, if he did not sometimes forget it) what persons have a right to be obeyed, and not whether there be a power in the world, which is to be called paternal, without knowing in whom it resides: for so it be a power, i. e. right to govern, it matters not, whether it be termed paternal or regal, natural or acquired; whether you call it supreme fatherhood, or supreme brotherhood, will be all one, provided we know who has it.

  §. 123.

  I go on then to ask, whether in the inheriting of this paternal power, this supreme fatherhood, the grandson by a daughter hath a right before a nephew by a brother? Whether the grandson by the eldest son, being an infant, before the younger son, a man and able? Whether the daughter before the uncle? or any other man, descended by a male line? Whether a grandson by a younger daughter, before a grand-daughter by an elder daughter? Whether the elder son by a concubine, before a younger son by a wife? From whence also will arise many questions of legitimation, and what in nature is the difference betwixt a wife and a concubine? for as to the municipal or positive laws of men, they can signify nothing here. It may farther be asked, Whether the eldest son, being a fool, shall inherit this paternal power, before the younger, a wise man? and what degree of folly it must be that shall exclude him? and who shall be judge of it? Whether the son of a fool, excluded for his folly, before the son of his wise brother who reigned? Who has the paternal power whilst the widow-queen is with child by the deceased king, and no body knows whether it will be a son or a daughter? Which shall be heir of the two male-twins, who by the dissection of the mother were laid open to the world? Whether a sister by the half blood, before a brother’s daughter by the whole blood?

  §. 124.

  These, and many more such doubts, might be proposed about the titles of succession, and the right of inheritance; and that not as idle speculations, but such as in history we shall find have concerned the inheritance of crowns and kingdoms; and if our’s want them, we need not go farther for famous examples of it, than the other kingdom in this very island, which having been fully related by the ingenious and learned author of Patriarcha non Monarcha, I need say no more of. Till our author hath resolved all the doubts that may arise about the next heir, and shewed that they are plainly determined by the law of nature, or the revealed law of God, all his suppositions of a monarchical, absolute, supreme, paternal power in Adam, and the descent of that power to his heirs, would not be of the least use to establish the authority, or make out the title, of any one prince now on earth; but would rather unsettle and bring all into question: for let our author tell us as long as he pleases, and let all men believe it too, that Adam had a paternal, and thereby a monarchical power; that this (the only power in the world) descended to his heirs; and that there is no other power in the world but this: let this be all as clear demonstration, as it is manifest error, yet if it be not past doubt, to whom this paternal power descends, and whose now it is, no body can be under any obligation of obedience, unless any one will say, that I am bound to pay obedience to paternal power in a man who has no more paternal power than I myself; which is all one as to say, I obey a man, because he has a right to govern; and if I be asked, how I know he has a right to govern, I should answer, it cannot be known, that he has any at all: for that cannot be the reason of my obedience, which I know not to be so; much less can that be a reason of my obedience, which no body at all can know to be so.

  §. 125.

  And therefore all this ado about Adam’s fatherhood, the greatness of its power, and the necessity of its supposal, helps nothing to establish the power of those that govern, or to determine the obedience of subjects who are to obey, if they cannot tell whom they are to obey, or it cannot be known who are to govern, and who to obey. In the state the world is now, it is irrecoverably ignorant, who is Adam’s heir. This fatherhood, this monarchical power of Adam, descending to his heirs, would be of no more use to the government of mankind, than it would be to the quieting of mens consciences, or securing their healths, if our author had assured them, that Adam had a power to forgive sins, or cure diseases, which by divine institution descended to his heir, whilst this heir is impossible to be known. And should not he do as rationally, who upon this assurance of our author went and confessed his sins, and expected a good absolution; or took physic with expectation of health, from any one who had taken on himself the name of priest or physician, or thrust himself into those employments, saying, I acquiesce in the absolving power descending from Adam, or I shall be cured by the medicinal power descending from Adam; as he who says, I submit to and obey the paternal power descending from Adam, when it is confessed all these powers descend only to his single heir, and that heir is unknown?

  §. 126.

  It is true, the civil lawyers have pretended to determine some of these cases concerning the succession of princes; but by our author’s principles, they have meddled in a matter that belongs not to them: for if all political power be derived only from Adam, and be to descend only to his successive heirs, by the ordinance of God and divine institution, this is a right antecedent and paramount to all government; and therefore the positive laws of men cannot determine that, which is itself the foundation of all law and government, and is to receive its rule only from the law of God and nature. And that being silent in the case, I am apt to think there is no such right to be conveyed this way: I am sure it would be to no purpose if there were, and men would be more at a loss concerning government, and obedience to governors, than if there were no such right; since by positive laws and compact, which divine institution (if there be any) shuts out, all these endless inextricable doubts can be safely provided against: but it can never be understood, how a divine natural right, and that of such moment as is all order and peace in the world, should be conveyed down to posterity, without any plain natural or divine rule concerning it. And there would be an end of all civil government, if the assignment of civil power were by divine institution to the heir, and yet by that divine institution the person of the heir could not be known. This paternal regal power being by divine right only his, it leaves no room for human prudence, or consent, to place it any where else; for if only one man hath a divine right to the obedience of mankind, no body can claim that obedience, but he that can shew that right; nor can men’s consciences by any other pretence be obliged to it. And thus this doctrine cuts up all government by the roots.

  §. 127.

  Thus we see how our author, laying it for a sure foundation, that the very person that is to rule, is the ordinance of God, and by divine institution, tells us at large, only that this person is the heir, but who this heir is, he leaves us to guess; and so this divine institution, which assigns it to a person whom we have no rule to know, is just as good as an assignment to no body at all. But whatever our author does, divine institution makes no such ridiculous assignments: nor can God be supposed to make it a sacred law, that one certain person should have a right to something, and yet not give rules to mark out, and know that person by, or give an heir a divine right to power, and yet not point out who that heir is. It is rather to be thought, that an heir had no such right by divine institution, than that God should give such a right to the heir, but yet leave it doubtful and undeterminable who such heir is.

  §. 128.

  If God had given the land of Canaan to Abraham, and in general terms to some body after him, without naming his seed, whereby it might be known who that somebody was, it would have been as good and useful an assignment, to determine the right to the land of Canaan, as it would be the determining the right of crowns, to give empire to Adam and his successive heirs after him, without telling who his heir is: for the word heir, without a rule to know who it is, signifies no more than some body, I know not whom. God making it a divine institution, that men should not marry those who were near of kin, thinks it not enough to say, None of you shall approach to any that is near of kin to him, to uncover their nakedness; but moreover, gives rules to know who are those near of kin, forbidden by divine institution; or else that law would have been of no use, it being to no purpose to lay restraint, or give privileges to men, in such general terms, as the particular person concerned cannot be known by. But God not having any where said, the next heir shall inherit all his father’s estate or dominion, we are not to wonder, that he hath no where appointed who that heir should be; for never having intended any such thing, never designed any heir in that sense, we cannot expect he should any where nominate, or appoint any person to it, as we might, had it been otherwise. And therefore in scripture, though the word heir occur, yet there is no such thing as heir in our author’s sense, one that was by right of nature to inherit all that his father had, exclusive of his brethren. Hence Sarah supposes, that if Ishmael staid in the house, to share in Abraham’s estate after his death, this son of a bond-woman might be heir with Isaac; and therefore, says she, cast out this bond-woman and her son, for the son of this bond-woman shall not be heir with my son: but this cannot excuse our author, who telling us there is, in every number of men, one who is right and next heir to Adam, ought to have told us what the laws of descent are: but he having been so sparing to instruct us by rules, how to know who is heir, let us see in the next place, what his history out of scripture, on which he pretends wholly to build his government, gives us in this necessary and fundamental point.

  §. 129.

  Our author, to make good the title of his book, p. 13. begins his history of the descent of Adam’s regal power, p. 13. in these words: This lordship which Adam by command had over the whole world, and by right descending from him, the patriarchs did enjoy, was a large, &c. How does he prove that the patriarchs by descent did enjoy it? for dominion of life and death, says he, we find Judah the father pronounced sentence of death against Thamar his daughter in law for playing the harlot, p. 13. How does this prove that Judah had absolute and sovereign authority? he pronounced sentence of death. The pronouncing of sentence of death is not a certain mark of sovereignty, but usually the office of inferior magistrates. The power of making laws of life and death is indeed a mark of sovereignty, but pronouncing the sentence according to those laws may be done by others, and therefore this will but ill prove that he had sovereign authority: as if one should say, Judge Jefferies pronounced sentence of death in the late times, therefore Judge Jefferies had sovereign authority. But it will be said, Judah did it not by commission from another, and therefore did it in his own right. Who knows whether he had any right at all? Heat of passion might carry him to do that which he had no authority to do. Judah had dominion of life and death: how does that appear? He exercised it, he pronounced sentence of death against Thamar: our author thinks it is very good proof, that because he did it, therefore he had a right to do it: he lay with her also: by the same way of proof, he had a right to do that too. If the consequence be good from doing to a right of doing, Absalom too may be reckoned amongst our author’s sovereigns, for he pronounced such a sentence of death against his brother Amnon, and much upon a like occasion, and had it executed too, if that be sufficient to prove a dominion of life and death.

  But allowing this all to be clear demonstration of sovereign power, who was it that had this lordship by right descending to him from Adam, as large and ample as the absolutest dominion of any monarch? Judah, says our author, Judah a younger son of Jacob, his father and elder brethren living; so that if our author’s own proof be to be taken, a younger brother may, in the life of his father and elder brothers, by right of descent, enjoy Adam’s monarchical power; and if one so qualified may be monarch by descent, why may not every man? if Judah, his father and elder brother living, were one of Adam’s heirs, I know not who can be excluded from this inheritance; all men by inheritance may be monarchs as well as Judah.

  §. 130.

  Touching war, we see that Abraham commanded an army of 318 soldiers of his own family, and Esau met his brother Jacob with 400 men at arms: for matter of peace, Abraham made a league with Abimelech, &c. p. 13. Is it not possible for a man to have 318 men in his family, without being heir to Adam? A planter in the West Indies has more, and might, if he pleased, (who doubts?) muster them up and lead them out against the Indians, to seek reparation upon any injury received from them; and all this without the absolute dominion of a monarch, descending to him from Adam. Would it not be an admirable argument to prove, that all power by God’s institution descended from Adam by inheritance, and that the very person and power of this planter were the ordinance of God, because he had power in his family over servants, born in his house, and bought with his money? For this was just Abraham’s case; those who were rich in the patriarch’s days, as in the West Indies now, bought men and maid servants, and by their increase, as well as purchasing of new, came to have large and numerous families, which though they made use of in war or peace, can it be thought the power they had over them was an inheritance descended from Adam, when it was the purchase of their money? A man’s riding in an expedition against an enemy, his horse bought in a fair would be as good a proof that the owner enjoyed the lordship which Adam by command had over the whole world, by right descending to him, as Abraham’s leading out the servants of his family is, that the patriarchs enjoyed this lordship by descent from Adam: since the title to the power, the master had in both cases, whether over slaves or horses, was only from his purchase; and the getting a dominion over any thing by bargain and money, is a new way of proving one had it by descent and inheritance.

  §. 131.

  But making war and peace are marks of sovereignty. Let it be so in politic socities: may not therefore a man in the West Indies, who hath with him sons of his own, friends, or companions, soldiers under pay, or slaves bought with money, or perhaps a band made up of all these, make war and peace, if there should be occasion, and ratify the articles too with an oath, without being a sovereign, an absolute king over those who went with him? He that says he cannot, must then allow many masters of ships, many private planters, to be absolute monarchs, for as much as this they have done. War and peace cannot be made for politic societies, but by the supreme power of such societies; because war and peace, giving a different motion to the force of such a politic body, none can make war or peace, but that which has the direction of the force of the whole body, and that in politic societies is only the supreme power. In voluntary societies for the time, he that has such a power by consent, may make war and peace, and so may a single man for himself, the state of war not consisting in the number of partisans, but the enmity of the parties, where they have no superior to appeal to.

  §. 132.

  The actual making of war or peace is no proof of any other power, but only of disposing those to exercise or cease acts of enmity for whom he makes it; and this power in many cases any one may have without any politic supremacy: and therefore the making of war or peace will not prove that every one that does so is a politic ruler, much less a king; for then common-wealths must be kings too, for they do as certainly make war and peace as monarchical government.

  §. 133.

  But granting this a mark of sovereignty in Abraham, is it a proof of the descent to him of Adam’s sovereignty over the whole world? If it be, it will surely be as good a proof of the descent of Adam’s lordship to others too. And then common-wealths, as well as Abraham, will be heirs of Adam, for they make war and peace, as well as he. If you say, that the lordship of Adam doth not by right descend to common-wealths, though they make war and peace, the same say I of Abraham, and then there is an end of your argument: if you stand to your argument, and say those that do make war and peace, as common-wealths do without doubt, do inherit Adam’s lordship, there is an end of your monarchy, unless you will say, that commonwealths by descent enjoying Adam’s lordship are monarchies; and that indeed would be a new way of making all the governments in the world monarchical.

  §. 134.

  To give our author the honour of this new invention, for I confess it is not I have first found it out by tracing his principles, and so charged it on him, it is fit my readers know that (as absurd as it may seem) he teaches it himself, p. 23. where he ingenuously says, In all kingdoms and common-wealths in the world, whether the prince be the supreme father of the people, or but the true heir to such a father, or come to the crown by usurpation or election, or whether some few or a multitude govern the common-wealth; yet still the authority that is in any one, or in many, or in all these, is the only right, and natural authority of a supreme father; which right of fatherhood, he often tells us, is regal and royal authority; as particularly, p. 12. the page immediately preceding this instance of Abraham. This regal authority, he says, those that govern common-wealths have; and if it be true, that regal and royal authority be in those that govern common-wealths, it is as true that common-wealths are governed by kings; for if regal authority be in him that governs, he that governs must needs be a king, and so all common-wealths are nothing but down-right monarchies; and then what need any more ado about the matter? The governments of the world are as they should be, there is nothing but monarchy in it. This, without doubt, was the surest way our author could have found, to turn all other governments, but monarchical, out of the world.

  §. 135.

  But all this scarce proves Abraham to have been a king as heir to Adam. If by inheritance he had been king, Lot, who was of the same family, must needs have been his subject, by that title, before the servants in his family; but we see they lived as friends and equals, and when their herdsmen could not agree, there was no pretence of jurisdiction or superiority between them, but they parted by consent, Gen. xiii. hence he is called both by Abraham, and by the text, Abraham’s brother, the name of friendship and equality, and not of jurisdiction and authority, though he were really but his nephew. And if our author knows that Abraham was Adam’s heir, and a king, it was more, it seems, than Abraham himself knew, or his servant whom he sent a wooing for his son; for when he sets out the advantages of the match, xxiv. Gen. 35. thereby to prevail with the young woman and her friends, he says, I am Abraham’s servant, and the lord hath blessed my master greatly, and he is become great; and he hath given him flocks and herds, and silver and gold, and men-servants and maid-servants, and camels and asses; and Sarah, my master’s wife, bare a son to my master when she was old, and unto him hath he given all he hath. Can one think that a discreet servant, that was thus particular to set out his master’s greatness, would have omitted the crown Isaac was to have, if he had known of any such? Can it be imagined he should have neglected to have told them on such an occasion as this, that Abraham was a king, a name well known at that time, for he had nine of them his neighbours, if he or his master had thought any such thing, the likeliest matter of all the rest, to make his errand successful?

  §. 136.

  But this discovery it seems was reserved for our author to make 2 or 3000 years after, and let him enjoy the credit of it; only he should have taken care that some of Adam’s land should have descended to this his heir, as well as all Adam’s lordship: for though this lordship which Abraham, (if we may believe our author) as well as the other patriarchs, by right descending to him, did enjoy, was as large and ample as the absolutest dominion of any monarch which hath been since the creation; yet his estate, his territories, his dominions were very narrow and scanty, for he had not the possession of a foot of land, till he bought a field and a cave of the sons of Heth to bury Sarah in.

  §. 137.

  The instance of Esau joined with this of Abraham, to prove that the lordship which Adam had over the whole world, by right descending from him, the patriarchs did enjoy, is yet more pleasant than the former. Esau met his brother Jacob with 400 men at arms; he therefore was a king by right of heir to Adam. Four hundred armed men then, however got together, are enough to prove him that leads them, to be a king and Adam’s heir. There have been tories in Ireland, (whatever there are in other countries) who would have thanked our author for so honourable an opinion of them, especially if there had been no body near with a better title of 500 armed men, to question their royal authority of 400. It is a shame for men to trifle so, to say no worse of it, in so serious an argument. Here Esau is brought as a proof that Adam’s lordship, Adam’s absolute dominion, as large as that of any monarch, descended by right to the patriarchs, and in this very chap. p. 19. Jacob is brought as an instance of one, that by birth-right was lord over his brethren. So we have here two brothers absolute monarchs by the same title, and at the same time heirs to Adam; the eldest, heir to Adam, because he met his brother with 400 men; and the youngest, heir to Adam by birth-right: Esau enjoyed the lordship which Adam had over the whole world by right descending to him, in as large and ample manner, as the absolutest dominion of any monarch; and at the same time, Jacob lord over him, by the right heirs have to be lords over their brethren. Risum teneatis? I never, I confess, met with any man of parts so dexterous as Sir Robert at this way of arguing: but it was his misfortune to light upon an hypothesis, that could not be accommodated to the nature of things, and human affairs; his principles could not be made to agree with that constitution and order, which God had settled in the world, and therefore must needs often clash with common sense and experience.

  §. 138.

  In the next section, he tells us, This patriarchal power continued not only till the flood, but after it, as the name patriarch doth in part prove. The word patriarch doth more than in part prove, that patriarchal power continued in the world as long as there were patriarchs, for it is necessary that patriarchal power should be whilst there are patriarchs; as it is necessary there should be paternal or conjugal power whilst there are fathers or husbands; but this is but playing with names. That which he would fallaciously insinuate is the thing in question to be proved, viz. that the lordship which Adam had over the world, the supposed absolute universal dominion of Adam by right descending from him, the patriarchs did enjoy. If he affirms such an absolute monarchy continued to the flood, in the world, I would be glad to know what records he has it from; for I confess I cannot find a word of it in my Bible: if by patriarchal power he means any thing else, it is nothing to the matter in hand. And how the name patriarch in some part proves, that those, who are called by that name, had absolute monarchical power, I confess, I do not see, and therefore I think needs no answer till the argument from it be made out a little clearer.

  §. 139.

  The three sons of Noah had the world, says our author, divided amongst them by their father, for of them was the whole world overspread, p. 14. The world might be overspread by the offspring of Noah’s sons, though he never divided the world amongst them; for the earth might be replenished without being divided: so that all our author’s argument here proves no such division. However, I allow it to him, and then ask, the world being divided amongst them, which of the three was Adam’s heir? If Adam’s lordship, Adam’s monarchy, by right descended only to the eldest, then the other two could be but his subjects, his slaves: if by right it descended to all three brothers, by the same right, it will descend to all mankind; and then it will be impossible what he says, p. 19. that heirs are lords of their brethren, should be true; but all brothers, and consequently all men, will be equal and independent, all heirs to Adam’s monarchy, and consequently all monarchs too, one as much as another. But it will be said, Noah their father divided the world amongst them; so that our author will allow more to Noah, than he will to God almighty, for Observations, 211. he thought it hard, that God himself should give the world to Noah and his sons, to the prejudice of Noah’s birth-right: his words are, Noah was left sole heir to the world: why should it be thought that God would disinherit him of his birth-right, and make him, of all men in the world, the only tenant in common with his children? and yet here he thinks it fit that Noah should disinherit Shem of his birth-right, and divide the world betwixt him and his brethren; so that this birth-right, when our author pleases, must, and when he pleases must not, be sacred and inviolable.

  §. 140.

  If Noah did divide the world between his sons, and his assignment of dominions to them were good, there is an end of divine institution; all our author’s discourse of Adam’s heir, with whatsoever he builds on it, is quite out of doors; the natural power of kings falls to the ground; and then the form of the power governing, and the person having that power, will not be (as he says they are, Observations, 254.) the ordinance of God, but they will be ordinances of man: for if the right of the heir be the ordinance of God, a divine right, no man, father or not father, can alter it: if it be not a divine right, it is only human, depending on the will of man: and so where human institution gives it not, the first-born has no right at all above his brethren; and men may put government into what hands, and under what form, they please.

  §. 141.

  He goes on, Most of the civilest nations of the earth labour to fetch their originalfrom some of the sons, or nephews of Noah, p. 14. How many do most of the civilest nations amount to? and who are they? I fear the Chineses, a very great and civil people, as well as several other people of the East, West, North and South, trouble not themselves much about this matter. All that believe the Bible, which I believe are our author’s most of the civilest nations, must necessarily derive themselves from Noah; but for the rest of the world, they think little of his sons or nephews. But if the heralds and antiquaries of all nations, for it is these men generally that labour to find out the originals of nations, or all the nations themselves, should labour to fetch their original from some of the sons or nephews of Noah, what would this be to prove, that the lordship which Adam had over the whole world, by right descended to the patriarchs? Whoever, nations, or races of men, labour to fetch their original from, may be concluded to be thought by them, men of renown, famous to posterity, for the greatness of their virtues and actions; but beyond these they look not, nor consider who they were heirs to, but look on them as such as raised themselves, by their own virtue, to a degree that would give a lustre to those who in future ages could pretend to derive themselves from them. But if it were Ogyges, Hercules, Brama, Tamberlain, Pharamond; nay, if Jupiter and Saturn were the names, from whence divers races of men, both ancient and modern, have laboured to derive their original; will that prove, that those men enjoyed the lordship of Adam, by right descending to them? If not, this is but a flourish of our author’s to mislead his reader, that in itself signifies nothing.

  §. 142.

  To as much purpose is what he tells us, p. 15. concerning this division of the world, That some say it was by Lot, and others that Noah sailed round the Mediterreanean in ten years, and divided the world into Asia, Afric and Europe, portions for his three sons. America then, it seems, was left to be his that could catch it. Why our author takes such pains to prove the division of the world by Noah to his sons, and will not leave out an imagination, though no better than a dream, that he can find any where to favour it, is hard to guess, since such a division, if it prove any thing, must necessarily take away the title of Adam’s heir; unless three brothers can all together be heirs of Adam; and therefore the following words, Howsoever the manner of this division be uncertain, yet it is most certain the division itself was by families from Noah and his children, over which the parents were heads and princes, p. 15. if allowed him to be true, and of any sorce to prove, that all the power in the world is nothing but the lordship of Adam’s descending by right, they will only prove, that the fathers of the children are all heirs to this lordship of Adam: for if in those days Cham and Japhet, and other parents, besides the eldest son, were heads and princes over their families, and had a right to divide the earth by families, what hinders younger brothers, being fathers of families, from having the same right? If Cham and Japhet were princes by right descending to them, notwithstanding any title of heir in their eldest brother, younger brothers by the same right descending to them are princes now; and so all our author’s natural power of kings will reach no farther than their own children, and no kingdom, by this natural right, can be bigger than a family: for either this lordship of Adam over the whole world, by right descends only to the eldest son, and then there can be but one heir, as our author says, p. 19. or else, it by right descends to all the sons equally, and then every father of a family will have it, as well as the three sons of Noah: take which you will, it destroys the present governments and kingdoms, that are now in the world, since whoever has this natural power of a king, by right descending to him, must have it, either as our author tells us Cain had it, and be lord over his brethren, and so be alone king of the whole world; or else, as he tells us here, Shem, Cham and Japhet had it, three brothers, and so be only prince of his own family, and all families independent one of another: all the world must be only one empire by the right of the next heir, or else every family be a distinct government of itself, by the lordship of Adam’s descending to parents of families. And to this only tend all the proofs he here gives us of the descent of Adam’s lordship: for continuing his story of this descent, he says,

  §. 143.

  In the dispersion of Babel, we must certainly find the establishment of royal power, throughout the kingdoms of the world, p. 14. If you must find it, pray do, and you will help us to a new piece of history: but you must shew it us before we shall be bound to believe, that regal power was established in the world upon your principles: for, that regal power was established in the kingdoms of the world, I think no body will dispute; but that there should be kingdoms in the world, whose several kings enjoyed their crowns, by right descending to them from Adam, that we think not only apocryphal, but also utterly impossible. If our author has no better foundation for his monarchy than a supposition of what was done at the dispersion of Babel, the monarchy he erects thereon, whose top is to reach to heaven to unite mankind, will serve only to divide and scatter them as that tower did; and, instead of establishing civil government and order in the world, will produce nothing but confusion.

  §. 144.

  For he tells us, the nations they were divided into, were distinct families, which had fathers for rulers over them; whereby it appears, that even in the confusion, God was careful to preserve the fatherly authority, by distributing the diversity of languages according to the diversity of families, p. 14. It would have been a hard matter for any one but our author to have found out so plainly, in the text he here brings, that all the nations in that dispersion were governed by fathers, and that God was careful to preserve the fatherly authority. The words of the text are; These are the sons of Shem after their families, after their tongues in their lands, after their nations; and the same thing is said of Cham and Japhet, after an enumeration of their posterities; in all which there is not one word said of their governors, or forms of government; of fathers, or fatherly authority. But our author, who is very quick sighted to spy out fatherhood, where no body else could see any the least glimpses of it, tells us positively their rulers were fathers, and God was careful to preserve the fatherly authority; and why? Because those of the same family spoke the same language, and so of necessity in the division kept together. Just as if one should argue thus: Hanibal in his army, consisting of divers nations, kept those of the same language together; therefore fathers were captains of each band, and Hanibal was careful of the fatherly authority: or in peopling of Carolina, the English, French, Scotch and Welch that are there, plant themselves together, and by them the country is divided in their lands after their tongues, after their families, after their nations; therefore care was taken of the fatherly authority: or because, in many parts of America, every little tribe was a distinct people, with a different language, one should infer, that therefore God was careful to preserve the fatherly authority, or that therefore their rulers enjoyed Adam’s lordship by right descending to them, though we know not who were their governors, nor what their form of government, but only that they were divided into little independent societies, speaking different languages.

  §. 145.

  The scripture says not a word of their rulers or forms of government, but only gives an account, how mankind came to be divided into distinct languages and nations; and therefore it is not to argue from the authority of scripture, to tell us positively, fathers were their rulers, when the scripture says no such thing; but to set up fancies of one’s own brain, when we confidently aver matter of fact, where records are utterly silent. Upon a like ground, i. e. none at all, he says, That they were not confused multitudes without heads and governors, and at liberty to choose what governors or governments they pleased.

  §. 146.

  For I demand, when mankind were all yet of one language, all congregated in the plain of Shinar, were they then all under one monarch, who enjoyed the lordship of Adam by right descending to him? If they were not, there were then no thoughts, it is plain, of Adam’s heir, no right to government known then upon that title; no care taken, by God or man, of Adam’s fatherly authority. If when mankind were but one people, dwelt all together, and were of one language, and were upon building a city together; and when it was plain, they could not but know the right heir, for Shem lived till Isaac’s time, a long while after the division at Babel; if then, I say, they were not under the monarchical government of Adam’s fatherhood, by right descending to the heir, it is plain there was no regard had to the fatherhood, no monarchy acknowledged due to Adam’s heir, no empire of Shem’s in Asia, and consequently no such division of the world by Noah, as our author has talked of. As far as we can conclude any thing from scripture in this matter, it seems from this place, that if they had any government, it was rather a common-wealth than an absolute monarchy: for the scripture tells us, Gen. xi. They said: it was not a prince commanded the building of this city and tower, it was not by the command of one monarch, but by the consultation of many, a free people; let us buildus a city: they built it for themselves as free-men, not as slaves for their lord and master: that we be not scattered abroad; having a city once built, and fixed habitations to settle our abodes and families. This was the consultation and design of a people, that were at liberty to part asunder, but desired to keep in one body, and could not have been either necessary or likely in men tied together under the government of one monarch, who if they had been, as our author tells us, all slaves under the absolute dominion of a monarch, needed not have taken such care to hinder themselves from wandering out of the reach of his dominion. I demand whether this be not plainer in scripture than any thing of Adam’s heir or fatherly authority?

  §. 147.

  But if being, as God says, Gen. xi. 6. one people, they had one ruler, one king by natural right, absolute and supreme over them, what care had God to preserve the paternal authority of the supreme fatherhood, if on a sudden he suffer 72 (for so many our author talks of) distinct nations to be erected out of it, under distinct governors, and at once to withdraw themselves from the obedience of their sovereign? This is to intitle God’s care how, and to what we please. Can it be sense to say, that God was careful to preserve the fatherly authority in those who had it not? for if these were subjects under a supreme prince, what authority had they? Was it an instance of God’s care to preserve the fatherly authority, when he took away the true supreme fatherhood of the natural monarch? Can it be reason to say, that God, for the preservation of fatherly authority, lets several new governments with their governors start up, who could not all have fatherly authority? And is it not as much reason to say, that God is careful to destroy fatherly authority, when he suffers one, who is in possession of it, to have his government torn in pieces, and shared by several of his subjects? Would it not be an argument just like this, for monarchical government, to say, when any monarchy was shattered to pieces, and divided amongst revolted subjects, that God was careful to preserve monarchical power, by rending a settled empire into a multitude of little governments? If any one will say, that what happens in providence to be preserved, God is careful to preserve as a thing therefore to be esteemed by men as necessary or useful, it is a peculiar propriety of speech, which every one will not think fit to imitate: but this I am sure is impossible to be either proper, or true speaking, that Shem, for example, (for he was then alive,) should have fatherly authority, or sovereignty by right of fatherhood, over that one people at Babel, and that the next moment, Shem yet living, 72 others should have fatherly authority, or sovereignty by right of fatherhood, over the same people, divided into so many distinct governments: either these 72 fathers actually were rulers, just before the confusion, and then they were not one people, but that God himself says they were; or else they were a common-wealth, and then where was monarchy? or else these 72 fathers had fatherly authority, but knew it not. Strange! that fatherly authority should be the only original of government amongst men, and yet all mankind not know it; and stranger yet, that the confusion of tongues should reveal it to them all of a sudden, that in an instant these 72 should know that they had fatherly power, and all others know that they were to obey it in them, and every one know that particular fatherly authority to which he was a subject. He that can think this arguing from scripture, may from thence make out what model of an Eutopia will best suit with his fancy or interest; and this fatherhood, thus disposed of, will justify both a prince who claims an universal monarchy, and his subjects, who, being fathers of families, shall quit all subjection to him, and canton his empire into less governments for themselves; for it will always remain a doubt in which of these the fatherly authority resided, till our author resolves us, whether Shem, who was then alive, or these 72 new princes, beginning so many new empires in his dominions, and over his subjects, had right to govern, since our author tells us, that both one and the other had fatherly, which is supreme authority, and are brought in by him as instances of those who did enjoy the lordships of Adam by right descending to them, which was as large and ample as the absolutest dominion of any monarch. This at least is unavoidable, that if God was careful to preserve the fatherly authority, in the 72 new-erected nations, it necessarily follows, that he was as careful to destroy all pretences of Adam’s heir; fince he took care, and therefore did preserve the fatherly authority in so many, at least 71, that could not possibly be Adam’s heirs, when the right heir (if God had ever ordained any such inheritance) could not but be known, Shem then living, and they being all one people.

  §. 148.

  Nimrod is his next instance of enjoying this patriarchal power, p. 16. but I know not for what reason our author seems a little unkind to him, and says, that he against right enlarged his empire, by seizing violently on the rights of other lords of families. These lords of families here were called fathers of families, in his account of the dispersion at Babel: but it matters not how they were called, so we know who they are; for this fatherly authority must be in them, either as heirs to Adam, and so there could not be 72, nor above one at once; or else as natural parents over their children, and so every father will have paternal authority over his children by the same right, and in as large extent as those 72 had, and so be independent princes over their own offspring. Taking his lords of families in this later sense, (as it is hard to give those words any other sense in this place) he gives us a very pretty account of the original of monarchy, in these following words, p. 16. And in this sense he may be said to be the author and founder of monarchy, viz. As against right seizing violently on the rights of fathers over their children; which paternal authority, if it be in them, by right of nature, (for else how could those 72 come by it?) no body can take from them without their own consents; and then I desire our author and his friends to consider, how far this will concern other princes, and whether it will not, according to his conclusion of that paragraph, resolve all regal power of those, whose dominions extend beyond their families, either into tyranny and usurpation, or election and consent of fathers of families, which will differ very little from consent of the people.

  §. 149.

  All his instances, in the next section, p. 17. of the 12 dukes of Edom, the nine kings in a little corner of Asia in Abraham’s days, the 31 kings in Canaan destroyed by Joshua, and the care he takes to prove that these were all sovereign princes, and that every town in those days had a king, are so many direct proofs against him, that it was not the lordship of Adam by right descending to them, that made kings: for if they had held their royalties by that title, either there must have been but one sovereign over them all, or else every father of a family had been as good a prince, and had as good a claim to royalty, as these: for if all the sons of Esau had each of them, the younger as well as the eldest, the right of fatherhood, and so were sovereign princes after their fathers death, the same right had their sons after them, and so on to all posterity; which will limit all the natural power of fatherhood, only to be over the issue of their own bodies, and their descendents; which power of fatherhood dies with the head of each family, and makes way for the like power of fatherhood to take place in each of his sons over their respective posterities: whereby the power of fatherhood will be preserved indeed, and is intelligible, but will not be at all to our author’s purpose. None of the instances he brings are proofs of any power they had, as heirs of Adam’s paternal authority by the title of his fatherhood descending to them; no, nor of any power they had by virtue of their own: for Adam’s fatherhood being over all mankind, it could descend but to one at once, and from him to his right heir only, and so there could by that title be but one king in the world at a time: and by right of fatherhood, not descending from Adam, it must be only as they themselves were fathers, and so could be over none but their own posterity. So that if those 12 dukes of Edom; if Abraham and the nine kings his neighbours; if Jacob and Esau, and the 31 kings in Canaan, the 72 kings mutilated by Adonibeseck, the 32 kings that came to Benhadad, the 70 kings of Greece making war at Troy, were, as our author contends, all of them sovereign princes; it is evident that kings derived their power from some other original than fatherhood, since some of these had power over more than their own posterity; and it is demonstration, they could not be all heirs to Adam: for I challenge any man to make any pretence to power by right of fatherhood, either intelligible or possible in any one, otherwise, than either as Adam’s heir, or as progenitor over his own descendents, naturally sprung from him. And if our author could shew that any one of these princes, of which he gives us here so large a catalogue, had his authority by either of these titles, I think I might yield him the cause; though it is manifest they are all impertinent, and directly contrary to what he brings them to prove, viz. That the lordship which Adam had over the world by right descended to the patriarchs.

  §. 150.

  Having told us, p. 16, That the patriarchal government continued in Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, until the Egyptian bondage, p. 17. he tells us, By manifest footsteps we may trace this paternal government unto the Israelites coming into Egypt, where the exercise of supreme patriarchal government was intermitted, because they were in subjection to a stronger prince. What these footsteps are of paternal government, in our author’s sense, i. e. of absolute monarchical power descending from Adam, and exercised by right of fatherhood, we have seen, that is for 2290 years no footsteps at all; since in all that time he cannot produce any one example of any person who claimed or exercised regal authority by right of fatherhood; or shew any one who being a king was Adam’s heir: all that his proofs amount to, is only this, that there were fathers, patriarchs and kings, in that age of the world; but that the fathers and patriarchs had any absolute arbitrary power, or by what titles those kings had their’s, and of what extent it was, the scripture is wholly filent; it is manifest by right of fatherhood they neither did, nor could claim any title to dominion and empire.

  §. 151.

  To say, that the exercise of supreme patriarchal government was intermitted, because they were in subjection to a stronger prince, proves nothing but what I before suspected, viz. That patriarchal jurisdiction or government is a fallacious expression, and does not in our author signify (what he would yet insinuate by it) paternal and regal power, such an absolute sovereignty as he supposes was in Adam.

  §. 152.

  For how can he say that patriarchal jurisdiction was intermitted in Egypt, where there was a king, under whose regal government the Israelites were, if patriarchal were absolute monarchical jurisdiction? And if it were not, but something else, why does he make such ado about a power not in question, and nothing to the purpose? The exercise of patriarchal jurisdiction, if patriarchal be regal, was not intermitted whilst the Israelites were in Egypt. It is true, the exercise of regal power was not then in the hands of any of the promised seed of Abraham, nor before neither that I know; but what is that to the intermission of regal authority, as descending from Adam, unless our author will have it, that this chosen line of Abraham had the right of inheritance to Adam’s lordship? and then to what purpose are his instances of the 72 rulers, in whom the fatherly authority was preserved in the confusion at Babel? Why does he bring the 12 princes sons of Ismael; and the dukes of Edom, and join them with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, as examples of the exercise of true patriarchal government, if the exercise of patriarchal jurisdiction were intermitted in the world, whenever the heirs of Jacob had not supreme power? I fear, supreme patriarchal jurisdiction was not only intermitted, but from the time of the Egyptian bondage quite lost in the world, since it will be hard to find, from that time downwards, any one who exercised it as an inheritance descending to him from the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. I imagined monarchical government would have served his turn in the hands of Pharaoh, or any body. But one cannot easily discover in all places what his discourse tends to, as particularly in this place it is not obvious to guess what he drives at, when he says, the exercise of supreme patriarchal jurisdiction in Egypt, or how this serves to make out the descent of Adam’s lordship to the patriarchs, or any body else.

  §. 153.

  For I thought he had been giving us out of scripture, proofs and examples of monarchical government, founded on paternal authority, descending from Adam; and not an history of the Jews: amongst whom yet we find no kings, till many years after they were a people: and when kings were their rulers, there is not the least mention or room for a pretence that they were heirs to Adam, or kings by paternal authority. I expected, talking so much as he does of scripture, that he would have produced thence a series of monarchs, whose titles were clear to Adam’s fatherhood, and who, as heirs to him, owned and exercised paternal jurisdiction over their subjects, and that this was the true patriarchical government; whereas he neither proves, that the patriarchs were kings; nor that either kings or patriarchs were heirs to Adam, or so much as pretended to it: and one may as well prove, that the patriarchs were all absolute monarchs; that the power both of patriarchs and kings was only paternal; and that this power descended to them from Adam: I say all these propositions may be as well proved by a confused account of a multitude of little kings in the West-Indies, out of Ferdinando Soto, or any of our late histories of the Northern America, or by our author’s 70 kings of Greece, out of Homer, as by any thing he brings out of scripture, in that multitude of kings he has reckoned up.

  §. 154.

  And methinks he should have let Homer and his wars of Troy alone, since his great zeal to truth or monarchy carried him to such a pitch of transport against philosophers and poets, that he tells us in his preface, that there are too many in these days, who please themselves in running after the opinions of philosophers and poets, to find out such an original of government, as might promise them some title to liberty, to the great scandal of Christianity, and bringing in of atheism. And yet these heathens, philosopher Aristotle, and poet Homer, are not rejected by our zealous Christian politician, whenever they offer any thing that seems to serve his turn; whether to the great scandal of Christianity and bringing in of atheism, let him look. This I cannot but observe, in authors who it is visible write not for truth, how ready zeal for interest and party is to entitle Christianity to their designs, and to charge atheism on those who will not without examining submit to their doctrines, and blindly swallow their nonsense.

  But to return to his scripture history, our author farther tells us, p. 18. that after the return of the Israelites out of bondage, God, out of a special care of them, chose Moses and Joshua successively to govern as princes in the place and stead of the supreme fathers. If it be true, that they returned out of bondage, it must be into a state of freedom, and must imply, that both before and after this bondage they were free, unless our author will say, that changing of masters is returning out of bondage; or that a slave returns out of bondage, when he is removed from one gally to another. If then they returned out of bondage, it is plain that in those days, whatever our author in his preface says to the contrary, there were difference between a son, a subject, and a slave; and that neither the patriarchs before, nor their rulers after this Egyptian bondage, numbered their sons or subjects amongst their possessions, and disposed of them with as absolute a dominion, as they did their other goods.

  §. 155.

  This is evident in Jacob, to whom Reuben offered his two sons as pledges; and Judah was at last surety for Benjamin’s safe return out of Egypt: which all had been vain, superfluous, and but a sort of mockery, if Jacob had had the same power over every one of his family, as he had over his ox or his ass, as an owner over his substance; and the offers that Reuben or Judah made had been such a security for returning of Benjamin, as if a man should take two lambs out of his lord’s flock, and offer one as security, that he will safely restore the other.

  §. 156.

  When they were out of this bondage, what then? God out of a special care of them, the Israelites. It is well that once in his book he will allow God to have any care of the people; for in other places he speaks of mankind, as if God had no care of any part of them, but only of their monarchs, and that the rest of the people, the societies of men, were made as so many herds of cattle, only for the service, use, and pleasure of their princes.

  §. 157.

  Chose Moses and Joshua successively to govern as princes; a shrewd argument our author has found out to prove God’s care of the fatherly authority, and Adam’s heirs, that here, as an expression of his care of his own people, he chooses those for princes over them, that had not the least pretence to either. The persons chosen were, Moses of the tribe of Levi, and Joshua of the tribe of Ephraim, neither of which had any title of fatherhood. But says our author, they were in the place and stead of the supreme fathers. If God had any where as plainly declared his choice of such fathers to be rulers, as he did of Moses and Joshua, we might believe Mases and Joshua were in their place and stead: but that being the question in debate, till that be better proved, Moses being chosen by God to be ruler of his people, will no more prove that government belonged to Adam’s heir, or to the fatherhood, than God’s choosing Aaron of the tribe of Levi to be priest, will prove that the priesthood belonged to Adam’s heir, or the prime fathers; since God would choose Aaron to be priest, and Moses ruler in Israel, though neither of those offices were settled on Adam’s heir, or the fatherhood.

  §. 158.

  Our author goes on, and after them likewise for a time he raised up judges, to defend his people in time of peril, p. 18. This proves fatherly authority to be the original of government, and that it descended from Adam to his heirs, just as well as what went before: only here our author seems to confess, that these judges, who were all the governors they then had, were only men of valour, whom they made their generals to defend them in time of peril; and cannot God raise up such men, unless fatherhood have a title to government?

  But says our author, when God gave the Israelites kings, he re-established the ancient andprime right of lineal succession to paternal government, p. 18.

  §. 160.

  How did God re-establish it? by a law, a positive command? We find no such thing. Our author means then, that when God gave them a king, in giving them a king, he re-established the right, &c. To re-establish de facto the right of lineal succession to paternal government, is to put a man in possession of that government which his fathers did enjoy, and he by lineal succession had a right to: for, first, if it were another government than what his ancestors had, it was not succeeding to an ancient right, but beginning a new one: for if a prince should give a man, besides his antient patrimony, which for some ages his family had been disseized of, an additional estate, never before in the possession of his ancestors, he could not be said to re-establish the right of lineal succession to any more than what had been formerly enjoyed by his ancestors. If therefore the power the kings of Israel had, were any thing more than Isaac or Jacob had, it was not the re-establishing in them the right of succession to a power, but giving them a new power, however you please to call it, paternal or not: and whether Isaac and Jacob had the same power that the kings of Israel had, I desire any one, by what has been above said, to consider; and I do not think they will find, that either Abraham, Isaac, or Jacob, had any regal power at all.

  §. 161.

  Next, there can be no re-establishment of the prime and ancient right of lineal succession to any thing, unless he, that is put in possession of it, has the right to succeed, and be the true and next heir to him he succeeds to. Can that be a re-establishment, which begins in a new family? or that the re-establishment of an ancient right of lineal succession, when a crown is given to one, who has no right of succession to it, and who, if the lineal succession had gone on, had been out of all possibility of pretence to it? Saul, the first king God gave the Israelites, was of the tribe of Benjamin. Was the ancient and prime right of lineal succession re-established in him? The next was David, the youngest son of Jesse, of the posterity of Judah, Jacob’s third son. Was the ancient and prime right of lineal succession to paternal government re-established in him? or in Solomon, his younger son and successor in the throne? or in Jereboam over the ten tribes? or in Athaliah, a woman who reigned six years an utter stranger to the royal blood? If the ancient and prime right of lineal succession to paternal government were re-established in any of these or their posterity, the ancient and prime right of lineal succession to paternal government belongs to younger brothers as well as elder, and may be re-established in any man living; for whatever younger brothers, by ancient and prime right of lineal succession, may have as well as the elder, that every man living may have a right to, by lineal succession, and Sir Robert as well as any other. And so what a brave right of lineal succession, to his paternal or regal government, our author has re-established, for the securing the rights and inheritance of crowns, where every one may have it, let the world consider.

  §. 162.

  But says our author however, p. 19. Whensoever God made choice of any special person to be king, he intended that the issue also should have benefit thereof, as being comprehended sufficiently in the person of the father, altho’ the father was only named in the grant. This yet will not help out succession; for if, as our author says, the benefit of the grant be intended to the issue of the grantee, this will not direct the succession; since, if God give any thing to a man and his issue in general, the claim cannot be to any one of that issue in particular; every one that is of his race will have an equal right. If it be said, our author meant heir, I believe our author was as willing as any body to have used that word, if it would have served his turn: but Solomon, who succeeded David in the throne, being no more his heir than Jeroboham, who succeeded him in the government of the ten tribes, was his issue, our author had reason to avoid saying, That God intended it to the heirs, when that would not hold in a succession, which our author could not except against; and so he has left his succession as undetermined, as if he had said nothing about it: for if the regal power be given by God to a man and his issue, as the land of Canaan was to Abraham and his seed, must they not all have a title to it, all share in it? And one may as well say, that by God’s grant to Abraham and his seed, the land of Canaan was to belong only to one of his seed exclusive of all others, as by God’s grant of dominion to a man and his issue, this dominion was to belong in peculiar to one of his issue exclusive of all others.

  §. 163.

  But how will our author prove that whensoever God made choice of any special person to be a king, he intended that the (I suppose he means his) issue also should have benefit thereof? has he so soon forgot Moses and Joshua, whom in this very section, he says, God out of a special care chose to govern as princes, and the judges that God raised up? Had not these princes, having the authority of the supreme fatherhood, the same power that the kings had; and being specially chosen by God himself, should not their issue have the benefit of that choice, as well as David’s or Solomon’s? If these had the paternal authority put into their hands immediately by God, why had not their issue the benefit of this grant in a succession to this power? or if they had it as Adam’s heirs, why did not their heirs enjoy it after them by right descending to them? for they could not be heirs to one another. Was the power the same, and from the same original, in Moses, Joshua and the Judges, as it was in David and the Kings; and was it inheritable in one, and not in the other? If it was not paternal authority, then God’s own people were governed by those that had not paternal authority, and those governors did well enough without it: if it were paternal authority, and God chose the persons that were to exercise it, our author’s rule fails, that whensoever God makes choice of any person to be supreme ruler (for I suppose the name king has no spell in it, it is not the title, but the power makes the difference) he intends that the issue also should have the benefit of it, since from their coming out of Egypt to David’s time, 400 years, the issue was never so sufficiently comprehended in the person of the father, as that any son, after the death of his father, succeeded to the government amongst all those judges that judged Israel. If, to avoid this, it be said, God always chose the person of the successor, and so, transferring the fatherly authority to him, excluded his issue from succeeding to it, that is manifestly not so in the story of Jephtha, where he articled with the people, and they made him judge over them, as is plain, Judg. 11.

  §. 164.

  It is in vain then to say, that whensoever God chooses any special person to have the exercise of paternal authority, (for if that be not to be king, I desire to know the difference between a king and one having the exercise of paternal authority) he intends the issue also should have the benefit of it, since we find the authority, the judges had, ended with them, and descended not to their issue; and if the judges had not paternal authority, I fear it will trouble our author, or any of the friends to his principles, to tell who had then the paternal authority, that is, the government and supreme power amongst the Israelites; and I suspect they must confess that the chosen people of God continued a people several hundreds of years, without any knowledge or thought of this paternal authority, or any appearance of monarchical government at all.

  §. 165.

  To be satisfied of this, he need but read the story of the Levite, and the war thereupon with the Benjamites, in the three last chapters of Judges; and when he finds, that the Levite appeals to the people for justice that it was the tribes and the congregation, that debated, resolved, and directed all that was done on that occasion; he must conclude, either that God was not careful to preserve the fatherly authority amongst his own chosen people; or else that the fatherly authority may be preserved, where there is no monarchical government: if the latter, then it will follow, that though fatherly authority be never so well proved, yet it will not infer a necessity of monarchical government; if the former, it will seem very strange and improbable, that God should ordain fatherly authority to be so sacred amongst the sons of men, that there could be no power, or government without it, and yet that amongst his own people, even whilst he is providing a government for them, and therein prescribes rules to the several states and relations of men, this great and fundamental one, this most material and necessary of all the rest, should be concealed, and lie neglected for 400 years after.

  §. 166.

  Before I leave this, I must ask how our author knows that whensoever God makes choice of any special person to be king, he intends that the issue should have the benefit thereof? Does God by the law of nature or revelation say so? By the same law also he must say, which of his issue must enjoy the crown in succession, and so point out the heir, or else leave his issue to divide or scramble for the government: both alike absurd, and such as will destroy the benefit of such grant to the issue. When any such declaration of God’s intention is produced, it will be our duty to believe God intends it so; but till that be done, our author must shew us some better warrant, before we shall be obliged to receive him as the authentic revealer of God’s intentions.

  §. 167.

  The issue, says our author, is comprehended sufficiently in the person of the father, although the father only was named in the grant: and yet God, when he gave the land of Canaan to Abraham, Gen. xiii. 15. thought fit to put his seed into the grant too: so the priesthood was given to Aaron and his seed; and the crown God gave not only to David, but his seed also: and however our author assures us that God intends, that the issue should have the benefit of it, when he chooses any person to be king, yet we see that the kingdom which he gave to Saul, without mentioning his seed after him, never came to any of his issue: and why, when God chose a person to be king, he should intend, that his issue should have the benefit of it, more than when he chose one to be judge in Israel, I would fain know a reason; or why does a grant of fatherly authority to a king more comprehend the issue, than when a like grant is made to a judge? Is paternal authority by right to descend to the issue of one, and not of the other? There will need some reason to be shewn of this difference, more than the name, when the thing given is the same fatherly authority, and the manner of giving it, God’s choice of the person, the same too; for I suppose our author, when he says, Godraised up judges, will by no means allow, they were chosen by the people.

  §. 168.

  But since our author has so confidently assured us of the care of God to preserve the fatherhood, and pretends to build all he says upon the authority of the scripture, we may well expect that that people, whose law, constitution and history is chiefly contained in the scripture, should furnish him with the clearest instances of God’s care of preserving the fatherly authority, in that people who it is agreed he had a most peculiar care of. Let us see then what state this paternal authority or government was in amongst the Jews, from their beginning to be a people. It was omitted, by our author’s confession, from their coming into Egypt, till their return out of that bondage, above 200 years: from thence till God gave the Israelites a king, about 400 years more, our author gives but a very slender account of it; nor indeed all that time are there the least footsteps of paternal or regal government amongst them. But then says our author, God re-established the ancient and prime right of lineal succession to paternal government.

  §. 169.

  What a lineal succession to paternal government was then established, we have already seen. I only now consider how long this lasted, and that was to their captivity, about 500 years: from thence to their destruction by the Romans, above 650 years after, the ancient and prime right of lineal succession to paternal government was again lost, and they continued a people in the promised land without it. So that of 1750 years that they were God’s peculiar people, they had hereditary kingly government amongst them not one third of the time; and of that time there is not the least footstep of one moment of paternal government, nor the re-establishment of the ancient and prime right of lineal succession to it, whether we suppose it to be derived, as from its fountain, from David, Saul, Abraham, or, which upon our author’s principles is the only true, from Adam.

  OF CIVIL-GOVERNMENT

  BOOK II

  Chap. I.

  §. 1.

  It having been shewn in the foregoing discourse,

  1. That Adam had not, either by natural right of fatherhood, or by positive donation from God, any such authority over his children, or dominion over the world, as is pretended:

  2. That if he had, his heirs, yet, had no right to it:

  3. That if his heirs had, there being no law of nature nor positive law of God that determines which is the right heir in all cases that may arise, the right of succession, and consequently of bearing rule, could not have been certainly determined:

  4. That if even that had been determined, yet the knowledge of which is the eldest line of Adam’s posterity, being so long since utterly lost, that in the races of mankind and families of the world, there remains not to one above another, the least pretence to be the eldest house, and to have the right of inheritance:

  All these premises having, as I think, been clearly made out, it is impossible that the rulers now on earth should make any benefit, or derive any the least shadow of authority from that, which is held to be the fountain of all power, Adam’s private dominion and paternal jurisdiction; so that he that will not give just occasion to think that all government in the world is the product only of force and violence, and that men live together by no other rules but that of beasts, where the strongest carries it, and so lay a foundation for perpetual disorder and mischief, tumult, sedition and rebellion, (things that the followers of that hypothesis so loudly cry out against) must of necessity find out another rise of governwent, another original of political power, and another way of designing and knowing the persons that have it, than what Sir Robert Filmer hath taught us.

  §. 2.

  To this purpose, I think it may not be amiss, to set down what I take to be political power; that the power of a magistrate over a subject may be distinguished from that of a father over his children, a master over his servant, a husband over his wife, and a lord over his slave. All which distinct powers happening sometimes together in the same man, if he be considered under these different relations, it may help us to distinguish these powers one from another, and shew the difference betwixt a ruler of a common-wealth, a father of a family, and a captain of a galley.

  §. 3.

  Political power, then, I take to be a right of making laws with penalties of death, and consequently all less penalties, for the regulating and preserving of property, and of employing the force of the community, in the execution of such laws, and in the defence of the common-wealth from foreign injury; and all this only for the public good.

  CHAP. II.
  Of the State of Nature.

  §. 4.

  TO understand political power right, and derive it from its original, we must consider, what state all men are naturally in, and that is, a state of perfect freedom to order their actions, and dispose of their possessions and persons, as they think fit, within the bounds of the law of nature, without asking leave, or depending upon the will of any other man.

  A state also of equality, wherein all the power and jurisdiction is reciprocal, no one having more than another; there being nothing more evident, than that creatures of the same species and rank, promiscuously born to all the same advantages of nature, and the use of the same faculties, should also be equal one amongst another without subordination or subjection, unless the lord and master of them all should, by any manifest declaration of his will, set one above another, and confer on him, by an evident and clear appointment, an undoubted right to dominion and sovereignty.

  §. 5.

  This equality of men by nature, the judicious Hooker looks upon as so evident in itself, and beyond all question, that he makes it the foundation of that obligation to mutual love amongst men, on which he builds the duties they owe one another, and from whence he derives the great maxims of justice and charity. His words are,

  The like natural inducement hath brought men to know that it is no less their duty, to love others than themselves; for seeing those things which are equal, must needs all have one measure; if I cannot but wish to receive good, even as much at every man’s hands, as any man can wish unto his own soul, how should I look to have any part of my desire herein satisfied, unless myself be careful to satisfy the like desire, which is undoubtedly in other men, being of one and the same nature? To have any thing offered them repugnant to this desire, must needs in all respects grieve them as much as me; so that if I do harm, I must look to suffer, there being no reason that others should shew greater measure of love to me, than they have by me shewed unto them: my desire therefore to be loved of my equals in nature, as much as possible may be, imposeth upon me a natural duty of bearing to them-ward fully the like affection; from which relation of equality between ourselves and them that are as ourselves, what several rules and canons natural reason hath drawn, for direction of life, no man is ignorant. Eccl. Pol. Lib. 1.

  §. 6.

  But though this be a state of liberty, yet it is not a state of licence: though man in that state have an uncontroulable liberty to dispose of his person or possessions, yet he has not liberty to destroy himself, or so much as any creature in his possession, but where some nobler use than its bare preservation calls for it. The state of nature has a law of nature to govern it, which obliges every one: and reason, which is that law, teaches all mankind, who will but consult it, that being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions: for men being all the workmanship of one omnipotent, and infinitely wise maker; all the servants of one sovereign master, sent into the world by his order, and about his business; they are his property, whose workmanship they are, made to last during his, not one another’s pleasure: and being furnished with like faculties, sharing all in one community of nature, there cannot be supposed any such subordination among us, that may authorize us to destroy one another, as if we were made for one another’s uses, as the inferior ranks of creatures are for our’s. Every one, as he is bound to preserve himself, and not to quit his station wilfully, so by the like reason, when his own preservation comes not in competition, ought he, as much as he can, to preserve the rest of mankind, and may not, unless it be to do justice on an offender, take away, or impair the life, or what tends to the preservation of the life, the liberty, health, limb, or goods of another.

  §. 7.

  And that all men may be restrained from invading others rights, and from doing hurt to one another, and the law of nature be observed, which willeth the peace and preservation of all mankind, the execution of the law of nature is, in that state, put into every man’s hands, whereby every one has a right to punish the transgressors of that law to such a degree, as may hinder its violation: for the law of nature would, as all other laws that concern men in this world, be in vain, if there were no body that in the state of nature had a power to execute that law, and thereby preserve the innocent and restrain offenders. And if any one in the state of nature may punish another for any evil he has done, every one may do so: for in that state of perfect equality, where naturally there is no superiority or jurisdiction of one over another, what any may do in prosecution of that law, every one must needs have a right to do.

  §. 8.

  And thus, in the state of nature, one man comes by a power over another; but yet no absolute or arbitrary power, to use a criminal, when he has got him in his hands, according to the passionate heats, or boundless extravagancy of his own will; but only to retribute to him, so far as calm reason and conscience dictate, what is proportionate to his transgression, which is so much as may serve for reparation and restraint: for these two are the only reasons, why one man may lawfully do harm to another, which is that we call punishment. In transgressing the law of nature, the offender declares himself to live by another rule than that of reason and common equity, which is that measure God has set to the actions of men, for their mutual security; and so he becomes dangerous to mankind, the tye, which is to secure them from injury and violence, being slighted and broken by him. Which being a trespass against the whole species, and the peace and safety of it, provided for by the law of nature, every man upon this score, by the right he hath to preserve mankind in general, may restrain, or where it is necessary, destroy things noxious to them, and so may bring such evil on any one, who hath transgressed that law, as may make him repent the doing of it, and thereby deter him, and by his example others, from doing the like mischief. And in this case, and upon this ground, every man hath a right to punish the offender, and be executioner of the law of nature.

  §. 9.

  I doubt not but this will seem a very strange doctrine to some men: but before they condemn it, I desire them to resolve me, by what right any prince or state can put to death, or punish an alien, for any crime he commits in their country. It is certain their laws, by virtue of any sanction they receive from the promulgated will of the legislative, reach not a stranger: they speak not to him, nor, if they did, is he bound to hearken to them. The legislative authority, by which they are in force over the subjects of that common-wealth, hath no power over him. Those who have the supreme power of making laws in England, France or Holland, are to an Indian, but like the rest of the world, men without authority: and therefore, if by the law of nature every man hath not a power to punish offences against it, as he soberly judges the case to require, I see not how the magistrates of any community can punish an alien of another country; since, in reference to him, they can have no more power than what every man naturally may have over another.

  §. 10.

  Besides the crime which consists in violating the law, and varying from the right rule of reason, whereby a man so far becomes degenerate, and declares himself to quit the principles of human nature, and to be a noxious creature, there is commonly injury done to some person or other, and some other man receives damage by his transgression: in which case he who hath received any damage, has, besides the right of punishment common to him with other men, a particular right to seek reparation from him that has done it: and any other person, who finds it just, may also join with him that is injured, and assist him in recovering from the offender so much as may make satisfaction for the harm he has suffered.

  §. 11.

  From these two distinct rights, the one of punishing the crime for restraint, and preventing the like offence, which right of punishing is in every body; the other of taking reparation, which belongs only to the injured party, comes it to pass that the magistrate, who by being magistrate hath the common right of punishing put into his hands, can often, where the public good demands not the execution of the law, remit the punishment of criminal offences by his own authority, but yet cannot remit the satisfaction due to any private man for the damage he has received. That, he who has suffered the damage has a right to demand in his own name, and he alone can remit: the damnified person has this power of appropriating to himself the goods or service of the offender, by right of self-preservation, as every man has a power to punish the crime, to prevent its being committed again, by the right he has of preserving all mankind, and doing all reasonable things he can in order to that end: and thus it is, that every man, in the state of nature, has a power to kill a murderer, both to deter others from doing the like injury, which no reparation can compensate, by the example of the punishment that attends it from every body, and also to secure men from the attempts of a criminal, who having renounced reason, the common rule and measure God hath given to mankind, hath, by the unjust violence and slaughter he hath committed upon one, declared war against all mankind, and therefore may be destroyed as a lion or a tyger, one of those wild savage beasts, with whom men can have no society nor security: and upon this is grounded that great law of nature, Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed. And Cain was so fully convinced, that every one had a right to destroy such a criminal, that after the murder of his brother, he cries out, Every one that findethme, shall slay me; so plain was it writ in the hearts of all mankind.

  §. 12.

  By the same reason may a man in the state of nature punish the lesser breaches of that law. It will perhaps be demanded, with death? I answer, each transgression may be punished to that degree, and with so much severity, as will suffice to make it an ill bargain to the offender, give him cause to repent, and terrify others from doing the like. Every offence, that can be committed in the state of nature, may in the state of nature be also punished equally, and as far forth as it may, in a common-wealth: for though it would be besides my present purpose, to enter here into the particulars of the law of nature, or its measures of punishment; yet, it is certain there is such a law, and that too, as intelligible and plain to a rational creature, and a studier of that law, as the positive laws of common-wealths; nay, possibly plainer; as much as reason is easier to be understood, than the fancies and intricate contrivances of men, following contrary and hidden interests put into words; for so truly are a great part of the municipal laws of countries, which are only so far right, as they are founded on the law of nature, by which they are to be regulated and interpreted.

  §. 13.

  To this strange doctrine, viz. That in the state of nature every one has the executive power of the law of nature, I doubt not but it will be objected, that it is unreasonable for men to be judges in their own cases, that self-love will make men partial to themselves and their friends: and on the other side, that ill nature, passion and revenge will carry them too far in punishing others; and hence nothing but confusion and disorder will follow, and that therefore God hath certainly appointed government to restrain the partiality and violence of men. I easily grant, that civil government is the proper remedy for the inconveniencies of the state of nature, which must certainly be great, where men may be judges in their own case, since it is easy to be imagined, that he who was so unjust as to do his brother an injury, will scarce be so just as to condemn himself for it: but I shall desire those who make this objection, to remember, that absolute monarchs are but men; and if government is to be the remedy of those evils, which necessarily follow from men’s being judges in their own cases, and the state of nature is therefore not to be endured, I desire to know what kind of government that is, and how much better it is than the state of nature, where one man, commanding a multitude, has the liberty to be judge in his own case, and may do to all his subjects whatever he pleases, without the least liberty to any one to question or controul those who execute his pleasure? and in whatsoever he doth, whether led by reason, mistake or passion, must be submitted to? much better it is in the state of nature, wherein men are not bound to submit to the unjust will of another: and if he that judges, judges amiss in his own, or any other case, he is answerable for it to the rest of mankind.

  §. 14.

  It is often asked as a mighty objection, where are, or ever were there any men in such a state of nature? To which it may suffice as an answer at present, that since all princes and rulers of independent governments all through the world, are in a state of nature, it is plain the world never was, nor ever will be, without numbers of men in that state. I have named all governors of independent communities, whether they are, or are not, in league with others: for it is not every compact that puts an end to the state of nature between men, but only this one of agreeing together mutually to enter into one community, and make one body politic; other promises, and compacts, men may make one with another, and yet still be in the state of nature. The promises and bargains for truck, &c. between the two men in the desert island, mentioned by Garcilasso de la Vega, in his history of Peru; or between a Swiss and an Indian, in the woods of America, are binding to them, though they are perfectly in a state of nature, in reference to one another: for truth and keeping of faith belongs to men, as men, and not as members of society.

  §. 15.

  To those that say, there were never any men in the state of nature, I will not only oppose the authority of the judicious Hooker, Eccl. Pol. lib. i. sect. 10. where he says, The laws which have been hitherto mentioned, i. e. the laws of nature, do bind men absolutely, even as they are men, although they have never any settled fellowship, never any solemn agreement amongst themselves what to do, or not to do: but forasmuch as we are not by ourselves sufficient to furnish ourselves with competent store of things, needful for such a life as our nature doth desire, a life fit for the dignity of man; therefore to supply those defects and imperfections which are in us, as living single and solely by ourselves, we are naturally induced to seek communion and fellowship with others: this was the cause of men’s uniting themselves at first in politic societies. But I moreover affirm, that all men are naturally in that state, and remain so, till by their own consents they make themselves members of some politic society; and I doubt not in the sequel of this discourse, to make it very clear.

  CHAP. III.
  Of the State of War.

  §. 16.

  THE state of war is a state of enmity and destruction: and therefore declaring by word or action, not a passionate and hasty, but a sedate settled design upon another man’s life, puts him in a state of war with him against whom he has declared such an intention, and so has exposed his life to the other’s power to be taken away by him, or any one that joins with him in his defence, and espouses his quarrel; it being reasonable and just, I should have a right to destroy that which threatens me with destruction: for, by the fundamental law of nature, man being to be preserved as much as possible, when all cannot be preserved, the safety of the innocent is to be preferred: and one may destroy a man who makes war upon him, or has discovered an enmity to his being, for the same reason that he may kill a wolf or a lion; because such men are not under the ties of the common-law of reason, have no other rule, but that of force and violence, and so may be treated as beasts of prey, those dangerous and noxious creatures, that will be sure to destroy him whenever he falls into their power.

  §. 17.

  And hence it is, that he who attempts to get another man into his absolute power, does thereby put himself into a state of war with him; it being to be understood as a declaration of a design upon his life: for I have reason to conclude, that he who would get me into his power without my consent, would use me as he pleased when he had got me there, and destroy me too when he had a fancy to it; for no body can desire to have me in his absolute power, unless it be to compel me by force to that which is against the right of my freedom, i. e. make me a slave. To be free from such force is the only security of my preservation; and reason bids me look on him, as an enemy to my preservation, who would take away that freedom which is the fence to it; so that he who makes an attempt to enslave me, thereby puts himself into a state of war with me. He that, in the state of nature, would take away the freedom that belongs to any one in that state, must necessarily be supposed to have a design to take away every thing else, that freedom being the foundation of all the rest; as he that, in the state of society, would take away the freedom belonging to those of that society or common-wealth, must be supposed to design to take away from them every thing else, and so be looked on as in a state of war.

  §. 18.

  This makes it lawful for a man to kill a thief, who has not in the least hurt him, nor declared any design upon his life, any farther than, by the use of force, so to get him in his power, as to take away his money, or what he pleases, from him; because using force, where he has no right, to get me into his power, let his pretence be what it will, I have no reason to suppose, that he, who would take away my liberty, would not, when he had me in his power, take away every thing else. And therefore it is lawful for me to treat him as one who has put himself into a state of war with me, i. e. kill him if I can; for to that hazard does he justly expose himself, whoever introduces a state of war, and is aggressor in it.

  §. 19.

  And here we have the plain difference between the state of nature and the state of war, which however some men have confounded, are as far distant, as a state of peace, good will, mutual assistance and preservation, and a state of enmity, malice, violence and mutual destruction, are one from another. Men living together according to reason, without a common superior on earth, with authority to judge between them, is properly the state of nature. But force, or a declared design of force, upon the person of another, where there is no common superior on earth to appeal to for relief, is the state of war: and it is the want of such an appeal gives a man the right of war even against an aggressor, tho’ he be in society and a fellow subject. Thus a thief, whom I cannot harm, but by appeal to the law, for having stolen all that I am worth, I may kill, when he sets on me to rob me but of my horse or coat; because the law, which was made for my preservation, where it cannot interpose to secure my life from present force, which, if lost, is capable of no reparation, permits me my own defence, and the right of war, a liberty to kill the aggressor, because the aggressor allows not time to appeal to our common judge, nor the decision of the law, for remedy in a case where the mischief may be irreparable. Want of a common judge with authority, puts all men in a state of nature: force without right, upon a man’s person, makes a state of war, both where there is, and is not, a common judge.

  §. 20.

  But when the actual force is over, the state of war ceases between those that are in society, and are equally on both sides subjected to the fair determination of the law; because then there lies open the remedy of appeal for the past injury, and to prevent future harm: but where no such appeal is, as in the state of nature, for want of positive laws, and judges with authority to appeal to, the state of war once begun, continues, with a right to the innocent party to destroy the other whenever he can, until the aggressor offers peace, and desires reconciliation on such terms as may repair any wrongs he has already done, and secure the innocent for the future; nay, where an appeal to the law, and constituted judges, lies open, but the remedy is denied by a manifest perverting of justice, and a barefaced wresting of the laws to protect or indemnify the violence or injuries of some men, or party of men, there it is hard to imagine any thing but a state of war: for where-ever violence is used, and injury done, though by hands appointed to administer justice, it is still violence and injury, however coloured with the name, pretences, or forms of law, the end whereof being to protect and redress the innocent, by an unbiassed application of it, to all who are under it; where-ever that is not bona fide done, war is made upon the sufferers, who having no appeal on earth to right them, they are left to the only remedy in such cases, an appeal to heaven.

  §. 21.

  To avoid this state of war (wherein there is no appeal but to heaven, and wherein every the least difference is apt to end, where there is no authority to decide between the contenders) is one great reason of men’s putting themselves into society, and quitting the state of nature: for where there is an authority, a power on earth, from which relief can be had by appeal, there the continuance of the state of war is excluded, and the controversy is decided by that power. Had there been any such court, any superior jurisdiction on earth, to determine the right between Jephtha and the Ammonites, they had never come to a state of war: but we see he was forced to appeal to heaven. The Lord the Judge (says he) be judge this day between the children of Israel and the children of Ammon, Judg. xi. 27. and then prosecuting, and relying on his appeal, he leads out his army to battle: and therefore in such controversies, where the question is put, who shall be judge? It cannot be meant, who shall decide the controversy; every one knows what Jephtha here tells us, that the Lord the Judge shall judge. Where there is no judge on earth, the appeal lies to God in heaven. That question then cannot mean, who shall judge, whether another hath put himself in a state of war with me, and whether I may, as Jephtha did, appeal to heaven in it? of that I myself can only be judge in my own conscience, as I will answer it, at the great day, to the supreme judge of all men.

  CHAP. IV.
  Of SLAVERY.

  §. 22.

  THE natural liberty of man is to be free from any superior power on earth, and not to be under the will or legislative authority of man, but to have only the law of nature for his rule. The liberty of man, in society, is to be under no other legislative power, but that established, by consent, in the common-wealth; nor under the dominion of any will, or restraint of any law, but what that legislative shall enact, according to the trust put in it. Freedom then is not what Sir Robert Filmer tells us, Observations, A. 55. a liberty for every oneto do what he lists, to live as he pleases, and not to be tied by any laws: but freedom of men under government is, to have a standing rule to live by, common to every one of that society, and made by the legislative power erected in it; a liberty to follow my own will in all things, where the rule prescribes not; and not to be subject to the inconstant, uncertain, unknown, arbitrary will of another man: as freedom of nature is, to be under no other restraint but the law of nature.

  §. 23.

  This freedom from absolute, arbitrary power, is so necessary to, and closely joined with a man’s preservation, that he cannot part with it, but by what forfeits his preservation and life together: for a man, not having the power of his own life, cannot, by compact, or his own consent, enslave himself to any one, nor put himself under the absolute, arbitrary power of another, to take away his life, when he pleases. No body can give more power than he has himself; and he that cannot take away his own life, cannot give another power over it. Indeed, having by his fault forfeited his own life, by some act that deserves death; he, to whom he has forfeited it, may (when he has him in his power) delay to take it, and make use of him to his own service, and he does him no injury by it: for, whenever he finds the hardship of his slavery outweigh the value of his life, it is in his power, by resisting the will of his master, to draw on himself the death he desires.

  §. 24.

  This is the perfect condition of slavery, which is nothing else, but the state of war continued, between a lawful conqueror and a captive: for, if once compact enter between them, and make an agreement for a limited power on the one side, and obedience on the other, the state of war and slavery ceases, as long as the compact endures: for, as has been said, no man can, by agreement, pass over to another that which he hath not in himself, a power over his own life.

  I confess, we find among the Jews, as well as other nations, that men did sell themselves; but, it is plain, this was only to drudgery, not to slavery: for, it is evident, the person sold was not under an absolute, arbitrary, despotical power: for the master could not have power to kill him, at any time, whom, at a certain time, he was obliged to let go free out of his service; and the master of such a servant was so far from having an arbitrary power over his life, that he could not, at pleasure, so much as maim him, but the loss of an eye, or tooth, set him free, Exod. xxi.

  CHAP. V.
  Of PROPERTY.

  §. 25.

  WHether we consider natural reason, which tells us, that men, being once born, have a right to their preservation, and consequently to meat and drink, and such other things as nature affords for their subsistence: or revelation, which gives us an account of those grants God made of the world to Adam, and to Noah, and his sons, it is very clear, that God, as king David says, Psal. CXV. 16. has given the earth to the children of men; given it to mankind in common. But this being supposed, it seems to some a very great difficulty, how any one should ever come to have a property in any thing: I will not content myself to answer, that if it be difficult to make out property, upon a supposition that God gave the world to Adam, and his posterity in common, it is impossible that any man, but one universal monarch, should have any property upon a supposition, that God gave the world to Adam, and his heirs in succession, exclusive of all the rest of his posterity. But I shall endeavour to shew, how men might come to have a property in several parts of that which God gave to mankind in common, and that without any express compact of all the commoners.

  §. 26.

  God, who hath given the world to men in common, hath also given them reason to make use of it to the best advantage of life, and convenience. The earth, and all that is therein, is given to men for the support and comfort of their being. And tho’ all the fruits it naturally produces, and beasts it feeds, belong to mankind in common, as they are produced by the spontaneous hand of nature; and no body has originally a private dominion, exclusive of the rest of mankind, in any of them, as they are thus in their natural state: yet being given for the use of men, there must of necessity be a means to appropriate them some way or other, before they can be of any use, or at all beneficial to any particular man. The fruit, or venison, which nourishes the wild Indian, who knows no inclosure, and is still a tenant in common, must be his, and so his, i. e. a part of him, that another can no longer have any right to it, before it can do him any good for the support of his life.

  §. 27.

  Though the earth, and all inferior creatures, be common to all men, yet every man has a property in his own person: this no body has any right to but himself. The labour of his body, and the work of his hands, we may say, are properly his. Whatsoever then he removes out of the state that nature hath provided, and left it in, he hath mixed his labour with, and joined to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his property. It being by him removed from the common state nature hath placed it in, it hath by this labour something annexed to it, that excludes the common right of other men: for this labour being the unquestionable property of the labourer, no man but he can have a right to what that is once joined to, at least where there is enough, and as good, left in common for others.

  §. 28.

  He that is nourished by the acorns he picked up under an oak, or the apples he gathered from the trees in the wood, has certainly appropriated them to himself. No body can deny but the nourishment is his. I ask then, when did they begin to be his? when he digested? or when he eat? or when he boiled? or when he brought them home? or when he picked them up? and it is plain, if the first gathering made them not his, nothing else could. That labour put a distinction between them and common: that added something to them more than nature, the common mother of all, had done; and so they became his private right. And will any one say, he had no right to those acorns or apples, he thus appropriated, because he had not the consent of all mankind to make them his? Was it a robbery thus to assume to himself what belonged to all in common? If such a consent as that was necessary, man had starved, notwithstanding the plenty God had given him. We see in commons, which remain so by compact, that it is the taking any part of what is common, and removing it out of the state nature leaves it in, which begins the property; without which the common is of no use. And the taking of this or that part, does not depend on the express consent of all the commoners. Thus the grass my horse has bit; the turfs my servant has cut; and the ore I have digged in any place, where I have a right to them in common with others, become my property, without the assignation or consent of any body. The labour that was mine, removing them out of that common state they were in, hath fixed my property in them.

  §. 29.

  By making an explicit consent of every commoner, necessary to any one’s appropriating to himself any part of what is given in common, children or servants could not cut the meat, which their father or master had provided for them in common, without assigning to every one his peculiar part. Though the water running in the fountain be every one’s, yet who can doubt, but that in the pitcher is his only who drew it out? His labour hath taken it out of the hands of nature, where it was common, and belonged equally to all her children, and hath thereby appropriated it to himself.

  §. 30.

  Thus this law of reason makes the deer that Indian’s who hath killed it; it is allowed to be his goods, who hath bestowed his labour upon it, though before it was the common right of every one. And amongst those who are counted the civilized part of mankind, who have made and multiplied positive laws to determine property, this original law of nature, for the beginning of property, in what was before common, still takes place; and by virtue thereof, what fish any one catches in the ocean, that great and still remaining common of mankind; or what ambergrise any one takes up here, is by the labour that removes it out of that common state nature left it in, made his property, who takes that pains about it. And even amongst us, the hare that any one is hunting, is thought his who pursues her during the chase: for being a beast that is still looked upon as common, and no man’s private possession; whoever has employed so much labour about any of that kind, as to find and pursue her, has thereby removed her from the state of nature, wherein she was common, and hath begun a property.

  §. 31.

  It will perhaps be objected to this, that if gathering the acorns, or other fruits of the earth, &c. makes a right to them, then any one may ingross as much as he will. To which I answer, Not so. The same law of nature, that does by this means give us property, does also bound that property too. God has given us all things richly, 1 Tim. vi. 12. is the voice of reason confirmed by inspiration. But how far has he given it us? To enjoy. As much as any one can make use of to any advantage of life before it spoils, so much he may by his labour fix a property in: whatever is beyond this, is more than his share, and belongs to others. Nothing was made by God for man to spoil or destroy. And thus, considering the plenty of natural provisions there was a long time in the world, and the few spenders; and to how small a part of that provision the industry of one man could extend itself, and ingross it to the prejudice of others; especially keeping within the bounds, set by reason, of what might serve for his use; there could be then little room for quarrels or contentions about property so established.

  §. 32.

  But the chief matter of property being now not the fruits of the earth, and the beasts that subsist on it, but the earth itself; as that which takes in and carries with it all the rest; I think it is plain, that property in that too is acquired as the former. As much land as a man tills, plants, improves, cultivates, and can use the product of, so much is his property. He by his labour does, as it were, inclose it from the common. Nor will it invalidate his right, to say every body else has an equal title to it; and therefore he cannot appropriate, he cannot inclose, without the consent of all his fellow-commoners, all mankind. God, when he gave the world in common to all mankind, commanded man also to labour, and the penury of his condition required it of him. God and his reason commanded him to subdue the earth, i. e. improve it for the benefit of life, and therein lay out something upon it that was his own, his labour. He that in obedience to this command of God, subdued, tilled and sowed any part of it, thereby annexed to it something that was his property, which another had no title to, nor could without injury take from him.

  §. 33.

  Nor was this appropriation of any parcel of land, by improving it, any prejudice to any other man, since there was still enough, and as good left; and more than the yet unprovided could use. So that, in effect, there was never the less left for others because of his inclosure for himself: for he that leaves as much as another can make use of, does as good as take nothing at all. No body could think himself injured by the drinking of another man, though he took a good draught, who had a whole river of the same water left him to quench his thirst: and the case of land and water, where there is enough of both, is perfectly the same.

  §. 34.

  God gave the world to men in common; but since he gave it them for their benefit, and the greatest conveniencies of life they were capable to draw from it, it cannot be supposed he meant it should always remain common and uncultivated. He gave it to the use of the industrious and rational, (and labour was to be his title to it;) not to the fancy or covetousness of the quarrelsome and contentious. He that had as good left for his improvement, as was already taken up, needed not complain, ought not to meddle with what was already improved by another’s labour: if he did, it is plain he desired the benefit of another’s pains, which he had no right to, and not the ground which God had given him in common with others to labour on, and whereof there was as good left, as that already possessed, and more than he knew what to do with, or his industry could reach to.

  §. 35.

  It is true, in land that is common in England, or any other country, where there is plenty of people under government, who have money and commerce, no one can inclose or appropriate any part, without the consent of all his fellow-commoners; because this is left common by compact, i. e. by the law of the land, which is not to be violated. And though it be common, in respect of some men, it is not so to all mankind; but is the joint property of this country, or this parish. Besides, the remainder, after such inclosure, would not be as good to the rest of the commoners, as the whole was when they could all make use of the whole; whereas in the beginning and first peopling of the great common of the world, it was quite otherwise. The law man was under, was rather for appropriating. God commanded, and his wants forced him to labour. That was his property which could not be taken from him where-ever he had fixed it. And hence subduing or cultivating the earth, and having dominion, we see are joined together. The one gave title to the other. So that God, by commanding to subdue, gave authority so far to appropriate: and the condition of human life, which requires labour and materials to work on, necessarily introduces private possessions.

  §. 36.

  The measure of property nature has well set by the extent of men’s labour and the conveniencies of life: no man’s labour could subdue, or appropriate all; nor could his enjoyment consume more than a small part; so that it was impossible for any man, this way, to intrench upon the right of another, or acquire to himself a property, to the prejudice of his neighbour, who would still have room for as good, and as large a possession (after the other had taken out his) as before it was appropriated. This measure did confine every man’s possession to a very moderate proportion, and such as he might appropriate to himself, without injury to any body, in the first ages of the world, when men were more in danger to be lost, by wandering from their company, in the then vast wilderness of the earth, than to be straitened for want of room to plant in. And the same measure may be allowed still without prejudice to any body, as full as the world seems: for supposing a man, or family, in the state they were at first peopling of the world by the children of Adam, or Noah; let him plant in some in-land, vacant places of America, we shall find that the possessions he could make himself, upon the measures we have given, would not be very large, nor, even to this day, prejudice the rest of mankind, or give them reason to complain, or think themselves injured by this man’s incroachment, though the race of men have now spread themselves to all the corners of the world, and do infinitely exceed the small number was at the beginning. Nay, the extent of ground is of so little value, without labour, that I have heard it affirmed, that in Spain itself a man may be permitted to plough, sow and reap, without being disturbed, upon land he has no other title to, but only his making use of it. But, on the contrary, the inhabitants think themselves beholden to him, who, by his industry on neglected, and consequently waste land, has increased the stock of corn, which they wanted. But be this as it will, which I lay no stress on; this I dare boldly affirm, that the same rule of propriety, (viz.) that every man should have as much as he could make use of, would hold still in the world, without straitening any body; since there is land enough in the world to suffice double the inhabitants, had not the invention of money, and the tacit agreement of men to put a value on it, introduced (by consent) larger possessions, and a right to them; which, how it has done, I shall by and by shew more at large.

  §. 37.

  This is certain, that in the beginning, before the desire of having more than man needed had altered the intrinsic value of things, which depends only on their usefulness to the life of man; or had agreed, that a little piece of yellow metal, which would keep without wasting or decay, should be worth a great piece of flesh, or a whole heap of corn; though men had a right to appropriate, by their labour, each one to himself, as much of the things of nature, as he could use: yet this could not be much, nor to the prejudice of others, where the same plenty was still left to those who would use the same industry. To which let me add, that he who appropriates land to himself by his labour, does not lessen, but increase the common stock of mankind: for the provisions serving to the support of human life, produced by one acre of inclosed and cultivated land, are (to speak much within compass) ten times more than those which are yielded by an acre of land of an equal richness lying waste in common. And therefore he that incloses land, and has a greater plenty of the conveniencies of life from ten acres, than he could have from an hundred left to nature, may truly be said to give ninety acres to mankind: for his labour now supplies him with provisions out of ten acres, which were but the product of an hundred lying in common. I have here rated the improved land very low, in making its product but as ten to one, when it is much nearer an hundred to one: for I ask, whether in the wild woods and uncultivated waste of America, left to nature, without any improvement, tillage or husbandry, a thousand acres yield the needy and wretched inhabitants as many conveniencies of life, as ten acres of equally fertile land do in Devonshire, where they are well cultivated?

  Before the appropriation of land, he who gathered as much of the wild fruit, killed, caught, or tamed, as many of the beasts, as he could; he that so imployed his pains about any of the spontaneous products of nature, as any way to alter them from the state which nature put them in, by placing any of his labour on them, did thereby acquire a propriety in them: but if they perished, in his possession, without their due use; if the fruits rotted, or the venison putrified, before he could spend it, he offended against the common law of nature, and was liable to be punished; he invaded his neighbour’s share, for he had no right, farther than his use called for any of them, and they might serve to afford him conveniencies of life.

  §. 38.

  The same measures governed the possession of land too: whatsoever he tilled and reaped, laid up and made use of, before it spoiled, that was his peculiar right; whatsoever he enclosed, and could feed, and make use of, the cattle and product was also his. But if either the grass of his inclosure rotted on the ground, or the fruit of his planting perished without gathering, and laying up, this part of the earth, notwithstanding his inclosure, was still to be looked on as waste, and might be the possession of any other. Thus, at the beginning, Cain might take as much ground as he could till, and make it his own land, and yet leave enough to Abel’s sheep to feed on; a few acres would serve for both their possessions. But as families increased, and industry inlarged their stocks, their possessions inlarged with the need of them; but yet it was commonly without any fixed property in the ground they made use of, till they incorporated, settled themselves together, and built cities; and then, by consent, they came in time, to set out the bounds of their distinct territories, and agree on limits between them and their neighbours; and by laws within themselves, settled the properties of those of the same society: for we see, that in that part of the world which was first inhabited, and therefore like to be best peopled, even as low down as Abraham’s time, they wandered with their flocks, and their herds, which was their substance, freely up and down; and this Abraham did, in a country where he was a stranger. Whence it is plain, that at least a great part of the land lay in common; that the inhabitants valued it not, nor claimed property in any more than they made use of. But when there was not room enough in the same place, for their herds to feed together, they by consent, as Abraham and Lot did, Gen. xiii. 5. separated and inlarged their pasture, where it best liked them. And for the same reason Esau went from his father, and his brother, and planted in mount Seir, Gen. xxxvi. 6.

  §. 39.

  And thus, without supposing any private dominion, and property in Adam, over all the world, exclusive of all other men, which can no way be proved, nor any one’s property be made out from it; but supposing the world given, as it was, to the children of men in common, we see how labour could make men distinct titles to several parcels of it, for their private uses; wherein there could be no doubt of right, no room for quarrel.

  §. 40.

  Nor is it so strange, as perhaps before consideration it may appear, that the property of labour should be able to over-balance the community of land: for it is labour indeed that puts the difference of value on every thing; and let any one consider what the difference is between an acre of land planted with tobacco or sugar, sown with wheat or barley, and an acre of the same land lying in common, without any husbandry upon it, and he will find, that the improvement of labour makes the far greater part of the value. I think it will be but a very modest computation to say, that of the products of the earth useful to the life of man nine tenths are the effects of labour: nay, if we will rightly estimate things as they come to our use, and cast up the several expences about them, what in them is purely owing to nature, and what to labour, we shall find, that in most of them ninety-nine hundredths are wholly to be put on the account of labour.

  §. 41.

  There cannot be a clearer demonstration of any thing, than several nations of the Americans are of this, who are rich in land, and poor in all the comforts of life; whom nature having furnished as liberally as any other people, with the materials of plenty, i. e. a fruitful soil, apt to produce in abundance, what might serve for food, raiment, and delight; yet for want of improving it by labour, have not one hundredth part of the conveniencies we enjoy: and a king of a large and fruitful territory there, feeds, lodges, and is clad worse than a day-labourer in England.

  §. 42.

  To make this a little clearer, let us but trace some of the ordinary provisions of life, through their several progresses, before they come to our use, and see how much they receive of their value from human industry. Bread, wine and cloth, are things of daily use, and great plenty; yet notwithstanding, acorns, water and leaves, or skins, must be our bread, drink and cloathing, did not labour furnish us with these more useful commodities: for whatever bread is more worth than acorns, wine than water, and cloth or silk, than leaves, skins or moss, that is wholly owing to labour and industry; the one of these being the food and raiment which unassisted nature furnishes us with; the other, provisions which our industry and pains prepare for us, which how much they exceed the other in value, when any one hath computed, he will then see how much labour makes the far greatest part of the value of things we enjoy in this world: and the ground which produces the materials, is scarce to be reckoned in, as any, or at most, but a very small part of it; so little, that even amongst us, land that is left wholly to nature, that hath no improvement of pasturage, tillage, or planting, is called, as indeed it is, waste; and we shall find the benefit of it amount to little more than nothing.

  This shews how much numbers of men are to be preferred to largeness of dominions; and that the increase of lands, and the right employing of them, is the great art of government: and that prince, who shall be so wise and godlike, as by established laws of liberty to secure protection and encouragement to the honest industry of mankind, against the oppression of power and narrowness of party, will quickly be too hard for his neighbours: but this by the by. To return to the argument in hand,

  §. 43.

  An acre of land, that bears here twenty bushels of wheat, and another in America, which, with the same husbandry, would do the like, are, without doubt, of the same natural intrinsic value: but yet the benefit mankind receives from the one in a year, is worth 5 l. and from the other possibly not worth a penny, if all the profit an Indian received from it were to be valued, and sold here; at least, I may truly say, not one thousandth. It is labour then which puts the greatest part of value upon land, without which it would scarcely be worth any thing: it is to that we owe the greatest part of all its useful products; for all that the straw, bran, bread, of that acre of wheat, is more worth than the product of an acre of as good land, which lies waste, is all the effect of labour: for it is not barely the plough-man’s pains, the reaper’s and thresher’s toil, and the baker’s sweat, is to be counted into the bread we eat; the labour of those who broke the oxen, who digged and wrought the iron and stones, who felled and framed the timber employed about the plough, mill, oven, or any other utensils, which are a vast number, requisite to this corn, from its being seed to be sown to its being made bread, must all be charged on the account of labour, and received as an effect of that: nature and the earth furnished only the almost worthless materials, as in themselves. It would be a strange catalogue of things, that industry provided and made use of, about every loaf of bread, before it came to our use, if we could trace them; iron, wood, leather, bark, timber, stone, bricks, coals, lime, cloth, dying drugs, pitch, tar, masts, ropes, and all the materials made use of in the ship, that brought any of the commodities made use of by any of the workmen, to any part of the work; all which it would be almost impossible, at least too long, to reckon up.

  §. 44.

  From all which it is evident, that though the things of nature are given in common, yet man, by being master of himself, and proprietor of his own person, and the actions or labour of it, had still in himself thegreat foundation of property; and that, which made up the great part of what he applied to the support or comfort of his being, when invention and arts had improved the conveniencies of life, was perfectly his own, and did not belong in common to others.

  §. 45.

  Thus labour, in the beginning, gave a right of property, wherever any one was pleased to employ it upon what was common, which remained a long while the far greater part, and is yet more than mankind makes use of. Men, at first, for the most part, contented themselves with what unassisted nature offered to their necessities: and though afterwards, in some parts of the world, (where the increase of people and stock, with the use of money, had made land scarce, and so of some value) the several communities settled the bounds of their distinct territories, and by laws within themselves regulated the properties of the private men of their society, and so, by compact and agreement, settled the property which labour and industry began; and the leagues that have been made between several states and kingdoms, either expresly or tacitly disowning all claim and right to the land in the others possession, have, by common consent, given up their pretences to their natural common right, which originally they had to those countries, and so have, by positive agreement, settled a property amongst themselves, in distinct parts and parcels of the earth; yet there are still great tracts of ground to be found, which (the inhabitants thereof not having joined with the rest of mankind, in the consent of the use of their common money) lie waste, and are more than the people who dwell on it do, or can make use of, and so still lie in common; tho’ this can scarce happen amongst that part of mankind that have consented to the use of money.

  §. 46.

  The greatest part of things really useful to the life of man, and such as the necessity of subsisting made the first commoners of the world look after, as it doth the Americans now, are generally things of short duration; such as, if they are not consumed by use, will decay and perish of themselves: gold, silver and diamonds, are things that fancy or agreement hath put the value on, more than real use, and the necessary support of life. Now of those good things which nature hath provided in common, every one had a right (as hath been said) to as much as he could use, and property in all that he could effect with his labour; all that his industry could extend to, to alter from the state nature had put it in, was his. He that gathered a hundred bushels of acorns or apples, had thereby a property in them, they were his goods as soon as gathered. He was only to look, that he used them before they spoiled, else he took more than his share, and robbed others. And indeed it was a foolish thing, as well as dishonest, to hoard up more than he could make use of. If he gave away a part to any body else, so that it perished not uselesly in his possession, these he also made use of. And if he also bartered away plums, that would have rotted in a week, for nuts that would last good for his eating a whole year, he did no injury; he wasted not the common stock; destroyed no part of the portion of goods that belonged to others, so long as nothing perished uselesly in his hands. Again, if he would give his nuts for a piece of metal, pleased with its colour; or exchange his sheep for shells, or wool for a sparkling pebble or a diamond, and keep those by him all his life, he invaded not the right of others, he might heap up as much of these durable things as he pleased; the exceeding of the bounds of his just property not lying in the largeness of his possession, but the perishing of any thing uselesly in it.

  §. 47.

  And thus came in the use of money, some lasting thing that men might keep without spoiling, and that by mutual consent men would take in exchange for the truly useful, but perishable supports of life.

  §. 48.

  And as different degrees of industry were apt to give men possessions in different proportions, so this invention of money gave them the opportunity to continue and enlarge them: for supposing an island, separate from all possible commerce with the rest of the world, wherein there were but an hundred families, but there were sheep, horses and cows, with other useful animals, wholsome fruits, and land enough for corn for a hundred thousand times as many, but nothing in the island, either because of its commonness, or perishableness, fit to supply the place of money; what reason could any one have there to enlarge his possessions beyond the use of his family, and a plentiful supply to its consumption, either in what their own industry produced, or they could barter for like perishable, useful commodities, with others? Where there is not some thing, both lasting and scarce, and so valuable to be hoarded up, there men will be apt to enlarge their possessions of land, were it never so rich, never so free for them to take: for I ask, what would a man value ten thousand, or an hundred thousand acres of excellent land, ready cultivated, and well stocked too with cattle, in the middle of the inland parts of America, where he had no hopes of commerce with other parts of the world, to draw money to him by the sale of the product? It would not be worth the inclosing, and we should see him give up again to the wild common of nature, whatever was more than would supply the conveniencies of life to be had there for him and his family.

  §. 49.

  Thus in the beginning all the world was America, and more so than that is now; for no such thing as money was any where known. Find out something that hath the use and value of money amongst his neighbours, you shall see the same man will begin presently to enlarge his possessions.

  §. 50.

  But since gold and silver, being little useful to the life of man in proportion to food, raiment, and carriage, has its value only from the consent of men, whereof labour yet makes, in great part, the measure, it is plain, that men have agreed to a disproportionate and unequal possession of the earth, they having, by a tacit and voluntary consent, found out a way how a man may fairly possess more land than he himself can use the product of, by receiving in exchange for the overplus gold and silver, which may be hoarded up without injury to any one; these metals not spoiling or decaying in the hands of the possessor. This partage of things in an inequality of private possessions, men have made practicable out of the bounds of society, and without compact, only by putting a value on gold and silver, and tacitly agreeing in the use of money: for in governments, the laws regulate the right of property, and the possession of land is determined by positive constitutions.

  §. 51.

  And thus, I think, it is very easy to conceive, without any difficulty, how labour could at first begin a title of property in the common things of nature, and how the spending it upon our uses bounded it. So that there could then be no reason of quarrelling about title, nor any doubt about the largeness of possession it gave. Right and conveniency went together; for as a man had a right to all he could employ his labour upon, so he had no temptation to labour for more than he could make use of. This left no room for controversy about the title, nor for incroachment on the right of others; what portion a man carved to himself, was easily seen; and it was useless, as well as dishonest, to carve himself too much, or take more than he needed.

  CHAP. VI.
  Of Paternal Power.

  §. 52.

  IT may perhaps be censured as an impertinent criticism, in a discourse of this nature, to find fault with words and names, that have obtained in the world: and yet possibly it may not be amiss to offer new ones, when the old are apt to lead men into mistakes, as this of paternal power probably has done, which seems so to place the power of parents over their children wholly in the father, as if the mother had no share in it; whereas, if we consult reason or revelation, we shall find, she hath an equal title. This may give one reason to ask, whether this might not be more properly called parental power? for whatever obligation nature and the right of generation lays on children, it must certainly bind them equal to both the concurrent causes of it. And accordingly we see the positive law of God every where joins them together, without distinction, when it commands the obedience of children, Honour thy father and thy mother, Exod. xx. 12. Whosoever curseth his father or his mother, Lev. xx. 9. Ye shall fear every man his mother and his father, Lev. xix. 3. Children, obey your parents, &c. Eph. vi. 1. is the stile of the Old and New Testament.

  §. 53.

  Had but this one thing been well considered, without looking any deeper into the matter, it might perhaps have kept men from running into those gross mistakes, they have made, about this power of parents; which, however it might, without any great harshness, bear the name of absolute dominion, and regal authority, when under the title of paternal power it seemed appropriated to the father, would yet have sounded but oddly, and in the very name shewn the absurdity, if this supposed absolute power over children had been called parental; and thereby have discovered, that it belonged to the mother too: for it will but very ill serve the turn of those men, who contend so much for the absolute power and authority of the fatherhood, as they call it, that the mother should have any share in it; and it would have but ill supported the monarchy they contend for, when by the very name it appeared, that that fundamental authority, from whence they would derive their government of a single person only, was not placed in one, but two persons jointly. But to let this of names pass.

  §. 54.

  Though I have said above, Chap. II. That all men by nature are equal, I cannot be supposed to understand all sorts of equality: age or virtue may give men a just precedency: excellency of parts and merit may place others above the common level: birth may subject some, and alliance or benefits others, to pay an observance to those to whom nature, gratitude, or other respects, may have made it due: and yet all this consists with the equality, which all men are in, in respect of jurisdiction or dominion one over another; which was the equality I there spoke of, as proper to the business in hand, being that equal right, that every man hath, to his natural freedom, without being subjected to the will or authority of any other man.

  §. 55.

  Children, I confess, are not born in this full state of equality, though they are born to it. Their parents have a sort of rule and jurisdiction over them, when they come into the world, and for some time after; but it is but a temporary one. The bonds of this subjection are like the swaddling clothes they art wrapt up in, and supported by, in the weakness of their infancy: age and reason as they grow up, loosen them, till at length they drop quite off, and leave a man at his own free disposal.

  §. 56.

  Adam was created a perfect man, his body and mind in full possession of their strength and reason, and so was capable, from the first instant of his being to provide for his own support and preservation, and govern his actions according to the dictates of the law of reason which God had implanted in him. From him the world is peopled with his descendants, who are all born infants, weak and helpless, without knowledge or understanding: but to supply the defects of this imperfect state, till the improvement of growth and age hath removed them, Adam and Eve, and after them all parents were, by the law of nature, under an obligation to preserve, nourish, and educate the children they had begotten; not as their own workmanship, but the workmanship of their own maker, the Almighty, to whom they were to be accountable for them.

  §. 57.

  The law, that was to govern Adam, was the same that was to govern all his posterity, the law of reason. But his offspring having another way of entrance into the world, different from him, by a natural birth, that produced them ignorant and without the use of reason, they were not presently under that law; for no body can be under a law, which is not promulgated to him; and this law being promulgated or made known by reason only, he that is not come to the use of his reason, cannot be said to be under this law; and Adam’s children, being not presently as soon as born under this law of reason, were not presently free: for law, in its true notion, is not so much the limitation as the direction of a free and intelligent agent to his proper interest, and prescribes no farther than is for the general good of those under that law: could they be happier without it, the law, as an useless thing, would of itself vanish; and that ill deserves the name of confinement which hedges us in only from bogs and precipices. So that, however it may be mistaken, the end of law is not to abolish or restrain, but to preserve and enlarge freedom: for in all the states of created beings capable of laws, where there is no law, there is no freedom: for liberty is, to be free from restraint and violence from others; which cannot be, where there is no law: but freedom is not, as we are told, a liberty for every man to do what he lists: (for who could be free, when every other man’s humour might domineer over him?) but a liberty to dispose, and order as he lists, his person, actions, possessions, and his whole property, within the allowance of those laws under which he is, and therein not to be subject to the arbitrary will of another, but freely follow his own.

  §. 58.

  The power, then, that parents have over their children, arises from that duty which is incumbent on them, to take care of their off-spring, during the imperfect state of childhood. To inform the mind, and govern the actions of their yet ignorant non-age, till reason shall take its place, and ease them of that trouble, is what the children want, and the parents are bound to: for God having given man an understanding to direct his actions, has allowed him a freedom of will, and liberty of acting, as properly belonging thereunto, within the bounds of that law he is under. But whilst he is in an estate, wherein he has not understanding of his own to direct his will, he is not to have any will of his own to follow: he that understands for him, must will for him too; he must prescribe to his will, and regulate his actions; but when he comes to the estate that made his father a freeman, the son is a freeman too.

  §. 59.

  This holds in all the laws a man is under, whether natural or civil. Is a man under the law of nature? What made him free of that law? what gave him a free disposing of his property, according to his own will, within the compass of that law? I answer, a state of maturity wherein he might be supposed capable to know that law, that so he might keep his actions within the bounds of it. When he has acquired that state, he is presumed to know how far that law is to be his guide, and how far he may make use of his freedom, and so comes to have it; till then, some body else must guide him, who is presumed to know how far the law allows a liberty. If such a state of reason, such an age of discretion made him free, the same shall make his son free too. Is a man under the law of England? What made him free of that law? that is, to have the liberty to dispose of his actions and possessions according to his own will, within the permission of that law? A capacity of knowing that law; which is supposed by that law, at the age of one and twenty years, and in some cases sooner. If this made the father free, it shall make the son free too. Till then we see the law allows the son to have no will, but he is to be guided by the will of his father or guardian, who is to understand for him. And if the father die, and fail to substitute a deputy in his trust; if he hath not provided a tutor, to govern his son, during his minority, during his want of understanding, the law takes care to do it; some other must govern him, and be a will to him, till he hath attained to a state of freedom, and his understanding be fit to take the government of his will. But after that, the father and son are equally free as much as tutor and pupil after nonage; equally subjects of the same law together, without any dominion left in the father over the life, liberty, or estate of his son, whether they be only in the state and under the law of nature, or under the positive laws of an established government.

  §. 60.

  But if, through defects that may happen out of the ordinary course of nature, any one comes not to such a degree of reason, wherein he might be supposed capable of knowing the law, and so living within the rules of it, he is never capable of being a free man, he is never let loose to the disposure of his own will (because he knows no bounds to it, has not understanding, its proper guide) but is continued under the tuition and government of others, all the time his own understanding is uncapable of that charge. And so lunatics and ideots are never set free from the government of their parents; children, who are not as yet come unto those years whereat they may have; and innocents which are excluded by a natural defect from ever having; thirdly, madmen, which for the present cannot possibly have the use of right reason to guide themselves, have for their guide, the reason that guideth other men which are tutors over them, to seek and procure their good for them, says Hooker, Eccl. Pol. lib. i. sect. 7. All which seems no more than that duty, which God and nature has laid on man, as well as other creatures, to preserve their offspring, till they can be able to shift for themselves, and will scarce amount to an instance or proof of parents regal authority.

  §. 61.

  Thus we are born free, as we are born rational; not that we have actually the exercise of either: age, that brings one, brings with it the other too. And thus we see how natural freedom and subjection to parents may consist together, and are both founded on the same principle. A child is free by his father’s title, by his father’s understanding, which is to govern him till he hath it of his own. The freedom of a man at years of discretion, and the subjection of a child to his parents, whilst yet short of that age, are so consistent, and so distinguishable, that the most blinded contenders for monarchy, by right of fatherhood, cannot miss this difference; the most obstinate cannot but allow their consistency: for were their doctrine all true, were the right heir of Adam now known, and by that title settled a monarch in his throne, invested with all the absolute unlimited power Sir Robert Filmer talks of; if he should die as soon as his heir were born, must not the child, notwithstanding he were never so free, never so much sovereign, be in subjection to his mother and nurse, to tutors and governors, till age and education brought him reason and ability to govern himself and others? The necessities of his life, the health of his body, and the information of his mind, would require him to be directed by the will of others, and not his own; and yet will any one think, that this restraint and subjection were inconsistent with, or spoiled him of that liberty or sovereignty he had a right to, or gave away his empire to those who had the government of his nonage? This government over him only prepared him the better and sooner for it. If any body should ask me, when my son is of age to be free? I shall answer, just when his monarch is of age to govern. But at what time, says the judicious Hooker, Eccl. Pol. l. i. sect. 6. a man may be said to have attained so far forth the use of reason, as sufficeth to make him capable of those laws whereby he is then bound to guide his actions: this is a great deal more easy for sense to discern, than for any one by skill and learning to determine.

  §. 62.

  Common-wealths themselves take notice of, and allow, that there is a time when men are to begin to act like free men, and therefore till that time require not oaths of fealty, or allegiance, or other public owning of, or submission to the government of their countries.

  §. 63.

  The freedom then of man, and liberty of acting according to his own will, is grounded on his having reason, which is able to instruct him in that law he is to govern himself by, and make him know how far he is left to the freedom of his own will. To turn him loose to an unrestrained liberty, before he has reason to guide him, is not the allowing him the privilege of his nature to be free; but to thrust him out amongst brutes, and abandon him to a state as wretched, and as much beneath that of a man, as their’s. This is that which puts the authority into the parents hands to govern the minority of their children. God hath made it their business to employ this care on their off-spring, and hath placed in them suitable inclinations of tenderness and concern to temper this power, to apply it, as his wisdom designed it, to the children’s good, as long as they should need to be under it.

  §. 64.

  But what reason can hence advance this care of the parents due to their off-spring into an absolute arbitrary dominion of the father, whose power reaches no farther, than by such a discipline, as he finds most effectual, to give such strength and health to their bodies, such vigour and rectitude to their minds, as may best fit his children to be most useful to themselves and others; and, if it be necessary to his condition, to make them work, when they are able, for their own subsistence. But in this power the mother too has her share with the father.

  §. 65.

  Nay, this power so little belongs to the father by any peculiar right of nature, but only as he is guardian of his children, that when he quits his care of them, he loses his power over them, which goes along with their nourishment and education, to which it is inseparably annexed; and it belongs as much to the foster-father of an exposed child, as to the natural father of another. So little power does the bare act of begetting give a man over his issue; if all his care ends there, and this be all the title he hath to the name and authority of a father. And what will become of this paternal power in that part of the world, where one woman hath more than one husband at a time? or in those parts of America, where, when the husband and wife part, which happens frequently, the children are all left to the mother, follow her, and are wholly under her care and provision? If the father die whilst the children are young, do they not naturally every where owe the same obedience to their mother, during their minority, as to their father were he alive? and will any one say, that the mother hath a legislative power over her children? that she can make standing rules, which shall be of perpetual obligation, by which they ought to regulate all the concerns of their property, and bound their liberty all the course of their lives? or can she inforce the observation of them with capital punishments? for this is the proper power of the magistrate, of which the father hath not so much as the shadow. His command over his children is but temporary, and reaches not their life or property: it is but a help to the weakness and imperfection of their nonage, a discipline necessary to their education: and though a father may dispose of his own possessions as he pleases, when his children are out of danger of perishing for want, yet his power extends not to the lives or goods, which either their own industry, or another’s bounty has made their’s; nor to their liberty neither, when they are once arrived to the infranchisement of the years of discretion. The father’s empire then ceases, and he can from thence forwards no more dispose of the liberty of his son, than that of any other man: and it must be far from an absolute or perpetual jurisdiction, from which a man may withdraw himself, having licence from divine authority to leave father and mother, and cleave to his wife.

  §. 66.

  But though there be a time when a child comes to be as free from subjection to the will and command of his father, as the father himself is free from subjection to the will of any body else, and they are each under no other restraint, but that which is common to them both, whether it be the law of nature, or municipal law of their country; yet this freedom exempts not a son from that honour which he ought, by the law of God and nature, to pay his parents. God having made the parents instruments in his great design of continuing the race of mankind, and the occasions of life to their children; as he hath laid on them an obligation to nourish, preserve, and bring up their offspring; so he has laid on the children a perpetual obligation of honouring their parents, which containing in it an inward esteem and reverence to be shewn by all outward expressions, ties up the child from any thing that may ever injure or affront, disturb or endanger, the happiness or life of those from whom he received his; and engages him in all actions of defence, relief, assistance and comfort of those, by whose means he entered into being, and has been made capable of any enjoyments of life: from this obligation no state, no freedom can absolve children. But this is very far from giving parents a power of command over their children, or an authority to make laws and disposs as they please of their lives or liberties. It is one thing to owe honour, respect, gratitude and assistance; another to require an absolute obedience and submission. The honour due to parents, a monarch in his throne owes his mother; and yet this lessens not his authority, nor subjects him to her government.

  §. 67.

  The subjection of a minor places in the father a temporary government, which terminates with the minority of the child: and the honour due from a child, places in the parents a perpetual right to respect, reverence, support and compliance too, more or less, as the father’s care, cost, and kindness in his education, has been more or less. This ends not with minority, but holds in all parts and conditions of a man’s life. The want of distinguishing these two powers, viz. that which the father hath in the right of tuition, during minority, and the right of honour all his life, may perhaps have caused a great part of the mistakes about this matter: for to speak properly of them, the first of these is rather the privilege of children, and duty of parents, than any prerogative of paternal power. The nourishment and education of their children is a charge so incumbent on parents for their children’s good, that nothing can absolve them from taking care of it: and though the power of commanding and chastising them go along with it, yet God hath woven into the principles of human nature such a tenderness for their off-spring, that there is little fear that parents should use their power with too much rigour; the excess is seldom on the severe side, the strong byass of nature drawing the other way. And therefore God almighty when he would express his gentle dealing with the Israelites, he tells them, that though he chastened them, he chastened them as a man chastens his son, Deut. viii. 5. i. e. with tenderness and affection, and kept them under no severer discipline than what was absolutely best for them, and had been less kindness to have slackened. This is that power to which children are commanded obedience, that the pains and care of their parents may not be increased, or ill rewarded.

  §. 68.

  On the other side, honour and support, all that which gratitude requires to return for the benefits received by and from them, is the indispensible duty of the child, and the proper privilege of the parents. This is intended for the parents advantage, as the other is for the child’s; though education, the parents duty, seems to have most power, because the ignorance and infirmities of childhood stand in need of restraint and correction; which is a visible exercise of rule, and a kind of dominion. And that duty which is comprehended in the word honour, requires less obedience, though the obligation be stronger on grown, than younger children: for who can think the command, Children obey your parents, requires in a man, that has children of his own, the same submission to his father, as it does in his yet young children to him; and that by this precept he were bound to obey all his father’s commands, if, out of a conceit of authority, he should have the indiscretion to treat him still as a boy?

  §. 69.

  The first part then of paternal power, or rather duty, which is education, belongs so to the father, that it terminates at a certain season; when the business of education is over, it ceases of itself, and is also alienable before: for a man may put the tuition of his son in other hands; and he that has made his son an apprentice to another, has discharged him, during that time, of a great part of his obedience both to himself and to his mother. But all the duty of honour, the other part, remains never the less entire to them; nothing can cancel that: it is so inseparable from them both, that the father’s authority cannot dispossess the mother of this right, nor can any man discharge his son from honouring her that bore him. But both these are very far from a power to make laws, and inforcing them with penalties, that may reach estate, liberty, limbs and life. The power of commanding ends with nonage; and though, after that, honour and respect, support and defence, and whatsoever gratitude can oblige a man to, for the highest benefits he is naturally capable of, be always due from a son to his parents; yet all this puts no scepter into the father’s hand, no sovereign power of commanding. He has no dominion over his son’s property, or actions; nor any right, that his will should prescribe to his son’s in all things; however it may become his son in many things, not very inconvenient to him and his family, to pay a deference to it.

  §. 70.

  A man may owe honour and respect to an ancient, or wise man; desence to his child or friend; relief and support to the distressed; and gratitude to a benefactor, to such a degree, that all he has, all he can do, cannot sufficiently pay it: but all these give no authority, no right to any one, of making laws over him from whom they are owing. And it is plain, all this is due not only to the bare title of father; not only because, as has been said, it is owing to the mother too; but because these obligations to parents, and the degrees of what is required of children, may be varied by the different care and kindness, trouble and expence, which is often employed upon one child more than another.

  §. 71.

  This shews the reason how it comes to pass, that parents in societies, where they themselves are subjects, retain a power over their children, and have as much right to their subjection, as those who are in the state of nature. Which could not possibly be, if all political power were only paternal, and that in truth they were one and the same thing: for then, all paternal power being in the prince, the subject could naturally have none of it. But these two powers, political and paternal, are so perfectly distinct and separate; are built upon so different foundations, and given to so different ends, that every subject that is a father, has as much a paternal power over his children, as the prince has over his: and every prince, that has parents, owes them as much filial duty and obedience, as the meanest of his subjects do to their’s; and can therefore contain not any part or degree of that kind of dominion, which a prince or magistrate has over his subject.

  §. 72.

  Though the obligation on the parents to bring up their children, and the obligation on children to honour their parents, contain all the power on the one hand, and submission on the other, which are proper to this relation, yet there is another power ordinarily in the father, whereby he has a tie on the obedience of his children; which tho’ it be common to him with other men, yet the occasions of shewing it, almost constantly happening to fathers in their private families, and the instances of it elsewhere being rare, and less taken notice of, it passes in the world for a part of paternal jurisdiction. And this is the power men generally have to bestow their estates on those who please them best; the possession of the father being the expectation and inheritance of the children, ordinarily in certain proportions, according to the law and custom of each country; yet it is commonly in the father’s power to bestow it with a more sparing or liberal hand, according as the behaviour of this or that child hath comported with his will and humour.

  §. 73.

  This is no small tie on the obedience of children: and there being always annexed to the enjoyment of land, a submission to the government of the country, of which that land is a part; it has been commonly supposed, that a father could oblige his posterity to that government, of which he himself was a subject, and that his compact held them; whereas, it being only a necessary condition annexed to the land, and the inheritance of an estate which is under that government, reaches only those who will take it on that condition, and so is no natural tie or engagement, but a voluntary submission: for every man’s children being by nature as free as himself, or any of his ancestors ever were, may, whilst they are in that freedom, choose what society they will join themselves to, what common-wealth they will put themselves under. But if they will enjoy the inheritance of their ancestors, they must take it on the same terms their ancestors had it, and submit to all the conditions annexed to such a possession. By this power indeed fathers oblige their children to obedience to themselves, even when they are past minority, and most commonly too subject them to this or that political power: but neither of these by any peculiar right of fatherhood, but by the reward they have in their hands to inforce and recompence such a compliance; and is no more power than what a French man has over an English man, who by the hopes of an estate he will leave him, will certainly have a strong tie on his obedience: and if, when it is left him, he will enjoy it, he must certainly take it upon the conditions annexed to the possession of land in that country where it lies, whether it be France or England.

  §. 74.

  To conclude then, tho’ the father’s power of commanding extends no farther than the minority of his children, and to a degree only fit for the discipline and government of that age; and tho’ that honour and respect, and all that which the Latins called piety, which they indispensibly owe to their parents all their life-time, and in all estates, with all that support and defence is due to them, gives the father no power of governing, i. e. making laws and enacting penalties on his children; though by all this he has no dominion over the property or actions of his son: yet it is obvious to conceive how easy it was, in the first ages of the world, and in places still, where the thinness of people gives families leave to separate into unpossessed quarters, and they have room to remove or plant themselves in yet vacant habitations, for the father of the family to become the prince of* it; he had been a ruler from the beginning of the infancy of his children: and since without some government it would be hard for them to live together, it was likeliest it should, by the express or tacit consent of the children when they were grown up, be in the father, where it seemed without any change barely to continue; when indeed nothing more was required to it, than the permitting the father to exercise alone, in his family, that executive power of the law of nature, which every free man naturally hath, and by that permission resigning up to him a monarchical power, whilst they remained in it. But that this was not by any paternal right, but only by the consent of his children, is evident from hence, that no body doubts, but if a stranger, whom chance or business had brought to his family, had there killed any of his children, or committed any other fact, he might condemn and put him to death, or otherwise have punished him, as well as any of his children; which it was impossible he should do by virtue of any paternal authority over one who was not his child, but by virtue of that executive power of the law of nature, which, as a man, he had a right to: and he alone could punish him in his family, where the respect of his children had laid by the exercise of such a power, to give way to the dignity and authority they were willing should remain in him, above the rest of his family.

  §. 75.

  Thus it was easy, and almost natural for children, by a tacit, and scarce avoidable consent, to make way for the father’s authority and government. They had been accustomed in their childhood to follow his direction, and to refer their little differences to him; and when they were men, who fitter to rule them? Their little properties, and less covetousness, seldom afforded greater controversies; and when any should arise, where could they have a fitter umpire than he, by whose care they had every one been sustained and brought up, and who had a tenderness for them all? It is no wonder that they made no distinction betwixt minority and full age; nor looked after one and twenty, or any other age that might make them the free disposers of themselves and fortunes, when they could have no desire to be out of their pupilage: the government they had been under, during it, continued still to be more their protection than restraint; and they could no where find a greater security to their peace, liberties, and fortunes, than in the rule of a father.

  §. 76.

  Thus the natural fathers of families, by an insensible change, became the politic monarchs of them too: and as they chanced to live long, and leave able and worthy heirs, for several successions, or otherwise; so they laid the foundations of hereditary, or elective kingdoms, under several constitutions and mannors, according as chance, contrivance, or occasions happened to mould them. But if princes have their titles in their fathers right, and it be a sufficient proof of the natural right of fathers to political authority, because they commonly were those in whose hands we find, de facto, the exercise of government: I say, if this argument be good, it will as strongly prove, that all princes, nay princes only, ought to be priests, since it is as certain, that in the beginning, the father of the family was priest, as that he was ruler n his own houshold.

  CHAP. VII.
  Of Political or Civil Society.

  §. 77.

  GOD having made man such a creature, that in his own judgment, it was not good for him to be alone, put him under strong obligations of necessity, convenience, and inclination to drive him into society, as well as fitted him with understanding and language to continue and enjoy it. The first society was between man and wife, which gave beginning to that between parents and children; to which, in time, that between master and servant came to be added: and though all these might, and commonly did meet together, and make up but one family, wherein the master or mistress of it had some sort of rule proper to a family; each of these, or all together, came short of political society, as we shall see, if we consider the different ends, ties, and bounds of each of these.

  §. 78.

  Conjugal society is made by a voluntary compact between man and woman; and tho’ it consist chiefly in such a communion and right in one another’s bodies as is necessary to its chief end, procreation; yet it draws with it mutual support and assistance, and a communion of interests too, as necessary not only to unite their care and affection, but also necessary to their common off-spring, who have a right to be nourished, and maintained by them, till they are able to provide for themselves.

  §. 79.

  For the end of conjunction, between male and female, being not barely procreation, but the continuation of the species; this conjunction betwixt male and female ought to last, even after procreation, so long as is necessary to the nourishment and support of the young ones, who are to be sustained by those that got them, till they are able to shift and provide for themselves. This rule, which the infinite wise maker hath set to the works of his hands, we find the inferior creatures steadily obey. In those viviparous animals which feed on grass, the conjunction between male and female lasts no longer than the very act of copulation; because the teat of the dam being sufficient to nourish the young, till it be able to feed on grass, the male only begets, but concerns not himself for the female or young, to whose sustenance he can contribute nothing. But in beasts of prey the conjunction lasts longer: because the dam not being able well to subsist herself, and nourish her numerous off-spring by her own prey alone, a more laborious, as well as more dangerous way of living, than by feeding on grass, the assistance of the male is necessary to the maintenance of their common family, which cannot subsist till they are able to prey for themselves, but by the joint care of male and female. The same is to be observed in all birds, (except some domestic ones, where plenty of food excuses the cock from feeding, and taking care of the young brood) whose young needing food in the nest, the cock and hen continue mates, till the young are able to use their wing, and provide for themselves.

  §. 80.

  And herein I think lies the chief, if not the only reason, why the male and female in mankind are tied to a longer conjunction than other creatures, viz. because the female is capable of conceiving, and de facto is commonly with child again, and brings forth too a new birth, long before the former is out of a dependency for support on his parents help, and able to shift for himself, and has all the assistance is due to him from his parents: whereby the father, who is bound to take care for those he hath begot, is under an obligation to continue in conjugal society with the same woman longer than other creatures, whose young being able to subsist of themselves, before the time of procreation returns again, the conjugal bond dissolves of itself, and they are at liberty, till Hymen at his usual anniversary season summons them again to chuse new mates. Wherein one cannot but admire the wisdom of the great Creator, who having given to man foresight, and an ability to lay up for the future, as well as to supply the present necessity, hath made it necessary, that society of man and wife should be more lasting, than of male and female amongst other creatures; that so their industry might be encouraged, and their interest better united, to make provision and lay up goods for their common issue, which uncertain mixture, or easy and frequent solutions of conjugal society would mightily disturb.

  §. 81.

  But tho’ these are ties upon mankind, which make the conjugal bonds more firm and lasting in man, than the other species of animals; yet it would give one reason to enquire, why this compact, where procreation and education are secured, and inheritance taken care for, may not be made determinable, either by consent, or at a certain time, or upon certain conditions, as well as any other voluntary compacts, there being no necessity in the nature of the thing, nor to the ends of it, that it should always be for life; I mean, to such as are under no restraint of any positive law, which ordains all such contracts to be perpetual.

  §. 82.

  But the husband and wife, though they have but one common concern, yet having different understandings, will unavoidably sometimes have different wills too; it therefore being necessary that the last determination, i. e. the rule, should be placed somewhere; it naturally falls to the man’s share, as the abler and the stronger. But this reaching but to the things of their common interest and property, leaves the wife in the full and free possession of what by contract is her peculiar right, and gives the husband no more power over her life than she has over his; the power of the husband being so far from that of an absolute monarch, that the wife has in many cases a liberty to separate from him, where natural right, or their contract allows it; whether that contract be made by themselves in the state of nature, or by the customs or laws of the country they live in; and the children upon such separation fall to the father or mother’s lot, as such contract does determine.

  §. 83.

  For all the ends of marriage being to be obtained under politic government, as well as in the state of nature, the civil magistrate doth not abridge the right or power of either naturally necessary to those ends, viz. procreation and mutual support and assistance whilst they are together; but only decides any controversy that may arise between man and wife about them. If it were otherwise, and that absolute sovereignty and power of life and death naturally belonged to the husband, and were necessary to the society between man and wife, there could be no matrimony in any of those countries where the husband is allowed no such absolute authority. But the ends of matrimony requiring no such power in the husband, the condition of conjugal society put it not in him, it being not at all necessary to that state. Conjugal society could subsist and attain its ends without it; nay, community of goods, and the power over them, mutual assistance and maintenance, and other things belonging to conjugal society, might be varied and regulated by that contract which unites man and wife in that society, as far as may consist with procreation and the bringing up of children till they could shift for themselves; nothing being necessary to any society, that is not necessary to the ends for which it is made.

  §. 84.

  The society betwixt parents and children, and the distinct rights and powers belonging respectively to them, I have treated of so largely, in the foregoing chapter, that I shall not here need to say any thing of it. And I think it is plain, that it is far different from a politic society.

  §. 85.

  Master and servant are names as old as history, but given to those of far different condition; for a freeman makes himself a servant to another, by selling him, for a certain time, the service he undertakes to do, in exchange for wages he is to receive: and though this commonly puts him into the family of his master, and under the ordinary discipline thereof; yet it gives the master but a temporary power over him, and no greater than what is contained in the contract between them. But there is another sort of servants, which by a peculiar name we call slaves, who being captives taken in a just war, are by the right of nature subjected to the absolute dominion and arbitrary power of their masters. These men having, as I say, forfeited their lives, and with it their liberties, and lost their estates; and being in the state of slavery, not capable of any property, cannot in that state be considered as any part of civil society; the chief end whereof is the preservation of property.

  §. 86.

  Let us therefore consider a master of a family with all these subordinate relations of wife, children, servants, and slaves, united under the domestic rule of a family; which, what resemblance soever it may have in its order, offices, and number too, with a little common-wealth, yet is very far from it, both in its constitution, power and end: or if it must be thought a monarchy, and the paterfamilias the absolute monarch in it, absolute monarchy will have but a very shattered and short power, when it is plain, by what has been said before, that the master of the family has a very distinct and differently limited power, both as to time and extent, over those several persons that are in it; for excepting the slave (and the family is as much a family, and his power as paterfamilias as great, whether there be any slaves in his family or no) he has no legislative power of life and death over any of them, and none too but what a mistress of a family may have as well as he. And he certainly can have no absolute power over the whole family, who has but a very limited one over every individual in it. But how a family, or any other society of men, differ from that which is properly political society, we shall best see, by considering wherein political society itself consists.

  §. 87.

  Man being born, as has been proved, with a title to perfect freedom, and an uncontrouled enjoyment of all the rights and privileges of the law of nature, equally with any other man, or number of men in the world, hath by nature a power, not only to preserve his property, that is, his life, liberty and estate, against the injuries and attempts of other men; but to judge of, and punish the breaches of that law in others, as he is persuaded the offence deserves, even with death itself, in crimes where the heinousness of the fact, in his opinion, requires it. But because no political society can be, nor subsist, without having in itself the power to preserve the property, and in order thereunto, punish the offences of all those of that society; there, and there only is political society, where every one of the members hath quitted this natural power, resigned it up into the hands of the community in all cases that exclude him not from appealing for protection to the law established by it. And thus all private judgment of every particular member being excluded, the community comes to be umpire, by settled standing rules, indifferent, and the same to all parties; and by men having authority from the community, for the execution of those rules, decides all the differences that may happen between any members of that society concerning any matter of right; and punishes those offences which any member hath committed against the society, with such penalties as the law has established: whereby it is easy to discern, who are, and who are not, in political society together. Those who are united into one body, and have a common established law and judicature to appeal to, with authority to decide controversies between them, and punish offenders, are in civil society one with another: but those who have no such common people, I mean on earth, are still in the state of nature, each being, where there is no other, judge for himself, and executioner; which is, as I have before shewed it, the perfect state of nature.

  §. 88.

  And thus the common-wealth comes by a power to set down what punishment shall belong to the several transgressions which they think worthy of it, committed amongst the members of that society, (which is the power of making laws) as well as it has the power to punish any injury done unto any of its members, by any one that is not of it, (which is the power of war and peace;) and all this for the preservation of the property of all the members of that society, as far as is possible. But though every man who has entered into civil society, and is become a member of any common-wealth, has thereby quitted his power to punish offences, against the law of nature, in prosecution of his own private judgment, yet with the judgment of offences, which he has given up to the legislative in all cases, where he can appeal to the magistrate, he has given a right to the common-wealth to employ his force, for the execution of the judgments of the common-wealth, whenever he shall be called to it; which indeed are his own judgments, they being made by himself, or his representative. And herein we have the original of the legislative and executive power of civil society, which is to judge by standing laws, how far offences are to be punished, when committed within the common-wealth; and also to determine, by occasional judgments founded on the present circumstances of the fact, how far injuries from without are to be vindicated; and in both these to employ all the force of all the members, when there shall be need.

  §. 89.

  Where-ever therefore any number of men are so united into one society, as to quit every one his executive power of the law of nature, and to resign it to the public, there and there only is a political, or civil society. And this is done, where-ever any number of men, in the state of nature, enter into society to make one people, one body politic, under one supreme government; or else when any one joins himself to, and incorporates with any government already made: for hereby he authorizes the society, or which is all one, the legislative thereof, to make laws for him, as the public good of the society shall require; to the execution whereof, his own assistance (as to his own decrees) is due. And this puts men out of a state of nature into that of a common-wealth, by setting up a judge on earth, with authority to determine all the controversies, and redress the injuries that may happen to any member of the common-wealth; which judge is the legislative, or magistrates appointed by it. And where-ever there are any number of men, however associated, that have no such decisive power to appeal to, there they are still in the state of nature.

  §. 90.

  Hence it is evident, that absolute monarchy, which by some men is counted the only government in the world, is indeed inconsistent with civil society, and so can be no form of civil-government at all: for the end of civil society, being to avoid, and remedy those inconveniencies of the state of nature, which necessarily follow from every man’s being judge in his own case, by setting up a known authority, to which every one of that society may appeal upon any injury received, or controversy that may arise, and which every one of the* society ought to obey; where-ever any persons are, who have not such an authority to appeal to, for the decision of any difference between them, there those persons are still in the state of nature; and so is every absolute prince, in respect of those who are under his dominion.

  §. 91.

  For he being supposed to have all, both legislative and executive power in himself alone, there is no judge to be found, no appeal lies open to any one, who may fairly, and indifferently, and with authority decide, and from whose decision relief and redress may be expected of any injury or inconviency, that may be suffered from the prince, or by his order: so that such a man, however intitled, Czar, or Grand Seignior, or how you please, is as much in the state of nature, with all under his dominion, as he is with the rest of mankind: for where-ever any two men are, who have no standing rule, and common judge to appeal to on earth, for the determination of controversies of right betwixt them, there they are still in the stateof*nature, and under all the inconveniencies of it, with only this woful difference to the subject, or rather slave of an absolute prince: that whereas, in the ordinary state of nature, he has a liberty to judge of his right, and according to the best of his power, to maintain it; now, whenever his property is invaded by the will and order of his monarch, he has not only no appeal, as those in society ought to have, but as if he were degraded from the common state of rational creatures, is denied a liberty to judge of, or to defend his right; and so is exposed to all the misery and inconveniencies, that a man can fear from one, who being in the unrestrained state of nature, is yet corrupted with flattery, and armed with power.

  §. 92.

  For he that thinks absolute power purifies men’s blood, and corrects the baseness of human nature, need read but the history of this, or any other age, to be convinced of the contrary. He that would have been insolent and injurious in the woods of America, would not probably be much better in a throne; where perhaps learning and religion shall be found out to justify all that he shall do to his subjects, and the sword presently silence all those that dare question it: for what the protection of absolute monarchy is, what kind of fathers of their countries it makes princes to be, and to what a degree of happiness and security it carries civil society, where this sort of government is grown to perfection, he that will look into the late relation of Ceylon, may easily see.

  §. 93.

  In absolute monarchies indeed, as well as other governments of the world, the subjects have an appeal to the law, and judges to decide any controversies, and restrain any violence that may happen betwixt the subjects themselves, one amongst another. This every one thinks necessary, and believes he deserves to be thought a declared enemy to society and mankind, who should go about to take it away. But whether this be from a true love of mankind and society, and such a charity as we owe all one to another, there is reason to doubt: for this is no more than what every man, who loves his own power, profit, or greatness, may and naturally must do, keep those animals from hurting, or destroying one another, who labour and drudge only for his pleasure and advantage; and so are taken care of, not out of any love the master has for them, but love of himself, and the profit they bring him: for if it be asked, what security, what fence is there, in such a state, against the violence and oppression of this absolute ruler? the very question can scarce be borne. They are ready to tell you, that it deserves death only to ask after safety. Betwixt subject and subject, they will grant, there must be measures, laws and judges, for their mutual peace and security: but as for the ruler, he ought to be absolute, and is above all such circumstances; because he has power to do more hurt and wrong, it is right when he does it. To ask how you may be guarded from harm, or injury, on that side where the strongest hand is to do it, is presently the voice of faction and rebellion: as if when men quitting the state of nature entered into society, they agreed that all of them but one, should be under the restraint of laws, but that he should still retain all the liberty of the state of nature, increased with power, and made licentious by impunity. This is to think, that men are so foolish, that they take care to avoid what mischiefs may be done them by pole-cats, or foxes; but are content, nay, think it safety, to be devoured by lions.

  §. 94.

  But whatever flatterers may talk to amuse people’s understandings, it hinders not men from feeling; and when they perceive, that any man, in what station soever, is out of the bounds of the civil society which they are of, and that they have no appeal on earth against any harm, they may receive from him, they are apt to think themselves in the state of nature, in respect of him whom they find to be so; and to take care, as soon as they can, to have that safety and security in civil society, for which it was first instituted, and for which only they entered into it. And therefore, though perhaps at first, (as shall be shewed more at large hereafter in the following part of this discourse) some one good and excellent man having got a pre-eminency amongst the rest, had this deference paid to his goodness and virtue, as to a kind of natural authority, that the chief rule, with arbitration of their differences, by a tacit consent devolved into his hands, without any other caution, but the assurance they had of his uprightness and wisdom; yet when time, giving authority, and (as some men would persuade us) sacredness of customs, which the negligent, and unforeseeing innocence of the first ages began, had brought in successors of another stamp, the people finding their properties not secure under the government, as then it was, (whereas government has no other end but the preservation of* property) could never be safe nor at rest, nor think themselves in civil society, till the legislature was placed in collective bodies of men, call them senate, parliament, or what you please. By which means every single person became subject, equally with other the meanest men, to those laws, which he himself, as part of the legislative, had established; nor could any one, by his own authority, avoid the force of the law, when once made; nor by any pretence of superiority plead exemption, thereby to license his own, or the miscarriages of any of his dependents. †No man in civil society can be exempted from the laws of it: for if any man may do what he thinks fit, and there be no appeal on earth, for redress or security against any harm he shall do; I ask, whether he be not perfectly still in the state of nature, and so can be no part or member of that civil society; unless any one will say, the state of nature and civil society are one and the same thing, which I have never yet found any one so great a patron of anarchy as to affirm.

  CHAP. VIII.
  Of the Beginning of Political Societies.

  §. 95.

  MEN being, as has been said, by nature, all free, equal, and independent, no one can be put out of this estate, and subjected to the political power of another, without his own consent. The only way whereby any one divests himself of his natural liberty, and puts on the bonds of civil society, is by agreeing with other men to join and unite into a community, for their comfortable, safe, and peaceable living one amongst another, in a secure enjoyment of their properties, and a greater security against any, that are not of it. This any number of men may do, because it injures not the freedom of the rest; they are left as they were in the liberty of the state of nature. When any number of men have so consented to make one community or government, they are thereby presently incorporated, and make one body politic, wherein the majority have a right to act and conclude the rest.

  §. 96.

  For when any number of men have, by the consent of every individual, made a community, they have thereby made that community one body, with a power to act as one body, which is only by the will and determination of the majority: for that which acts any community, being only the consent of the individuals of it, and it being necessary to that which is one body to move one way; it is necessary the body should move that way whither the greater force carries it, which is the consent of the majority: or else it is impossible it should act or continue one body, one community, which the consent of every individual that united into it, agreed that it should; and so every one is bound by that consent to be concluded by the majority. And therefore we see, that in assemblies, impowered to act by positive laws, where no number is set by that positive law which impowers them, the act of the majority passes for the act of the whole, and of course determines, as having, by the law of nature and reason, the power of the whole.

  §. 97.

  And thus every man, by consenting with others to make one body politic under one government, puts himself under an obligation, to every one of that society, to submit to the determination of the majority, and to be concluded by it; or else this original compact, whereby he with others incorporates into one society, would signify nothing, and be no compact, if he be left free, and under no other ties than he was in before in the state of nature. For what appearance would there be of any compact? what new engagement if he were no farther tied by any decrees of the society, than he himself thought fit, and did actually consent to? This would be still as great a liberty, as he himself had before his compact, or any one else in the state of nature hath, who may submit himself, and consent to any acts of it if he thinks fit.

  §. 98.

  For if the consent of the majority shall not, in reason, be received as the act of the whole, and conclude every individual; nothing but the consent of every individual can make any thing to be the act of the whole: but such a consent is next to impossible ever to be had, if we consider the infirmities of health, and avocations of business, which in a number, though much less than that of a common-wealth, will necessarily keep many away from the public assembly. To which if we add the variety of opinions, and contrariety of interests, which unavoidably happen in all collections of men, the coming into society upon such terms would be only like Cato’s coming into the theatre, only to go out again. Such a constitution as this would make the mighty Leviathan of a shorter duration, than the feeblest creatures, and not let it outlast the day it was born in: which cannot be supposed, till we can think, that rational creatures should desire and constitute societies only to be dissolved: for where the majority cannot conclude the rest, there they cannot act as one body, and consequently will be immediately dissolved again.

  §. 99.

  Whosoever therefore out of a state of nature unite into a community, must be understood to give up all the power, necessary to the ends for which they unite into society, to the majority of the community, unless they expresly agreed in any number greater than the majority. And this is done by barely agreeing to unite into one political society, which is all the compact that is, or needs be, between the individuals, that enter into, or make up a common-wealth. And thus that, which begins and actually constitutes any political society, is nothing but the consent of any number of freemen capable of a majority to unite and incorporate into such a society. And this is that, and that only, which did, or could give beginning to any lawful government in the world.

  §. 100.

  To this I find two objections made.

  First, That there are no instances to be found in story, of a company of men independent, and equal one amongst another, that met together, and in this way began and set up a government.

  Secondly, It is impossible of right, that men should do so, because all men being born under government, they are to submit to that, and are not at liberty to begin a new one.

  §. 101.

  To the first there is this to answer, That it is not at all to be wondered, that history gives us but a very little account of men, that lived together in the state of nature. The inconveniences of that condition, and the love and want of society, no sooner brought any number of them together, but they presently united and incorporated, if they designed to continue together. And if we may not suppose men ever to have been in the state of nature, because we hear not much of them in such a state, we may as well suppose the armies of Salmanasser or Xerxes were never children, because we hear little of them, till they were men, and imbodied in armies. Government is every where antecedent to records, and letters seldom come in amongst a people till a long continuation of civil society has, by other more necessary arts, provided for their safety, ease, and plenty: and then they begin to look after the history of their founders, and search into their original, when they have outlived the memory of it: for it is with common-wealths as with particular persons, they are commonly ignorant of their own births and infancies: and if they know any thing of their original, they are beholden for it, to the accidental records that others have kept of it. And those that we have, of the beginning of any polities in the world, excepting that of the Jews, where God himself immediately interposed, and which favours not at all paternal dominion, are all either plain instances of such a beginning as I have mentioned, or at least have manifest footsteps of it.

  §. 102.

  He must shew a strange inclination to deny evident matter of fact, when it agrees not with his hypothesis, who will not allow, that the beginning of Rome and Venice were by the uniting together of several men free and independent one of another, amongst whom there was no natural superiority or subjection. And if Josephus Acosta’s word may be taken, he tells us, that in many parts of America there was no government at all. There are great and apparent conjectures, says he, that these men, speaking of those of Peru, for a long time had neither kings nor common-wealths, but lived in troops, as they do this day in Florida, the Cheriquanas, those of Brasil, and many other nations, which have no certain kings, but as occasion is offered, in peace or war, they choose their captains as they please, l. i. c. 25. If it be said, that every man there was born subject to his father, or the head of his family; that the subjection due from a child to a father took not away his freedom of uniting into what political society he thought fit, has been already proved. But be that as it will, these men, it is evident, were actually free; and whatever superiority some politicians now would place in any of them, they themselves claimed it not, but by consent were all equal, till by the same consent they set rulers over themselves. So that their politic societies all began from a voluntary union, and the mutual agreement of men freely acting in the choice of their governors, and forms of government.

  §. 103.

  And I hope those who went away from Sparta with Palantus, mentioned by Justin, l. iii. c. 4. will be allowed to have been freemen independent one of another, and to have set up a government over themselves, by their own consent. Thus I have given several examples, out of history, of people free and in the state of nature, that being met together incorporated and began a common-wealth. And if the want of such instances be an argument to prove that government were not, nor could not be so begun, I suppose the contenders for paternal empire were better let it alone, than urge it against natural liberty: for if they can give so many instances, out of history, of governments begun upon paternal right, I think (though at best an argument from what has been, to what should of right be, has no great force) one might, without any great danger, yield them the cause. But if I might advise them in the case, they would do well not to search too much into the original of governments, as they have begun de facto, lest they should find, at the foundation of most of them, something very little favourable to the design they promote, and such a power as they contend for.

  §. 104.

  But to conclude, reason being plain on our side, that men are naturally free, and the examples of history shewing, that the governments of the world, that were begun in peace, had their beginning laid on that foundation, and were made by the consent of the people; there can be little room for doubt, either where the right is, or what has been the opinion, or practice of mankind, about the first erecting of governments.

  §. 105.

  I will not deny, that if we look back as far as history will direct us, towards the original of common-wealths, we shall generally find them under the government and administration of one man. And I am also apt to believe, that where a family was numerous enough to subsist by itself, and continued entire together, without mixing with others, as it often happens, where there is much land, and few people, the government commonly began in the father: for the father having, by the law of nature, the same power with every man else to punish, as he thought fit, any offences against that law, might thereby punish his transgressing children, even when they were men, and out of their pupilage; and they were very likely to submit to his punishment, and all join with him against the offender, in their turns, giving him thereby power to execute his sentence against any transgression, and so in effect make him the law-maker, and governor over all that remained in conjunction with his family. He was fittest to be trusted; paternal affection secured their property and interest under his care; and the custom of obeying him, in their childhood, made it easier to submit to him, rather than to any other. If therefore they must have one to rule them, as government is hardly to be avoided amongst men that live together; who so likely to be the man as he that was their common father; unless negligence, cruelty, or any other defect of mind or body made him unfit for it? But when either the father died, and left his next heir, for want of age, wisdom, courage, or any other qualities, less fit for rule; or where several families met, and consented to continue together; there, it is not to be doubted, but they used their natural freedom, to set up him, whom they judged the ablest, and most likely, to rule well over them. Conformable hereunto we find the people of America, who (living out of the reach of the conquering swords, and spreading domination of the two great empires of Peru and Mexico) enjoyed their own natural freedom, though, cæteris paribus, they commonly prefer the heir of their deceased king; yet if they find him any way weak, or uncapable, they pass him by, and set up the stoutest and bravest man for their ruler.

  §. 106.

  Thus, though looking back as far as records give us any account of peopling the world, and the history of nations, we commonly find the government to be in one hand; yet it destroys not that which I affirm, viz. that the beginning of politic society depends upon the consent of the individuals, to join into, and make one society; who, when they are thus incorporated, might set up what form of government they thought fit. But this having given occasion to men to mistake, and think, that by nature government was monarchical, and belonged to the father, it may not be amiss here to consider, why people in the beginning generally pitched upon this form, which though perhaps the father’s pre-eminency might, in the first institution of some common-wealths, give a rise to, and place in the beginning, the power in one hand; yet it is plain that the reason, that continued the form of government in a single person, was not any regard, or respect to paternal authority; since all petty monarchies, that is, almost all monarchies, near their original, have been commonly, at least upon occasion, elective.

  §. 107.

  First then, in the beginning of things, the father’s government of the childhood of those sprung from him, having accustomed them to the rule of one man, and taught them that where it was exercised with care and skill, with affection and love to those under it, it was sufficient to procure and preserve to men all the political happiness they sought for in society. It was no wonder that they should pitch upon, and naturally run into that form of government, which from their infancy they had been all accustomed to; and which, by experience, they had found both easy and safe. To which, if we add, that monarchy being simple, and most obvious to men, whom neither experience had instructed in forms of government, nor the ambition or insolence of empire had taught to beware of the encroachments of prerogative, or the inconveniencies of absolute power, which monarchy in succession was apt to lay claim to, and bring upon them; it was not at all strange, that they should not much trouble themselves to think of methods of restraining any exorbitances of those to whom they had given the authority over them, and of balancing the power of government, by placing several parts of it in different hands. They had neither felt the oppression of tyrannical dominion, nor did the fashion of the age, nor their possessions, or way of living, (which afforded little matter for covetousness or ambition) give them any reason to apprehend or provide against it; and therefore it is no wonder they put themselves into such a frame of government, as was not only, as I said, most obvious and simple, but also best suited to their present state and condition; which stood more in need of defence against foreign invasions and injuries, than of multiplicity of laws. The equality of a simple poor way of living, confining their desires within the narrow bounds of each man’s small property, made few controversies, and so no need of many laws to decide them, or variety of officers to superintend the process, or look after the execution of justice, where there were but few trespasses, and few offenders. Since then those, who liked one another so well as to join into society, cannot but be supposed to have some acquaintance and friendship together, and some trust one in another; they could not but have greater apprehensions of others, than of one another: and therefore their first care and thought cannot but be supposed to be, how to secure themselves against foreign force. It was natural for them to put themselves under a frame of government which might best serve to that end, and chuse the wisest and bravest man to conduct them in their wars, and lead them out against their enemies, and in this chiefly be their ruler.

  §. 108.

  Thus we see, that the kings of the Indians in America, which is still a pattern of the first ages in Asia and Europe, whilst the inhabitants were too few for the country, and want of people and money gave men no temptation to enlarge their possessions of land, or contest for wider extent of ground, are little more than generals of their armies; and though they command absolutely in war, yet at home and in time of peace they exercise very little dominion, and have but a very moderate sovereignty, the resolutions of peace and war being ordinarily either in the people, or in a council. Tho’ the war itself, which admits not of plurality of governors, naturally devolves the command into the king’s sole authority.

  §. 109.

  And thus in Israel itself, the chief business of their judges, and first kings, seems to have been to be captains in war, and leaders of their armies; which (besides what is signified by going out and in before the people, which was, to march forth to war, and home again in the heads of their forces) appears plainly in the story of Jephtha. The Ammonites making war upon Israel, the Gileadites in fear send to Jephtha, a bastard of their family whom they had cast off, and article with him, if he will assist them against the Ammonites, to make him their ruler; which they do in these words, And the people made him head and captain over them, Judg. xi. 11. which was, as it seems, all one as to be judge. And he judged Israel, Judg. xii. 7. that is, was their captain-general six years. So when Jotham upbraids the Shechemites with the obligation they had to Gideon, who had been their judge and ruler, he tells them, He fought for you, and adventured his life far, and delivered you out of the hands of Midian, Judg. ix. 17. Nothing mentioned of him, but what he did as a general: and indeed that is all is found in his history, or in any of the rest of the judges. And Abimelech particularly is called king, though at most he was but their general. And when, being weary of the ill conduct of Samuel’s sons, the children of Israel desired a king, like all the nations to judge them, and to go out before them, and to fight their battles, 1 Sam. viii. 20. God granting their desire, says to Samuel, I will send thee a man, and thou shalt anoint him to be captain over my people Israel, that he may save my people out of the hands of the Philistines, ix. 16. As if the only business of a king had been to lead out their armies, and fight in their defence; and accordingly at his inauguration pouring a vial of oil upon him, declares to Saul, that the Lord had anointed him to be captain over his inheritance, x. 1. And therefore those, who after Saul’s being solemnly chosen and saluted king by the tribes at Mispah, were unwilling to have him their king, made no other objection but this, How shall this man save us? v. 27. as if they should have said, this man is unfit to be our king, not having skill and conduct enough in war, to be able to defend us. And when God resolved to transfer the government to David, it is in these words, But now thy kingdom shall not continue: the Lord hath sought him a man after his own heart, and the Lord hath commanded him to be captain over his people, xiii. 14. As if the whole kingly authority were nothing else but to be their general: and therefore the tribes who had stuck to Saul’s family, and opposed David’s reign, when they came to Hebron with terms of submission to him, they tell him, amongst other arguments they had to submit to him as to their king, that he was in effect their king in Saul’s time, and therefore they had no reason but to receive him as their king now. Also (say they) in time past, when Saul was king over us, thou wast he that leddest out and broughtest in Israel, and the Lord said unto thee, Thou shalt feed my people Israel, and thou shalt be a captain over Israel.

  §. 110.

  Thus, whether a family by degrees grew up into a common-wealth, and the fatherly authority being continued on to the elder son, every one in his turn growing up under it, tacitly submitted to it, and the easiness and equality of it not offending any one, every one acquiesced, till time seemed to have confirmed it, and settled a right of succession by prescription: or whether several families, or the descendants of several families, whom chance, neighbourhood, or business brought together, uniting into society, the need of a general, whose conduct might defend them against their enemies in war, and the great confidence the innocence and sincerity of that poor but virtuous age, (such as are almost all those which begin governments, that ever come to last in the world) gave men one of another, made the first beginners of common-wealths generally put the rule into one man’s hand, without any other express limitation or restraint, but what the nature of the thing, and the end of government required: which ever of those it was that at first put the rule into the hands of a single person, certain it is no body was intrusted with it but for the public good and safety, and to those ends, in the infancies of common-wealths, those who had it commonly used it. And unless they had done so, young societies could not have subsisted; without such nursing fathers tender and careful of the public weal, all governments would have sunk under the weakness and infirmities of their infancy, and the prince and the people had soon perished together.

  §. 111.

  But though the golden age (before vain ambition, and amor sceleratus habendi, evil concupiscence, had corrupted men’s minds into a mistake of true power and honour) had more virtue, and consequently better governors, as well as less vicious subjects; and there was then no stretching prerogative on the one side, to oppress the people; nor consequently on the other, any dispute aboutprivilege, to lessen or restrain the power of the magistrate, and so no contest betwixt rulers and people about governors or government: yet, when ambition and luxury in future ages* would retain and increase the power, without doing the business for which it was given; and aided by slattery, taught princes to have distinct and separate interests from their people, men found it necessary to examine more carefully the original and rights of government; and to find out ways to restrain the exorbitances, and prevent the abuses of that power, which they having intrusted in another’s hands only for their own good, they found was made use of to hurt them.

  §. 112.

  Thus we may see how probable it is, that people that were naturally free, and by their own consent either submitted to the government of their father, or united together out of different families to make a government, should generally put the rule into one man’s hands, and chuse to be under the conduct of a single person, without so much as by express conditions limiting or regulating his power, which they thought safe enough in his honesty and prudence; though they never dreamed of monarchy being Jure Divino, which we never heard of among mankind, till it was revealed to us by the divinity of this last age; nor ever allowed paternal power to have a right to dominion, or to be the foundation of all government. And thus much may suffice to shew, that as far as we have any light from history, we have reason to conclude, that all peaceful beginnings of government have been laid in the consent of the people. I say peaceful, because I shall have occasion in another place to speak of conquest, which some esteem a way of beginning of governments.

  The other objection I find urged against the beginning of polities, in the way I have mentioned, is this, viz.

  §. 113.

  That all men being born under government, some or other, it is impossible any of them should ever be free, and at liberty to unite together, and begin a new one, or ever be able to erect a lawful government.

  If this argument be good; I ask, how came so many lawful monarchies into the world? for if any body, upon this supposition, can shew me any one man in any age of the world free to begin a lawful monarchy, I will be bound to shew him ten other freemen at liberty, at the same time to unite and begin a new government under a regal, or any other form; it being demonstration, that if any one, born under the dominion of another, may be so free as to have a right to command others in a new and distinct empire, every one that is born under the dominion of another may be so free too, and may become a ruler, or subject, of a distinct separate government. And so by this their own principle, either all men, however born, are free, or else there is but one lawful prince, one lawful government in the world. And then they have nothing to do, but barely to shew us which that is; which when they have done, I doubt not but all mankind will easily agree to pay obedience to him.

  §. 114.

  Though it be a sufficient answer to their objection, to shew that it involves them in the same difficulties that it doth those they use it against; yet I shall endeavour to discover the weakness of this argument a little farther.

  All men, say they, are born under government, and therefore they cannot be at liberty to begin a new one. Every one is born a subject to his father, or his prince, and is therefore under the perpetual tie of subjection and allegiance. It is plain mankind never owned nor considered any such natural subjection that they were born in, to one or to the other that tied them, without their own consents, to a subjection to them and their heirs.

  §. 115.

  For there are no examples so frequent in history, both sacred and profane, as those of men withdrawing themselves, and their obedience, from the jurisdiction they were born under, and the family or community they were bred up in, and setting up new governments in other places; from whence sprang all that number of petty commonwealths in the beginning of ages, and which always multiplied, as long as there was room enough, till the stronger, or more fortunate, swallowed the weaker; and those great ones again breaking to pieces, dissolved into lesser dominions. All which are so many testimonies against paternal sovereignty, and plainly prove, that it was not the natural right of the father descending to his heirs, that made governments in the beginning, since it was impossible, upon that ground, there should have been so many little kingdoms; all must have been but only one universal monarchy, if men had not been at liberty to separate themselves from their families, and the government, be it what it will, that was set up in it, and go and make distinct common-wealths and other governments, as they thought fit.

  §. 116.

  This has been the practice of the world from its first beginning to this day; nor is it now any more hindrance to the freedom of mankind, that they are born under constituted and ancient polities, that have established laws, and set forms of government, than if they were born in the woods, amongst the unconfined inhabitants, that run loose in them: for those, who would persuade us, that by being born under any government, we are naturally subjects to it, and have no more any title or pretence to the freedom of the state of nature, have no other reason (bating that of paternal power, which we have already answered) to produce for it, but only, because our fathers or progenitors passed away their natural liberty, and thereby bound up themselves and their posterity to a perpetual subjection to the government, which they themselves submitted to. It is true, that whatever engagements or promises any one has made for himself, he is under the obligation of them, but cannot, by any compact whatsoever, bind his children or posterity: for his son, when a man, being altogether as free as the father, any act of the father can no more give away the liberty of the son, than it can of any body else: he may indeed annex such conditions to the land, he enjoyed as a subject of any common-wealth, as may oblige his son to be of that community, if he will enjoy those possessions which were his father’s; because that estate being his father’s property, he may dispose, or settle it, as he pleases.

  §. 117.

  And this has generally given the occasion to mistake in this matter; because common-wealths not permitting any part of their dominions to be dismembered, nor to be enjoyed by any but those of their community, the son cannot ordinarily enjoy the possessions of his father, but under the same terms his father did, by becoming a member of the society; whereby he puts himself presently under the government he finds there established, as much as any other subject of that common-wealth. And thus the consent of freemen, born under government, which only makes them members of it, being given separately in their turns, as each comes to be of age, and not in a multitude together; people take no notice of it, and thinking it not done at all, or not necessary, conclude they are naturally subjects as they are men.

  §. 118.

  But, it is plain, governments themselves understand it otherwise; they claim no power over the son, because of that they had over the father; nor look on children as being their subjects, by their fathers being so. If a subject of England have a child, by an English woman in France, whose subject is he? Not the king of England’s; for he must have leave to be admitted to the privileges of it: nor the king of France’s; for how then has his father a liberty to bring him away, and breed him as he pleases? and who ever was judged as a traytor or deserter, if he left, or warred against a country, for being barely born in it of parents that were aliens there? It is plain then, by the practice of governments themselves, as well as by the law of right reason, that a child is born a subject of no country or government. He is under his father’s tuition and authority, till he comes to age of discretion; and then he is a freeman, at liberty what government he will put himself under, what body politic he will unite himself to: for if an Englishman’s son, born in France, be at liberty, and may do so, it is evident there is no tie upon him by his father’s being a subject of this kingdom; nor is he bound up by any compact of his ancestors. And why then hath not his son, by the same reason, the same liberty, though he be born any where else? Since the power that a father hath naturally over his children, is the same, where-ever they be born, and the ties of natural obligations, are not bounded by the positive limits of kingdoms and common-wealths.

  §. 119.

  Every man being, as has been shewed, naturally free, and nothing being able to put him into subjection to any earthly power, but only his own consent; it is to be considered, what shall be understood to be a sufficient declaration of a man’s consent, to make him subject to the laws of any government. There is a common distinction of an express and a tacit consent, which will concern our present case. No body doubts but an express consent, of any man entering into any society, makes him a perfect member of that society, a subject of that government. The difficulty is, what ought to be looked upon as a tacit consent, and how far it binds, i. e. how far any one shall be looked on to have consented, and thereby submitted to any government, where he has made no expressions of it at all. And to this I say, that every man, that hath any possessions, or enjoyment, of any part of the dominions of any government, doth thereby give his tacit consent, and is as far forth obliged to obedience to the laws of that government, during such enjoyment, as any one under it; whether this his possession be of land, to him and his heirs for ever, or a lodging only for a week; or whether it be barely travelling freely on the highway; and in effect, it reaches as far as the very being of any one within the territories of that government.

  §. 120.

  To understand this the better, it is fit to consider, that every man, when he at first incorporates himself into any common-wealth, he, by his uniting himself thereunto, annexed also, and submits to the community, those possessions, which he has, or shall acquire, that do not already belong to any other government: for it would be a direct contradiction, for any one to enter into society with others for the securing and regulating of property; and yet to suppose his land, whose property is to be regulated by the laws of the society, should be exempt from the jurisdiction of that government, to which he himself, the proprietor of the land, is a subject. By the same act therefore, whereby any one unites his person, which was before free, to any common-wealth; by the same he unites his possessions, which were before free, to it also; and they become, both of them, person and possession, subject to the government and dominion of that common-wealth, as long as it hath a being. Whoever therefore, from thenceforth, by inheritance, purchase, permission, or otherways, enjoys any part of the land, so annexed to, and under the government of that common-wealth, must take it with the condition it is under; that is, of submitting to the government of the common-wealth, under whose jurisdiction it is, as far forth as any subject of it.

  §. 121.

  But since the government has a direct jurisdiction only over the land, and reaches the possessor of it, (before he has actually incorporated himself in the society) only as he dwells upon, and enjoys that; the obligation any one is under, by virtue of such enjoyment, to submit to the government, begins and ends with the enjoyment; so that whenever the owner, who has given nothing but such a tacit consent to the government, will, by donation, sale, or otherwise, quit the said possession, he is at liberty to go and incorporate himself into any other common-wealth; or to agree with others to begin a new one, in vacuis locis, in any part of the world, they can find free and unpossessed: whereas he, that has once, by actual agreement, and any express declaration, given his consent to be of any common-wealth, is, perpetually and indispensibly obliged to be, and remain unalterably a subject to it, and can never be again in the liberty of the state of nature; unless, by any calamity, the government he was under comes to be dissolved; or else by some public act cuts him off from being any longer a member of it.

  §. 122.

  But submitting to the laws of any country, living quietly, and enjoying privileges and protection under them, makes not a man a member of that society: this is only a local protection and homage due to and from all those, who, not being in a state of war, come within the territories belonging to any government, to all parts whereof the force of its laws extends. But this no more makes a man a member of that society, a perpetual subject of that common-wealth, than it would make a man a subject to another, in whose family he found it convenient to abide for some time; though, whilst he continued in it, he were obliged to comply with the laws, and submit to the government he found there. And thus we see, that foreigners, by living all their lives under another government, and enjoying the privileges and protection of it, though they are bound, even in conscience, to submit to its administration, as far forth as any denison; yet do not thereby come to be subjects or members of that common-wealth. Nothing can make any man so, but his actually entering into it by positive engagement, and express promise and compact. This is that, which I think, concerning the beginning of political societies, and that consent which makes any one a member of any common-wealth.

  CHAP. IX.
  Of the Ends of Political Society and Government.

  §. 123.

  IF man in the state of nature be so free, as has been said; if he be absolute lord of his own person and possessions, equal to the greatest, and subject to no body, why will he part with his freedom? why will he give up this empire, and subject himself to the dominion and controul of any other power? To which it is obvious to answer, that though in the state of nature he hath such a right, yet the enjoyment of it is very uncertain, and constantly exposed to the invasion of others: for all being kings as much as he, every man his equal, and the greater part no strict observers of equity and justice, the enjoyment of the property he has in this state is very unsafe, very unsecure. This makes him willing to quit a condition, which, however free, is full of fears and continual dangers: and it is not without reason, that he seeks out, and is willing to join in society with others, who are already united, or have a mind to unite, for the mutual preservation of their lives, liberties and estates, which I call by the general name, property.

  §. 124.

  The great and chief end, therefore, of men’s uniting into common-wealths, and putting themselves under government, is the preservation of their property. To which in the state of nature there are many things wanting.

  First, There wants an established, settled, known law, received and allowed by common consent to be the standard of right and wrong, and the common measure to decide all controversies between them: for though the law of nature be plain and intelligible to all rational creatures; yet men being biassed by their interest, as well as ignorant for want of study of it, are not apt to allow of it as a law binding to them in the application of it to their particular cases.

  §. 125.

  Secondly, In the state of nature there wants a known and indifferent judge, with authority to determine all differences according to the established law: for every one in that state being both judge and executioner of the law of nature, men being partial to themselves, passion and revenge is very apt to carry them too far, and with too much heat, in their own cases; as well as negligence, and unconcernedness, to make them too remiss in other men’s.

  §. 126.

  Thirdly, In the state of nature there often wants power to back and support the sentence when right, and to give it due execution. They who by any injustice offended, will seldom fail, where they are able, by force to make good their injustice; such resistance many times makes the punishment dangerous, and frequently destructive, to those who attempt it.

  §. 127.

  Thus mankind, notwithstanding all the privileges of the state of nature, being but in an ill condition, while they remain in it, are quickly driven into society. Hence it comes to pass, that we seldom find any number of men live any time together in this state. The inconveniencies that they are therein exposed to, by the irregular and uncertain exercise of the power every man has of punishing the transgressions of others, make them take sanctuary under the established laws of government, and therein seek the preservation of their property. It is this makes them so willingly give up every one his single power of punishing, to be exercised by such alone, as shall be appointed to it amongst them; and by such rules as the community, or those authorized by them to that purpose, shall agree on. And in this we have the original right and rise of both the legislative and executive power, as well as of the governments and societies themselves.

  §. 128.

  For in the state of nature, to omit the liberty he has of innocent delights, a man has two powers.

  The first is to do whatsoever he thinks fit for the preservation of himself, and others within the permission of the law of nature: by which law, common to them all, he and all the rest of mankind are one community, make up one society, distinct from all other creatures. And were it not for the corruption and vitiousness of degenerate men, there would be no need of any other; no necessity that men should separate from this great and natural community, and by positive agreements combine into smaller and divided associations.

  The other power a man has in the state of nature, is the power to punish the crimes committed against that law. Both these he gives up, when he joins in a private, if I may so call it, or particular politic society, and incorporates into any common-wealth, separate from the rest of mankind.

  §. 129.

  The first power, viz. of doing whatsoever be thought for the preservation of himself, and the rest of mankind, he gives up to be regulated by laws made by the society, so far forth as the preservation of himself, and the rest of that society shall require; which laws of the society in many things confine the liberty he had by the law of nature.

  §. 130.

  Secondly, The power of punishing he wholly gives up, and engages his natural force, (which he might before employ in the execution of the law of nature, by his own single authority, as he thought fit) to assist the executive power of the society, as the law thereof shall require: for being now in a new state, wherein he is to enjoy many conveniencies, from the labour, assistance, and society of others in the same community, as well as protection from its whole strength; he is to part also with as much of his natural liberty, in providing for himself, as the good, prosperity, and safety of the society shall require; which is not only necessary, but just, since the other members of the society do the like.

  §. 131.

  But though men, when they enter into society, give up the equality, liberty, and executive power they had in the state of nature, into the hands of the society, to be so far disposed of by the legislative, as the good of the society shall require; yet it being only with an intention in every one the better to preserve himself, his liberty and property; (for no rational creature can be supposed to change his condition with an intention to be worse) the power of the society, or legislative constituted by them, can never be supposed to extend farther, than the common good; but is obliged to secure every one’s property, by providing against those three defects above mentioned, that made the state of nature so unsafe and uneasy. And so whoever has the legislative or supreme power of any common-wealth, is bound to govern by established standing laws, promulgated and known to the people, and not by extemporary decrees; by indifferent and upright judges, who are to decide controversies by those laws; and to employ the force of the community at home, only in the execution of such laws, or abroad to prevent or redress foreign injuries, and secure the community from inroads and invasion. And all this to be directed to no other end, but the peace, safety, and public good of the people.

  CHAP. X.
  Of the Forms of a Common-wealth.

  §. 132.

  THE majority having, as has been shewed, upon men’s first uniting into society, the whole power of the community naturally in them, may employ all that power in making laws for the community from time to time, and executing those laws by officers of their own appointing; and then the form of the government is a perfect democracy: or else may put the power of making laws into the hands of a few select men, and their heirs or successors; and then it is an oligarchy: or else into the hands of one man, and then it is a monarchy: if to him and his heirs, it is an hereditary monarchy: if to him only for life, but upon his death the power only of nominating a successor to return to them; an elective monarchy. And so accordingly of these the community may make compounded and mixed forms of government, as they think good. And if the legislative power be at first given by the majority to one or more persons only for their lives, or any limited time, and then the supreme power to revert to them again; when it is so reverted, the community may dispose of it again anew into what hands they please, and so constitute a new form of government: for the form of government depending upon the placing the supreme power, which is the legislative, it being impossible to conceive that an inferior power should prescribe to a superior, or any but the supreme make laws, according as the power of making laws is placed, such is the form of the common-wealth.

  §. 133.

  By common-wealth, I must be understood all along to mean, not a democracy, or any form of government, but any independent community, which the Latines signified by the word civitas, to which the word which best answers in our language, is common-wealth, and most properly expresses such a society of men, which community or city in English does not; for there may be subordinate communities in a government; and city amongst us has a quite different notion from common-wealth: and therefore, to avoid ambiguity, I crave leave to use the word common-wealth in that sense, in which I find it used by king James the first; and I take it to be its genuine signification; which if any body dislike, I consent with him to change it for a better.

  CHAP. XI.
  Of the Extent of the Legislative Power.

  §. 134.

  THE great end of men’s entering into society, being the enjoyment of their properties in peace and safety, and the great instrument and means of that being the laws established in that society; the first and fundamental positive law of all common-wealths is the establishing of the legislative power; as the first and fundamental naturallaw, which is to govern even the legislative itself, is the preservation of the society, and (as far as will consist with the public good) of every person in it. This legislative is not only the supreme power of the common-wealth, but sacred and unalterable in the hands where the community have once placed it; nor can any edict of any body else, in what form soever conceived, or by what power soever backed, have the force and obligation of a law, which has not its sanction from that legislative which the public has chosen and appointed: for without this the law could not have that, which is absolutely necessary to its being a law,*the consent of the society, over whom no body can have a power to make laws, but by their own consent, and by authority received from them; and therefore all the obedience, which by the most solemn ties any one can be obliged to pay, ultimately terminates in this supreme power, and is directed by those laws which it enacts: nor can any oaths to any foreign power whatsoever, or any domestic subordinate power, discharge any member of the society from his obedience to the legislative, acting pursuant to their trust; nor oblige him to any obedience contrary to the laws so enacted, or farther than they do allow; it being ridiculous to imagine one can be tied ultimately to obey any power in the society, which is not the supreme.

  §. 135.

  Though the legislative, whether placed in one or more, whether it be always in being, or only by intervals, though it be the supreme power in every common-wealth; yet,

  First, It is not, nor can possibly be absolutely arbitrary over the lives and fortunes of the people: for it being but the joint power of every member of the society given up to that person, or assembly, which is legislator; it can be no more than those persons had in a state of nature before they entered into society, and gave up to the community: for no body can transfer to another more power than he has in himself; and no body has an absolute arbitrary power over himself, or over any other, to destroy his own life, or take away the life or property of another. A man, as has been proved, cannot subject himself to the arbitrary power of another; and having in the state of nature no arbitrary power over the life, liberty, or possession of another, but only so much as the law of nature gave him for the preservation of himself, and the rest of mankind; this is all he doth, or can give up to the common-wealth, and by it to the legislative power, so that the legislative can have no more than this. Their power, in the utmost bounds of it, is limited to the public good of the society. It is a power, that hath no other end but preservation, and therefore can never* have a right to destroy, enslave, or designedly to impoverish the subjects. The obligations of the law of nature cease not in society, but only in many cases are drawn closer, and have by human laws known penalties annexed to them, to inforce their observation. Thus the law of nature stands as an eternal rule to all men, legislators as well as others. The rules that they make for other men’s actions, must, as well as their own and other men’s actions, be conformable to the law of nature, i. e. to the will of God, of which that is a declaration, and the fundamental law of nature being the preservation of mankind, no human sanction can be good, or valid against it.

  §. 136.

  Secondly,* The legislative, or supreme authority, cannot assume to its self a power to rule by extemporary arbitrary decrees, but is bound to dispense justice, and decide the rights of the subject by promulgated standing laws, and known authorized judges: for the law of nature being unwritten, and so no where to be found but in the minds of men, they who through passion or interest shall miscite, or misapply it, cannot so easily be convinced of their mistake where there is no established judge: and so it serves not, as it ought, to determine the rights, and fence the properties of those that live under it, especially where every one is judge, interpreter, and executioner of it too, and that in his own case: and he that has right on his side, having ordinarily but his own single strength, hath not force enough to defend himself from injuries, or to punish delinquents. To avoid these inconveniencies, which disorder men’s properties in the state of nature, men unite into societies, that they may have the united strength of the whole society to secure and defend their properties, and may have standing rules to bound it, by which every one may know what is his. To this end it is that men give up all their natural power to the society which they enter into, and the community put the legislative power into such hands as they think fit, with this trust, that they shall be governed by declared laws, or else their peace, quiet, and property will still be at the same uncertainty, as it was in the state of nature.

  §. 137.

  Absolute arbitrary power, or governing without settled standing laws, can neither of them consist with the ends of society and government, which men would not quit the freedom of the state of nature for, and tie themselves up under, were it not to preserve their lives, liberties and fortunes, and by stated rules of right and property to secure their peace and quiet. It cannot be supposed that they should intend, had they a power so to do, to give to any one, or more, an absolute arbitrary power over their persons and estates, and put a force into the magistrate’s hand to execute his unlimited will arbitrarily upon them. This were to put themselves into a worse condition than the state of nature, wherein they had a liberty to defend their right against the injuries of others, and were upon equal terms of force to maintain it, whether invaded by a single man, or many in combination. Whereas by supposing they have given up themselves to the absolute arbitrary power and will of a legislator, they have disarmed themselves, and armed him, to make a prey of them when he pleases; he being in a much worse condition, who is exposed to the arbitrary power of one man, who has the command of 100,000, than he that is exposed to the arbitrary power of 100,000 single men; no body being secure, that his will, who has such a command, is better than that of other men, though his force be 100,000 times stronger. And therefore, whatever form the commonwealth is under, the ruling power ought to govern by declared and received laws, and nor by extemporary dictates and undetermined resolutions: for then mankind will be in a far worse condition than in the state of nature, if they shall have armed one, or a few men with the joint power of a multitude, to force them to obey at pleasure the exorbitant and unlimited decrees of their sudden thoughts, or unrestrained, and till that moment unknown wills, without having any measures set down which may guide and justify their actions: for all the power the government has, being only for the good of the society, as it ought not to be arbitrary and at pleasure, so it ought to be exercised by established and promulgated laws; that both the people may know their duty, and be safe and secure within the limits of the law; and the rulers too kept within their bounds, and not be tempted, by the power they have in their hands, to employ it to such purposes, and by such measures, as they would not have known, and own not willingly.

  §. 138.

  Thirdly, The supreme power cannot take from any man any part of his property without his own consent: for the preservation of property being the end of government, and that for which men enter into society, it necessarily supposes and requires, that the people should have property, without which they must be supposed to lose that, by entering into society, which was the end for which they entered into it; too gross an absurdity for any man to own. Men therefore in society having property, they have such a right to the goods, which by the law of the community are their’s, that no body hath a right to take their substance or any part of it from them, without their own consent: without this they have no property at all; for I have truly no property in that, which another can by right take from me, when he pleases, against my consent. Hence it is a mistake to think, that the supreme or legislative power of any common-wealth, can do what it will, and dispose of the estates of the subject arbitrarily, or take any part of them at pleasure. This is not much to be feared in governments where the legislative consists, wholly or in part, in assemblies which are variable, whose members, upon the dissolution of the assembly, are subjects under the common laws of their country, equally with the rest. But in governments, where the legislative is in one lasting assembly always in being, or in one man, as in absolute monarchies, there is danger still, that they will think themselves to have a distinct interest from the rest of the community; and so will be apt to increase their own riches and power, by taking what they think fit from the people: for a man’s property is not at all secure, tho’ there be good and equitable laws to set the bounds of it between him and his fellow subjects, if he who commands those subjects have power to take from any private man, what part he pleases of his property, and use and dispose of it as he thinks good.

  §. 139.

  But government, into whatsoever hands it is put, being, as I have before shewed, intrusted with this condition, and for thisend, that men might have and secure their properties; the prince, or senate, however it may have power to make laws, for the regulating of property between the subjects one amongst another, yet can never have a power to take to themselves the whole, or any part of the subjects property, without their own consent: for this would be in effect to leave them no property at all. And to let us see, that even absolute power, where it is necessary, is not arbitrary by being absolute, but is still limited by that reason, and confined to those ends, which required it in some cases to be absolute, we need look no farther than the common practice of martial discipline: for the preservation of the army, and in it of the whole common-wealth, requires an absolute obedience to the command of every superior officer, and it is justly death to disobey or dispute the most dangerous or unreasonable of them; but yet we see, that neither the serjeant, that could command a soldier to march up to the mouth of a cannon, or stand in a breach, where he is almost sure to perish, can command that soldier to give him one penny of his money; nor the general, that can condemn him to death for deserting his post, or for not obeying the most desperate orders, can yet, with all his absolute power of life and death, dispose of one farthing of that soldier’s estate, or seize one jot of his goods; whom yet he can command any thing, and hang for the least disobedience; because such a blind obedience is necessary to that end, for which the commander has his power, viz. the preservation of the rest; but the disposing of his goods has nothing to do with it.

  §. 140.

  It is true, governments cannot be supported without great charge, and it is fit every one who enjoys his share of the protection, should pay out of his estate his proportion for the maintenance of it. But still it must be with his own consent, i. e. the consent of the majority, giving it either by themselves, or their representatives chosen by them: for if any one shall claim a power to lay and levy taxes on the people, by his own authority, and without such consent of the people, he thereby invades the fundamental law of property, and subverts the end of government: for what property have I in that, which another may by right take, when he pleases, to himself?

  §. 141.

  Fourthly, The legislative cannot transfer the power of making laws to any other hands: for it being but a delegated power from the people, they who have it cannot pass it over to others. The people alone can appoint the form of the common-wealth, which is by constituting the legislative, and appointing in whose hands that shall be. And when the people have said, We will submit to rules, and be governed by laws made by such men, and in such forms, no body else can say other men shall make laws for them; nor can the people be bound by any laws, but such as are enacted by those whom they have chosen, and authorized to make laws for them. The power of the legislative, being derived from the people by a positive voluntary grant and institution, can be no other than what that positive grant conveyed, which being only to make laws, and not to make legislators, the legislative can have no power to transfer their authority of making laws, and place it in other hands.

  §. 142.

  These are the bounds which the trust, that is put in them by the society, and the law of God and nature, have set to the legislative power of every common-wealth, in all forms of government.

  First, They are to govern by promulgated established laws, not to be varied in particular cases, but to have one rule for rich and poor, for the favourite at court, and the country man at plough.

  Secondly, These laws also ought to be designed for no other end ultimately, but the good of the people.

  Thirdly, They must not raise taxes on the property of the people, without the consent of the people, given by themselves, or their deputies. And this properly concerns only such governments where the legislative is always in being, or at least where the people have not reserved any part of the legislative to deputies, to be from time to time chosen by themselves.

  Fourthly, The legislative neither must nor can transfer the power of making laws to any body else, or place it any where, but where the people have.

  CHAP. XII.
  Of the Legislative, Executive, and Federative Power of the Common-wealth.

  §. 143.

  THE legislative power is that, which has a right to direct how the force of the common-wealth shall be employed for preserving the community and the members of it. But because those laws which are constantly to be executed, and whose force is always to continue, may be made in a little time; therefore there is no need, that the legislative should be always in being, not having always business to do. And because it may be too great a temptation to human frailty, apt to grasp at power, for the same persons, who have the power of making laws, to have also in their hands the power to execute them, whereby they may exempt themselves from obedience to the laws they make, and suit the law, both in its making, and execution, to their own private advantage, and thereby come to have a distinct interest from the rest of the community, contrary to the end of society and government: therefore in well-ordered common-wealths, where the good of the whole is so considered, as it ought, the legislative power is put into the hands of divers persons, who duly assembled, have by themselves, or jointly with others, a power to make laws, which when they have done, being separated again, they are themselves subject to the laws they have made; which is a new and near tie upon them, to take care, that they make them for the public good.

  §. 144.

  But because the laws, that are at once, and in a short time made, have a constant and lasting force, and need a perpetual execution, or an attendance thereunto; therefore it is necessary there should be a power always in being, which should see to the execution of the laws that are made, and remain in force. And thus the legislative and executive power come often to be separated.

  §. 145.

  There is another power in every common-wealth, which one may call natural, because it is that which answers to the power every man naturally had before he entered into society: for though in a common-wealth the members of it are distinct persons still in reference to one another, and as such are governed by the laws of the society; yet in reference to the rest of mankind, they make one body, which is, as every member of it before was, still in the state of nature with the rest of mankind. Hence it is, that the controversies that happen between any man of the society with those that are out of it, are managed by the public; and an injury done to a member of their body, engages the whole in the reparation of it. So that under this consideration, the whole community is one body in the state of nature, in respect of all other states or persons out of its community.

  §. 146.

  This therefore contains the power of war and peace, leagues and alliances, and all the transactions, with all persons and communities without the common-wealth, and may be called federative, if any one pleases. So the thing be understood, I am indifferent as to the name.

  §. 147.

  These two powers, executive and federative, though they be really distinct in themselves, yet one comprehending the execution of the municipal laws of the society within its self, upon all that are parts of it; the other the management of the security and interest of the public without, with all those that it may receive benefit or damage from, yet they are always almost united. And though this federative power in the well or ill management of it be of great moment to the common-wealth, yet it is much less capable to be directed by antecedent, standing, positive laws, than the executive; and so must necessarily be left to the prudence and wisdom of those, whose hands it is in, to be managed for the public good: for the laws that concern subjects one amongst another, being to direct their actions, may well enough precede them. But what is to be done in reference to foreigners, depending much upon their actions, and the variation of designs and interests, must be left in great part to the prudence of those, who have this power committed to them, to be managed by the best of their skill, for the advantage of the common-wealth.

  §. 148.

  Though, as I said, the executive and federative power of every community be really distinct in themselves, yet they are hardly to be separated, and placed at the same time, in the hands of distinct persons: for both of them requiring the force of the society for their exercise, it is almost impracticable to place the force of the common-wealth in distinct, and not subordinate hands; or that the executive and federative power should be placed in persons, that might act separately, whereby the force of the public would be under different commands: which would be apt some time or other to cause disorder and ruin.

  CHAP. XIII.
  Of the Subordination of the Powers of the Common-wealth.

  §. 149.

  THough in a constituted common-wealth, standing upon its own basis, and acting according to its own nature, that is, acting for the preservation of the community, there can be but one supreme power, which is the legislative, to which all the rest are and must be subordinate, yet the legislative being only a fiduciary power to act for certain ends, there remains still in the people a supreme power to remove or alter the legislative, when they find the legislative act contrary to the trust reposed in them: for all power given with trust for the attaining an end, being limited by that end, whenever that end is manifestly neglected, or opposed, the trust must necessarily be forfeited, and the power devolve into the hands of those that gave it, who may place it anew where they shall think best for their safety and security. And thus the community perpetually retains a supreme power of saving themselves from the attempts and designs of any body, even of their legislators, whenever they shall be so foolish, or so wicked, as to lay and carry on designs against the liberties and properties of the subject: for no man or society of men, having a power to deliver up their preservation, or consequently the means of it, to the absolute will and arbitrary dominion of another; when ever any one shall go about to bring them into such a slavish condition, they will always have a right to preserve, what they have not a power to part with; and to rid themselves of those, who invade this fundamental, sacred, and unalterable law of self-preservation, for which they entered into society. And thus the community may be said in this respect to be always the supreme power, but not as considered under any form of government, because this power of the people can never take place till the government be dissolved.

  §. 150.

  In all cases, whilst the government subsists, the legislative is the supreme power: for what can give laws to another, must needs be superior to him; and since the legislative is no otherwise legislative of the society, but by the right it has to make laws for all the parts, and for every member of the society, prescribing rules to their actions, and giving power of execution, where they are transgressed, the legislative must needs be the supreme, and all other powers, in any members or parts of the society, derived from and subordinate to it.

  §. 151.

  In some common-wealths, where the legislative is not always in being, and the executive is vested in a single person, who has also a share in the legislative; there that single person in a very tolerable sense may also be called supreme: not that he has in himself all the supreme power, which is that of law-making; but because he has in him the supreme execution, from whom all inferior magistrates derive all their several subordinate powers, or at least the greatest part of them: having also no legislative superior to him, there being no law to be made without his consent, which cannot be expected should ever subject him to the other part of the legislative, be is properly enough in this sense supreme. But yet it is to be observed, that tho’ oaths of allegiance and fealty are taken to him, it is not to him as supreme legislator, but as supreme executor of the law, made by a joint power of him with others; allegiance being nothing but an obedience according to law, which when he violates, he has no right to obedience, nor can claim it otherwise than as the public person vested with the power of the law, and so is to be considered as the image, phantom, or representative of the common-wealth, acted by the will of the society, declared in its laws; and thus he has no will, no power, but that of the law. But when he quits this representation, this public will, and acts by his own private will, he degrades himself, and is but a single private person without power, and without will, that has any right to obedience; the members owing no obedience but to the public will of the society.

  §. 152.

  The executive power, placed any where but in a person that has also a share in the legislative, is visibly subordinate and accountable to it, and may be at pleasure changed and displaced; so that it is not the supreme executive power, that is exempt from subordination, but the supreme executive power vested in one, who having a share in the legislative, has no distinct superior legislative to be subordinate and accountable to, farther than he himself shall join and consent; so that he is no more subordinate than he himself shall think fit, which one may certainly conclude will be but very little. Of other ministerial and subordinate powers in a common-wealth, we need not speak, they being so multiplied with infinite variety, in the different customs and constitutions of distinct common-wealths, that it is impossible to give a particular account of them all. Only thus much, which is necessary to our present purpose, we may take notice of concerning them, that they have no manner of authority, any of them, beyond what is by positive grant and commission delegated to them, and are all of them accountable to some other power in the common-wealth.

  §. 153.

  It is not necessary, no, nor so much as convenient, that the legislative should be always in being; but absolutely necessary that the executive power should, because there is not always need of new laws to be made, but always need of execution of the laws that are made. When the legislative hath put the execution of the laws, they make, into other hands, they have a power still to resume it out of those hands, when they find cause, and to punish for any mal-administration against the laws. The same holds also in regard of the federative power, that and the executive being both ministerial and subordinate to the legislative, which, as has been shewed, in a constituted common-wealth is the supreme. The legislative also in this case being supposed to consist of several persons, (for if it be a single person, it cannot but be always in being, and so will, as supreme, naturally have the supreme executive power, together with the legislative) may assemble, and exercise their legislature, at the times that either their original constitution, or their own adjournment, appoints, or when they please; if neither of these hath appointed any time, or there be no other way prescribed to convoke them: for the supreme power being placed in them by the people, it is always in them, and they may exercise it when they please, unless by their original constitution they are limited to certain seasons, or by an act of their supreme power they have adjourned to a certain time; and when that time comes, they have a right to assemble and act again.

  §. 154.

  If the legislative, or any part of it, be made up of representatives chosen for that time by the people, which afterwards return into the ordinary state of subjects, and have no share in the legislature but upon a new choice, this power of chusing must also be exercised by the people, either at certain appointed seasons, or else when they are summoned to it; and in this latter case, the power of convoking the legislative is ordinarily placed in the executive, and has one of these two limitations in respect of time: that either the original constitution requires their assembling and acting at certain intervals, and then the executive power does nothing but ministerially issue directions for their electing and assembling, according to due forms; or else it is left to his prudence to call them by new elections, when the occasions or exigencies of the public require the amendment of old, or making of new laws, or the redress or prevention of any inconveniencies, that lie on, or threaten the people.

  §. 155.

  It may be demanded here, What if the executive power, being possessed of the force of the common-wealth, shall make use of that force to hinder the meeting and acting of the legislative, when the original constitution, or the public exigencies require it? I say, using force upon the people without authority, and contrary to the trust put in him that does so, is a state of war with the people, who have a right to reinstate their legislative in the exercise of their power: for having erected a legislative, with an intent they should exercise the power of making laws, either at certain set times, or when there is need of it, when they are hindered by any force from what is so necessary to the society, and wherein the safety and preservation of the people consists, the people have a right to remove it by force. In all states and conditions, the true remedy of force without authority, is to oppose force to it. The use of force without authority, always puts him that uses it into a state of war, as the aggressor, and renders him liable to be treated accordingly.

  §. 156.

  The power of assembling and dismissing the legislative, placed in the executive, gives not the executive a superiority over it, but is a fiduciary trust placed in him, for the safety of the people, in a case where the uncertainty and variableness of human affairs could not bear a steady fixed rule: for it not being possible, that the first framers of the government should, by any foresight, be so much masters of future events, as to be able to prefix so just periods of return and duration to the assemblies of the legislative, in all times to come, that might exactly answer all the exigencies of the common-wealth; the best remedy could be found for this defect, was to trust this to the prudence of one who was always to be present, and whose business it was to watch over the public good. Constant frequent meetings of the legislative, and long continuations of their assemblies, without necessary occasion, could not but be burdensome to the people, and must necessarily in time produce more dangerous inconveniencies, and yet the quick turn of affairs might be sometimes such as to need their present help: any delay of their convening might endanger the public; and sometimes too their business might be so great, that the limited time of their sitting might be too short for their work, and rob the public of that benefit which could be had only from their mature deliberation. What then could be done in this case to prevent the community from being exposed some time or other to eminent hazard, on one side or the other, by fixed intervals and periods, set to the meeting and acting of the legislative, but to intrust it to the prudence of some, who being present, and acquainted with the state of public affairs, might make use of this prerogative for the public good? and where else could this be so well placed as in his hands, who was intrusted with the execution of the laws for the same end? Thus supposing the regulation of times for the assembling and sitting of the legislative, not settled by the original constitution, it naturally fell into the hands of the executive, not as an arbitrary power depending on his good pleasure, but with this trust always to have it exercised only for the public weal, as the occurrences of times and change of affairs might require. Whether settled periods of their convening, or a liberty left to the prince for convoking the legislative, or perhaps a mixture of both, hath the least inconvenience attending it, it is not my business here to inquire, but only to shew, that though the executive power may have the prerogative of convoking and dissolving such conventions of the legislative, yet it is not thereby superior to it.

  §. 157.

  Things of this world are in so constant a flux, that nothing remains long in the same state. Thus people, riches, trade, power, change their stations, flourishing mighty cities come to ruin, and prove in times neglected desolate corners, whilst other unfrequented places grow into populous countries, filled with wealth and inhabitants. But things not always changing equally, and private interest often keeping up customs and privileges, when the reasons of them are ceased, it often comes to pass, that in governments, where part of the legislative consists of representatives chosen by the people, that in tract of time this representation becomes very unequal and disproportionate to the reasons it was at first established upon. To what gross absurdities the following of custom, when reason has left it, may lead, we may be satisfied, when we see the bare name of a town, of which there remains not so much as the ruins, where scarce so much housing as a sheepcote, or more inhabitants than a shepherd is to be found, sends as many representatives to the grand assembly of law-makers, as a whole county numerous in people, and powerful in riches. This strangers stand amazed at, and every one must confess needs a remedy; tho’ most think it hard to find one, because the constitution of the legislative being the original and supreme act of the society, antecedent to all positive laws in it, and depending wholly on the people, no inferior power can alter it. And therefore the people, when the legislative is once constituted, having, in such a government as we have been speaking of, no power to act as long as the government stands; this inconvenience is thought incapable of a remedy.

  §. 158.

  Salus populi suprema lex, is certainly so just and fundamental a rule, that he, who sincerely follows it, cannot dangerously err. If therefore the executive, who has the power of convoking the legislative, observing rather the true proportion, than fashion of representation, regulates, not by old custom, but true reason, the number of members, in all places that have a right to be distinctly represented, which no part of the people however incorporated can pretend to, but in proportion to the assistance which it affords to the public, it cannot be judged to have set up a new legislative, but to have restored the old and true one, and to have rectified the disorders which succession of time had insensibly, as well as inevitably introduced: For it being the interest as well as intention of the people, to have a fair and equal representative; whoever brings it nearest to that, is an undoubted friend to, and establisher of the government, and cannot miss the consent and approbation of the community; prerogative being nothing but a power, in the hands of the prince, to provide for the public good, in such cases, which depending upon unforeseen and uncertain occurrences, certain and unalterable laws could not safely direct; whatsoever shall be done manifestly for the good of the people, and the establishing the government upon its true foundations, is, and always will be, just prerogative. The power of erecting new corporations, and therewith new representatives, carries with it a supposition, that in time the measures of representation might vary, and those places have a just right to be represented which before had none; and by the same reason, those cease to have a right, and be too inconsiderable for such a privilege, which before had it. ’Tis not a change from the present state, which perhaps corruption or decay has introduced, that makes an inroad upon the government, but the tendency of it to injure or oppress the people, and to set up one part or party, with a distinction from, and an unequal subjection of the rest. Whatsoever cannot but be acknowledged to be of advantage to the society, and people in general, upon just and lasting measures, will always, when done, justify itself; and whenever the people shall chuse their representatives upon just and undeniably equal measures, suitable to the original frame of the government, it cannot be doubted to be the will and act of the society, whoever permitted or caused them so to do.

  CHAP. XIV.
  Of PREROGATIVE.

  §. 159.

  WHERE the legislative and executive power are in distinct hands, (as they are in all moderated monarchies, and well-framed governments) there the good of the society requires, that several things should be left to the discretion of him that has the executive power: for the legislators not being able to foresee, and provide by laws, for all that may be useful to the community, the executor of the laws, having the power in his hands, has by the common law of nature a right to make use of it for the good of the society, in many cases, where the municipal law has given no direction, till the legislative can conveniently be assembled to provide for it. Many things there are, which the law can by no means provide for; and those must necessarily be left to the discretion of him that has the executive power in his hands, to be ordered by him as the public good and advantage shall require: nay, it is fit that the laws themselves should in some cases give way to the executive power, or rather to this fundamental law of nature and government, viz. That as much as may be, all the members of the society are to be preserved: for since many accidents may happen, wherein a strict and rigid observation of the laws may do harm; (as not to pull down an innocent man’s house to stop the fire, when the next to it is burning) and a man may come somtimes within the reach of the law, which makes no distinction of persons, by an action that may deserve reward and pardon; ’tis fit the ruler should have a power, in many cases, to mitigate the severity of the law, and pardon some offenders: for the end of government being the preservation of all, as much as may be, even the guilty are to be spared, where it can prove no prejudice to the innocent.

  §. 160.

  This power to act according to discretion, for the public good, without the prescription of the law, and sometimes even against it, is that which is called prerogative: for since in some governments the lawmaking power is not always in being, and is usually too numerous, and so too slow, for the dispatch requisite to execution; and because also it is impossible to foresee, and so by laws to provide for, all accidents and necessities that may concern the public, or to make such laws as will do no harm, if they are executed with an inflexible rigour, on all occasions, and upon all persons that may come in their way; therefore there is a latitude left to the executive power, to do many things of choice which the laws do not prescribe.

  §. 161.

  This power, whilst employed for the benefit of the community, and suitably to the trust and ends of the government, is undoubted prerogative, and never is questioned: for the people are very seldom or never scrupulous or nice in the point; they are far from examining prerogative, whilst it is in any tolerable degree employed for the use it was meant, that is, for the good of the people, and not manifestly against it: but if there comes to be a question between the executive power and the people, about a thing claimed as a prerogative; the tendency of the exercise of such prerogative to the good or hurt of the people, will easily decide that question.

  §. 162.

  It is easy to conceive, that in the infancy of governments, when commonwealths differed little from families in number of people, they differed from them too but little in number of laws: and the governors, being as the fathers of them, watching over them for their good, the government was almost all prerogative. A few established laws served the turn, and the discretion and care of the ruler supplied the rest. But when mistake or flattery prevailed with weak princes to make use of this power for private ends of their own, and not for the public good, the people were fain by express laws to get prerogative determined in those points wherein they found disadvantage from it: and thus declared limitations of prerogative were by the people found necessary in cases which they and their ancestors had left, in the utmost latitude, to the wisdom of those princes who made no other but a right use of it, that is, for the good of their people.

  §. 163.

  And therefore they have a very wrong notion of government, who say, that the people have incroached upon the prerogative, when they have got any part of it to be defined by positive laws: for in so doing they have not pulled from the prince any thing that of right belonged to him, but only declared, that that power which they indefinitely left in his or his ancestors hands, to be exercised for their good, was not a thing which they intended him when he used it otherwise: for the end of government being the good of the community, whatsoever alterations are made in it, tending to that end, cannot be an incroachment upon any body, since no body in government can have a right tending to any other end: and those only are incroachments which prejudice or hinder the public good. Those who say otherwise, speak as if the prince had a distinct and separate interest from the good of the community, and was not made for it; the root and source from which spring almost all those evils and disorders which happen in kingly governments. And indeed, if that be so, the people under his government are not a society of rational creatures, entered into a community for their mutual good; they are not such as have set rulers over themselves, to guard, and promote that good; but are to be looked on as an herd of inferior creatures under the dominion of a master, who keeps them and works them for his own pleasure or profit. If men were so void of reason, and brutish, as to enter into society upon such terms, prerogative might indeed be, what some men would have it, an arbitrary power to do things hurtful to the people.

  §. 164.

  But since a rational creature cannot be supposed, when free, to put himself into subjection to another, for his own harm; (though, where he finds a good and wise ruler, he may not perhaps think it either necessary or useful to set precise bounds to his power in all things) prerogative can be nothing but the people’s permitting their rulers to do several things, of their own free choice, where the law was silent, and sometimes too against the direct letter of the law, for the public good; and their acquiescing in it when so done: for as a good prince, who is mindful of the trust put into his hands, and careful of the good of his people, cannot have too much prerogative, that is, power to do good; so a weak and ill prince, who would claim that power which his predecessors exercised without the direction of the law, as a prerogative belonging to him by right of his office, which he may exercise at his pleasure, to make or promote an interest distinct from that of the public, gives the people an occasion to claim their right, and limit that power, which, whilst it was exercised for their good, they were content should be tacitly allowed.

  §. 165.

  And therefore he that will look into the history of England, will find, that prerogative was always largest in the hands of our wisest and best princes; because the people, observing the whole tendency of their actions to be the public good, contested not what was done without law to that end: or, if any human frailty or mistake (for princes are but men, made as others) appeared in some small declinations from that end; yet ’twas visible, the main of their conduct tended to nothing but the care of the public. The people therefore, finding reason to be satisfied with these princes, whenever they acted without, or contrary to the letter of the law, acquiesced in what they did, and, without the least complaint, let them inlarge their prerogative as they pleased, judging rightly, that they did nothing herein to the prejudice of their laws, since they acted conformable to the foundation and end of all laws, the public good.

  §. 166.

  Such god-like princes indeed had some title to arbitrary power by that argument, that would prove absolute monarchy the best government, as that which God himself governs the universe by; because such kings partake of his wisdom and goodness. Upon this is founded that saying, That the reigns of good princes have been always most dangerous to the liberties of their people: for when their successors, managing the government with different thoughts, would draw the actions of those good rulers into precedent, and make them the standard of their prerogative, as if what had been done only for the good of the people was a right in them to do, for the harm of the people, if they so pleased; it has often occasioned contest, and sometimes public disorders, before the people could recover their original right, and get that to be declared not to be prerogative, which truly was never so; since it is impossible that any body in the society should ever have a right to do the people harm; though it be very possible, and reasonable, that the people should not go about to set any bounds to the prerogative of those kings, or rulers, who themselves transgressed not the bounds of the public good: for prerogative is nothing but the power of doing public good without a rule.

  §. 167.

  The power of calling parliaments in England, as to precise time, place, and duration, is certainly a prerogative of the king, but still with this trust, that it shall be made use of for the good of the nation, as the exigencies of the times, and variety of occasions, shall require: for it being impossible to foresee which should always be the fittest place for them to assemble in, and what the best season; the choice of these was left with the executive power, as might be most subservient to the public good, and best suit the ends of parliaments.

  §. 168.

  The old question will be asked in this matter of prerogative, But who shall be judge when this power is made a right use of? I answer: between an executive power in being, with such a prerogative, and a legislative that depends upon his will for their convening, there can be no judge on earth; as there can be none between the legislative and the people, should either the executive, or the legislative, when they have got the power in their hands, design, or go about to enslave or destroy them. The people have no other remedy in this, as in all other cases where they have no judge on earth, but to appeal to heaven: for the rulers, in such attempts, exercising a power the people never put into their hands, (who can never be supposed to consent that any body should rule over them for their harm) do that which they have not a right to do. And where the body of the people, or any single man, is deprived of their right, or is under the exercise of a power without right, and have no appeal on earth, then they have a liberty to appeal to heaven, whenever they judge the cause of sufficient moment. And therefore, though the people cannot be judge, so as to have, by the constitution of that society, any superior power, to determine and give effective sentence in the case; yet they have, by a law antecedent and paramount to all positive laws of men, reserved that ultimate determination to themselves which belongs to all mankind, where there lies no appeal on earth, viz. to judge, whether they have just cause to make their appeal to heaven. And this judgment they cannot part with, it being out of a man’s power so to submit himself to another, as to give him a liberty to destroy him; God and nature never allowing a man so to abandon himself, as to neglect his own preservation: and since he cannot take away his own life, neither can he give another power to take it. Nor let any one think, this lays a perpetual foundation for disorder; for this operates not, till the inconveniency is so great, that the majority feel it, and are weary of it, and find a necessity to have it amended. But this the executive power, or wise princes, never need come in the danger of: and it is the thing, of all others, they have most need to avoid, as of all others the most perilous.

  CHAP. XV.
  Of Paternal, Political, and Despotical Power, considered together.

  §. 169.

  THOUGH I have had occasion to speak of these separately before, yet the great mistakes of late about government, having, as I suppose, arisen from confounding these distinct powers one with another, it may not, perhaps, be amiss to consider them here together.

  §. 170.

  First, then, Paternal or parental power is nothing but that which parents have over their children, to govern them for the children’s good, till they come to the use of reason, or a state of knowledge, wherein they may be supposed capable to understand that rule, whether it be the law of nature, or the municipal law of their country, they are to govern themselves by: capable, I say, to know it, as well as several others, who live as freemen under that law. The affection and tenderness which God hath planted in the breast of parents towards their children, makes it evident, that this is not intended to be a severe arbitrary government, but only for the help, instruction, and preservation of their offspring. But happen it as it will, there is, as I have proved, no reason why it should be thought to extend to life and death, at any time, over their children, more than over any body else; neither can there be any pretence why this parental power should keep the child, when grown to a man, in subjection to the will of his parents, any farther than having received life and education from his parents, obliges him to respect, honour, gratitude, assistance and support, all his life, to both father and mother. And thus, ’tis true, the paternal is a natural government, but not at all extending itself to the ends and jurisdictions of that which is political. The power of the father doth not reach at all to the property of the child, which is only in his own disposing.

  §. 171.

  Secondly, Political power is that power, which every man having in the state of nature, has given up into the hands of the society, and therein to the governors, whom the society hath set over itself, with this express or tacit trust, that it shall be employed for their good, and the preservation of their property: now this power, which every man has in the state of nature, and which he parts with to the society in all such cases where the society can secure him, is to use such means, for the preserving of his own property, as he thinks good, and nature allows him; and to punish the breach of the law of nature in others, so as (according to the best of his reason) may most conduce to the preservation of himself, and the rest of mankind. So that the end and measure of this power, when in every man’s hands in the state of nature, being the preservation of all of his society, that is, all mankind in general, it can have no other end or measure, when in the hands of the magistrate, but to preserve the members of that society in their lives, liberties, and possessions; and so cannot be an absolute, arbitrary power over their lives and fortunes, which are as much as possible to be preserved; but a power to make laws, and annex such penalties to them, as may tend to the preservation of the whole, by cutting off those parts, and those only, which are so corrupt, that they threaten the sound and healthy, without which no severity is lawful. And this power has its original only from compact and agreement, and the mutual consent of those who make up the community.

  §. 172.

  Thirdly, Despotical power is an absolute, arbitrary power one man has over another, to take away his life, whenever he pleases. This is a power, which neither nature gives, for it has made no such distinction between one man and another; nor compact can convey: for man not having such an arbitrary power over his own life, cannot give another man such a power over it; but it is the effect only of forfeiture, which the aggressor makes of his own life, when he puts himself into the state of war with another: for having quitted reason, which God hath given to be the rule betwixt man and man, and the common bond whereby human kind is united into one fellowship and society; and having renounced the way of peace which that teaches, and made use of the force of war, to compass his unjust ends upon another, where he has no right; and so revolting from his own kind to that of beasts, by making force, which is their’s, to be his rule of right, he renders himself liable to be destroyed by the injured person, and the rest of mankind, that will join with him in the execution of justice, as any other wild beast, or noxious brute, with whom mankind can have neither society nor security* . And thus captives, taken in a just and lawful war, and such only, are subject to a despotical power, which, as it arises not from compact, so neither is it capable of any, but is the state of war continued: for what compact can be made with a man that is not master of his own life? what condition can he perform? and if he be once allowed to be master of his own life, the despotical, arbitrary power of his master ceases. He that is master of himself, and his own life, has a right too to the means of preserving it; so that as soon ascompact enters, slavery ceases, and he so far quits his absolute power, and puts an end to the state of war, who enters into conditions with his captive.

  §. 173.

  Nature gives the first of these, viz. paternal power to parents for the benefit of their children during their minority, to supply their want of ability, and understanding how to manage their property. (By property I must be understood here, as in other places, to mean that property which men have in their persons as well as goods.) Voluntary agreement gives the second, viz. political power to governors for the benefit of their subjects, to secure them in the possession and use of their properties. And forfeiture gives the third despotical power to lords for their own benefit, over those who are stripped of all property.

  §. 174.

  He, that shall consider the distinct rise and extent, and the different ends of these several powers, will plainly see, that paternal power comes as far short of that of the magistrate, as despotical exceeds it; and that absolute dominion, however placed, is so far from being one kind of civil society, that it is as inconsistent with it, as slavery is with property. Paternal power is only where minority makes the child incapable to manage his property; political, where men have property in their own disposal; and despotical, over such as have no property at all.

  CHAP. XVI.
  Of CONQUEST.

  §. 175.

  THough governments can originally have no other rise than that before mentioned, nor polities be founded on any thing but the consent of the people; yet such have been the disorders ambition has filled the world with, that in the noise of war, which makes so great a part of the history of mankind, this consent is little taken notice of: and therefore many have mistaken the force of arms for the consent of the people, and reckon conquest as one of the originals of government. But conquest is as far from setting up any government, as demolishing an house is from building a new one in the place. Indeed, it often makes way for a new frame of a common-wealth, by destroying the former; but, without the consent of the people, can never erect a new one.

  §. 176.

  That the aggressor, who puts himself into the state of war with another, and unjustly invades another man’s right, can, by such an unjust war, never come to have a right over the conquered, will be easily agreed by all men, who will not think, that robbers and pyrates have a right of empire over whomsoever they have force enough to master; or that men are bound by promises, which unlawful force extorts from them. Should a robber break into my house, and with a dagger at my throat make me seal deeds to convey my estate to him, would this give him any title? Just such a title, by his sword, has an unjust conqueror, who forces me into submission. The injury and the crime is equal, whether committed by the wearer of a crown, or some petty villain. The title of the offender, and the number of his followers, make no difference in the offence, unless it be to aggravate it. The only difference is, great robbers punish little ones, to keep them in their obedience; but the great ones are rewarded with laurels and triumphs, because they are too big for the weak hands of justice in this world, and have the power in their own possession, which should punish offenders. What is my remedy against a robber, that so broke into my house? Appeal to the law for justice. But perhaps justice is denied, or I am crippled and cannot stir, robbed and have not the means to do it. If God has taken away all means of seeking remedy, there is nothing left but patience. But my son, when able, may seek the relief of the law, which I am denied: he or his son may renew his appeal, till he recover his right. But the conquered, or their children, have no court, no arbitrator on earth to appeal to. Then they may appeal, as Jephtha did, to heaven, and repeat their appeal till they have recovered the native right of their ancestors, which was, to have such a legislative over them, as the majority should approve, and freely acquiesce in. If it be objected, This would cause endless trouble; I answer, no more than justice does, where she lies open to all that appeal to her. He that troubles his neighbour without a cause, is punished for it by the justice of the court he appeals to: and he that appeals to heaven must be sure he has right on his side; and a right too that is worth the trouble and cost of the appeal, as he will answer at a tribunal that cannot be deceived, and will be sure to retribute to every one according to the mischiefs he hath created to his fellow subjects; that is, any part of mankind: from whence it is plain, that he that conquers in an unjust war can thereby have no title to the subjection and obedience of the conquered.

  §. 177.

  But supposing victory favours the right side, let us consider a conqueror in a lawful war, and see what power he gets, and over whom.

  First, It is plain he gets no power by his conquest over those that conquered with him. They that fought on his side cannot suffer by the conquest, but must at least be as much freemen as they were before. And most commonly they serve upon terms, and on condition to share with their leader, and enjoy a part of the spoil, and other advantages that attend the conquering sword; or at least have a part of the subdued country bestowed upon them. And the conquering people are not, I hope, to be slaves by conquest, and wear their laurels only to shew they are sacrifices to their leaders triumph. They that found absolute monarchy upon the title of the sword, make their heroes, who are the founders of such monarchies, arrant Draw-can-sirs, and forget they had any officers and soldiers that fought on their side in the battles they won, or assisted them in the subduing, or shared in possessing, the countries they mastered. We are told by some, that the English monarchy is founded in the Norman conquest, and that our princes have thereby a title to absolute dominion: which if it were true, (as by the history it appears otherwise) and that William had a right to make war on this island; yet his dominion by conquest could reach no farther than to the Saxons and Britons, that were then inhabitants of this country. The Normans that came with him, and helped to conquer, and all descended from them, are freemen, and no subjects by conquest; let that give what dominion it will. And if I, or any body else, shall claim freedom, as derived from them, it will be very hard to prove the contrary: and it is plain, the law, that has made no distinction between the one and the other, intends not there should be any difference in their freedom or privileges.

  §. 178.

  But supposing, which seldom happens, that the conquerors and conquered never incorporate into one people, under the same laws and freedom; let us see next what power a lawful conqueror has over the subdued: and that I say is purely despotical. He has an absolute power over the lives of those who by an unjust war have forfeited them; but not over the lives or fortunes of those who engaged not in the war, nor over the possessions even of those who were actually engaged in it.

  §. 179.

  Secondly, I say then the conqueror gets no power but only over those who have actually assisted, concurred, or consented to that unjust force that is used against him: for the people having given to their governors no power to do an unjust thing, such as is to make an unjust war, (for they never had such a power in themselves) they ought not to be charged as guilty of the violence and unjustice that is committed in an unjust war, any farther than they actually abet it; no more than they are to be thought guilty of any violence or oppression their governors should use upon the people themselves, or any part of their fellow subjects, they having impowered them no more to the one than to the other. Conquerors, it is true, seldom trouble themselves to make the distinction, but they willingly permit the confusion of war to sweep all together: but yet this alters not the right; for the conquerors power over the lives of the conquered, being only because they have used force to do, or maintain an injustice, he can have that power only over those who have concurred in that force; all the rest are innocent; and he has no more title over the people of that country, who have done him no injury, and so have made no forfeiture of their lives, than he has over any other, who, without any injuries or provocations, have lived upon fair terms with him.

  §. 180.

  Thirdly, The power a conqueror gets over those he overcomes in a just war, is perfectly despotical: he has an absolute power over the lives of those, who, by putting themselves in a state of war, have forfeited them; but he has not thereby a right and title to their possessions. This I doubt not, but at first sight will seem a strange doctrine, it being so quite contrary to the practice of the world; there being nothing more familiar in speaking of the dominion of countries, than to say such an one conquered it; as if conquest, without any more ado, conveyed a right of possession. But when we consider, that the practice of the strong and powerful, how universal soever it may be, is seldom the rule of right, however it be one part of the subjection of the conquered, not to argue against the conditions cut out to them by the conquering sword.

  §. 181.

  Though in all war there be usually a complication of force and damage, and the aggressor seldom fails to harm the estate, when he uses force against the persons of those he makes war upon; yet it is the use of force only that puts a man into the state of war: for whether by force he begins the injury, or else having quietly, and by fraud, done the injury, he refuses to make reparation, and by force maintains it, (which is the same thing, as at first to have done it by force) it is the unjust use of force that makes the war: for he that breaks open my house, and violently turns me out of doors; or having peaceably got in, by force keeps me out, does in effect the same thing; supposing we are in such a state, that we have no common judge on earth, whom I may appeal to, and to whom we are both obliged to submit: for of such I am now speaking. It is the unjust use of force then, that puts a man into the state of war with another; and thereby he that is guilty of it makes a forfeiture of his life: for quitting reason, which is the rule given between man and man, and using force, the way of beasts, he becomes liable to be destroyed by him he uses force against, as any savage ravenous beast, that is dangerous to his being.

  §. 182.

  But because the miscarriages of the father are no faults of the children, and they may be rational and peaceable, notwithstanding the brutishness and injustice of the father; the father, by his miscarriages and violence, can forfeit but his own life, but involves not his children in his guilt or destruction. His goods, which nature, that willeth the preservation of all mankind as much as is possible, hath made to belong to the children to keep them from perishing, do still continue to belong to his children: for supposing them not to have joined in the war, either thro’ infancy, absence, or choice, they have done nothing to forfeit them: nor has the conqueror any right to take them away, by the bare title of having subdued him that by force attempted his destruction; though perhaps he may have some right to them, to repair the damages he has sustained by the war, and the defence of his own right; which how far it reaches to the possessions of the conquered, we shall see by and by. So that he that by conquest has a right over a man’s person to destroy him if he pleases, has not thereby a right over his estate to possess and enjoy it: for it is the brutal force the aggressor has used, that gives his adversary a right to take away his life, and destroy him if he pleases, as a noxious creature; but it is damage sustained that alone gives him title to another man’s goods: for though I may kill a thief that sets on me in the high-way, yet I may not (which seems less) take away his money, and let him go: this would be robbery on my side. His force, and the state of war he put himself in, made him forfeit his life, but gave me no title to his goods. The right then of conquest extends only to the lives of those who joined in the war, not to their estates, but only in order to make reparation for the damages received, and the charges of the war, and that too with reservation of the right of the innocent wife and children.

  §. 183.

  Let the conqueror have as much justice on his side, as could be supposed, he has no right to seize more than the vanquished could forfeit: his life is at the victor’s mercy; and his service and goods he may appropriate, to make himself reparation; but he cannot take the goods of his wife and children; they too had a title to the goods he enjoyed, and their shares in the estate he possessed: for example, I in the state of nature (and all common-wealths are in the state of nature one with another) have injured another man, and refusing to give satisfaction, it comes to a state of war, wherein my defending by force what I had gotten unjustly, makes me the aggressor. I am conquered: my life, it is true, as forfeit, is at mercy, but not my wife’s and children’s. They made not the war, nor assisted in it. I could not forfeit their lives; they were not mine to forfeit. My wife had a share in my estate; that neither could I forfeit. And my children also, being born of me, had a right to be maintained out of my labour or substance. Here then is the case: the conqueror has a title to reparation for damages received, and the children have a title to their father’s estate for their subsistence: for as to the wife’s share, whether her own labour, or compact, gave her a title to it, it is plain, her husband could not forfeit what was her’s. What must be done in the case? I answer; the fundamental law of nature being, that all, as much as may be, should be preserved, it follows, that if there be not enough fully to satisfy both, viz. for the conqueror’s losses, and children’s maintenance, he that hath, and to spare, must remit something of his full satisfaction, and give way to the pressing and preferable title of those who are in danger to perish without it.

  §. 184.

  But supposing the charge and damages of the war are to be made up to the conqueror, to the utmost farthing; and that the children of the vanquished, spoiled of all their father’s goods, are to be left to starve and perish; yet the satisfying of what shall, on this score, be due to the conqueror, will scarce give him a title to any country be shall conquer: for the damages of war can scarce amount to the value of any considerable tract of land, in any part of the world, where all the land is possessed, and none lies waste. And if I have not taken away the conqueror’s land, which, being vanquished, it is impossible I should; scarce any other spoil I have done him can amount to the value of mine, supposing it equally cultivated, and of an extent any way coming near what I had over-run of his. The destruction of a year’s product or two (for it seldom reaches four or five) is the utmost spoil that usually can be done: for as to money, and such riches and treasure taken away, these are none of nature’s goods, they have but a fantastical imaginary value: nature has put no such upon them: they are of no more account by her standard, than the wampompeke of the Americans to an European prince, or the silver money of Europe would have been formerly to an American. And five years product is not worth the perpetual inheritance of land, where all is possessed, and none remains waste, to be taken up by him that is disseized: which will be easily granted, if one do but take away the imaginary value of money, the disproportion being more than between five and five hundred; though, at the same time, half a year’s product is more worth than the inheritance, where there being more land than the inhabitants possess and make use of, any one has liberty to make use of the waste: but there conquerors take little care to possess themselves of the lands of the vanquished. No damage therefore, that men in the state of nature (as all princes and governments are in reference to one another) suffer from one another, can give a conqueror power to dispossess the posterity of the vanquished, and turn them out of that inheritance, which ought to be the possession of them and their descendants to all generations. The conqueror indeed will be apt to think himself master: and it is the very condition of the subdued not to be able to dispute their right. But if that be all, it gives no other title than what bare force gives to the stronger over the weaker: and, by this reason, he that is strongest will have a right to whatever he pleases to seize on.

  §. 185.

  Over those then that joined with him in the war, and over those of the subdued country that opposed him not, and the posterity even of those that did, the conqueror, even in a just war, hath, by his conquest, no right of dominion: they are free from any subjection to him, and if their former government be dissolved, they are at liberty to begin and erect another to themselves.

  §. 186.

  The conqueror, it is true, usually, by the force he has over them, compels them, with a sword at their breasts, to stoop to his conditions, and submit to such a government as he pleases to afford them; but the enquiry is, what right he has to do so? If it be said, they submit by their own consent, then this allows their own consent to be necessary to give the conqueror a title to rule over them. It remains only to be considered, whether promises extorted by force, without right, can be thought consent, and how far they bind. To which I shall say, they bind not at all; because whatsoever another gets from me by force, I still retain the right of, and he is obliged presently to restore. He that forces my horse from me, ought presently to restore him, and I have still a right to retake him. By the same reason, he that forced a promise from me, ought presently to restore it, i. e. quit me of the obligation of it; or I may resume it myself, i. e. chuse whether I will perform it: for the law of nature laying an obligation on me only by the rules the prescribes, cannot oblige me by the violation of her rules: such is the extorting any thing from me by force. Nor does it at all alter the case to say, I gave my promise, no more than it excuses the force, and passes the right, when I put my hand in my pocket, and deliver my purse myself to a thief, who demands it with a pistol at my breast.

  §. 187.

  From all which it follows, that the government of a conqueror, imposed by force on the subdued, against whom he had no right of war, or who joined not in the war against him, where he had right, has no obligation upon them.

  §. 188.

  But let us suppose, that all the men of that community, being all members of the same body politic, may be taken to have joined in that unjust war wherein they are subdued, and so their lives are at the mercy of the conqueror.

  §. 189.

  I say, this concerns not their children who are in their minority: for since a father hath not, in himself, a power over the life or liberty of his child, no act of his can possibly forfeit it. So that the children, whatever may have happened to the fathers, are freemen, and the absolute power of the conqueror reaches no farther than the persons of the men that were subdued by him, and dies with them: and should he govern them as slaves, subjected to his absolute arbitrary power, he has no such right of dominion over their children. He can have no power over them but by their own consent, whatever he may drive them to say or do; and he has no lawfull authority, whilst force, and not choice, compels them to submission.

  §. 190.

  Every man is born with a double right: first, a right of freedom to his person, which no other man has a power over, but the free disposal of it lies in himself. Secondly, a right, before any other man, to inherit with his brethren his father’s goods.

  §. 191.

  By the first of these, a man is naturally free from subjection to any government, tho’ he be born in a place under its jurisdiction; but if he disclaim the lawful government of the country he was born in, he must also quit the right that belonged to him by the laws of it, and the possessions there descending to him from his ancestors, if it were a government made by their consent.

  §. 192.

  By the second, the inhabitants of any country, who are descended, and derive a title to their estates from those who are subdued, and had a government forced upon them against their free consents, retain a right to the possession of their ancestors, though they consent not freely to the government, whose hard conditions were by force imposed on the possessors of that country: for the first conqueror never having had a title to the land of that country, the people who are the descendants of, or claim under those who were forced to submit to the yoke of a government by constraint, have always a right to shake it off, and free themselves from the usurpation or tyranny which the sword hath brought in upon them, till their rulers put them under such a frame of government as they willingly and of choice consent to. Who doubts but the Grecian christians, descendants of the ancient possessors of that country, may justly cast off the Turkish yoke, which they have so long groaned under, whenever they have an opportunity to do it? For no government can have a right to obedience from a people who have not freely consented to it; which they can never be supposed to do, till either they are put in a full state of liberty to chuse their government and governors, or at least till they have such standing laws, to which they have by themselves or their representatives given their free consent, and also till they are allowed their due property, which is so to be proprietors of what they have, that no body can take away any part of it without their own consent, without which, men under any government are not in the state of freemen, but are direct slaves under the force of war.

  §. 193.

  But granting that the conqueror in a just war has a right to the estates, as well as power over the persons, of the conquered; which, it is plain, he hath not: nothing of absolute power will follow from hence, in the continuance of the government; because the descendants of these being all freemen, if he grants them estates and possessions to inhabit his country, (without which it would be worth nothing) whatsoever he grants them, they have, so far as it is granted, property in. The nature whereof is, that without a man’s own consent it cannot be taken from him.

  §. 194.

  Their persons are free by a native right, and their properties, be they more or less, are their own, and at their own dispose, and not at his; or else it is no property. Supposing the conqueror gives to one man a thousand acres, to him and his heirs for ever, to another he lets a thousand acres for his life, under the rent of 50l. or 500l. per ann. has not the one of these a right to his thousand acres for ever, and the other, during his life, paying the said rent? and hath not the tenant for life a property in all that he gets over and above his rent, by his labour and industry during the said term, supposing it be double the rent? Can any one say, the king, or conqueror, after his grant, may by his power of conqueror take away all, or part of the land from the heirs of one, or from the other during his life, he paying the rent? or can he take away from either the goods or money they have got upon the said land, at his pleasure? If he can, then all free and voluntary contracts cease, and are void in the world; there needs nothing to dissolve them at any time, but power enough: and all the grants and promises of men in power are but mockery and collusion: for can there be any thing more ridiculous than to say, I give you and your’s this for ever, and that in the surest and most solemn way of conveyance can be devised; and yet it is to be understood, that I have right, if I please, to take it away from you again to morrow?

  §. 195.

  I will not dispute now whether princes are exempt from the laws of their country; but this I am sure, they owe subjection to the laws of God and nature, No body, no power, can exempt them from the obligations of that eternal law. Those are so great, and so strong, in the case of promises, that omnipotency itself can be tied by them. Grants, promises, and oaths, are bonds that hold the Almighty: whatever some flatterers say to princes of the world, who all together, with all their people joined to them, are, in comparison of the great God, but as a drop of the bucket, or a dust on the balance, inconsiderable, nothing!

  §. 196.

  The short of the case in conquest is this: the conqueror, if he have a just cause, has a despotical right over the persons of all, that actually aided, and concurred in the war against him, and a right to make up his damage and cost out of their labour and estates, so he injure not the right of any other. Over the rest of the people, if there were any that consented not to the war, and over the children of the captives themselves, or the possessions of either, he has no power; and so can have, by virtue of conquest, no lawful title himself to dominion over them, or derive it to his posterity; but is an aggressor, if he attempts upon their properties, and thereby puts himself in a state of war against them, and has no better a right of principality, he, nor any of his successors, than Hingar, or Hubba, the Danes, had here in England; or Spartacus, had he conquered Italy, would have had; which is to have their yoke cast off, as soon as God shall give those under their subjection courage and opportunity to do it. Thus, notwithstanding whatever title the kings of Assyria had over Judah, by the sword, God assisted Hezekiah to throw off the dominion of that conquering empire. And the lord was with Hezekiah, and he prospered; wherefore he went forth, and he rebelled against the king of Assyria, and served him not, 2 Kings xviii. 7. Whence it is plain, that shaking off a power, which force, and not right, hath set over any one, though it hath the name of rebellion, yet is no offence before God, but is that which he allows and countenances, though even promises and covenants, when obtained by force, have intervened: for it is very probable, to any one that reads the story of Ahaz and Hezekiah attentively, that the Assyrians subdued Ahaz, and deposed him, and made Hezekiah king in his father’s lifetime; and that Hezekiah by agreement had done him homage, and paid him tribute all this time.

  CHAP. XVII.
  Of USURPATION.

  §. 197.

  AS conquest may be called a foreign usurpation, so usurpation is a kind of domestic conquest, with this difference, that an usurper can never have right on his side, it being no usurpation, but where one is got into the possession of what another has right to. This, so far as it is usurpation, is a change only of persons, but not of the forms and rules of the government: for if the usurper extend his power beyond what of right belonged to the lawful princes, or governors of the commonwealth, it is tyranny added to usurpation.

  §. 198.

  In all lawful governments, the designation of the persons, who are to bear rule, is as natural and necessary a part as the form of the government itself, and is that which had its establishment originally from the people; the anarchy being much alike, to have no form of government at all; or to agree, that it shall be monarchical, but to appoint no way to design the person that shall have the power, and be the monarch. Hence all commonwealths, with the form of government established, have rules also of appointing those who are to have any share in the public authority, and settled methods of conveying the right to them: for the anarchy is much alike, to have no form of government at all; or to agree that it shall be monarchical, but to appoint no way to know or design the person that shall have the power, and be the monarch. Whoever gets into the exercise of any part of the power, by other ways than what the laws of the community have prescribed, hath no right to be obeyed, though the form of the commonwealth be still preserved; since he is not the person the laws have appointed, and consequently not the person the people have consented to. Nor can such an usurper, or any deriving from him, ever have a title, till the people are both at liberty to consent, and have actually consented to allow, and confirm in him the power he hath till then usurped.

  CHAP. XVIII.
  Of TYRANNY.

  §. 199.

  AS usurpation is the exercise of power, which another hath a right to; so tyranny is the exercise of power beyond right, which no body can have a right to. And this is making use of the power any one has in his hands, not for the good of those who are under it, but for his own private separate advantage. When the governor, however intitled, makes not the law, but his will, the rule; and his commands and actions are not directed to the preservation of the properties of his people, but the satisfaction of his own ambition, revenge, covetousness, or any other irregular passion.

  §. 200.

  If one can doubt this to be truth, or reason, because it comes from the obscure hand of a subject, I hope the authority of a king will make it pass with him. King James the first, in his speech to the parliament, 1603, tells them thus, I will ever prefer the weal of the public, and of the whole commonwealth, in making of good laws and constitutions, to any particular and private ends of mine; thinking ever the wealth and weal of the commonwealth to be my greatest weal and worldly felicity; a point wherein a lawful king doth directly differ from a tyrant: for I do acknowledge, that the special and greatest point of difference that is between a rightful king and an usurping tyrant, is this, that whereas the proud and ambitious tyrant doth think his kingdom and people are only ordained for satisfaction of his desires and unreasonable appetites, the righteous and just king doth by the contrary acknowledge himself to be ordained for the procuring of the wealth and property of his people. And again, in his speech to the parliament, 1609, he hath these words, The king binds himself by a double oath, to the observation of the fundamental laws of his kingdom; tacitly, as by being a king, and so bound to protect aswell the people, as the laws of his kingdom; and expresly, by his oath at his coronation; so as every just king, in a settled kingdom, is bound to observe that paction made to his people, by his laws, in framing his government agreeable thereunto, according to that paction which God made with Noah after the deluge. Hereafter, seed-time and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night, shall not cease while the earth remaineth. And therefore a king governing in a settled kingdom, leaves to be a king, and degenerates into a tyrant, as soon as he leaves off to rule according to his laws. And a little after, Therefore all kings that are not tyrants, or perjured, will be glad to bound themselves within the limits of their laws; and they that persuade them the contrary, are vipers, and pests both against them and the commonwealth. Thus that learned king, who well understood the notion of things, makes the difference betwixt a king and a tyrant to consist only in this, that one makes the laws the bounds of his power, and the good of the public, the end of his government; the other makes all give way to his own will and appetite.

  §. 201.

  It is a mistake, to think this fault is proper only to monarchies; other forms of government are liable to it, as well as that: for wherever the power, that is put in any hands for the government of the people, and the preservation of their properties, is applied to other ends, and made use of to impoverish, harass, or subdue them to the arbitrary and irregular commands of those that have it; there it presently becomes tyranny, whether those that thus use it are one or many. Thus we read of the thirty tyrants at Athens, as well as one at Syracuse; and the intolerable dominion of the Decemviri at Rome was nothing better.

  §. 202.

  Where-ever law ends, tyranny begins, if the law be transgressed to another’s harm; and whosoever in authority exceeds the power given him by the law, and makes use of the force he has under his command, to compass that upon the subject, which the law allows not, ceases in that to be a magistrate; and, acting without authority, may be opposed, as any other man, who by force invades the right of another. This is acknowledged in subordinate magistrates. He that hath authority to seize my person in the street, may be opposed as a thief and a robber, if he endeavours to break into my house to execute a writ, notwithstanding that I know he has such a warrant, and such a legal authority, as will impower him to arrest me abroad. And why this should not hold in the highest, as well as in the most inferior magistrate, I would gladly be informed. Is it reasonable, that the eldest brother, because he has the greatest part of his father’s estate, should thereby have a right to take away any of his younger brothers portions? or that a rich man, who possessed a whole country, should from thence have a right to seize, when he pleased, the cottage and garden of his poor neighbour? The being rightfully possessed of great power and riches, exceedingly beyond the greatest part of the sons of Adam, is so far from being an excuse, much less a reason, for rapine and oppression, which the endamaging another without authority is, that it is a great aggravation of it: for the exceeding the bounds of authority is no more a right in a great, than in a petty officer; no more justifiable in a king than a constable; but is so much the worse in him, in that he has more trust put in him, has already a much greater share than the rest of his brethren, and is supposed, from the advantages of his education, employment, and counsellors, to be more knowing in the measures of right and wrong.

  §. 203.

  May the commands then of a prince be opposed? may he be resisted as often as any one shall find himself aggrieved, and but imagine he has not right done him? This will unhinge and overturn all polities, and, instead of government and order, leave nothing but anarchy and confusion.

  §. 204.

  To this I answer, that force is to be opposed to nothing, but to unjust and unlawful force; whoever makes any opposition in any other case, draws on himself a just condemnation both from God and man; and so no such danger or confusion will follow, as is often suggested: for,

  §. 205.

  First, As, in some countries, the person of the prince by the law is sacred; and so, whatever he commands or does, his person is still free from all question or violence, not liable to force, or any judicial censure or condemnation. But yet opposition may be made to the illegal acts of any inferior officer, or other commissioned by him; unless he will, by actually putting himself into a state of war with his people, dissolve the government, and leave them to that defence which belongs to every one in the state of nature: for of such things who can tell what the end will be? and a neighbour kingdom has shewed the world an odd example. In all other cases the sacredness of the person exempts him from all inconveniencies, whereby he is secure, whilst the government stands, from all violence and harm whatsoever; than which there cannot be a wiser constitution: for the harm he can do in his own person not being likely to happen often, nor to extend itself far; nor being able by his single strength to subvert the laws, nor oppress the body of the people, should any prince have so much weakness, and ill nature as to be willing to do it, the inconveniency of some particular mischiefs, that may happen sometimes, when a heady prince comes to the throne, are well recompensed by the peace of the public, and security of the government, in the person of the chief magistrate, thus set out of the reach of danger: it being safer for the body, that some few private men should be sometimes in danger to suffer, than that the head of the republic should be easily, and upon slight occasions, exposed.

  §. 206.

  Secondly, But this privilege, belonging only to the king’s person, hinders not, but they may be questioned, opposed, and resisted, who use unjust force, though they pretend a commission from him, which the law authorizes not; as is plain in the case of him that has the king’s writ to arrest a man, which is a full commission from the king; and yet he that has it cannot break open a man’s house to do it, nor execute this command of the king upon certain days, nor in certain places, though this commission have no such exception in it; but they are the limitations of the law, which if any one transgress, the king’s commission excuses him not: for the king’s authority being given him only by the law, he cannot impower any one to act against the law, or justify him, by his commission, in so doing; the commission, or command of any magistrate, where he has no authority, being as void and insignificant, as that of any private man; the difference between the one and the other, being that the magistrate has some authority so far, and to such ends, and the private man has none at all: for it is not the commission, but the authority, that gives the right of acting; and against the laws there can be no authority. But, notwithstanding such resistance, the king’s person and authority are still both secured, and so no danger to governor or government.

  §. 207.

  Thirdly, Supposing a government wherein the person of the chief magistrate is not thus sacred; yet this doctrine of the lawfulness of resisting all unlawful exercises of his power, will not upon every slight occasion indanger him, or imbroil the government: for where the injured party may be relieved, and his damages repaired by appeal to the law, there can be no pretence for force, which is only to be used where a man is intercepted from appealing to the law: for nothing is to be accounted hostile force, but where it leaves not the remedy of such an appeal; and it is such force alone, that puts him that uses it into a state of war, and makes it lawful to resist him. A man with a sword in his hand demands my purse in the high-way, when perhaps I have not twelve pence in my pocket: this man I may lawfully kill. To another I deliver 100 l. to hold only whilst I alight, which he refuses to restore me, when I am got up again, but draws his sword to defend the possession of it by force, if I endeavour to retake it. The mischief this man does me is a hundred, or possibly a thousand times more than the other perhaps intended me (whom I killed before he really did me any); and yet I might lawfully kill the one, and cannot so much as hurt the other lawfully. The reason whereof is plain; because the one using force, which threatened my life, I could not have time to appeal to the law to secure it: and when it was gone, it was too late to appeal. The law could not restore life to my dead carcass: the loss was irreparable; which to prevent, the law of nature gave me a right to destroy him, who had put himself into a state of war with me, and threatened my destruction. But in the other case, my life not being in danger, I may have the benefit of appealing to the law, and have reparation for my 100 l. that way.

  §. 208.

  Fourthly, But if the unlawful acts done by the magistrate be maintained (by the power he has got), and the remedy which is due by law, be by the same power obstructed; yet the right of resisting, even in such manifest acts of tyranny, will not suddenly, or on slight occasions, disturb the government: for if it reach no farther than some private men’s cases, though they have a right to defend themselves, and to recover by force what by unlawful force is taken from them; yet the right to do so will not easily engage them in a contest, wherein they are sure to perish; it being as impossible for one, or a few oppressed men to disturb the government, where the body of the people do not think themselves concerned in it, as for a raving mad-man, or heady mal-content to overturn a well-settled state; the people being as little apt to follow the one, as the other.

  §. 209.

  But if either these illegal acts have extended to the majority of the people; or if the mischief and oppression has lighted only on some few, but in such cases, as the precedent, and consequences seem to threaten all; and they are persuaded in their consciences, that their laws, and with them their estates, liberties, and lives are in danger, and perhaps their religion too; how they will be hindered from resisting illegal force, used against them, I cannot tell. This is an inconvenience, I confess, that attends all governments whatsoever, when the governors have brought it to this pass, to be generally suspected of their people; the most dangerous state which they can possibly put themselves in; wherein they are the less to be pitied, because it is so easy to be avoided; it being as impossible for a governor, if he really means the good of his people, and the preservation of them, and their laws together, not to make them see and feel it, as it is for the father of a family, not to let his children see he loves, and takes care of them.

  §. 210.

  But if all the world shall observe pretences of one kind, and actions of another; arts used to elude the law, and the trust of prerogative (which is an arbitrary power in some things left in the prince’s hand to do good, not harm to the people) employed contrary to the end for which it was given: if the people shall find the ministers and subordinate magistrates chosen suitable to such ends, and favoured, or laid by, proportionably as they promote or oppose them: if they see several experiments made of arbitrary power, and that religion underhand favoured, (tho’ publicly proclaimed against) which is readiest to introduce it; and the operators in it supported, as much as may be; and when that cannot be done, yet approved still, and liked the better: if a long train of actions shew the councils all tending that way; how can a man any more hinder himself from being persuaded in his own mind, which way things are going; or from casting about how to save himself, than he could from believing the captain of the ship he was in, was carrying him, and the rest of the company, to Algiers, when he found him always steering that course, though cross winds, leaks in his ship, and want of men and provisions did often force him to turn his course another way for some time, which he steadily returned to again, as soon as the wind, weather, and other circumstances would let him?

  CHAP. XIX.
  Of the Dissolution of Government.

  §. 211.

  HE that will with any clearness speak of the dissolution of government, ought in the first place to distinguish between the dissolution of the society and the dissolution of the government. That which makes the community, and brings men out of the loose state of nature, into one politic society, is the agreement which every one has with the rest to incorporate, and act as one body, and so be one distinct common-wealth. The usual, and almost only way whereby this union is dissolved, is the inroad of foreign force making a conquest upon them: for in that case, (not being able to maintain and support themselves, as one intire and independent body) the union belonging to that body which consisted therein, must necessarily cease, and so every one return to the state he was in before, with a liberty to shift for himself, and provide for his own safety, as he thinks fit, in some other society. Whenever the society is dissolved, it is certain the government of that society cannot remain. Thus conquerors swords often cut up governments by the roots, and mangle societies to pieces, separating the subdued or scattered multitude from the protection of, and dependence on, that society which ought to have preserved them from violence. The world is too well instructed in, and too forward to allow of, this way of dissolving of governments, to need any more to be said of it; and there wants not much argument to prove, that where the society is dissolved, the government cannot remain; that being as impossible, as for the frame of an house to subsist when the materials of it are scattered and dissipated by a whirl-wind, or jumbled into a confused heap by an earthquake.

  §. 212.

  Besides this over-turning from without, governments are dissolved from within,

  First, When the legislative is altered. Civil society being a state of peace, amongst those who are of it, from whom the state of war is excluded by the umpirage, which they have provided in their legislative, for the ending all differences that may arise amongst any of them, it is in their legislative, that the members of a common-wealth are united, and combined together into one coherent living body. This is the soul that gives form, life, and unity, to the common-wealth: from hence the several members have their mutual influence, sympathy, and connexion: and therefore, when the legislative is broken, or dissolved, dissolution and death follows: for the essence and union of the society consisting in having one will, the legislative, when once established by the majority, has the declaring, and as it were keeping of that will. The constitution of the legislative is the first and fundamental act of society, whereby provision is made for the continuation of their union, under the direction of persons, and bonds of laws, made by persons authorized thereunto, by the consent and appointment of the people, without which no one man, or number of men, amongst them, can have authority of making laws that shall be binding to the rest. When any one, or more, shall take upon them to make laws, whom the people have not appointed so to do, they make laws without authority, which the people are not therefore bound to obey; by which means they come again to be out of subjection, and may constitute to themselves a new legislative, as they think best, being in full liberty to resist the force of those, who without authority would impose any thing upon them. Every one is at the disposure of his own will, when those who had, by the delegation of the society, the declaring of the public will, are excluded from it, and others usurp the place, who have no such authority or delegation.

  §. 213.

  This being usually brought about by such in the common-wealth who misuse the power they have; it is hard to consider it aright, and know at whose door to lay it, without knowing the form of government in which it happens. Let us suppose then the legislative placed in the concurrence of three distinct persons.

  1. A single hereditary person, having the constant, supreme, executive power, and with it the power of convoking and dissolving the other two within certain periods of time.

  2. An assembly of hereditary nobility.

  3. An assembly of representatives chosen, pro tempore, by the people. Such a form of government supposed, it is evident,

  §. 214.

  First, That when such a single person, or prince, sets up his own arbitrary will in place of the laws, which are the will of the society, declared by the legislative, then the legislative is changed: for that being in effect the legislative, whose rules and laws are put in execution, and required to be obeyed; when other laws are set up, and other rules pretended, and inforced, than what the legislative, constituted by the society, have enacted, it is plain that the legislative is changed. Whoever introduces new laws, not being thereunto authorized by the fundamental appointment of the society, or subverts the old, disowns and overturns the power by which they were made, and so sets up a new legislative.

  §. 215.

  Secondly, When the prince hinders the legislative from assembling in its due time, or from acting freely, pursuant to those ends for which it was constituted, the legislative is altered: for it is not a certain number of men, no, nor their meeting, unless they have also freedom of debating, and leisure of perfecting, what is for the good of the society, wherein the legislative consists: when these are taken away or altered, so as to deprive the society of the due exercise of their power, the legislative is truly altered; for it is not names that constitute governments, but the use and exercise of those powers that were intended to accompany them; so that he, who takes away the freedom, or hinders the acting of the legislative in its due seasons, in effect takes away the legislative, and puts an end to the government.

  §. 216.

  Thirdly, When, by the arbitrary power of the prince, the electors, or ways of election, are altered, without the consent, and contrary to the common interest of the people, there also the legislative is altered: for, if others than those whom the society hath authorized thereunto, do chuse, or in another way than what the society hath prescribed, those chosen are not the legislative appointed by the people.

  §. 217.

  Fourthly, The delivery also of the people into the subjection of a foreign power, either by the prince, or by the legislative, is certainly a change of the legislative, and so a dissolution of the government: for the end why people entered into society being to be preserved one intire, free, independent society, to be governed by its own laws; this is lost, whenever they are given up into the power of another.

  §. 218.

  Why, in such a constitution as this, the dissolution of the government in these cases is to be imputed to the prince, is evident; because he, having the force, treasure and offices of the state to employ, and often persuading himself, or being flattered by others, that as supreme magistrate he is uncapable of controul; he alone is in a condition to make great advances toward such changes, under pretence of lawful authority, and has it in his hands to terrify or suppress opposers, as factious, seditious, and enemies to the government: whereas no other part of the legislative, or people, is capable by themselves to attempt any alteration of the legislative, without open and visible rebellion, apt enough to be taken notice of, which, when it prevails, produces effects very little different from foreign conquest. Besides, the prince in such a form of government, having the power of dissolving the other parts of the legislative, and thereby rendering them private persons, they can never in opposition to him, or without his concurrence, alter the legislative by a law, his consent being necessary to give any of their decrees that sanction. But yet, so far as the other parts of the legislative any way contribute to any attempt upon the government, and do either promote, or not, what lies in them, hinder such designs, they are guilty, and partake in this, which is certainly the greatest crime men can be guilty of one towards another.

  §. 219.

  There is one way more whereby such a government may be dissolved, and that is, when he who has the supreme executive power, neglects and abandons that charge, so that the laws already made can no longer be put in execution. This is demonstratively to reduce all to anarchy, and so effectually to dissolve the government: for laws not being made for themselves, but to be, by their execution, the bonds of the society, to keep every part of the body politic in its due place and function; when that totally ceases, the government visibly ceases, and the people become a confused multitude, without order or connexion. Where there is no longer the administration of justice, for the securing of men’s rights, nor any remaining power within the community to direct the force, or provide for the necessities of the public, there certainly is no government left. Where the laws cannot be executed, it is all one as if there were no laws; and a government without laws is, I suppose, a mystery in politics, unconceivable to human capacity, and inconsistent with human society.

  §. 220.

  In these and the like cases, when the government is dissolved, the people are at liberty to provide for themselves, by erecting a new legislative, differing from the other, by the change of persons, or form, or both, as they shall find it most for their safety and good: for the society can never, by the fault of another, lose the native and original right it has to preserve itself, which can only be done by a settled legislative, and a fair and impartial execution of the laws made by it. But the state of mankind is not so miserable that they are not capable of using this remedy, till it be too late to look for any. To tell people they may provide for themselves, by erecting a new legislative, when by oppression, artifice, or being delivered over to a foreign power, their old one is gone, is only to tell them, they may expect relief when it is too late, and the evil is past cure. This is in effect no more than to bid them first be slaves, and then to take care of their liberty; and when their chains are on, tell them, they may act like freemen. This, if barely so, is rather mockery than relief; and men can never be secure from tyranny, if there be no means to escape it till they are perfectly under it: and therefore it is, that they have not only a right to get out of it, but to prevent it.

  §. 221.

  There is therefore, secondly, another way whereby governments are dissolved, and that is, when the legislative, or the prince, either of them, act contrary to their trust.

  First, The legislative acts against the trust reposed in them, when they endeavour to invade the property of the subject, and to make themselves, or any part of the community, masters, or arbitrary disposers of the lives, liberties, or fortunes of the people.

  §. 222.

  The reason why men enter into society, is the preservation of their property; and the end why they chuse and authorize a legislative, is, that there may be laws made, and rules set, as guards and fences to the properties of all the members of the society, to limit the power, and moderate the dominion, of every part and member of the society: for since it can never be supposed to be the will of the society, that the legislative should have a power to destroy that which every one designs to secure, by entering into society, and for which the people submitted themselves to legislators of their own making; whenever the legislators endeavour to take away, and destroy the property of the people, or to reduce them to slavery under arbitrary power, they put themselves into a state of war with the people, who are thereupon absolved from any farther obedience, and are left to the common refuge, which God hath provided for all men, against force and violence. Whensoever therefore the legislative shall transgress this fundamental rule of society; and either by ambition, fear, folly or corruption, endeavour to grasp themselves, or put into the hands of any other, an absolute power over the lives, liberties, and estates of the people; by this breach of trust they forfeit the power the people had put into their hands for quite contrary ends, and it devolves to the people, who have a right to resume their original liberty, and, by the establishment of a new legislative, (such as they shall think fit) provide for their own safety and security, which is the end for which they are in society. What I have said here, concerning the legislative in general, holds true also concerning the supreme executor, who having a double trust put in him, both to have a part in the legislative, and the supreme execution of the law, acts against both, when he goes about to set up his own arbitrary will as the law of the society. He acts also contrary to his trust, when he either employs the force, treasure, and offices of the society, to corrupt the representatives, and gain them to his purposes; or openly pre-engages the electors, and prescribes to their choice, such, whom he has, by sollicitations, threats, promises, or otherwise, won to his designs; and employs them to bring in such, who have promised before-hand what to vote, and what to enact. Thus to regulate candidates and electors, and new-model the ways of election, what is it but to cut up the government by the roots, and poison the very fountain of public security? for the people having reserved to themselves the choice of their representatives, as the fence to their properties, could do it for no other end, but that they might always be freely chosen, and so chosen, freely act, and advise, as the necessity of the common-wealth, and the public good should, upon examination, and mature debate, be judged to require. This, those who give their votes before they hear the debate, and have weighed the reasons on all sides, are not capable of doing. To prepare such an assembly as this, and endeavour to set up the declared abettors of his own will, for the true representatives of the people, and the law-makers of the society, is certainly as great a breach of trust, and as perfect a declaration of a design to subvert the government, as is possible to be met with. To which, if one shall add rewards and punishments visibly employed to the same end, and all the arts of perverted law made use of, to take off and destroy all that stand in the way of such a design, and will not comply and consent to betray the liberties of their country, it will be past doubt what is doing. What power they ought to have in the society, who thus employ it contrary to the trust went along with it in its first institution, is easy to determine; and one cannot but see, that he, who has once attempted any such thing as this, cannot any longer be trusted.

  §. 223.

  To this perhaps it will be said, that the people being ignorant, and always discontented, to lay the foundation of government in the unsteady opinion and uncertain humour of the people, is to expose it to certain ruin; and no government will be able long to subsist, if the people may set up a new legislative, whenever they take offence at the old one. To this I answer, Quite the contrary. People are not so easily got out of their old forms, as some are apt to suggest. They are hardly to be prevailed with to amend the acknowledged faults in the frame they have been accustomed to. And if there be any original defects, or adventitious ones introduced by time, or corruption; it is not an easy thing to get them changed, even when all the world sees there is an opportunity for it. This slowness and aversion in the people to quite their old constitutions, has, in the many revolutions which have been seen in this kingdom, in this and former ages, still kept us to, or, after some interval of fruitless attempts, still brought us back again to our old legislative of king, lords and commons: and whatever provocations have made the crown be taken from some of our princes heads, they never carried the people so far as to place it in another line.

  §. 224.

  But it will be said, this hypothesis lays a ferment for frequent rebellion. To which I answer,

  First, No more than any other hypothesis: for when the people are made miserable, and find themselves exposed to the ill usage of arbitrarypower, cry up their governors, as much as you will, for sons of Jupiter; let them be sacred and divine, descended, or authorized from heaven; give them out for whom or what you please, the same will happen. The people generally ill treated, and contrary to right, will be ready upon any occasion to ease themselves of a burden that sits heavy upon them. They will wish, and seek for the opportunity, which in the change, weakness and accidents of human affairs, seldom delays long to offer itself. He must have lived but a little while in the world, who has not seen examples of this in his time; and he must have read very little, who cannot produce examples of it in all sorts of governments in the world.

  §. 225.

  Secondly, I answer, such revolutions happen not upon every little mismanagement in public affairs. Great mistakes in the ruling part, many wrong and inconvenient laws, and all the slips of human frailty, will be born by the people without mutiny or murmur. But if a long train of abuses, prevarications and artifices, all tending the same way, make the design visible to the people, and they cannot but feel what they lie under, and see whither they are going; it is not to be wondered, that they should then rouze themselves, and endeavour to put the rule into such hands which may secure to them the ends for which government was at first erected; and without which, ancient names, and specious forms, are so far from being better, that they are much worse, than the state of nature, or pure anarchy; the inconveniencies being all as great and as near, but the remedy farther off and more difficult.

  §. 226.

  Thirdly, I answer, that this doctrine of a power in the people of providing for their safety a-new, by a new legislative, when their legislators have acted contrary to their trust, by invading their property, is the best fence against rebellion, and the probablest means to hinder it: for rebellion being an opposition, not to persons, but authority, which is founded only in the constitutions and laws of the government; those, whoever they be, who by force break through, and by force justify their violation of them, are truly and properly rebels: for when men, by entering into society and civil-government, have excluded force, and introduced laws for the preservation of property, peace, and unity amongst themselves, those who set up force again in opposition to the laws, do rebellare, that is, bring back again the state of war, and are properly rebels: which they who are in power, (by the pretence they have to authority, the temptation of force they have in their hands, and the flattery of those about them) being likeliest to do; the properest way to prevent the evil, is to shew them the danger and injustice of it, who are under the greatest temptation to run into it.

  §. 227.

  In both the fore-mentioned cases, when either the legislative is changed, or the legislators act contrary to the end for which they were constituted; those who are guilty are guilty of rebeliion: for if any one by force takes away the established legislative of any society, and the laws by them made, pursuant to their trust, he thereby takes away the umpirage, which every one had consented to, for a peaceable decision of all their controversies, and a bar to the state of war amongst them. They, who remove, or change the legislative, take away this decisive power, which no body can have, but by the appointment and consent of the people; and so destroying the authority which the people did, and no body else can set up, and introducing a power which the people hath not authorized, they actually introduce a state of war, which is that of force without authority: and thus, by removing the legislative established by the society, (in whose decisions the people acquiesced and united, as to that of their own will) they untie the knot, and expose the people a-new to the state of war. And if those, who by force take away the legislative, are rebels, the legislators themselves, as has been shewn, can be no less esteemed so; when they, who were set up for the protection, and preservation of the people, their liberties and properties, shall by force invade and endeavour to take them away; and so they putting themselves into a state of war with those who made them the protectors and guardians of their peace, are properly, and with the greatest aggravation, rebellantes, rebels.

  §. 228.

  But if they, who say it lays a foundation for rebellion, mean that it may occasion civil wars, or intestine broils, to tell the people they are absolved from obedience when illegal attempts are made upon their liberties or properties, and may oppose the unlawful violence of those who were their magistrates, when they invade their properties contrary to the trust put in them; and that therefore this doctrine is not to be allowed, being so destructive to the peace of the world: they may as well say, upon the same ground, that honest men may not oppose robbers or pirates, because this may occasion disorder or bloodshed. If any mischief come in such cases, it is not to be charged upon him who defends his own right, but on him that invades his neighbours. If the innocent honest man must quietly quit all he has, for peace sake, to him who will lay violent hands upon it, I desire it may be considered, what a kind of peace there will be in the world, which consists only in violence and rapine; and which is to be maintained only for the benefit of robbers and oppressors. Who would not think it an admirable peace betwixt the mighty and the mean, when the lamb, without resistance, yielded his throat to be torn by the imperious wolf? Polyphemus’s den gives us a perfect pattern of such a peace, and such a government, wherein Ulysses and his companions had nothing to do, but quietly to suffer themselves to be devoured. And no doubt Ulysses, who was a prudent man, preached up passive obedience, and exhorted them to a quiet submission, by representing to them of what concernment peace was to mankind; and by shewing the inconveniences might happen, if they should offer to resist Polyphemus, who had now the power over them.

  §. 229.

  The end of government is the good of mankind; and which is best for mankind, that the people should be always exposed to the boundless will of tyranny, or that the rulers should be sometimes liable to be opposed, when they grow exorbitant in the use of their power, and employ it for the destruction, and not the preservation of the properties of their people?

  §. 230.

  Nor let any one say, that mischief can arise from hence, as often as it shall please a busy head, or turbulent spirit, to desire the alteration of the government. It is true, such men may stir, whenever they please; but it will be only to their own just ruin and perdition: for till the mischief be grown general, and the ill designs of the rulers become visible, or their attempts sensible to the greater part, the people, who are more disposed to suffer than right themselves by resistance, are not apt to stir. The examples of particular injustice, or oppression of here and there an unfortunate man, moves them not. But if they universally have a persuasion, grounded upon manifest evidence, that designs are carrying on against their liberties, and the general course and tendency of things cannot but give them strong suspicions of the evil intention of their governors, who is to be blamed for it? Who can help it, if they, who might avoid it, bring themselves into this suspicion? Are the people to be blamed, if they have the sense of rational creatures, and can think of things no otherwise than as they find and feel them? And is it not rather their fault, who put things into such a posture, that they would not have them thought to be as they are? I grant, that the pride, ambition, and turbulency of private men have sometimes caused great disorders in common-wealths, and factions have been fatal to states and kingdoms. But whether the mischief hath oftener begun in the peoples wantonness, and a desire to cast off the lawful authority of their rulers, or in the rulers insolence, and endeavours to get and exercise an arbitrary power over their people; whether oppression, or disobedience, gave the first rise to the disorder, I leave it to impartial history to determine. This I am sure, whoever, either ruler or subject, by force goes about to invade the rights of either prince or people, and lays the foundation for overturning the constitution and frame of any just government, is highly guilty of the greatest crime, I think, a man is capable of, being to answer for all those mischiefs of blood, rapine, and desolation, which the breaking to pieces of governments bring on a country. And he who does it, is justly to be esteemed the common enemy and pest of mankind, and is to be treated accordingly.

  §. 231.

  That subjects or foreigners, attempting by force on the properties of any people, may be resisted with force, is agreed on all hands. But that magistrates, doing the same thing, may be resisted, hath of late been denied: as if those who had the greatest privileges and advantages by the law, had thereby a power to break those laws, by which alone they were set in a better place than their brethren: whereas their offence is thereby the greater, both as being ungrateful for the greater share they have by the law, and breaking also that trust, which is put into their hands by their brethren.

  §. 232.

  Whosoever uses force without right, as every one does in society, who does it without law, puts himself into a state of war with those against whom he so uses it; and in that state all former ties are cancelled, all other rights cease, and every one has a right to defend himself, and to resist the aggressor. This is so evident, that Barclay himself, that great assertor of the power and sacredness of kings, is forced to confess, That it is lawful for the people, in some cases, to resist their king; and that too in a chapter, wherein he pretends to shew, that the divine law shuts up the people from all manner of rebellion. Whereby it is evident, even by his own doctrine, that, since they may in some cases resist, all resisting of princes is not rebellion. His words are these. Quod siquis dicat, Ergone populus tyrannicæ crudelitati & furori jugulum semper præbehit? Ergone multitudo civitates suas fame, ferro, & flammâ vastari, seque, conjuges, & liberos fortunæ ludibrio & tyranni libidini exponi, inque omnia vitæ pericula omnesque miserias & molestias á rege deduci patientur? Num illis quod omni animantium generi est á naturâ tributum, denegari debet, ut sc. vim vi repellant, seseq; ab injuriâ tueantur? Huic breviter responsum sit, Populo universo negari defensionem, quæ juris naturalis est, neque ultionem quæ præter naturam est adversus regem concedi debere. Quapropter si rex non in singulares tantum personas aliquot privatum odium exerceat, sed corpus etiam reipublicæ, cujus ipse caput est, i. e. totum populum, vel insignem aliquam ejus partem immani & intolerandâ seu tyrannide divexet; populo, quidem hoc casu resistendi ac tuendi se ab injuriâ potestas competit, sed tuendise tantum, non enim in principem invadendi: & restituendæ injuriæ illatæ, non recedendi à debitâ reverentiâ propter acceptam injuriam. Præsentem denique impetum propulsandi non vim præteritam ulciscenti jus habet. Horum enim alterum à naturâ est, ut vitam scilicet corpusque tueamur. Alterum vero contra naturam, ut inferior de superiori supplicium sumat. Quod itaque populus malum, antequam factum sit, impedire potest, ne fiat, id postquam factum est, in regem authorem sceleris vindicare non potest: populus igitur hoc ampliùs quam privatus quispiam habet: quod huic, vel ipsis adversariis judicibus, excepto Buchanano, nullum nisi in patientia remedium superest. Cùm ille si intolerabilis tyrannus est (modicum enim ferre omnino debet) resistere cum reverentiâ possit, Barclay contra Monarchom. l. iii. c. 8.

  In English thus.

  §. 233.

  But if any one should ask, Must the people then always lay themselves open to the cruelty and rage of tyranny? Must they see their cities pillaged, and laid in ashes, their wives and children exposed to the tyrant’s lust and fury, and themselves and families reduced by their king to ruin, and all the miseries of want and oppression, and yet sit still? Must men alone be debarred the common privilege of opposing force with force, which nature allows so freely to all other creatures for their preservation from injury? I answer: Self-defence is a part of the law of nature; nor can it be denied the community, even against the king himself: but to revenge themselves upon him, must by no means be allowed them: it being not agreeable to that law. Wherefore if the king shall shew an hatred, not only to some particular persons, but sets himself against the body of the common-wealth, whereof he is the head, and shall, with intolerable ill usage, cruelly tyrannize over the whole, or a considerable part of the people, in this case the people have a right to resist and defend themselves from injury: but it must be with this caution, that they only defend themselves, but do not attack their prince: they may repair the damages received, but must not for any provocation exceed the bounds of due reverence and respect. They may repulse the present attempt, but must not revenge past violences: for it is natural for us to defend life and limb, but that an inferior should punish a superior, is against nature. The mischief which is designed them, the people may prevent before it be done; but when it is done, they must not revenge it on the king, though author of the villany. This therefore is the privilege of the people in general, above what any private person hath; that particular men are allowed by our adversaries themselves (Buchanan only excepted) to have no other remedy but patience; but the body of the people may with respect resist intolerable tyranny; for when it is but moderate, they ought to endure it.

  §. 234.

  Thus far that great advocate of monarchical power allows of resistance.

  §. 235.

  It is true, he has annexed two limitations to it, to no purpose:

  First, He says, it must be with reverence.

  Secondly, It must be without retribution, or punishment; and the reason he gives is, because an inferior cannot punish a superior.

  First, How to resist force without striking again, or how to strike with reverence, will need some skill to make intelligible. He that shall oppose an assault only with a shield to receive the blows, or in any more respectful posture, without a sword in his hand, to abate the confidence and force of the assailant, will quickly be at an end of his resistance, and will find such a defence serve only to draw on himself the worse usage. This is as ridiculous a way of resisting, as Juvenal thought it of fighting; ubi tu pulsas, ego vapulo tantum. And the success of the combat will be unavoidably the same he there describes it:

  • —Libertas pauperis hæc est:
  • Pulsatus rogat, & pugnis concisus, adorat,
  • Ut liceat paucis cum dentibus inde reverti.

  This will always be the event of such an imaginary resistance, where men may not strike again. He therefore who may resist, must be allowed to strike. And then let our author, or any body else, join a knock on the head, or a cut on the face, with as much reverence and respect as he thinks fit. He that can reconcile blows and reverence, may, for aught I know, desire for his pains, a civil, respectful cudgeling where-ever he can meet with it.

  Secondly, As to his second, An inferior cannot punish a superior; that is true, generally speaking, whilst he is his superior. But to resist force with force, being the state of war that levels the parties, cancels all former relation of reverence, respect, and superiority: and then the odds that remains, is, that he, who opposes the unjust aggressor, has this superiority over him, that he has a right, when he prevails, to punish the offender, both for the breach of the peace, and all the evils that followed upon it. Barclay therefore, in another place, more coherently to himself, denies it to be lawful to resist a king in any case. But he there assigns two cases, whereby a king may un-king himself. His words are,

  Quid ergo, nulline casus incidere possunt quibus populo sese erigere atque in regem impotentius dominantem arma capere & invadere jure suo suâque authoritate liceat? Nulli certe quamdiu rex manet. Semper enim ex divinis id obstat, Regem honorificato; & qui potestati resistit, Dei ordinationi resistit: non aliàs igitur in eum populo potestas est quam si id committat propter quod ipso jure rex esse desinat. Tunc enim se ipse principatu exuit atque in privatis constituit liber: hoc modo populus & superior efficitur, reverso ad eum sc. jure illo quod ante regem inauguratum in interregno habuit. At sunt paucorum generum commissa ejusmodi quæ hunc effectum pariunt. At ego cum plurima animo perlustrem, duo tantum invenio, duos, inquam, casus quibus rex ipso facto ex rege non regem se facit & omni honore & dignitate regali atque in subditos potestate destituit; quorum etiam meminit Winzerus. Horum unus est, Si regnum disperdat, quemadmodum de Nerone fertur, quod is nempe senatum populumque Romanum, atque adeo urbem ipsam ferro flammaque vastare, ac novas sibi sedes quærere decrevisset. Et de Caligula, quod palam denunciarit se neque civem neque principem senatui amplius fore, inque animo habuerit interempto utriusque ordinis electissimo quoque Alexandriam commigrare, ac ut populum uno ictu interimeret, unam ei cervicem optavit. Talia cum rex aliquis meditatur & molitur serio, omnem regnandi curam & animum ilico abjicit, ac proinde imperium in subditos amittit, ut dominus servi pro derelicto habiti dominium.

  §. 236.

  Alter casus est, Si rex in alicujus clientelam se contulit; ac regnum quod liberum à majoribus & populo traditum accepit, alienæ ditioni mancipavit. Nam tunc quamvis forte non eâ mente id agit populo plane ut incommodet: tamen quia quod præcipuum est regiæ dignitatis amisit, ut summus scilicet in regno secundum Deum sit, & solo Deo inferior, atque populum etiam totum ignorantem vel invitum, cujus libertatem sartam & tectam conservare debuit, in alterius gentis ditionem & potestatem dedidit; hâc velut quadam regni ab alienatione effecit, ut nec quod ipse in regno imperium habuit retineat, nec in eum cui collatum voluit, juris quicquam transferat; atque ita eo facto liberum jam & suæ potestatis populum relinquit, cujus rei exemplum unum annales Scotici suppeditant. Barclay contra Monarchom. l. iii. c. 16.

  Which in English runs thus.

  §. 237.

  What then, can there no case happen wherein the people may of right, and by their own authority, help themselves, take arms, and set upon their king, imperiously domineering over them? None at all, whilst he remains a king. Honour the king, and he that resists the power, resists the ordinance of God; are divine oracles that will never permit it. The people therefore can never come by a power over him, unless he does something that makes him cease to be a king: for then he divests himself of his crown and dignity, and returns to the state of a private man, and the people become free and superior, the power which they had in the interregnum, before they crowned him king, devolving to them again. But there are but few miscarriages which bring the matter to this state. After considering it well on all sides, I can find but two. Two cases there are, I say, whereby a king, ipso facto, becomes no king, and loses all power and regal authority over his people; which are also taken notice of by Winzerus.

  The first is, If he endeavour to overturn the government, that is, if he have a purpose and design to ruin the kingdom and common-wealth, as it is recorded of Nero, that he resolved to cut off the senate and people of Rome, lay the city waste with fire and sword, and then remove to some other place. And of Caligula, that he openly declared, that he would be no longer a head to the people or senate, and that he had it in his thoughts to cut off the worthiest men of both ranks, and then retire to Alexandria: and he wisht that the people had but one neck, that he might dispatch them all at a blow. Such designs as these, when any king harbours in his thoughts, and seriously promotes, he immediately gives up all care and thought of the common-wealth; and consequently forfeits the power of governing his subjects, as a master does the dominion over his slaves whom he hath abandoned.

  §. 238.

  The other case is, When a king makes himself the dependent of another, and subjects his kingdom which his ancestors left him, and the people put free into his hands, to the dominion of another: for however perhaps it may not be his intention to prejudice the people; yet because he has hereby lost the principal part of regal dignity, viz. to be next and immediately under God, supreme in his kingdom; and also because he betrayed or forced his people, whose liberty he ought to have carefully preserved, into the power and dominion of a foreign nation. By this, as it were, alienation of his kingdom, he himself loses the power he had in it before, without transferring any the least right to those on whom he would have bestowed it; and so by this act sets the people free, and leaves them at their own disposal. One example of this is to be found in the Scotch Annals.

  §. 239.

  In these cases Barclay, the great champion of absolute monarchy, is forced to allow, that a king may be resisted, and ceases to be a king. That is, in short, not to multiply cases, in whatsoever he has no authority, there he is no king, and may be resisted: for wheresoever the authority ceases, the king ceases too, and becomes like other men who have no authority. And these two cases he instances in, differ little from those above mentioned, to be destructive to governments, only that he has omitted the principle from which his doctrine flows; and that is, the breach of trust, in not preserving the form of government agreed on, and in not intending the end of government itself, which is the public good and preservation of property. When a king has dethroned himself, and put himself in a state of war with his people, what shall hinder them from prosecuting him who is no king, as they would any other man, who has put himself into a state of war with them; Barclay, and those of his opinion, would do well to tell us. This farther I desire may be taken notice of out of Barclay, that he says, The mischief that is designed them, the people may prevent before it be done: whereby he allows resistance when tyranny is but in design. Such designs as these (says he) when any king harbours in his thoughts and seriously promotes, he immediately gives up all care and thought of the common-wealth; so that, according to him, the neglect of the public good is to be taken as an evidence of such design, or at least for a sufficient cause of resistance. And the reason of all, he gives in these words, Because he betrayed or forced his people, whose liberty he ought carefully to have preserved. What he adds, into the power and dominion of a foreign nation, signifies nothing, the fault and forfeiture lying in the loss of their liberty, which he ought to have preserved, and not in any distinction of the persons to whose dominion they were subjected. The peoples right is equally invaded, and their liberty lost, whether they are made slaves to any of their own, or a foreign nation; and in this lies the injury, and against this only have they the right of defence. And there are instances to be found in all countries, which shew, that it is not the change of nations in the persons of their governors, but the change of government, that gives the offence. Bilson, a bishop of our church, and a great stickler for the power and prerogative of princes, does, if I mistake not, in his treatise of Christian subjection, acknowledge, that princes may forfeit their power, and their title to the obedience of their subjects; and if there needed authority in a case where reason is so plain, I could send my reader to Bracton, Fortescue, and the author of the Mirrour, and others, writers that cannot be suspected to be ignorant of our government, or enemies to it. But I thought Hooker alone might be enough to satisfy those men, who relying on him for their ecclesiastical polity, are by a strange fate carried to deny those principles upon which he builds it. Whether they are herein made the tools of cunninger workmen, to pull down their own fabric, they were best look. This I am sure, their civil policy is so new, so dangerous, and so destructive to both rulers and people, that as former ages never could bear the broaching of it; so it may be hoped, those to come, redeemed from the impositions of these Egyptian under-task-masters, will abhor the memory of such servile flatterers, who, whilst it seemed to serve their turn, resolved all government into absolute tyranny, and would have all men born to, what their mean souls fitted them for, slavery.

  §. 240.

  Here, it is like, the common question will be made, Who shall be judge, whether the prince or legislative act contrary to their trust? This, perhaps, ill-affected and factious men may spread amongst the people, when the prince only makes use of his due prerogative. To this I reply, The people shall be judge; for who shall be judge whether his trustee or deputy acts well, and according to the trust reposed in him, but he who deputes him, and must, by having deputed him, have still a power to discard him, when he fails in his trust? If this be reasonable in particular cases of private men, why should it be otherwise in that of the greatest moment, where the welfare of millions is concerned, and also where the evil, if not prevented, is greater, and the redress very difficult, dear, and dangerous?

  §. 141.

  But farther, this question, (Who shall be judge?) cannot mean, that there is no judge at all: for where there is no judicature on earth, to decide controversies amongst men, God in heaven is judge. He alone, it is true, is judge of the right. But every man is judge for himself, as in all other cases, so in this, whether another hath put himself into a state of war with him, and whether he should appeal to the Supreme Judge, as Jeptha did.

  §. 242.

  If a controversy arise betwixt a prince and some of the people, in a matter where the law is silent, or doubtful, and the thing be of great consequence, I should think the proper umpire, in such a case, should be the body of the people: for in cases where the prince hath a trust reposed in him, and is dispensed from the common ordinary rules of the law; there, if any men find themselves aggrieved, and think the prince acts contrary to, or beyond that trust, who so proper to judge as the body of the people, (who, at first, lodged that trust in him) how far they meant it should extend? But if the prince, or whoever they be in the administration, decline that way of determination, the appeal then lies no where but to heaven; force between either persons, who have no known superior on earth, or which permits no appeal to a judge on earth, being properly a state of war, wherein the appeal lies only to heaven; and in that state the injured party must judge for himself, when he will think fit to make use of that appeal, and put himself upon it.

  §. 243.

  To conclude, The power that every individual gave the society, when he entered into it, can never revert to the individuals again, as long as the society lasts, but will always remain in the community; because without this there can be no community, no common-wealth, which is contrary to the original agreement: so also when the society hath placed the legislative in any assembly of men, to continue in them and their successors, with direction and authority for providing such successors, the legislative can never revert to the people whilst that government lasts; because having provided a legislative with power to continue for ever, they have given up their political power to the legislative, and cannot resume it. But if they have set limits to the duration of their legislative, and made this supreme power in any person, or assembly, only temporary; or else, when by the miscarriages of those in authority, it is forfeited; upon the forfeiture, or at the determination of the time set, it reverts to the society, and the people have a right to act as supreme, and continue the legislative in themselves; or erect a new form, or under the old form place it in new hands, as they think good.

  FINIS.

  [* ]In grants and gifts that have their original from God or nature, as the power of the father hath, no inferior power of man can limit, nor make any law of prescription against them. Observations, 158.
  
  The scripture teaches, that supreme power was originally the father, without any limitation. Observations, 245.

  [* ]It is no improbable opinion therefore, which the archphilosopher was of, that the chief person in every houshold was always, as it were, a king: so when numbers of housholds joined themselves in civil societies together, kings were the first kind of governors amongst them, which is also, as it seemeth, the reason why the name of fathers continued still in them, who, of fathers, were made rulers; as also the ancient custom of governors to do as Melchizedec, and being kings, to exercise the office of priests, which fathers did at the first, grew perhaps by the same occasion. Howbeit, this is not the only kind of regiment that has been received in the world. The inconveniences of one kind have caused sundry others to be devised; so that in a word, all public regiment, of what kind soever, seemeth evidently to have risen from the deliberate advice, consultation and composition between men, judging it convenient and behoveful; there being no impossibility in nature considered by itself, but that man might have lived without: any public regiment, Hooker’s Eccl. P. lib. i. sect. 10.

  [* ]The public power of all society is above every soul contained in the same society; and the principal use of that power is, to give laws unto all that are under it, which laws in such cases we must obey, unless there be reason shewed which may necessarily inforce, that the law of reason, or of God, doth enjoin the contrary, Hook. Eccl. Pol. l. i. sect. 16.

  [* ]To take away all such mutual grievances, injuries and wrongs, i. e. such as attend men in the state of nature, there was no way but only by growing into composition and agreement amongst themselves, by ordaining some kind of government public, and by yielding themselves subject thereunto, that unto whom they granted authority to rule and govern, by them the peace, tranquillity and happy estate of the rest might be procured. Men always knew that where force and injury was offered, they might be defenders of themselves; they knew that however men may seek their own commodity, yet if this were done with injury unto others, it was not to be suffered, but by all men, and 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, in as much as every man is towards himself, and them whom he greatly affects, partial; and therefore that strifes and troubles would be endless, except they gave their common consent, all to be ordered by some, whom they should agree upon, without which consent there would be no reason that one man should take upon him to be lord or judge over another, Hooker’s Eccl. Pol. l. i. sect. 10.

  [* ]At the first, when some certain kind of regiment was once appointed, it may be that nothing was then farther 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 duty beforehand, and know the penalties of transgressing them. Hooker’s Eccl. Pol. l. i. sect. 10.

  [† ]Civil law being the act of the whole body politic, doth therefore over-rule each several part of the same body. Hooker ibid.

  [* ]At first, when some certain kind of regiment was once approved, it may be nothing was then farther 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 duty before hand, and know the penalties of transgressing them. Hooker’s Eccl. Pol. l. i. sect. 10.

  [* ]The lawful power of making laws to command whole politic societies of men, belonging so properly unto the same intire societies, that for any prince or potentate of what kind soever upon earth, to exercise the same of himself, and not by express commission immediately and personally received from God, or else by authority derived at the first from their consent, upon whose persons they impose laws, it is no better than mere tyranny. Laws they are not therefore which public approbation hath not made so. Hooker’s Eccl. Pol. l. i. sect. 10. Of this point therefore we are to note, that sith men naturally have no full and perfect power to command whole politic multitudes of men, therefore utterly without our consent, we could in such sort be at no man’s commandment living. And to be commanded we do consent, when that society, whereof we be a part, hath at any time before consented, without revoking the same after by the like universal agreement.
  
  Laws therefore human, of what kind so ever, are available by consent. Ibid.

  [* ]Two foundations there are which bear up public societies; the one a natural inclination, whereby all men desire sociable life and fellowship; the other an order, expresly or secretly agreed upon, touching the manner of their union in living together: the latter is that which we call the law of a common-weal, the very soul of a politic body, the parts whereof are by law animated, held together, and set on work in such actions as the common good requireth. Laws politic, ordained for external order and regiment amongst men, are never framed as they should be, unless presuming the will of man to be inwardly obstinate, rebellious, and averse from all obedience to the sacred laws of his nature; in a word, unless presuming man to be, in regard of his depraved mind, little better than a wild beast, they do accordingly provide, notwithstanding, so to frame his outward actions, that they be no hindrance unto the common good, for which societies are instituted. Unless they do this, they are not perfect. Hooker’s Eccl. Pol. l. i. sect. 10.

  [* ]Human laws are measures in respect of men whose actions they must direct, howbeit such measures they are as have also their higher rules to be measured by, which rules are two, the law of God, and the law of nature; so that laws human must be made according to the general laws of nature, and without contradiction to any positive law of scripture, otherwise they are ill made. Hooker’s Eccl. Pol. l. iii. sect. 9.
  
  To constrain men to any thing inconvenient doth seem unreasonable. Ibid. l. i. sect. 10.

  [* ]Another copy corrected by Mr. Locke, has it thus, Noxious brute that is destructive to their being.

• Back to Top

  10: 10. Adam Smith, An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations

  Adam Smith (1723-1790) is often considered the first modern economist because of his seminal work on the self-ordering nature of market forces, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776). But economics was not his only interest. Smith’s first work, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759), describes principles of human nature that can be used to analyze social institutions and behavior. Smith questioned how humans can form moral judgments (especially about their own behavior) given the powerful desire for self-preservation. He answered by pointing to the individual’s capacity to, first, sympathize with the plight of those suffering injustice and, second, reflect on the nature and source of correct behavior. Smith sought to develop the theme of self-regulation further in his masterpiece, The Wealth of Nations (1776). At the center of this work is the question: How can a system of perfect liberty function, given the drives and constraints of human nature, to produce an orderly society? Smith argued that orderliness on a larger scale arises from the same clash of passion and reason that produces it on the personal scale. Competition produces restraints on private action. Both society and the economy, according to Smith, can be understood by a commonsense analysis of human motivation. He dubbed the natural order established by the interaction of interested forces in society the “Invisible Hand.” The success of this natural system of order depends upon a minimum of government interference by regulation and expropriation. Smith was therefore critical of mercantilism and monopolies and favored a laissez-faire economic policy. He contended that government has only three proper roles: (1) to provide for the defense of the state, (2) to ensure justice for the population, and (3) to provide certain public works and institutions that no person or organization can provide. Smith’s analysis of economic forces demonstrated the importance, for a society, of free markets and the division of labor in the production of wealth. All later economic works have had to address this contribution in one way or another.

  See the entry about Adam Smith in the Goodrich Seminar Room.

  Adam Smith, An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Vol. I ed. R. H. Campbell and A. S. Skinner, vol. II of the Glasgow Edition of the Works and Correspondence of Adam Smith (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1981).

  Accessed from oll.libertyfund.org/title/220 on 2007-12-03

  The Glasgow Edition of the Works and Correspondence of Adam Smith and the associated volumes are published in hardcover by Oxford University Press. The six titles of the Glasgow Edition, but not the associated volumes, are being published in softcover by Liberty Fund. The online edition is published by Liberty Fund under license from Oxford University Press.

  ©Oxford University Press 1976. All rights reserved. No part of this material may be stored transmitted retransmitted lent or reproduced in any form or medium without the permission of Oxford University Press.

  ---

  Preface

  While this volume as a whole was prepared by the General Editors, the actual text of the Wealth of Nations was established by W. B. Todd following principles which are explained in a separate note.

  As far as the general or non–textual editorial work is concerned, we have sought to provide a system of cross references within the WN, together with a comprehensive list of references from the WN to Smith’s other works, including the Lecture Notes and Correspondence. In addition, Smith’s own references have been traced and parallels with other writers indicated where it seems reasonably certain that he had actually used their works. Comment has been made on matters of historical fact where this might be of benefit to the modern reader.

  In the introduction, we have tried to give some idea of the links which exist between Smith’s economics and other parts of a wider system of social science, together with an account of the structure and scope of the WN itself. We have also sought to indicate the extent to which the WN was the reflection of the times in which Smith lived.

  In executing a work of this kind we have incurred debts which are too numerous to mention. We should, however, like to acknowledge the great benefit which we have received from the work of Edwin Cannan, whose original index has been retained.

  R.H.C.

  A.S.S.

  Key to Abbreviations and References

  Corr.	Correspondence
  ED	‘Early Draft’ of The Wealth of Nations
  EPS	Essays on Philosophical Subjects (which include:)
  Ancient Logics	‘History of the Ancient Logics and Metaphysics’
  Ancient Physics	‘History of the Ancient Physics’
  Astronomy	‘History of Astronomy’
  English and Italian Verses	‘Of the Affinity between certain English and Italian Verses’
  External Senses	‘Of the External Senses’
  Imitative Arts	‘Of the Nature of that Imitation which takes place in what are called the Imitative Arts’
  Music, Dancing, and Poetry	‘Of the Affinity between Music, Dancing and Poetry’
  Stewart	Dugald Stewart, ‘Account of the Life and Writings of Adam Smith, LL.D.’
  FA, FB	Two fragments on the division of labour, Buchan Papers, Glasgow University Library.
  LJ(A)	Lectures on Jurisprudence: Report of 1762–63.
  LJ(B)	Lectures on Jurisprudence: Report dated 1766.
  LRBL	Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres
  TMS	The Theory of Moral Sentiments
  WN	The Wealth of Nations
  Anderson Notes	From John Anderson’s Commonplace Book, vol. i, Andersonian Library, University of Strathclyde.

  References to Smith’s published works are given according to the original divisions, together with the paragraph numbers added in the margin of the Glasgow edition. For example:

  TMS I.iii.2.2 =	Theory of Moral Sentiments, Part I, section iii, chapter 2, paragraph 2.
  WN I.x.b.1 =	Wealth of Nations, Book I, chapter x, section b, paragraph 1.
  Astronomy, I.4 =	‘History of Astronomy’, Section I, paragraph 4.

  The Table of Corresponding Passages appended to this volume identifies the sections into which the WN is divided and provides for each paragraph the page references in the Cannan editions of 1930 and 1937.

  In the case of the lecture notes we have adopted the following practice: references to the LRBL are given in the form ‘LRBL i.8’ (= volume i, page 8 of the original manuscript), with references to the Lothian edition (London, 1963) in parenthesis. In the Lectures on Jurisprudence we have also cited the volume and page reference from the original manuscript (all of which will be included in the Glasgow edition) while retaining page references to the Cannan edition (Oxford, 1896) where appropriate. References to the Correspondence give date of letter and letter number from the Glasgow edition.

  Postscript. The Anderson Notes are now published in R. L. Meek, Smith, Marx and After (London, 1977).

  General Introduction

  Scope and Method

  Although it would be extravagant to claim that Adam Smith was the last of the great polymaths, it is nonetheless true that he wrote on a remarkable range of subjects including as it does economics and history; law and government; language and the arts, not to mention essays on astronomy, ancient logics and metaphysics. Indeed, the latter group of essays, apparently written in the 1750s, although not published until 1795, moved J. A. Schumpeter to remark that ‘Nobody, I venture to say, can have an adequate idea of Smith’s intellectual stature who does not know these essays’ and to describe that on astronomy as the ‘pearl of the collection’1 .

  The Astronomy is especially valuable as an exercise in ‘philosophical history’; a form of enquiry in which Smith was particularly interested, and which, in this case, led him to examine the first formation and subsequent development of those astronomical theories which had culminated in the work of Newton. But at the same time, the essay was designed to illustrate the principles which lead and direct philosophical enquiries. The essay was thus concerned with the question of motivation, and as such may tell us a good deal about Smith’s own drives as a thinker, contributing in this way to our understanding of the form which his other works in fact assumed.

  Smith’s main purpose in the Astronomy was to consider the stimulus given to the exercise of the understanding by the sentiments of surprise, wonder, and admiration; sentiments which he did not necessarily consider to be the sole sources of stimuli to philosophical work, but which represented forces whose influence was, he believed, ‘of far wider extent than we should be apt upon a careless view to imagine’ (Intro., 7). In elaborating on this statement Smith made a number of simple assumptions: that man is endowed with certain faculties and propensities such as reason, reflection, and imagination, and that he is motivated by a desire to acquire the means of pleasure and to avoid pain, where in this context pleasure relates to a state of the imagination involving tranquility and composure; a state attained from the contemplation of relation, similarity, or customary connection. He went on to argue that we feel surprise when some object or relation does not fall into an expected pattern; a sentiment which is quickly followed by wonder, which is in turn associated with the perception of something like a gap or interval (i.e. a lack of known connection or failure to conform to an established classification) between the object or objects of examination. For Smith, the essence of wonder was that it gave rise to a feeling of pain (i.e. disutility) to which the normal response is an act of attempted explanation, designed to restore the mind to a state of equilibrium; a goal which can only be attained where an explanation for the phenomena in question is found, and where that explanation is coherent, capable of accounting for observed appearances, and stated in terms of plausible (or familiar) principles.

  Smith considered these feelings and responses to be typical of all men, while suggesting that the philosopher or scientist was particularly subject to them, partly as a result of superior powers of observation and partly because of that degree of curiosity which normally leads him to examine problems (such as the conversion of flesh into bone) which are to the ordinary man so ‘familiar’ as not to require any explanation at all (II.11).

  Nature as a whole, Smith argued, ‘seems to abound with events which appear solitary and incoherent’ (II.12) so that the purpose of philosophy emerges as being to find ‘the connecting principles of nature’ (II.12) with, as its ultimate end, the ‘repose and tranquility of the imagination’ (IV.13). It is here especially that the sentiment of admiration becomes relevant in the sense that once an explanation has been offered for some particular problem, the very existence of that explanation may heighten our appreciation of the ‘appearances’ themselves. Thus, for example, we may learn to understand and thus to admire a complex economic structure once its hidden ‘springs’ have been exposed, just as the theory of astronomy leads us to admire the heavens by presenting ‘the theatre of nature’ as a coherent and therefore as a more ‘magnificent spectacle’ (II.12). Scientific explanation is thus designed to restore the mind to a state of balance and at the same time productive of a source of pleasure in this rather indirect way. Smith also added, however, that men pursue the study of philosophy for its own sake, ‘as an original pleasure or good in itself, without regarding its tendency to procure them the means of many other pleasures’ (III.3).

  There are perhaps three features of this argument which are worth emphasizing at this point. First, Smith’s suggestion that the purpose of philosophy is to explain the coherence of nature, allied to his recognition of the interdependence of phenomena, leads directly to the idea of a system which is designed to explain a complex of phenomena or ‘appearances’. It is interesting to recall in this connection that the history of astronomy unfolded in terms of four systems of this kind, and that Smith should have likened such productions of the intellect to machines whose function was to connect together ‘in the fancy those different movements and effects which are already in reality performed’ (IV.19). Secondly, it is noteworthy that Smith should have associated intellectual effort, and the forms which the corresponding output may assume, with certain sources of pleasure. He himself often spoke of the beauty of ‘systematical arrangement’ (WN V.i.f.25) and his ‘delight’ in such arrangement was one of the qualities of his mind to which Dugald Stewart frequently drew attention. In the Imitative Arts (II.30) Smith likened the pleasure to be derived from the contemplation of a great system of thought to that felt when listening to ‘a well composed concerto of instrumental Music’ ascribing to both an almost sensual quality. Points such as these are relevant at least in the sense that a general preference for order or system may lead the thinker to work in certain ways and even to choose a particular method of organizing his arguments. Smith in fact considered the various ways of organizing scientific (or didactic) discourse in the LRBL where it is stated that the technique whereby we ‘lay down certain principles, [primary?] or proved, in the beginning, from whence we account for the severall Phaenomena, connecting all together by the same chain’ is ‘vastly more ingenious’ and for that reason ‘more engaging’ than any other. He added: ‘It gives us a pleasure to see the phenomena which we reckoned the most unaccountable, all deduced from some principle (commonly, a wellknown one) and all united in one chain’. (LRBL ii.133–4, ed. Lothian, 140.) Elsewhere he referred to a propensity, common to all men, to account for ‘all appearances from as few principles as possible’ (TMS VII.ii.2.14).

  However, while there is little doubt that Smith’s major works (including of course the Astronomy itself) are dominated by such a choice, it would be as wrong to imply that such works are to be regarded as deductive exercises in practical aesthetics as it would be to ignore the latter element altogether. The fact is that the dangers as well as the delights of purely deductive reasoning were widely recognized at this time, and the choice of Newton rather than Descartes (who was also a proponent of the ‘method’ described above) as the model to be followed is indicative of the point. The distinctive feature of Newton’s work was not, after all, to be found in the use of ‘certain principles’ in the explanation of complex phenomena, but rather in the fact that he (following the lead of others) sought to establish those principles in a certain way. Those interested in the scientific study of man at this time sought to apply the Newtonian vision of a law governed universe to a new sphere, and to employ the ‘experimental method’ as an aid to the discovery of those laws of nature which governed the behaviour of the machine and disclosed the intention of its Design.

  Smith’s contribution to what would now be defined as the ‘social sciences’ is contained in his work on ethics, jurisprudence, and economics, which correspond in turn to the order in which he lectured on these subjects while Professor of Moral Philosophy at Glasgow. All are characterized by certain common features which are readily apparent on examination: in each case Smith sought to explain complex problems in terms of a small number of basic principles, and each conforms to the requirements of the Newtonian method in the broad sense of that term. All three make use of the typical hypothesis that the principles of human nature can be taken as constant, and all employ the doctrine of ‘unintended social outcomes’—the thesis that man, in following the prompting of his nature, unconsciously gives substantial expression to some parts of the [Divine?] Plan. Again, each area of Smith’s thought is marked by a keen sense of the fact that manners and institutions may change through time and that they may show striking variations in different communities at the same point in time—a feature which was rapidly becoming quite common in an age dominated by Montesquieu.

  It is perhaps even more remarkable that not only were Smith’s ethics, jurisprudence, and economics, marked by a degree of systematic thought of such a kind as to reveal a great capacity for model–building, but also by an attempt to delineate the boundaries of a single system of thought, of which these separate subjects were the component parts. For example, the TMS may be seen to offer an explanation as to the way in which so self–regarding a creature as man succeeds (by natural as distinct from artificial means) in erecting barriers against his own passions; an argument which culminates in the proposition that some system of magistracy is generally an essential condition of social stability. On the other hand, the historical treatment of jurisprudence complements this argument by showing the way in which government originates, together with the sources of social and political change, the whole running in terms of a four stage theory of economic development.2 The economic analysis as such may be seen to be connected with the other areas of Smith’s thought in the sense that it begins from a specific stage of historical development and at the same time makes use of the psychological assumptions established by the TMS.

  Before proceeding to the economics it may therefore be useful to review the main elements of the other branches of Smith’s work, and to elucidate some of their interconnections. This may be an appropriate choice not only because Smith himself taught the elements of economics against a philosophical and historical background, but also because so much of that background was formally incorporated in the WN itself—a book, after all, which is concerned with much more than economics as that term is now commonly understood.

  Social Theory

  Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments is, of course, an important contribution to moral philosophy in its own right, and one which attempted to answer the two main questions which Smith considered to be the proper province of this kind of philosopher:

  First, wherein does virtue consist? Or what is the tone of temper, and tenour of conduct, which constitutes the excellent and praise–worthy character, the character which is the natural object of esteem, honour, and approbation? And, secondly, by what power or faculty in the mind is it, that this character, whatever it be, is recommended to us? Or in other words, how and by what means does it come to pass, that the mind prefers one tenour of conduct to another?

  (VII.i.2)

  On Smith’s argument, the process by which we distinguish between objects of approval or disapproval depends largely on our capacity for ‘other–regarding’ activities and involves a complex of abilities and propensities which include sympathy, imagination, reason and reflection. To begin with, he stated a basic principle in arguing that man is possessed of a certain fellow feeling which permits him to feel joy or sorrow according as the circumstances facing others contribute to their feelings of pleasure or pain. An expression of sympathy (broadly defined) for another person thus involves an act of reflection and imagination on the part of the observer in the sense that we can only form an opinion with regard to the mental state of another person by ‘changing places in the fancy’ with him. Smith was also careful to argue in this connection that our judgement with regard to others was always likely to be imperfect, at least in the sense that we can have ‘no immediate experience of what other men feel’ (I.i.1.2). Given these basic principles, Smith then proceeded to apply them in considering the two different ‘aspects’ or ‘relations’ under which we may judge an action taken by ourselves or others, ‘first, in relation to the cause or object which excites it; and, secondly, in relation to the end which it proposes, or to the effect which it tends to produce’ (II.i.2).

  We may take these in turn:

  In dealing with the first question we go beyond the consideration of the circumstances in which the subject of our judgement may find himself, and his state of mind (i.e. whether he is happy or sad) to consider the extent to which his actions or ‘affections’ (i.e. expressions of feeling) are appropriate to the conditions under which they take place or the objects which they seek to attain. In short, the purpose of judgement is to form an opinion as to the propriety or impropriety of an action, or expression of feeling, where these qualities are found to consist in ‘the suitableness or unsuitableness, in the proportion or disproportion which the affection seems to bear to the cause or object which excites it’ (I.i.3.6).

  Given the principles so far established it will be evident that when the spectator of another man’s conduct tries to form an opinion as to its propriety, he can only do so by ‘bringing home to himself’ both the circumstances and feelings of the subject. Smith went on to argue that exactly the same principles apply when we seek to form a judgement as to our own actions, the only difference being that we must do so indirectly rather than directly; by visualizing the manner in which the real or supposed spectator might react to them. Or, as Smith put it:

  We can never survey our own sentiments and motives, we can never form any judgement concerning them; unless we remove ourselves, as it were, from our own natural station, and endeavour to view them as at a certain distance from us. But we can do this in no other way than by endeavouring to view them with the eyes of other people, or as other people are likely to view them.

  (III.1.2)

  Given these points, we can now examine the second ‘relation’, that is, the propriety of action ‘in relation to the end which it proposes, or the effect which it tends to produce’. Here, as far as the agent is concerned, Smith argued that the spectator can form a judgement as to whether or not an action is proper or improper in terms, for example, of motive as well as by reference to the propriety of the choice of means to attain a given end. In the same way, the spectator can form a judgement with regard to the propriety of the reaction of the subject (or person affected) to the circumstances created by the action of the agent.

  Now while it is evident that the spectator can form these judgements when examining the actions of the two parties taken separately, it is an essential part of Smith’s argument that a view with regard to the merit or demerit of a given action can be formed only by taking account of the activities of the two parties simultaneously. He was careful to argue in this connection, for example, that we might sympathize with the motives of the agent while recognizing that the action taken had had unintended consequences which might have either harmed or benefited some third party. Similarly, the spectator might sympathize with the reaction of the subject to a particular situation, while finding that sympathy qualified by recognition of the fact that the person acting had not intended another person either to gain or lose. It is only given a knowledge of the motives of the agent and the consequences of an action that we can form a judgement as to its merit or demerit, where that judgement is based on some perception of the propriety or impropriety of the activities of the two parties. Given these conditions Smith concluded that as our perception of the propriety of conduct ‘arises from what I shall call a direct sympathy with the affections and motives of the person who acts, so our sense of its merit arises from what I shall call an indirect sympathy with the gratitude of the person who is, if I may say so, acted upon’ (II.i.5.1).

  Smith went on from this point to argue that where approval of motive is added to a perception of the beneficent tendency of the action taken, then such actions deserve reward; while those of the opposite kind ‘seem then to deserve, and, if I may say so, to call aloud for, a proportionable punishment; and we entirely enter into, and thereby approve of, that resentment which prompts to inflict it’ (II.i.4.4). As we shall see, this principle was to assume considerable importance in terms of Smith’s discussion of justice.

  Before going further there are perhaps three points which should be emphasized and which arise from Smith’s discussion of the two different ‘relations’ in terms of which we can examine the actions of ourselves or other men.

  First, Smith’s argument is designed to suggest that judgement of our actions is always framed by the real or supposed spectator of our conduct. It is evident therefore that the accuracy of the judgement thus formed will be a function of the information available to the spectator with regard to action or motive, and the impartiality with which that information is interpreted.

  Secondly, it follows from the above that wherever an action taken or a feeling expressed by one man is approved of by another, then an element of restraint (and therefore control of our ‘affections’) must be present. For example, it is evident that since we have no immediate experience of what other men feel, then we as spectators can ‘enter into’ their situation only to a limited degree. The person judged can therefore attain the agreement of the spectator only:

  by lowering his passion to that pitch, in which the spectators are capable of going along with him. He must flatten, if I may be allowed to say so, the sharpness of its natural tone, in order to reduce it to harmony and concord with the emotions of those who are about him.

  (I.i.4.7)

  Finally, it will be obvious that the individual judged will only make the effort to attain a certain ‘mediocrity’ of expression where he regards the opinion of the spectator as important. In fact Smith made this assumption explicit in remarking:

  Nature when she formed man for society, endowed him with an original desire to please, and an original aversion to offend his brethren. She taught him to feel pleasure in their favourable, and pain in their unfavourable regard. She rendered their approbation most flattering . . . for its own sake; and their disapprobation most mortifying and most offensive.

  (III.2.6)

  Given the desire to acquire the sources of pleasure and to avoid pain, this aspect of the psychology of man would appear to ensure that he will generally act in ways which will secure the approbation of his brethren, and that he is to this extent fitted for the society of other men. At the same time, however, Smith makes it clear that this general disposition may of itself be insufficient to ensure an adequate source of control over our actions and passions, and this for reasons which are at least in part connected with the spectator concept and the problem of self–interest.

  We have already noted that the spectator can never be entirely informed with regard to the feelings of another person, and it will be evident therefore that it will always be particularly difficult to attain a knowledge of the motive which may prompt a given action. Smith noted this point in remarking that in fact the world judges by the event, and not by the design, classifying this tendency as one of a number of ‘irregularities’ in our moral sentiments. The difficulty is, of course, that such a situation must constitute something of a discouragement to virtue; a problem which was solved in Smith’s model by employing an additional (and explicit) assumption with regard to the psychology of man. As Smith put it, a desire for approval and an aversion to the disapproval of his fellows would not alone have rendered man fit:

  for that society for which he was made. Nature, accordingly, has endowed him not only with a desire of being approved of, but with a desire of being what ought to be approved of; or of being what he approves of in other men. The first desire could only have made him wish to appear to be fit for society. The second was necessary in order to render him anxious to be really fit.

  (III.2.7)

  Hence the importance in Smith’s argument of the ideal or supposed spectator, of the ‘man within the breast’, the abstract, ideal, spectator of our sentiments and conduct who is always well informed with respect to our own motives, and whose judgement would be that of the actual spectator where the latter was possessed of all the necessary information. It is this tribunal, the voice of principle and conscience, which, in Smith’s argument, helps to ensure that we will in fact tread the path of virtue and which supports us in this path even when our due rewards are denied us or our sins unknown.

  However, having made this point, Smith drew attention to another difficulty, namely that even where we have access to the information necessary to judge our own conduct, and even where we are generally disposed to judge ourselves as others might see us, if they knew all, yet there are at least two occasions on which we may be unlikely to regard our own actions with the required degree of impartiality: ‘first, when we are about to act; and, secondly, after we have acted. Our views are apt to be very partial in both cases; but they are apt to be most partial when it is of most importance that they should be otherwise’ (III.4.2). In this connection he went on to note that when ‘we are about to act, the eagerness of passion will very seldom allow us to consider what we are doing with the candour of an indifferent person’, while in addition a judgement formed in a cool hour may still be lacking in sufficient candour, because ‘It is so disagreeable to think ill of ourselves, that we often purposely turn away our view from those circumstances which might render that judgement unfavourable’ (III.4.4).

  The solution to this particular logical problem is found in the idea of general rules of morality or accepted conduct; rules which we are disposed to obey by virtue of the claims of conscience, and of which we attain some knowledge by virtue of our ability to form judgements in particular cases. As Smith argued:

  It is thus that the general rules of morality are formed. They are ultimately founded upon experience of what, in particular instances, our moral faculties, our natural sense of merit and propriety, approve, or disapprove of. We do not originally approve or condemn particular actions; because, upon examination, they appear to be agreeable or inconsistent with a certain general rule. The general rule, on the contrary, is formed, by finding from experience, that all actions of a certain kind, or circumstanced in a certain manner, are approved or disapproved of.

  (III.4.8)

  It will be noted that such rules are based on our experience of what is fit and proper to be done or to be avoided, and that they become standards or yardsticks against which we can judge our conduct even in the heat of the moment, and which are therefore ‘of great use in correcting the misrepresentations of self–love’ (III.4.12).

  Yet even here Smith does not claim that a knowledge of general rules will of itself be sufficient to ensure good conduct, and this for reasons which are not unconnected with (although not wholly explained by) yet a further facet of man’s nature.

  For Smith, man was an active being, disposed to pursue certain objectives which may be motivated by a desire to be thought well of by his fellows but which at the same time may lead him to take actions which have hurtful consequences as far as others are concerned. It is indeed one of Smith’s more striking achievements to have recognized the social objective of many economic goals in remarking:

  it is chiefly from this regard to the sentiments of mankind, that we pursue riches and avoid poverty. For to what purpose is all the toil and bustle of this world? what is the end of avarice and ambition, of the pursuit of wealth, of power and pre–eminence? . . . what are the advantages we propose by that great purpose of human life which we call bettering our condition? To be observed, to be attended to, to be taken notice of with sympathy, complacency, and approbation, are all the advantages which we can propose to derive from it.

  (I.iii.2.1)

  However, Smith was well aware that the pursuit of status, the desire to be well thought of in a public sense, could be associated with self–delusion, and with actions which could inflict damage on others either by accident or design. In this connection, he remarked that the individual:

  In the race for wealth, and honours, and preferments . . . may run as hard as he can, and strain every nerve and every muscle, in order to outstrip all his competitors. But if he should justle, or throw down any of them, the indulgence of the spectators is entirely at an end. It is a violation of fair play, which they cannot admit of.

  (II.ii.2.1)

  Knowledge of the resentment of the spectators thus emerges as something of a deterrent as far as the agent is concerned, although Smith placed more emphasis on the fact that a feeling of resentment generated by some act of injustice produces a natural approval of punishment, just as the perception of the good consequences of some action leads, as we have seen, to a desire to see it rewarded. In this world at least, it is our disposition to punish and approval of punishment which restrains acts of injustice, and which thus helps to restrain the actions of individuals within due bounds. Justice in this sense of the term is of critical importance, and Smith went on to notice that while nature ‘exhorts mankind to acts of beneficence, by the pleasing consciousness of deserved reward’, beneficence is still the ‘ornament which embellishes, not the foundation which supports the building’. He continued:

  Justice, on the contrary, is the main pillar that upholds the whole edifice. If it is removed, the great, the immense fabric of human society . . . must in a moment crumble into atoms.

  (II.ii.3.4)

  In Smith’s eyes, a fundamental pre–condition of social order was a system of positive law, embodying our conception of those rules of conduct which relate to justice. He added that these rules must be administered by some system of government or ‘magistracy’, on the ground that:

  As the violation of justice is what men will never submit to from one another, the public magistrate is under a necessity of employing the power of the commonwealth to enforce the practice of this virtue. Without this precaution, civil society would become a scene of bloodshed and disorder, every man revenging himself at his own hand whenever he fancied he was injured.

  (VII.iv.36)

  It now remains to be seen just how ‘government’ originates, to explain the sources of its authority, and the basis of obedience to that authority.

  The Stages of Society

  It was in the lectures on justice rather than the TMS that Smith set out to consider the grounds on which we were disposed to obey our ‘magistrates’, finding the basis of obedience in the principles of utility and authority. In practice, Smith placed most emphasis on the latter and identified four main sources: personal qualifications, age, fortune, and birth. Taking these four sources in turn, he argued that personal qualities such as wisdom, strength, or beauty, while important as sources of individual distinction, were yet of rather limited political value, since they are all qualities which are open to dispute. As a result, he suggests that age, provided there is no ‘suspicion of dotage’, represents a more important source of authority and of respect, since it is ‘a plain and palpable quality’ about which there can be no doubt’. Smith also observed that as a matter of fact age regulates rank among those who are in every other respect equal in both primitive and civilized societies, although its relative importance in the two cases is likely to vary.

  The third source of authority, wealth, of all the sources of power is perhaps the most emphasized by Smith, and here again he cites two elements. First, he noted that through an ‘irregularity’ of our moral sentiments, men tend to admire and respect the rich (rather than the poor, who may be morally more worthy) as the possessors of all the imagined conveniences of wealth. Secondly, he argued that the possession of riches may also be associated with a degree of power which arises from the dependence of the poor for their subsistence. Thus, for example, the great chief who has no other way of spending his surpluses other than in the maintenance of men, acquires retainers and dependents who:

  depending entirely upon him for their subsistence, must both obey his orders in war, and submit to his jurisdiction in peace. He is necessarily both their general and their judge, and his chieftainship is the necessary effect of the superiority of his fortune.

  (WN V.i.b.7)

  Finally, Smith argues that the observed fact of our tendency to venerate antiquity of family, rather than the upstart or newly rich, also constitutes an important source of authority which may reinforce that of riches. He concluded that:

  Birth and fortune are evidently the two circumstances which principally set one man above another. They are the two great sources of personal distinction, and are therefore the principal causes which naturally establish authority and subordination among men.

  (V.i.b.11)

  Having made these points, Smith then went on to argue that just as wealth (and the subsequent distinction of birth) represents an important source of authority, so in turn it opens up an important source of dispute. In this connection we find him arguing that where people are prompted by malice or resentment to hurt one another, and where they can be harmed only in respect of person or reputation, then men may live together with some degree of harmony; the point being that ‘the greater part of men are not very frequently under the influence of those passions; and the very worst men are so only occasionally.’ He went on to note:

  As their gratification too, how agreeable soever it may be to certain characters, is not attended with any real or permanent advantage, it is in the greater part of men commonly restrained by prudential considerations. Men may live together in society with some tolerable degree of security, though there is no civil magistrate to protect them from the injustice of those passions.

  (V.i.b.2)

  But in a situation where property can be acquired, Smith argued there could be an advantage to be gained by committing acts of injustice, in that here we find a situation which tends to give full rein to avarice and ambition.

  The acquisition of valuable and extensive property, therefore, necessarily requires the establishment of civil government. Where there is no property, or at least none that exceeds the value of two or three days labour, civil government is not so necessary.

  (ibid.)

  Elsewhere he remarked that ‘Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defence of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all’ (V.i.b.12). It is a government, on Smith’s argument, which in some situations at least is supported by a perception of its utility, at least on the side of the ‘rich’, but which must gradually have evolved naturally and independently of any consideration of that necessity. In Smith’s own words:

  Civil government supposes a certain subordination. But as the necessity of civil government gradually grows up with the acquisition of valuable property, so the principal causes which naturally introduce subordination gradually grow up with the growth of that valuable property.

  (V.i.b.3)

  In this way Smith stated the basic principles behind the origin of government and illustrated the four main sources of authority. In the subsequent part of the argument he then tried to show the way in which the outlines of society and government would vary, by reference to four broad socio–economic types: the stages of hunting, pasture, agriculture, and commerce.3 One of the more striking features of Smith’s argument is in fact the link which he succeeded in establishing between the form of economy prevailing (i.e. the mode of earning subsistence) and the source and distribution of power or dependence among the classes of men which make up a single ‘society’.

  The first stage of society was represented as the ‘lowest and rudest’ state, such ‘as we find it among the native tribes of North America’ (WN V.i.a.2). In this case, life is maintained through gathering the spontaneous fruits of the soil, and the dominant activities are taken to be hunting and fishing—a mode of acquiring subsistence which is antecedent to any social organization in production. As a result, Smith suggested that such communities would be small in size and characterized by a high degree of personal liberty—due of course to the absence of any form of economic dependence. Smith also observed that in the absence of private property which was also capable of accumulation, disputes between different members of the community would be minor ‘so there is seldom any established magistrate or any regular administration of justice’ (V.i.b.2) in such states. He added:

  Universal poverty establishes there universal equality, and the superiority, either of age, or of personal qualities, are the feeble, but the sole foundations of authority and subordination. There is therefore little or no authority or subordination in this period of society.

  (V.i.b.7)

  The second social stage is that of pasture, which Smith represented as a ‘more advanced state of society, such as we find it among the Tartars and Arabs’ (V.i.a.3). Here the use of cattle is the dominant economic activity and this mode of subsistence meant, as Smith duly noted, that life would tend to be nomadic and the communities larger in size than had been possible in the preceding stage. More dramatically, Smith observed that the appropriation of herds and flocks which introduced an inequality of fortune, was that which first gave rise to regular government. We also find here a form of property which can be accumulated and transmitted from one generation to another, thus explaining a change in the main sources of authority as compared to the previous period. As Smith put it:

  The second period of society, that of shepherds, admits of very great inequalities of fortune, and there is no period in which the superiority of fortune gives so great authority to those who possess it. There is no period accordingly in which authority and subordination are more perfectly established. The authority of an Arabian scherif is very great; that of a Tartar khan altogether despotical.

  (V.i.b.7)

  At the same time it is evident that the mode of subsistence involved will ensure a high degree of dependence on the part of those who must acquire the means of subsistence through the exchange of personal service, and those who, owning the means of subsistence, have no other means of expending it save on the maintenance of dependents, who also contribute to their military power. Smith added that while the distinction of birth, being subsequent to the inequality of fortune, can have no place in a nation of hunters, this distinction ‘always does take place among nations of shepherds’ (V.i.b.10). Since the great families lack, in this context, the means of dissipating wealth, it follows that ‘there are no nations among whom wealth is likely to continue longer in the same families’ (ibid.).

  The third economic stage is perhaps the most complicated of Smith’s four–fold classification at least in the sense that it seems to have a lower, middle and upper phase. Thus for example the initial stage may be seen to correspond to that situation which followed the overthrow of Rome by the barbarians; pastoral nations which had, however, acquired some idea of agriculture and of property in land. Smith argued that such peoples would naturally adapt existing institutions to their new situation and that their first act would be to divide the available territories, introducing by this means a settled abode and some form of rudimentary tillage; i.e. the beginnings of a new form of productive activity. Under the circumstances outlined, each estate or parcel of land would assume the character of a separate principality, while presenting many of the features of the second stage. As in the previous case, for example, the basis of power is property, and, as before, those who lack the means of subsistence can acquire it only through the exchange of personal service, thus becoming members of a group who ‘having no equivalent to give in return for their maintenance’ must obey their lord ‘for the same reason that soldiers must obey the prince who pays them’ (III.iv.5). Each separate estate could thus be regarded as stable in a political sense in that it was based on clear relations of power and dependence, although Smith did emphasize that there would be an element of instability in terms of the relations between the principalities; a degree of instability which remained even after the advent of the feudal period with its complex of rights and obligations. In Smith’s words the authority possessed by the government of a whole country ‘still continued to be, as before, too weak in the head and too strong in the inferior members’ (III.iv.9), a problem basically created by the fact that:

  In those disorderly times, every great landlord was a sort of petty prince. His tenants were his subjects. He was their judge, and in some respects their legislator in peace, and their leader in war. He made war according to his own discretion, frequently against his neighbours, and sometimes against his sovereign.

  (III.ii.3)

  It was a situation which effectively prevented economic development, and one where the open country remained ‘a scene of violence, rapine, and disorder’ (III.iv.9).

  The middle stage of this period may be represented as preserving the institutions of the previous stage (save with the substitution of the feudal for the allodial system of land–tenure), albeit with the significant addition of self–governing cities paying a ‘rent certain’ to the king. In this way, Smith suggested, the kings were able to acquire a source of power capable of offsetting that of the great lords, by way of a tactical alliance with the cities. Smith made exactly this point when remarking that mutual interest would lead the burghers to ‘support the king, and the king to support them against the lords. They were the enemies of his enemies, and it was his interest to render them as secure and independent of those enemies as he could’ (III.iii.8). Two significant developments were then traced from this situation, itself a response to the political instability of the agrarian period. First, the cities, as self–governing communities (a kind of independent republics Smith calls them) would create the essential conditions for economic development (personal security), while, secondly, their development would also generate an important shift in the balance of political power.

  The upper stage of the period differs from the previous phase most obviously in that Smith here examines a situation where the trade and manufactures of the cities had had a significant impact on the power of the nobles, by providing them for the first time with a means of expending their surpluses. It was this trend, Smith suggested, which led the great proprietors to improve the form of leases (with a view to maximizing their exchangeable surpluses) and to the dismissal of the excess part of their tenants and retainers—all with consequent effects on the economic and thus the political power of this class. As Smith put it:

  For a pair of diamond buckles perhaps, or for something as frivolous and useless, they exchanged the maintenance, or what is the same thing, the price of the maintenance of a thousand men for a year, and with it the whole weight and authority which it could give them.

  (III.iv.10)

  The fourth and apparently final economic stage (commerce) may be simply described as one wherein all goods and services command a price, thus effectively eliminating the direct dependence of the feudal period and to this extent diminishing the power to be derived from the ownership of property. Thus for example Smith noted that in the present stage of Europe a man of ten thousand a year might maintain only a limited number of footmen, and that while tradesmen and artificers might be dependent on his custom, none the less ‘they are all more or less independent of him, because generally they can all be maintained without him’ (III.iv.11).

  From the standpoint of the economics of the situation, the significant development was that of a two sector economy at the domestic level where the constant drive to better our condition could provide the maximum stimulus to economic growth within an institutional framework which ensured that the pursuit of private interest was compatible with public benefit. From the standpoint of the politics of the situation, the significant development was a new source of wealth which was more widely distributed than previously, and which ultimately had the effect of limiting the power of kings by shifting the balance of consideration away from the old landed aristocracy and towards a new mercantile class. In the words of John Millar, it was a general trend which served to propagate sentiments of personal independence, as a result of a change in the mode of earning subsistence; a trend which must lead us to expect that ‘the prerogatives of the monarch and of the ancient nobility will be gradually undermined, that the privileges of the people will be extended in the same proportion, and that power, the usual attendant of wealth, will be in some measure diffused over all the members of the community.’4

  Once again we face a situation where a change in the mode of earning subsistence has altered the balance and distribution of political power, with consequent effects on the nature of government. Once again, we find a situation where the basis of authority and obedience are found in the principles of utility and authority, but where the significance of the latter is diminished (and the former increased) by the change in the pattern of dependence. It is also a situation where the ease with which fortunes may be dissipated makes it increasingly unlikely that economic, and thus political, power, will remain in the hands of particular families over long periods of time.

  The two areas of argument just considered disclose a number of interesting features.

  The TMS for example can be seen to accept the proposition that mankind are always found in ‘troops and companies’ and to offer an explanation as to how it is that man is fitted for the society of his fellows. In developing this argument Smith, as we have seen, makes much of the importance of the rules of morality (including justice), while offering an explanation of their origin of a kind which places him in the anti–rationalist tradition of Hutcheson and Hume. At the same time it is evident that the form of argument used discloses Smith’s awareness of the fact that human experience may vary; a point which is made explicitly in the TMS, and which is reflected in the fact that he did not seek to define the content of general rules in any but the most general terms.

  The historical argument on the other hand, can be seen to offer an explanation for the origin of government (whose necessity was merely postulated in the TMS), and at the same time indirectly to throw some light on the causes of change in accepted patterns of behaviour as a result of the emphasis given to the four socio–economic stages of growth. This same argument may also throw into relief certain problems which the TMS does not formally handle; by drawing attention to the fact that societies are not homogeneous, and to the possibility of a conflict of values. Interestingly enough, exactly this point is made in the WN in the course of a discussion of religion: ‘In every civilized society, in every society where the distinction of ranks has once been completely established, there have been always two different schemes or systems of morality current at the same time’ (V.i.g.10).

  But for the present purpose the most important connections are those which exist between the ethics and jurisprudence on the one hand, and the economics on the other.

  The historical analysis, for example, has the benefit of showing that the commercial stage or exchange economy may be regarded as the product of certain historical processes, and of demonstrating that where such a form of economy prevails, a particular social structure or set of relations between classes is necessarily presupposed. At the same time the argument (developed especially in Book III of the WN) helps to demonstrate that a particular form of government will be associated with the same socio–economic institutions; a form of government which in the particular case of England had been perfected by the Revolution Settlement, and which reflected the growing importance of the ‘middling’ ranks.

  But perhaps the links between the economic analysis and the TMS are even more readily apparent and possibly more important.

  As we have seen, the whole point of the TMS is to show that society, like the individual men who make it up, represents something of a balance between opposing forces; a form of argument which gave due weight to our self–regarding propensities (much as Hutcheson had done) but which departs from the teaching of Hutcheson in denying that ‘Self–love was a principle which could never be virtuous in any degree or in any direction’ (TMS VII.ii.3.12). In much the same way Smith denied Mandeville’s suggestion that the pursuit of ‘whatever is agreeable in dress, furniture, or equipage’ should be regarded as ‘vicious’ (VII.ii.4.12). To both he in effect replied that the ‘condition of human nature were peculiarly hard, if those affections, which, by the very nature of our being, ought frequently to influence our conduct, could upon no occasion appear virtuous, or deserve esteem and commendation from any body’ (VII.ii.3.18).

  In many respects Smith was at his most successful in showing that the desire to be approved of by our fellows, which was so important in the discussion of moral judgement, was also relevant in the economic sphere. As we have seen, he argued that the whole object of bettering our condition was to find ourselves as objects of general esteem, and noted elsewhere that ‘we cannot live long in the world without perceiving that the respect of our equals, our credit and rank in the society we live in, depend very much upon the degree in which we possess, or are supposed to possess’, the advantages of external fortune (VI.i.3). While the pursuit of status and the imagined conveniences of wealth were important sources of dispute, Smith also emphasized their economic advantage even within the confines of the TMS. It is such drives, he asserted, which serve to rouse and keep in ‘continual motion the industry of mankind’ (IV.i.1.10) and he went on to note that those who have attained fortune are, in expending it,

  led by an invisible hand to make nearly the same distribution of the necessaries of life, which would have been made, had the earth been divided into equal portions among all its inhabitants, and thus without intending it, without knowing it, advance the interest of the society, and afford means to the multiplication of the species.

  (ibid.)

  Equally interesting is the fact that Smith should also have discussed at such length the means whereby the poor man may seek to attain the advantages of fortune, in emphasizing the importance of prudence, a virtue which, being uncommon, commands general admiration and explains that ‘eminent esteem with which all men naturally regard a steady perseverance in the practice of frugality, industry, and application, though directed to no other purpose than the acquisition of fortune’ (IV.i.2.8). It is indeed somewhat remarkable that it is the TMS, and in particular that portion of it (Part VI) which Smith wrote just before his death, that provides the most complete account of the psychology of Smith’s public benefactor: the frugal man.

  Economic Theory and the Exchange Economy

  In terms of Smith’s teaching, his work on economics was designed to follow on his treatment of ethics and jurisprudence, and therefore to add something to the sum total of our knowledge of the activities of man in society. To this extent, each of the three subjects can be seen to be interconnected, although it is also true to say that each component of the system contains material which distinguishes it from the others. One part of Smith’s achievement was in fact to see all these different subjects as parts of a single whole, while at the same time differentiating economics from them. Looked at in this way, the economic analysis involves a high degree of abstraction which can be seen in a number of ways. For example, in his economic work, Smith was concerned only with some aspects of the psychology of man and in fact confined his attention to the self–regarding propensities; a fact which is neatly expressed in his famous statement that ‘It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest’ (WN I.ii.2). Moreover, Smith was not concerned, at least in his formal analysis, with a level of moral or social experience other than that involved in a ‘mercenary exchange of good offices according to an agreed valuation’ (TMS II.ii.3.2); in short, all that the economic work requires is a situation where the minimum condition of justice obtains. Given this basic premiss, together with the hypothesis of self–interest, Smith then set out to explain the interdependence of economic phenomena. There are of course two types of account as to the way in which Smith fulfilled these purposes; one represented by the state of his knowledge when he left Glasgow in 1763, and the other by the WN itself.

  We now have two versions of Smith’s lecture course, together with the so called ‘early draft’ of the WN; sufficient at least to provide an adequate guide to the ground covered. There are differences between these documents: LJ (A), for example, while generally more elaborate, is less complete than LJ (B): it does not, for example, consider such topics as Law’s Bank, interest, exchange, or the causes of the slow progress of opulence. The ED, on the other hand, contains a much more elaborate account of the division of labour than that provided in either of the lecture notes, although it has nothing to say regarding the link between the division of labour and the extent of the market. While the coverage of the ED is very similar to that found in LJ (B) it is also true to say that topics other than the division of labour are dealt with in note form. But these are basically differences in detail: the three documents are not marked by any major shifts of emphasis or of analytical perspective, and it is this fact which makes it quite appropriate to take LJ (B) as a reasonable guide to the state of Smith’s thought on economics in the early 1760s.

  Turning now to this version of the lectures, one cannot fail to be struck by the same quality of system which we have already had occasion to note elsewhere. The lectures begin with a discussion of the natural wants of man; a discussion already present in the ethics. Smith links this thesis to the development of the arts and of productive forces, before going on to remark on the material enjoyments available to the ordinary man in the modern state as compared to the chief of some savage nation. In both the lectures and the ED Smith continued to note that, while it cannot be difficult to explain the superior advantages of the rich man as compared to the savage, it seems at first sight more difficult to explain why the ‘peasant should likewise be better provided’ (ED 2.2), especially given the fact that he who ‘bears, as it were, upon his shoulders the whole fabric of human society, seems himself to be pressed down below ground by the weight, and to be buried out of sight in the lowest foundations of the building’ (ED 2.3).

  The answer to this seeming paradox was found in the division of labour, which explained the great improvement in the productive powers of modern man. Smith continued to examine the sources of so great an increase in productivity, tracing the origin of the institution to the famous propensity to ‘truck, barter and exchange’, while observing that the scope of this development must be limited by the extent of the market.

  Examination of the division of labour led directly to Smith’s point that unlike the savage the modern man was largely dependent on the labour of others for the satisfaction of his full range of wants, thus directing attention to the importance of exchange. In the course of this discussion, Smith introduced the problem of price and the distinction between natural and market price.

  In the Lectures, natural price (or supply price) was largely defined in terms of labour cost, the argument being that:

  A man then has the natural price of his labour when it is sufficient to maintain him during the time of labour, to defray the expence of education, and to compensate the risk of not living long enough and of not succeeding in the business. When a man has this, there is sufficient encouragement to the labourer and the commodity will be cultivated in proportion to the demand.

  (LJ (B) 227, ed. Cannan 176)

  Market price, on the other hand, was stated to be regulated by ‘quite other circumstances’, these being: the ‘demand or need for the commodity’, the ‘abundance or scarcity of the commodity in proportion to the need of it’ and the ‘riches or poverty of those who demand’ (LJ (B) 227–8, ed. Cannan 176–7). Smith then went on to argue that while distinct, these prices were ‘necessarily connected’ and to show that where the market exceeded the natural price, labour would crowd into this employment, thus expanding the supply, and vice versa, leading to the conclusion that in equilibrium the two prices would tend to coincide. Smith quite clearly understood that resources would tend to move between employments where there were differences in the available rates of return, thus showing a grasp of the interdependence of economic phenomena which led him to speak of a ‘natural balance of industry’ and of the ‘natural connection of all trades in the stock’ (LJ (B) 233–4, ed. Cannan 180–81).

  Progressing logically from this point, Smith proceeded to show that any policy which prevented the market prices of goods from coinciding with their supply prices, such as monopolies or bounties, would tend to diminish public opulence and derange the distribution of stock between different employments.

  The discussion of price led in turn to the treatment of money as the means of exchange; to a review of the qualities of the metals which made them so suitable as a means of exchange and to the discussion of coinage.5 Smith also included an account of the problems of debasement at this stage of his analysis, making in the course of his argument a point with which he is not always associated, namely, that where the value of money is falling ‘People are disposed to keep their goods from the market, as they know not what they will get for them’ (LJ (B) 242, ed. Cannan 188).

  It was in the course of this analysis that Smith defined money as merely the instrument of exchange, at least under normal circumstances, going on to suggest that it was essentially a ‘dead stock in itself’; a point which helped to confirm ‘the beneficial effects of the erection of banks and paper credit’ (LJ (B) 246, ed. Cannan 191).

  This argument led quite naturally to a critique of the prejudice that opulence consists in money and to Smith’s argument that mercantile policy as currently understood was essentially self–contradictory, and that it hindered the division of labour by artificially restricting the extent of the market. It was a short step to the conclusion (stated with characteristic caution) that:

  From the above considerations it appears that Brittain should by all means be made a free port, that there should be no interruptions of any kind made to forreign trade, that if it were possible to defray the expences of government by any other method, all duties, customs, and excise should be abolished, and that free commerce and liberty of exchange should be allowed with all nations and for all things.

  (LJ (B) 269, ed. Cannan 209)6

  It will be obvious that that section of the lectures which deals with ‘cheapness and plenty’ does in fact contain many of the subjects which were to figure in the WN. It also appears that many of his central ideas were already present in a relatively sophisticated form: ideas such as equilibrium price, the working of the allocative mechanism, and the associated concept of the ‘natural balance’ of industry. Smith also made allowance for the importance of ‘stock’ both in discussing the natural connection of all stocks in trade and with reference to the division of labour, while the distinction between employer and employed is surely implied in the discussion of the individual whose sole function is to contribute the eighteenth part of a pin.

  Yet at the same time there is also a good deal missing from the lectures; there is, for example, no clear distinction between factors of production and categories of return,7 not to mention the macro–economic analysis of the second Book of the WN with its model of the ‘circular flow’ and discussion of capital accumulation. While the distinction between rent, wages, and profits, may have come from James Oswald, or emerged as the natural consequence of Smith’s own reflection on his lectures (which seems very probable), the macro–economic model which finally appeared in the WN may well have owed something, either directly or indirectly, to Smith’s contact with the Physiocrats, and especially those who revised the system, such as Mercier de la Rivière, Baudeau and Turgot.8

  It is obviously difficult to the point of impossibility to establish the extent of Smith’s debts to his predecessors, and Dugald Stewart probably had the right of it when he remarked that ‘After all, perhaps the merit of such a work as Mr Smith’s is to be estimated less from the novelty of the principles it contains, than from the reasonings employed to support these principles, and from the scientific manner in which they are unfolded in their proper order and connexion’ (Stewart, IV.26). While Stewart duly noted that Smith had made an original contribution to the subject it need not surprise us to discover that the WN (like the TMS) may also represent a great synthetic performance whose real distinction was to exhibit a ‘systematical view of the most important articles of Political Economy’ (Stewart, IV.27); a systematical view whose content shows a clear development both from Smith’s state of knowledge as it existed in the 1760s, and from that represented by the Physiocrats as a School.9 While it would be inappropriate to review here the pattern of this development in detail (a task which we have attempted to fulfill in the notes to the text) it may be useful to delineate at least some of the elements of the reformulated system albeit in the broadest terms.

  The first three chapters of the WN begin with an examination of the division of labour which closely follows the elaborate account provided in the ED.10 The most obvious changes, as regards the latter document, relate to the provision of a separate chapter linking the division of labour to the extent of the market using an account which often parallels that found in the two ‘fragments’, which W. R. Scott had thought to be part of the Edinburgh Lectures.11 It is also interesting to note that the discussion of inequality is omitted from the WN and that the argument as a whole is no longer prefaced by a statement of the thesis of ‘natural wants’. The following chapter is also recognizably a development of the earlier work, and deals with the inconveniences of barter, the advantages of the metals as a medium of exchange, and the necessity for coinage; the only major difference relates to arrangement in that the discussion of money now precedes that of price. Chapter v, which leads on from the previous discussion, does however break new ground in discussing the distinction between real and nominal price. In this place Smith was anxious to establish the point that while the individual very naturally measures the value of his receipts in money terms, the real measure of welfare is to be established by the money’s worth, where the latter is determined by the quantity of products (i.e. labour commanded) which can be acquired. In this chapter Smith was not so directly concerned with the problem of exchange value as normally understood, so much as with finding an invariable measure of value which would permit him to compare levels of economic welfare at different periods of time. It was probably this particular perspective which led him to state but not to ‘solve’ the so–called ‘paradox of value’—a paradox which he had already explained in the Lectures.12

  Chapter vi leads on to a discussion of the component parts of the price of commodities and once more breaks new ground in formally isolating the three main factors of production and the three associated forms of monetary revenue: rent, wages and profit. These distinctions are, of course, of critical importance, and perhaps Smith’s acute awareness of the fact is reflected in his anxiety to show how easily they may be confused. Chapter vii then proceeds to discuss the determinants of price, developing ideas already present in the Lectures but in the more sophisticated form appropriate to the three–fold factor division. This section of Smith’s work is perhaps among the best from a purely analytical point of view, and is quite remarkable for the formality with which the argument unfolds. For example, the analysis is explicitly static in that Smith takes as given certain rates of factor payment (the ‘natural’ rates), treating the factors as stocks rather than flows. Smith’s old concept of ‘natural price’ is then redefined as obtaining when a commodity can be sold at a price which covers the natural rates of rent, wages, and profits, i.e. its cost of production. Market price, on the other hand, (the ‘actual’ price) is shown to be determined by specific relations of demand and supply while both prices are interconnected in that any divergence of the market from the natural price must raise or lower the rates of factor payment in relation to their natural rates, thus generating a flow of factors which has the effect of bringing the market and natural prices to equality.13

  The argument then proceeds to the discussion of those forces which determine the ‘natural’ rates of return to factors. Chapter viii takes up the problem of wages, and argues that this form of return is payable for the use of a productive resource and normally arises where ‘the labourer is one person, and the owner of the stock which employs him another’ (I.viii.10). While making allowance for the relative importance of the bargaining position of the two parties, Smith concluded that the wage rate would normally be determined by the size of the wages fund and the supply of labour, where both are affected by the price of wage goods.

  Now this argument means that the wage rate actually payable in a given (annual) period may vary considerably (i.e. the prevailing or natural rate of the theory of price) as compared to other such time periods, and that it may be above, below, or equal to, the subsistence wage (where the latter must be sufficient to maintain the labourer and his family, including an allowance for customary expense). Smith illustrates these possibilities in terms of the examples of advancing, stationary, and declining economies, using this argument to suggest that whenever the prevailing wage rate sinks below, or rises above, the subsistence wage, then in the long run there will be a population adjustment.

  Chapter ix shows the same basic features: that is, Smith sets out to show why profit accrues and in so doing differentiates it from interest as a category of return, while arguing that it is not a return for the work of ‘inspection and direction’ but rather for the risks involved in combining the factors of production. Again, there is a ‘static’ element in that Smith, while admitting the difficulty of finding an average rate of profit, argues that some indication will be given by the rate of interest, and that the rate of profit will be determined by the level of stock in relation to the business to be transacted together with the prevailing wage rate. Once more there is also a concern with the dynamics of the case, i.e. with the trend of profits over time, the conclusion being that profits, like wages, would tend to fall, as the number of capitals increases.

  The following chapter is a direct development from the two which preceded it and is chiefly concerned with the ‘static’ aspects of the theory of allocation and returns. In dealing with the theory of ‘net advantage’, Smith provides a more elaborate account of the doctrine already found in the Lectures, and there confined to the discussion of labour. In the present context Smith dropped the assumption of given rates of factor payment (as made at the beginning of I.vii) in explaining that rates of monetary return may be expected to vary with the agreeableness or disagreeableness of the work, the cost of learning a trade, the constancy or inconstancy of employment, the great or small trust which may be involved, and the probability or improbability of success. Of these it is argued that only the first and the last affect profits, thus explaining the greater uniformity of rates of return (as compared to wages) in different employments. The whole purpose of the first section of this chapter is to elaborate on the above ‘circumstances’ and to show, at least where there is perfect liberty, that different rates of monetary return need occasion no difference in the ‘whole of the advantages and disadvantages, real or imaginary’ which affect different employments (I.x.b.39).

  In terms of the discussion of the price mechanism, we now have a complex of rates of return in different employments and an equilibrium situation where the rate of return in each type of employment stands in such a relation to the others as to ensure that there is no tendency to enter or leave any one of them. The same argument adds a further dimension of difficulty to Smith’s account of the allocative mechanism, by drawing attention to the problem of moving between employments which require different skills or levels of training.14

  Mobility is in fact the theme of the second part of the chapter where (again elaborating on ideas present in the Lectures) Smith shows the various ways in which the policy of Europe prevented the equality of ‘advantages and disadvantages’ which would otherwise arise; citing such examples as the privileges of corporations, the statute of apprenticeship, public endowments and especially the poor law.

  The closing chapter of Book I is concerned with the third and final form of return—rent—and is among the longest and most complex of the whole work. But perhaps the following points can be made when looking at the chapter from the standpoint of Smith’s analytical system. First, and most obviously, the general structure of the chapter is similar to those which deal with wages and profit. That is, Smith initially tries to explain what rent is in suggesting that it is the price which must be paid for a scarce resource which is a part of the property of individuals, and in arguing that it must vary with the fertility and situation of the land. Unlike the other forms of revenue, Smith emphasized that rent was unique in that it accrued without necessarily requiring any effort from those to whom it was due, and that what was a cost to the individual farmer was really a surplus as far as society was concerned; a point which led Smith to the famous statement that rent ‘enters into the composition of the price of commodities in a different way from wages and profit. High or low wages and profit, are the causes of high or low price; high or low rent is the effect of it.’ (I.xi.a.8.)

  Secondly, it is noteworthy that the analysis continues the ‘static’ theme already found in the theory of price, wages, and profits, by concentrating attention on the forces which determine the allocation of land between alternative uses (such as the production of corn and cattle) and in suggesting, at least in the general case, that rent payments would tend to equality in these different uses.

  Thirdly, it is noteworthy that Smith should have included a dynamic perspective in the discussion of allocation, of such a kind as to make his historical sketch of the changing pattern of land use an important, if rather neglected, aspect of his general theory of economic development.

  Finally, Smith continues the dynamic theme in the form in which it appears in the previous chapters by considering the long term trends as far as this form of return is concerned; the conclusion being that rent payments must increase as more land is brought into use under the pressure of a growing population, and that the real value of such payments must rise given that the real price of manufactures tends to fall in the long run.

  If we look back over this Book from the (rather narrow) perspective of Smith’s system, it will be evident that the argument is built up quite logically by dealing with a number of separate but inter–related subjects such as costs, price, and returns. At the same time two themes appear to run through the treatment of the different subjects: a static theme in that Smith is often concerned to explain the forces which determine the prevailing rates of return at particular points in time, together with the working of the allocative mechanisms, with factors treated as stocks rather than as flows; and, secondly, a dynamic aspect where Smith considers the general trends of factor payments over long periods, together with the pattern of land use and the probable changes in the real value of wage goods and manufactures. Both of these major themes were to find a place in the analysis of the following Books.

  The Introduction to Book II sets the theme of the following chapters by taking the reader back to the division of labour and by re–iterating a point which had already been made in the Lectures, namely that the division of labour depends on the prior accumulation of stock. An important difference here, however, as compared to the Lectures, is to be found in the fact that the task of accumulation is now seen to face the employer of labour rather than the labourer himself. Chapter i then proceeds to elaborate on the nature of stock and its applications in suggesting that the individual may devote a part of his ‘stock’ to consumption purposes, and therefore earn no revenue or income from it, while a part may be devoted to the acquisition of income. In the latter case stock is divided, in the manner of the physiocrats, into circulating and fixed capital; it is also shown that different trades will require different combinations of the two types of stock and that no fixed capital can produce an income except when used in combination with a circulating capital.

  Reasoning by analogy, Smith proceeded to argue that the stock of society taken as a whole could be divided into the same basic parts. In this connection he suggested that in any given period (such as a year) there would be a certain stock of goods, both perishable and durable reserved for immediate consumption, one characteristic being that such goods were used up at different rates. Secondly, he argued that society as a whole would possess a certain fixed capital, where the latter included such items as machines and useful instruments of trade, stocks of buildings which were used for productive purposes, improved lands, and the ‘acquired and useful abilities’ of the inhabitants (i.e. human capital). Finally, he identified the circulating capital of society as including the supply of money necessary to carry out circulation, the stocks of materials and goods in process held by the manufacturers or farmers, and the stocks of completed goods available for sale but still in the hands of producers or merchants as distinct from their ‘proper’ consumers.

  Such an argument is interesting in that it provides an example of the ease with which Smith moved from the discussion of micro– to the discussion of macro–economic issues. At the same time it serves to introduce Smith’s account of the ‘circular flow’, whereby he shows how, within a particular time period, goods available for sale are used up by the parties to exchange. In Smith’s terminology, the pattern of events is such that the necessary purchases of goods by consumers and producers features a ‘withdrawal’ from the circulating capital of society, with the resulting purchases being used up during the current period or added to either the fixed capital or the stock of goods reserved for immediate consumption. As he pointed out, the constant withdrawal of goods requires replacement, and this can be done only through the production of additional raw materials and finished goods in both main sectors (agriculture and manufactures) thus exposing the ‘real exchange which is annually made between those two orders of people’ (II.i.28). The basic division into types of capital, and this particular way of visualizing the working of the process, may well owe a great deal to the Physiocrats, even if the basic sectoral division had already been suggested by Hume.

  The remaining chapters of the Book are basically concerned to elaborate on the relations established in the first. For example, chapter ii makes the division into classes (proprietors, undertakers, wage–labour) explicit and establishes another connection with the analysis of Book I by reminding the reader that if the price of each commodity taken singly comprehends payments for rent, wages, and profits, then this must be true of all commodities taken ‘complexly’, so that in any given (annual) period aggregate income must be divided between the three factors of production in such a way as to reflect the prevailing levels of demand for, and supply of, them. Once again we find an implicit return to the ‘static’ analysis of Book I, save at a macro–economic level. The relationship between output and income adds something to Smith’s general picture of the ‘circular flow’ and at the same time enabled him to expand on his account by drawing a distinction between gross and net aggregate output where the latter is established by deducting the cost of maintaining the fixed capital (together with the costs of maintaining the money supply) from the gross product. In this way Smith was able to indicate the desirability of reducing the maintenance costs of the fixed capital, and of the money supply (a part of society’s circulating capital), introducing by this means the discussion of paper money (a cheaper instrument than coin) and of banks. The chapter goes on to provide a very long account of Scottish affairs in the 1760s and 1770s, together with a history of the Bank of England. Law’s Bank is accorded a single paragraph, in contrast to the treatment in the Lectures, on the ground that its activities had already been adequately exposed by Messrs. DuVerney and DuTot. The Bank of Amsterdam, also mentioned in the conclusion of this chapter and in the Lectures, was accorded a separate digression in WN IV.iv.

  The third chapter of the Book elaborates still further on the basic model by introducing a distinction between income in the aggregate and the proportion of that income devoted to consumption (revenue) or to savings. Smith also introduced the famous distinction between productive and unproductive labour at this point, where the former is involved in the creation of commodities and therefore of income while the latter is involved in the provision of services. Smith does not, of course, deny that services (such as defence or justice) are useful or even necessary, he merely wished to point out that the labour which is involved in the provision of a service is always maintained by the industry of other people and that it does not directly contribute to aggregate output. Smith’s argument was of course that funds intended to function as a capital would always be devoted to the employment of productive labour, while those intended to act as a revenue might maintain either productive or unproductive labour. Two points arise from this argument: first, that the productive capacity of any society would depend on the proportion in which total income was distributed between revenue and capital; and, secondly, that capitals could only be increased through parsimony, i.e. through a willingness to forego present advantages with a view to attaining some greater future benefit. It was in fact Smith’s view that net savings would always be possible during any given annual period, and that the effort would always be made through man’s natural desire to better his condition. Moreover, he evidently believed that wherever savings were made they would be converted into investment virtually sur le champ (thus providing another parallel with Turgot) and that the rapid progress which had been made by England confirmed this general trend. In Book II economic dynamics begins to overshadow the static branch of the subject: an important reminder that Smith’s version of the ‘circular flow’ is to be seen as a spiral of constantly expanding dimensions, rather than as a circle of constant size. It is also worth emphasizing in this connection that Smith’s concern with economic growth takes us back in a sense to the oldest part of the edifice, namely his treatment of the division of labour, the point being that the increasing size of the market gives greater scope to this institution, thus enhancing the possibilities for expansion, which are further stimulated by technical change in the shape of the flow of invention (I.i.8).

  The fourth and fifth chapters of this book offer further insights into the working of the ‘flow’ on the one hand, and the theory of economic growth on the other. II.iv, for example, contains not only an account of the determinants of interest, but confirms that interest is distinct from profit as a form of return, while introducing the monied interest as something separate from the manufacturing and agricultural interests.

  The following chapter adds four additional uses for capitals (again providing a close parallel with Turgot) in stating that they may be used in the wholesale or retail trades in addition to all those above mentioned. Thus as far as our understanding of the circular flow is concerned, Smith argues that the retailer in purchasing from the wholesale merchant in effect replaces the capital which the latter had laid out in purchasing commodities for sale; purchases which had themselves contributed to replace the capitals advanced by the farmers or manufacturers in creating them. In the same way, the manufacturer, for example, in making purchases of the instruments of trade replaces the outlay of some fellow ‘undertaker’ while his purchases of raw materials contribute to restore the capitals laid out by the farmers on their production.15 Smith’s enumeration of the different employments of capital is also relevant as far as his theory of growth is concerned, because each one can be shown to give employment to different quantities of productive labour. While he had already observed in the Lectures that agriculture was the most productive form of investment, the argument was here expanded to suggest that manufacture was the next most productive, followed by the wholesale and retail trades. He also argued with regard to the wholesale trade, that its contribution to the maintenance of productive labour varied, in declining order of importance, according as it was concerned with the home trade, the foreign trade of consumption, or the carrying trade, where the critical factor was the frequency of returns. A further dimension was added to this discussion in the opening chapter of Book III where it is suggested that, when left to their own devices, men would naturally choose to invest in agriculture, manufactures, and trade (in that order) thus contributing to maximize the rate of growth by choosing those forms of investment which generated the greatest level of output for a given injection of capital.

  Smith’s thesis concerning the different productivities of capital and the associated (although logically distinct) argument concerning the natural progress of opulence are sometimes regarded as being among the less successful parts of the edifice; a fact which makes it all the more important to observe the great burden which they are made to bear in the subsequent argument. In Book III, for example, Smith uses the history of Europe since the fall of the Roman Empire to confirm that the pattern of development had inverted the ‘natural’ order, in the sense that the stimulus to economic advance had initially come through the cities with their trade in surpluses. As we shall see in another context, (below, p. 55) the development of trade had given a stimulus to domestic manufactures based on the refinement of local goods or on imitation of the foreigner; a pattern of events which eventually impinged on the agrarian sector, and which is made to explain the transition to the final economic stage. Smith thus suggests that a process of development regarded as ‘natural’ from the standpoint of the theory of history, was essentially ‘unnatural’ from the standpoint of the analysis of the progress of opulence. However, the argument does explain the position of the third Book and the use there made of historical material which had been included in the Lectures, where it had been mainly intended to serve a very different purpose to that found in the WN.

  The second main application of the thesis is in Book IV where Smith returns to a theme which had already figured prominently in the Lectures; the critique of mercantilism. Many of the points which had been made in the earlier work undoubtedly re–appear in this section of the WN. In the WN, the mercantile system, with its associated patterns of control over the import, export, and production of commodities, is again shown to be based on an erroneous notion of wealth. Smith also argues, as he had before, that the chief engines of mercantilism, such as monopoly powers, adversely affect the allocative mechanism and to this extent affect economic welfare. But the main burden of his argument concerning distortion in the use of resources runs in terms not of the static allocative mechanism, so much as the essentially dynamic theory of the natural progress of opulence, the argument being that mercantile policy had diverted stock to less productive uses, with slower returns, than would otherwise have been the case. This argument is particularly marked in Smith’s treatment of the colonial relationship with America; a relationship which was central to the mercantile system as presented by Smith, and which sought to create a self–sufficient economic unit.16 In this connection Smith argued that the mercantile system was essentially self–contradictory: that by encouraging the output of rude products in America, Great Britain had helped (unwittingly) only to accelerate an already rapid rate of growth to an extent which would inevitably make the restrictions imposed on American manufactures unduly burdensome. As far as Great Britain was concerned, Smith believed that her concentration on the American market had in effect drawn capital from trades carried on with European outlets and diverted it to the more distant one of America, while at the same time forcing a certain amount of capital from a direct to an indirect trade. Obviously, all of this must have had an adverse effect on the rate of economic growth in Great Britain; a matter of some moment, in that, as Smith represents the case, a country with a suboptimal rate of growth happened to face an increasing burden of costs from the colonies themselves. It is a plausible, powerful, thesis which may be defended on a variety of grounds other than those on which Smith relied. But, as one shrewd contemporary critic noted, Smith’s view on the different productivities of investment was central to his case, and he begged leave to arrest his steps ‘for a moment, while we examine the ground whereon we tread: and the more so, as I find these propositions used in the second part of your work as data; whence you endeavour to prove, that the monopoly of the colony trade is a disadvantageous . . . institution.’17

  The Role of the State

  While the immediately preceding sections have concentrated to a large extent on the structure and organization of Smith’s thought, perhaps enough has also been said regarding its content to illustrate the existence of another kind of ‘system’; an analytical system which treats the economy as a type of model analogous to some kind of machine whose parts are unconscious of their mutual connection, or of the end which their interaction serves to promote, but where that interaction is governed by the laws of the machine. In economic terms, these law–governed processes refer, for example, to the working of the allocative mechanism, the theory of distribution, or of economic growth. The components of the ‘model’ are of course the sectors, the classes, and the individuals whose pursuit of gain contributes to the effective working of the whole. Thus, for example, the undertaker in pursuit of gain contributes to economic efficiency by endeavouring to make ‘such a proper division and distribution of stock’ amongst his workmen as to enable them to ‘produce the greatest quantity of work possible’. The individual workman or undertaker offers his services in the most lucrative employments and helps to ensure, by this means, that goods are sold at their cost of production, and all factors are paid at their ‘natural’ rates. Similarly, the constant desire to better one’s condition contributes to the flow of savings and thus to the process of economic growth. In all these cases social benefit and economic order are the result of the self–interested actions of individuals rather than the consequences of some formal plan; indeed, Smith went further in insisting that public benefit would not and need not form any part of the normal motivation of the main actors in the drama. The famous doctrine of the invisible hand, already prefigured in the TMS in precisely this connection, was designed to show that the individual, in pursuing his own objectives, contributed to the public benefit, thereby promoting an end ‘which was no part of his intention’ (WN IV.ii.9).18

  Now this general view of the working of economic processes is important in that it helps to explain the functions which any government ought ideally to undertake, and the way in which these functions should be performed; broadly speaking, a subject which provides the focal point of Book V. In terms of the model itself, for example, governments have no strictly economic functions, at least in the sense that the sovereign should be discharged from ‘the duty of superintending the industry of private people, and of directing it towards the employments most suitable to the interest of the society’ (IV.ix.51). And yet, the functions of the state, if minimal, are quite indispensable in the sense that it must provide for such (unproductive) services as defence, justice, and those public works which are unlikely to be provided by the market because ‘the profit could never repay the expence to any individual or small number of individuals’ (IV.ix.51).

  Smith’s list of public services is a short one, but the discussion of the principles on which their provision should be organized is developed at some length and is interesting for two main reasons. First, Smith argued that public services should be provided only where the market has failed to do so; secondly, he suggested that the main problems with regard to such services were those of equity and efficiency. With regard to equity, Smith suggested, for example, that public services should always be paid for by those who use them (including roads and bridges). He also defended the principle of direct payment on the ground of efficiency in arguing that it is only in this way that we can avoid the building of roads through deserts for the sake of some private interest, or a situation where a great bridge is ‘thrown over a river at a place where nobody passes, or merely to embellish the view from the windows of a neighbouring palace: things which sometimes happen, in countries where works of this kind are carried on by any other revenue than that which they themselves are capable of affording’ (V.i.d.6). At the same time Smith insisted that all public services should be provided by such bodies as found it in their interest to do so effectively, and that they should be organized in such a way as to take account of the self–interested nature of man. Smith stated his basic belief in remarking that ‘Publick services are never better performed than when their reward comes only in consequence of their being performed, and is proportioned to the diligence employed in performing them’ (V.i.b.20). He tirelessly emphasized this point, especially in reference to university teaching, while reminding his readers that the principle held good in all situations and in all trades.

  Of course, Smith did recognise the limitations of this principle and the fact that it would not always be possible to fund or to maintain public services without recourse to general taxation. But here again the main features of the analytical system are relevant in that they affect the way in which taxation should, where possible, be handled. Thus Smith pointed out on welfare grounds that taxation should be imposed according to the famous canons of equality, certainty, convenience, and economy, and insisted that they should not be levied in ways which infringed the liberty of the subject—for example, through the ‘odious visits’ and examinations of the tax–gatherer (V.ii.b.3–7). Similarly he argued that ideally taxes ought not to interfere with the allocative mechanism (as for example, taxes on necessities) or constitute important disincentives to the individual effort on which the working of the whole system has been seen to depend (such as taxes on profits). In short, Smith’s recommendations with regard to the functions of government are designed to ensure the freedom of the individual to pursue his own (socially beneficial) ends and merely require that the state should provide such services as facilitate the working of the system, while conforming to the constraints of human nature and the market mechanism. Looked at from this point of view, Smith’s discussion of the role of the state is very much a part of his general model and confirms his view that the task of political economy, considered as a part of the science of the statesman or legislator, is ‘to provide a plentiful revenue or subsistence for the people, or more properly to enable them to provide such a revenue or subsistence for themselves’ (IV.Intro.1).

  But Smith went much further than this in discussing the role of the state, and in ways which remind us of his essentially practical concerns, and of the importance of other branches of his general system such as the theory of history and the TMS.

  To begin with, it will already be evident that one thread which runs through the WN involves criticism of those contemporary institutions which impeded the realization in its entirety of the system of natural liberty. Broadly speaking, these impediments can be reduced to four main categories each one of which Smith wished to see removed. First, there is the problem (already raised in terms of the historical analysis) that ‘Laws frequently continue in force long after the circumstances, which first gave occasion to them, and which could alone render them reasonable, are no more’ (III.ii.4). Secondly, Smith drew attention to certain institutions which had their origins in the past but which still commanded active support; institutions such as guilds and corporations, which could still regulate the government of trades. All such arrangements were, in Smith’s view impolitic because they impeded the working of the allocative mechanism and unjust because they were a ‘violation of this most sacred property’ which ‘every man has in his own labour’ (I.x.c.12). In a very similar way Smith commented on the problems presented by the poor law and the laws of settlement and summarized his appeal to government in these terms: ‘break down the exclusive privileges of corporations, and repeal the statute of apprenticeship, both which are real encroachments upon natural liberty, and add to these the repeal of the law of settlements . . .’ (IV.ii.42). Thirdly, Smith criticised the continuing use of positions of privilege, such as monopoly powers, which did not necessarily have any particular link with the past. Here again the basic theme remains, that such institutions are impolitic and unjust: unjust because they are positions of privilege and impolitic because they again affect the working of the allocative mechanism, being besides, ‘a great enemy to good management’ (I.xi.b.5).

  Finally, we have the main theme of Book IV which we have already had occasion to mention; that is Smith’s call for a reform of national policy in so far as that was represented by the mercantile system.

  All this amounts to a very considerable programme of reform, although, quite characteristically, Smith recognized that reality would fall a long way short of perfection, and that it could do so without damage to that fundamental drive to better our condition or to the capacity of that drive to overcome ‘a hundred impertinent obstructions with which the folly of human laws too often encumbers its operations’ (IV.v.b.43). Smith recognized the existence of many practical difficulties; that people are attached to old forms and institutions for example, quite as much as to old families and kings, and also that sectional economic pressures would always find some means of influencing the legislature in their favour, precisely because of those same economic forces which helped to explain the historical dominance of the House of Commons in England.19 For such reasons he concluded that ‘To expect, indeed, that the freedom of trade should ever be entirely restored in Great Britain, is as absurd as to expect that an Oceana or Utopia should ever be established in it’ (IV.ii.43).

  If points such as these contribute to qualify the rather ‘optimistic’ thesis with which Smith is generally associated, the impression is further confirmed by those passages in the WN (occurring mainly in Book V) which bear more directly on the analysis of the TMS. In the former work, it will be remembered that welfare is typically defined in material terms; in terms of the level of real income, i.e. the extent to which the individual can command the produce (or labour) of others. On the other hand, in the philosophical work welfare was defined more in terms of the quality of life attainable, where ‘quality’ refers to a level of moral experience greater than that involved in the ‘mercenary exchange of good offices according to an agreed valuation’. There is of course no inconsistency between these two positions, since the two major books, while analytically linked, in fact refer to different areas of human experience. But at the same time Smith made a number of points in the WN which establish an important link between the philosophical and economic aspects of his study of man in society, while constituting a reminder that welfare should not be considered solely in economic terms. In this connection Smith drew attention to the fact that the worker in a ‘large manufactory’ was liable to the temptations of bad company with consequent effects on moral standards (I.viii.48). In the same vein he also mentioned the problems presented by large cities where, unlike the rich man who is noticed by the public and who therefore has an incentive to attend to his own conduct, the poor man is ‘sunk in obscurity and darkness. His conduct is observed and attended to by nobody, and he is therefore very likely to neglect it himself, and to abandon himself to every sort of low profligacy and vice.’ (V.i.g.12.)

  To this extent, the importance of the spectator is undermined, and so too may be those faculties and propensities on which moral experience has been seen to depend (a separate point). For Smith drew attention to the ‘fact’ that the division of labour which had contributed to economic growth through the subdivision and simplification of productive processes, had at the same time confined the activities of the worker to a few simple operations which gave no stimulus to the exercise of his mind, thus widening the gulf between the philosopher and the ordinary man or his employer. Smith believed that the worker could lose the habit of mental exertion, thus gradually becoming as ‘stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human creature to become’ and he went on, in a famous passage, to remark:

  The torpor of his mind renders him, not only incapable of relishing or bearing a part in any rational conversation, but of conceiving any generous, noble, or tender sentiment, and consequently of forming any just judgment concerning many even of the ordinary duties of private life.

  (V.i.f.50)

  As Smith duly noted, this general trend could produce the apparently paradoxical result that while the inhabitants of the fourth economic stage enjoyed far greater material benefits than those available to the hunter or savage, yet the latter would be more likely to exercise his mental faculties and to this extent be ‘better off’ (V.i.f.51). Smith recognized that the occupations of the savage were unlikely to produce an ‘improved and refined understanding’, but his main point was that in the modern state this refinement can only be attained by the few who are able to reflect at large on a wide range of problems, including the social. As Smith put it, in a passage which once again reminds us of the importance of the Astronomy and of the problems of stratification in society:

  The contemplation of so great a variety of objects necessarily exercises their minds in endless comparisons and combinations, and renders their understandings, in an extraordinary degree, both acute and comprehensive. Unless those few, however, happen to be placed in some very particular situations, their great abilities, though honourable to themselves, may contribute very little to the good government or happiness of their society. Notwithstanding the great abilities of those few, all the nobler parts of the human character may be, in a great measure, obliterated and extinguished in the great body of the people.

  (V.i.f.51)

  Smith’s belief that the ‘labouring poor, that is, the great body of the people’ (V.i.f.50) might suffer a kind of ‘mental mutilation’ led him directly to the discussion of education. To some extent he argued that market forces had proved themselves capable of the effective provision of this service, especially with regard to the education of women (V.i.f.47), and he also noted that it was the absence of such pressures which had enabled the ancient universities to become ‘the sanctuaries in which exploded systems and obsolete prejudices’ had found support and protection (V.i.f.34). Yet at the same time, he did not believe that the public could rely on the market, not least because the lower orders could scarce afford to maintain their children even in infancy, and he went on to note, with regard to the children of the relatively poor, that ‘As soon as they are able to work, they must apply to some trade by which they can earn their subsistence’ (V.i.f.53). Smith therefore advocated the provision of parish schools on the Scottish model wherein the young could be taught to read and to acquire the rudiments of geometry and mechanics—provided of course that their masters were ‘partly, but not wholly paid by the publick’ (V.i.f.55). Smith even went so far as to suggest that the public should impose ‘upon almost the whole body of the people the necessity of acquiring those most essential parts of education, by obliging every man to undergo an examination or probation in them before he can obtain the freedom in any corporation, or be allowed to set up any trade’ (V.i.f.57). Smith also advocated that the better off, despite their superior (economic) advantages in acquiring education, should be required to attain a rather higher standard of knowledge ‘by instituting some sort of probation, even in the higher and more difficult sciences, to be undergone by every person before he was permitted to exercise any liberal profession, or before he could be received as a candidate for any honourable office of trust or profit’ (V.i.g.14).

  Such policies were defended on the ground of benefit to the individual, but also for more practical reasons. The labourer armed with a knowledge of the rudiments of geometry and mechanics was likely to be better placed to perform his tasks effectively and to continue to see how they could be improved. Similarly, Smith suggested that an educated people would be better placed to see through the interested claims of faction and sedition, while in addition an ‘instructed and intelligent people . . . are always more decent and orderly than an ignorant and stupid one’. Such a people, he continued (in a strain which reminds us of the importance of the earlier discussion of political obligation) are also more likely to obtain the respect of their ‘lawful superiors’ and to reciprocate that respect. He concluded:

  In free countries, where the safety of government depends very much upon the favourable judgment which the people may form of its conduct, it must surely be of the highest importance that they should not be disposed to judge rashly or capriciously concerning it.

  (V.i.f.61)

  In this way Smith granted the state an important cultural purpose and at the same time introduced a significant qualification to the optimistic thesis with which he is often associated—both with regard to the efficacy of market forces and the benefits of economic growth.

  The Institutional Relevance of the WN

  The attractions of Smith’s system, and of an analysis which stretched even beyond the WN to encompass his other works, was quickly recognized by contemporaries. A stream of tributes found their way to Smith. Hugh Blair, the erstwhile Minister of the High Kirk of Edinburgh and later Professor of Rhetoric and Belles Lettres at the University wrote:

  I am Convinced that since Montesquieu’s Esprit des Lois, Europe has not received any Publication which tends so much to Enlarge & Rectify the ideas of mankind.

  Your Arrangement is excellent. One chapter paves the way for another; and your System gradually erects itself. Nothing was ever better suited than your Style is to the Subject; clear & distinct to the last degree, full without being too much so, and as tercly as the Subject could admit. Dry as some of the Subjects are, It carried me along.20

  William Robertson was more to the point: ‘You have formed into a regular and consistent system one of the most intricate and important parts of political science.’21 In similar vein Joseph Black commended Smith for providing ‘. . . a comprehensive System composed with such just & liberal Sentiments’.22 Lastly, some eighteen months later Edward Gibbon described the WN as ‘the most profound and systematic treatise on the great objects of trade and revenue which had ever been published in any age or in any Country.’23

  Unstinted admiration of Smith’s system was accompanied by a fear, not always clearly expressed, that the work might not prove to have an immediate appeal, a fear based on an appreciation that the WN is not a simple but a difficult and involved book. With some feeling Hugh Blair pled for an index and a ‘Syllabus of the whole’, because, ‘You travel thro’ a great Variety of Subjects. One has frequently occasion to reflect & look back.’ (Letter 151.) David Hume looked forward to a day which he, within months of his death, was not to see, when the book would be popular, but he was less sanguine about its immediate prospects:

  . . . the Reading of it necessarily requires so much Attention, and the Public is disposed to give so little, that I shall still doubt for some time of its being at first very popular: But it has Depth and Solidity and Acuteness, and it is so much illustrated by curious Facts, that it must at last take the public Attention.24

  A week later Hume offered a comparison with Gibbon’s Decline and Fall to William Strahan, the publisher of both, a comparison not altogether in favour of the WN: ‘Dr Smith’s Performance is another excellent Work that has come from your Press this Winter; but I have ventured to tell him, that it requires too much thought to be as popular as Mr Gibbon’s.’25 Even on publication, there were signs that Hume was unduly pessimistic. In his reply Strahan, while concurring with Hume’s comparison, admitted that the sales of the WN ‘though not near so rapid, has been more than I could have expected from a work that requires much thought and reflection’.26 Adam Ferguson’s more optimistic predictions were nearer the mark: ‘You are not to expect the run of a novel, nor even of a true history; but you may venture to assure your booksellers of a steady and continual sale, as long as people wish for information on these subjects.’27

  In the event the fears of lack of immediate success were ill–founded. The first edition of the WN, published on 9 March 1776, was sold out in six months. On 13 November 1776 Smith wrote to William Strahan acknowledging payment of a sum of £300, the balance of money due to him for the first edition, and proposed that the second edition ‘be printed at your [Strahan’s] expense, and that we should divide the profits’.28 Strahan agreed and the second edition appeared early in 1778. Only minor amendments, though many of them, distinguished it from the first; but the third edition, published late in 1784, had such substantial additions that they were also published separately for the benefit of those who had purchased the earlier editions, under the title Additions and Corrections to the First and Second Editions of Dr Adam Smith’s Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. The most notable changes were the introduction of Book IV, chapter viii (Conclusion of the Mercentile System); Book V, chapter i.e. (Of the Public Works and Institutions which are necessary for facilitating particular Branches of Commerce); passages on drawbacks (IV.iv.3–11), on the corn bounty (IV.v.8–9), on the herring bounty (IV.v.28–37) and the Appendix; and, particularly significant in view of Hugh Blair’s early plea, the first index. The fourth edition of 1786 and the fifth of 1789, the last in Smith’s lifetime, had only minor alterations. The English editions were not the only ones to appear in Smith’s lifetime; by 1790 the book had been, or was being published in French, German, Danish and Italian.

  The WN did not suffer the fate which befell the previous great treatise on economics, Sir James Steuart’s Principles of Political Oeconomy, published only nine years earlier in 1767. Its success, judged even merely by its level of sales and the five editions in Smith’s lifetime, hardly accorded with some of the fears for the book’s popularity which tinged the otherwise unbounded admiration of Smith’s friends. In welcoming the WN the members of Smith’s intellectual circle faced a dilemma. They were attracted by the WN as the crown of Smith’s system, but they feared that great achievement would not, perhaps even could not, be generally and immediately appreciated. There was, however, another side to the WN, a more pragmatic, down to earth side, which gave the work a practical relevance in the eyes of many to whom the intellectual system was perhaps a mystery or merely irrelevant. Smith’s friends did not always recognize that his ‘proper attention to facts’, even to Hume’s ‘curious facts’, was to prove an immediate source of attraction. Having gained attention in this way, Smith then commanded respect because the practical conclusions which followed from the chief elements of his system were evidently related to the economic problems of the middle of the eighteenth century. These practical conclusions may be demonstrated by casting leading elements in Smith’s system in the form of a series of practical prescriptions for economic growth. When the prescriptions are compared with the historical situation in Britain in the mid–eighteenth century, their immediate relevance is apparent. The various categories of Smith’s system had thus an institutional content or background derived from the experience of his day, which many admired and followed even when the system and its categories remained difficult for them to understand.

  The division of labour remained central to this institutional analysis. Even when Smith recognized the theoretical possibility of the operation of other factors—an increased labour force or mechanization—the division of labour remained in practice the fundamental cause of economic growth. The emphasis is clear in Book II where, as has already been pointed out (p. 30), economic dynamics begins to overshadow economic statics, specifically in II.iii.32:

  The annual produce of the land and labour of any nation can be increased in its value by no other means, but by increasing either the number of its productive labourers, or the productive powers of those labourers who had before been employed. The number of its productive labourers, it is evident, can never be much increased, but in consequence of an increase of capital, or of the funds destined for maintaining them. The productive powers of the same number of labourers cannot be increased, but in consequence either of some addition and improvement to those machines and instruments which facilitate and abridge labour; or of a more proper division and distribution of employment. In either case an additional capital is almost always required. It is by means of an additional capital only that the undertaker of any work can either provide his workmen with better machinery, or make a more proper distribution of employment among them.

  Given that the division of labour remained the key to economic growth its full effectiveness was limited by an inadequate expansion of the market and by an inadequate supply of capital. An inadequate supply of capital also limited the effectiveness of those other influences—increased quantity of labour and mechanization—which Smith recognized as theoretical, if not practical causes of economic expansion. The distinction between productive and unproductive labour had led to the conclusion that growth of capital depended on the most extensive use of funds in the employment of productive labour. Smith then developed his system to determine those fields where productive labour was most effectively employed and the conclusions, derived in this way from his analytical framework, had highly institutional implications, for they indicated the areas where growth was to be welcomed and encouraged. That was guidance for the practical man.29 Three propositions from II.v make the order of preference clear:

  No equal capital puts into motion a greater quantity of productive labour than that of the farmer.

  (12)

  After agriculture, the capital employed in manufactures puts into motion the greatest quantity of productive labour, and adds the greatest value to the annual produce. That which is employed in the trade of exportation, has the least effect of any of the three.

  (19)

  The capital, therefore, employed in the home–trade of any country will generally give encouragement and support to a greater quantity of productive labour in that country, and increase the value of its annual produce more than an equal capital employed in the foreign trade of consumption: and the capital employed in this latter trade has in both these respects a still greater advantage over an equal capital employed in the carrying trade.

  (31)

  Such were the practical conclusions to which the theory led and, since the desirable allocation was to be achieved through ‘the uniform, constant, and uninterrupted effort of every man to better his condition’, the implication was obvious: government intervention had to be restrained, especially when it was possible to demonstrate, as in Book IV, that intervention was usually exercised on behalf of those vested interests which perverted the natural course of opulence. Well might Hugh Blair exclaim:

  You have done great Service to the World by overturning all that interested Sophistry of Merchants, with which they had Confounded the whole Subject of Commerce. Your work ought to be, and I am persuaded will in some degree become, the Commercial Code of Nations.

  (Letter 151)

  Even a cursory survey of the major economic characteristics of Britain in the eighteenth century confirms the contemporary relevance of Smith’s emphases. He advocated for example the desirability of encouraging agriculture because of the superior productivity of capital invested in it. To the practical man, whether he appreciated the full logic of Smith’s analysis or not, the advocacy struck a responsive chord, since the main source of economic advance in Britain in the mid–eighteenth century lay in agriculture. Of that no one was unaware. Poor harvests and high prices benefited no one, obviously not industrial workers, and not the majority of farmers. Only a few specialist grain growers expected to reap the profits of scarcity and any potential gain was frequently eroded by the prohibitions on the use of grain for purposes other than the making of bread in times of scarcity and, more dramatically, by the activities of bread rioters. Hence a modern historian has described the period as one when ‘the coming of dearth was sufficient in itself to halt, or reverse, an upward movement of activity’.30 This restraint on increasing wealth was at last being tackled in the eighteenth century. Contemporaries, as well as later historians, disputed the significance and effectiveness of the specific agricultural improvements which brought the change to fruition, but, even when the method was disputed, the end was plain. The age–old spectre of famine was removed for the first time, and secure economic advance was possible. That was a dramatic change from the experience of many other countries.

  A similar sympathetic response followed Smith’s evaluation of the form and function of trade. Agriculture and commerce were the twin props of the economy in the eyes of many contemporaries and Smith’s extensive treatment of the latter reflected its domination of economic thought and practice. More strikingly still, the pattern of foreign trade in the eighteenth century was changing and so drew attention to the relevance of Smith’s attempt to assess the comparative contributions to economic growth of the different forms of trade. The relevance of the analysis is evident in the changes in the pattern of both commodities and markets.

  Woollen exports had long been the traditional staple, particularly to European markets, which at the beginning of the eighteenth century took over 90 per cent of the woollen goods exported. Thereafter, though Spain and Portugal were taking more, other European countries were taking less; the future lay less with Europe than in the past. Later in the eighteenth century cotton assumed the role of leading export which wool had once held, but it was dependent on non–European markets. Between the two phases of domination by two different textile industries the buoyant trading sector lay in re–exports, which had not been of great significance until the second half of the seventeenth century, but by the beginning of the eighteenth century re–exports were equal to half the level of domestic exports. Sugar, tobacco, Indian calicos were the leading commodities, and their buoyancy reflected an economy which gained from a commerce based more on Britain’s trading links than on the sale of domestic production overseas, an economy in which it was impossible to deny the paramount position, for good or ill, of overseas trade, and especially of the carrying trade. Nowhere in Britain was that situation more evident than in the economic structure of Glasgow in the third quarter of the eighteenth century. The foreign trade of Scotland had been turning from the continent of Europe to the New World even before the parliamentary union of 1707 confirmed the move, and the protection afforded by the Navigation Acts provided a firm and unfettered basis for Glasgow’s success as an entrepot in the tobacco trade. Hence to read the practical discussion in Book IV of the WN, whether to accept or to reject its conclusions, was to read an account highly relevant to the contemporary economic scene. The Book discusses the stuff of which contemporary economic policy was made.

  Though the problems of agriculture and of commerce were the economic issues which dominated the mind of the practical man of the eighteenth century, industrial production was increasing, and, when Smith wrote, its increase was bringing to an end a period of stability in the relative contributions to the national product of agriculture, manufacturing and commerce. Smith’s emphasis on the growth, but not on the existing domination, of manufacturing industry, and particularly his exposition of the division of labour as the prime agent of change, accorded with contemporary experience. The increased industrial output was associated with a decline in the relative importance of the woollen industry and a marked growth in the relative contribution of metal manufactures, reflecting increased division of labour in small units and not the emergence of the larger and more modern units of industrial organisation which are associated with substantial capital formation and with joint–stock enterprise. The day of large–scale capital formation and extensive joint–stock enterprise came years after Smith. Though the problems of the industrial sector did not loom large in the minds of many contemporaries, when they did, they assumed the forms which Smith enunciated. The increasing capital intensity of production, and of its concentration, which was to begin with the appearance of the cotton industry, were yet to be, and the absence of any significant analysis of that sector in the WN should be cited less as a matter of regret and criticism and more as an indication of Smith’s awareness of those aspects of the contemporary industrial scene which were of concern at the time he wrote.

  The WN succeeded not only because its institutional emphasis made it thus so evidently, as Blair wrote, ‘a publication for the present time’ but also because it contained a stirring message. Its plea for liberty accorded with the intellectual presuppositions of the eighteenth century. The plea for liberty in the WN is a vital factor explaining the different reception accorded to Steuart and Smith within a decade of each other. Steuart may have suffered from additional handicaps. Apart from his personal handicap of Jacobitism, his work appealed less powerfully to the intellects of the eighteenth century, and above all Steuart’s support for government intervention placed him in a different camp from Smith, and in one which was not popular among the increasingly influential elements in contemporary society.31

  Smith provided a system with categories and elements which remain valid as parts of his analytical framework, but their institutional content, so pertinent to economic conditions in Britain in the eighteenth century, that it helped ensure the success of the WN, limits the acceptability and applicability of the system in other places and at other times. Whatever the intellectual attractiveness of Smith’s writing on the continent of Europe, it was frequently institutionally irrelevant there when it was first published. For example, in contrast with Britain, ancient mercantilist and agrarian restrictions were acceptable on the continent. In Germany local monopolistic guilds still dominated economic life, and the advocacy of the new degree of economic freedom requisite for new forms of economic enterprise was not acceptable. Palyi suggests that the surprising aspect of the WN’s reception in Germany was not that it was not readily received, but ‘that the resistance against the WN did not last longer than some twenty years and did not take a more active form’.32 In France, again as Palyi points out, the situation was confused because of the influence of the physiocrats. Smith gave sufficient recognition to the physiocratic point of view to lend some support to its claims, and that support was especially helpful since the acceptability of their doctrines was waning, partly because of the antagonism the physiocrats had engendered from the new and rising industrial groups, whose dislike of physiocracy grew from the support it provided to the large landowners. That confusion influenced the reception accorded to the WN.

  Attempts to apply the WN to societies more advanced than Britain on the eve of the industrial revolution encounter similar, or even greater problems. The difficulty of doing so is demonstrated by contrasting Smith’s emphasis on the division of labour as the central cause of economic growth and his neglect of other factors, such as increases in the supply of labour, particularly through the growth of population, and improvements in the productivity of labour through mechanization. Smith recognized that an increase in the labour force led to an increase in output, but he did not envisage unemployed labour resources being brought into use, and any increase in the supply of labour was likely to be a long–run consequence of an expansion of the national product.

  The demand for those who live by wages, therefore, necessarily increases with the increase of the revenue and stock of every country, and cannot possibly increase without it. The increase of revenue and stock is the increase of national wealth. The demand for those who live by wages, therefore, naturally increases with the increase of national wealth, and cannot possibly increase without it.

  (I.viii.21)

  Increasing population, whether a cause of economic growth, or as something to fear, was not highlighted. That may seem surprising. Others, among them Sir James Steuart, feared over–population, but it was possible to be as optimistic about the future in the mid–eighteenth century as at any time. The spectre of famine and of some diseases had been removed; the sharp rise in population and the problems of its concentration were yet to be. Hence it was easy to conceive the problem of economic growth as one of utilizing the labour force in ways which would most effectively meet the opportunities offered by the expansion of the market, either by improvements in the division of labour or by mechanization. Of the two possibilities Smith, with his analysis firmly rooted in the institutional structure of his day, stressed the former. Mechanization was recognized—as in his discussion of the steam engine—but it was conceived as a process accompanying the division of labour.

  The owner of the stock which employs a great number of labourers, necessarily endeavours, for his own advantage, to make such a proper division and distribution of employment, that they may be enabled to produce the greatest quantity of work possible. For the same reason, he endeavours to supply them with the best machinery which either he or they can think of.

  (I.viii.57)

  In consequence of better machinery, of greater dexterity, and of a more proper division and distribution of work, all of which are the natural effects of improvement, a much smaller quantity of labour becomes requisite for executing any particular piece of work. . .

  (I.xi.o.1)

  Not only are the division of labour and mechanization closely interwoven, but invention itself was in Smith’s opinion ‘originally owing to the division of labour’ (I.i.8).33 Innovation is no more central to the analysis. Projectors pass through the pages of the WN, frequently to be dismissed as detrimental rather than helpful to economic growth. In spite of his stress on psychological propensities in other parts of his work, Smith did not extend his analysis in a serious way to evaluate the qualities which determined the ability to innovate successfully.

  The dominance of the division of labour, and the comparative neglect of other categories in the analysis, notably mechanization, is, of course, a reflection of the institutional relevance of the WN to the British economy in the mid–eighteenth century. The penalty paid was the opening of a penetrating line of criticism for those who wished to stress Smith’s comparative neglect of the other and ultimately more powerful agent of economic growth. Into that context can be placed the criticism of Lauderdale, who, though not distinguishing between capital and entrepreneurship, was anxious to remedy Smith’s alleged failure to make adequate allowance for differences in knowledge and ability in different countries. Rae suggested even more forcefully that invention held the key to explaining the greater productivity of capital in some societies than in others. Smith’s admirer, J. B. Say, developed the idea of entrepreneurship as a very special form of labour. Later Schumpeter placed the entrepreneur and his innovating ability at the heart of an explanation of economic growth. Lauderdale, Rae, Say, Schumpeter belong to later generations, which, unlike Smith’s, had witnessed the effect of mechanization on industrial output. Smith was writing even before the large–scale application of mechanization to cotton–spinning. Hence, just as the WN did not seem so relevant to societies other than Britain in the later eighteenth century, so the institutional content of the WN was not applicable to the industrial state which Britain was beginning to be.

  Nevertheless, discussion of Smith’s institutional relevance can become almost pointless if it tries to prove either that Smith anticipated modern industrialization, or if it spends much time proving that he did not. Any evaluation must start from the obvious fact that Smith’s thought was formulated in the third quarter of the eighteenth century, and that many of his ideas had been formulated as early as the 1760s. To search the WN for examples of the institutional structure which was to emerge later in a more advanced industrial economy is to search for qualities which it cannot possess except fortuitously. The attraction of the WN was not that it was a tourist’s guide to the subsequent course of industrialization, but that it had a command of the institutional structure of the time, sufficiently convincing to demonstrate its contemporary relevance.

  The institutional features of the WN which date it also helped towards its immediate success. The modern reader may recognize the systematic analysis as the great intellectual achievement of the treatise and qualify the validity of Smith’s views on public policy, or even adopt the extreme interpretation of dismissing them as totally irrelevant. No contemporary could have entertained such a view; obviously misleading or erroneous comments on the public policy of the age, or, worse still, irrelevant comments, would have detracted from the intellectual achievement in their eyes. The acceptance of the WN by contemporaries rested on its apparent relevance to the affairs of everyday life as much as on its systematic analysis. It became the authority to quote as much in public discussion as in parliamentary debate. But that was not all. Smith’s relevance to his day and age insured such immediate acceptance for the WN that, even when its popularity as a guide to policy was waning, and was ultimately rejected, the work was so well established, and so generally established, that it was never neglected, and the systematic analysis was then recognized for the massive intellectual achievement which it is.

  Smith’s use of History

  If Smith achieved the unusual distinction of being a prophet with honour in his own country, he did so partly because his work was firmly rooted in a historical situation. The WN may, therefore, be used as a historical source, in at least two distinctive senses. Since Smith frequently wrote as a historian—sometimes deliberately, sometimes otherwise—he may be judged accordingly by the common criteria of historical scholarship. In addition, Smith’s account of events in the later eighteenth century may be assessed for its reliability as the report of a contemporary observer. In neither case is an account of Smith’s writing a straightforward and uncomplicated matter. Just as anyone using Smith to illuminate later economic thought must make full allowance for the limitations of his institutional background on the general applicability of his theories, so those who use the WN as a historical source in whatever sense must make even greater allowances. In the former case the deficiencies are inevitable, as Smith could not have envisaged changes which were yet to be; in the latter case the omissions may even be deliberate and so misleading, especially if they are not obvious. As always, Smith’s desire to devise a major intellectual system determined the use he made of historical and factual material. No one of his intellectual eminence would distort the facts, even if only because refutation would thus have been infinitely easier, but, even when facts were not distorted, they may still have been used in such a subordinate and supporting role to the dominating systematic model that their use for any other purpose needs qualification.

  If parts of the WN are to be judged as straightforward pieces of historical writing, it is necessary to distinguish the different ways in which Smith wrote as a historian. When he wrote as an orthodox historian, he tried to assemble the best documentary and factual evidence for his case; when he wrote as a philosopher of history, he tried to distil an ideal interpretation of an historical process ostensibly from the facts he had accumulated.

  Smith, as any orthodox historian, may be assessed by a review of his sources and his use of them. Their variety is striking, whether the impression be derived from those quoted in the WN itself, from the resources in Smith’s personal library, or from the accounts of the Library at Glasgow when he controlled its expenditure. The break with the tradition of Christian authority is obvious; even historical parts of the Bible and its apparent relevance to the discussion of a nomadic life are virtually ignored, with only the most incidental of references to the Old Testament. By contrast, the classical tradition dominates and supplies many illustrations of early times. Given the inevitable paucity of source material for an account of an earlier age, and yet given the necessity of formulating such an account as part of an essential background to the dynamic historical evolution which he was seeking, Smith—in common with others who adopted his approach—was forced to use another group of source materials: the travellers’ tales and accounts of contemporary societies which were at a much earlier and much more primitive stage of social evolution. Travellers’ tales bulk large in what is generally regarded as Smith’s historical writing, taking pride of place even over the classical references. To a more orthodox historian the extensive use of travellers’ tales is even more suspect than the use of classical writers, whose work can at least be subjected to a more critical appraisal of their reliability. Travellers’ tales, especially in an age when they were frequently rare, even unique, accounts of far off places, could not easily be confirmed or refuted, and so the travellers tended to highlight the unusual and the bizarre. A warning of Francis Hutcheson could well be taken to heart:

  The Entertainment therefore in these ingenious Studys consists chiefly in exciting Horror, and making Men stare . . . What is most surprizing in these Studys, is the wondrous Credulity of some Gentlemen of great Pretentions in other Matters to Caution of Assent, for these marvellous Memoirs of Monks, Friars, Sea–Captains, Pirates; and for the Historys, Annals, Chronologys, received by oral Tradition, or Hieroglyphicks.34

  Smith was not more culpable than many of his contemporaries in his use of such material. He was certainly less guilty than some others of falling into the trap against which Hutcheson warned, for he did not accept all his sources uncritically. Trade statistics were held perceptively and authoritatively to be unreliable:

  Heavy duties being imposed upon almost all goods imported, our merchant importers smuggle as much, and make entry of as little as they can. Our merchant exporters, on the contrary, make entry of more than they export; sometimes out of vanity, and to pass for great dealers in goods which pay no duty; and sometimes to gain a bounty or a drawback. Our exports, in consequence of these different frauds, appear upon the customhouse books greatly to overbalance our imports; to the unspeakable comfort of those politicians who measure the national prosperity by what they call the balance of trade.

  (V.ii.k.29)

  Hence it is not surprising that Smith, though ready to endorse Gregory King’s skill in political arithmetic (I.viii.34), and willing to quote the calculations of Charles Smith on the corn trade (I.xi.g.18), had to admit that he himself had ‘no great faith in political arithmetick’ (IV.v.b.30). Quantitative sources were not the only ones treated with some reserve.

  After all the wonderful tales which have been published concerning the splendid state of those countries [Mexico and Peru] in antient times, whoever reads, with any degree of sober judgment, the history of their first discovery and conquest, will evidently discern that, in arts, agriculture, and commerce, their inhabitants were much more ignorant than the Tartars of the Ukraine are at present.

  (I.xi.g.26)

  Yet sometimes Smith’s use of a source is less critical than it should be, especially when the source confirms an argument he is developing from other and more general, often speculative sources, so that the orthodox historian thus becomes the supporter of the philosophic historian. Instances range from the trivial to the substantial. At the most trivial level Smith’s faults represent merely different standards of transcription between the eighteenth century and the present day. At times he seems to quote from memory, as when his quotations are not quite verbatim, or when he attributes a view to a source which it does not quite support, as for example, in his use of the works of Juan and Ulloa and of Frézier to support his condemnation of the mining of precious metals in the New World (I.xi.c.26–8). More serious still, in his use of statutes Smith falls into the error, not unique among historians, of failing to distinguish between the intention of the statute and the manner and extent of its implementation. The error is surprising in Smith’s case, because his experience at least after his appointment as Commissioner of Customs in 1778, enabled him to observe the gulf which could be fixed between intention and implementation in the case of some statutes, as in various attempts to suppress smuggling, and even more important because he himself sometimes provided the material for drawing such a distinction, as in his discussion of the laws relating to apprenticeship. A more serious example is his discussion of the settlement provisions of the poor law. In both cases Smith objected because of interference with the liberty he considered essential for the effective allocation of resources (above, 37).

  After castigating the generally restrictive effect of the Statute of Apprentices Smith proceeded to recognize the limitations on its application: to market towns and not in the country (I.x.c.8); to those trades which were established when the Act was passed and not to those which appeared subsequently, excluding—on Smith’s own admission—‘the manufactures of Manchester, Birmingham and Wolverhampton’, or at least ‘many of them’ (I.x.c.9); and finally, not to soldiers and sea–men who, ‘when discharged from the king’s service, are at liberty to exercise any trade, within any town or place of Great Britain or Ireland’ (IV.ii.42).

  Smith’s failure to make adequate allowance for the qualifications to the law of settlement is more serious. Smith objected to the legal restraints imposed on the right to obtain a settlement in a parish, with its entitlement to poor relief, as part of his general objection to artificial restraints on the free mobility of labour. He made his objection forcefully:

  There is scarce a poor man in England of forty years of age . . . who has not in some part of his life felt himself most cruelly oppressed by this ill–contrived law of settlements.

  (I.x.c.59)

  The reasons had been as sweepingly advanced in the previous paragraph:

  . . . in England, where it is often more difficult for a poor man to pass the artificial boundary of a parish, than an arm of the sea or a ridge of high mountains, natural boundaries which sometimes separate very distinctly different rates of wages in other countries.

  (I.x.c.58)

  In addition Smith contrasted conditions in Scotland with those in England, alleging that in England the law of settlement ensured that ‘The scarcity of hands in one parish . . . cannot always be relieved by their super–abundance in another, as it is constantly in Scotland’ (I.x.c.58). Once again Smith himself provided qualifications which should have led to the enunciation of his proposition in more moderate terms. He recognized the major mitigation of the restraints on the mobility of labour which followed the introduction of certificates, whereby a parish accepted liability for a potential pauper, though he promptly cast doubt on the effectiveness of the measure by commenting rather cynically, after quoting from a passage in Richard Burn’s Justice of the Peace, that ‘certificates ought always to be required by the parish where any poor man comes to reside, and that they ought very seldom to be granted by that which he proposes to leave’ (I.x.c.56). Smith also provided a general explanation of differences of wage rates between Scotland and England; one dependent not on their different laws of settlement but on differences between their rates of development and between the levels of subsistence in the two countries (I.viii.33–4).

  Other evidence reinforces the doubts Smith raises himself. Removals of potential paupers in England were probably less frequent than he implies, otherwise it is difficult to understand how the new developing areas ever obtained the labour force they required; in Scotland paupers were sometimes forcefully removed, though less frequently than in England. The issue was one of contemporary importance, and could have been investigated by a detailed examination of parochial administration, but of such investigation there is no evidence in the WN, so that in these matters Smith did not have knowledge comparable to that which he had about customs procedure, even before his appointment as a commissioner, and which enabled him to be more critical of evidence in that field. In his discussion of both the laws of apprenticeship and settlement Smith provides evidence which damages his own case against the restrictive legislation, and provides indications that investigations which might have been undertaken to confirm his case or otherwise were not carried out. The general principles, the opposition to restrictions damaging to the free allocation of resources, were held so strongly that there seemed no case to answer.

  Criticism of Smith’s use of sources becomes truly damaging only if he read into a source more serious evidence in support of a proposition than he was entitled to do. Even that criticism must not be pushed too far. All historians must choose the facts they judge relevant to their argument, and so their discussion is forced in one direction or another. Hence a significant distinction between the approaches of Smith and of orthodox historians can be drawn only if Smith’s choice of evidence strayed beyond the limits set by human frailty in determining degrees of relevance towards a demonstrable distortion of historical evidence, whether deliberate or not. Then, even if Smith’s use of his sources meets the requirements of the most refined critical apparatus of textual criticism, he would stand condemned by orthodox historians for his unacceptable choice of evidence.

  Any such distinction, or even gulf, between the approaches of Smith and of orthodox historians appears only when Smith writes as a speculative or philosophical as well as an orthodox historian, and so a fundamental issue in any appreciation of the WN lies in determining how Smith deals with any tensions which emerge between the two approaches. Each strand of his historical reasoning, the orthodox and the speculative, is a logical entity, and each, if examined and judged by its own standards, is internally consistent. Problems emerge only when attempts are made to integrate the two in order to eliminate the tensions which seem to emerge between them. Smith does not recognize the tensions, he was probably unaware of them, because his grand design of a comprehensive system dominates every other approach. Yet tension between the two approaches appears at central parts of his analysis, most significantly in Book III, where the historical evidence is, of course, embedded at the centre of the exposition, not merely providing a peripheral part of the reasoning. The philosophical historian states unequivocally the course of the ‘natural progress of opulence’:

  According to the natural course of things, therefore, the greater part of the capital of every growing society is, first, directed to agriculture, afterwards to manufactures, and last of all to foreign commerce. This order of things is so very natural, that in every society that had any territory, it has always, I believe, been in some degree observed.

  (III.i.8)

  In the next paragraph the orthodox historian upsets ‘the natural progress’:

  though this natural order of things must have taken place in some degree in every such society, it has, in all the modern states of Europe, been, in many respects, entirely inverted. The foreign commerce of some of their cities has introduced all their finer manufactures, or such as were fit for distant sale; and manufactures and foreign commerce together, have given birth to the principal improvements of agriculture.

  (III.i.9)

  The last sentence of the chapter provides both an explanation and an accusation:

  The manners and customs which the nature of their original government introduced, and which remained after that government was greatly altered, necessarily forced them into this unnatural and retrograde order.

  (III.i.9)

  The three chapters which follow, to make up the shortest Book in the WN, then proceed to expound an orthodox historical progress of opulence in a way which differs from that outlined in ‘the natural progress’, of how, for example in III.iv, the commerce of the towns contributed to the improvement of the country.

  This distinction between the speculative historical progress of opulence and the orthodox historical progress is the prime example of the tensions involved in the use of the WN as a historical source. Yet allegations of tension, of an uneasy relationship and even of contradictions between the two strands of thought, are evident only when Smith is judged by standards, and by a methodology, which he would not have accepted. Smith’s objective was to delineate an ideal account of historical evolution, which did not need to conform to any actual historical situation, so historical evidence, while playing a central part in his thought, was supplementary evidence of secondary importance. If historical facts indicated a divergence from the ideal explanation, then Smith felt obliged to offer explanations of the divergence. He worked from the system to the facts not from the facts to the system, and in that context his protestation that he had ‘no great faith in political arithmetic’ is significant. If the historian or the political arithmetician demonstrated the divergence from the ideal that, for instance, the progress of opulence was from the town to the country and not the reverse, the interesting problem then lay in determining the reasons for the divergence—in the present example it lay in unwise and undesirable intervention from the government. H. T. Buckle, though given to overstating his case, made a vital point, and in a lively style:

  Adam Smith . . .very properly rejected [statistical facts] as the basis of his science, and merely used them by way of illustration, when he could select what he liked. The same remark applies to other facts which he drew from the history of trade, and, indeed, from the general history of society. All of these are essentially subsequent to the argument. They make the argument more clear, but not more certain. For, it is no exaggeration to say, that, if all the commercial and historical facts in the Wealth of Nations were false, the book would still remain, and its conclusions would hold equally good, though they would be less attractive.35

  Any tension between the speculative, or systematic, and the orthodox strands of Smith’s thought is potentially even more misleading when the systematic thought is contrasted with, or used to illuminate aspects of contemporary policy. Then Smith’s comments on the happenings of his time in the eighteenth century may be so coloured by his speculative approach that his accounts and views may have to be treated with some reserve and not used as reliable source material for historical studies of the period.

  It was suggested earlier that the conclusion of greatest practical significance in Smith’s analysis for the eighteenth century lay in his ordering of the productive use of capital, as in II.v.19: first, in agriculture; then in manufactures; last in ‘the trade of exportation’. In the subsequent evaluation of the wholesale trade, the very practical conclusion was stated unequivocally:

  . . . the great object of the political oeconomy of every country, is to encrease the riches and power of that country. It ought, therefore, to give no preference nor superior encouragement to the foreign trade of consumption above the home–trade, nor to the carrying trade above either of the other two.

  (II.v.31)

  Just as Smith’s orthodox historical work sometimes qualified the use that may be made of his speculative history, so his orthodox empirical studies cast doubt on some of the recommendations on contemporary policy derived directly from his analytical system. Examples can be given at both ends of his proposition concerning the desirable deployment of resources, from his comment on agriculture and on the colonial trade.

  ‘In proportion as a greater share of [capital] is employed in agriculture, the greater will be the quantity of productive labour which it puts into motion within the country’. (II.v.19.) It was suggested above (p. 45) that the prospects for economic growth in Britain in the eighteenth century were greatest in agriculture, and Smith provides empirical evidence of the progress already made in that field in his own day and of further possible lines of progress, as, for example, in an accurate and perceptive account of the expansion of the Scottish cattle trade (I.xi.l.2–3). But another part of Smith’s system, and the empirical content he gave to its operation in agriculture, casts doubt on the pre–eminence given to agriculture in economic progress. He asserts from empirical evidence that the division of labour, the great agent of change, is least applicable in agriculture (I.i.4). Once again the different strands of the argument are logically valid, but the relationship between the two is uneasy and unclear, and so too is the use which may be made of the evidence as reflecting economic conditions in the eighteenth century.

  Smith’s treatment of the colonial trade is even more significant, because it looms large in the WN and in contemporary discussion. Given his general analysis it is not surprising that Smith condemns the tobacco trade as an example of how undesirable government intervention had turned trade ‘from a direction in which it would have maintained a greater quantity of productive labour, into one, in which it can maintain a much smaller quantity’ and had ‘rendered the whole state of that industry and commerce more precarious and less secure, than if their produce had been accommodated to a greater variety of markets’. (IV.vii.c.46 and 40.) It has already been suggested (p. 46) that Smith’s account of the carrying trade, both of its dependence on current commercial policy and of its effect on the domestic economy, would have been recognized by his contemporaries as a realistic survey of the conditions of the time. The growth of re–exports, and the tobacco trade’s domination, especially in Glasgow, owed much to the Navigation Acts, and the effect on the domestic economy was so limited that it is even possible to suggest that there existed two separate economies, each with its rate and extent of growth determined by different factors. But, once again, the WN itself provides the qualifications to the practical conclusion derived from the systematic analysis.

  To begin with, it is not clear that commercial legislation was the critical cause of the growth of the colonial trade in general, and the tobacco trade in particular. ‘There are no colonies of which the progress has been more rapid than that of the English in North America’ (IV.vii.b.15), because ‘Plenty of good land, and liberty to manage their own affairs their own way, seem to be the two great causes of the prosperity of all new colonies’ (IV.vii.b.16). Even the exact influence of the monopoly is unclear: it ‘raises the rate of mercantile profit, and therefore augments somewhat the gains of our merchants’, but it also ‘hinders the sum of profit from rising so high as it otherwise would do’ (IV.vii.c.59). To determine the overall effect of the monopolistic restrictions, Smith is admitting in effect the necessity of a nice calculation of gain and loss. In the long–run even more necessary for that purpose is an evaluation of the use to which any profit is put: a smaller profit in the hands of those who use it in ways deemed appropriate may promote economic growth more rapidly than a larger profit in the hands of those who use it differently. Of that problem Smith was aware:

  If the prodigality of some was not compensated by the frugality of others, the conduct of every prodigal, by feeding the idle with the bread of the industrious, tends not only to beggar himself, but to impoverish his country.

  (II.iii.20)

  Smith’s distinction between the prodigal and the frugal man raises immense difficulties for any attempt to use his systematic analysis as a final commentary on the effect of the colonial trade. The distinction can be highlighted in Smith’s own words in II.iii:

  The proportion between capital and revenue . . . seems every where to regulate the proportion between industry and idleness. Wherever capital predominates, industry prevails: wherever revenue, idleness.

  (13)

  Capitals are increased by parsimony, and diminished by prodigality and misconduct.

  (14)

  Parsimony, and not industry, is the immediate cause of the increase of capital. Industry, indeed, provides the subject which parsimony accumulates. But whatever industry might acquire, if parsimony did not save and store up, the capital would never be the greater.

  (16)

  Hence, whatever the limitations, derived from Smith’s systematic analysis, on the beneficial effects of the carrying trade, the colonial trade might still have made a major contribution to economic growth if the merchants were parsimonious and not prodigal, particularly if they then diverted their capital into agricultural enterprises at home. Smith recognized in general terms what was happening. ‘Merchants are commonly ambitious of becoming country gentlemen, and when they do, they are generally the best of all improvers’ (III.iv.3), certainly better than the great proprietors (III.ii.7). The experience of the eighteenth century confirms this aspect of Smith’s discussion. Parsimony among the merchants, including colonial merchants, and their desire to become landed gentlemen, provided the capital which Smith recognized as essential for the exploitation of the agricultural resources of Scotland itself. The undesirability of concentration on the carrying trade which Smith’s intellectual analysis demonstrated, was evidently much less in practice when a full study is made, and, once again as in the discussion of agriculture, for reasons which are embedded in the WN. The reasons are not stressed, because to do so would have required some qualification to conclusions derived from the central analysis of the desirable distribution of capital and to some of the allegedly harmful effects of the Navigation Acts.

  Smith’s historical writing has practical implications in the use of the WN. The historical writing is meaningful only if interpreted as part of the intellectual system which the historical material was used to illustrate and support. Similarly, Smith’s discussion of contemporary problems and events, which can easily be assumed to be an example of unbiased reporting, must also be integrated into his entire system. The belief in the natural progress of opulence, almost in its inevitability, is so strong throughout the WN that, when dealing with a contemporary problem, Smith’s main objective is to isolate those barriers which lay in the path of natural progress as he saw it, and to advocate their speedy removal. Hence on contemporary issues his writing verges on propaganda, he uses evidence in ways which are not wholly convincing to those not committed to his system, and he presses interpretations of contemporary events to more extreme conclusions than may well be warranted.

  The defects of Smith’s emphasis must not be stressed unduly, though they may seem to justify the suggestion that he was never noted for his consistency. Paradoxically the inconsistency was often consistent, because it rarely damaged the central analysis and was indeed usually introduced as a means of support for it. Nor can Smith easily be accused of inconsistency in the transfer of his analysis to policy, so long as his practical recommendations were confined to a general advocacy of the desirability of eliminating government intervention from many, if not from all aspects of economic life. The inconsistencies appear only in the detail. These are defects of greater consequence to those who read the WN today than to those who read the WN when it was first published. Then the analysis, both systematic and institutional, was largely applicable in Britain, and was a major cause of the work’s popularity; it was excellent political propaganda and such stretching of empirical evidence as it contained was not such as could discredit the whole. The problem is for those readers of later generations who seek to use the WN as a source book of contemporary comment.

  The Text and Apparatus

  Since WN is a work of some magnitude and complexity, yet one inadequately described in the standard bibliographical references, it may be appropriate to define the various editions examined,1 to indicate the circumstances of printing and issue,2 and then to specify the relation of each edition to the present text.

  1] 4° 1st edition. Published 9 March 1776 at £1.16.0 in blue–grey or marbled boards.

  Vol. i: A⁴ a² B–L⁴ M⁴(± M3) N–P⁴ Q⁴(± Q1) R–T⁴ U⁴(± U3) X–2Y⁴ 2Z⁴(± 2Z3) 3A⁴(± 3A4) 3B–3N⁴ 3O⁴(± 3O4) 3P–3T⁴. Pp. i title, ii advt for TMS 4th edn., iii–xi contents, xii blank. 12–510 text, 511–512 blank. Vol. ii: A² B–C⁴ D⁴(± D1) E–3Y⁴ 3Z⁴ (± 3Z4) 4A⁴ 4B⁴ (– 4B1.2 + 4B1.2) 4C⁴(± 4C2.3) 4D–4E⁴ 4F². Pp. i half–title, iii title, iv errata, 12–587 text, 588 advts. The substitute leaves, six in the first volume and six in the second, have been noted only in their cancelled state.3

  The original edition, the first title of which serves as a frontispiece to this volume, properly serves as copy–text: the printing closest to original manuscript and thus ordinarily preserving in its ‘accidentals’, or spelling and punctuation, the author’s several idiosyncracies. Nonetheless, since the edition was printed not directly from the author’s original script but, apparently like all his work, from a copy prepared by an amanuensis,4 some of its peculiarities may be attributed to another hand and therefore discounted whenever the third edition, closely attended by the author, offers a less ambiguous reading.

  2] 4° 2d edition. Published 28 February 1778 at £1.16.0 in boards.

  Vol. i: A–G⁴ H⁴(± H4) I–2D⁴ 2E⁴(± 2E2.3) 2F–2L⁴ 2M⁴(± 2M2.3) 2N–3S⁴ 3T⁴(– 3T4). Pp. i title, iii–vii contents, viii advt for TMS 4th edn. and errata, 12–510 text. Vol. ii: A⁴ B–4E⁴ 4F⁴(– F4). Pp. i half–title, iii title, v–viii contents, 12–589 text, 590 blank. In Volume i the Texas copy still contains original leaf H4, first of the five cancelled in other specimens, but this is invariant from the cancellans.5

  Strahan printing ledger: (Nov. 1777) 141½ sheets, 500 copies, @ 16s. = £113.4.0. Extra Corrections £4. This printing was done, it will be observed, three months before issue.

  The second edition exhibits a number of alterations large and small, some providing new information, some correcting matters of fact, some perfecting the idiom, and a large number now documenting references in footnotes. All these substantive changes are incorporated in the text excepting only those further amended in the third edition.

  2A] 4° ‘Additions and Corrections.’ Published 20 November 1784 at 2s. in blue–grey boards, ‘to accommodate the purchasers of the former editions’.

  Issue: B–L⁴. Pp. 12–79 text, 80 blank.

  Strahan ledger: (Oct. 1784) 10 sheets, 500 copies, @ 16s. = £8.

  As the collation would indicate, this is a very considerable supplement, representing in thirteen sections some 24,000 words. The ‘Additions’ were undertaken several years before when Smith first proposed a separate printing and his publisher, Thomas Cadell, agreed subject to a proviso—which could hardly be enforced—that the issue be sold only to those who had purchased the earlier editions.6 Though many ‘Corrections’ doubtless were then and thereafter also entered in Smith’s copy of the Second Edition, and from the caption title would appear to be conveyed as well in this separate issue, a goodly number of lesser consequence could be accommodated expediently only in the edition next described.

  3] 8° 3d edition. Published simultaneously with 2A 20 November 1784 at 18s. in boards or one guinea bound.

  Vol. i: A⁴ B–2I⁸ 2K². Pp. i title, iii Advertisement, iv errata, v vi–viii contents, 12–499 text, 500 blank. Vol. ii: π² a² B–2K⁸ 2L⁶. Pp. 1–2 blank, i title, iii iv–vi contents, 12–518 text, 519–523 Appendix, 524 blank. Vol. iii: π² a² B–2K⁸ 2L². Pp. 1–2 blank, i title, iii iv–v contents, vi blank, 12–465 text, 466 blank, 467–515 index, 516 advt for TMS, 4th edn.7

  Strahan ledger: (Oct. 1784) 97½ sheets, 1000 copies, @ £1.7.0 = £131.12.6. Extra for Index £3.5.0. Tables and Corrections £4.19.0.

  In view of the author’s later statement (see section 4 below) this issue must be accepted as representing his final version, one which incorporates with some further amendments all the additions issued in 2A, further revises the text and, most significantly, supplies a lengthy index.8 Moreover, as there is clear evidence that it was read several times in proof, with close attention to the pointing,9 the third edition can be regarded as supervening even the first in many of its formal aspects, and thus now serves as printers’ copy.

  4] 8° 4th edition. Published 6 November 1786 at 18s. in boards.

  Vol. i: A⁴ B–2I⁸ 2K². Pp. i title, iii Advt to 3d Ed., iv Advt to 4th Ed., v vi–viii contents, 12–499 text, 500 errata. Vol. ii: π² a² B–2K⁸ 2L⁶. Pp. 1–2 blank, i title, iii iv–vi contents, 12–518 text, 519–523 Appendix, 524 errata. Vol. iii: A⁴ B–2K⁸ 2L². Pp. 1–2 blank, i title, iii iv–v contents, vi errata, 12–465 text, 466 blank, 467–515 index, 516 advt for TMS, 4th edn.10

  Strahan ledger: (Oct. 1786) 98 sheets, 1250 copies, @ £1.11.0 = £151.18.0. Extra for Tables and Index £4.2.0.

  If we accept Smith’s own assurance, in the new ‘Advertisement’, that there are indeed ‘no alterations of any kind’ in this edition, then the ‘few trifling alterations’ which Cannan here observed, and accepted in his own text, may be dismissed along with the others which he rightly perceived to be ‘misreadings or unauthorized corrections of the printers’.11 That there are no fewer than fourteen errata noted, some in each of the three volumes, attests however to the printer’s continuing concern, a concern evidenced as late as the posthumous seventh edition of 1793, where F2 in the first volume is a cancel.

  5] 8° 5th edition. Published 1789, possibly also, as for 4, at 18s. in boards.

  Vol. i: A⁶ B–2I⁸ 2K². Pp. 1–2 blank, i title, iii–iv advt to 3d Edn., v–vi Advt to 4th Ed., vii viii–x contents, 12–499 text, 500 blank. Vol. ii: π² a² B–2K⁸ 2L⁶. Pp. 1–2 blank, i title, iii iv–vi contents, 12–518 text, 519–523 Appendix, 524 blank. Vol. iii: A⁴ B–2K⁸ 2L². Pp. 1–2 blank, i title, iii iv–v contents, vi blank, 12–465 text, 466 blank, 467–515 index, 516 advt for TMS 4th edn.12

  Strahan ledger: (Feb. 1789) 98 sheets, 1500 copies, @ £1.14.0 = £166.12.0. Extra for Tables and Index £4.6.0.

  From this edition the present text adopts one obvious correction only, the reading ‘Hope’ in the ‘Advertisement to the Fourth Edition’, but ordinarily, as with the Fourth, refuses any admittance to numerous adjustments (as well as many misprints) now again representing, apparently, only the work of the printer. It is certainly illogical to follow this text, as does Cannan, simply because it is ‘the last published in Smith’s Lifetime’.13

  6] 8° 6th edition. Published 1791, possibly also, as for 4, at 18s. in boards.

  Description as for 5, except that final advt. is now for TMS 6th edn.14 Strahan ledger: (Dec. 1791) 98 sheets, 2000 copies, @ £2 = £196. Extra for Tables and Index £4.6.0.

  Like the two preceding, this the first posthumous edition has been collated, and its variants also recorded below the text, as a matter of historical record. The account extends thus far to meet, and in this case to dismiss, any possibility that the author left some final revisions incorporated in the work only after his death.15

  Once the order and validity of readings was assessed, according to the rationale set out above, the preparation of this text then followed a set procedure. First at Texas the two available specimens of 1 (the copy–text) were read against all the later editions, including a photocopy of British Library 2A, and every variant entered in a photocopy of Texas 3 (printer’s copy), the substantive readings in one column, the accidentals in a second, and end–line hyphenations in a third. This record was then verified against the copies at Glasgow and printer’s copy marked for the press. Thereafter the proofs were read independently by all three editors against 3, any discrepancies again resolved at Glasgow, and revised proofs thereafter checked against the final record. As now prepared this edition contains a number of features all described below.

  For the text proper the paragraphs within each section or part have been numbered both to facilitate cross reference in the annotations and to simplify later citation from this edition.16 Within the text stars and daggers are the author’s own devices for pointing a note, superscript figures the numbers entered by the present editors to signal their further commentary. Superscript letters, denoting substantive textual variants, are of two orders, e.g.:

  shall a only	single indicator centered between two words, signifying, as noted below text, an additional reading once inserted at this point
  bhis capitalb	double indicators abutting the word or words in question, both delimiting, as noted below text, a passage elsewhere in variant form or omitted.

  Differences in spelling (ancient/antient, public/publick, &c) remain unaltered as representative of the variable orthography Smith himself continually allowed on the several occasions he revised his work. In general all accidentals, if necessarily introduced from some edition other than 3, or in a few instances by the present editors, are listed in Schedule A; accidentals not admitted, along with misprinted substantives, are recorded in B; line–end hyphenation is registered in C. At the beginning of each original page in 3 the number of that page is entered in brackets.

  Below the text page, as now printed, three kinds of data may appear. First are Smith’s own references (together with appropriate indicators if these originally occur in some edition after the first or if they are later amended) followed immediately, within square brackets, by any extension of the reference the present editors consider necessary. Second are the substantive textual variants, all entered in a manner indicating the kind or extent of variation:

  anot 2A	‘not’ inserted in 2A ‘Additions and Corrections’ but not present in 1–2, deleted in 3–6, and therefore excluded from this text.
  b–bom. 4 <corrected 4e–6>	passage first omitted in 4 but immediately corrected in 4 errata list and retained thereafter
  c–com. 1	passage entered in all editions except 1
  d–din this 1–2	words in 1–2 differing from phrase adopted in 3–6
  e–e2–6 [includes the whole of this paragraph]	cautionary note for an extensive addition, where insertions fandg or other amendmentsh–h andi–i may intrude

  Thirdly, below text page, as signalled by superscript numerals in the text, come the editors’ own commentary. These number references are sequential only through each part.

  Following the work, and the several editorial schedules, there are three indexes, each of which bears its own heading as to purpose and utility.

  As an essential part of their own editorial work, the text and its variants have also been checked and scrutinized by the General Editors.

  W.B.T.

  ADVERTISEMENT^a

  The first Edition of the following Work was printed in the end of the year 1775, and in the beginning of the year 1776. Through the greater part of the Book, therefore, whenever the present state of things is mentioned, it is to be understood of the state they were in, either about that time, or at some earlier period, during the time I was employed in writing the Book. To ^bthis^b third Edition, however, I have made several additions, particularly to the chapter upon Drawbacks, and to that upon Bounties; likewise a new chapter entitled, The Conclusion of the Mercantile System; and a new article to the chapter upon the expences of the sovereign. In all these additions, the present state of things means always the state in which they were during the year 1783 and the beginning of the ^cpresent^c year 1784.1

  ADVERTISEMENT to the FOURTH EDITION

  In this fourth Edition I have made no alterations of any kind. I now, however, find myself at liberty to acknowledge my very great obligations to Mr. Henry ^aHope^a of Amsterdam. To that Gentleman I owe the most distinct, as well as liberal information, concerning a very interesting and important subject, the Bank of Amsterdam; of which no printed account had ever appeared to me satisfactory, or even intelligible.1 The name of that Gentleman is so well known in Europe, the information which comes from him must do so much honour to whoever has been favoured with it, and my vanity is so much interested in making this acknowledgement, that I can no longer refuse myself the pleasure of prefixing this Advertisement to this new Edition of my Book.

  INTRODUCTION AND PLAN OF THE WORK

  1The annual labour of every nation is the fund which originally supplies it with all the necessaries and conveniences of life which it annually consumes, and which consist always, either in the immediate produce of that labour, or in what is purchased with that produce from other nations.

  2According therefore, as this produce, or what is purchased with it, bears a greater or smaller proportion to the number of those who are to consume it, the nation will be better or worse supplied with all the necessaries and conveniences for which it has occasion.

  3But this proportion must in every nation be regulated by two different circumstances; first, by the skill, dexterity, and judgment with which ^aits^a labour is generally applied^b ; and, secondly, by the proportion between the number of those who are employed in useful labour, and that of those who are not so employed. Whatever be the soil, climate, or extent of territory of any particular nation, the abundance or scantiness of its annual supply must, in that particular situation, depend upon those two circumstances.

  4The abundance or scantiness of this supply too seems to depend more upon the former of those two circumstances than upon the latter. Among the savage nations of hunters and fishers, every individual who is able to work, is more or less employed in useful labour, and endeavours to provide, as well as he can, the necessaries and conveniencies of life, for himself, ^cor^c such of his family or tribe as are either too old, or too young, or too infirm to go a hunting and fishing. Such nations, however, are so miserably poor, that, from mere want, they are frequently reduced, or, at least, think themselves reduced, to the necessity sometimes of directly destroying, and sometimes of abandoning their infants, their old people, and those afflicted with lingering diseases, to perish with hunger, or to be devoured by wild beasts. Among civilized and thriving nations, on the contrary, though a great number of people do not labour at all, many of whom consume the produce of ten times, frequently of a hundred times more labour than the greater part of those who work; yet the produce of the whole labour of the society is so great, that all are often abundantly supplied, and a workman, even of the lowest and poorest order, if he is frugal and industrious, may enjoy a greater share of the necessaries and conveniences of life than it is possible for any savage to acquire.

  5The causes of this improvement, in the productive powers of labour, and the order, according to which its produce is naturally distributed among the different ranks and conditions of men in the society, make the subject of the First Book of this Inquiry.

  6Whatever be the actual state of the skill, dexterity, and judgment with which labour is applied in any nation, the abundance or scantiness of its annual supply must depend, during the continuance of that state, upon the proportion between the number of those who are annually employed in useful labour, and that of those who are not so employed. The number of useful and productive labourers, it will hereafter appear, is every where in proportion to the quantity of capital stock which is employed in setting them to work, and to the particular way in which it is so employed. The Second Book, therefore, treats of the nature of capital stock, of the manner in which it is gradually accumulated, and of the different quantities of labour which it puts into motion, according to the different ways in which it is employed.

  7Nations tolerably well advanced as to skill, dexterity, and judgment, in the application of labour, have followed very different plans in the general conduct or direction of it; and those plans have not all been equally favourable to the greatness of its produce. The policy of some nations has given extraordinary encouragement to the industry of the country; that of others to the industry of towns. Scarce any nation has dealt equally and impartially with every sort of industry. Since the downfal of the Roman empire, the policy of Europe has been more favourable to arts, manufactures, and commerce, the industry of towns; than to agriculture, the industry of the country. The circumstances which seem to have introduced and established this policy are explained in the Third Book.

  8Though those different plans were, perhaps, first introduced by the private interests and prejudices of particular orders of men, without any regard to, or foresight of, their consequences upon the general welfare of the society; yet they have given occasion to very different theories of political œconomy; of which some magnify the importance of that industry which is carried on in towns, others of that which is carried on in the country. Those theories have had a considerable influence, not only upon the opinions of men of learning, but upon the public conduct of princes and sovereign states. I have endeavoured, in the Fourth Book, to explain, as fully and distinctly as I can, those different theories, and the principal effects which they have produced in different ages and nations.

  9^dTo explain^d in what has consisted the revenue of the great body of the people, or what ^ehas been^e the nature of those funds which, in different ages and nations, have supplied their annual consumption, is ^fthe object of^f these Four first Books. The Fifth and last Book treats of the revenue of the sovereign, or commonwealth. In this Book I have endeavoured to show; first, what are the necessary expences of the sovereign, or commonwealth; which of those expences ought to be defrayed by the general contribution of the whole society; and which of them, by that of some particular part only, or of some particular members of ^git^g ; secondly, what are the different methods in which the whole society may be made to contribute towards defraying the expences incumbent on the whole society, and what are the principal advantages and inconveniencies of each of those methods: and, thirdly and lastly, what are the reasons and causes which have induced almost all modern governments to mortgage some part of this revenue, or to contract debts, and what have been the effects of those debts upon the real wealth, the annual produce of the land and labour of the society.

  BOOK I

  Of the Causes of Improvement in the productive Powers of Labour, and of the Order according to which its Produce is naturally distributed among the different Ranks of the People

  CHAPTER I

  Of the Division of Labour

  1The greatest ^aimprovement^a in the productive powers of labour, and the greater part of the skill, dexterity, and judgment with which it is any where directed, or applied, seem to have been the effects of the division of labour.1

  2The effects of the division of labour, in the general business of society, will be more easily understood, by considering in what manner it operates in some particular manufactures. It is commonly supposed to be carried furthest in some very trifling ones; not perhaps that it really is carried further in them than in others of more importance: but in those trifling manufactures which are destined to supply the small wants of but a small number of people, the whole number of workmen must necessarily be small; and those employed in every different branch of the work can often be collected into the same workhouse, and placed at once under the view of the spectator. In those great manufactures, on the contrary, which are destined to supply the great wants of the great body of the people, every different branch of the work employs so great a number of workmen, that it is impossible to collect them all into the same workhouse. We can seldom see more, at one time, than those employed in one single branch. Though ^bin such manufactures,^b therefore, the work may really be divided into a much greater number of parts, than in those of a more trifling nature, the division is not near so obvious, and has accordingly been much less observed.

  3To take an example, therefore, from a very trifling manufacture; but one in which the division of labour has been very often taken notice of, the trade of the pin–maker; a workman not educated to this business (which the division of labour has rendered a distinct trade), nor acquainted with the use of the machinery employed in it (to the invention of which the same division of labour has probably given occasion), could scarce, perhaps, with his utmost industry, make one pin in a day, and certainly could not make twenty.2 But in the way in which this business is now carried on, not only the whole work is a peculiar trade, but it is divided into a number of branches, of which the greater part are likewise peculiar trades. One man draws out the wire, another straights it, a third cuts it, a fourth points it, a fifth grinds it at the top for receiving the head; to make the head requires two or three distinct operations; to put it on, is a peculiar business, to whiten the pins is another; it is even a trade by itself to put them into the paper; and the important business of making a pin is, in this manner, divided into about eighteen distinct operations,3 which, in some manufactories, are all performed by distinct hands, though in others the same man will sometimes perform two or three of them. I have seen a small manufactory of this kind where ten men only were employed, and where some of them consequently performed two or three distinct operations. But though they were very poor, and therefore but indifferently accommodated with the necessary machinery, they could, when they exerted themselves, make among them about twelve pounds of pins in a day.4 There are in a pound upwards of four thousand pins of a middling size. Those ten persons, therefore, could make among them upwards of forty–eight thousand pins in a day. Each person, therefore, making a tenth part of forty–eight thousand pins, might be considered as making four thousand eight hundred pins in a day. But if they had all wrought separately and independently, and without any of them having been educated to this peculiar business, they certainly could not each of them have made twenty, perhaps not one pin in a day; that is, certainly, not the two hundred and fortieth, perhaps not the four thousand eight hundredth part of what they are at present capable of performing, in consequence of a proper division and combination of their different operations.

  4In every other art and manufacture, the effects of the division of labour are similar to what they are in this very trifling one; though, in many of them, the labour can neither be so much subdivided, nor reduced to so great a simplicity of operation. The division of labour, however, so far as it can be introduced, occasions, in every art, a proportionable increase of the productive powers of labour. The separation of different trades and employments from one another, seems to have taken place, in consequence of this advantage. This separation too is generally carried furthest in those countries which enjoy the highest degree of industry and improvement; what is the work of one man, in a rude state of society, being generally that of several in an improved one. In every improved society, the farmer is generally nothing but a farmer; the manufacturer, nothing but a manufacturer.5 The labour too which is necessary to produce any one complete manufacture, is almost always divided among a great number of hands. How many different trades are employed in each branch of the linen and woollen manufactures, from the growers of the flax and the wool, to the bleachers and smoothers of the linen, or to the dyers and dressers of the cloth! The nature of agriculture, indeed, does not admit of so many subdivisions of labour, nor of so complete a separation of one business from another, as manufactures.6 It is impossible to separate so entirely, the business of the grazier from that of the corn–farmer, as the trade of the carpenter is commonly separated from that of the smith. The spinner is almost always a distinct person from the weaver; but the ploughman, the harrower, the sower of the seed, and the reaper of the corn, are often the same.7 The occasions for those different sorts of labour returning with the different seasons of the year, it is impossible that one man should be constantly employed in any one of them. This impossibility of making so complete and entire a separation of all the different branches of labour employed in agriculture, is perhaps the reason why the improvement of the productive powers of labour in this art, does not always keep pace with their improvement in manufactures. The most opulent nations, indeed, generally excel all their neighbours in agriculture as well as in manufactures; but they are commonly more distinguished by their superiority in the latter than in the former.8 Their lands are in general better cultivated, and having more labour and expence bestowed upon them, produce more, in proportion to the extent and natural fertility of the ground. But ^cthis^c superiority of produce is seldom much more than in proportion to the superiority of labour and expence. In agriculture, the labour of the rich country is not always much more productive than that of the poor; or, at least, it is never so much more productive, as it commonly is in manufactures. The corn of the rich country, therefore, will not always, in the same degree of goodness, come cheaper to market than that of the poor. The corn of Poland, in the same degree of goodness, is as cheap as that of France, notwithstanding the superior opulence and improvement of the latter country. The corn of France is, in the corn provinces, fully as good, and in most years nearly about the same price with the corn of England, though, in opulence and improvement, France is perhaps inferior to England. The ^dcorn–lands^d of England, however, are better cultivated than those of France, and the ^ecorn–lands^e of France are said to be much better cultivated than those of Poland. But though the poor country, notwithstanding the inferiority of its cultivation, can, in some measure, rival the rich in the cheapness and goodness of its corn, it can pretend to no such competition in its manufactures; at least if those manufactures suit the soil, climate, and situation of the rich country. The silks of France are better and cheaper than those of England, because the silk manufacture, ^fat least under the present high duties upon the importation of raw silk,^f does not ^gso well^g suit the climate of England ^has that of France.^h But the hard–ware and the coarse woollens of England are beyond all comparison superior to those of France, and much cheaper too in the same degree of goodness.9 In Poland there are said to be scarce any manufactures of any kind, a few of those coarser household manufactures excepted, without which no country can well subsist.

  5This great increase ⁱofⁱ the quantity of work, which, ^jin consequence of the division of labour,^j the same number of people are capable of performing, ^k is owing to three different circumstances; first, to the increase of dexterity in every particular workman; secondly, to the saving of the time which is commonly lost in passing from one species of work to another; and lastly, to the invention of a great number of machines which facilitate and abridge labour, and enable one man to do the work of many.10

  6First, the improvement of the dexterity of the workman necessarily increases the quantity of the work he can perform, and the division of labour, by reducing every man’s business to some one simple operation, and by making this operation the sole employment of his life, necessarily increases very much the dexterity of the workman. A common smith, who, though accustomed to handle the hammer, has never been used to make nails, if upon some particular occasion he is obliged to attempt it, will scarce, I am assured, be able to make above two or three hundred nails in a day, and those too very bad ones. A smith who has been accustomed to make nails, but whose sole or principal business has not been that of a nailer, can seldom with his utmost diligence make more than eight hundred or a thousand nails in a day. I have seen several boys under twenty years of age who had never exercised any other trade but that of making nails, and who, when they exerted themselves, could make, each of them, upwards of two thousand three hundred nails in a day. The making of a nail, however, is by no means one of the simplest operations. The same person blows the bellows, stirs or mends the fire as there is occasion, heats the iron, and forges every part of the nail: In forging the head too he is obliged to change his tools. The different operations into which the making of a pin, or of a metal button, is subdivided, are all of them much more simple, and the dexterity of the person, of whose life it has been the sole business to perform them, is usually much greater. The rapidity with which some of the operations of those manufactures are performed, exceeds what the human hand could, by those who had never seen them, be supposed capable of acquiring.11

  7Secondly, the advantage which is gained by saving the time commonly lost in passing from one sort of work to another, is much greater than we should at first view be apt to imagine it. It is impossible to pass very quickly from one kind of work to another, that is carried on in a different place, and with quite different tools. A country weaver, who cultivates a small farm, must lose a good deal of time in passing from his loom to the field, and from the field to his loom. When the two trades can be carried on in the same workhouse, the loss of time is no doubt much less. It is even in this case, however, very considerable. A man commonly saunters a little in turning his hand from one sort of employment to another. When he first begins the new work he is seldom very keen and hearty; his mind, as they say, does not go to it, and for some time he rather trifles than applies to good purpose.12 The habit of sauntering and of indolent careless application, which is naturally, or rather necessarily13 acquired by every country workman who is obliged to change his work and his tools every half hour, and to apply his hand in twenty different ways almost every day of his life; renders him almost always slothful and lazy, and incapable of any vigorous application even on the most pressing occasions. Independent, therefore, of his deficiency in point of dexterity, this cause alone must always reduce considerably the quantity of work which he is capable of performing.14

  8Thirdly, and lastly, every body must be sensible how much labour is facilitated and abridged by the application of proper machinery. It is unnecessary to give any example.15 I shall ^l only observe, ^mtherefore,^m that the invention of all those machines by which labour is so much facilitated and abridged, seems to have been originally owing to the division of labour. Men are much more likely to discover easier and readier methods of attaining any object, when the whole attention of their minds is directed towards that single object, than when it is dissipated among a great variety of things. But in consequence of the division of labour, the whole of every man’s attention comes naturally to be directed towards some one very simple object. It is naturally to be expected, therefore, that some one or other of those who are employed in each particular branch of labour should soon find out easier and readier methods of performing their own particular work, wherever the nature of it admits of such improvement.16 A great part of the machines ⁿmade use ofⁿ in those manufactures in which labour is most subdivided, were originally the inventions of common workmen, who, being each of them employed in some very simple operation, naturally turned their thoughts towards finding out easier and readier methods of performing it.17 Whoever has been much accustomed to visit such manufactures, must frequently have been shewn very pretty machines, which were the inventions of ^osuch^o workmen, in order to facilitate and quicken their own particular part of the work.18 In the first fire–engines,19 a boy was constantly employed to open and shut alternately the communication between the boiler and the cylinder, according as the piston either ascended or descended. One of those boys, who loved to play with his companions, observed that, by tying a string from the handle of the valve, which opened this communication, to another part of the machine, the valve would open and shut without his assistance, and leave him at liberty to divert himself with his play–fellows. One of the greatest improvements that has been made upon this machine, since it was first invented, was in this manner the discovery of a boy who wanted to save his own labour.20

  9All the improvements in machinery, however, have by no means been the inventions of those who had occasion to use the machines. Many improvements have been made by the ingenuity of the makers of the machines, when to make them became the business of a peculiar trade;21 and some by that of those who are called philosophers or men of speculation, whose trade it is, not to do any thing, but to observe every thing; and who, upon that account, are often capable of combining together the powers of the most distant and dissimilar objects.22 In the progress of society, philosophy or speculation becomes, like every other employment, the principal or sole trade and occupation of a particular class of citizens. Like every other employment too, it is subdivided into a great number of different branches, each of which affords occupation to a peculiar tribe or class of philosophers; and this subdivision of employment in philosophy, as well as in every other business, improves dexterity, and saves time. Each individual becomes more expert in his own peculiar branch, more work is done upon the whole, and the quantity of science is considerably increased by it.23

  10It is the great multiplication of the productions of all the different arts, in consequence of the division of labour, which occasions, in a well–governed society, that universal opulence which extends itself to the lowest ranks of the people.24 Every workman has a great quantity of his own work to dispose of beyond what he himself has occasion for; and every other workman being exactly in the same situation, he is enabled to exchange a great quantity of his own goods for a great quantity, or, what comes to the same thing, for the price of a great quantity of theirs. He supplies them abundantly with what they have occasion for, and they accommodate him as amply with what he has occasion for, and a general plenty diffuses itself through all the different ranks of the society.

  11Observe the accommodation of the most common artificer or daylabourer in a civilized and thriving country, and you will perceive that the number of people of whose industry a part, though but a small part, has been employed in procuring him this accommodation, exceeds all computation. The woollen coat, for example, which covers the daylabourer, as coarse and rough as it may appear, is the produce of the joint labour of a great multitude of workmen.25 The shepherd, the sorter of the wool, the wool–comber or carder, the dyer, the scribbler, the spinner, the weaver, the fuller, the dresser, with many others, must all join their different arts in order to complete even this homely production. How many merchants and carriers, besides, must have been employed in transporting the materials from some of those workmen to others who often live in a very distant part of the country! How much commerce and navigation in particular, how many ship–builders, sailors, sail–makers, rope–makers, must have been employed in order to bring together the different drugs made use of by the dyer, which often come from the remotest corners of the world! What a variety of labour too is necessary in order to produce the tools of the meanest of those workmen! To say nothing of such complicated machines as the ship of the sailor, the mill of the fuller, or even the loom of the weaver, let us consider only what a variety of labour is requisite in order to form that very simple machine, the shears with which the shepherd clips the wool.26 The miner, the builder of the furnace for smelting the ore, the feller of the timber, the burner of the charcoal to be made use of in the smelting–house, the brick–maker, the brick–layer, the workmen who attend the furnace, the mill–wright, the forger, the smith, must all of them join their different arts in order to produce them. Were we to examine, in the same manner, all the different parts of his dress and household furniture, the coarse linen shirt which he wears next his skin, the shoes which cover his feet, the bed which he lies on, and all the different parts which compose it, the kitchen–grate at which he prepares his victuals, the coals which he makes use of for that purpose, dug from the bowels of the earth, and brought to him perhaps by a long sea and a long land carriage, all the other utensils of his kitchen, all the furniture of his table, the knives and forks, the earthen or pewter plates upon which he serves up and divides his victuals, the different hands employed in preparing his bread and his beer, the glass window which lets in the heat and the light, and keeps out the wind and the rain, with all the knowledge and art requisite for preparing that beautiful and happy invention, without which these northern parts of the world could scarce have afforded a very comfortable habitation, together with the tools of all the different workmen employed in producing those different conveniencies; if we examine, I say, all these things, and consider what a variety of labour is employed about each of them, we shall be sensible that without the assistance and cooperation of many thousands, the very meanest person in a civilized country could not be provided, even according to, what we very falsely imagine, the easy and simple manner in which he is commonly accommodated.27 Compared, indeed, with the more extravagant luxury of the great, his accommodation must no doubt appear extremely simple and easy; and yet it may be true, perhaps, that the accommodation of an European prince does not always so much exceed that of an industrious and frugal peasant,28 as the accommodation of the latter exceeds that of many an African king, the absolute master of the lives and liberties of ten thousand naked savages.29

  CHAPTER II

  Of the Principle which gives occasion to the Division of Labour

  1This division of labour, from which so many advantages are derived, is not originally the effect of any human wisdom, which foresees and intends that general opulence to which it gives occasion.1 It is the necessary, though very slow and gradual consequence of a certain propensity in human nature which has in view no such extensive utility; the propensity to truck, barter, and exchange one thing for another.2

  2Whether this propensity be one of those original principles in human nature, of which no further account can be given; or whether, as seems more probable, it be the necessary consequence of the faculties of reason and speech, it belongs not to our present subject to enquire.3 It is common to all men, and to be found in no other race of animals, which seem to know neither this nor any other species of contracts. Two greyhounds, in running down the same hare, have sometimes the appearance of acting in some sort of concert. Each turns her towards his companion, or endeavours to intercept her when his companion turns her towards himself. This, however, is not the effect of any contract, but of the accidental concurrence of their passions in the same object at that particular time.4 Nobody ever saw a dog make a fair and deliberate exchange of one bone for another with another dog. Nobody ever saw one animal by its gestures and natural cries signify to another, this is mine, that yours; I am willing to give this for that. When an animal wants to obtain something either of a man or of another animal, it has no other means of persuasion but to gain the favour of those whose service it requires. A puppy fawns upon its dam, and a spaniel endeavours by a thousand attractions to engage the attention of its master who is at dinner, when it wants to be fed by him. Man sometimes uses the same arts with his brethren, and when he has no other means of engaging them to act according to his inclinations, endeavours by every servile and fawning attention to obtain their good will. He has not time, however, to do this upon every occasion. In civilized society he stands at all times in need of the co–operation and assistance of great multitudes, while his whole life is scarce sufficient to gain the friendship of a few persons. In almost every other race of animals each individual, when it is grown up to maturity, is intirely independent, and in its natural state has occasion for the assistance of no other living creature.5 But man has almost constant occasion for the help of his brethren, and it is in vain for him to expect it from their benevolence only.6 He will be more likely to prevail if he can interest their self–love in his favour, and shew them that it is for their own advantage to do for him what he requires of them. Whoever offers to another a bargain of any kind, proposes to do this. Give me that which I want, and you shall have this which you want, is the meaning of every such offer; and it is in this manner that we obtain from one another the far greater part of those good offices which we stand in need of. It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self–love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages.7 Nobody but a beggar chuses to depend chiefly upon the benevolence of his fellow–citizens. Even a beggar does not depend upon it entirely. The charity of well–disposed people, indeed, supplies him with the whole fund of his subsistence. But though this principle ultimately provides him with all the necessaries of life which he has occasion for, it neither does nor can provide him with them as he has occasion for them. The greater part of his occasional wants are supplied in the same manner as those of other people, by treaty, by barter, and by purchase. With the money which one man gives him he purchases food. The old cloaths which another bestows upon him he exchanges for other old cloaths which suit him better, or for lodging, or for food, or for money, with which he can buy either food, cloaths, or lodging, as he has occasion.

  3As it is by treaty, by barter, and by purchase, that we obtain from one another the greater part of those mutual good offices which we stand in need of, so it is this same trucking disposition which originally gives occasion to the division of labour. In a tribe of hunters or shepherds a particular person makes bows and arrows, for example, with more readiness and dexterity than any other. He frequently exchanges them for cattle or for venison with his companions; and he finds at last that he can in this manner get more cattle and venison, than if he himself went to the field to catch them. From a regard to his own interest, therefore, the making of bows and arrows grows to be his chief business, and he becomes a sort of armourer.8 Another excels in making the frames and covers of their little huts or moveable houses. He is accustomed to be of use in this way to his neighbours, who reward him in the same manner with cattle and with venison, till at last he finds it his interest to dedicate himself entirely to this employment, and to become a sort of house–carpenter. In the same manner a third becomes a smith or a brazier, a fourth a tanner or dresser of hides or skins, the principal part of the clothing of savages.9 And thus the certainty of being able to exchange all that surplus part of the produce of his own labour, which is over and above his own consumption, for such parts of the produce of other men’s labour as he may have occasion for, encourages every man to apply himself to a particular occupation, and to cultivate and bring to perfection whatever talent or genius he may possess for that particular species of business.10

  4The difference of natural talents in different men is, in reality, much less than we are aware of; and the very different genius which appears to distinguish men of different professions, when grown up to maturity, is not upon many occasions so much the cause, as the effect of the division of labour.11 The difference between the most dissimilar characters, between a philosopher and a common street porter, for example, seems to arise not so much from nature, as from habit, custom, and education.12 When they came into the world, and for the first six or eight years of their existence, they were^a, perhaps,^a very much alike, and neither their parents nor play–fellows could perceive any remarkable difference. About that age, or soon after, they come to be employed in very different occupations. The difference of talents comes then to be taken notice of, and widens by degrees, till at last the vanity of the philosopher is willing to acknowledge scarce any resemblance. But without the disposition to truck, barter, and exchange, every man must have procured to himself every necessary and conveniency of life which he wanted. All must have had the same duties to perform, and the same work to do, and there could have been no such difference of employment as could alone give occasion to any great difference of talents.13

  5As it is this disposition which forms that difference of talents, so remarkable among men of different professions, so it is this same disposition which renders that difference useful. Many tribes of animals acknowledged to be all of the same species, derive from nature a much more remarkable distinction of genius, than what, antecedent to custom and education, appears to take place among men. By nature a philosopher is not in genius and disposition half so different from a street porter, as a mastiff is from a greyhound, or a greyhound from a spaniel, or this last from a shepherd’s dog. Those different tribes of animals, however, though all of the same species, are of scarce any use to one another. The strength of the mastiff is not, in the least, supported either by the swiftness of the greyhound, or by the sagacity of the spaniel, or by the docility of the shepherd’s dog. The effects of those different geniuses and talents, for want of the power or disposition to barter and exchange, cannot be brought into a common stock, and do not in the least contribute to the better accommodation and conveniency of the species. Each animal is still obliged to support and defend itself, separately and independently, and derives no sort of advantage from that variety of talents with which nature has distinguished its fellows. Among men, on the contrary, the most dissimilar geniuses are of use to one another; the different produces of their respective talents, by the general disposition to truck, barter, and exchange, being brought, as it were, into a common stock, where every man may purchase whatever part of the produce of other men’s talents he has occasion for.14

  CHAPTER III

  That the Division of Labour is limited by the Extent of the Market1

  1As it is the power of exchanging that gives occasion to the division of labour, so the extent of this division must always be limited by the extent of that power, or, in other words, by the extent of the market.2 When the market is very small, no person can have any encouragement to dedicate himself entirely to one employment, for want of the power to exchange all that surplus part of the produce of his own labour, which is over and above his own consumption, for such parts of the produce of other men’s labour as he has occasion for.

  2There are some sorts of industry, even of the lowest kind, which can be carried on no where but in a great town. A porter, for example, can find employment and subsistence in no other place. A village is by much too narrow a sphere for him; even an ordinary market town is scarce large enough to afford him constant occupation. In the lone houses and very small villages which are scattered about in so desert a country as the Highlands of Scotland, every farmer must be butcher, baker and brewer for his own family.3 In such situations we can scarce expect to find even a smith, a carpenter, or a mason, within less than twenty miles of another of the same trade. The scattered families that live at eight or ten miles distance from the nearest of them, must learn to perform themselves a great number of little pieces of work, for which, in more populous countries, they would call in the assistance of those workmen.4 Country workmen are almost every where obliged to apply themselves to all the different branches of industry that have so much affinity to one another as to be employed about the same sort of materials.5 A country carpenter deals in every sort of work that is made of wood: a country smith in every sort of work that is made of iron. The former is not only a carpenter, but a joiner, a cabinet–maker, and even a carver in wood, as well as a wheel–wright, a plough–wright, a cart and waggon maker. The employments of the latter are still more various.6 It is impossible there should be such a trade as even that of a nailer in the remote and inland parts of the Highlands of Scotland. Such a workman at the rate of a thousand nails a day, and three hundred working days in the year, will make three hundred thousand nails in the year. But in such a situation it would be impossible to dispose of one thousand, that is, of one day’s work in the year.7

  3As by means of water–carriage a more extensive market is opened to every sort of industry than what land–carriage alone can afford it, so it is upon the sea–coast, and along the banks of navigable rivers, that industry of every kind naturally begins to subdivide and improve itself, and it is frequently not till a long time after that those improvements extend themselves to the inland parts of the country.8 A broad–wheeled waggon, attended by two men, and drawn by eight horses, in about six weeks time carries and brings back between London and Edinburgh near four ton weight of goods. In about the same time a ship navigated by six or eight men, and sailing between the ports of London and Leith, frequently carries and brings back two hundred ton weight of goods. Six or eight men, therefore, by the help of water–carriage, can carry and bring back in the same time the same quantity of goods between London and Edinburgh, as fifty broad–wheeled waggons, attended by a hundred men, and drawn by four hundred horses.9 Upon two hundred tons of goods, therefore, carried by the cheapest land–carriage from London to Edinburgh, there must be charged the maintenance of a hundred men for three weeks, and both the maintenance, and, what is nearly equal to the maintenance, the wear and tear of four hundred horses as well as of fifty great waggons. Whereas, upon the same quantity of goods carried by water, there is to be charged only the maintenance of six or eight men, and the wear and tear of a ship of two hundred tons burden, together with the value of the superior risk, or the difference of the insurance between land and water–carriage. Were there no other communication between those two places, therefore, but by land–carriage, as no goods could be transported from the one to the other, except such whose price was very considerable in proportion to their weight, they could carry on but a small part of that commerce which^a at present ^bsubsists^b between them, and consequently could give but a small part of that encouragement which they at present mutually afford to each other’s industry.10 There could be little or no commerce of any kind between the distant parts of the world. What goods could bear the expence of land–carriage between London and Calcutta? Or if there ^cwere^c any so precious as to be able to support this expence, with what safety could they be transported through the territories of so many barbarous nations? Those two cities, however, at present carry on^d a very considerable commerce ^ewith each other^e , and by mutually affording a market, give a good deal of encouragement to each other’s industry.

  4Since such, therefore, are the advantages of water–carriage, it is natural that the first improvements of art and industry should be made where this conveniency opens the whole world for a market to the produce of every sort of labour, and that they should always be much later in extending themselves into the inland parts of the country. The inland parts of the country can for a long time have no other market for the greater part of their goods, but the country which lies round about them, and separates them from the sea–coast, and the great navigable rivers. The extent of their market, therefore, must for a long time be in proportion to the riches and populousness of that country, and consequently their improvement must always be posterior to the improvement of that country. In our North American colonies the plantations have constantly followed either the sea–coast or the banks of the navigable rivers, and have scarce any where extended themselves to any considerable distance from both.11

  5The nations that, according to the best authenticated history, appear to have been first civilized, were those that dwelt round the coast of the Mediterranean sea. That sea, by far the greatest inlet that is known in the world, having no tides, nor consequently any waves except such as are caused by the wind only, was, by the smoothness of its surface, as well as by the multitude of its islands, and the proximity of its neighbouring shores, extremely favourable to the infant navigation of the world; when, from their ignorance of the compass, men were afraid to quit the view of the coast, and from the imperfection of the art of ship–building, to abandon themselves to the boisterous waves of the ocean.12 To pass beyond the pillars of Hercules, that is, to sail out of the Streights of Gibraltar, was, in the antient world, long considered as a most wonderful and dangerous exploit of navigation. It was late before even the Phenicians and Carthaginians, the most skilful navigators and shipbuilders of those old times, attempted it, and they were for a long time the only nations that did attempt it.

  6Of all the countries on the coast of the Mediterranean sea, Egypt seems to have been the first in which either agriculture or manufactures were cultivated and improved to any considerable degree.13 Upper Egypt extends itself nowhere above a few miles from the Nile, and in Lower Egypt that great river breaks itself into many different canals, which, with the assistance of a little art, seem to have afforded a communication by water–carriage, not only between all the great towns, but between all the considerable villages, and even to many farm–houses in the country; nearly in the same manner as the Rhine and the Maese do in Holland at present. The extent and easiness of this inland navigation was probably one of the principal causes of the early improvement of Egypt.14

  7The improvements in agriculture and manufactures seem likewise to have been of very great antiquity in the provinces of Bengal in the East Indies, and in some of the eastern provinces of China; though the great extent of this antiquity is not authenticated by any histories of whose authority we, in this part of the world, are well assured. In Bengal the Ganges and several other great rivers ^fform a great number of navigable^f canals in the same manner as the Nile does in Egypt. In the Eastern provinces of China too, several great rivers form, by their different branches, a multitude of canals, and by communicating with one another afford an inland navigation much more extensive than that either of the Nile or the Ganges, or perhaps than both of them put together.15 It is remarkable that neither the antient Egyptians, nor the Indians, nor the Chinese, encouraged foreign commerce, but seem all to have derived their great opulence from this inland navigation.

  8All the inland parts of Africa, and all that part of Asia which lies any considerable way north of the Euxine and Caspian seas, the antient Scythia, the modern Tartary and Siberia, seem in all ages of the world to have been in the same barbarous and uncivilized state in which we find them at present.16 The sea of Tartary is the frozen ocean which admits of no navigation, and though some of the greatest rivers in the world run through that country, they are at too great a distance from one another to carry commerce and communication through the greater part of it. There are in Africa none of those great inlets, such as the Baltic and Adriatic seas in Europe, the Mediterranean and Euxine seas in both Europe and Asia, and the gulphs of Arabia, Persia, India, Bengal, and Siam, in Asia, to carry maritime commerce into the interior parts of that great continent: and the great rivers of Africa are at too great a distance from one another to give occasion to any considerable inland navigation. The commerce besides which any nation can carry on by means of a river which does not break itself into any great number of branches or canals, and which runs into another territory before it reaches the sea, can never be very considerable; because it is always in the power of the nations who possess that other territory to obstruct the communication between the upper country and the sea. The navigation of the Danube is of very little use to the different states of Bavaria, Austria and Hungary, in comparison of what it would be if any^g of them possessed the whole of its course till it falls into the Black Sea.

  CHAPTER IV

  Of the Origin and Use of Money1

  1When the division of labour has been once thoroughly established, it is but a very small part of a man’s wants which the produce of his own labour can supply. He supplies the far greater part of them by exchanging that surplus part of the produce of his own labour, which is over and above his own consumption, for such parts of the produce of other men’s labour as he has occasion for. Every man thus lives by exchanging, or becomes in some measure a merchant, and the society itself grows to be what is properly a commercial society.

  2But when the division of labour first began to take place, this power of exchanging must frequently have been very much clogged and embarrassed in its operations.2 One man, we shall suppose, has more of a certain commodity than he himself has occasion for, while another has less. The former consequently would be glad to dispose of, and the latter to purchase, a part of this superfluity. But if this latter should chance to have nothing that the former stands in need of, no exchange can be made between them. The butcher has more meat in his shop than he himself can consume, and the brewer and the baker would each of them be willing to purchase a part of it. But they have nothing to offer in exchange, except the different productions of their respective trades, and the butcher is already provided with all the bread and beer which he has immediate occasion for. No exchange can, in this case, be made between them. He cannot be their merchant, nor they his customers; and they are all of them thus mutually less serviceable to one another. In order to avoid the inconveniency of such situations, every prudent man in every period of society, after the first establishment of the division of labour, must naturally have endeavoured to manage his affairs in such a manner, as to have at all times by him, besides the peculiar produce of his own industry, a certain quantity of some one commodity or other, such as he imagined few people would be likely to refuse in exchange for the produce of their industry.3

  3Many different commodities, it is probable, were successively both thought of and employed for this purpose. In the rude ages of society, cattle are said to have been the common instrument of commerce; and, though they must have been a most inconvenient one, yet in old times we find things were frequently valued according to the number of cattle which had been given in exchange for them.4 The armour of Diomede, says Homer, cost only nine oxen; but that of Glaucus cost ^aan^a hundred oxen.5 Salt is said to be the common instrument of commerce and exchanges in Abyssinia;6 a species of shells in some parts of the coast of India; dried cod at Newfoundland; tobacco in Virginia; sugar in some of our West India colonies; hides or dressed leather in some other countries; and there is at this day a village in Scotland where it is not uncommon, I am told, for a workman to carry nails instead of money to the baker’s shop or the ale–house.7

  4In all countries, however, men seem at last to have been determined by irresistible reasons to give the preference, for this employment, to metals above every other commodity.8 Metals can not only be kept with as little loss as any other commodity, scarce any thing being less perishable that they are, but they can likewise, without any loss, be divided into any number of parts, as by fusion those parts can easily be re–united again; a quality which no other equally durable commodities possess, and which more than any other quality renders them fit to be the instruments of commerce and circulation. The man who wanted to buy salt, for example, and had nothing but cattle to give in exchange for it, must have been obliged to buy salt to the value of a whole ox, or a whole sheep at a time. He could seldom buy less than this, because what he was to give for it could seldom be divided without loss; and if he had a mind to buy more, he must, for the same reasons, have been obliged to buy double or triple the quantity, the value, to wit, of two or three oxen, or of two or three sheep. If, on the contrary, instead of sheep or oxen, he had metals to give in exchange for it, he could easily proportion the quantity of the metal to the precise quantity of the commodity which he had immediate occasion for.

  5Different metals have been made use of by different nations for this purpose. Iron was the common instrument of commerce among the antient Spartans; copper among the antient Romans9 ; and gold and silver among all rich and commercial nations.10

  6Those metals seem originally to have been made use of for this purpose in rude bars, without any stamp or coinage. Thus we are told by Pliny* , upon the authority of ^cTimaeus^c , an antient ^dhistorian^d , that, till the time of Servius Tullius, the Romans had no coined money, but made use of unstamped bars of copper to purchase whatever they had occasion for. These rude bars, therefore, performed at this time the function of money.

  7The use of metals in this rude state was attended with two very considerable inconveniencies; first, with the trouble of weighing ^e ; and, secondly, with ^fthat^f of assaying them. In the precious metals, where a small difference in the quantity makes a great difference in the value, even the business of weighing, with proper exactness, requires at least very accurate weights and scales. The weighing of gold in particular is an operation of some nicety. In the coarser metals, indeed, where a small error would be of little consequence, less accuracy would, no doubt, be necessary. Yet we should find it excessively troublesome, if every time a poor man had occasion either to buy or sell a farthing’s worth of goods, he was obliged to weigh the farthing. The operation of assaying is still more difficult, still more tedious, and, unless a part of the metal is fairly melted in the crucible, with proper dissolvents, any conclusion that can be drawn from it, is extremely uncertain. Before the institution of coined money, however, unless they went through this tedious and difficult operation, people must always have been liable to the grossest frauds and impositions, and instead of a pound weight of pure silver, or pure copper, might receive in exchange for their goods, an adulterated composition of the coarsest and cheapest materials, which had, however, in their outward appearance, been made to resemble those metals. To prevent such abuses, to facilitate exchanges, and thereby to encourage all sorts of industry and commerce, it has been found necessary, in all countries that have made any considerable advances towards improvement, to affix a publick stamp upon certain quantities of such particular metals, as were in those countries commonly made use of to purchase goods. Hence the origin of coined money, and of those publick offices called mints;11 institutions exactly of the same nature with those of the aulnagers and stampmasters of woollen and linen cloth.12 All of them are equally meant to ascertain, by means of a publick stamp, the quantity and uniform goodness of those different commodities when brought to market.13

  8The first publick stamps of this kind that were affixed to the current metals, seem in many cases to have been intended to ascertain, what it was both most difficult and most important to ascertain, the goodness or fineness of the metal, and to have resembled the sterling mark which is at present affixed to plate and bars of silver, or the Spanish mark which is sometimes affixed to ingots of gold, and which being struck only upon one side of the piece, and not covering the whole surface, ascertains the fineness, but not the weight of the metal. Abraham weighs to Ephron the four hundred shekels of silver which he had agreed to pay for the field of Machpelah.14 They are said however to be the current money of the merchant, and yet are received by weight and not by tale, in the same manner as ingots of gold and bars of silver are at present. The revenues of the antient Saxon kings of England are said to have been paid, not in money but in kind, that is, in victuals and provisions of all sorts.15 William the Conqueror introduced the custom of paying them in money. This money, however, was, for a long time, received at the exchequer, by weight and not by tale.16

  9The inconveniency and difficulty of weighing those metals with exactness gave occasion to the institution of coins, of which the stamp, covering entirely both sides of the piece and sometimes the edges too, was supposed to ascertain not only the fineness, but the weight of the metal. Such coins, therefore, were received by tale as at present, without the trouble of weighing.

  10The denominations of those coins seem originally to have expressed the weight or quantity of metal contained in them. In the time of Servius Tullius, who first coined money at Rome, the Roman As or Pondo contained a Roman pound of good copper.17 It was divided in the same manner as our Troyes pound, into twelve ounces, each of which contained a real ounce of good copper. The English pound sterling, in the time of Edward I., contained a pound, Tower weight, of silver of a known fineness.18 The Tower pound seems to have been something more than the Roman pound, and something less than the Troyes pound.19 This last was not introduced into the mint of England till the 18th of Henry VIII.20 The French livre contained in the time of Charlemagne a pound, Troyes weight, of silver of a known fineness. The fair of Troyes in Champaign was at that time frequented by all the nations of Europe, and the weights and measures of so famous a market were generally known and esteemed.21 The Scots money pound contained, from the time of Alexander the First to that of Robert Bruce, a pound of silver of the same weight and fineness with the English pound sterling. English, French, and Scots pennies too, contained all of them originally a real pennyweight of silver, the twentieth part of an ounce, and the twohundred–and–fortieth part of a pound. The shilling too seems originally to have been the denomination of a weight. When wheat is at twelve shillings the quarter, says an antient statute of Henry III. then wastel bread of a farthing shall weigh eleven shillings and four pence.22 The proportion, however, between the shilling and either the penny on the one hand, or the pound on the other, seems not to have been so constant and uniform as that between the penny and the pound. During the first race of the kings of France, the French sou or shilling appears upon different occasions to have contained five, twelve, twenty, ^gand forty^g pennies. Among the antient Saxons a shilling appears at one time to have contained only five pennies,23 and it is not improbable that it may have been as variable among them as among their neighbours, the antient Franks. From the time of Charlemagne among the French,24 and from that of William the Conqueror among the English,25 the proportion between the pound, the shilling, and the penny, seems to have been uniformly the same as at present, though the value of each has been very different. For in every country of the world, I believe, the avarice and injustice of princes and sovereign states, abusing the confidence of their subjects, have by degrees diminished the real quantity of metal, which had been originally contained in their coins. The Roman As, in the latter ages of the Republick, was reduced to the twenty–fourth part of its original value, and, instead of weighing a pound, came to weigh only half an ounce.26 The English pound and penny contain at present about a third only; the Scots pound and penny about a thirty–sixth; and the French pound and penny about a sixty–sixth part of their original value.27 By means of those operations the princes and sovereign states which performed them were enabled, in appearance, to pay their debts and ^hto^h fulfil their engagements with a smaller quantity of silver than would otherwise have been requisite. It was indeed in appearance only; for their creditors were really defrauded of a part of what was due to them. All other debtors in the state were allowed the same privilege, and might pay with the same nominal sum of the new and debased coin whatever they had borrowed in the old.28 Such operations, therefore, have always proved favourable to the debtor, and ruinous to the creditor, and have sometimes produced a greater and more universal revolution in the fortunes of private persons, than could have been occasioned by a very great publick calamity.29

  11It is in this manner that money has become in all civilized nations the universal instrument of commerce, by the intervention of which goods of all kinds are bought and sold, or exchanged for one another.30

  12What are the rules which men naturally observe in exchanging them either for money or for one another, I shall now proceed to examine. These rules determine what may be called the relative or exchangeable value of goods.

  13 The word value, it is to be observed, has two different meanings, and sometimes expresses the utility of some particular object, and sometimes the power of purchasing other goods which the possession of that object conveys. The one may be called ‘value in use;’ the other, ‘value in exchange.’ The things which have the greatest value in use have frequently little or no value in exchange; and, on the contrary, those which have the greatest value in exchange have frequently little or no value in use. Nothing is more useful than water: but it will purchase scarce any thing; scarce any thing can be had in exchange for it. A diamond, on the contrary, has scarce any value in use; but a very great quantity of other goods may frequently be had in exchange for it.31

  14In order to investigate the principles which regulate the exchangeable value of commodities, I shall endeavour to shew,

  15First, what is the real measure of this exchangeable value; or, wherein consists the real price of all commodities,

  16Secondly, what are the different parts of which this real price is composed or made up.

  17And, lastly, what are the different circumstances which sometimes raise some or all of these different parts of price above, and sometimes sink them below their natural or ordinary rate; or, what are the causes which sometimes hinder the market price, that is, the actual price of commodities, from coinciding exactly with what may be called their natural price.

  18 I shall endeavour to explain, as fully and distinctly as I can, those three subjects in the three following chapters, for which I must very earnestly entreat both the patience and attention of the reader: his patience in order to examine a detail which may perhaps in some places appear unnecessarily tedious; and his attention in order to understand what may, perhaps, after the fullest explication which I am capable of giving ⁱofⁱ it, appear still in some degree obscure. I am always willing to run some hazard of being tedious in order to be sure that I am perspicuous; and after taking the utmost pains that I can to be perspicuous, some obscurity may still appear to remain upon a subject ^j in its own nature extremely abstracted.32

  CHAPTER V

  Of the real and nominal Price of Commodities, or of their Price in Labour, and their Price in Money

  1Every man is rich or poor according to the degree in which he can afford to enjoy the necessaries, conveniencies, and amusements of human life.1 But after the division of labour has once thoroughly taken place, it is but a very small part of these with which a man’s own labour can supply him. The far greater part of them he must derive from the labour of other people, and he must be rich or poor according to the quantity of that labour which he can command, or which he can afford to purchase. The value of any commodity, therefore, to the person who possesses it, and who means not to use or consume it himself, but to exchange it for other commodities, is equal to the quantity of labour which it enables him to purchase or command.2 Labour, therefore, is the real measure of the exchangeable value of all commodities.3

  2The real price of every thing, what every thing really costs to the man who wants to acquire it, is the toil and trouble of acquiring it.4 What every thing is really worth to the man who has acquired it, and who wants to dispose of it or exchange it for something else, is the toil and trouble which it can save to himself, and which it can impose upon other people. What is bought with money or with goods is purchased by labour as much as what we acquire by the toil of our own body.5 That money or those goods indeed save us this toil. They contain the value of a certain quantity of labour which we exchange for what is supposed at the time to contain the value of an equal quantity.6 Labour was the first price, the original purchase–money that was paid for all things.7 It was not by gold or by silver, but by labour, that all the wealth of the world was originally purchased;8 and its value, to those who possess it and who want to exchange it for some new productions, is precisely equal to the quantity of labour which it can enable them to purchase or command.

  3^aWealth , as Mr. Hobbes says, is power.9 But the person who either acquires, or succeeds to a great fortune, does not necessarily acquire or succeed to any political power, either civil or military. His fortune may, perhaps, afford him the means of acquiring both, but the mere possession of that fortune does not necessarily convey to him either. The power which that possession immediately and directly conveys to him, is the power of purchasing; a certain command over all the labour, or over all the produce of labour which is then in the market. His fortune is greater or less, precisely in proportion to the extent of this power; or to the quantity either of other men’s labour, or, what is the same thing, of the produce of other men’s labour, which it enables him to purchase or command. The exchangeable value of every thing must always be precisely equal to the extent of this power which it conveys to its owner.^a

  4But though labour be the real measure of the exchangeable value of all commodities, it is not that by which their value is commonly estimated. It is often difficult to ascertain the proportion between two different quantities of labour. The time spent in two different sorts of work will not always alone determine this proportion. The different degrees of hardship endured, and of ingenuity exercised, must likewise be taken into account.10 There may be more labour in an hour’s hard work than in two hours easy business; or in an hour’s application to a trade which it cost ten years labour to learn, than in a month’s industry at an ordinary and obvious employment. But it is not easy to find any accurate measure either of hardship or ingenuity. In exchanging indeed the different productions of different sorts of labour for one another, some allowance is commonly made for both. It is adjusted, however, not by any accurate measure, but by the higgling and bargaining of the market, according to that sort of rough equality which, though not exact, is sufficient for carrying on the business of common life.

  5Every commodity besides, is more frequently exchanged for, and thereby compared with, other commodities than with labour. It is more natural, therefore, to estimate its exchangeable value by the quantity of some other commodity than by that of the labour which it can purchase. The greater part of people too understand better what is meant by a quantity of a particular commodity, than by a quantity of labour. The one is a plain palpable object; the other an abstract notion, which, though it can be made sufficiently intelligible, is not altogether so natural and obvious.

  6But when barter ceases, and money has become the common instrument of commerce, every particular commodity is more frequently exchanged for money than for any other commodity. The butcher seldom carries his beef or his mutton to the baker, or the brewer, in order to exchange them for bread or for beer, but he carries them to the market, where he exchanges them for money, and afterwards exchanges that money for bread and for beer. The quantity of money which he gets for them regulates too the quantity of bread and beer which he can afterwards purchase. It is more natural and obvious to him, therefore, to estimate their value by the quantity of money, the commodity for which he immediately exchanges them, than by that of bread and beer, the commodities for which he can exchange them only by the intervention of another commodity; and rather to say that his butcher’s meat is worth threepence or fourpence a pound, than that it is worth three or four pounds of bread, or three or four quarts of small beer. Hence it comes to pass, that the exchangeable value of every commodity is more frequently estimated by the quantity of money, than by the quantity either of labour or of any other commodity which can be had in exchange for it.11

  7Gold and silver, however, like every other commodity, vary in their value, are sometimes cheaper and sometimes dearer, sometimes of easier and sometimes of more difficult purchase. The quantity of labour which any particular quantity of them can purchase or command, or the quantity of other goods which it will exchange for, depends always upon the fertility or barrenness of the mines which happen to be known about the time when such exchanges are made. The discovery of the abundant mines of America reduced, in the sixteenth century, the value of gold and silver in Europe to about a third of what it had been before.12 As it cost less labour to bring those metals from the mine to the market, so when they were brought ^bthither^b they could purchase or command less labour; and this revolution in their value, though perhaps the greatest, is by no means the only one of which history gives some account.13 But as a measure of quantity, such as the natural foot, fathom, or handful, which is continually varying in its own quantity, can never be an accurate measure of the quantity of other things; so a commodity which is itself continually varying in its own value, can never be an accurate measure of the value of other commodities.14 Equal quantities of labour,^c at all times and places, ^dmay be said to^d be of equal value to the labourer. ^eIn his ordinary state of health, strength and spirits ; in the ordinary degree of his skill and dexterity,15 he^e must always lay down the same portion of his ease, his liberty, and his happiness.16 The price which he pays must always be the same, whatever may be the quantity of goods which he receives in return for it. Of these, indeed, it may sometimes purchase a greater and sometimes a smaller quantity; but it is their value which varies, not that of the labour which purchases them. At all times and places that is dear which it is difficult to come at, or which it costs much labour to acquire; and that cheap which is to be had easily, or with very little labour. Labour alone, therefore, never varying in its own value, is alone the ultimate and real standard by which the value of all commodities can at all times and places be estimated and compared. It is their real price; money is their nominal price only.

  8But though equal quantities of labour are always of equal value to the labourer, yet to the person who employs him they appear sometimes to be of greater and sometimes of smaller value. He purchases them sometimes with a greater and sometimes with a smaller quantity of goods, and to him the price of labour seems to vary like that of all other things. It appears to him dear in the one case, and cheap in the other. In reality, however, it is the goods which are cheap in the one case, and dear in the other.

  9In this popular sense, therefore, labour, like commodities, may be said to have a real and a nominal price. Its real price may be said to consist in the quantity of the necessaries and conveniencies of life which are given for it; its nominal price, in the quantity of money. The labourer is rich or poor, is well or ill rewarded, in proportion to the real, not to the nominal price of his labour.17

  10The distinction between the real and the nominal price of commodities and labour, is not a matter of mere speculation, but may sometimes be of considerable use in practice. The same real price is always of the same value; but on account of the variations in the value of gold and silver, the same nominal price is sometimes of very different values. When a landed estate, therefore, is sold with a reservation of a perpetual rent, if it is intended that this rent should always be of the same value, it is of importance to the family in whose favour it is reserved, that it should not consist in a particular sum of money.18 Its value would in this case be liable to variations of two different kinds; first, to those which arise from the different quantities of gold and silver which are contained at different times in coin of the same denomination; and, secondly, to those which arise from the different values of equal quantities of gold and silver at different times.

  11Princes and sovereign states have frequently fancied that they had a temporary interest to diminish the quantity of pure metal contained in their coins; but they seldom have fancied that they had any to augment it. The quantity of metal contained in the coins, I believe of all nations has, accordingly, been almost continually diminishing, and hardly ever augmenting.19 Such variations therefore tend almost always to diminish the value of a money rent.

  12The discovery of the mines of America diminished the value of gold and silver in Europe. This diminution, it is commonly supposed, though, I apprehend, without any certain proof, is still going on gradually, and is likely to continue to do so for a long time.20 Upon this supposition, therefore, such variations are more likely to diminish, than to augment the value of a money rent, even though it should be stipulated to be paid, not in such a quantity of coined money of such a denomination (in so many pounds sterling, for example), but in so many ounces either of pure silver, or of silver of a certain standard.

  13 The rents which have been reserved in corn have preserved their value much better than those which have been reserved in money, even where the denomination of the coin has not been altered.21 By the 18th of Elizabeth22 it was enacted, That a third of the rent of all college leases should be reserved in corn, to be paid, either in kind, or according to the current prices at the nearest publick market. The money arising from this corn rent, though originally but a third of the whole, is in the present times, according to Doctor Blackstone, commonly near double of what arises from the other two–thirds.23 The old money rents of colleges must, according to this account, have sunk almost to a fourth part of their ancient value; or are worth little more than a fourth part of the corn which they were formerly worth. But since the reign of Philip and Mary the denomination of the English coin has undergone little or no alteration, and the same number of pounds, shillings and pence have contained very nearly the same quantity of pure silver. This degradation, therefore, in the value of the money rents of colleges, has arisen altogether from the degradation in the value of silver.

  14When the degradation in the value of silver is combined with the diminution of the quantity of it contained in the coin of the same denomination, the loss is frequently still greater. In Scotland, where the denomination of the coin has undergone much greater alterations than it ever did in England, and in France, where it has undergone still greater than it ever did in Scotland,24 some antient rents, originally of considerable value, have in this manner been reduced almost to nothing.

  15Equal quantities of labour will at distant times be purchased more nearly with equal quantities of corn, the subsistence of the labourer, than with equal quantities of gold and silver, or perhaps of any other commodity.25 Equal quantities of corn, therefore, will, at distant times, be more nearly of the same real value, or enable the possessor to purchase or command more nearly the same quantity of the labour of other people. They will do this, I say, more nearly than equal quantities of almost any other commodity; for even equal quantities of corn will not do it exactly. The subsistence of the labourer, or the real price of labour, as I shall endeavour to show hereafter,26 is very different upon different occasions; more liberal in a society advancing to opulence than in one that is standing still; and in one that is standing still than in one that is going backwards. Every other commodity, however, will at any particular time purchase a greater or smaller quantity of labour in proportion to the quantity of subsistence which it can purchase at that time. A rent therefore reserved in corn is liable only to the variations in the quantity of labour which a certain quantity of corn can purchase. But a rent reserved in any other commodity is liable, not only to the variations in the quantity of labour which any particular quantity of corn can purchase, but to the variations in the quantity of corn which can be purchased by any particular quantity of that commodity.

  16Though the real value of a corn rent, it is to be observed however, varies much less from century to century than that of a money rent, it varies much more from year to year. The money price of labour, as I shall endeavour to show hereafter,27 does not fluctuate from year to year with the money price of corn, but seems to be every where accommodated, not to the temporary or occasional, but to the average or ordinary price of that necessary of life. The average or ordinary price of corn again is regulated, as I shall likewise endeavour to show hereafter, by the value of silver, by the richness or barrenness of the mines which supply the market with that metal, or by the quantity of labour which must be employed, and consequently of corn which must be consumed, in order to bring any particular quantity of ^fsilver^f from the mine to the market. But the value of silver, though it sometimes varies greatly from century to century, seldom varies much from year to year, but frequently continues the same, or very nearly the same, for half a century or a century together.28 The ordinary or average money price of corn, therefore, may, during so long a period, continue the same or very nearly the same too, and along with it the money price of labour, provided, at least, the society continues, in other respects, in the same or nearly in the same condition. In the mean time the temporary and occasional price of corn may frequently be double, one year, of what it had been the year before, or fluctuate^g, for example,^g from five and twenty to fifty shillings the quarter^h . But when corn is at the latter price, not only the nominal, but the real value of a corn rent will be double of what it is when at the former, or will command double the quantity either of labour or of the greater part of other commodities; the money price of labour, and along with it that of most other things, continuing the same during all these fluctuations.

  17Labour, therefore, it appears evidently, is the only universal, as well as the only accurate measure of value, or the only standard by which we can compare the values of different commodities at all times and at all places. We cannot estimate, it is allowed, the real value of different commodities from century to century by the quantities of silver which were given for them. We cannot estimate it from year to year by the quantities of corn. By the quantities of labour we can, with the greatest accuracy, estimate it both from century to century and from year to year. From century to century, corn is ⁱaⁱ better measure than silver, because, from century to century, equal quantities of corn will command the same quantity of labour more nearly than equal quantities of silver. From year to year, on the contrary, silver is a better measure than corn, because equal quantities of it will more nearly command the same quantity of labour.29

  18 But though in establishing perpetual rents, or even in letting very long leases, it may be of use to distinguish between real and nominal price, it is of none in buying and selling, the more common and ordinary transactions of human life.

  19At the same time and place the real and the nominal price of all commodities are exactly in proportion to one another. The more or less money you get for any commodity, in the London market, for example, the more or less labour it will at that time and place enable you to purchase or command. At the same time and place, therefore, money is the exact measure of the real exchangeable value of all commodities. It is so, however, at the same time and place only.

  20Though at distant places, there is no regular proportion between the real and the money price of commodities, yet the merchant who carries goods from the one to the other has nothing to consider but ^jtheir^j money price, or the difference between the quantity of silver for which he buys them, and that for which he is likely to sell them. Half an ounce of silver at Canton in China may command a greater quantity both of labour and of the necessaries and conveniencies of life, than an ounce at London. A commodity, therefore, which sells for half an ounce of silver at Canton may there be really dearer, of more real importance to the man who possesses it there, than ^ka commodity^k which sells for an ounce at London ^lis^l to the man who possesses it at London. If a London merchant, however, can buy at Canton for half an ounce of silver, a commodity which he can afterwards sell at London for an ounce, he gains a hundred per cent. by the bargain, just as much as if an ounce of silver was at London exactly of the same value as at Canton. It is of no importance to him that half an ounce of silver at Canton would have given him the command of more labour and of a greater quantity of the necessaries and conveniencies of life than an ounce can do at London. An ounce at London will always give him the command of double the quantity of all these which half an ounce could have done there, and this is precisely what he wants.

  21As it is the nominal or money price of goods, therefore, which finally determines the prudence or imprudence of all purchases and sales, and thereby regulates almost the whole business of common life in which price is concerned, we cannot wonder that it should have been so much more attended to than the real price.

  22In such ^ma^m work as this, however, it may sometimes be of use to compare the different real values of a particular commodity at different times and places, or the different degrees of power over the labour of other people which it may, upon different occasions, have given to those who possessed it. We must in this case compare, not so much the different quantities of silver for which it was commonly sold, as the different quantities of labour which those different quantities of silver could have purchased. But the current prices of labour at distant times and places can scarce ever be known with any degree of exactness. Those of corn, though they have in few places been regularly recorded, are in general better known and have been more frequently taken notice of by historians and other writers.30 We must generally, therefore, content ourselves with them, not as being always exactly in the same proportion as the current prices of labour, but as being the nearest approximation which can commonly be had to that proportion. I shall hereafter have occasion to make several comparisons of this kind.31

  23In the progress of industry, commercial nations have found it convenient to coin several different metals into money; gold for larger payments, silver for purchases of moderate value, and copper, or some other coarse metal, for those of still smaller consideration. They have always, however, considered one of those metals as more perculiarly the measure of value than any of the other two; and this preference seems generally to have been given to the metal which they happened first to make use of as the instrument of commerce. Having once begun to use it as their standard, which they must have done when they had no other money, they have generally continued to do so even when the necessity was not the same.

  24The Romans are said to have had nothing but copper money till within five years before the first Punic war* , when they first began to coin silver. Copper, therefore, appears to have continued always the measure of value in that republick. At Rome all accounts appear to have been kept, and the value of all estates to have been computed either in Asses or in Sestertii. The As was always the denomination of a copper coin. The word Sestertius signifies two Asses and a half. Though the Sestertius, therefore, was ^ooriginally^o a silver coin, its value was estimated in copper. At Rome, one who owed a great deal of money, was said to have a great deal of other people’s copper.32

  25The northern nations who established themselves upon the ruins of the Roman empire, seem to have had silver money from the first beginning of their settlements, and not to have known either gold or copper coins for several ages thereafter. There were silver coins in England in the time of the Saxons;33 but there was little gold coined till the time of Edward III. nor any copper till that of James I. of Great Britain. In England, therefore, and for the same reason, I believe, in all other modern nations of Europe, all accounts are kept, and the value of all goods and of all estates is generally computed in silver: and when we mean to express the amount of a person’s fortune, we seldom mention the number of guineas, but the number of pounds ^psterling^p which we suppose would be given for it.34

  26^qOriginally, in^q all countries, I believe a legal tender of payment could^r be made ^sonly^s in the coin of that metal,^t which was peculiarly considered as the standard or measure of value. In England, gold was not considered as a legal tender for a long time after it was coined into money. The proportion between the values of gold and silver money was not fixed by any public law or proclamation; but was left to be settled by the market.35 If a debtor offered payment in gold, the creditor might either reject such payment altogether, or accept of it at such a valuation of the gold as he and his debtor could agree upon. Copper is not at present a legal tender, except in the change of the smaller silver coins. In this state of things the distinction between the metal which was the standard, and that which was not the standard, was something more than a nominal distinction.

  27In process of time, and as people became gradually more familiar with the use of the different metals in coin, and consequently better acquainted with the proportion between their respective values, it has in most countries, I believe, been found convenient to ascertain this proportion, and to declare by a public law that a guinea, for example, of such a weight and fineness, should exchange for one–and–twenty shillings, or be a legal tender for a debt of that ^uamount^u36 . In this state of things, and during the continuance of any one regulated proportion of this kind, the distinction between the metal which is the standard and that which is not the standard, becomes little more than a nominal distinction.

  28In consequence of any change, however, in this regulated proportion, this distinction becomes, or at least seems to become, something more than nominal again. If the regulated value of a guinea, for example, was either reduced to twenty, or raised to two–and–twenty shillings, all accounts being kept and almost all obligations for debt being expressed in silver money, the greater part of payments could in either case be made with the same quantity of silver money as before; but would require very different quantities of gold money; a greater in the one case, and a smaller in the other. Silver would appear to be more invariable in its value than gold. Silver would appear to measure the value of gold, and gold would not appear to measure the value of silver. The value of gold would seem to depend upon the quantity of silver which it would exchange for; and the value of silver would not seem to depend upon the quantity of gold which it would exchange for. This difference, however, would be altogether owing to the custom of keeping accounts, and of expressing the amount of all great and small sums rather in silver than in gold money. One of Mr Drummond’s notes for five–and–twenty or fifty guineas would, after an alteration of this kind, be still payable with five–and–twenty or fifty guineas in the same manner as before. It would, after such an alteration, be payable with the same quantity of gold as before, but with very different quantities of silver. In the payment of such a note, gold would appear to be more invariable in its value than silver. Gold would appear to measure the value of silver, and silver would not appear to measure the value of gold.37 If the custom of keeping accounts, and of expressing promissory notes and other obligations for money in this manner, should ever become general, gold, and not silver, would be considered as the metal which was peculiarly the standard or measure of value.

  29In reality, during the continuance of any one regulated proportion between the respective values of the different metals in coin, the value of the most precious metal regulates the value of the whole coin. Twelve copper pence contain half a pound, avoirdupois, of copper, of not the best quality, which, before it is coined, is seldom worth sevenpence in silver. But as by the regulation twelve such pence are ordered to exchange for a shilling, they are in the market considered as worth a shilling, and a shilling can at any time be had for them. Even before the late reformation of the gold coin of Great Britain,38 the gold, that part of it at least which circulated in London and its neighbourhood, was in general less degraded below its standard weight than the greater part of the silver. One–and–twenty worn and defaced shillings, however, were considered as equivalent to a guinea, which perhaps, indeed, was worn and defaced too, but seldom so much so. The late regulations have brought the gold coin as near perhaps to its standard weight as it is possible to bring the current coin of any nation; and the order, to receive no gold at the public offices but by weight, is likely to preserve it so ^vas^v long as that order is enforced. The silver coin still continues in the same worn and degraded state as before the reformation of the gold coin. In the market, however, one–and–twenty shillings of this degraded silver coin are still considered as worth a guinea of this excellent gold coin.

  30The reformation of the gold coin has evidently raised the value of the silver coin which can be exchanged for it.

  31In the English mint a pound weight of gold is coined into forty–four guineas and a half, which, at one–and–twenty shillings the guinea, is equal to forty–six pounds fourteen shillings and six–pence. An ounce of such gold coin, therefore, is worth 3l.17s.10d. ½ in silver. In England no duty or seignorage is paid upon the coinage, and he who carries a pound weight or an ounce weight of standard gold bullion to the mint, gets back a pound weight or an ounce weight of gold in coin, without any deduction.39 Three pounds seventeen shillings and ten–pence halfpenny an ounce, therefore is said to be the mint price of gold in England, or the quantity of gold coin which the mint gives in return for standard gold bullion.

  32Before the reformation of the gold coin, the price of standard gold bullion in the market had for many years been upwards of 3l.18s. sometimes 3l.19s. and very frequently 4l. an ounce; that sum, it is probable, in the worn and degraded gold coin, seldom containing more than an ounce of standard gold. Since the reformation of the gold coin, the market price of standard gold bullion seldom exceeds 3l.17s.7d. an ounce. Before the reformation of the gold coin, the market price was always more or less above the mint price.40 Since that reformation, the market price has been constantly below the mint price. But that market price is the same whether it is paid in gold or in silver coin. The late reformation of the gold coin, therefore, has raised not only the value of the gold coin, but likewise that of the silver coin in proportion to gold bullion, and probably too in proportion to all other commodities; though the price of the greater part of other commodities being influenced by so many other causes, the rise in the value either of gold or silver coin in proportion to them, may not be so distinct and sensible.

  33In the English mint a pound weight of standard silver bullion is coined into sixty–two shillings, containing, in the same manner, a pound weight of standard silver. Five shillings and two–pence an ounce, therefore, is said to be the mint price of silver in England, or the quantity of silver coin which the mint gives in return for standard silver bullion. Before the reformation of the gold coin, the market price of standard silver bullion was, upon different occasions, five shillings and four–pence, five shillings and five–pence, five shillings and six–pence, five shillings and seven–pence, and very often five shillings and eight–pence an ounce. Five shillings and sevenpence, however, seems to have been the most common price. Since the reformation of the gold coin, the market price of standard silver bullion has fallen occasionally to five shillings and three–pence, five shillings and four–pence, and five shillings and five–pence an ounce, which last price it has scarce ever exceeded. Though the market price of silver bullion has fallen considerably since the reformation of the gold coin, it has not fallen so low as the mint price.

  34In the proportion between the different metals in the English coin, as copper is rated very much above its real value, so silver is rated somewhat below it. In the market of Europe, in the French coin and in the Dutch coin, an ounce of fine gold exchanges for about fourteen ounces of fine silver. In the English coin, it exchanges for about fifteen ounces, that is, for more silver than it is worth according to the common estimation of Europe.41 But as the price of copper in bars is not, even in England, raised by the high price of copper in English coin, so the price of silver in bullion is not sunk by the low rate of silver in English coin. Silver in bullion still preserves its proper proportion to gold; for the same reason that copper in bars preserves its proper proportion to silver.

  35Upon the reformation of the silver coin in the reign of William III. the price of silver bullion still continued to be somewhat above the mint price.42 Mr. Locke imputed this high price to the permission of exporting silver bullion, and to the prohibition of exporting silver coin.43 This permission of exporting, he said, rendered the demand for silver bullion greater than the demand for silver coin. But the number of people who want silver coin for the common uses of buying and selling at home, is surely much greater than that of those who want silver bullion either for the use of exportation or for any other use. There subsists at present a like permission of exporting gold bullion, and a like prohibition of exporting gold coin; and yet the price of gold bullion has fallen below the mint price. But in the English coin silver was then, in the same manner as now, under–rated in proportion to gold; and the gold coin (which at that time too was not supposed to require any reformation) regulated then, as well as now, the real value of the whole coin. As the reformation of the silver coin did not then reduce the price of silver bullion to the mint price, it is not very probable that a like reformation will do so now.

  36Were the silver coin brought back as near to its standard weight as the gold, a guinea, it is probable, would, according to the present proportion, exchange for more silver in coin than it would purchase in bullion. The silver ^wcoin^w containing its full standard weight, there would in this case be a profit in melting it down, in order, first, to sell the bullion for gold coin, and afterwards to exchange this gold coin for silver coin to be melted down in the same manner. Some alteration in the present proportion seems to be the only method of preventing this inconveniency.

  37 The inconveniency perhaps would be less if silver was rated in the coin as much above its proper proportion to gold as it is at present rated below it; provided it was at the same time enacted that silver should not be a legal tender for more than the change of a guinea; in the same manner as copper is not a legal tender for more than the change of a shilling. No creditor could in this case be cheated in consequence of the high valuation of silver in coin; as no creditor can at present be cheated in consequence of the high valuation of copper. The bankers only would suffer by this regulation. When a run comes upon them they sometimes endeavour to gain time by paying in sixpences,44 and they would be precluded by this regulation from this discreditable method of evading immediate payment. They would be obliged in consequence to keep at all times in their coffers a greater quantity of cash than at present; and though this might no doubt be a considerable inconveniency to them, it would at the same time be a considerable security to their creditors.

  38Three pounds seventeen shillings and ten–pence halfpenny (the mint price of gold) certainly does not contain, even in our present excellent gold coin, more than an ounce of standard gold, and it may be thought, therefore, should not purchase more standard bullion. But gold in coin is more convenient than gold in bullion, and though, in England, the coinage is free,45 yet the gold which is carried in bullion to the mint, can seldom be returned in coin to the owner till after a delay of several weeks. In the present hurry of the mint, it could not be returned till after a delay of several months. This delay is equivalent to a small duty, and renders gold in coin somewhat more valuable than an equal quantity of gold in bullion. If in the English coin silver was rated according to its proper proportion to gold, the price of silver bullion would probably fall below the mint price even without any reformation of the silver coin; the value even of the present worn and defaced silver coin being regulated by the value of the excellent gold coin for which it can be changed.

  39A small seignorage or duty upon the coinage of both gold and silver would probably increase still more the superiority of those metals in coin above an equal quantity of either of them in bullion. The coinage would in this case increase the value of the metal coined in proportion to the extent of this small duty; for the same reason that the fashion increases the value of plate in proportion to the price of that fashion. The superiority of coin above bullion would prevent the melting down of the coin, and would discourage its exportation.46 If upon any public exigency it should become necessary to export the coin, the greater part of it would soon return again of its own accord. Abroad it could sell only for its weight in bullion. At home it would buy more than that weight. There would be a profit, therefore, in bringing it home again. In France a seignorage of about eight per cent. is imposed upon the coinage,47 and the French coin, when exported, is said to return home again of its own accord.

  40The occasional fluctuations in the market price of gold and silver bullion arise from the same causes as the like fluctuations in that of all other commodities. The frequent loss of those metals from various accidents by sea and by land, the continual waste of them in gilding and plating, in lace and embroidery, in the ^xwear and tear^x of coin, and in ^vthat^v of plate; require, in all countries which possess no mines of their own, a continual importation, in order to repair this loss and this waste. The merchant importers, like all other merchants, we may believe, endeavour, as well as they can, to suit their occasional importations to what, they judge, is likely to be the immediate demand. With all their attention, however, they sometimes over–do the business, and sometimes under–do it. When they import more bullion than is wanted, rather than incur the risk and trouble of exporting it again, they are sometimes willing to sell a part of it for something less than the ordinary or average price. When, on the other hand, they import less than is wanted, they get something more than this price. But when, under all those occasional fluctuations, the market price either of gold or silver bullion continues for several years together steadily and constantly, either more or less above, or more or less below the mint price; we may be assured that this steady and constant, either superiority or inferiority of price, is the effect of something in the state of the coin, which, at that time, renders a certain quantity of coin either of more value or of less value than the precise quantity of bullion which it ought to contain. The constancy and steadiness of the effect, supposes a proportionable constancy and steadiness in the cause.

  41The money of any particular country is, at any particular time and place, more or less an accurate measure of value according as the current coin is more or less exactly agreeable to its standard, or contains more or less exactly the precise quantity of pure gold or pure silver which it ought to contain. If in England, for example, forty–four guineas and a half contained exactly a pound weight of standard gold, or eleven ounces of fine gold and one ounce of alloy, the gold coin of England would be as accurate a measure of the actual value of goods at any particular time and place as the nature of the thing would admit. But if, by rubbing and wearing, forty–four guineas and a half generally contain less than a pound weight of standard gold; the diminution, however, being greater in some pieces than in others; the measure of value comes to be liable to the same sort of uncertainty to which all other weights and measures are commonly exposed. As it rarely happens that these are exactly agreeable to their standard, the merchant adjusts the price of his goods, as well as he can, not to what those weights and measures ought to be, but to what, upon an average, he finds by experience they actually are. In consequence of a like disorder in the coin the price of goods comes, in the same manner, to be adjusted, not to the quantity of pure gold or silver which the coin ought to contain, but to that which, upon an average, it is found by experience, it actually does contain.

  42By the money–price of goods, it is to be observed, I understand always the quantity of pure gold or silver for which they are sold, without any regard to the denomination of the coin. Six shillings and eight–pence, for example, in the time of Edward I., I consider as the same money–price with a pound sterling in the present times; because it contained, as nearly as we can judge, the same quantity of pure silver.48

  CHAPTER VI

  Of the component Parts of the Price of Commodities

  1In that early and rude state of society which precedes both the accumulation of stock and the appropriation of land, the proportion between the quantities of labour necessary for acquiring different objects seems to be the only circumstance which can afford any rule for exchanging them for one another.1 If among a nation of hunters, for example, it usually costs twice the labour to kill a beaver which it does to kill a deer, one beaver should naturally exchange for or be worth two deer. It is natural that what is usually the produce of two days or two hours labour, should be worth double of what is usually the produce of one day’s or one hour’s labour.

  2If the one species of labour should be more severe than the other, some allowance will naturally be made for this superior hardship;2 and the produce of one hour’s labour in the one way may frequently exchange for that of two hours labour in the other.

  3Or if the one species of labour requires an uncommon degree of dexterity and ingenuity, the esteem which men have for such talents, will naturally give a value to their produce, superior to what would be due to the time employed about it.3 Such talents can seldom be acquired but in consequence of long application, and the superior value of their produce may frequently be no more than a reasonable compensation for the time and labour which must be spent in acquiring them. In the advanced state of society, allowances of this kind, for superior hardship and superior skill, are commonly made in the wages of labour; and something of the same kind must probably have taken place in its earliest and rudest period.

  4In this state of things^a, the whole produce of labour belongs to the labourer; and^a the quantity of labour commonly employed in acquiring or producing any commodity, is the only circumstance which can regulate the quantity of labour which it ought commonly to purchase, command, or exchange for.

  5As soon as stock has accumulated in the hands of particular persons, some of them will naturally employ it in setting to work industrious people, whom they will supply with materials and subsistence, in order to make a profit by the sale of their work, or by what their labour adds to the value of the materials. In exchanging the complete manufacture either for money, for labour, or for other goods, over and above what may be sufficient to pay the price of the materials, and the wages of the workmen, something must be given for the profits of the undertaker of the work who hazards his stock in this adventure.4 The value which the workmen add to the materials, therefore, resolves itself in this case into two parts, of which the one pays their wages, the other the profits of their employer upon the whole stock of materials and wages which he advanced. He could have no interest to employ them, unless he expected from the sale of their work something more than what was sufficient to replace his stock to him; and he could have no interest to employ a great stock rather than a small one, unless his profits were to bear some proportion to the extent of his stock.

  6The profits of stock, it may perhaps be thought, are only a different name for the wages of a particular sort of labour, the labour of inspection and direction. They are, however, altogether different, are regulated by quite different principles, and bear no proportion to the quantity, the hardship, or the ingenuity of this supposed labour of inspection and direction. They are regulated altogether by the value of the stock employed, and are greater or smaller in proportion to the extent of this stock. Let us suppose, for example, that in some particular place, where the common annual profits of manufacturing stock are ten per cent. There are two different manufactures, in each of which twenty workmen are employed at the rate of fifteen pounds a year each, or at the expence of three hundred a year in each manufactory. Let us suppose too, that the coarse materials annually wrought up in the one cost only seven hundred pounds, while the finer materials in the other cost seven thousand. The capital annually employed in the one will in this case amount only to one thousand pounds; whereas that employed in the other will amount to seven thousand three hundred pounds. At the rate of ten per cent. therefore, the undertaker of the one will expect an yearly profit of about one hundred pounds only; while that of the other will expect about seven hundred and thirty pounds. But though their profits are so very different, their labour of inspection and direction may be either altogether or very nearly the same. In many great works, almost the whole labour of this kind is^b committed to some principal clerk. His wages properly express the value of this labour of inspection and direction. Though in settling them some regard is had commonly, not only to his labour and skill, but to the trust which is reposed in him, yet they never bear any regular proportion to the capital of which he oversees the management; and the owner of this capital, though he is thus discharged of almost all labour, still expects that his profits should bear a regular proportion to ^chis capital^c In the price of commodities, therefore, the profits of stock ^dconstitute a component part^d altogether different from the wages of labour, and regulated by quite different principles.

  7In this state of things, ^ethe whole produce of labour does not always belong to the labourer. He must in most cases share it with the owner of the stock which employs him. Neither is^e the quantity of labour commonly employed in acquiring or producing any commodity,^f the only circumstance which can regulate the quantity which it ought commonly to purchase, command, or exchange for. An additional quantity, it is evident, must be due for the profits of the stock which advanced the wages and furnished the materials of that labour.

  8As soon as the land of any country has all become private property, the landlords, like all other men, love to reap where they never sowed, and demand a rent even for its natural produce. The wood of the forest, the grass of the field, and all the natural fruits of the earth, which, when land was in common, cost ^gthe labourer^g only the trouble of gathering them, come^h, even to him,^h to have an additional price fixed upon them. ⁱHeⁱ must then pay for the licence to gather them; and ^jmust give up to the landlord a portion of what his labour either collects or produces. This portion, or, what comes to the same thing, the price of this portion, constitutes the rent of land, and in the price of the greater part of commodities makes a third component part.^j5

  9The real value of all the different component parts of price^k, it must be observed, is^k measured by the quantity of labour which they can, each of them, purchase or command. Labour measures the value not only of that part of price which resolves itself into labour, but of that which resolves itself into rent, and of that which resolves itself into profit.6

  10In every society the price of every commodity finally resolves itself into some one or other, or all of those three parts; and in every improved society, all the three enter more or less, as component parts, into the price of the far greater part of commodities.

  11In the price of corn, for example, one part pays the rent of the landlord, another pays the wages or maintenance of the labourers and labouring cattle employed in producing it, and the third pays the profit of the farmer. These three parts seem either immediately or ultimately to make up the whole price of corn. A fourth part, it may perhaps be thought, is necessary for replacing the stock of the farmer, or for compensating the ^lwear and tear^l of his labouring cattle, and other instruments of husbandry. But it must be considered that the price of any instrument of husbandry, such as a labouring horse, is itself made up of the same three parts; the rent of the land upon which he is reared, the labour of tending and rearing him, and the profits of the farmer who advances both the rent of this land, and the wages of this labour. Though the price of the corn, therefore, may pay the price as well as the maintenance of the horse, the whole price still resolves itself either immediately or ultimately into the same three parts of rent, labour, and profit.

  12In the price of flour or meal, we must add to the price of the corn, the profits of the miller, and the wages of his servants; in the price of the bread, the profits of the baker, and the wages of his servants; and in the price of both, the labour of transporting the corn from the house of the farmer to that of the miller, and from that of the miller to that of the baker, together with the profits of those who advance the wages of that labour.

  13The price of flax resolves itself into the same three parts as that of corn. In the price of linen we must add to this price the wages of the flax–dresser, of the spinner, of the weaver, of the bleacher, &c. together with the profits of their respective employers.

  14As any particular commodity comes to be more manufactured, that part of the price which resolves itself into wages and profit, comes to be greater in proportion to that which resolves itself into rent. In the progress of the manufacture, not only the number of profits increase, but every subsequent profit is greater than the foregoing; because the capital from which it is derived must always be greater. The capital which employs the weavers, for example, must be greater than that which employs the spinners; because it not only replaces that capital with its profits, but pays, besides, the wages of the weavers; and the profits must always bear some proportion to the capital.

  15In the most improved societies, however, there are always a few commodities of which the price resolves itself into two parts only, the wages of labour, and the profits of stock; and a still smaller number in which it consists altogether in the wages of labour. In the price of sea–fish, for example, one part pays the labour of the fishermen, and the other the profits of the capital employed in the fishery. Rent very seldom makes any part of it, though it does sometimes, as I shall shew hereafter.7 It is otherwise, at least through the greater part of Europe, in river fisheries. A salmon fishery pays a rent, and rent, though it cannot well be called the rent of land, makes a part of the price of a salmon as well as wages and profit. In some parts of Scotland a few poor people make a trade of gathering, along the sea–shore, those little variegated stones commonly known by the name of Scotch Pebbles. The price which is paid to them by the stone–cutter is altogether the wages of their labour; neither rent nor profit make any part of it.

  16 But the whole price of ^many^m commodity must still finally resolve itself into some one or other, or all of those three parts; as whatever part of it remains after paying the rent of the land, and the price of the whole labour employed in raising, manufacturing, and bringing it to market, must necessarily be profit to somebody.

  17As the price or exchangeable value of every particular commodity, taken separately, resolves itself into some one or other or all of those three parts; so that of all the commodities which compose the whole annual produce of the labour of every country, taken complexly, must resolve itself into the same three parts, and be parcelled out among different inhabitants of the country, either as the wages of their labour, the profits of their stock, or the rent of their land.8 The whole of what is annually either collected or produced by the labour of every society, or what comes to the same thing, the whole price of it, is in the manner originally distributed among some of its different members. Wages, profit, and rent, are the three original sources of all revenue as well as of all exchangeable value. All other revenue is ultimately derived from some one or other of these.

  18Whoever derives his revenue from a fund which is his own, must draw it either from his labour, from his stock, or from his land. The revenue derived from labour is called wages. That derived from stock, by the person who manages or employs it, is called profit. That derived from it by the person who does not employ it himself, but lends it to another, is called the interest or the use of money. It is the compensation which the borrower pays to the lender, for the profit which he has an opportunity of making by the use of the money. Part of that profit naturally belongs to the borrower, who runs the risk and takes the trouble of employing it; and part to the lender, who affords him the opportunity of making this profit. The interest of money is always a derivative revenue, which, if it is not paid from the profit which is made by the use of the money, must be paid from some other source of revenue, unless perhaps the borrower is a spendthrift, who contracts a second debt in order to pay the interest of the first.9 The revenue which proceeds altogether from land, is called rent, and belongs to the landlord. The revenue of the farmer is derived partly from his labour, and partly from his stock. To him, land is only the instrument which enables him to earn the wages of this labour, and to make the profits of this stock. All taxes, and all the revenue which is founded upon them, all salaries, pensions, and annuities of every kind, are ultimately derived from some one or other of those three original sources of revenue, and are paid either immediately or mediately from the wages of labour, the profits of stock, or the rent of land.

  19When those three different sorts of revenue belong to different persons, they are readily distinguished; but when they belong to the same they are sometimes confounded with one another, at least in common language.10

  20A gentleman who farms a part of his own estate, after paying the expence of cultivation, should gain both the rent of the landlord and the profit of the farmer. He is apt to denominate, however, his whole gain, profit, and thus confounds rent with profit, at least in common language. The greater part of our North American and West Indian planters are in this situation. They farm, the greater part of them, their own estates, and accordingly we seldom hear of the rent of a plantation, but frequently of its profit.

  21Common farmers seldom employ any overseer to direct the general operations of the farm. They generally too work a good deal with their own hands, as ploughmen, harrowers, &c. What remains of the crop after paying the rent, therefore, should not only replace to them their stock employed in cultivation, together with its ordinary profits, but pay them the wages which are due to them, both as labourers and overseers. Whatever remains, however, after paying the rent and keeping up the stock, is called profit. But wages evidently make a part of it. The farmer, by saving these wages, must necessarily gain them. Wages, therefore, are in this case confounded with profit.

  22An independent manufacturer, who has stock enough both to purchase materials, and to maintain himself till he can carry his work to market, should gain both the wages of a journeyman who works under a master, and the profit which that master makes by the sale of ⁿthe journeyman’sⁿ work. His whole gains, however, are commonly called profit, and wages are, in this case too, confounded with profit.

  23A gardener who cultivates his own garden with his own hands, unites in his own person the three different characters, of landlord, farmer, and labourer. His produce, therefore, should pay him the rent of the first, the profit of the second, and the wages of the third. The whole, however, is commonly considered as the earnings of his labour. Both rent and profit are, in this case, confounded with wages.

  24As in a civilized country there are but few commodities of which the exchangeable value arises from labour only, rent and profit contributing largely to that of the far greater part of them, so the annual produce of its labour will always be sufficient to purchase or command a much greater quantity of labour than what was employed in raising, preparing, and bringing that produce to market. If the society ^owas^o annually to employ all the labour which it can annually purchase, as the quantity of labour would increase greatly every year, so the produce of every succeeding year would be of vastly greater value than that of the foregoing. But there is no country in which the whole annual produce is employed in maintaining the industrious.11 The idle every where consume a great part of it; and according to the different proportions in which it is annually divided between those two different orders of people, its ordinary or average value must either annually increase, or diminish, or continue the same from one year to another.

  CHAPTER VII

  Of the natural and market Price of Commodities1

  1There is in every society or neighbourhood an ordinary or average rate both of wages and profit in every different employment of labour and stock. This rate is naturally regulated, as I shall show hereafter,2 partly by the general circumstances of the society, their riches or poverty, their advancing, stationary, or declining condition; and partly by the particular nature of each employment.3

  2There is likewise in every society or neighbourhood an ordinary or average rate of rent, which is regulated too, as I shall show hereafter,4 partly by the general circumstances of the society or neighbourhood in which the land is situated, and partly by the natural or improved fertility of the land.

  3These ordinary or average rates may be called the natural rates of wages, profit, and rent, at the time and place in which they commonly prevail.

  4When the price of any commodity is neither more nor less than what is sufficient to pay the rent of the land, the wages of the labour, and the profits of the stock employed in raising, preparing, and bringing it to market, according to their natural rates, the commodity is then sold for what may be called its natural price.5

  5The commodity is then sold precisely for what it is worth, or for what it really costs the person who brings it to market; for though in common language what is called the prime cost of any commodity does not comprehend the profit of the person who is to sell it again, yet if he sells it at a price which does not allow him the ordinary rate of profit in his neighbourhood, he is evidently a loser by the trade; since by employing his stock in some other way he might have made that profit. His profit, besides, is his revenue, the proper fund of his subsistence. As, while he is preparing and bringing the goods to market, he advances to his workmen their wages, or their subsistence; so he advances to himself, in the same manner, his own subsistence, which is generally suitable to the profit which he may reasonably expect from the sale of his goods. Unless they yield him this profit, therefore, they do not repay him what they may very properly be said to have really cost him.

  6Though the price, therefore, which leaves him this profit, is not always the lowest at which a dealer may sometimes sell his goods, it is the lowest at which he is likely to sell them for any considerable time; at least where there is perfect liberty,6 or where he may change his trade as often as he pleases.

  7 The actual price at which any commodity is commonly sold is called its market price. It may either be above, or below, or exactly the same with its natural price.

  8The market price of every particular commodity is regulated by the proportion between the quantity which is actually brought to market, and the demand of those who are willing to pay the natural price of the commodity, or the whole value of the rent, labour, and profit, which must be paid in order to bring it thither. Such people may be called the effectual demanders, and their demand the effectual demand;7 since it may be sufficient to effectuate the bringing of the commodity to market. It is different from the absolute demand. A very poor man may be said in some sense to have a demand for a coach and six; he might like to have it; but his demand is not an effectual demand, as the commodity can never be brought to market in order to satisfy it.8

  9When the quantity of any commodity which is brought to market falls short of the effectual demand, all those who are willing to pay the whole value of the rent, wages, and profit, which must be paid in order to bring it thither, cannot be supplied with the quantity which they want. Rather than want it altogether, some of them will be willing to give more. A competition will immediately begin among them, and the market price will rise more or less above the natural price, according as ^aeither^a the greatness of the deficiency^b, or the wealth and wanton luxury of the competitors, happen to animate^b more or less the eagerness of ^cthe^c competition. ^dAmong competitors of equal wealth and luxury the^d same deficiency will generally occasion a more or less eager competition, according as the acquisition of the commodity happens to be of more or less importance to ^ethem^e Hence the exorbitant price of the necessaries of life during the blockade of a town or in a famine.

  10When the quantity brought to market exceeds the effectual demand, it cannot be all sold to those who are willing to pay the whole value of the rent, wages and profit, which must be paid in order to bring it thither. Some part must be sold to those who are willing to pay less, and the low price which they give for it must reduce the price of the whole. The market price will sink more or less below the natural price, according as the greatness of the excess increases more or less the competition of the sellers, or according as it happens to be more or less important to them to get immediately rid of the commodity. The same excess in the importation of perishable, will occasion a much greater competition than in that of durable commodities; in the importation of oranges, for example, than ^fin^f that of old iron.9

  11When the quantity brought to market is just sufficient to supply the effectual demand and no more, the market price naturally comes to be either exactly, or as nearly as can be judged of, the same with the natural price. The whole quantity upon hand can be disposed of for this price, and cannot be disposed of for more. The competition of the different dealers obliges them all to accept of this price, but does not oblige them to accept of less.

  12The quantity of every commodity brought to market naturally suits itself to the effectual demand. It is the interest of all those who employ their land, labour, or stock, in bringing any commodity to market, that the quantity never should exceed the effectual demand; and it is the interest of all other people that it never should fall short of ^gthat demand^g .

  13If at any time it exceeds the effectual demand, some of the component parts of its price must be paid below their natural rate. If it is rent, the interest of the landlords will immediately prompt them to withdraw a part of their land; and if it is wages or profit, the interest of the labourers in the one case, and of their employers in the other, will prompt them to withdraw a part of their labour or stock from this employment. The quantity brought to market will soon be no more than sufficient to supply the effectual demand. All the different parts of its price will rise to their natural rate, and the whole price to its natural price.

  14If, on the contrary, the quantity brought to market should at any time fall short of the effectual demand, some of the component parts of its price must rise above their natural rate. If it is rent, the interest of all other landlords will naturally prompt them to prepare more land for the raising of this commodity; if it is wages or profit, the interest of all other labourers and dealers will soon prompt them to employ more labour and stock in preparing and bringing it to market. The quantity brought thither will soon be sufficient to supply the effectual demand. All the different parts of its price will soon sink to their natural rate, and the whole price to its natural price.

  15The natural price, therefore, is, as it were, the central price, to which the prices of all commodities are continually gravitating.10 Different accidents may sometimes keep them suspended a good deal above it, and sometimes force them down even somewhat below it. But whatever may be the obstacles which hinder them from settling in this center of repose and continuance, they are constantly tending towards it.

  16The whole quantity of industry annually employed in order to bring any commodity to market, naturally suits itself in this manner to the effectual demand. It naturally aims at bringing always that precise quantity thither which may be sufficient to supply, and no more than supply, that demand.

  17But in some employments the same quantity of industry will in different years produce very different quantities of commodities; while in others it will produce always the same, or very nearly the same. The same number of labourers in husbandry will, in different years, produce very different quantities of corn, wine, oil, hops, &c. But the same number of spinners and weavers will every year produce the same or very nearly the same quantity of linen and woollen cloth. It is only the average produce of the one species of industry which can be suited in any respect to the effectual demand; and as its actual produce is frequently much greater and frequently much less than its average produce, the quantity of the commodities brought to market will sometimes exceed a good deal, and sometimes fall short a good deal of the effectual demand. Even though that demand therefore should continue always the same, their market price will be liable to great fluctuations, will sometimes fall a good deal below, and sometimes rise a good deal above their natural price. In the other species of industry, the produce of equal quantities of labour being always the same or very nearly the same, it can be more exactly suited to the effectual demand. While that demand continues the same, therefore, the market price of the commodities is likely to do so too, and to be either altogether, or as nearly as can be judged of, the same with the natural price. That the price of linen and woollen cloth is liable neither to such frequent nor to such great variations as the price of corn, every man’s experience will inform him. The price of the one species of commodities varies only with the variations in the demand: That of the other varies, not only with the variations in the demand, but with the much greater and more frequent variations in the quantity of what is brought to market in order to supply that demand.

  18The occasional and temporary fluctuations in the market price of any commodity fall chiefly upon those parts of its price which resolve themselves into wages and profit. That part which resolves itself into rent is less affected by them. A rent certain in money is not in the least affected by them either in its rate or in its value. A rent which consists either in a certain proportion or in a certain quantity of the rude produce, is no doubt affected in its yearly value by all the occasional and temporary fluctuations in the market price of that rude produce: but it is seldom affected by them in its yearly rate. In settling the terms of the lease, the landlord and farmer endeavour, according to their best judgment, to adjust that rate, not to the temporary and occasional, but to the average and ordinary price of the produce.

  19Such fluctuations affect both the value and the rate either of wages or of profit, according as the market happens to be either over–stocked or understocked with commodities or with labour; with work done, or with work to be done. A publick mourning raises the price of black cloth11 (with which the market is almost always under–stocked upon such occasions) and augments the profits of the merchants who possess any considerable quantity of it. It has no effect upon the wages of the weavers. The market is understocked with commodities, not with labour; with work done, not with work to be done. It raises the wages of journeymen taylors. The market is here under–stocked with labour. There is an effectual demand for ^hmore^h labour, for more work to be done than can be had. It sinks the price of coloured silks and cloths, and thereby reduces the profits of the merchants who have any considerable quantity of them upon hand. It sinks too the wages of the workmen employed in preparing such commodities, for which all demand is stopped for six months, perhaps for a twelvemonth. The market is here over–stocked both with commodities and with labour.

  20But though the market price of every particular commodity is in this manner continually gravitating, if one may say so, towards the natural price, yet sometimes particular accidents, sometimes natural causes, and sometimes particular regulations of police, may, in many commodities, keep up the market price, for a long time together, a good deal above the natural price.12

  21When by an increase in the effectual demand, the market price of some particular commodity happens to rise a good deal above the natural price, those who employ their stocks in supplying that market are generally careful to conceal this change. If it was commonly known, their great profit would tempt so many new rivals to employ their stocks in the same way, that, the effectual demand being fully supplied, the market price would soon be reduced to the natural price, and perhaps for some time even below it. If the market is at a great distance from the residence of those who supply it, they may sometimes be able to keep the secret for several years together, and may so long enjoy their extraordinary profits without any new rivals.13 Secrets of this kind, however, it must be acknowledged, can seldom be long kept; and the extraordinary profit can last very little longer than they are kept.

  22Secrets in manufactures are capable of being longer kept than secrets in trade. A dyer who has found the means of producing a particular colour with materials which cost only half the price of those commonly made use of, may, with good management, enjoy the advantage of his discovery as long as he lives, and even leave it as a legacy to his posterity. His extraordinary gains arise from the high price which is paid for his private labour. They properly consist in the high wages of that labour. But as they are repeated upon every part of his stock, and as their whole amount bears, upon that account, a regular proportion to it, they are commonly considered as extraordinary profits of stock.

  23Such enhancements of the market price are evidently the effects of particular accidents, of which, however, the operation may sometimes last for many years together.

  24Some natural productions require such a singularity of soil and situation, that all the land in a great country, which is fit for producing them, may not be sufficient to supply the effectual demand. The whole quantity brought to market, therefore, may be disposed of to those who are willing to give more than what is sufficient to pay the rent of the land which produced them, together with the wages of the labour, and the profits of the stock which were employed in preparing and bringing them to market, according to their natural rates. Such commodities may continue ⁱfor whole centuries togetherⁱ to be sold at this high price^j ; and that part of it which resolves itself into the rent of land is in this case the part which is generally paid above its natural rate. The rent of the land which affords such singular and esteemed productions, like the rent of some vineyards in France of a peculiarly happy soil and situation, bears no regular proportion to the rent of other equally fertile and equally well–cultivated land in its neighbourhood.14 The wages of the labour and the profits of the stock employed in bringing such commodities to market, on the contrary, are seldom out of their natural proportion to those of the other employments of labour and stock in their neighbourhood.

  25Such enhancements of the market price are evidently the effect of natural causes which may hinder the effectual demand from ever being fully supplied, and which may continue, therefore, to operate for ever.

  26A monopoly granted either to an individual or to a trading company has the same effect as a secret in trade or manufactures. The monopolists, by keeping the market constantly under–stocked, by never fully supplying the effectual demand, sell their commodities much above the natural price, and raise their emoluments, whether they consist in wages or profit, greatly above their natural rate.15

  27The price of monopoly is upon every occasion the highest which can be got. The natural price, or the price of free competition, on the contrary, is the lowest which can be taken, not upon every occasion, indeed, but for any considerable time together. The one is upon every occasion the highest which can be squeezed out of the buyers, or which, it is supposed, they will consent to give: The other is the lowest which the sellers can commonly afford to take, and at the same time continue their business.

  28The exclusive privileges of corporations, statutes of apprenticeship, and all those laws which restrain, in particular employments, the competition to a smaller number than might otherwise go into them, have the same tendency, though in a less degree.16 They are a sort of enlarged monopolies, and may frequently, for ages together and in whole classes of employments, keep up the market price of particular commodities above the natural price, and maintain both the wages of the labour and the profits of the stock employed about them somewhat above their natural rate.

  29Such enhancements of the market price may last as long as the regulations of police which give occasion to them.

  30The market price of any particular commodity, though it may continue long above, can seldom continue long below its natural price. Whatever part of it was paid below the natural rate, the persons whose interest it affected would immediately feel the loss, and would immediately withdraw either so much land, or so much labour, or so much stock, from being employed about it, that the quantity brought to market would soon be no more than sufficient to supply the effectual demand. Its market price, therefore, would soon rise to the natural price. This at least would be the case where there was perfect liberty.17

  31The same statutes of apprenticeship and other corporation laws indeed, which, when a manufacture is in prosperity, enable the workman to raise his wages a good deal above their natural rate, sometimes oblige him, when it decays, to let them down a good deal below it. As in the one case they exclude many people from his employment, so in the other they exclude him from many employments. The effect of such regulations, however, is not near so durable in sinking the workman’s wages below, as in raising them above their natural rate. Their operation in the one way may endure for many centuries, but in the other it can last no longer than the lives of some of the workmen who were bred to the business in the time of its prosperity. When they are gone, the number of those who are afterwards educated to the trade will naturally suit itself to the effectual demand. The police must be as violent as that of Indostan or antient Egypt (where every man was bound by a principle of religion to follow the occupation of his father, and was supposed to commit the most horrid sacrilege if he changed it for another) which can in any particular employment, and for several generations together, sink either the wages of labour or the profits of stock below their natural rate.18

  32This is all that I think necessary to be observed at present concerning the deviations, whether occasional or permanent, of the market price of commodities from the natural price.

  33The natural price itself varies with the natural rate of each of its component parts, of wages, profit, and rent; and in every society this rate varies according to their circumstances, according to their riches or poverty, their advancing, stationary, or declining condition. I shall, in the four following chapters, endeavour to explain, as fully and distinctly as I can, the causes of those different variations.

  34First, I shall endeavour to explain what are the circumstances which naturally determine the rate of wages, and in what manner those circumstances are affected by the riches or poverty, by the advancing, stationary, or declining state of the society.

  35Secondly, I shall endeavour to show what are the circumstances which naturally determine the rate of profit, and in what manner too those circumstances are affected by the like variations in the state of the society.

  36Though pecuniary wages and profit are very different in the different employments of labour and stock; yet a certain proportion seems commonly to take place between both the pecuniary wages in all the different employments of labour, and the pecuniary profits in all the different employments of stock. This proportion, it will appear hereafter,19 depends partly upon the nature of the different employments, and partly upon the different laws and policy of the society in which they are carried on. But though in many respects dependent upon the laws and policy, this proportion seems to be little affected by the riches or poverty of that society; by its advancing, stationary, or declining condition; but to remain the same or very nearly the same in all those different states. I shall, in the third place, endeavour to explain all the different circumstances which regulate this proportion.

  37In the fourth and last place, I shall endeavour to show what are the circumstances which regulate the rent of land, and which either raise or lower the real price of all the different substances which it produces.

  CHAPTER VIII

  Of the Wages of Labour

  1The produce of labour constitutes the natural recompence or wages of labour.

  2In that original state of things, which precedes both the appropriation of land and the accumulation of stock,1 the whole produce of labour belongs to the labourer2 . He has neither landlord nor master to share with him.

  3Had this state continued, the wages of labour would have augmented with all those improvements in its productive powers, to which the division of labour gives occasion. All things would gradually have become cheaper. They would have been produced by a smaller quantity of labour; and as the commodities produced by equal quantities of labour would naturally in this state of things be exchanged for one another, they would have been purchased likewise with the produce of a smaller quantity.

  4But though all things would have become cheaper in reality, in appearance many things might have become dearer than before, or have been exchanged for a greater quantity of other goods. Let us suppose, for example, that in the greater part of employments the productive powers of labour had been improved to tenfold, or that a day’s labour could produce ten times the quantity of work which it had done originally; but that in a particular employment they had been improved only to double, or that a day’s labour could produce only twice the quantity of work which it had done before. In exchanging the produce of a day’s labour in the greater part of employments, for that of a day’s labour in this particular one, ten times the original quantity of work in them would purchase only twice the original quantity in it. Any particular quantity in it, therefore, a pound weight, for example, would appear to be five times dearer than before. In reality, however, it would be twice as cheap. Though it required five times the quantity of other goods to purchase it, it would require only half the quantity of labour either to purchase or to produce it. The acquisition, therefore, would be twice as easy as before.

  5But this original state of things, in which the labourer enjoyed the whole produce of his own labour, could not last beyond the first introduction of the appropriation of land and the accumulation of stock. It was at an end, therefore, long before the most considerable improvements were made in the productive powers of labour, and it would be to no purpose to trace ^afarther^a what might have been its effects upon the recompence or wages of labour.

  6As soon as land becomes private property, the landlord demands a share of ^balmost all the^b produce ^cwhich^c the labourer can either raise, or collect from it. His rent makes the first deduction from the produce of the labour which is employed upon land.

  7It seldom happens that the person who tills the ground has wherewithal to maintain himself till he reaps the harvest. His maintenance is generally advanced to him from the stock of a master, the farmer who employs him, and who would have no interest to employ him, unless he was to share in the produce of his labour, or unless his stock was to be replaced to him with a profit. This profit makes a second deduction from the produce of the labour which is employed upon land.

  8The produce of almost all other labour is liable to the like deduction of profit. In all arts and manufactures the greater part of the workmen stand in need of a master to advance them the materials of their work, and their wages and maintenance till it be compleated. He shares in the produce of their labour, or in the value which it adds to the materials upon which it is bestowed; and in this share consists his profit.3

  9It sometimes happens, indeed, that a single independent workman has stock sufficient both to purchase the materials of his work, and to maintain himself till it be compleated. He is both master and workman, and enjoys the whole produce of his own labour, or the whole value which it adds to the materials upon which it is bestowed. It includes what are usually two distinct revenues, belonging to two distinct persons, the profits of stock, and the wages of labour.4

  10Such cases, however, are not very frequent, and in every part of Europe, twenty workmen serve under a master for one that is independent; and the wages of labour are every where understood to be, what they usually are, when the labourer is one person, and the owner of the stock which employs him another.

  11What are the common wages of labour depends every where upon the contract usually made between those two parties, whose interests are by no means the same. The workmen desire to get as much, the masters to give as little as possible. The former are disposed to combine in order to raise, the latter in order to lower the wages of labour.

  12 It is not, however, difficult to foresee which of the two parties must, upon all ordinary occasions, have the advantage in the dispute, and force the other into a compliance with their terms. The masters, being fewer in number, ^dcan combine much more easily; and the law, besides, authorises, or at least does not prohibit their combinations,^d while it prohibits those of the workmen.5 We have no acts of parliament against combining to lower the price of work; but many against combining to raise it. In all such disputes the masters can hold out much longer. A landlord, a farmer, a master manufacturer, or merchant, though they did not employ a single workman, could generally live a year or two upon the stocks which they have already acquired. Many workmen could not subsist a week, few could subsist a month, and scarce any a year without employment. In the long–run the workman may be as necessary to his master as his master is to him; but the necessity is not so immediate.

  13We rarely hear, it has been said, of the combinations of masters; though frequently of those of workmen. But whoever imagines, upon this account, that masters rarely combine, is as ignorant of the world as of the subject. Masters are always and every where in a sort of tacit, but constant and uniform combination, not to raise the wages of labour above their actual rate. To violate this combination is every where a most unpopular action, and a sort of reproach to a master among his neighbours and equals. We seldom, indeed, hear of this combination, because it is the usual, and one may say, the natural state of things which nobody ever hears of.6 Masters too sometimes enter into particular combinations to sink the wages of labour even below this rate. These are always conducted with the utmost silence and secrecy, till the moment of execution, and when the workmen yield, as they sometimes do, without resistance, though severely felt by them, they are never heard of by other people. Such combinations, however, are frequently resisted by a contrary defensive combination of the workmen; who sometimes too, without any provocation of this kind, combine of their own accord to raise the price of their labour. Their usual pretences are, sometimes the high price of provisions;7 sometimes the great profit which their masters make by their work. But whether their combinations be offensive or defensive, they are always abundantly heard of. In order to bring the point to a speedy decision, they have always recourse to the loudest clamour, and sometimes to the most shocking violence and outrage. They are desperate, and act with the folly and extravagance of desperate men, who must ^eeither^e starve, or frighten their masters into an immediate compliance with their demands. The masters upon these occasions are just as clamorous upon the other side, and never cease to call aloud for the assistance of the civil magistrate, and the rigorous execution of those laws which have been enacted with so much severity against the combinations of servants, labourers, and journeymen. The workmen, accordingly, very seldom derive any advantage from the violence of those tumultuous combinations, which, partly from the interposition of the civil magistrate, partly from the superior steadiness of the masters, partly from the necessity which the greater part of the workmen are under of submitting for the sake of present subsistence, generally end in nothing, but the punishment or ruin of the ringleaders.8

  But though in disputes with their workmen, masters must generally have the advantage, there is however a certain rate below which it seems impossible to reduce, for any considerable time, the ordinary wages even of the lowest species of labour.

  15A man must always live by his work, and his wages must at least be sufficient to maintain him. They must even upon most occasions be somewhat more; otherwise it would be impossible ^ffor him^f to bring up a family, and the race of such workmen could not last beyond the first generation. Mr. Cantillon seems, upon this account, to suppose that the lowest species of common labourers must every where earn at least double their own maintenance, in order that one with another they may be enabled to bring up two children; the labour of the wife, on account of her necessary attendance on the children, being supposed no more than sufficient to provide for herself. But one–half the children born, it is computed, die before the age of manhood.9 The poorest labourers, therefore, according to this account, must, one with another, attempt to rear at least four children, in order that two may have an equal chance of living to that age. But the necessary maintenance of four children, it is supposed, may be nearly equal to that of one man. The labour of an able–bodied slave, the same author adds, is computed to be worth double his maintenance; and that of the meanest labourer, he thinks, cannot be worth less than that of an able–bodied slave. Thus far at least seems certain, that, in order to bring up a family, the labour of the husband and wife together must, even in the lowest species of common labour, be able to earn something more than what is precisely necessary for their own maintenance;10 but in what proportion, whether in that abovementioned, or in any other, I shall not take upon me to determine.11

  16There are certain circumstances, however, which sometimes give the labourers an advantage, and enable them to raise their wages considerably above this rate; evidently the lowest which is consistent with common humanity.

  17When in any country the demand for those who live by wages; labourers, journeymen, servants of every kind, is continually increasing; when every year furnishes employment for a greater number than had been employed the year before, the workmen have no occasion to combine in order to raise their wages. The scarcity of hands occasions a competition among masters, who bid against one another, in order to get ^gworkmen^g and thus voluntarily break through the natural combination of masters not to raise wages.

  18The demand for those who live by wages, it is evident, cannot increase but in proportion to the increase of the funds which are destined for the payment of wages. These funds are of two kinds; first, the revenue which is over and above what is necessary for the maintenance; and, secondly, the stock which is over and above what is necessary for the employment of their masters.

  19When the landlord, annuitant, or monied man, has a greater revenue than what he judges sufficient to maintain his own family, he employs either the whole or a part of the surplus in maintaining one or more menial servants. Increase this surplus, and he will naturally increase the number of those servants.

  20When an independent workman, such as a weaver or shoe–maker, has got more stock than what is sufficient to purchase the materials of his own work, and to maintain himself till he can dispose of it, he naturally employs one or more journeymen with the surplus, in order to make a profit by their work. Increase this surplus, and he will naturally increase the number of his journeymen.

  21The demand for those who live by wages, therefore, necessarily increases with the increase of the revenue and stock of every country, and cannot possibly increase without it. The increase of revenue and stock is the increase of national wealth. The demand for those who live by wages, therefore, naturally increases with the increase of national wealth, and cannot possibly increase without it.

  22It is not the actual greatness of national wealth, but its continual increase, which occasions a rise in the wages of labour. It is not, accordingly, in the richest countries, but in the most thriving, or in those which are growing rich the fastest, that the wages of labour are highest. England is certainly, in the present times, a much richer country than any part of North America. The wages of labour, however, are much higher in North America than in any part of England.12 In the province of New York, common labourers earn* three shillings and sixpence currency, equal to two shillings sterling, a day; ship carpenters, ten shillings and sixpence currency, with a pint of rum worth sixpence sterling, equal in all to six shillings and sixpence sterling; house carpenters and bricklayers, eight shillings currency, equal to four shillings and sixpence sterling; journeymen taylors, five shillings currency, equal to about two shillings and ten pence sterling. These prices are all above the London price; and wages are said to be as high in the other colonies as in New York. The price of provisions is every where in North America much lower than in England. A dearth has never been known there. In the worst seasons, they have always had a sufficiency for themselves, though less for exportation. If the money price of labour, therefore, be higher than it is any where in the mother country, its real price, the real command of the necessaries and conveniencies of life which it conveys to the labourer, must be higher in a still greater proportion.

  23But though North America is not yet so rich as England, it is much more thriving, and advancing with much greater rapidity to the further acquisition of riches.13 The most decisive mark of the prosperity of any country is the increase of the number of its inhabitants. In Great Britain, and most other European countries, they are not supposed to double in less than five hundred years.14 In the British colonies in North America, it has been found, that they double in twenty or five–and–twenty years.15 Nor in the present times is this increase principally owing to the continual importation of new inhabitants, but to the great multiplication of the species. Those who live to old age, it is said, frequently see there from fifty to a hundred, and sometimes many more, descendants from their own body. Labour is there so well rewarded that a numerous family of children, instead of being a burthen is a source of opulence and prosperity to the parents. The labour of each child, before it can leave their house, is computed to be worth a hundred pounds clear gain to them. A young widow with four or five young children, who, among the middling or inferior ranks of people in Europe, would have so little chance for a second husband, is there frequently courted as a sort of fortune. The value of children is the greatest of all encouragements to marriage. We cannot, therefore, wonder that the people in North America should generally marry very young. Notwithstanding the great increase occasioned by such early marriages, there is a continual complaint of the scarcity of hands in North America.16 The demand for labourers, the funds destined for maintaining them, increase, it seems, still faster than they can find labourers to employ.17

  24Though the wealth of a country should be very great, yet if it has been long stationary, we must not expect to find the wages of labour very high in it. The funds destined for the payment of wages, the revenue and stock of its inhabitants, may be of the greatest extent, but if they have continued for several centuries of the same, or very nearly of the same extent, the number of labourers employed every year could easily supply, and even more than supply, the number wanted the following year. There could seldom be any scarcity of hands, nor could the masters be obliged to bid against one another in order to get them. The hands, on the contrary, would, in this case, naturally multiply beyond their employment. There would be a constant scarcity of employment, and the labourers would be obliged to bid against one another in order to get it. If in such a country the wages of labour had ever been more than sufficient to maintain the labourer, and to enable him to bring up a family, the competition of the labourers and the interest of the masters would soon reduce them to this lowest rate which is consistent with common humanity. China has been long one of the richest, that is, one of the most fertile, best cultivated, most industrious, and most populous countries in the world. It seems, however, to have been long stationary. Marco Polo, who visited it more than five hundred years ago,18 describes its cultivation, industry, and populousness, almost in the same terms in which they are described by travellers in the present times. It had perhaps, even long before his time, acquired that full complement of riches which the nature of its laws and institutions permits it to acquire.19 The accounts of all travellers, inconsistent in many other respects, agree in the low wages of labour, and in the difficulty which a labourer finds in bringing up a family in China. If by digging the ground a whole day he can get what will purchase a small quantity of rice in the evening, he is contented. The condition of artificers is, if possible, still worse. Instead of waiting indolently in their work–houses, for the calls of their customers, as in Europe, they are continually running about the streets with the tools of their respective trades, offering their service, and as it were begging employment.20 The poverty of the lower ranks of people in China far surpasses that of the most beggarly nations in Europe. In the neighbourhood of Canton many hundred, it is commonly said, many thousand families have no habitation on the land, but live constantly in little fishing boats upon the rivers and canals. The subsistence which they find there is so scanty that they are eager to fish up the nastiest garbage thrown overboard from any European ship. Any carrion, the carcase of a dead dog or cat, for example, though half putrid and stinking, is as welcome to them as the most wholesome food to the people of other countries. Marriage is encouraged in China, not by the profitableness of children, but by the liberty of destroying them. In all great towns several are every night exposed in the street, or drowned like puppies in the water. The performance of this horrid office is even said to be the avowed business by which some people earn their subsistence.21

  25China, however, though it may perhaps stand still, does not seem to go backwards. Its towns are no–where deserted by their inhabitants. The lands which had once been cultivated are no–where neglected. The same or very nearly the same annual labour must therefore continue to be performed, and the funds destined for maintaining it must not, consequently, be sensibly diminished. The lowest class of labourers, therefore, notwithstanding their scanty subsistence, must some way or another make shift to continue their race so far as to keep up their usual numbers.

  26But it would be otherwise in a country where the funds destined for the maintenance of labour were sensibly decaying. Every year the demand for servants and labourers would, in all the different classes of employments, be less than it had been the year before. Many who had been bred in the superior classes, not being able to find employment in their own business, would be glad to seek it in the lowest. The lowest class being not only overstocked with its own workmen, but with the overflowings of all the other classes, the competition for employment would be so great in it, as to reduce the wages of labour to the most miserable and scanty subsistence of the labourer. Many would not be able to find employment even upon these hard terms, but would either starve, or be driven to seek a subsistence either by begging, or by the perpetration perhaps of the greatest enormities. Want, famine, and mortality would immediately prevail in that class, and from thence extend themselves to all the superior classes, till the number of inhabitants in the country was reduced to what could easily be maintained by the revenue and stock which remained in it, and which had escaped either the tyranny or calamity which had destroyed the rest. This perhaps is nearly the present state of Bengal, and of some other of the English settlements in the East Indies.22 In a fertile country which had before been much depopulated, where subsistence, consequently, should not be very difficult, and where, notwithstanding, three or four hundred thousand people die of hunger in one year, we may be assured that the funds destined for the maintenance of the labouring poor are fast decaying. The difference between the genius of the British constitution which protects and governs North America, and that of the mercantile company which oppresses and domineers in the East Indies, cannot perhaps be better illustrated than by the different state of those countries.23

  27The liberal reward of labour, therefore, as it is the necessary effect, so it is the natural symptom of increasing national wealth. The scanty maintenance of the labouring poor, on the other hand, is the natural symptom that things are at a stand, and their starving condition that they are going fast backwards.

  28In Great Britain the wages of labour seem, in the present times, to be evidently more than what is precisely necessary to enable the labourer to bring up a family. In order to satisfy ourselves upon this point it will not be necessary to enter into any tedious or doubtful calculation of what may be the lowest sum upon which it is possible to do this. There are many plain symptoms that the wages of labour are no–where in this country regulated by this lowest rate which is consistent with common humanity.

  29First, in almost every part of Great Britain there is a distinction, even in the lowest species of labour, between summer and winter wages. Summer wages are always highest. But on account of the extraordinary expense of fewel, the maintenance of a family is most expensive in winter. Wages, therefore, being highest when this expence is lowest, it seems evident that they are not regulated by what is necessary for this expence; but by the quantity and supposed value of the work. A labourer, it may be said indeed, ought to save part of his summer wages in order to defray his winter expence; and that through the whole year they do not exceed what is necessary to maintain his family through the whole year. A slave, however, or one absolutely dependent on us for immediate subsistence, would not be treated in this manner. His daily subsistence would be proportioned to his daily necessities.

  30Secondly, the wages of labour do not in Great Britain fluctuate with the price of provisions. These vary every–where from year to year, frequently from month to month. But in many places the money price of labour remains uniformly the same sometimes for half a century together. If in these places, therefore, the labouring poor can maintain their families in dear years, they must be at their ease in times of moderate plenty, and in affluence in those of extraordinary cheapness. The high price of provisions during these ten years past has not in many parts of the kingdom been accompanied with any sensible rise in the money price of labour. It has, indeed, in some; owing probably more to the increase of the demand for labour, than to that of the price of provisions.

  31Thirdly, as the price of provisions varies more from year to year than the wages of labour, so, on the other hand, the wages of labour vary more from place to place than the price of provisions. The prices of bread and butcher’s meat are generally the same or very nearly the same through the greater part of the united kingdom. These and most other things which are sold by retail, the way in which the labouring poor buy all things, are generally fully as cheap or cheaper in great towns than in the remoter parts of the country, for reasons which I shall have occasion to explain hereafter.24 But the wages of labour in a great town and its neighbourhood are frequently a fourth or a fifth part, twenty or five–and–twenty per cent. higher than at a few miles distance. Eighteen pence a day may be reckoned the common price of labour in London and its neighbourhood. At a few miles distance it falls to fourteen and fifteen pence. Ten pence may may be reckoned its price in Edinburgh and its neighbourhood.25 At a few miles distance it falls to eight pence, the usual price of common labour through the greater part of the low country of Scotland, where it varies a good deal less than in England.26 Such a difference of prices, which it seems is not always sufficient to transport a man from one parish to another, would necessarily occasion so great a transportation of the most bulky commodities, not only from one parish to another, but from one end of the kingdom, almost from one end of the world to the other, as would soon reduce them more nearly to a level. After all that has been said of the levity and inconstancy of human nature, it appears evidently from experience that a man is of all sorts of luggage the most difficult to be transported. If the labouring poor, therefore, can maintain their families in those parts of the kingdom where the price of labour is lowest, they must be in affluence where it is highest.

  32Fourthly, the variations in the price of labour not only do not correspond either in place or time with those in the price of provisions, but they are frequently quite opposite.

  33Grain, the food of the common people, is dearer in Scotland than in England, whence Scotland receives almost every year very large supplies. But English corn must be sold dearer in Scotland, the country to which it is brought, than in England, the country from which it comes; and in proportion to its quality it cannot be sold dearer in Scotland than the Scotch corn that comes to the same market in competition with it.27 The quality of grain depends chiefly upon the quantity of flour or meal which it yields at the mill, and in this respect English grain is so much superior to the Scotch, that, though often dearer in appearance, or in proportion to the measure of its bulk, it is generally cheaper in reality, or in proportion to its quality, or even to the measure of its weight. The price of labour, on the contrary, is dearer in England than in Scotland. If the labouring poor, therefore, can maintain their families in the one part of the united kingdom, they must be in affluence in the other. Oatmeal indeed supplies the common people in Scotland with the greatest and the best part of their food, which is in general much inferior to that of their neighbours of the same rank in England.28 This difference, however, in the mode of their subsistence is not the cause, but the effect of the difference in their wages; though, by a strange misapprehension, I have frequently heard it represented as the cause. It is not because one man keeps a coach while his neighbour walks a–foot, that the one is rich and the other poor; but because the one is rich he keeps a coach, and because the other is poor he walks a–foot.

  34During the course of the last century, taking one year with another, grain was dearer in both parts of the united kingdom than during that of the present. This is a matter of fact which cannot now admit of any reasonable doubt; and the proof of it is, if possible, still more decisive with regard to Scotland than with regard to England. It is in Scotland supported by the evidence of the publick fiars,29 annual valuations made upon oath, according to the actual state of the markets, of all the different sorts of grain in every different county of Scotland. If such direct proof could require any collateral evidence to confirm it, I would observe that this has likewise been the case in France, and probably in most other parts of Europe. With regard to France there is the clearest proof.30 But though it is certain that in both parts of the united kingdom grain was somewhat dearer in the last century than in the present, it is equally certain that labour was much cheaper. If the labouring poor, therefore, could bring up their families then, they must be much more at their ease now. In the last century, the most usual day–wages of common labour through the greater part of Scotland were sixpence in summer and five–pence in winter. Three shillings a week, the same price very nearly, still continues to be paid in some parts of the Highlands and Western Islands. Through the greater part of the low country the most usual wages of common labour are now eight–pence a day; ten–pence, sometimes a shilling about Edinburgh, in the counties which border upon England, probably on account of that neighbourhood, and in a few other places where there has lately been a considerable rise in the demand for labour, about Glasgow, Carron, Ayrshire, &c. In England the improvements of agriculture, manufactures and commerce began much earlier than in Scotland. The demand for labour, and consequently its price, must necessarily have increased with those improvements. In the last century, accordingly, as well as in the present, the wages of labour were higher in England than in Scotland. They have risen too considerably since that time, though, on account of the greater variety of wages paid there in different places, it is more difficult to ascertain how much. In 1614, the pay of a foot soldier was the same as in the present times, eight pence a day. When it was first established it would naturally be regulated by the usual wages of common labourers, the rank of people from which foot soldiers are commonly drawn.31 Lord Chief Justice Hales, who wrote in the time of Charles II. computes the necessary expence of a labourer’s family, consisting of six persons, the father and mother, two children able to do something, and two not able, at ten shillings a week, or twenty–six pounds a year. If they cannot earn this by their labour, they must make it up, he supposes, either by begging or stealing.32 He appears to have enquired very carefully into this subject* . In 1688, Mr. Gregory King, whose skill in political arithmetick is so much extolled by Doctor Davenant,33 computed the ordinary income of labourers and out–servants to be fifteen pounds a year to a family, which he supposed to consist, one with another, of three and a half persons. His calculation, therefore, though different in appearance, corresponds very nearly at bottom with that of judge Hales. Both suppose the weekly expence of such families to be about twenty pence a head. Both the pecuniary income and expence of such families have increased considerably since that time through the greater part of the kingdom; in some places more, and in some less; though perhaps scarce any where so much as some exaggerated accounts of the present wages of labour have lately represented them to the publick. The price of labour, it must be observed, cannot be ascertained very accurately any where, different prices being often paid at the same place and for the same sort of labour, not only according to the different abilities of the workmen, but according to the easiness or hardness of the masters. Where wages are not regulated by law, all that we can pretend to determine is what are the most usual; and experience seems to show that law can never regulate them properly, though it has often pretended to do so.

  35The real recompence of labour, the real quantity of the necessaries and conveniencies of life which it can procure to the labourer, has, during the course of the present century, increased perhaps in a still greater proportion than its money price. Not only grain has become somewhat cheaper, but many other things from which the industrious poor derive an agreeable and wholesome variety of food, have become a great deal cheaper. Potatoes, for example, do not at present, through the greater part of the kingdom, cost half the price which they used to do thirty or forty years ago. The same thing may be said of turnips, carrots, cabbages; things which were formerly never raised but by the spade, but which are now commonly raised by the plough.34 All sort of garden stuff too has become cheaper. The greater part of the apples and even of the onions consumed in Great Britain were in the last century imported from Flanders. The great improvements in the coarser manufactures of both linen and woollen cloth furnish the labourers with cheaper and better cloathing; and those in the manufactures of the coarser metals, with cheaper and better instruments of trade, as well as with many agreeable and convenient pieces of houshold furniture. Soap, salt, candles, leather, and fermented liquors have, indeed, become a good deal dearer; chiefly from the taxes which have been laid upon them. The quantity of these, however, which the labouring poor are under any necessity of consuming, is so very small, that the increase in their price does not compensate the diminution in that of so many other things.35 The common complaint that luxury extends itself even to the lowest ranks of the people, and that the labouring poor will not now be contented with the same food, cloathing and lodging which satisfied them in former times, may convince us that it is not the money price of labour only, but its real recompence, which has augumented.

  36Is this improvement in the circumstances of the lower ranks of the people to be regarded as an advantage or as an inconveniency to the society? The answer seems at first sight abundantly plain. Servants, labourers and workmen of different kinds, make up the far greater part of every great political society. But what improves the circumstances of the greater part can never be regarded as an inconveniency to the whole. No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable. It is but equity, besides, that they who feed, cloath and lodge the whole body of the people, should have such a share of the produce of their own labour as to be themselves tolerably well fed, cloathed and lodged.

  37Poverty, though it no doubt discourages, does not always prevent marriage. It seems even to be favourable to generation.36 A half–starved Highland woman frequently bears more than twenty children, while a pampered fine lady is often incapable of bearing any, and is generally exhausted by two or three. Barrenness, so frequent among women of fashion, is very rare among those of inferior station. Luxury in the fair sex, while it enflames perhaps the passion for enjoyment, seems always to weaken, and frequently to destroy altogether, the powers of generation.

  38But poverty, though it does not prevent the generation, is extremely unfavourable to the rearing of children. The tender plant is produced, but in so cold a soil and so severe a climate, soon withers and dies. It is not uncommon, I have been frequently told, in the Highlands of Scotland for a mother who has borne twenty children not to have two alive. Several officers of great experience have assured me, that so far from recruiting their regiment, they have never been able to supply it with drums and fifes from all the soldiers children that were born in it. A greater number of fine children, however, is seldom seen anywhere than about a barrack of soldiers. Very few of them, it seems, arrive at the age of thirteen or fourteen. In some places one half the children born die before they are four years of age; in many places before they are seven; and in almost all places before they are nine or ten.37 This great mortality, however, will every where be found chiefly among the children of the common people, who cannot afford to tend them with the same care as those of better station. Though their marriages are generally more fruitful than those of people of fashion, a smaller proportion of their children arrive at maturity. In foundling hospitals, and among the children brought up by parish charities, the mortality is still greater than among those of the common people.

  39Every species of animals naturally multiplies in proportion to the means of their subsistence, and no species can ever multiply beyond it.38 But in civilized society it is only among the inferior ranks of people that the scantiness of subsistence can set limits to the further multiplication of the human species; and it can do so in no other way than by destroying a great part of the children which their fruitful marriages produce.

  40The liberal reward of labour, by enabling them to provide better for their children, and consequently to bring up a greater number, naturally tends to widen and extend those limits. It deserves to be remarked too, that it necessarily does this as nearly as possible in the proportion which the demand for labour requires. If this demand is continually increasing, the reward of labour must necessarily encourage in such a manner the marriage and multiplication of labourers, as may enable them to supply that continually increasing demand by a continually increasing population. If ^kthe reward^k should at any time be less than what was requisite for this purpose, the deficiency of hands would soon raise it; and if it should at any time be more, their excessive multiplication would soon lower it to this necessary rate. The market would be so much under–stocked with labour in the one case, and so much over–stocked in the other, as would soon force back its price to that proper rate which the circumstances of the society required. It is in this manner that the demand for men, like that for any other commodity, necessarily regulates the production of men; quickens it when it goes on too slowly, and stops it when it advances too fast. It is this demand which regulates and determines the state of propagation in all the different countries of the world, in North America, in Europe, and in China; which renders it rapidly progressive in the first, slow and gradual in the second, and altogether stationary in the last.

  41The ^lwear and tear^l of a slave, it has been said, is at the expence of his master; but that of a free servant is at his own expence. The ^mwear and tear^m of the latter, however, is, in reality, as much at the expence of his master as that of the former. The wages paid to journeymen and servants of every kind must be such as may enable them, one with another, to continue the race of journeymen and servants, according as the increasing, diminishing, or stationary demand of the society may happen to require. But though the ⁿwear and tearⁿ of a free servant be equally at the expence of his master, it generally costs him much less than that of a slave. The fund destined for replacing or repairing, if I may say so, the ^owear and tear^o of the slave, is commonly managed by a negligent master or careless overseer. That destined for performing the same office with regard to the free man, is managed by the free man himself. The disorders which generally prevail in the œconomy of the rich, naturally introduce themselves into the management of the former: The strict frugality and parsimonious attention of the poor as naturally establish themselves in that of the latter. Under such different management, the same purpose must require very different degrees of expence to execute it. It appears, accordingly, from the experience of all ages and nations, I believe, that the work done by freemen comes cheaper in the end than that performed by slaves.39 It is found to do so even at Boston, New York, and Philadelphia, where the wages of common labour are so very high.

  42The liberal reward of labour, therefore, as it is the effect of increasing wealth, so it is the cause of increasing population. To complain of it is to lament over the necessary effect and cause of the greatest publick prosperity.

  43It deserves to be remarked, perhaps, that it is in the progressive state, while the society is advancing to the further acquisition, rather than when it has acquired its full complement of riches, that the condition of the labouring poor, of the great body of the people, seems to be the happiest and the most comfortable. It is hard in the stationary, and miserable in the declining state. The progressive state is in reality the chearful and the hearty state to all the different orders of the society. The stationary is dull; the declining, melancholy.

  44 The liberal reward of labour, as it encourages the propagation, so it increases the industry of the common people. The wages of labour are the encouragement of industry, which, like every other human quality, improves in proportion to the encouragement it receives. A plentiful subsistence increases the bodily strength of the labourer, and the comfortable hope of bettering his condition,40 and of ending his days perhaps in ease and plenty, animates him to exert that strength to the utmost. Where wages are high, accordingly, we shall always find the workmen more active, diligent, and expeditious, than where they are low; in England, for example, than in Scotland; in the neighbourhood of great towns, than in remote country places. Some workmen, indeed, when they can earn in four days what will maintain them through the week, will be idle the other three.41 This, however, is by no means the case with the greater part.42 Workmen, on the contrary, when they are liberally paid by the piece, are very apt to over–work themselves, and to ruin their health and constitution in a few years. A carpenter in London, and in some other places, is not supposed to last in his utmost vigour above eight years. Something of the same kind happens in many other trades, in which the workmen are paid by the piece; as they generally are in manufactures, and even in country labour, wherever wages are higher than ordinary. Almost every class of artificers is subject to some peculiar infirmity occasioned by excessive application to their peculiar species of work. Ramuzzini, an eminent Italian physician, has written a particular book concerning such diseases.43 We do not reckon our soldiers the most industrious set of people among us. Yet when soldiers have been employed in some particular sorts of work, and liberally paid by the piece, their officers have frequently been obliged to stipulate with the undertaker, that they should not be allowed to earn above a certain sum every day, according to the rate at which they were paid.44 Till this stipulation was made, mutual emulation and the desire of greater gain, frequently prompted them to over–work themselves, and to hurt their health by excessive labour. Excessive application during four days of the week, is frequently the real cause of the idleness of the other three, so much and so loudly complained of. Great labour, either of mind or body, continued for several days together, is in most men naturally followed by a great desire of relaxation, which, if not restrained by force or by some strong necessity, is almost irresistible. It is the call of nature, which requires to be relieved by some indulgence, sometimes of ease only, but sometimes too of dissipation and diversion. If it is not complied with, the consequences are often dangerous, and sometimes fatal, and such as almost always, sooner or later, bring on the peculiar infirmity of the trade. If masters would always listen to the dictates of reason and humanity, they have frequently occasion rather to moderate, than to animate the application of many of their workmen. It will be found, I believe, in every sort of trade, that the man who works so moderately, as to be able to work constantly, not only preserves his health the longest, but, in the course of the year, executes the greatest quantity of work.

  45In cheap years, it is pretended, workmen are generally more idle, and in dear ones more industrious than ordinary. A plentiful subsistence, therefore, it has been concluded, relaxes, and a scanty one quickens their industry. That a little more plenty than ordinary may render some workmen idle, cannot well be doubted; but that it should have this effect upon the greater part, or that men in general should work better when they are ill fed than when they are well fed, when they are disheartened than when they are in good spirits, when they are frequently sick than when they are generally in good health, seems not very probable. Years of dearth, it is to be observed, are generally among the common people years of sickness and mortality, which cannot fail to diminish the produce of their industry.

  46In years of plenty, servants frequently leave their masters, and trust their subsistence to what they can make by their own industry. But the same cheapness of provisions, by increasing the fund which is destined for the maintenance of servants, encourages masters, farmers especially, to employ a greater number. Farmers upon such occasions expect more profit from their corn by maintaining a few more labouring servants, than by selling it at a low price in the market. The demand for servants increases, while the number of those who offer to supply that demand diminishes. The price of labour, therefore, frequently rises in cheap years.45

  47In years of scarcity, the difficulty and uncertainty of subsistence make all such people eager to return to service. But the high price of provisions, by diminishing the funds destined for the maintenance of servants, disposes masters rather to diminish than to increase the number of those they have. In dear years too, poor independent workmen frequently consume the little stocks with which they had used to supply themselves with the materials of their work, and are obliged to become journeymen for subsistence. More people want employment than can easily get it; many are willing to take it upon lower terms than ordinary, and the wages of both servants and journeymen frequently sink in dear years.

  48Masters of all sorts, therefore, frequently make better bargains with their servants in dear than in cheap years, and find them more humble and dependent in the former than in the latter. They naturally, therefore, commend the former as more favourable to industry. Landlords and farmers, besides, two of the largest classes of masters, have another reason for being pleased with dear years. The rents of the one and the profits of the other depend very much upon the price of provisions. Nothing can be more absurd, however, than to imagine that men in general should work less when they work for themselves, than when they work for other people. A poor independent workman will generally be more industrious than even a journeyman who works by the piece. The one enjoys the whole produce of his own industry; the other shares it with his master. The one, in his separate independent state, is less liable to the temptations of bad company, which in large manufactories so frequently ruin the morals of the other.46 The superiority of the independent workman over those servants who are hired by the month or by the year, and whose wages and maintenance are the same whether they do much or do little, is likely to be still greater. Cheap years tend to increase the proportion of independent workmen to journeymen and servants of all kinds, and dear years to diminish it.

  49A French author of great knowledge and ingenuity, Mr. Messance, receiver of the ^ptailles^p in the election of St. Etienne, endeavours to show that the poor do more work in cheap than in dear years, by comparing the quantity and value of the goods made upon those different occasions in three different manufactures; one of coarse woollens carried on at Elbeuf; one of linen, and another of silk, both which extend through the whole generality of Rouen.47 It appears from his account, which is copied from the registers of the publick offices, that the quantity and value of the goods made in all those three manufactures has generally been greater in cheap than in dear years; and that it has always been greatest in the cheapest, and least in the dearest years. All the three seem to be stationary manufactures, or which, though their produce may vary somewhat from year to year, are upon the whole neither going backwards nor forwards.

  50The manufacture of linen in Scotland, and that of coarse woollens in the west riding of Yorkshire, are growing manufactures, of which the produce is generally, though with some variations, increasing both in quantity and value. Upon examining, however, the accounts which have been published of their annual produce, I have not been able to observe that its variations have had any sensible connection with the dearness or cheapness of the seasons. In 1740, a year of great scarcity, both manufactures, indeed, appear to have declined very considerably.48 But in 1756, another year of great scarcity, the Scotch manufacture made more than ordinary advances.49 The Yorkshire manufacture, indeed, declined, and its produce did not rise to what it had been in 1755 till 1766, after the repeal of the American stamp act.50 In that and the following year it greatly exceeded what it had ever been before, and it has continued to ^qadvance^q ever since.

  51The produce of all great manufactures for distant sale must necessarily depend, not so much upon the dearness or cheapness of the seasons in the countries where they are carried on, as upon the circumstances which affect the demand in the countries where they are consumed; upon peace or war, upon the prosperity or declension of other rival manufactures, and upon the good or bad humour of their principal customers. A great part of the extraordinary work, besides, which is probably done in cheap years, never enters the publick registers of manufactures. The men servants who leave their masters become independent labourers. The women return to their parents, and commonly spin in order to make cloaths for themselves and their families. Even the independent workmen do not always work for publick sale, but are employed by some of their neighbours in manufactures for family use. The produce of their labour, therefore, frequently makes no figure in those publick registers of which the records are sometimes published with so much parade, and from which our merchants and manufacturers would often vainly pretend to announce the prosperity or declension of the greatest empires.

  52Though the variations in the price of labour, not only do not always correspond with those in the price of provisions, but are frequently quite opposite, we must not, upon this account, imagine that the price of provisions has no influence upon that of labour.51 The money price of labour is necessarily regulated by two circumstances; the demand for labour, and the price of the necessaries and conveniencies of life.52 The demand for labour, according as it happens to be increasing, stationary, or declining, or to require an increasing, stationary, or declining population, determines the quantity of the necessaries and conveniencies of life which must be given to the labourer; and the money price of labour is determined by what is requisite for purchasing this quantity. Though the money price of labour, therefore, is sometimes high where the price of provisions is low, it would be still higher, the demand continuing the same, if the price of provisions was high.

  53It is because the demand for labour increases in years of sudden and extraordinary plenty, and diminishes in those of sudden and extraordinary scarcity, that the money price of labour sometimes rises in the one, and sinks in the other.

  54In a year of sudden and extraordinary plenty, there are funds in the hands of many of the employers of industry, sufficient to maintain and employ a greater number of industrious people than had been employed the year before; and this extraordinary number cannot always be had. Those masters, therefore, who want more workmen, bid against one another, in order to get them, which sometimes raises both the real and the money price of their labour.

  55The contrary of this happens in a year of sudden and extraordinary scarcity. The funds destined for employing industry are less than they had been the year before. A considerable number of people are thrown out of employment, who bid ^ragainst one^r another, in order to get it, which sometimes lowers both the real and the money price of labour. In 1740, a year of extraordinary scarcity, many people were willing to work for bare subsistence. In the succeeding years of plenty, it was more difficult to get labourers and servants.

  56The scarcity of a dear year, by diminishing the demand for labour, tends to lower its price, as the high price of ^sprovisions^s tends to raise it. The plenty of a cheap year, on the contrary, by increasing the demand, tends to raise the price of labour, as the cheapness of provisions tends to lower it. In the ordinary variations of the price of provisions, those two opposite causes seem to counterbalance one another; which is probably in part the reason why the wages of labour are every–where so much more steady and permanent than the price of provisions.

  57The increase in the wages of labour necessarily increases the price of many commodities, by increasing that part of it which resolves itself into wages, and so far tends to diminish their consumption both at home and abroad. The same cause, however, which raises the wages of labour, the increase of stock, tends to increase its productive powers, and to make a smaller quantity of labour produce a greater quantity of work. The owner of the stock which employs a great number of labourers, necessarily endeavours, for his own advantage, to make such a proper division and distribution of employment, that they may be enabled to produce the greatest quantity of work possible. For the same reason, he endeavours to supply them with the best machinery which either he or they can think of.53 What takes place among the labourers in a particular workhouse, takes place, for the same reason, among those of a great society. The greater their number, the more they naturally divide themselves into different classes and subdivisions of employment. More heads are occupied in inventing the most proper machinery for executing the work of each, and it is, therefore, more likely to be invented. There are many commodities, therefore, which, in consequence of these improvements, come to be produced by so much less labour than before, that the increase of its price ^tis more than compensated by^t the diminution of its quantity.54

  CHAPTER IX

  Of the Profits of Stock

  1The rise and fall in the profits of stock depend upon the same causes with the rise and fall in the wages of labour, the increasing or declining state of the wealth of the society; but those causes affect the one and the other very differently.

  2The increase of stock, which raises wages, tends to lower profit. When the stocks of many rich merchants are turned into the same trade, their mutual competition naturally tends to lower its profit; and when there is a like increase of stock in all the different trades carried on in the same society, the same competition must produce the same effect in them all.1

  3It is not easy, it has already been observed, to ascertain what are the average wages of labour even in a particular place, and at a particular time.2 We can, even in this case, seldom determine more than what are the most usual wages. But even this can seldom be done with regard to the profits of stock. Profit is so very fluctuating, that the person who carries on a particular trade cannot always tell you himself what is the average of his annual profit. It is affected, not only by every variation of price in the commodities which he deals in, but by the good or bad fortune both of his rivals and of his customers, and by a thousand other accidents to which goods when carried either by sea or by land, or even when stored in a warehouse, are liable. It varies, therefore, not only from year to year, but from day to day, and almost from hour to hour.3 To ascertain what is the average profit of all the different trades carried on in a great kingdom, must be much more difficult; and to judge of what it may have been formerly, or in remote periods of time, with any degree of precision, must be altogether impossible.

  4But though it may be impossible to determine, with any degree of precision, what are or were the average profits of stock, either in the present, or in antient times, some notion may be formed of them from the interest of money.4 It may be laid down as a maxim, that wherever a great deal can be made by the use of money, a great deal will commonly be given for the use of it; and that wherever little can be made by it, less will commonly be given for it.5 According, therefore, as the usual market rate of interest varies in any country, we may be assured that the ordinary profits of stock must vary with it, must sink as it sinks, and rise as it rises. The progress of interest, therefore, may lead us to form some notion of the progress of profit.6

  5By the 37th of Henry VIII. all interest above ten per cent. was declared unlawful.7 More, it seems, had sometimes been taken before that. In the reign of Edward VI. religious zeal prohibited all interest.8 This prohibition, however, like all others of the same kind, is said to have produced no effect, and probably rather increased than diminished the evil of usury.9 The statute of Henry VIII. was revived by the 13th of Elizabeth, cap. 8.10 and ten per cent. continued to be the legal rate of interest till the 21st of James I. when it was restricted to eight per cent.11 It was reduced to six per cent. soon after the restoration,12 and by the 12th of Queen Anne, to five per cent.13 All these different statutory regulations seem to have been made with great propriety. They seem to have followed and not to have gone before the market rate of interest, or the rate at which people of good credit usually borrowed.14 Since the time of Queen Anne, five per cent. seems to have been rather above than below the market rate. Before the late war, the government borrowed at three per cent.;15 and people of good credit in the capital, and in many other parts of the kingdom, at three and a half, four, and four and a half per cent.

  6Since the time of Henry VIII. the wealth and revenue of the country have been continually advancing, and, in the course of their progress, their pace seems rather to have been gradually accelerated than retarded. They seem, not only to have been going on, but to have been going on faster and faster. The wages of labour have been continually increasing during the same period, and in the greater part of the different branches of trade and manufactures the profits of stock have been diminishing.

  7It generally requires a greater stock to carry on any sort of trade in a great town than in a country village. The great stocks employed in every branch of trade, and the number of rich competitors, generally reduce the rate of profit in the former below what it is in the latter. But the wages of labour are generally higher in a great town than in a country village. In a thriving town the people who have great stocks to employ, frequently cannot get the number of workmen they want, and therefore bid against one another in order to get as many as they can, which raises the wages of labour, and lowers the profits of stock. In the remote parts of the country there is frequently not stock sufficient to employ all the people, who therefore bid against one another in order to get employment, which lowers the wages of labour, and raises the profits of stock.

  8 In Scotland, though the legal rate of interest is the same as in England, the market rate is rather higher. People of the best credit there seldom borrow under five per cent. Even private bankers in Edinburgh give four per cent. upon their promissory notes, of which payment either in whole or in part may be demanded at pleasure. Private bankers in London give no interest for the money which is deposited with them. There are few trades which cannot be carried on with a smaller stock in Scotland than in England. The common rate of profit, therefore, must be somewhat greater. The wages of labour, it has already been observed, are lower in Scotland than in England.16 The country too is not only much poorer, but the steps by which it advances to a better condition, for it is evidently advancing, seem to be much slower and more tardy.17

  9The legal rate of interest in France has not, during the course of the present century, been always regulated by the market rate* . In 1720 interest was reduced from the twentieth to the fiftieth penny, or from five to two per cent. In 1724 it was raised to the thirtieth penny, or to 3⅓ per cent. In 1725 it was again raised to the twentieth penny, or to five per cent. In 1766, during the administration of Mr. Laverdy, it was reduced to the twenty–fifth penny, or to four per cent. The Abbe Terray raised it afterwards to the old rate of five per cent. The supposed purpose of many of those violent reductions of interest was to prepare the way for reducing that of the publick debts; a purpose which has sometimes been executed. France is perhaps in the present times not so rich a country as England; and though the legal rate of interest has in France frequently been lower than in England, the market rate has generally been higher; for there, as in other countries, they have several very safe and easy methods of evading the law.18 The profits of trade, I have been assured by British merchants who had traded in both countries, are higher in France than in England; and it is no doubt upon this account that many British subjects chuse rather to employ their capitals in a country where trade is in disgrace, than in one where it is highly respected. The wages of labour are lower in France than in England. When you go from Scotland to England, the difference which you may remark between the dress and countenance of the common people in the one country and in the other, sufficiently indicates the difference in their condition. The contrast is still greater when you return from France.19 France, though no doubt a richer country than Scotland, seems not to be going forward so fast. It is a common and even a popular opinion in the country that it is going backwards; an opinion which, I apprehend, is ill founded even with regard to France, but which nobody can possibly entertain with regard to Scotland, who sees the country now and who saw it twenty or thirty years ago.

  10 The province of Holland, on the other hand, in proportion to the extent of its territory and the number of its people, is a richer country than England. The government there borrow at two per cent., and private people of good credit at three. The wages of labour are said to be higher in Holland than in England, and the Dutch, it is well known, trade upon lower profits than any people in Europe.20 The trade of Holland, it has been pretended by some people, is decaying, and it may perhaps be true that some particular branches of it are so. But these symptoms seem to indicate sufficiently that there is no general decay. When profit diminishes, merchants are very apt to complain that trade decays; though the diminution of profit is the natural effect of its prosperity, or of a greater stock being employed in it than before. During the late war the Dutch gained the whole carrying trade of France, of which they still retain a very large share. The great property which they possess both in the French and English funds,21 about forty millions, it is said, in the latter (in which I suspect, however, there is a considerable exaggeration);22 the great sums which they lend to private people in countries where the rate of interest is higher than in their own, are circumstances which no doubt demonstrate the redundancy of their stock, or that it has increased beyond what they can employ with tolerable profit in the proper business of their own country: but they do not demonstrate that that business has decreased. As the capital of a private man, though acquired by a particular trade, may increase beyond what he can employ in it, and yet that trade continue to increase too; so may likewise the capital of a great nation.

  11In our North American and West Indian colonies, not only the wages of labour, but the interest of money, and consequently the profits of stock, are higher than in England. In the different colonies both the legal and the market rate of interest run from six to eight per cent. High wages of labour and high profits of stock, however, are things, perhaps, which scarce ever go together, except in the peculiar circumstances of new colonies.23 A new colony must always for some time be more under–stocked in proportion to the extent of its territory, and more under–peopled in proportion to the extent of its stock, than the greater part of other countries.24 They have more land than they have stock to cultivate. What they have, therefore, is applied to the cultivation only of what is most fertile and most favourably situated, the ^blands^b near the sea shore, and along the banks of navigable rivers.25 Such land too is frequently purchased at a price below the value even of its natural produce.26 Stock employed in the purchase and improvement of such lands must yield a very large profit, and consequently afford to pay a very large interest. Its rapid accumulation in so profitable an employment enables the planter to increase the number of his hands faster than he can find them in a new settlement. Those whom he can find, therefore, are very liberally rewarded. As the colony increases, the profits of stock gradually diminish. When the most fertile and best situated lands have been all occupied, less profit can be made by the cultivation of what is inferior both in soil and situation, and less interest can be afforded for the stock which is so employed. In the greater part of our colonies, accordingly, both the legal and the market rate of interest have been considerably reduced during the course of the present century. As riches, improvement, and population have increased, interest has declined. The wages of labour do not sink with the profits of stock. The demand for labour increases with the increase of stock whatever be its profits; and after these are diminished, stock may not only continue to increase, but to increase much faster than before. It is with industrious nations who are advancing in the acquisition of riches, as with industrious individuals. A great stock, though with small profits, generally increases faster than a small stock with great profits. Money, says the proverb, makes money. When you have got a little, it is often easy to get more. The great difficulty is to get that little. The connection between the increase of stock and that of industry, or of the demand for useful labour, has partly been explained already,27 but will be explained more fully hereafter in treating of the accumulation of stock.28

  12The acquisition of new territory, or of new branches of trade, may sometimes raise the profits of stock,29 and with them the interest of money, even in a country which is fast advancing in the acquisition of riches. The stock of the country not being sufficient for the whole accession of business, which such acquisitions present to the different people among whom it is divided, is applied to those particular branches only which afford the greatest profit. Part of what had before been employed in other trades, is necessarily withdrawn from them, and turned into some of the new and more profitable ones. In all those old trades, therefore, the competition comes to be less than before. The market comes to be less fully supplied with many different sorts of goods. Their price necessarily rises more or less, and yields a greater profit to those who deal in them, who can, therefore, afford to borrow at a higher interest. For some time after the conclusion of the late war, not only private people of the best credit, but some of the greatest companies in London, commonly borrowed at five per cent. who before that had not been used to pay more than four, and four and a half per cent. The great accession both of territory and trade, by our acquisitions in North America and the West Indies, will sufficiently account for this, without supposing any diminution in the capital stock of the society. So great an accession of new business to be carried on by the old stock, must necessarily have diminished the quantity employed in a great number of particular branches, in which the competition being less, the profits must have been greater. I shall hereafter have occasion to mention the reasons which dispose me to believe that the capital stock of Great Britain was not diminished even by the enormous expence of the late war.30

  13The diminution of the capital stock of the society, or of the funds destined for the maintenance of industry, however, as it lowers the wages of labour, so it raises the profits of stock, and consequently the interest of money. By the wages of labour being lowered, the owners of what stock remains in the society can bring their goods ^cat less expence^c to market than before, and less stock being employed in supplying the market than before, they can sell them dearer. Their goods cost them less, and they get more for them. Their profits, therefore, being augmented at both ends, can well afford a large interest. The great fortunes so suddenly and so easily acquired in Bengal and the other British settlements in the East Indies, may satisfy us that, as the wages of labour are very low, so the profits of stock are very high in those ruined countries. The interest of money is proportionably so. In Bengal, money is frequently lent to the farmers at forty, fifty, and sixty per cent. and the succeeding crop is mortgaged for the payment. As the profits which can afford such an interest must eat up almost the whole rent of the landlord, so such enormous usury must in its turn eat up the greater part of those profits. Before the fall of the Roman republick, a usury of the same kind seems to have been common in the provinces, under the ruinous administration of their proconsuls. The virtuous Brutus lent money in Cyprus at ^deight–and–forty^d per cent. as we learn from the letters of Cicero.31

  14In a country which had acquired that full complement of riches which the nature of its soil and climate, and its situation with respect to other countries allowed it to acquire; which could, therefore, advance no further, and which was not going backwards, both the wages of labour and the profits of stock would probably be very low. In a country fully peopled in proportion to what either its territory could maintain or its stock employ, the competition for employment would necessarily be so great as to reduce the wages of labour to what was barely sufficient to keep up the number of labourers, and, the country being already fully peopled, that number could never be augmented. In a country fully stocked in proportion to all the business it had to transact, as great a quantity of stock would be employed in every particular branch as the nature and extent of the trade would admit. The competition, therefore, would everywhere be as great, and consequently the ordinary profit as low as possible.

  15But perhaps no country has ever yet arrived at this degree of opulence. China seems to have been long stationary, and had probably long ago acquired that full complement of riches which is consistent with the nature of its laws and institutions.32 But this complement may be much inferior to what, with other laws and institutions, the nature of its soil, climate, and situation might admit of. A country which neglects or despises foreign commerce, and which admits the vessels of foreign nations into one or two of its ports only, cannot transact the same quantity of business which it might do with different laws and institutions.33 In a country too, where, though the rich or the owners of large capitals enjoy a good deal of security, the poor or the owners of small capitals enjoy scarce any, but are liable, under the pretence of justice, to be pillaged and plundered at any time by the inferior mandarines, the quantity of stock employed in all the different branches of business transacted within it, can never be equal to what the nature and extent of that business might admit. In every different branch, the oppression of the poor must establish the monopoly of the rich, who, by engrossing the whole trade to themselves, will be able to make very large profits. Twelve per cent. accordingly is said to be the common interest of money in China, and the ordinary profits of stock must be sufficient to afford this large interest.34

  16A defect in the law may sometimes raise the rate of interest considerably above what the condition of the country, as to wealth or poverty, would require. When the law does not enforce the performance of contracts,35 it puts all borrowers nearly upon the same footing with bankrupts or people of doubtful credit in better regulated countries. The uncertainty of recovering his money makes the lender exact the same usurious interest which is usually required from bankrupts. Among the barbarous nations who over–run the western provinces of the Roman empire, the performance of contracts was left for many ages to the faith of the contracting parties. The courts of justice of their kings seldom intermeddled in it. The high rate of interest which took place in those antient times may perhaps be partly accounted for from this cause.

  17When the law prohibits interest altogether, it does not prevent it. Many people must borrow, and nobody will lend without such a consideration for the use of their money as is suitable, not only to what can be made by the use of it, but to the difficulty and danger of evading the law. The high rate of interest among all Mahometan nations is accounted for by Mr. Montesquieu, not from their poverty, but partly from this, and partly from the difficulty of recovering the money.36

  18The lowest ordinary rate of profit must always be something more than what is sufficient to compensate the occasional losses to which every employment of stock is exposed.37 It is this surplus only which is neat or clear profit. What is called gross profit comprehends frequently, not only this surplus, but what is retained for compensating such extraordinary losses. The interest which the borrower can afford to pay is in proportion to the clear profit only.

  19The lowest ordinary rate of interest must, in the same manner, be something more than sufficient to compensate the occasional losses to which lending, even with tolerable prudence, is exposed. Were it not more, charity or friendship could be the only motives for lending.

  20In a country which had acquired its full complement of riches, where in every particular branch of business there was the greatest quantity of stock that could be employed in it, as the ordinary rate of clear profit would be very small, so that usual market rate of interest which could be afforded out of it, would be so low as to render it impossible for any but the very wealthiest people to live upon the interest of their money. All people of small or middling fortunes would be obliged to superintend themselves the employment of their own stocks. It would be necessary that almost every man should be a man of business, or engage in some sort of trade. The province of Holland seems to be approaching near to this state. It is there unfashionable not to be a man of business. Necessity makes it usual for almost every man to be so, and custom every where regulates fashion. As it is ridiculous not to dress, so is it, in some measure, not to be employed, like other people. As a man of a civil profession seems aukward in a camp or a garrison, and is even in some danger of being despised there, so does an idle man among men of business.

  21The highest ordinary rate of profit may be such as, in the price of the greater part of commodities, eats up the whole of what should go to the rent of the land, and leaves only what is sufficient to pay the labour of preparing and bringing them to market, according to the lowest rate at which labour can any–where be paid, the bare subsistence of the labourer. The workman must always have been fed in some way or other while he was about the work; but the landlord may not always have been paid. The profits of the trade which the servants of the East India Company carry on in Bengal may not perhaps be very far from this state.38

  22The proportion which the usual market rate of interest ought to bear to the ordinary rate of clear profit, necessarily varies as profit rises or falls. Double interest is in Great Britain reckoned, what the merchants call, a good, moderate, reasonable profit;39 terms which I apprehend mean no more than a common and usual profit. In a country where the ordinary rate of clear profit is eight or ten per cent., it may be reasonable that one half of it should go to interest, wherever business is carried on with borrowed money. The stock is at the risk of the borrower, who, as it were, insures it to the lender; and four or five per cent. may, in the greater part of trades, be both a sufficient profit upon the risk of this insurance, and a sufficient recompence for the trouble of employing the stock. But the proportion between interest and clear profit might not be the same in countries where the ordinary rate of profit was either a good deal lower, or a good deal higher. If it were a good deal lower, one half of it perhaps could not be afforded for interest; and more might be afforded if it were a good deal higher.

  23In countries which are fast advancing to riches, the low rate of profit may, in the price of many commodities, compensate the high wages of labour, and enable those countries to sell as cheap as their less thriving neighbours, among whom the wages of labour may be lower.

  24^eIn reality high profits tend much more to raise the price of work than high wages. If in the linen manufacture, for example, the wages of the different working people; the flax–dressers, the spinners, the weavers, &c. should, all of them, be advanced two pence a day: it would be necessary to heighten the price of a piece of linen only by a number of two pences equal to the number of people that had been employed about it, multiplied by the number of days during which they had been so employed. That part of the price of the commodity which resolved itself into wages would, through all the different stages of the manufacture, rise only in arithmetical proportion to this rise of wages. But if the profits of all the different employers of those working people should be raised five per cent. that part of the price of the commodity which resolved itself into profit, would, through all the different stages of the manufacture, rise in geometrical proportion to this rise of profit. The employer of the flax–dressers would in selling his flax require an additional five per cent. upon the whole value of the materials and wages which he advanced to his workmen. The employer of the spinners would require an additional five per cent. both upon the advanced price of the flax and upon the wages of the spinners. And the employer of the weavers would require a like five per cent. both upon the advanced price of the linen yarn and upon the wages of the weavers. In raising the price of commodities the rise of wages operates in the same manner as simple interest does in the accumulation of debt. The rise of profit operates like compound interest. Our merchants and master–manufacturers complain much of the bad effects of high wages in raising the price, and thereby lessening the sale of their goods both at home and abroad. They say nothing concerning the bad effects of high profits. They are silent with regard to the pernicious effects of their own gains. They complain only of those of other people.^e40

  CHAPTER X

  Of Wages and Profit in the different Employments of Labour and Stock

  1The whole of the advantages and disadvantages of the different employments of labour and stock must, in the same neighbourhood, be either perfectly equal or continually tending to equality. If in the same neighbourhood, there was any employment ^aevidently either^a more or less advantageous than the rest, so many people would crowd into it in the one case, and so many would desert it in the other, that its advantages would soon return to the level of other employments.1 This at least would be the case in a society where things were left to follow their natural course, where there was perfect liberty,2 and where every man was perfectly free both to chuse what occupation he thought proper, and to change it as often as he thought proper. Every man’s interest would prompt him to seek the advantageous, and to shun the disadvantageous employment.

  2Pecuniary wages and profit, indeed, are every–where in Europe extremely different according to the different employments of labour and stock. But this difference arises partly from certain circumstances in the employments themselves, which, either really, or at least in the imaginations of men, make up for a small pecuniary gain in some, and counter–balance a great one in others; and partly from the policy of Europe, which nowhere leaves things at perfect liberty.

  3The particular consideration of those circumstances and of that policy will divide this chapter into two parts.

  part i

  Inequalities arising from the Nature of the Employments themselves

  1The five following are the principal circumstances which, so far as I have been able to observe, make up for a small pecuniary gain in some employments, and counter–balance a great one in others: first, the agreeableness or disagreeableness of the employments themselves; secondly, the easiness and cheapness, or the difficulty and expence of learning them; thirdly, the constancy or inconstancy of employment in them; fourthly, the small or great trust which must be reposed in those who exercise them; and, fiftly, the probability or improbability of success in them.3

  2First, The wages of labour vary with the ease or hardship, the cleanliness or dirtiness, the honourableness or dishonourableness of the employment. Thus in most places, take the year round, a journeyman taylor earns less than a journeyman weaver. His work is much easier. A journeyman weaver earns less than a journeyman smith. His work is not always easier, but it is much cleanlier. A journeyman blacksmith, though an artificer, seldom earns so much in twelve hours as a collier, who is only a labourer, does in eight. His work is not quite so dirty, is less dangerous, and is carried on in day–light, and above ground. Honour makes a great part of the reward of all honourable professions. In point of pecuniary gain, all things considered, they are generally under–recompensed, as I shall endeavour to show by and by.4 Disgrace has the contrary effect. The trade of a butcher is a brutal and an odious business; but it is in most places more profitable than the greater part of common trades. The most detestable of all employments, that of public executioner, is in proportion to the quantity of work done, better paid than any common trade whatever.

  3Hunting and fishing, the most important employments of mankind in the rude state of society, become in its advanced state their most agreeable amusements, and they pursue for pleasure what they once followed from necessity.5 In the advanced state of society, therefore, they are all very poor people who follow as a trade, what other people pursue as a pastime.6 Fishermen have been so since the time of * Theocritus. A poacher is everywhere a very poor man in Great Britain. In countries where the rigour of the law suffers no poachers, the licensed hunter is not in a much better condition. The natural taste for those employments makes more people follow them than can live comfortably by them, and the produce of their labour, in proportion to its quantity, comes always too cheap to market to afford any thing but the most scanty subsistence to the labourers.

  4Disagreeableness and disgrace affect the profits of stock in the same manner as the wages of labour. The keeper of an inn or tavern, who is never master of his own house, and who is exposed to the brutality of every drunkard, exercises neither a very agreeable nor a very creditable business. But there is scarce any common trade in which a small stock yields so great a profit.

  5Secondly, the wages of labour vary with the easiness and cheapness, or the difficulty and expence of learning the business.7

  6When any expensive machine is erected, the extraordinary work to be performed by it before it is worn out, it must be expected, will replace the capital laid out upon it, with at least ^bthe^b ordinary profits.8 A man educated at the expence of much labour and time to any of those employments which require extraordinary dexterity and skill, may be compared to one of those expensive machines.9 The work which he learns to perform, it must be expected, over and above the usual wages of common labour, will replace to him the whole expence of his education, with at least the ordinary profits of an ^cequally^c valuable capital. It must do this too in a reasonable time, regard being had to the very uncertain duration of human life, in the same manner as to the more certain duration of the machine.10

  7The difference between the wages of skilled labour and those of common labour, is founded upon this principle.

  8The policy of Europe considers the labour of all mechanicks, artificers, and manufacturers, as skilled labour; and that of all country labourers as common labour. It seems to suppose that of the former to be of a more nice and delicate nature than that of the latter. It is so perhaps in some cases; but in the greater part it is quite otherwise, as I shall endeavour to shew by and by.11 The laws and customs of Europe, therefore, in order to qualify any person for exercising the one species of labour, impose the necessity of an apprenticeship,12 though with different degrees of rigour in different places. They leave the other free and open to every body. During the continuance of the apprenticeship, the whole labour of the apprentice belongs to his master. In the mean time he must, in many cases, be maintained by his parents or relations, and in almost all cases must be cloathed by them.13 Some money too is commonly given to the master for teaching him his trade. They who cannot give money, give time, or become bound for more than the usual number of years; a consideration which, though it is not always advantageous to the master, on account of the usual idleness of apprentices, is always disadvantageous to the apprentice. In country labour, on the contrary, the labourer, while he is employed about the easier, learns the more difficult parts of his business, and his own labour maintains him through all the different stages of his employment. It is reasonable, therefore, that in Europe the wages of mechanicks, artificers, and manufacturers, should be somewhat higher than those of common labourers. They are so accordingly, and their superior gains make them in most places be considered as a superior rank of people. This superiority, however, is generally very small; the daily or weekly earnings of journeymen in the more common sorts of manufactures, such as those of plain linen and woollen cloth, computed at an average, are, in most places, very little more than the day wages of common labourers. Their employment, indeed, is more steady and uniform, and the superiority of their earnings, taking the whole year together, may be somewhat greater. It seems evidently, however, to be no greater than what is sufficient to compensate the superior expence of their education.

  9Education in the ingenious arts and in the liberal professions, is still more tedious and expensive. The pecuniary recompence, therefore, of painters and sculptors, of lawyers and physicians, ought to be much more liberal: and it is so accordingly.

  10The profits of stock seem to be very little affected by the easiness or difficulty of learning the trade in which it is employed. All the different ways in which stock is commonly employed in great towns seem, in reality, to be almost equally easy and equally difficult to learn. One branch either of foreign or domestick trade, cannot well be a much more intricate business than another.

  11Thirdly, The wages of labour in different occupations vary with the constancy or inconstancy of employment.

  12Employment is much more constant in some trades than in others. In the greater part of manufactures, a journeyman may be pretty sure of employment almost every day in the year that he is able to work. A mason or bricklayer, on the contrary, can work neither in hard frost nor in foul weather, and his employment at all other times depends upon the occasional calls of his customers. He is liable, in consequence, to be frequently without any. What he earns, therefore, while he is employed, must not only maintain him while he is idle, but make him some compensation for those anxious and desponding moments which the thought of so precarious a situation must sometimes occasion. Where the computed earnings of the greater part of manufacturers, accordingly, are nearly upon a level with the day wages of common labourers, those of masons and bricklayers are generally from one–half more to double those wages. Where common labourers earn four and five shillings a week, masons and bricklayers frequently earn seven and eight; where the former earn six, the latter often earn nine and ten; and where the former earn nine and ten, as in London, the latter commonly earn fifteen and eighteen. No species of skilled labour, however, seems more easy to learn than that of masons and bricklayers. Chairmen in London, during the summer season, are said sometimes to be employed as bricklayers. The high wages of those workmen, therefore, are not so much the recompence of their skill, as the compensation for the inconstancy of their employment.

  13A house carpenter seems to exercise rather a nicer and ^d more ingenious trade than a mason. In most places, however, for it is not universally so, his day–wages are somewhat lower. His employment, though it depends much, does not depend so entirely upon the occasional calls of his customers; and it is not liable to be interrupted by the weather.

  14When the trades which generally afford constant employment, happen in a particular place not to do so, the wages of the workmen always rise a good deal above their ordinary proportion to those of common labour. In London almost all journeymen artificers are liable to be called upon and dismissed by their masters from day to day, and from week to week, in the same manner as day–labourers in other places. The lowest order of artificers, journeymen taylors, accordingly, earn there half a crown a–day,14 though eighteen–pence may be reckoned the wages of common labour. In small towns and country–villages, the wages of journeymen taylors frequently scarce equal those of common labour; but in London they are often many weeks without employment, particularly during the summer.

  15 When the inconstancy of employment is combined with the hardship, disagreeableness and dirtiness of the work, it sometimes raises the wages of the most common labour above those of the most skilful artificers. A collier working by the piece is supposed, at Newcastle, to earn commonly about double, and in many parts of Scotland about three times the wages of common labour.15 His high wages arise altogether from the hardship, disagreeableness, and dirtiness of his work. His employment may, upon most occasions, be as constant as he pleases. The coal–heavers in London exercise a trade which in hardship, dirtiness, and disagreeableness, almost equals that of colliers; and from the unavoidable irregularity in the arrivals of coal–ships, the employment of the greater part of them is necessarily very inconstant. If colliers, therefore, commonly earn double and triple the wages of common labour, it ought not to seem unreasonable that coal–heavers should sometimes earn four and five times those wages. In the enquiry made into their condition a few years ago, it was found that at the rate at which they were then paid, they could earn from six to ten shillings a day. Six shillings are about four times the wages of common labour in London, and in every particular trade, the lowest common earnings may always be considered as those of the far greater number. How extravagant soever those earnings may appear, if they were more than sufficient to compensate all the disagreeable circumstances of the business, there would soon be so great a number of competitors as, in a trade which has no exclusive privilege, would quickly reduce them to a lower rate.

  16The constancy or inconstancy of employment cannot ^eaffect^e the ordinary profits of stock in any particular trade. Whether the stock is or is not constantly employed depends, not upon the trade, but the trader.

  17Fourthly, The wages of labour vary according to the small or great trust which must be reposed in the workmen.16

  18The wages of goldsmiths and jewellers are every–where superior to those of many other workmen, not only of equal, but of much superior ingenuity; on account of the precious materials with which they are intrusted.

  19We trust our health to the physician; our fortune and sometimes our life and reputation to the lawyer and attorney. Such confidence could not safely be reposed in people of a very mean or low condition. Their reward must be such, therefore, as may give them that rank in the society which so important a trust requires. The long time and the great expence which must be laid out in their education, when combined with this circumstance, necessarily enhance still further the price of their labour.17

  20When a person employs only his own stock in trade, there is no trust; and the credit which he may get from other people, depends, not upon the nature of his trade, but upon their opinion of his fortune, probity, and prudence. The different rates of profit, therefore, in the different branches of trade, cannot arise from the different degrees of trust reposed in the traders.

  21Fifthly, the wages of labour in different employments vary according to the probability or improbability of success in them.

  22The probability that any particular person shall ever be qualified for the employment to which he is educated, is very different in different occupations. In the greater part of mechanick trades, success is almost certain; but very uncertain in the liberal professions. Put your son apprentice to a shoemaker, there is little doubt of his learning to make a pair of shoes: But send him to study the law, it is at least twenty to one if ever he makes such proficiency as will enable him to live by the business. In a perfectly fair lottery, those who draw the prizes ought to gain all that is lost by those who draw the blanks. In a profession where twenty fail for one that succeeds, that one ought to gain all that should have been gained by the unsuccessful twenty.18 The counsellor at law who, perhaps, at near forty years of age, begins to make something by his profession, ought to receive the retribution, not only of his own so tedious and expensive education, but of that of more than twenty others who are never likely to make any thing by it. How extravagant soever the fees of counsellors at law may sometimes appear, their real retribution is never equal to this. Compute in any particular place, what is likely to be annually gained, and what is likely to be annually spent, by all the different workmen in any common trade, such as that of shoemakers or weavers, and you will find that the former sum will generally exceed the latter. But make the same computation with regard to all the counsellors and students of law, in all the different inns of court, and you will find that their annual gains bear but a very small proportion to their annual expence, even though you rate the former as high, and the latter as low, as can well be done. The lottery of the law, therefore, is very far from being a perfectly fair lottery; and that, as well as many other liberal and honourable professions, ^fare^f , in point of pecuniary gain, evidently under–recompenced.

  23Those professions keep their level, however, with other occupations, and, notwithstanding these discouragements, all the most generous and liberal spirits are eager to crowd into them. Two different causes contribute to recommend them. First, the desire of the reputation which attends upon superior excellence in any of them; and, secondly, the natural confidence which every man has more or less, not only in his own abilities, but in his own good fortune.

  24To excel in any profession, in which but few arrive at mediocrity, is the most decisive mark of what is called genius or superior talents. The publick admiration which attends upon such distinguished abilities, makes always a part of their reward; a greater or smaller in proportion as it is higher or lower in degree. It makes a considerable part of ^gthat reward^g in the profession of physick; a still greater perhaps in that of law; in poetry and philosophy it makes almost the whole.19

  25There are some very agreeable and beautiful talents of which the possession commands a certain sort of admiration; but of which the exercise for the sake of gain is considered, whether from reason or prejudice, as a sort of publick prostitution. The pecuniary recompence, therefore, of those who exercise them in this manner, must be sufficient, not only to pay for the time, labour, and expence of acquiring the talents, but for the discredit which attends the employment of them as the means of subsistence.20 The exorbitant rewards of players, opera–singers, opera–dancers, &c. are founded upon those two principles; the rarity and beauty of the talents, and the discredit of employing them in this manner.21 It seems absurd at first sight that we should despise their persons, and yet reward their talents with the most profuse liberality. While we do the one, however, we must of necessity do the other. Should the publick opinion or prejudice ever alter with regard to such occupations, their pecuniary recompence would quickly diminish. More people would apply to them, and the competition would quickly reduce the price of their labour. Such talents, though far from being common, are by no means so rare as is imagined. Many people possess them in great perfection, who disdain to make this use of them; and many more are capable of acquiring them, if any thing could be made honourably by them.

  26The over–weening conceit which the greater part of men have of their own abilities, is an antient evil remarked by the philosophers and moralists of all ages. Their absurd presumption in their own good fortune, has been less taken notice of.22 It is, however, if possible, still more universal. There is no man living who, when in tolerable health and spirits, has not some share of it. The chance of gain is by every man more or less over–valued, and the chance of loss is by most men under–valued, and by scarce any man, who is in tolerable health and spirits, valued more than it is worth.

  27That the chance of gain is naturally over–valued, we may learn from the universal success of lotteries. The world neither ever saw, nor ever will see, a perfectly fair lottery; or one in which the whole gain compensated the whole loss; because the undertaker could make nothing by it. In the state lotteries the tickets are really not worth the price which is paid by the original subscribers, and yet commonly sell in the market for twenty, thirty, and sometimes forty per cent. advance. The vain hope of gaining some of the great prizes is the sole cause of this demand. The soberest people scarce look upon it as a folly to pay a small sum for the chance of gaining ten or twenty thousand pounds; though they know that even that small sum is perhaps twenty or thirty per cent. more than the chance is worth. In a lottery in which no prize exceeded twenty pounds, though in other respects it approached much nearer to a perfectly fair one than the common state lotteries, there would not be the same demand for tickets. In order to have a better chance for some of the great prizes, some people purchase several tickets, and others, small shares in a still greater number. There is not, however, a more certain proposition in mathematicks, than that the more tickets you adventure upon, the more likely you are to be a loser. Adventure upon all the tickets in the lottery, and you lose for certain; and the greater the number of your tickets the nearer you approach to this certainty.

  28That the chance of loss is frequently under–valued, and scarce ever valued more than it is worth, we may learn from the very moderate profit of insurers.23 In order to make insurance, either from fire or sea–risk, a trade at all, the common premium must be sufficient to compensate the common losses, to pay the expence of management, and to afford such a profit as might have been drawn from an equal capital employed in any common trade. The person who pays no more than this, evidently pays no more than the real value of the risk, or the lowest price at which he can reasonably expect to insure it. But though many people have made a little money by insurance, very few have made a great fortune; and from this consideration alone, it seems evident enough, that the ordinary balance of profit and loss is not more advantageous in this, than in other common trades by which so many people make fortunes. Moderate, however, as the premium of insurance commonly is, many people despise the risk too much to care to pay it. Taking the whole kingdom at an average, nineteen houses in twenty, or rather perhaps ninety–nine in a hundred, are not insured from fire. Sea risk is more alarming to the greater part of people, and the proportion of ships insured to those not insured is much greater. Many sail, however, at all seasons, and even in time of war, without any insurance. This may sometimes perhaps be done without any imprudence. When a great company, or even a great merchant, has twenty or thirty ships at sea, they may, as it were, insure one another. The premium saved upon them all, may more than compensate such losses as they are likely to meet with in the common course of chances. The neglect of insurance upon shipping, however, in the same manner as upon houses, is, in most cases, the effect of no such nice calculation, but of mere thoughtless rashness and presumptuous contempt of the risk.

  29The contempt of risk and the presumptuous hope of success, are in no period of life more active than at the age at which young people chuse their professions. How little the fear of misfortune is then capable of balancing the hope of good luck, appears still more evidently in the readiness of the common people to enlist as soldiers,24 or to go to sea, than in the eagerness of those of better fashion to enter into what are called the liberal professions.

  30 What a common soldier may lose is obvious enough. Without regarding the danger, however, young volunteers never enlist so readily as at the beginning of a new war; and though they have scarce any chance of preferment, they figure to themselves, in their youthful fancies, a thousand occasions of acquiring honour and distinction which never occur. These romantick hopes make the whole price of their blood. Their pay is less than that of common labourers, and in actual service their fatigues are much greater.25

  31The lottery of the sea is not altogether so disadvantageous as that of the army. The son of a creditable labourer or artificer may frequently go to sea with his father’s consent; but if he enlists as a soldier, it is always without it. Other people see some chance of his making something by the one trade: nobody but himself sees any of his making any thing by the other. The great admiral is less the object of publick admiration than the great general, and the highest success in the sea service promises a less brilliant fortune and reputation than equal success in the land. The same difference runs through all the inferior degrees of preferment in both. By the rules of precedency a captain in the navy ranks with a colonel in the army: but he does not rank with him in the common estimation. As the great prizes in the lottery are less, the smaller ones must be more numerous. Common sailors, therefore, more frequently get some fortune and preferment than common soldiers; and the hope of those prizes is what principally recommends the trade. Though their skill and dexterity are much superior to that of almost any artificers, and though their whole life is one continual scene of hardship and danger, yet for all this dexterity and skill, for all those hardships and dangers, while they remain in the condition of common sailors, they receive scarce any other recompence but the pleasure of exercising the one and of surmounting the other. Their wages are not greater than those of common labourers at the port which regulates the rate of seamens wages. As they are continually going from port to port, the monthly pay of those who sail from all the different ports of Great Britain, is more nearly upon a level than that of any other workmen in those different places; and the rate of the port to and from which the greatest number sail, that is the port of London, regulates that of all the rest. At London the wages of the greater part of the different classes of workmen are about double those of the same classes at Edinburgh.26 But the sailors who sail from the port of London seldom earn above three or four shillings a month more than those who sail from the port of Leith, and the difference is frequently not so great. In time of peace, and in the merchant service, the London price is from a guinea to about seven–and–twenty shillings the calendar month. A common labourer in London, at the rate of nine or ten shillings a week, may earn in the calendar month from forty to five–and–forty shillings. The sailor, indeed, over and above his pay, is supplied with provisions. Their value, however, may not perhaps always exceed the difference between his pay and that of the common labourer; and though it sometimes should, the excess will not be clear gain to the sailor, because he cannot share it with his wife and family, whom he must maintain out of his wages at home.

  32The dangers and hair–breadth escapes of a life of adventures, instead of disheartening young people, seem frequently to recommend a trade to them. A tender mother, among the inferior ranks of people, is often afraid to send her son to school at a sea–port town, lest the sight of the ships and the conversation and adventures of the sailors should entice him to go to sea. The distant prospect of hazards, from which we can hope to extricate ourselves by courage and address, is not disagreeable to us, and does not raise the wages of labour in any employment. It is otherwise with those in which courage and address can be of no avail. In trades which are known to be very unwholesome, the wages of labour are always remarkably high. Unwholesomeness is a species of disagreeableness, and its effects upon the wages of labour are to be ranked under that general head.

  33In all the different employments of stock, the ordinary rate of profit varies more or less with the certainty or uncertainty of the returns. These are in general less uncertain in the inland than in the foreign trade, and in some branches of foreign trade than in others; in the trade to North America, for example, than in that to Jamaica.27 The ordinary rate of profit always rises more or less with the risk.28 It does not, however, seem to rise in proportion to it, or so as to compensate it compleately. Bankruptcies are most frequent in the most hazardous trades. The most hazardous of all trades, that of a smuggler, though when the adventure succeeds it is likewise the most profitable, is the infallible road to bankruptcy. The presumptuous hope of success seems to act here as upon all other occasions, and to entice so many adventurers into those hazardous trades, that their competition reduces ^hthe^h profit below what is sufficient to compensate the risk. To compensate it compleatly, the common returns ought, over and above the ordinary profits of stock, not only to make up for all occasional losses, but to afford a surplus profit to the adventurers of the same nature with the profit of insurers. But if the common returns were sufficient for all this, bankruptcies would not be more frequent in these than in other trades.

  34Of the five circumstances, therefore, which vary the wages of labour, two only affect the profits of stock; the agreeableness or disagreeableness of the business, and the risk or security with which it is attended.29 In point of agreeableness or disagreeableness, there is little or no difference in the far greater part of the different employments of stock; but a great deal in those of labour; and the ordinary profit of stock, though it rises with the risk, does not always seem to rise in proportion to it. It should follow from all this, that, in the same society or neighbourhood, the average and ordinary rates of profit in the different employments of stock should be more nearly upon a level than the pecuniary wages of the different sorts of labour. They are so accordingly. The difference between the earnings of a common labourer and those of a well employed lawyer or physician, is evidently much greater, than that, between the ordinary profits in any two different branches of trade. The apparent difference, besides, in the profits of different trades, is generally a deception arising from our not always distinguishing what ought to be considered as wages, from what ought to be considered as profit.30

  35Apothecaries profit is become a bye–word, denoting something uncommonly extravagant. This great apparent profit, however, is frequently no more than the reasonable wages of labour. The skill of an apothecary is a much nicer and more delicate matter than that of any artificer whatever; and the trust which is reposed in him is of much greater importance. He is the physician of the poor in all cases, and of the rich when the distress or danger is not very great. His reward, therefore, ought to be suitable to his skill and his trust, and it arises generally from the price at which he sells his drugs. But the whole drugs which the best employed apothecary, in a large market town, will sell in a year, may not perhaps cost him above thirty or forty pounds. Though he should sell them, therefore, for three or four hundred, or at a thousand per cent. profit, this may frequently be no more than the reasonable wages of his labour charged, in the only way in which he can charge them, upon the price of his drugs. The greater part of the apparent profit is real wages disguised in the garb of profit.

  36In a small sea–port town, a little grocer will make forty or fifty per cent. upon a stock of a single hundred pounds, while a considerable wholesale merchant in the same place will scarce make eight or ten per cent. upon a stock of ten thousand. The trade of the grocer may be necessary for the conveniency of the inhabitants, and the narrowness of the market may not admit the employment of a larger capital in the business. The man, however, must not only live by his trade, but live by it suitably to the qualifications which it requires. Besides possessing a little capital, he must be able to read, write, and account, and must be a tolerable judge too of, perhaps, fifty or sixty different sorts of goods, their prices, qualities, and the markets where they are to be had cheapest. He must have all the knowledge, in short, that is necessary for a great merchant, which nothing hinders him from becoming but the want of a sufficient capital. Thirty or forty pounds a year cannot be considered as too great a recompence for the labour of a person so accomplished. Deduct this from the seemingly great profits of his capital, and little more will remain, perhaps, than the ordinary profits of stock. The greater part of the apparent profit is, in this case too, real wages.

  37 The difference between the apparent profit of the retail and that of the wholesale trade, is much less in the capital than in small towns and country villages.31 Where ten thousand pounds can be employed in the grocery trade, the wages of the grocer’s labour ⁱmake butⁱ a very trifling addition to the real profits of so great a stock. The apparent profits of the wealthy retailer, therefore, are there more nearly upon a level with those of the wholesale merchant. It is upon this account that goods sold by retail are generally as cheap and frequently much cheaper in the capital than in small towns and country villages. Grocery goods, for example, are generally much cheaper; bread and butcher’s meat frequently as cheap. It costs no more to bring grocery goods to the great town than to the country village; but it costs a great deal more to bring corn and cattle, as the greater part of them must be brought from a much greater distance. The prime cost of grocery goods, therefore, being the same in both places, they are cheapest where the least profit is charged upon them. The prime cost of bread and butcher’s–meat is greater in the great town than in the country village; and though the profit is less, therefore, they are not always cheaper there, but often equally cheap. In such articles as bread and butcher’s meat, the same cause, which diminishes apparent profit, increases prime cost. The extent of the market, by giving employment to greater stocks, diminishes apparent profit; but by requiring supplies from a greater distance, it increases prime cost. This diminution of the one and increase of the other seem, in most cases, nearly to counter–balance one another; which is probably the reason that, though the prices of corn and cattle are commonly very different in different parts of the kingdom, those of bread and butcher’s–meat are generally very nearly the same through the greater part of it.

  38Though the profits of stock both in the wholesale and retail trade are generally less in the capital than in small towns and country villages, yet great fortunes are frequently acquired from small beginnings in the former, and scarce ever in the latter. In small towns and country villages, on account of the narrowness of the market, trade cannot always be extended as stock extends. In such places, therefore, though the rate of a particular person’s profits may be very high, the sum or amount of them can never be very great, nor consequently that of his annual accumulation. In great towns, on the contrary, trade can be extended as stock increases, and the credit of a frugal and thriving man increases much faster than his stock. His trade is extended in proportion to the amount of both, and the sum or amount of his profits is in proportion to the extent of his trade, and his annual accumulation in proportion to the amount of his profits. It seldom happens, however, that great fortunes are made even in great towns by any one regular, established, and well–known branch of business, but in consequence of a long life of industry, frugality, and attention. Sudden fortunes, indeed, are sometimes made in such places by what is called the trade of speculation. The speculative merchant exercises no one regular, established, or well–known branch of business. He is a corn merchant this year, and a wine merchant the next, and a sugar, tobacco, or tea merchant the year after. He enters into every trade when he foresees that it is likely to be more than commonly profitable, and he quits it when he foresees that its profits are likely to return to the level of other trades. His profits and losses, therefore, can bear no regular proportion to those of any one established and well–known branch of business. A bold adventurer may sometimes acquire a considerable fortune by two or three successful speculations; but ^j is just as likely to lose one by two or three unsuccessful ones. This trade can be carried on no where but in great towns. It is only in places of the most extensive commerce and correspondence that the intelligence requisite for it can be had.

  39The five circumstances above mentioned, though they occasion considerable inequalities in the wages of labour and profits of stock, occasion none in the whole of the advantages and disadvantages, real or imaginary, of the different employments of either. The nature of those circumstances is such, that they make up for a small pecuniary gain in some, and counter–balance a great one in others.

  40In order, however, that this equality may take place in the whole of their advantages or disadvantages, three things are requisite even where there is the most perfect freedom. First, the employments must be well known and long established in the neighbourhood; secondly, they must be in their ordinary, or what may be called their natural state; and, thirdly, they must be the sole or principal employments of those who occupy them.

  41First, this equality can take place only in those employments which are well known, and have been long established in the neighbourhood.

  42Where all other circumstances are equal, wages are generally higher in new than in old trades. When a projector attempts to establish a new manufacture, he must at first entice his workmen from other employments by higher wages than they can either earn in their own trades, or than the nature of his work would otherwise require, and a considerable time must pass away before he can venture to reduce them to the common level. Manufactures for which the demand arises altogether from fashion and fancy, are continually changing, and seldom last long enough to be considered as old established manufactures. Those, on the contrary, for which the demand arises chiefly from use or necessity, are less liable to change, and the same form or fabrick may continue in demand for whole centuries together. The wages of labour, therefore, are likely to be higher in manufactures of the former, than in those of the latter kind. Birmingham deals chiefly in manufactures of the former kind; Sheffield in those of the latter; and the wages of labour in those two different places, are said to be suitable to this difference in the nature of their manufactures.32

  43The establishment of any new manufacture, of any new branch of commerce, or of any new practice in agriculture, is always a speculation, from which the projector promises himself extraordinary profits.33 These profits sometimes are very great, and sometimes, more frequently, perhaps, they are quite otherwise; but in general they bear no regular proportion to those of other old trades in the neighbourhood. If the project succeeds, they are commonly at first very high. When the trade or practice becomes thoroughly established and well known, the competition reduces them to the level of other trades.

  44Secondly, this equality in the whole of the advantages and disadvantages of the different employments of labour and stock, can take place only in the ordinary, or what may be called the natural state of those employments.

  45The demand for almost every different species of labour, is sometimes greater and sometimes less than usual. In the one case the advantages of the employment rise above, in the other they fall below the common level. The demand for country labour is greater at hay–time and harvest, than during the greater part of the year; and wages rise with the demand. In time of war, when forty or fifty thousand sailors are forced from the merchant service into that of the king, the demand for sailors to merchant ships necessarily rises with their scarcity, and their wages upon such occasions commonly rise from a guinea and seven–and–twenty–shillings, to forty shillings and three pounds a month.34 In a decaying manufacture, on the contrary, many workmen, rather than quit their old trade, are contented with smaller wages than would otherwise be suitable to the nature of their employment.

  46The profits of stock vary with the price of the commodities in which it is employed. As the price of any commodity rises above the ordinary or average rate, the profits of at least some part of the stock that is employed in bringing it to market, rise above their proper level, and as it falls they sink below it. All commodities are more or less liable to variations of price, but some are much more so than others. In all commodities which are produced by human industry, the quantity of industry annually employed is necessarily regulated by the annual demand, in such a manner that the average annual produce may, as nearly as possible, be equal to the average annual consumption. In some employments, it has already been observed,35 the same quantity of industry will always produce the same, or very nearly the same quantity of commodities. In the linen or woollen manufactures, for example, the same number of hands will annually work up very nearly the same quantity of linen and woollen cloth. The variations in the market price of such commodities, therefore, can arise only from some accidental variation in the demand. A publick mourning raises the price of black cloth.36 But as the demand for most sorts of plain linen and woollen cloth is pretty uniform, so is likewise the price. But there are other employments in which the same quantity of industry will not always produce the same quantity of commodities. The same quantity of industry, for example, will, in different years, produce very different quantities of corn, wine, hops, sugar, tobacco, &c. The price of such commodities, therefore, varies not only with the variations of demand, but with the much greater and more frequent variations of quantity, and is consequently extremely fluctuating. But the profit of some of the dealers must necessarily fluctuate with the price of the commodities. The operations of the speculative merchant are principally employed about such commodities. He endeavours to buy them up when he foresees that their price is likely to rise, and to sell them when it is likely to fall.

  47Thirdly, This equality in the whole of the advantages and disadvantages of the different employments of labour and stock; can take place only in such as are the sole or principal employments of those who occupy them.

  48When a person derives his subsistence from one employment, which does not occupy the greater part of his time; in the intervals of his leisure he is often willing to work at another for less wages than would otherwise suit the nature of the employment.37

  49There still subsists in many parts of Scotland a set of people called Cotters or Cottagers,38 though they were more frequent some years ago than they are now. They are a sort of out–servants of the landlords and farmers. The usual reward which they receive from their masters is a house, a small garden for pot–herbs, as much grass as will feed a cow, and, perhaps, an acre or two of bad arable land. When their master has occasion for their labour, he gives them, besides, two pecks of oatmeal a week, worth about sixteen–pence sterling. During a great part of the year he has little or no occasion for their labour, and the cultivation of their own little possession is not sufficient to occupy the time which is left at their own disposal. When such occupiers were more numerous than they are at present, they are said to have been willing to give their spare time for a very small recompence to any body, and to have wrought for less wages than other labourers. In antient times they seem to have been common all over Europe. In countries ill cultivated and worse inhabited, the greater part of landlords and farmers could not otherwise provide themselves with the extraordinary number of hands, which country labour requires at certain seasons. The daily or weekly recompence which such labourers occasionally received from their masters, was evidently not the whole price of their labour. Their small tenement made a considerable part of it. This daily or weekly recompence, however, seems to have been considered as the whole of it, by many writers who have collected the prices of labour and provisions in antient times, and who have taken pleasure in representing both as wonderfully low.

  50 The produce of such labour comes frequently cheaper to market than would otherwise be suitable to its nature.39 Stockings in many parts of Scotland are knit much cheaper than they can any–where be wrought upon the loom. They are the work of servants and labourers, who derive the principal part of their subsistence from some other employment. More than a thousand pair of Shetland stockings are annually imported into Leith, of which the price is from five–pence to seven–pence a pair. At Learwick,40 the small capital of the Shetland islands, ten–pence a day, I have been assured, is a common price of common labour. In the same islands they knit worsted stockings to the value of a guinea a pair and upwards.

  51The spinning of linen yarn is carried on in Scotland nearly in the same way as the knitting of stockings, by servants who are chiefly hired for other purposes. They earn but a very scanty subsistence, who endeavour to get their whole livelihood by either of those trades. In most parts of Scotland she is a good spinner who can earn twenty–pence a week.41

  52In opulent countries the market is generally so extensive, that any one trade is sufficient to employ the whole labour and stock of those who occupy it. Instances of people’s living by one employment, and at the same time deriving some little advantage from another, occur chiefly in poor countries. The following instance, however, of something of the same kind is to be found in the capital of a very rich one. There is no city in Europe, I believe, in which house–rent is dearer than in London, and yet I know no capital in which a furnished apartment can be hired so cheap.42 Lodging is not only much cheaper in London than in Paris; it is much cheaper than in Edinburgh of the same degree of goodness; and what may seem extraordinary, the dearness of house–rent is the cause of the cheapness of lodging. The dearness of house–rent in London arises, not only from those causes which render it dear in all great capitals, the dearness of labour, the dearness of all the materials of building, which must generally be brought from a great distance, and above all the dearness of ground–rent, every landlord acting the part of a monopolist, and frequently exacting a higher rent for a single acre of bad land in a town, than can be had for a hundred of the best in the country; but it arises in part from the peculiar manners and customs of the people, which oblige every master of a family to hire a whole house from top to bottom. A dwelling–house in England means every thing that is contained under the same roof. In France, Scotland, and many other parts of Europe, it frequently means no more than a single story. A tradesman in London is obliged to hire a whole house in that part of the town where his customers live. His shop is upon the ground–floor, and he and his family sleep in the garret; and he endeavours to pay a part of his house–rent by letting the two middle stories to lodgers. He expects to maintain his family by his trade, and not by his lodgers. Whereas, at Paris and Edinburgh, the people who let lodgings, have commonly no other means of subsistence; and the price of the lodging must pay, not only the rent of the house, but the whole expence of the family.

  part ii

  Inequalities occasioned by the Policy of Europe

  1Such are the inequalities in the whole of the advantages and disadvantages of the different employments of labour and stock, which the defect of any of the three requisites above–mentioned must occasion, even where there is the most perfect liberty. But the policy of Europe, by not leaving things at perfect liberty, occasions other inequalities of much greater importance.

  2It does this chiefly in the three following ways. First, by restraining the competition in some employments to a smaller number than would otherwise be disposed to enter into them; secondly, by increasing it in others beyond what it naturally would be; and, thirdly, by obstructing the free circulation of labour and stock, both from employment to employment and from place to place.1

  3First, The policy of Europe occasions a very important inequality in the whole of the advantages and disadvantages of the different employments of labour and stock, by restraining the competition in some employments to a smaller number than might otherwise be disposed to enter into them.

  4The exclusive privileges of corporations are the principal means it makes use of for this purpose.2

  5The exclusive privilege of an incorporated trade necessarily restrains the competition, in the town where it is established, to those who are free of the trade. To have served an apprenticeship in the town, under a master properly qualified, is commonly the necessary requisite for obtaining this freedom. The bye–laws of the corporation regulate sometimes the number of apprentices which any master is allowed to have, and almost always the number of years which each apprentice is obliged to serve. The intention of both regulations is to restrain the competition to a much smaller number than might otherwise be disposed to enter into the trade. The limitation of the number of apprentices restrains it directly. A long term of apprenticeship restrains it more indirectly, but as effectually, by increasing the expence of education.3

  6In Sheffield no master cutler can have more than one apprentice at a time, by a bye–law of the corporation. In Norfolk and Norwich no master weaver can have more than two apprentices, under pain of forfeiting five pounds a month to the king.4 No master hatter can have more than two apprentices any–where in England, or in the English plantations, under pain of forfeiting five pounds a month, half to the king, and half to him who shall sue in any court of record.5 Both these regulations, though they have been confirmed by a publick law of the kingdom, are evidently dictated by the same corporation spirit which enacted the bye–law of Sheffield. The silk weavers in London had scarce been incorporated a year when they enacted a bye–law, restraining any master from having more than two apprentices at a time. It required a particular act of parliament to rescind this bye–law.6

  7Seven years seem antiently to have been, all over Europe, the usual term established for the duration of apprenticeships in the greater part of incorporated trades. All such incorporations were antiently called universities; which indeed is the proper Latin name for any incorporation whatever. The university of smiths, the university of taylors, &c. are expressions which we commonly meet with in the old charters of antient towns.7 When those particular incorporations which are now peculiarly called universities were first established, the term of years which it was necessary to study, in order to obtain the degree of master of arts, appears evidently to have been copied from the term of apprenticeship in common trades, of which the incorporations were much more antient. As to have wrought seven years under a master properly qualified, was necessary, in order to intitle any person to become a master, and to have himself apprentices in a common trade; so to have studied seven years under a master properly qualified, was necessary to entitle him to become a master, teacher, or doctor (words antiently synonimous) in the liberal arts, and to have scholars or apprentices (words likewise originally synonimous) to study under him.8

  8By the 5th of Elizabeth, commonly called the Statute of Apprenticeship,9 it was enacted, that no person should for the future exercise any trade, craft, or mystery at that time exercised in England, unless he had previously served to it an apprenticeship of seven years at least; and what before had been the bye–law of many particular corporations, became in England the general and publick law of all trades carried on in market towns. For though the words of the statute are very general, and seem plainly to include the whole kingdom, by interpretation its operation has been limited to market towns, it having been held that in country villages a person may exercise several different trades, though he has not served a seven years apprenticeship to each, they being necessary for the conveniency of the inhabitants, and the number of people frequently not being sufficient to supply each with a particular sett of hands.10

  9By a strict interpretation of the words too the operation of this statute has been limited to those trades which were established in England before the 5th of Elizabeth, and has never been extended to such as have been introduced since that time.11 This limitation has given occasion to several distinctions which, considered as rules of police, appear as foolish as can well be imagined. It has been adjudged, for example, that a coach–maker can neither himself make nor employ journeymen to make his coach–wheels, but must buy them of a master wheel–wright; this latter trade having been exercised in England before the 5th of Elizabeth. But a wheel–wright, though he has never served an apprenticeship to a coach–maker, may either himself make or employ journeymen to make coaches; the trade of a coach–maker not being within the statute, because not exercised in England at the time when it was made. The manufactures of Manchester, Birmingham, and Wolverhampton, are many of them, upon this account, not within the statute; not having been exercised in England before the 5th of Elizabeth.12

  10In France, the duration of apprenticeships is different in different towns and in different trades. In Paris, five years is the term required in a great number; but before any person can be qualified to exercise the trade as a master, he must, in many of them, serve five years more as a journeyman. During this latter term he is called the companion of his master, and the term itself is called his companionship.13

  11In Scotland there is no general law which regulates universally the duration of apprenticeships. The term is different in different corporations. Where it is long, a part of it may generally be redeemed by paying a small fine. In most towns too a very small fine is sufficient to purchase the freedom of any corporation. The weavers of linen and hempen cloth, the principal manufactures of the country, as well as all other artificers subservient to them, wheel–makers, reel–makers, &c. may exercise their trades in any town corporate without paying any fine. In all towns corporate all persons are free to sell butcher’s–meat upon any lawful day of the week. Three years is in Scotland a common term of apprenticeship, even in some very nice trades; and in general I know of no country in Europe in which corporation laws are so little oppressive.14

  12The property which every man has in his own labour, as it is the original foundation of all other property, so it is the most sacred and inviolable. The patrimony of a poor man lies in the strength and dexterity of his hands; and to hinder him from employing this strength and dexterity in what manner he thinks proper without injury to his neighbour, is a plain violation of this most sacred property. It is a manifest encroachment upon the just liberty both of the workman, and of those who might be disposed to employ him. As it hinders the one from working at what he thinks proper, so it hinders the ^aothers^a from employing whom they think proper. To judge whether he is fit to be employed, may surely be trusted to the discretion of the employers whose interest it so much concerns. The affected anxiety of the law–giver lest they should employ an improper person, is evidently as impertinent as it is oppressive.

  13The institution of long apprenticeships can give no security that insufficient workmanship shall not frequently be exposed to publick sale. When this is done it is generally the effect of fraud, and not of inability; and the longest apprenticeship can give no security against fraud. Quite different regulations are necessary to prevent this abuse. The sterling mark upon plate,15 and the stamps upon linen16 and woollen cloth,17 give the purchaser much greater security than any statute of apprenticeship.18 He generally looks at these, but never thinks it worth while to enquire whether the ^bworkman^b had served a seven years apprenticeship.

  14The institution of long apprenticeships has no tendency to form young people to industry. A journeyman who works by the piece is likely to be industrious, because he derives a benefit from every exertion of his industry.19 An apprentice is likely to be idle, and almost always is so, because he has no immediate interest to be otherwise.20 In the inferior employments, the sweets of labour consist altogether in the recompence of labour. They who are soonest in a condition to enjoy the sweets of it, are likely soonest to conceive a relish for it, and to acquire the early habit of industry. A young man naturally conceives an aversion to labour, when for a long time he receives no benefit from it. The boys who are put out apprentices from publick charities are generally bound for more than the usual number of years, and they generally turn out very idle and worthless.

  15Apprenticeships were altogether unknown to the antients. The reciprocal duties of master and apprentice make a considerable article in every modern code. The Roman law is perfectly silent with regard to them. I know no Greek or Latin word (I might venture, I believe, to assert that there is none) which expresses the idea we now annex to the word Apprentice, a servant bound to work at a particular trade for the benefit of a master, during a term of years, upon condition that the master shall teach him that trade.

  16Long apprenticeships are altogether unnecessary. The arts, which are much superior to common trades, such as those of making clocks and watches, contain no such mystery as to require a long course of instruction.21 The first invention of such beautiful machines, indeed, and even that of some of the instruments employed in making them, must, no doubt, have been the work of deep thought and long time, and may justly be considered as among the happiest efforts of human ingenuity. But when both have been fairly invented and are well understood, to explain to any young man, in the compleatest manner, how to apply the instruments and how to construct the machines, cannot well require more than the lessons of a few weeks: perhaps those of a few days might be sufficient. In the common mechanick trades, those of a few days might certainly be sufficient. The dexterity of hand, indeed, even in common trades, cannot be acquired without much practice and experience. But a young man would practise with much more diligence and attention, if from the beginning he wrought as a journeyman, being paid in proportion to the little work which he could execute, and paying in his turn for the materials which he might sometimes spoil through awkwardness and inexperience. His education would generally in this way be more effectual, and always less tedious and expensive. The master, indeed, would be a loser. He would lose all the wages of the apprentice, which he now saves, for seven years together. In the end, perhaps, the apprentice himself would be a loser. In a trade so easily learnt he would have more competitors, and his wages, when he came to be a compleat workman, would be much less than at present. The same increase of competition would reduce the profits of the masters as well as the wages of the workmen. The trades, the crafts, the mysteries, would all be losers. But the publick would be a gainer, the work of all artificers coming in this way much cheaper to market.

  17It is to prevent this reduction of price, and consequently of wages and profit, by restraining that free competition which would most certainly ocasion it, that all corporations, and the greater part of corporation laws, have been established. In order to erect a corporation, no other authority in antient times was requisite in many parts of Europe, but that of the town corporate in which it was established.22 In England, indeed, a charter from the king was likewise necessary. But this prerogative of the crown seems to have been reserved rather for extorting money from the subject, than for the defence of the common liberty against such oppressive monopolies. Upon paying a fine to the king, the charter seems generally to have Cf. LJ (A) vi.61: been readily granted; and when any particular class of artificers or traders thought proper to act as a corporation without a charter, such adulterine guilds, as they were called, were not always disfranchised upon that account, but obliged to fine annually to the king for permission to exercise their usurped privileges* . The immediate inspection of all corporations, and of the bye–laws which they might think proper to enact for their own government, belonged to the town corporate in which they were established; and whatever discipline was exercised over them, proceeded commonly, not from the king, but from that greater incorporation of which those subordinate ones were only parts or members.

  18The government of towns corporate was altogether in the hands of traders and artificers; and it was the manifest interest of every particular class of them, to prevent the market from being over–stocked, as they commonly express it, with their own particular species of industry; which is in reality to keep it always under–stocked. Each class was eager to establish regulations proper for this purpose, and, provided it was allowed to do so, was willing to consent that every other class should do the same. In consequence of such regulations, indeed, each class was obliged to buy the goods they had occasion for from every other within the town, somewhat dearer than they otherwise might have done. But in recompence, they were enabled to sell their own just as much dearer; so that so far it was as broad as long, as they say; and in the dealings of the different classes within the town with one another, none of them were losers by these regulations. But in their dealings with the country they were all great gainers; and in these latter dealings consists the whole trade which supports and enriches every town.

  19Every town draws its whole subsistence, and all the materials of its industry, from the country.23 It pays for these chiefly in two ways: first, by sending back to the country a part of those materials wrought up and manufactured; in which case their price is augmented by the wages of the workmen, and the profits of their masters or immediate employers: secondly, by sending to it a part both of the rude and manufactured produce, either of other countries, or of distant parts of the same country, imported into the town; in which case too the original price of those goods is augmented by the wages of the carriers or sailors, and by the profits of the merchants who employ them. In what is gained upon the first of those two branches of commerce, consists the advantage which the town makes by its manufactures; in what is gained upon the second, the advantage of its inland and foreign trade. The wages of the workmen, and the profits of their different employers, make up the whole of what is gained upon both. Whatever regulations, therefore, tend to increase those wages and profits beyond what they otherwise would be, tend to enable the town to purchase, with a smaller quantity of its labour, the produce of a greater quantity of the labour of the country. They give the traders and artificers in the town an advantage over the landlords, farmers, and labourers in the country, and break down that natural equality which would otherwise take place in the commerce which is carried on between them. The whole annual produce of the labour of the society is annually divided between those two different sets of people. By means of those regulations a greater share of it is given to the inhabitants of the town than would otherwise fall to them; and a less to those of the country.

  20The price which the town really pays for the provisions and materials annually imported into it, is the quantity of manufactures and other goods annually exported from it. The dearer the latter are sold, the cheaper the former are bought. The industry of the town becomes more, and that of the country less advantageous.

  21That the industry which is carried on in towns is, every–where in Europe, more advantageous than that which is carried on in the country, without entering into any very nice computations, we may satisfy ourselves by one very simple and obvious observation. In every country of Europe we find, at least, a hundred people who have acquired great fortunes from small beginnings by trade and manufactures, the industry which properly belongs to towns, for one who has done so by that which properly belongs to the country, the raising of rude produce by the improvement and cultivation of land.24 Industry, therefore, must be better rewarded, the wages of labour and the profits of stock must evidently be greater in the one situation than in the other. But stock and labour naturally seek the most advantageous employment. They naturally, therefore, resort as much as they can to the town, and desert the country.

  22The inhabitants of a town, being collected into one place, can easily combine together. The most insignificant trades carried on in towns have accordingly, in some place or other, been incorporated; and even where they have never been incorporated, yet the corporation spirit, the jealousy of strangers, the aversion to take apprentices, or to communicate the secret of their trade, generally prevail in them, and often teach them, by voluntary associations and agreements, to prevent that free competition which they cannot prohibit by bye–laws. The trades which employ but a small number of hands, run most easily into such combinations. Half a dozen wool–combers, perhaps, are necessary to keep a thousand spinners and weavers at work. By combining not to take apprentices they can not only engross the employment, but reduce the whole manufacture into a sort of slavery to themselves, and raise the price of their labour much above what is due to the nature of their work.

  23 The inhabitants of the country, dispersed in distant places, cannot easily combine together.25 They have not only never been incorporated, but the corporation spirit never has prevailed among them. No apprenticeship has ever been thought necessary to qualify for husbandry, the great trade of the country. After what are called the fine arts, and the liberal professions, however, there is perhaps no trade which requires so great a variety of knowledge and experience.26 The innumerable volumes which have been written upon it in all languages, may satisfy us, that among the wisest and most learned nations, it has never been regarded as a matter very easily understood. And from all those volumes we shall in vain attempt to collect that knowledge of its various and complicated operations, which is commonly possessed even by the common farmer; how contemptuously soever the very contemptible authors of some of them may sometimes affect to speak of him. There is scarce any common mechanick trade, on the contrary, of which all the operations may not be as compleatly and distinctly explained in a pamphlet of a very few pages, as it is possible for words illustrated by figures to explain them. In the history of the arts, now publishing by the French academy of sciences,27 several of them are actually explained in this manner. The direction of operations, besides, which must be varied with every change of the weather, as well as with many other accidents, requires much more judgment and discretion, than that of those which are always the same or very nearly the same.

  24Not only the art of the farmer, the general direction of the operations of husbandry, but many inferior branches of country labour require much more skill and experience than the greater part of mechanick trades. The man who works upon brass and iron, works with instruments and upon materials of which the temper is always the same, or very nearly the same. But the man who ploughs the ground with a team of horses or oxen, works with instruments of which the health, strength, and temper are very different upon different occasions. The condition of the materials which he works upon too is as variable as that of the instruments which he works with, and both require to be managed with much judgment and discretion. The common ploughman, though generally regarded as the pattern of stupidity and ignorance, is seldom defective in this judgment and discretion. He is less accustomed, indeed, to social intercourse than the mechanick who lives in a town. His voice and language are more uncouth and more difficult to be understood by those who are not used to them. His understanding, however, being accustomed to consider a greater variety of objects, is generally much superior to that of the other, whose whole attention from morning till night is commonly occupied in performing one or two very simple operations.28 How much the lower ranks of people in the country are really superior to those of the town, is well known to every man whom either business or curiosity has led to converse much with both. In China and Indostan accordingly both the rank and the wages of country labourers are said to be superior to those of the greater part of artificers and manufacturers. They would probably be so every where, if corporation laws and the corporation spirit did not prevent it.

  25The superiority which the industry of the towns has every where in Europe over that of the country, is not altogether owing to corporations and corporation laws. It is supported by many other regulations. The high duties upon foreign manufactures and upon all goods imported by alien merchants, all tend to the same purpose.29 Corporation laws enable the inhabitants of towns to raise their prices, without fearing to be under–sold by the ^dfree^d competition of their own countrymen. Those other regulations secure them equally against that of foreigners. The enhancement of price occasioned by both is every where finally paid by the landlords, farmers, and labourers of the country, who have seldom opposed the establishment of such monopolies. They have commonly neither inclination nor fitness to enter into combinations; and the clamour and sophistry of merchants and manufacturers easily persuade them that the private interest of a part, and of a subordinate part of the society, is the general interest of the whole.

  26In Great Britain the superiority of the industry of the towns over that of the country, seems to have been greater formerly than in the present times. The wages of country labour approach nearer to those of manufacturing labour, and the profits of stock employed in agriculture to those of trading and manufacturing stock, than they are said to have done in the last century, or in the beginning of the present. This change may be regarded as the necessary, though very late consequence of the extraordinary encouragement given to the industry of the towns. The stock accumulated in them comes in time to be so great, that it can no longer be employed with the antient profit in that species of industry which is peculiar to them. That industry has its limits like every other; and the increase of stock, by increasing the competition, necessarily reduces the profit.30 The lowering of profit in the town forces out stock to the country, where, by creating a new demand for country labour, it necessarily raises its wages. It then spreads itself, if I may say so, over the face of the land, and by being employed in agriculture is in part restored to the country, at the expence of which, in a great measure, it had originally been accumulated in the town. That every where in Europe the greatest improvements of the country have been owing to such overflowings of the stock originally accumulated in the towns, I shall endeavour to show hereafter;31 and at the same time to demonstrate, that though some countries have by this course attained to a considerable degree of opulence, it is in itself necessarily slow, uncertain, liable to be disturbed and interrupted by innumerable accidents, and in every respect contrary to the order of nature and of reason. The interests, prejudices, laws and customs which have given occasion to it, I shall endeavour to explain as fully and distinctly as I can in the third and fourth books of this enquiry.

  27People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the publick, or in some contrivance to raise prices. It is impossible indeed to prevent such meetings, by any law which either could be executed, or would be consistent with liberty and justice. But though the law cannot hinder people of the same trade from sometimes assembling together, it ought to do nothing to facilitate such assemblies; much less to render them necessary.

  28A regulation which obliges all those of the same trade in a particular town to enter their names and places of abode in a publick register, facilitates such assemblies. It connects individuals who might never otherwise be known to one another, and gives every man of the trade a direction where to find every other man of it.

  29A regulation which enables those of the same trade to tax themselves in order to provide for their poor, their sick, their widows and orphans, by giving them a common interest to manage, renders such assemblies necessary.

  30An incorporation not only renders them necessary, but makes the act of the majority binding upon the whole. In a free trade an effectual combination cannot be established but by the unanimous consent of every single ^etrader^e and it cannot last longer than every single ^ftrader^f continues of the same mind. The majority of a corporation can enact a bye–law with proper penalties, which will limit the competition more effectually and more durably than any voluntary combination whatever.

  31The pretence that corporations are necessary for the better government of the trade, is without any foundation. The real and effectual discipline which is exercised over a workman, is not that of his corporation, but that of his customers. It is the fear of losing their employment which restrains his frauds and corrects his negligence. An exclusive corporation necessarily weakens the force of this discipline. A particular set of workmen must then be employed, let them behave well or ill. It is upon this account that in many large incorporated towns no tolerable workmen are to be found, even in some of the most necessary trades. If you would have your work tolerably executed, it must be done in the suburbs, where the workmen having no exclusive privilege, have nothing but their character to depend upon, and you must then smuggle it into the town as well as you can.

  32It is in this manner that the policy of Europe, by restraining the competition in some employments to a smaller number than would otherwise be disposed to enter into them, occasions a very important inequality in the whole of the advantages and disadvantages of the different employments of labour and stock.

  33 Secondly, The policy of Europe, by increasing the competition in some employments beyond what it naturally would be, occasions another inequality of an opposite kind in the whole of the advantages and disadvantages of the different employments of labour and stock.

  34It has been considered as of so much importance that a proper number of young people should be educated for certain professions, that, sometimes the publick, and sometimes the piety of private founders have established many pensions, scholarships, exhibitions, bursaries, &c.32 for this purpose, which draw many more people into those trades than could otherwise pretend to follow them. In all christian countries, I believe, the education of the greater part of churchmen is paid for in this manner. Very few of them are educated altogether at their own expence. The long, tedious and expensive education, therefore, of those who are, will not always procure them a suitable reward, the church being crowded with people who, in order to get employment, are willing to accept of a much smaller recompence than what such an education would otherwise have entitled them to; and in this manner the competition of the poor takes away the reward of the rich. It would be indecent, no doubt, to compare either a curate or a chaplain with a journeyman in any common trade. The pay of a curate or chaplain, however, may very properly be considered as of the same nature with the wages of a journeyman. They are, all three, paid for their work according to the contract which they may happen to make with their respective superiors. Till after the middle of the fourteenth century, five merks, containing about as much silver as ten pounds of our present money, was in England the usual pay of a curate or ^g stipendiary parish priest, as we find it regulated by the decrees of several different national councils.33 At the same period four–pence a day, containing the same quantity of silver as a shilling of our present money, was declared to be the pay of a master mason, and three–pence a day, equal to nine–pence of our present money, that of a journeyman mason* . The wages of both these labourers, therefore, supposing them to have been constantly employed, were much superior to those of the curate. The wages of the master mason, supposing him to have been without employment one–third of the year, would have fully equalled them. By the 12th of Queen Anne, c.12,34 it is declared, “That whereas for want of sufficient maintenance and encouragement to curates, the cures have in several places been meanly supplied, the bishop is, therefore, empowered to appoint by writing under his hand and seal a sufficient certain stipend or allowance, not exceeding fifty and not less than twenty pounds a year”. Forty pounds a year is reckoned at present very good pay for a curate, and notwithstanding this act of parliament, there are many curacies under twenty pounds a year. There are journeymen shoemakers in London who earn forty pounds a year, and there is scarce an industrious workman of any kind in that metropolis who does not earn more than twenty. This last sum indeed does not exceed what is frequently earned by common labourers in many country parishes. Whenever the law has attempted to regulate the wages of workmen, it has always been rather to lower them than to raise them.35 But the law has upon many occasions attempted to raise the wages of curates, and for the dignity of the church, to oblige the rectors of parishes to give them more than the wretched maintenance which they themselves might be willing to accept of. And in both cases the law seems to have been equally ineffectual, and has never either been able to raise the wages of curates or to sink those of labourers to the degree that was intended; because it has never been able to hinder either the one from being willing to accept of less than the legal allowance, on account of the indigence of their situation and the multitude of their competitors; or the other from receiving more, on account of the contrary competition of those who expected to derive either profit or pleasure from employing them.

  35The great benefices and other ecclesiastical dignities support the honour of the church, notwithstanding the mean circumstances of some of its inferior members. The respect paid to the profession too makes some compensation even to them for the meanness of their pecuniary recompence. In England, and in all Roman Catholick countries, the lottery of the church is in reality much more advantageous than is necessary. The example of the churches of Scotland, of Geneva, and of several other protestant churches, may satisfy us that in so creditable a profession, in which education is so easily procured, the hopes of much more moderate benefices will draw a sufficient number of learned, decent, and respectable men into holy orders.

  36In professions in which there are no benefices, such as law and physick, if an equal proportion of people were educated at the publick expence, the competition would soon be so great, as to sink very much their pecuniary reward. It might then not be worth any man’s while to educate his son to either of those professions at his own expence. They would be entirely abandoned to such as had been educated by those publick charities, whose numbers and necessities would oblige them in general to content themselves with a very miserable recompence, to the entire degradation of the now respectable professions of law and physick.

  37That unprosperous race of men commonly called men of letters, are pretty much in the situation which lawyers and physicians probably would be in upon the foregoing supposition. In every part of Europe the greater part of them have been educated for the church, but have been hindered by different reasons from entering into holy orders.36 They have generally, therefore, been educated at the publick expence, and their numbers are every–where so great as commonly to reduce the price of their labour to a very paultry recompence.

  38Before the invention of the art of printing, the only employment by which a man of letters could make any thing by his talents, was that of a publick ⁱor privateⁱ teacher, or by communicating to other people the curious and useful knowledge which he had acquired himself: And this is still surely a more honourable, a more useful, and in general even a more profitable employment than that other of writing for a bookseller, to which the art of printing has given occasion. The time and study, the genius, knowledge, and application requisite to qualify an eminent teacher of the sciences, are at least equal to what is necessary for the greatest practitioners in law and physick. But the usual reward of the eminent teacher bears no proportion to that of the lawyer or physician; because the trade of the one is crowded with indigent people who have been brought up to it at the publick expence; whereas those of the other two are incumbered with very few who have not been educated at their own. The usual recompence, however, of publick and private teachers, small as it may appear, would undoubtedly be less than it is, if the competition of those yet more indigent men of letters who write for bread was not taken out of the market.37 Before the invention of the art of printing, a scholar and a beggar seem to have been terms very nearly synonimous. The different governors of the universities before that time appear to have often granted licences to their scholars to beg.38

  39In antient times, before any charities of this kind had been established for the education of indigent people to the learned professions, the rewards of eminent teachers appear to have been much more considerable. Isocrates, in what is called his discourse against the sophists, reproaches the teachers of his own times with inconsistency. “They make the most magnificent promises to their scholars”, says he, “and undertake to teach to be wise, to be happy, and to be just, and in return for so important a service they stipulate the paultry reward of four or five minae. They who teach wisdom”, continues he, “ought certainly to be wise themselves; but if any man ^jwas^j to sell such a bargain for such a price, he would be convicted of the most evident folly.”39 He certainly does not mean here to exaggerate the reward, and we may be assured that it was not less than he represents it. Four minae were equal to thirteen pounds six shillings and eight pence: five minae to sixteen pounds thirteen shillings and four pence. Something not less than the largest of those two sums, therefore, must at that time have been usually paid to the most eminent teachers at Athens. Isocrates himself demanded ten minae, or thirty–three pounds six shillings and eight pence, from each scholar.40 When he taught at Athens, he is said to have had an hundred scholars. I understand this to be the number whom he taught at one time, or who attended what we would call one course of lectures, a number which will not appear extraordinary from so great a city to so famous a teacher, who taught too what was at that time the most fashionable of all sciences, rhetorick. He must have made, therefore, by each course of lectures, a thousand minae, or 3,333 l. 6s. 8d. A thousand minae, accordingly, is said by Plutarch in another place, to have been his Didactron, or usual price of teaching.41 Many other eminent teachers in those times appear to have acquired great fortunes. Gorgias made a present to the temple of Delphi of his own statue in solid gold.42 We must not, I presume, suppose that it was as large as the life. His way of living, as well as that of Hippias and Protagoras, two other eminent teachers of those times, is represented by Plato as splendid even to ostentation. Plato himself is said to have lived with a good deal of magnificence. Aristotle, after having been tutor to Alexander and most munificently rewarded,43 as it is universally agreed, both by him and his father Phillip, thought it worth while, notwithstanding, to return to Athens, in order to resume the teaching of his school. Teachers of the sciences were probably in those times less common than they came to be in an age or two afterwards, when the competition had probably somewhat reduced both the price of their labour and the admiration for their persons. The most eminent of them, however, appear always to have enjoyed a degree of consideration much superior to any of the like profession in the present times. The Athenians sent Carneades the academick, and Diogenes the stoick, upon a solemn embassy to Rome; and though their city had then declined from its former grandeur, it was still an independent and considerable republick. Carneades too was a Babylonian by birth, and as there never was a people more jealous of admitting foreigners to publick offices than the Athenians, their consideration for him must have been very great.44

  40This inequality is upon the whole, perhaps, rather advantageous than hurtful to the publick. It may somewhat degrade the profession of a publick teacher; but the cheapness of literary education is surely an advantage which greatly over–balances this trifling inconveniency. The publick too might derive still greater benefit from it, if the constitution of those schools and colleges, in which education is carried on, was more reasonable than it is at present through the greater part of Europe.45

  41Thirdly, The policy of Europe, by obstructing the free circulation of labour and stock both from employment to employment, and from place to place, occasions in some cases a very inconvenient inequality in the whole of the advantages and disadvantages of their different employments.

  42The statute of apprenticeship obstructs the free circulation of labour from one employment to another, even in the same place.46 The exclusive privileges of corporations obstruct it from one place to another, even in the same employment.

  43 It frequently happens that while high wages are given to the workmen in one manufacture, those in another are obliged to content themselves with bare subsistence. The one is in an advancing state, and has, therefore, a continual demand for new hands: The other is in a declining state, and the super–abundance of hands is continually increasing. Those two manufactures may sometimes be in the same town, and sometimes in the same neighbourhood, without being able to lend the least assistance to one another. The statute of apprenticeship may oppose it in the one case, and both that and an exclusive corporation in the other. In many different manufactures, however, the operations are so much alike, that the workmen could easily change trades with one another, if those absurd laws did not hinder them.47 The arts of weaving plain linen and plain silk, for example, are almost entirely the same. That of weaving plain woollen is somewhat different; but the difference is so insignificant, that either a linen or a silk weaver might become a tolerable workman in a ^kvery^k few days.48 If any of those three capital manufactures, therefore, were decaying, the workmen might find a resource in one of the other two which was in a more prosperous condition; and their wages would neither rise too high in the thriving, nor sink too low in the decaying manufacture. The linen manufacture indeed is, in England, by a particular statute,49 open to every body; but, as it is not much cultivated through the greater part of the country, it can afford no general resource to the workmen of other decaying manufactures, who, wherever the statute of apprenticeship takes place, have no other choice but either to come upon the parish, or to work as common labourers, for which, by their habits, they are much worse qualified than for any sort of manufacture that bears any resemblance to their own. They generally, therefore, chuse to come upon the parish.

  44Whatever obstructs the free circulation of labour from one employment to another, obstructs that of stock likewise; the quantity of stock which can be employed in any branch of business depending very much upon that of ^lthe^l labour which can be employed in it. Corporation laws, however, give less obstruction to the free circulation of stock from one place to another than to that of labour. It is every–where much easier for a wealthy merchant to obtain the privilege of trading in a town corporate, than for a poor artificer to obtain that of working in it.

  45The obstruction which corporation laws give to the free circulation of labour is common, I believe, to every part of Europe. That which is given to it by the poor laws ^mis, so far as I know,^m peculiar to England. It consists in the difficulty which a poor man finds in obtaining a settlement, or even in being allowed to exercise his industry in any parish but that to which he belongs. It is the labour of artificers and manufacturers only of which the free circulation is obstructed by corporation laws. The difficulty of obtaining settlements obstructs even that of common labour. It may be worth while to give some account of the rise, progress, and present state of this disorder, the greatest perhaps of any in the police of England.50

  46When by the destruction of monasteries the poor had been deprived of the charity51 of those religious houses, after some other ineffectual attempts for their relief, it was enacted by the 43d of Elizabeth, c.2.52 that every parish should be bound to provide for its own poor; and that overseers of the poor should be annually appointed, who, with the churchwardens, should raise by a parish rate, competent sums for this purpose.

  47By this statute the necessity of providing for their own poor was indispensably imposed upon every parish. Who were to be considered as the poor of each parish, ⁿbecame, therefore,ⁿ a question of some importance. This question, after some variation, was at last determined by the 13th and 14th of Charles II.53 when it was enacted, that forty days undisturbed residence should gain any person a settlement in any parish; but that within that time it should be lawful for two justices of the peace, upon complaint made by the churchwardens or overseers of the poor, to remove any new inhabitant to the parish where he was last legally settled; unless he either rented a tenement of ten pounds a year, or could give such security for the discharge of the parish where he was then living, as those justices should judge sufficient.

  48 Some frauds, it is said, were committed in consequence of this statute; parish officers sometimes bribing their own poor to go clandestinely to another parish, and by keeping themselves concealed for forty days to gain a settlement there, to the discharge of that to which they properly belonged. It was enacted, therefore, by the 1st of James II.54 that the forty days undisturbed residence of any person necessary to gain a settlement, should be accounted only from the time of his delivering notice in writing, of the place of his abode and the number of his family, to one of the churchwardens or overseers of the parish where he came to dwell.

  49But parish officers, it seems, were not always more honest with regard to their own, than they had been with regard to other parishes, and sometimes connived at such intrusions, receiving the notice, and taking no proper steps in consequence of it. As every person in a parish, therefore, was supposed to have an interest to prevent as much as possible their being burdened by such intruders, it was further enacted by the 3d of William III.55 that the forty days residence should be accounted only from the publication of such notice in writing on Sunday in the church, immediately after divine service.

  50“After all,” says Doctor Burn, “this kind of settlement, by continuing forty days after publication of notice in writing, is very seldom obtained; and the design of the acts is not so much for gaining of settlements, as for the avoiding of them, by persons coming into a parish clandestinely: for the giving of notice is only putting a force upon the parish to remove. But if a person’s situation is such, that it is doubtful whether he is actually removeable or not, he shall by giving of notice compel the parish either to allow him a settlement uncontested, by suffering him to continue forty days; or, by removing him, to try the right”.56

  51This statute, therefore, rendered it almost impracticable for a poor man to gain a new settlement in the old way, by forty days inhabitancy. But that it might not appear to preclude altogether the common people of one parish from ever establishing themselves with security in another, it appointed four other ways by which a settlement might be gained without any notice delivered or published. The first was, by being taxed to parish rates and paying them; the second, by being elected into an annual parish office and serving in it a year; the third, by serving an apprenticeship in the parish; the fourth, by being hired into service there for a year, and continuing in the same service during the whole of it.57

  52Nobody can gain a settlement by either of the two first ways, but by the publick deed of the whole parish, who are too well aware of the consequences to adopt any new–comer who has nothing but his labour to support him, either by taxing him to parish rates, or by electing him into a parish office.

  53 No married man can well gain any settlement in either of the two last ways. An apprentice is scarce ever married; and it is expressly enacted, that no married servant shall gain any settlement by being hired for a year.58 The principal effect of introducing settlement by service, has been to put out in a great measure the old fashion of hiring for a year, which before had been so customary in England, that even at this day, if no particular term is agreed upon, the law intends that every servant is hired for a year. But masters are not always willing to give their servants a settlement by hiring them in this manner; and servants are not always willing to be so hired, because as every last settlement discharges all the foregoing, they might thereby lose their original settlement in the places of their nativity, the habitation of their parents and relations.

  54No independent workman, it is evident, whether labourer or artificer, is likely to gain any new settlement either by apprenticeship or by service. When such a person, therefore, carried his industry to a new parish, he was liable to be removed, how healthy and industrious soever, at the caprice of any churchwarden or overseer, unless he either rented a tenement of ten pounds a year, a thing impossible for one who has nothing but his labour to live by; or could give such security for the discharge of the parish as two justices of the peace should judge sufficient. What security they shall require, indeed, is left altogether to their discretion; but they cannot well require less than thirty pounds, it having been enacted, that the purchase even of a free–hold estate of less than thirty pounds value, shall not gain any person a settlement, as not being sufficient for the discharge of the parish.59 But this is a security which scarce any man who lives by labour can give; and much greater security is frequently demanded.

  55In order to restore in some measure that free circulation of labour which those different statutes had almost entirely taken away, the invention of certificates was fallen upon. By the 8th and 9th of William III.60 it was enacted, that if any person should bring a certificate from the parish where he was last legally settled, subscribed by the churchwardens and overseers of the poor, and allowed by two justices of the peace, that every other parish should be obliged to receive him; that he should not be removeable merely upon account of his being likely to become chargeable, but only upon his becoming actually chargeable, and that then the parish which granted the certificate should be obliged to pay the expence both of his maintenance and of his removal. And in order to give the most perfect security to the parish where such certificated man should come to reside, it was further enacted by the same statute,61 that he should gain no settlement there by any means whatever, except either by renting a tenement of ten pounds a year, or by serving upon his own account in an annual parish office for one whole year; and consequently neither by notice, nor by service, nor by apprenticeship, nor by paying parish rates. By the 12th of Queen Anne too, stat. I. c. 18.62 it was further enacted, that neither the servants nor apprentices of such certificated man should gain any settlement in the parish where he resided under such certificate.

  56How far this invention has restored that free circulation of labour which the preceding statutes had almost entirely taken away, we may learn from the following very judicious observation of Doctor Burn. “It is obvious,” says he, “that there are divers good reasons for requiring certificates with persons coming to settle in any place; namely, that persons residing under them can gain no settlement, neither by apprenticeship, nor by service, nor by giving notice, nor by paying parish rates; that they can settle neither apprentices nor servants; that if they become chargeable, it is certainly known whither to remove them, and the parish shall be paid for the removal, and for their maintenance in the mean time; and that if they fall sick, and cannot be removed, the parish which gave the certificate must maintain them: none of all which can be without a certificate. Which reasons will hold proportionably for parishes not granting certificates in ordinary cases; for it is far more than an equal chance, but that they will have the certificated persons again, and in a worse condition”.63 The moral of this observation seems to be, that certificates ought always to be required by the parish where any poor man comes to reside, and that they ought very seldom to be granted by that which he proposes to leave. “There is somewhat of hardship in this matter of certificates” says the same very intelligent author in his History of the Poor Laws, “by putting it in the power of a parish officer, to imprison a man as it were for life; however inconvenient it may be for him to continue at that place where he has had the misfortune to acquire what is called a settlement, or whatever advantage he may propose to himself by living elsewhere”.64

  57Though a certificate carries along with it no testimonial of good behaviour, and certifies nothing but that the person belongs to the parish to which he really does belong, it is altogether discretionary in the parish officers either to grant or to refuse it. A mandamus was once moved for, says Doctor Burn, to compel the church–wardens and overseers to sign a certificate; but the court of King’s Bench rejected the motion as a very strange attempt.65

  58The very unequal price of labour which we frequently find in England in places at no great distance from one another, is probably owing to the obstruction which the law of settlements gives to a poor man who would carry his industry from one parish to another without a certificate.66 A single man, indeed, who is healthy and industrious, may sometimes reside by sufferance without one; but a man with a wife and family who should attempt to do so, would in most parishes be sure of being removed, and if the single man should afterwards marry, he would generally be removed likewise. The scarcity of hands in one parish, therefore, cannot always be relieved by their super–abundance in another, as it is constantly in Scotland,67 and, I believe, in all other countries where there is no difficulty of settlement. In such countries, though wages may sometimes rise a little in the neighbourhood of a great town, or wherever else there is an extraordinary demand for labour, and sink gradually as the distance from such places increases, till they fall back to the common rate of the country; yet we never meet with those sudden and unaccountable differences in the wages of neighbouring places which we sometimes find in England, where it is often more difficult for a poor man to pass the artificial boundary of a parish, than an arm of the sea or a ridge of high mountains, natural boundaries which sometimes separate very distinctly different rates of wages in other countries.

  59To remove a man who has committed no misdemeanour from the parish where he chuses to reside, is an evident violation of natural liberty and justice. The common people of England, however, so jealous of their liberty, but like the common people of most other countries never rightly understanding wherein it consists, have now for more than a century together suffered themselves to be exposed to this oppression without a remedy. Though men of reflection too have sometimes complained of the law of settlements as a publick grievance; yet it has never been the object of any general popular clamour, such as that against general warrants, an abusive practice undoubtedly, but such a one as was not likely to occasion any general oppression. There is scarce a poor man in England of forty years of age, I will venture to say, who has not in some part of his life felt himself most cruelly oppressed by this ill–contrived law of settlements.

  60I shall conclude this long chapter with observing,68 that though antiently it was usual to rate wages, first by general laws extending over the whole kingdom, and afterwards by particular orders of the justices of peace in every particular county, both these practices have now gone entirely into disuse. “By the experience of above four hundred years,” says Doctor Burn, “it seems time to lay aside all endeavours to bring under strict regulations, what in its own nature seems incapable of minute limitation: for if all persons in the same kind of work were to receive equal wages, there would be no emulation, and no room left for industry or ingenuity”.69

  61Particular acts of parliament, however, still attempt sometimes to regulate wages in particular trades and in particular places. Thus the 8th of George III.70 prohibits under heavy penalties all master taylors in London, and five miles round it, from giving, and their workmen from accepting, more than two shillings and seven–pence halfpenny a day, except in the case of a general mourning.71 Whenever the legislature attempts to regulate the differences between masters and their workmen, its counsellors are always the masters.72 When the regulation, therefore, is in favour of the workmen, it is always just and equitable; but it is sometimes otherwise when in favour of the masters. Thus the law which obliges the masters in several different trades to pay their workmen in money and not in goods, is quite just and equitable. It imposes no real hardship upon the masters. It only obliges them to pay that value in money, which they pretended to pay, but did not always really pay, in goods.73 This law is in favour of the workmen; but the 8th of George III. is in favour of the masters.74 When masters combine together in order to reduce the wages of their workmen, they commonly enter into a private bond or agreement, not to give more than a certain wage under a certain penalty. Were the workmen to enter into a contrary combination of the same kind, not to accept of a certain wage under a certain penalty, the law would punish them very severely; and if it dealt impartially, it would treat the masters in the same manner. But the 8th of George III. enforces by law that very regulation which masters sometimes attempt to establish by such combinations. The complaint of the workmen, that it puts the ablest and most industrious upon the same footing with an ordinary workman, seems perfectly well founded.

  62In antient times too it was usual to attempt to regulate the profits of merchants and other dealers, by rating the price both of provisions and other goods. The assize of bread is, so far as I know, the only remnant of this ancient usage.75 Where there is an exclusive corporation, it may perhaps be proper to regulate the price of the first necessary of life. But where there is none, the competition will regulate it much better than any assize. The method of fixing the assize of bread established by the 31st of George II.76 could not be put in practice in Scotland, on account of a defect in the law; its execution depending upon the office of clerk of the market, which does not exist there. This defect was not remedied till the 3d of George III.77 The want of an assize occasioned no sensible inconveniency, and the establishment of one, in the few places where it has yet taken place, has produced no sensible advantage. In the greater part of the towns of Scotland, however, there is an incorporation of bakers who claim exclusive privileges, though they are not very strictly guarded.

  63The proportion between the different rates both of wages and profit in the different employments of labour and stock, seems not to be much affected, as has already been observed,78 by the riches or poverty, the advancing, stationary, or declining state of the society. Such revolutions in the publick welfare, though they affect the general rates both of wages and profit, must in the end affect them equally in all different employments. The proportion between them, therefore, must remain the same, and cannot well be altered, at least for any considerable time, by any such revolutions.

  CHAPTER XI

  Of the Rent of Land

  1Rent, considered as the price paid for the use of land, is naturally the highest which the tenant can afford to pay in the actual circumstances of the land. In adjusting the terms of the lease, the landlord endeavours to leave him no greater share of the produce than what is sufficient to keep up the stock from which he furnishes the seed, pays the labour, and purchases and maintains the cattle and other instruments of husbandry, together with the ordinary profits of farming stock in the neighbourhood.1 This is evidently the smallest share with which the tenant can content himself without being a loser, and the landlord seldom means to leave him any more. Whatever part of the produce, or, what is the same thing, whatever part of its price, is over and above this share, he naturally endeavours to reserve to himself as the rent of his land, which is evidently the highest the tenant can afford to pay in the actual circumstances of the land. Sometimes, indeed, the liberality, more frequently the ignorance, of the landlord,2 makes him accept of somewhat less than this portion; and sometimes too, though more rarely, the ignorance of the tenant makes him undertake to pay somewhat more, or to content himself with somewhat less than the ordinary profits of farming stock in the neighbourhood. This portion, however, may still be considered as the natural rent of land, or the rent for which it is naturally meant that land should for the most part be let.

  2The rent of land, it may be thought, is frequently no more than a reasonable profit or interest for the stock laid out by the landlord upon its improvement. This, no doubt, may be partly the case upon some occasions; for it can scarce ever be more than partly the case.3 The landlord demands a rent even for unimproved land, and the supposed interest or profit upon the expence of improvement is generally an addition to this original rent. Those improvements, besides, are not always made by the stock of the landlord, but sometimes by that of the tenant. When the lease comes to be renewed, however, the landlord commonly demands the same augmentation of rent, as if they had been all made by his own.

  3He sometimes demands rent for what is altogether incapable of human improvement. Kelp is a species of sea–weed, which, when burnt, yields an alkaline salt, useful for making glass, soap, and for several other purposes. It grows in several parts of Great Britain, particularly in Scotland, upon such rocks only as lie within the high water mark, which are twice every day covered with the sea, and of which the produce, therefore, was never augmented by human industry.4 The landlord, however, whose estate is bounded by a kelp shore of this kind, demands a rent for it as much as for his corn fields.5

  4The sea in the neighbourhood of the islands of Shetland is more than commonly abundant in fish, which make a great part of the subsistence of their inhabitants. But in order to profit by the produce of the water, they must have a habitation upon the neighbouring land. The rent of the landlord is in proportion, not to what the farmer can make by the land, but to what he can make both by the land and ^aby^a the water. It is partly paid in sea–fish; and one of the very few instances in which rent makes a part of the price of that commodity, is to be found in that country.

  5The rent of land, therefore, considered as the price paid for the use of the land, is naturally a monopoly price.6 It is not at all proportioned to what the landlord may have laid out upon the improvement of the land, or to what he can afford to take; but to what the farmer can afford to give.7

  6Such parts only of the produce of land can commonly be brought to market of which the ordinary price is sufficient to replace the stock which must be employed in bringing them thither, together with its ordinary profits. If the ordinary price is more than this, the surplus part of it will naturally go to the rent of the land. If it is not more, though the commodity may be brought to market, it can afford no rent to the landlord. Whether the price is, or is not more, depends upon the demand.

  7There are some parts of the produce of land for which the demand must always be such as to afford a greater price than what is sufficient to bring them to market; and there are others for which it either may or may not be such as to afford this greater price. The former must always afford a rent to the landlord. The latter sometimes may, and sometimes may not, according to different circumstances.8

  8Rent, it is to be observed, therefore, enters into the composition of the price of commodities in a different way from wages and profit. High or low wages and profit, are the causes of high or low price; high or low rent is the effect of it.9 It is because high or low wages and profit must be paid, in order to bring a particular commodity to market, that its price is high or low. But it is because its price is high or low; a great deal more, or very little more, or no more, than what is sufficient to pay those wages and profit, that it affords a high rent, or a low rent, or no rent at all.

  9The particular consideration, first, of those parts of the produce of land which always afford some rent; secondly, of those which sometimes may and sometimes may not afford rent; and, thirdly, of the variations which, in the different periods of improvement, naturally take place, in the relative value of those two different sorts of rude produce, when compared both with one another and with manufactured commodities, will divide this chapter into three parts.

  part i

  Of the Produce of Land which always affords Rent

  1As men, like all other animals, naturally multiply in proportion to the means of their subsistence, food is always, more or less, in demand.1 It can always purchase or command a greater or smaller quantity of labour, and somebody can always be found who is willing to do something, in order to obtain it. The quantity of labour, indeed, which it can purchase, is not always equal to what it could maintain, if managed in the most œconomical manner, on account of the high wages which are sometimes given to labour. But it can always purchase such a quantity of labour as it can maintain, according to the rate at which that sort of labour is commonly maintained in the neighbourhood.

  2But land, in almost any situation, produces a greater quantity of food than what is sufficient to maintain all the labour necessary for bringing it to market, in the most liberal way in which that labour is ever maintained. The surplus too is always more than sufficient to replace the stock which employed that labour, together with its profits. Something, therefore, always remains for a rent to the landlord.2

  3The most desart moors in Norway and Scotland produce some sort of pasture for cattle, of which the milk and the increase are always more than sufficient, not only to maintain all the labour necessary for tending them, and to pay the ordinary profit to the farmer or owner of the herd or flock; but to afford some small rent to the landlord. The rent increases in proportion to the goodness of the pasture. The same extent of ground not only maintains a greater number of cattle, but as they are brought within a smaller compass, less labour becomes requisite to tend them, and to collect their produce. The landlord gains both ways; by the increase of the produce, and by the diminution of the labour which must be maintained out of it.

  4The rent of land ^anot only^a varies with its fertility, whatever be its produce, ^bbut^b with its situation, whatever be its fertility.3 Land in the neighbourhood of a town, gives a greater rent than land equally fertile in a distant part of the country. Though it may cost no more labour to cultivate the one than the other, it must always cost more to bring the produce of the distant land to market. A greater quantity of labour, therefore, must be maintained out of it; and the surplus, from which are drawn both the profit of the farmer and the rent of the landlord, must be diminished. But in remote parts of the country the rate of ^cprofit^c, as has already been shown,4 is generally higher than in the neighbourhood of a large town. A smaller proportion of this diminished surplus, therefore, must belong to the landlord.

  5Good roads, canals, and navigable rivers, by diminishing the expence of carriage, put the remote parts of the country more nearly upon a level with those in the neighbourhood of the town.5 They are upon that account the greatest of all improvements. They encourage the cultivation of the remote, which must always be the most extensive circle of the country. They are advantageous to the town, by breaking down the monopoly of the country in its neighbourhood. They are advantageous even to that part of the country. Though they introduce some rival commodities into the old market, they open many new markets to its produce. Monopoly, besides, is a great enemy to good management, which can never be universally established but in consequence of that free and universal competition which forces every body to have recourse to it for the sake of self–defence. It is not more than fifty years ago that some of the counties in the neighbourhood of London, petitioned the parliament against the extension of the turnpike roads into the remoter counties. Those remoter counties, they pretended, from the cheapness of labour, would be able to sell their grass and corn cheaper in the London market than themselves, and would thereby reduce their rents, and ruin their cultivation. Their rents, however, have risen, and their cultivation has been improved since that time.

  6A corn field of moderate fertility produces a much greater quantity of food for man, than the best pasture of equal extent. Though its cultivation requires much more labour, yet the surplus which remains after replacing the seed and maintaining all that labour, is likewise much greater. If a pound of butcher’s–meat, therefore, was never supposed to be worth more than a pound of bread, this greater surplus would everywhere be of greater value, and constitute a greater fund both for the profit of the farmer and the rent of the landlord. It seems to have done so universally in the rude beginnings of agriculture.

  7But the relative values of those two different species of food, bread and butcher’s–meat, are very different in the different periods of agriculture. In its rude beginnings, the unimproved wilds, which then occupy the far greater part of the country, are all abandoned to cattle. There is more butcher’s–meat than bread, and bread, therefore, is the food for which there is the greatest competition, and which consequently brings the greatest price.6 At Buenos Ayres, we are told by Ulloa, four reals, one–and–twenty pence halfpenny sterling, was, forty or fifty years ago, the ordinary price of an ox, chosen from a herd of two or three hundred.7 He says nothing of the price of bread, probably because he found nothing remarkable about it. An ox there, he says, costs little more than the labour of catching him. But corn can no–where be raised without a great deal of labour, and in a country which lies upon the river Plate, at that time the direct road from Europe to the silver mines of Potosi, the money price of labour could not be very cheap. It is otherwise when cultivation is extended over the greater part of the country. There is then more bread than butcher’s–meat. The competition changes its direction, and the price of butcher’s–meat becomes greater than the price of bread.

  8By the extension besides of cultivation, the unimproved wilds become insufficient to supply the demand for butcher’s–meat.8 A great part of the cultivated lands must be employed in rearing and fattening cattle, of which the price, therefore, must be sufficient to pay, not only the labour necessary for tending them, but the rent which the landlord and the profit which the farmer could have drawn from such land employed in tillage. The cattle bred upon the most uncultivated moors, when brought to the same market, are, in proportion to their weight or goodness, sold at the same price as those which are reared upon the most improved land. The proprietors of those moors profit by it, and raise the rent of their land in proportion to the price of their cattle. It is not more than a century ago that in many parts of the highlands of Scotland, butcher’s–meat was as cheap or cheaper than even bread made of oatmeal.9 The union opened the market of England to the highland cattle. Their ordinary price is at present about three times greater than at the beginning of the century, and the rents of many highland estates have been tripled and quadrupled in the same time. In almost every part of Great Britain a pound of the best butcher’s–meat is, in the present times, generally worth more than two pounds of the best white bread; and in plentiful years it is sometimes worth three or four pounds.

  9It is thus that in the progress of improvement the rent and profit of unimproved pasture come to be regulated in some measure by the rent and profit of what is improved, and these again by the rent and profit of corn.10 Corn is an annual crop, butcher’s–meat, a crop which requires four or five years to grow. As an acre of land, therefore, will produce a much smaller quantity of the one species of food than of the other, the inferiority of the quantity must be compensated by the superiority of the price. If it was more than compensated, more corn land would be turned into pasture; and if it was not compensated, part of what was in pasture would be brought back into corn.

  10This equality, however, between the rent and profit of grass and those of corn; of the land of which the immediate produce is food for cattle, and of that of which the immediate produce is food for men; must be understood to take place only through the greater part of the improved lands of a great country. In some particular local situations it is quite otherwise, and the rent and profit of grass are much superior to what can be made by corn.

  11Thus in the neighbourhood of a great town, the demand for milk and for forage to horses, frequently contribute, ^dtogether^d with the high price of butcher’s–meat, to raise the value of grass above what may be called its natural proportion to that of corn. This local advantage, it is evident, cannot be communicated to the lands at a distance.

  12Particular circumstances have sometimes rendered some countries so populous, that the whole territory, like the lands in the neighbourhood of a great town, has not been sufficient to produce both the grass and the corn necessary for the subsistence of their inhabitants. Their lands, therefore, have been principally employed in the production of grass, the more bulky commodity, and which cannot be so easily brought from a great distance; and corn, the food of the great body of the people, has been chiefly imported from foreign countries.11 Holland is at present in this situation,12 and a considerable part of antient Italy, seems to have been so during the prosperity of the Romans. To feed well, old Cato said, as we are told by Cicero, was the first and most profitable thing in the management of a private estate; to feed tolerably well, the second; and to feed ill, the third.13 To plough, he ranked only in the fourth place of profit and advantage. Tillage, indeed, in that part of antient Italy which lay in the neighbourhood of Rome, must have been very much discouraged by the distributions of corn which were frequently made to the people, either gratuitously, or at a very low price. This corn was brought from the conquered provinces, of which several, instead of taxes, were obliged to furnish a tenth part of their produce at a stated price, about sixpence a peck, to the republick. The low price at which this corn was distributed to the people, must necessarily have sunk the price of what could be brought to the Roman market from Latium, or the antient territory of Rome, and must have discouraged its cultivation in that country.14

  13In an open country too, of which the principal produce is corn, a well–enclosed piece of grass will frequently rent higher than any corn field in its neighbourhood. It is convenient for the maintenance of the cattle employed in the cultivation of the corn, and its high rent is, in this case, not so properly paid from the value of its own produce, as from that of the corn lands which are cultivated by means of it. It is likely to fall, if ever the neighbouring lands are compleatly inclosed. The present high rent of enclosed land in Scotland seems owing to the scarcity of enclosure, and will probably last no longer than that scarcity.15 The advantage of enclosure is greater for pasture than for corn. It saves the labour of guarding the cattle, which feed better too when they are not liable to be disturbed by their keeper or his dog.

  14But where there is no local advantage of this kind, the rent and profit of corn, or whatever else is the common vegetable food of the people, must naturally regulate, upon the land which is fit for producing it, the rent and profit of pasture.

  15The use of the artificial grasses, of turnips, carrots, cabbages, and the other expedients which have been fallen upon to make an equal quantity of land feed a greater number of cattle than when in natural grass, should somewhat reduce, it might be expected, the superiority which, in an improved country, the price of butcher’s–meat naturally has over that of bread. It seems accordingly to have done so; and there is some reason for believing that, at least in the London market, the price of butcher’s–meat in proportion to the price of bread is a good deal lower in the present times than it was in the beginning of the last century.16

  16In the appendix to the Life of prince Henry, Doctor Birch has given us an account of the prices of butcher’s–meat as commonly paid by that prince. It is there said, that the four quarters of an ox weighing six hundred pounds usually cost him nine pounds ten shillings, or thereabouts; that is, thirty–one shillings and eight pence per hundred pounds weight.17 Prince Henry died on the 6th of November, 1612, in the nineteenth year of his age.

  17In March, 1764, there was a parliamentary enquiry into the causes of the high price of provisions at that time.18 It was then, among other proof to the same purpose, given in evidence by a Virginia merchant, that in March, 1763, he had victualled his ships for twenty–four or twenty–five shillings the hundred weight of beef, which he considered as the ordinary price; whereas, in that dear year, he had paid twenty–seven shillings for the same weight and sort.19 This high price in 1764, is, however, four shillings and eight–pence cheaper than the ordinary price paid by prince Henry; and it is the best beef only, it must be observed, which is fit to be salted for those distant voyages.

  18The price paid by prince Henry amounts to 3 ⅘th d. per pound weight of the whole carcase, coarse and choice pieces taken together; and at that rate the choice pieces could not have been sold by retail for less than 4½d. or 5d. the pound.

  19In the parliamentary enquiry in 1764, the witnesses stated the price of the choice pieces of the best beef to be to the consumer 4d. and 4¼d. the pound; and the coarse pieces in general to be from seven farthings to 2½d. and 2¾d.; and this they said was in general one half–penny dearer than the same sort of pieces had usually been sold in the month of March. But even this high price is still a good deal cheaper than what we can well suppose the ordinary retail price to have been in the time of prince Henry.

  20During the twelve first years of the last century, the average price of the best wheat at the Windsor market was 1 l. 18s. 3 1/6d. the quarter of nine Winchester bushels.

  21But in the twelve years preceding 1764, including that year, the average price of the same measure of the best wheat at the same market was 2 l. 1s. 9½d.20

  22In the twelve first years of the last century, therefore, wheat appears to have been a good deal cheaper, and butcher’s–meat a good deal dearer than in the twelve years preceding 1764, including that year.

  23 In all great countries the greater part of the cultivated lands are employed in producing either food for men or food for cattle. The rent and profit of these regulate the rent and profit of all other cultivated land. If any particular produce afforded less, the land would soon be turned into corn or pasture; and if any afforded more, some part of the lands in corn or pasture would soon be turned to that produce.

  24Those productions, indeed, which require either a greater original expence of improvement, or a greater annual expence of cultivation, in order to fit the land for them, appear commonly to afford, the one a greater rent, the other a greater profit than corn or pasture. This superiority, however, will seldom be found to amount to more than a reasonable interest or compensation for this superior expence.

  25In a hop garden, a fruit garden, a kitchen garden, both the rent of the landlord, and the profit of the farmer, are generally greater than in a corn or grass field. But to bring the ground into this condition requires more expence. Hence a greater rent becomes due to the landlord. It requires too a more attentive and skilful management. Hence a greater profit becomes due to the farmer. The crop too, at least in the hop and fruit garden, is more precarious. Its price, therefore, besides compensating all occasional losses, must afford something like the profit of insurance. The circumstances of gardeners, generally mean, and always moderate, may satisfy us that their great ingenuity is not commonly over–recompensed. Their delightful art is practised by so many rich people for amusement, that little advantage is to be made by those who practise it for profit; because the persons who should naturally be their best customers, supply themselves with all their most precious productions.21

  26The advantage which the landlord derives from such improvements seems at no time to have been greater than what was sufficient to compensate the original expence of making them. In the antient husbandry, after the vineyard, a well–watered kitchen garden seems to have been the part of the farm which was supposed to yield the most valuable produce. But Democritus, who wrote upon husbandry about two thousand years ago, and who was regarded by the antients as one of the fathers of the art, thought they did not act wisely who enclosed a kitchen garden. The profit, he said, would not compensate the expence of a stone wall; and bricks (he meant, I suppose, bricks baked in the sun) mouldered with the rain, and the winter storm, and required continual repairs. Columella, who reports this judgment of Democritus, does not controvert it, but proposes a very frugal method of enclosing with a hedge of ^ebrambles^e and briars, which, he says, he had found by experience to be both a lasting and an impenetrable fence;22 but which, it seems, was not commonly known in the time of Democritus. Palladius adopts the opinion of Columella, which had before been recommended by Varro.23 In the judgment of those antient improvers, the produce of a kitchen garden had, it seems, been little more than sufficient to pay the extraordinary culture and the expence of watering; for in countries so near the sun, it was thought proper, in those times as in the present, to have the command of a stream of water, which could be conducted to every bed in the garden. Through the greater part of Europe, a kitchen garden is not at present supposed to deserve a better inclosure than that recommended by Columella. In Great Britain, and some other northern countries, the finer fruits cannot be brought to perfection but by the assistance of a wall. Their price, therefore, in such countries must be sufficient to pay the expence of building and maintaining what they cannot be had without. The fruit–wall frequently surrounds the kitchen garden, which thus enjoys the benefit of an enclosure which its own produce could seldom pay for.

  27That the vineyard, when properly planted and brought to perfection, was the most valuable part of the farm, seems to have been an undoubted maxim in the antient agriculture, as it is in the modern through all the wine countries. But whether it was advantageous to plant a new vineyard, was a matter of dispute among the antient Italian husbandmen, as we learn from Columella.24 He decides, like a true lover of all curious cultivation, in favour of the vineyard, and endeavours to show, by a comparison of the profit and expence, that it was a most advantageous improvement. Such comparisons, however, between the profit and expence of new projects, are commonly very fallacious; and in nothing more so than in agriculture. Had the gain actually made by such plantations been commonly as great as he imagined it might have been, there could have been no dispute about it. The same point is frequently at this day a matter of controversy in the wine countries. Their writers on agriculture, indeed, the lovers and promoters of high cultivation, seem generally disposed to decide with Columella in favour of the vineyard. In France the anxiety of the proprietors of the old vineyards to prevent the planting of any new ones, seems to favour their opinion, and to indicate a consciousness in those who must have the experience, that this species of cultivation is at present in that country more profitable than any other. It seems at the same time, however, to indicate another opinion, that this superior profit can last no longer than the laws which at present restrain the free cultivation of the vine.25 In 1731, they obtained an order of council, prohibiting both the planting of new vineyards, and the renewal of those old ones, of which the cultivation had been interrupted for two years; without a particular permission from the king, to be granted only in consequence of an information from the intendant of the province, certifying that he had examined the land, and that it was incapable of any other culture.26 The pretence of this order was the scarcity of corn and pasture, and the super–abundance of wine. But had this super–abundance been real, it would, without any order of council, have effectually prevented the plantation of new vineyards, by reducing the profits of this species of cultivation below their natural proportion to those of corn and pasture. With regard to the supposed scarcity of corn occasioned by the multiplication of vineyards,27 corn is no where in France more carefully cultivated than in the wine provinces, where the land is fit for producing it; as in Burgundy, Guienne, and the Upper Languedoc.28 The numerous hands employed in the one species of cultivation necessarily encourage the other, by affording a ready market for its produce. To diminish the number of those who are capable of paying for it, is surely a most unpromising expedient for encouraging the cultivation of corn. It is like the policy which would promote agriculture by discouraging manufactures.

  28The rent and profit of those productions, therefore, which require either a greater original expence of improvement in order to fit the land for them, or a greater annual expence of cultivation, though often much superior to those of corn and pasture, yet when they do no more than compensate such extraordinary expence, are in reality regulated by the rent and profit of those common crops.

  29It sometimes happens, indeed, that the quantity of land which can be fitted for some particular produce, is too small to supply the effectual demand. The whole produce can be disposed of to those who are willing to give somewhat more than what is sufficient to pay the whole rent, wages and profit necessary for raising and bringing it to market, according to their natural rates, or according to the rates at which they are paid in the greater part of other cultivated land. The surplus part of the price which remains after defraying the whole expence of improvement and cultivation may commonly, in this case, and in this case only, bear no regular proportion to the like surplus in corn or pasture, but may exceed it in almost any degree; and the greater part of this excess naturally goes to the rent of the landlord.

  30The usual and natural proportion, for example, between the rent and profit of wine and those of corn and pasture, must be understood to take place only with regard to those vineyards which produce nothing but good common wine, such as can be raised almost any where, upon any light, gravelly, or sandy soil, and which has nothing to recommend it but its strength and wholesomeness. It is with such vineyards only that the common land of the country can be brought into competition; for with those of a peculiar quality it is evident that it cannot.

  31The vine is more affected by the difference of soils than any other fruit tree. From some it derives a flavour which no culture or management can equal, it is supposed, upon any other. This flavour, real or imaginary, is sometimes peculiar to the produce of a few vineyards; sometimes it extends through the greater part of a small district, and sometimes through a considerable part of a large province. The whole quantity of such wines that is brought to market falls short of the effectual demand, or the demand of those who would be willing to pay the whole rent, profit and wages necessary for preparing and bringing them thither, according to the ordinary rate, or according to the rate at which they are paid in common vineyards.29 The whole quantity, therefore, can be disposed of to those who are willing to pay more, which necessarily raises the price above that of common wine. The difference is greater or less, according as the fashionableness and scarcity of the wine render the competition of the buyers more or less eager. Whatever it be, the greater part of it goes to the rent of the landlord. For though such vineyards are in general more carefully cultivated than most others, the high price of the wine seems to be, not so much the effect, as the cause of this careful cultivation. In so valuable a produce the loss occasioned by negligence is so great as to force even the most careless to attention. A small part of this high price, therefore, is sufficient to pay the wages of the extraordinary labour bestowed upon their cultivation, and the profits of the extraordinary stock which puts that labour into motion.

  32The sugar colonies possessed by the European nations in the West Indies, may be compared to those precious vineyards. Their whole produce falls short of the effectual demand of Europe, and can be disposed of to those who are willing to give more than what is sufficient to pay the whole rent, profit and wages necessary for preparing and bringing it to market, according to the rate at which they are commonly paid by any other produce.30 In Cochin–china the finest white sugar commonly sells for three piasters the quintal, about thirteen shillings and sixpence of our money, as we are told by* Mr. Poivre, a very careful observer of the agriculture of that country. What is there called the quintal weighs from a hundred and fifty to two hundred Paris pounds, or a hundred and seventy–five Paris pounds at a medium, which reduces the price of the hundred weight English to about eight shillings sterling, not a fourth part of what is commonly paid for the brown or muskavada sugars imported from our colonies, and not a sixth part of what is paid for the finest white sugar.31 The greater part of the cultivated lands in Cochin–china are employed in producing corn and rice, the food of the great body of the people. The respective prices of corn, rice, and sugar, are there probably in the natural proportion, or in that which naturally takes place in the different crops of the greater part of cultivated land, and which recompences the landlord and farmer, as nearly as can be computed, according to what is usually the original expence of improvement and the annual expence of cultivation. But in our sugar colonies the price of sugar bears no such proportion to that of the produce of a rice or corn field either in Europe or ^gin^g America. It is commonly said, that a sugar planter expects that the rum and the molasses should defray the whole expence of his cultivation, and that his sugar should be all clear profit. If this be true, for I pretend not to affirm it, it is as if a corn farmer expected to defray the expence of his cultivation with the chaff and the straw, and that the grain should be all clear profit. We see frequently societies of merchants in London and other trading towns, purchase waste lands in our sugar colonies, which they expect to improve and cultivate with profit by means of factors and agents; notwithstanding the great distance and the uncertain returns, from the defective administration of justice in those countries. Nobody will attempt to improve and cultivate in the same manner the most fertile lands of Scotland, Ireland, or the corn provinces of North America, though from the more exact administration of justice in these countries, more regular returns might be expected.

  33In Virginia and Maryland, the cultivation of tobacco is preferred, as ^hmore^h profitable, to that of corn.32 Tobacco might be cultivated with advantage through the greater part of Europe; but in almost every part of Europe it has become a principal subject of taxation, and to collect a tax from every different farm in the country where this plant might happen to be cultivated, would be more difficult, it has been supposed, than to levy one upon its importation at the custom–house. The cultivation of tobacco has upon this account been most absurdly prohibited through the greater part of Europe,33 which necessarily gives a sort of monopoly to the countries where it is allowed; and as Virginia and Maryland produce the greatest quantity of it, they share largely, though with some competitors, in the advantage of this monopoly. The cultivation of tobacco, however, seems not to be so advantageous as that of sugar. I have never even heard of any tobacco plantation that was improved and cultivated by the capital of merchants who resided in Great Britain, and our tobacco colonies send us home no such wealthy planters as we see frequently arrive from our sugar islands. Though from the preference given in those colonies to the cultivation of tobacco above that of corn, it would appear that the effectual demand of Europe for tobacco is not compleatly supplied, it probably is more nearly so than that for sugar: And though the present price of tobacco is probably more than sufficient to pay the whole rent, wages and profit necessary for preparing and bringing it to market, according to the rate at which they are commonly paid in corn land; it must not be so much more as the present price of sugar. Our tobacco planters, accordingly, have shewn the same fear of the super–abundance of tobacco, which the proprietors of the old vineyards in France have of the super–abundance of wine. By act of assembly they have restrained its cultivation to six thousand plants, supposed to yield a thousand weight of tobacco, for every negro between sixteen and sixty years of age.34 Such a negro, over and above this quantity of tobacco, can manage, they reckon, four acres of Indian corn. To prevent the market from being overstocked too, they have sometimes, in plentiful years, we are told by Dr. Douglas, (I suspect he has been ill informed)* burnt a certain quantity of tobacco for every negro, in the same manner as the Dutch are said to do of spices.35 If such violent methods are necessary to keep up the present price of tobacco, the superior advantage of its culture over that of corn, if it still has any, will not probably be of long continuance.

  34It is in this manner that the rent of the cultivated land, of which the produce is human food, regulates the rent of the greater part of other cultivated land. No particular produce can long afford less; because the land would immediately be turned to another use: And if any particular produce commonly affords more, it is because the quantity of land which can be fitted for it is too small to supply the effectual demand.

  35In Europe corn is the principal produce of land which serves immediately for human food. Except in particular situations, therefore, the rent of corn land regulates in Europe that of all other cultivated land.36 Britain need envy neither the vineyards of France nor the olive plantations of Italy. Except in particular situations, the value of these is regulated by that of corn, in which the fertility of Britain is not much inferior to that of either of those two countries.

  36 If in any country the common and favourite vegetable food of the people should be drawn from a plant of which the most common land, with the same or nearly the same culture, produced a much greater quantity than the most fertile does of corn, the rent of the landlord, or the surplus quantity of food which would remain to him, after paying the labour and replacing the stock of the farmer together with its ordinary profits, would necessarily be much greater. Whatever was the rate at which labour was commonly maintained in that country, this greater surplus could always maintain a greater quantity of it, and consequently enable the landlord to purchase or command a greater quantity of it. The real value of his rent, his real power and authority, his command of the necessaries and conveniencies of life with which the labour of other people could supply him, would necessarily be much greater.

  37A rice field produces a much greater quantity of food than the most fertile corn field.37 Two crops in the year from thirty to sixty bushels each, are said to be the ordinary produce of an acre. Though its cultivation, therefore, requires more labour, a much greater surplus remains after maintaining all that labour. In those rice countries, therefore, where rice is the common and favourite vegetable food of the people, and where the cultivators are chiefly maintained with it, a greater share of this greater surplus should belong to the landlord than in corn countries. In Carolina, where the planters, as in other British colonies, are generally both farmers and landlords, and where rent consequently is confounded with profit,38 the cultivation of rice is found to be more profitable than that of corn, though their fields produce only one crop in the year, and though, from the prevalence of the customs of Europe, rice is not there the common and favourite vegetable food of the people.

  38A good rice field is a bog at all seasons, and at one season a bog covered with water. It is unfit either for corn, or pasture, or vineyard, or, indeed, for any other vegetable produce that is very useful to men: And the lands which are fit for those purposes, are not fit for rice. Even in the rice countries, therefore, the rent of rice lands cannot regulate the rent of the other cultivated land which can never be turned to that produce.

  39The food produced by a field of potatoes is not inferior in quantity to that produced by a field of rice, and much superior to what is produced by a field of wheat. Twelve thousand weight of potatoes from an acre of land is not a greater produce than two thousand weight of wheat. The food or solid nourishment, indeed, which can be drawn from each of those two plants, is not altogether in proportion to their weight, on account of the watery nature of potatoes. Allowing, however, half the weight of this root to go to water, a very large allowance, such an acre of potatoes will still produce six thousand weight of solid nourishment, three times the quantity produced by the acre of wheat. An acre of potatoes is cultivated with less expence than an acre of wheat; the fallow, which generally precedes the sowing of wheat, more than compensating the hoeing and other extraordinary culture which is always given to potatoes. Should this root ever become in any part of Europe, like rice in some rice countries, the common and favourite vegetable food of the people, so as to occupy the same proportion of the lands in tillage which wheat and other sorts of grain for human food do at present, the same quantity of cultivated land would maintain a much greater number of people, and the labourers being generally fed with potatoes, a greater surplus would remain after replacing all the stock and maintaining all the labour employed in cultivation. A greater share of this surplus too would belong to the landlord. Population would increase, and rents would rise much beyond what they are at present.

  40The land which is fit for potatoes, is fit for almost every other useful vegetable. If they occupied the same proportion of cultivated land which corn does at present, they would regulate, in the same manner, the rent of the greater part of other cultivated land.

  41In some parts of Lancashire it is pretended, I have been told, that bread of oatmeal is a heartier food for labouring people than wheaten bread, and I have frequently heard the same doctrine held in Scotland. I am, however, somewhat doubtful of the truth of it. The common people in Scotland, who are fed with oatmeal, are in general neither so strong, nor so handsome as the same rank of people in England, who are fed with wheaten bread. They neither work, so well nor look so well; and as there is not the same difference between the people of fashion in the two countries, experience would seem to show, that the food of the common people in Scotland is not so suitable to the human constitution as that of their neighbours of the same rank in England.39 But it seems to be otherwise with potatoes. The chairmen, porters, and coalheavers in London, and those unfortunate women who live by prostitution, the strongest men and the most beautiful women perhaps in the British dominions, are said to be, the greater part of them, from the lowest rank of people in Ireland, who are generally fed with this root. No food can afford a more decisive proof of its nourishing quality, or of its being peculiarly suitable to the health of the human constitution.40

  42It is difficult to preserve potatoes through the year, and impossible to store them, like corn, for two or three years together. The fear of not being able to sell them before they rot, discourages their cultivation, and is, perhaps, the chief obstacle to their ever becoming in any great country, like bread, the principal vegetable food of all the different ranks of the people.41

  part ii

  Of the Produce of Land which sometimes does, and sometimes does not, afford Rent

  1Human food seems to be the only produce of land which always and necessarily affords some rent to the landlord. Other sorts of produce sometimes may and sometimes may not, according to different circumstances.

  2After food, cloathing and lodging are the two great wants of mankind.1

  3Land in its original rude state can afford the materials of cloathing and lodging to a much greater number of people than it can feed. In its improved state it can sometimes feed a greater number of people than it can supply with those materials; at least in the way in which they require them, and are willing to pay for them. In the one state, therefore, there is always a super–abundance of those materials, which are frequently, upon that account, of little or no value. In the other there is often a scarcity, which necessarily augments their value. In the one state a great part of them is thrown away as useless, and the price of what is used is considered as equal only to the labour and expence of fitting it for use, and can, therefore, afford no rent to the landlord. In the other they are all made use of, and there is frequently a demand for more than can be had. Somebody is always willing to give more for every part of them than what is sufficient to pay the expence of bringing them to market. Their price, therefore, can always afford some rent to the landlord.

  4The skins of the larger animals were the original materials of cloathing. Among nations of hunters and shepherds, therefore, whose food consists chiefly in the flesh of those animals, every man, by providing himself with food, provides himself with the materials of more cloathing than he can wear. If there was no foreign commerce, the greater part of them would be thrown away as things of no value. This was probably the case among the hunting nations of North America, before their country was discovered by the Europeans, with whom they now exchange their surplus peltry, for blankets, fire–arms, and brandy, which gives it some value. In the present commercial state of the known world, the most barbarous nations, I believe, among whom land property is established, have some foreign commerce of this kind, and find among their wealthier neighbours such a demand for all the materials of cloathing, which their land produces, and which can neither be wrought up nor consumed at home, as raises their price above what it costs to send them ^ato those wealthier neighbours^a . It affords, therefore, some rent to the landlord. When the greater part of the highland cattle were consumed on their own hills, the exportation of their hides made the most considerable article of the commerce of that country, and what they were exchanged for afforded some addition to the rent of the highland estates.2 The wool of England, which in old times could neither be consumed nor wrought up at home, found a market in the then wealthier and more industrious country of Flanders, and its price afforded something to the rent of the land which produced it. In countries not better cultivated than England was then, or than the highlands of Scotland are now, and which had no foreign commerce, the materials of cloathing would evidently be so super–abundant, that a great part of them would be thrown away as useless, and no part could afford any rent to the landlord.3

  5The materials of lodging cannot always be transported to so great a distance as those of cloathing, and do not so readily become an object of foreign commerce. When they are super–abundant in the country which produces them, it frequently happens, even in the present commercial state of the world, that they are of no value to the landlord. A good stone quarry in the neighbourhood of London would afford a considerable rent. In many parts of Scotland and Wales it affords none. Barren timber for building is of great value in a populous and well–cultivated country, and the land which produces it, affords a considerable rent. But in many parts of North America the landlord would be much obliged to any body who would carry away the greater part of his large trees.4 In some parts of the highlands of Scotland the bark is the only part of the wood which, for want of roads and water–carriage, can be sent to market.5 The timber is left to rot upon the ground. When the materials of lodging are so super–abundant, the part made use of is worth only the labour and expence of fitting it for that use.6 It affords no rent to the landlord, who generally grants the use of it to whoever takes the trouble of asking it. The demand of wealthier nations, however, sometimes enables him to get a rent for it. The paving of the streets of London has enabled the owners of some barren rocks on the coast of Scotland to draw a rent from what never afforded any before. The woods of Norway and of the coasts of the Baltick, find a market in many parts of Great Britain which they could not find at home, and thereby afford some rent to their proprietors.

  6Countries are populous, not in proportion to the number of people whom their produce can cloath and lodge, but in proportion to that of those whom it can feed. When food is provided, it is easy to find the necessary cloathing and lodging. But though these are at hand, it may often be difficult to find food. In some parts ^beven^b of the British dominions what is called A House, may be built by one day’s labour of one man. The simplest species of cloathing, the skins of animals, requires somewhat more labour to dress and prepare them for use. They do not, however, require a great deal. Among savage ^cand^c barbarous nations, a hundredth or little more than ^da^d hundredth part of the labour of the whole year, will be sufficient to provide them with such cloathing and lodging as satisfy the greater part of the people. All the other ninety–nine parts are frequently no more than enough to provide them with food.

  7But when by the improvement and cultivation of land the labour of one family can provide food for two, the labour of half the society becomes sufficient to provide food for the whole. The other half, therefore, or at least the greater part of them, can be employed in providing other things, or in satisfying the other wants and fancies of mankind.7 Cloathing and lodging, houshold furniture, and what is called Equipage, are the principal objects of the greater part of those wants and fancies. The rich man consumes no more food than his poor neighbour.8 In quality it may be very different, and to select and prepare it may require more labour and art; but in quantity it is very nearly the same. But compare the spacious palace and great wardrobe of the one, with the hovel and the few rags of the other, and you will be sensible that the difference between their cloathing, lodging and houshold furniture, is almost as great in quantity as it is in quality. The desire of food is limited in every man by the narrow capacity of the human stomach; but the desire of the conveniencies and ornaments of building, dress, equipage, and houshold furniture, seems to have no limit or certain boundary.9 Those, therefore, who have the command of more food than they themselves can consume, are always willing to exchange the surplus, or, what is the same thing, the price of it, for gratifications of this other kind. What is over and above satisfying the limited desire, is given for the amusement of those desires which cannot be satisfied, but seem to be altogether endless.10 The poor, in order to obtain food, exert themselves to gratify those fancies of the rich, and to obtain it more certainly, they vie with one another in the cheapness and perfection of their work. The number of workmen increases with the increasing quantity of food, or with the growing improvement and cultivation of the lands; and as the nature of their business admits of the utmost subdivisions of labour, the quantity of materials which they can work up, increases in a much greater proportion than their numbers. Hence arises a demand for every sort of material which human invention can employ, either usefully or ornamentally, in building, dress, equipage, or houshold furniture; for the fossils and minerals contained in the bowels of the earth; the precious metals, and the precious stones.

  8Food is in this manner, not only the original source of rent, but every other part of the produce of land which afterwards affords rent, derives that part of its value from the improvement of the powers of labour in producing food by means of the improvement and cultivation of land.

  9Those other parts of the produce of land, however, which afterwards afford rent, do not afford it always. Even in improved and cultivated countries, the demand for them is not always such as to afford a greater price than what is sufficient to pay the labour, and replace, together with its ordinary profits, the stock which must be employed in bringing them to market. Whether it is or is not such, depends upon different circumstances.

  10Whether a coal–mine, for example, can afford any rent, depends partly upon its fertility, and partly upon its situation.11

  11A mine of any kind may be said to be either fertile or barren, according as the quantity of mineral which can be brought from it by a certain quantity of labour, is greater or less than what can be brought by an equal quantity from the greater part of other mines of the same kind.

  12Some coal–mines advantageously situated, cannot be wrought on account of their barrenness. The produce does not pay the expence. They can afford neither profit nor rent.

  13There are some of which the produce is barely sufficient to pay the ^elabour^e , and replace, together with its ordinary profits, the stock employed in working them. They afford some profit to the undertaker of the work, but no rent to the landlord. They can be wrought advantageously by nobody but the landlord, who being himself undertaker of the work, gets the ordinary profit of the capital which he employs in it. Many coalmines in Scotland are wrought in this manner, and can be wrought in no other. The landlord will allow nobody else to work them without paying some rent, and nobody can afford to pay any.12

  14 Other coal–mines in the same country sufficiently fertile, cannot be wrought on account of their situation. A quantity of mineral sufficient to defray the expence of working, could be brought from the mine by the ordinary, or even less than the ordinary quantity of labour: But in an inland country, thinly inhabited, and without either good roads or watercarriage, this quantity could not be sold.

  15Coals are a less agreeable fewel than wood: they are said too to be less wholesome. The expence of coals, therefore, at the place where they are consumed, must generally be somewhat less than that of wood.

  16The price of wood again varies with the state of agriculture, nearly in the same manner, and exactly for the same reason, as the price of cattle. In its rude beginnings the greater part of every country is covered with wood, which is then a mere incumbrance of no value to the landlord, who would gladly give it to any body for the cutting. As agriculture advances, the woods are partly cleared by the progress of tillage, and partly go to decay in consequence of the increased number of cattle. These, though they do not increase in the same proportion as corn, which is altogether the acquisition of human industry, yet multiply under the care and protection of men; who store up in the season of plenty what may maintain them in that of scarcity, who through the whole year furnish them with a greater quantity of food than uncultivated nature provides for them, and who by destroying and extirpating their enemies, secure them in the free enjoyment of all that she provides. Numerous herds of cattle, when allowed to wander through the woods, though they do not destroy the old trees, hinder any young ones from coming up, so that in the course of a century or two the whole forest goes to ruin. The scarcity of wood then raises its price. It affords a good rent, and the landlord sometimes finds that he can scarce employ his best lands more advantageously than in growing barren timber, of which the greatness of the profit often compensates the lateness of the returns. This seems in the present times to be nearly the state of things in several parts of Great Britain, where the profit of planting is found to be equal to that of either corn or pasture. The advantage which the landlord derives from planting, can no–where exceed, at least for any considerable time, the rent which these could afford him; and in an inland country which is highly cultivated, it will frequently not fall much short of this rent. Upon the sea–coast of a well–improved country, indeed, if ^fcoals^f can conveniently ^gbe had^g for fewel, it may sometimes be cheaper to bring barren timber for building from less cultivated foreign countries, than to raise it at home. In the new town of Edinburgh, built within these few years, there is not, perhaps, a single stick of Scotch timber.13

  17Whatever may be the price of wood, if that of coals is such that the expence of a coal–fire is nearly equal to that of a wood one, we may be assured, that at that place, and in these circumstances, the price of coals is as high as it can be. It seems to be so in some of the inland parts of England, particularly in Oxfordshire, where it is usual, even in the fires of the common people, to mix coals and wood together, and where the difference in the expence of those two sorts of fewel cannot, therefore, be very great.

  18Coals, in the coal countries, are every–where much below this highest price. If they were not, they could not bear the expence of a distant carriage, either by land or by water. A small quantity only could be sold, and the coal masters and coal proprietors find it more for their interest to sell a great quantity at a price somewhat above the lowest, than a small quantity at the highest. The most fertile coal mine too, regulates the price of coals at all the other mines in its neighbourhood. Both the proprietor and the undertaker of the work find, the one that he can get a greater rent, the other that he can get a greater profit, by somewhat underselling all their neighbours. Their neighbours are soon obliged to sell at the same price, though they cannot so well afford it, and though it always diminishes, and sometimes takes away altogether both their rent and their profit. Some works are abandoned altogether; others can afford no rent, and can be wrought only by the proprietor.

  19The lowest price at which coals can be sold for any considerable time, is, like that of all other commodities, the price which is barely sufficient to replace, together with its ordinary profits, the stock which must be employed in bringing them to market. At a coal–mine for which the landlord can get no rent, but which he must either work himself or let it alone altogether, the price of coals must generally be nearly about this price.

  20Rent, even where coals afford one, has generally a smaller share in their price than in that of most other parts of the rude produce of land. The rent of an estate above ground, commonly amounts to what is supposed to be a third of the gross produce; and it is generally a rent certain and independent of the occasional variations in the crop.14 In coal–mines a fifth of the gross produce is a very great rent; a tenth the common rent, and it is seldom a rent certain, but depends upon the occasional variations in the produce. These are so great, that in a country where thirty years purchase is considered as a moderate price for the property of a landed estate, ten years purchase is regarded as a good price for that of a coalmine.

  21The value of a coal–mine to the proprietor ^hfrequently depends^h as much upon its situation as upon its fertility.15 That of a metallick mine depends more upon its fertility, and less upon its situation. The coarse, and still more the precious metals, when separated from the ore, are so valuable that they can generally bear the expence of a very long land, and of the most distant sea carriage. Their market is not confined to the countries in the neighbourhood of the mine, but extends to the whole world. The copper of Japan makes an article ⁱof commerce inⁱ Europe; the iron of Spain in that of Chili and Peru. The silver of Peru finds its way, not only to Europe, but from Europe to China.

  22The price of coals in Westmorland or Shropshire can have little effect on their price at Newcastle; and their price in the Lionnois can have none at all. The productions of such distant coal–mines can never be brought into competition with one another. But the productions of the most distant metallick mines frequently may, and in fact commonly are. The price, therefore, of the coarse, and still more that of the precious metals, at the most fertile mines in the world, must necessarily more or less affect their price at every other in it. The price of copper in Japan must have some influence upon its price at the copper mines in Europe. The price of silver in Peru, or the quantity either of labour or of other goods which it will purchase there, must have some influence on its price, not only at the silver mines of Europe, but at those of China. After the discovery of the mines of Peru, the silver mines of Europe were, the greater part of them, abandoned. The value of silver was so much reduced that their produce could no longer pay the expence of working them, or replace, with a profit, the food, cloaths, lodging and other necessaries which were consumed in that operation. This was the case too with the mines of Cuba and St. Domingo, and even with the antient mines of Peru, after the discovery of those of Potosi.

  23The price of every metal at every mine, therefore, being regulated in some measure by its price at the most fertile mine in the world that is actually wrought, it can at the greater part of mines do very little more than pay the expence of working, and can seldom afford a very high rent of the landlord. Rent, accordingly, seems at the greater part of mines to have but a small share in the price of the coarse, and a still smaller in that of the precious metals. Labour and profit make up the greater part of both.

  24A sixth part of the gross produce may be reckoned the average rent of the tin mines of Cornwall, the most fertile that are known in the world, as we are told by the Reverend Mr. Borlace, vice–warden of the stannaries. Some, he says, afford more, and some do not afford so much.16 A sixth part of the gross produce is the rent too of several very fertile lead mines in Scotland.17

  25In the silver mines of Peru, we are told by Frezier and Ulloa,18 the proprietor frequently exacts no other acknowldgement from the undertaker of the mine, but that he will grind the ore at his mill, paying him the ordinary multure or price of grinding. ^jTill 1736, indeed, the tax of the king of Spain amounted^j to one–fifth of the standard silver, which ^ktill then might^k be considered as the real rent of the greater part of the silver mines of Peru, the richest which ^lhave been^l known in the world. If there ^mhad been^m no tax this fifth would naturally ⁿhave belongedⁿ to the landlord, and many mines might ^ohave been^o wrought which ^pcould not then be wrought^p because they ^qcould not^q afford this tax. The tax of the duke of Cornwall upon tin is supposed to amount to more than five per cent. or one–twentieth part of the value;19 and whatever may be his proportion, it would naturally too belong to the proprietor of the mine, if tin was duty free. But if you add one–twentieth to one–sixth, you will find that the whole average rent of the tin mines of Cornwall, ^rwas^r to the whole average rent of the silver mines of Peru, as thirteen to twelve. ^sBut the silver mines of Peru are not now able to pay even this low rent, and the tax upon silver was, in 1736, reduced from one–fifth to one–tenth.20 Even this tax upon silver too gives more temptation to smuggling than the tax of one–twentieth upon tin;^s and smuggling must be much easier in the precious than in the bulky commodity. The tax of the king of Spain accordingly is said to be very ill paid, and that of the duke of Cornwall very well. Rent, therefore, it is probable, makes a greater part of the price of tin at the most fertile tin mines, than it does of silver at the most fertile silver mines in the world. After replacing the stock employed in working those different mines, together with its ordinary profits, the residue which remains to the proprietor, is greater it seems in the coarse, than in the precious metal.

  26Neither are the profits of the undertakers of silver mines commonly very great in Peru. The same most respectable and well informed authors acquaint us, that when any person undertakes to work a new mine in Peru, he is universally looked upon as a man destined to bankruptcy and ruin, and is upon that account shunned and avoided by every body. Mining, it seems, is considered there in the same light as here, as a lottery, in which the prizes do not compensate the blanks, though the greatness of some tempts many adventurers to throw away their fortunes in such unprosperous projects.21

  27As the sovereign, however, derives a considerable part of his revenue from the produce of silver mines, the law in Peru gives every possible encouragement to the discovery and working of new ones. Whoever discovers a new mine, is entitled to measure off two hundred and forty–six feet in length, according to what he supposes to be the direction of the vein, and half as much in breadth. He becomes proprietor of this portion of the mine, and can work it without paying any acknowledgement to the landlord. The interest of the duke of Cornwall has given occasion to a regulation nearly of the same kind in that antient dutchy. In waste and uninclosed lands any person who discovers a tin mine, may mark out its limits to a certain extent, which is called bounding a mine. The bounder becomes the real proprietor of the mine, and may either work it himself, or give it in lease to another, without the consent of the owner of the land, to whom, however, a very small acknowledgement must be paid upon working it.22 In both regulations the sacred rights of private property are sacrificed to the supposed interests of publick revenue.

  28The same encouragement is given in Peru to the discovery and working of new gold mines; and in gold the king’s tax amounts only to a twentieth part of the standard metal. It was once a fifth, ^tand afterwards a tenth,^t as in silver; but it was found that the work could not bear ^ueven the lowest of these two taxes^u . If it is rare, however, say the same authors, Frezier and Ulloa, to find a person who has made his fortune by a silver, it is still much rarer to find one who has done so by a gold mine.23 This twentieth part seems to be the whole rent which is paid by the greater part of the gold mines in Chili and Peru. Gold too is much more liable to be smuggled than even silver; not only on account of the superior value of the metal in proportion to its bulk, but on account of the peculiar way in which nature produces it. Silver is very seldom found virgin, but, like most other metals, is generally mineralized with some other body, from which it is impossible to separate it in such quantities as will pay for the expence, but by a very laborious and tedious operation, which cannot well be carried on but in workhouses erected for the purpose, and therefore exposed to the inspection of the king’s officers. Gold, on the contrary, is almost always found virgin. It is sometimes found in pieces of some bulk; and even when mixed in small and almost insensible particles with sand, earth, and other extraneous bodies, it can be separated from them by a very short and simple operation, which can be carried on in any private house by any body who is possessed of a small quantity of mercury. If the king’s tax, therefore, is but ill paid upon silver, it is likely to be much worse paid upon gold; and rent must make a much smaller part of the price of gold, than even of that of silver.

  29The lowest price at which the precious metals can be sold, or the smallest quantity of other goods for which they can be exchanged during any considerable time, is regulated by the same principles which fix the lowest ordinary price of all other goods. The stock which must commonly be employed, the food, cloaths and lodging which must commonly be consumed in bringing them from the mine to the market, determine it. It must at least be sufficient to replace that stock, with the ordinary profits.

  30Their highest price, however, seems not to be necessarily determined by any thing but the actual scarcity or plenty of those metals themselves. It is not determined by that of any other commodity, in the same manner as the price of coals is by that of wood, beyond which no scarcity can ever raise it. Increase the scarcity of gold to a certain degree, and the smallest bit of it may become more precious than a diamond, and exchange for a greater quantity of other goods.24

  31The demand for those metals arises partly from their utility, and partly from their beauty.25 If you except iron, they are more useful than, perhaps, any other metal. As they are less liable to rust and impurity, they can more easily be kept clean; and the utensils either of the table or the kitchen are often upon that account more agreeable when made of them. A silver boiler is more cleanly than a lead, copper, or tin one; and the same quality would render a gold boiler still better than a silver one.26 Their principal merit, however, arises from their beauty, which renders them peculiarly fit for the ornaments of dress and furniture. No paint or dye can give so splendid a colour as gilding. The merit of their beauty is greatly enhanced by their scarcity.27 With the greater part of rich people, the chief enjoyment of riches consists in the parade of riches, which in their ^veyes^v is never so compleat as when they appear to possess those decisive marks of opulence which nobody can possess but themselves.28 In their eyes the merit of an object which is in any degree either useful or beautiful, is greatly enhanced by its scarcity, or by the great labour which it requires to collect any considerable quantity of it, a labour which nobody can afford to pay but themselves.29 Such objects they are willing to purchase at a higher price than things much more beautiful and useful, but more common. These qualities of utility, beauty, and scarcity, are the original foundation of the high price of those metals, or of the great quantity of other goods for which they can every where be exchanged. This value was antecedent to and independent of their being employed as coin, and was the quality which fitted them for that employment. That employment, however, by occasioning a new demand, and by diminishing the quantity which could be employed in any other way, may have afterwards contributed to keep up or increase their value.

  32The demand for the precious stones arises altogether from their beauty. They are of no use, but as ornaments; and the merit of their beauty is greatly enhanced by their scarcity, or by the difficulty and expence of getting them from the mine.30 Wages and profit accordingly make up, upon most occasions, almost the whole of their high price. Rent comes in but for a very small share; frequently for no share; and the most fertile mines only afford any considerable rent. When Tavernier, a jeweller, visited the diamond mines of Golconda and Visiapour, he was informed that the sovereign of the country, for whose benefit they were wrought, had ordered all of them to be shut up, except those which ^wyielded^w the largest and finest stones.31 The others, it seems, were to the proprietor not worth the working.

  33As the price both of the precious metals and of the precious stones is regulated all over the world by their price at the most fertile mine in it, the rent which a mine of either can afford to its proprietor is in proportion, not to its absolute, but to what may ^xbe^x called its relative fertility, or to its superiority over other mines of the same kind. If new mines were discovered as much superior to those of Potosi as they were superior to those of Europe, the value of silver might be so much degraded as to render even the mines of Potosi not worth the working. Before the discovery of the Spanish West Indies, the most fertile mines in Europe may have afforded as great a rent to their proprietor as the richest mines in Peru do at present. Though the quantity of silver was much less, it might have exchanged for an equal quantity of other goods, and the proprietor’s share might have enabled him to purchase or command an equal quantity either of labour or of commodities. The value both of the produce and of the rent, the real revenue which they afforded both to the publick and to the proprietor, might have been the same.

  34The most abundant mines either of the precious metals or of the precious stones could add little to the wealth of the world. A produce of which the value is principally derived from its scarcity, is necessarily degraded by its abundance. A service of plate, and the other frivolous ornaments of dress and furniture, could be purchased for a smaller quantity of labour, or for a smaller quantity of commodities; and in this would consist the sole advantage which the world could derive from that abundance.

  35It is otherwise in estates above ground. The value both of their produce and of their rent is in proportion to their absolute, and not to their relative fertility. The land which produces a certain quantity of food, cloaths, and lodging, can always feed, cloath, and lodge a certain number of people; and whatever may be the proportion of the landlord, it will always give him a proportionable command of the labour of those people, and of the commodities with which that labour can supply him. The value of the most barren lands is not diminished by the neighbourhood of the most fertile. On the contrary, it is generally increased by it. The great number of people maintained by the fertile lands afford a market to many parts of the produce of the barren, which they could never have found among those whom their own produce could maintain.

  36Whatever increases the fertility of land in producing food, increases not only the value of the lands upon which the improvement is bestowed, but contributes likewise to increase that of many other lands, by creating a new demand for their produce. That abundance of food, of which, in consequence of the improvement of land, many people have the disposal beyond what they themselves can consume, is the great cause of the demand both for the precious metals and the precious stones, as well as for every other conveniency and ornament of dress, lodging, houshold furniture, and equipage.32 Food not only constitutes the principal part of the riches of the world, but it is the abundance of food which gives the principal part of their value to many other sorts of riches. The poor inhabitants of Cuba and St. Domingo, when they were first discovered by the Spaniards, used to wear little bits of gold as ornaments in their hair and other parts of their dress. They seemed to value them as we would do any little pebbles of somewhat more than ordinary beauty, and to consider them as just worth the picking up, but not worth the refusing to any body who asked them. They gave them to their new guests at the first request, without seeming to think that they had made them any very valuable present.33 They were astonished to observe the rage of the Spaniards to obtain them; and had no notion that there could any where be a country in which many people had the disposal of so great a superfluity of food, so scanty always among themselves, that for a very small quantity of those glittering baubles they would willingly give as much as might maintain a whole family for many years. Could they have been made to understand this, the passion of the Spaniards would not have surprised them.

  part iii

  Of the Variations in the Proportion between the respective Values of that Sort of Produce which always affords Rent, and of that which sometimes does, and sometimes does not, afford Rent

  3The great market for silver is the commercial and civilized part of the world.

  4If by the general progress of improvement the demand of this market should increase, while at the same time the supply did not increase in the same proportion, the value of silver would gradually rise in proportion to that of corn. Any given quantity of silver would exchange for a greater and a greater quantity of corn; or, in other words, the average money price of corn would gradually become cheaper and cheaper.

  5If, on the contrary, the supply by some accident should increase for many years together in a greater proportion than the demand, that metal would gradually become cheaper and cheaper; or, in other words, the average money price of corn would, in spite of all improvements, gradually become dearer and dearer.1

  6But if, on the other hand, the supply of the metal should increase nearly in the same proportion as the demand, it would continue to purchase or exchange for nearly the same quantity of corn, and the average money price of corn would, in spite of all improvements, continue very nearly the same.

  7These three seem to exhaust all the possible combinations of events which can happen in the progress of improvement; and during the course of the four centuries preceding the present, if we may judge by what has happened both in France and Great Britain, each of those three different combinations seem to have taken place in the European market, and nearly in the same order too in which I have here set them down.

  Digression concerning the Variations in the Value of Silver during the Course of the Four last Centuries

  first period

  1In 1350, and for some time before, the average price of the quarter of wheat in England seems not to have been estimated lower than four ounces of silver, Tower–weight, equal to about twenty shillings of our present money. From this price it seems to have fallen gradually to two ounces of silver, equal to about ten shillings of our present money, the price at which we find it estimated in the beginning of the sixteenth century, and at which it seems to have continued to be estimated till about 1570.

  2In 1350, being the 25th of Edward III, was enacted what is called, The statute of labourers.1 In the preamble it complains much of the insolence of servants, who endeavoured to raise their wages upon their masters.2 It therefore ordains, that all servants and labourers should for the future be contented with the same wages and liveries (liveries in those times signified, not only cloaths, but provisions) which they had been accustomed to receive in the 20th year of the king, and the four preceding years; that upon this account their livery wheat should no where be estimated higher than ten–pence a bushel, and that it should always be in the option of the master to deliver them either the wheat or the money. Ten–pence a bushel, therefore, had in the 25th of Edward III, been reckoned a very moderate price of wheat, since it required a particular statute to oblige servants to accept of it in exchange for their usual livery of provisions; and it had been reckoned a reasonable price ten years before that, or in the 16th year of the king, the term to which the statute refers. But in the 16th year of Edward III, ten–pence contained about half an ounce of silver, Tower–weight, and was nearly equal to half a crown of our present money.3 Four ounces of silver, Tower–weight, therefore, equal to six shillings and eight–pence of the money of those times, and to near twenty shillings of that of the present, must have been reckoned a moderate price for the quarter of eight bushels.

  3This statute is surely a better evidence of what was reckoned in those times a moderate price of grain, than the prices of some particular years which have generally been recorded by historians and other writers on account of their extraordinary dearness or cheapness, and from which, therefore, it is difficult to form any judgment concerning what may have been the ordinary price.4 There are, besides, other reasons for believing that in the beginning of the fourteenth century, and for some time before, the common price of wheat was not less than four ounces of silver the quarter, and that of other grain in proportion.

  4In 1309, Ralph de Born, prior of St. Augustine’s, Canterbury, gave a feast upon his installation–day, of which William Thorn has preserved, not only the bill of fare, but the prices of many particulars. In that feast were consumed, 1st, fifty–three quarters of wheat, which cost nineteen pounds, or seven shillings and two–pence a quarter, equal to about one–and–twenty shillings and six–pence of our present money: 2dly, Fifty–eight quarters of malt, which cost seventeen pounds ten shillings, or six shillings a quarter, equal to about eighteen shillings of our present money: 3dly, Twenty quarters of oats, which cost four pounds, or four shillings a quarter, equal to about twelve shillings of our present money.5 The prices of malt and oats seem here to be higher than their ordinary proportion to the price of wheat.

  5These prices are not recorded on account of their extraordinary dearness or cheapness, but are mentioned accidentally as the prices actually paid for large quantities of grain consumed at a feast which was famous for its magnificence.

  6In 1262, being the 51st of Henry III, was revived an ancient statute called, The Assize of Bread and Ale,6 which, the king says in the preamble, had been made in the times of his progenitors sometime kings of England. It is probably, therefore, as old at least as the time of his grandfather Henry II, and may have been as old as the conquest. It regulates the price of bread according as the prices of wheat may happen to be, from one shilling to twenty shillings the quarter of the money of those times. But statutes of this kind are generally presumed to provide with equal care for all deviations from the middle price, for those below it as well as for those above it. Ten shillings, therefore, containing six ounces of silver, Tower–weight, and equal to about thirty shillings of our present money, must, upon this supposition, have been reckoned the middle price of the quarter of wheat when this statute was first enacted, and must have continued to be so in the 51st of Henry III. We cannot therefore be very ^a wrong in supposing that the middle price was not less than one–third of the highest price at which this statute regulates the price of bread, or than six shillings and eight–pence of the money of those times, containing four ounces of silver, Tower–weight.

  7From these different facts, therefore, we seem to have some reason to conclude, that about the middle of the fourteenth century, and for a considerable time before, the average or ordinary price of the quarter of wheat was not supposed to be less than four ounces of silver, Towerweight.7

  8From about the middle of the fourteenth to the beginning of the sixteenth century, what was reckoned the reasonable and moderate, that is the ordinary or average price of wheat, seems to have sunk gradually to about one–half of this price; so as at last to have fallen to about two ounces of silver, Tower–weight, equal to about ten shillings of our present money. It continued to be estimated at this price till about 1570.

  9In the houshold book of Henry, the fifth earl of Northumberland, drawn up in 1512, there are two different estimations of wheat. In one of them it is computed at six–shillings and eight–pence the quarter, in the other at five shillings and eight–pence only.8 In 1512, six shillings and eight–pence contained only two ounces of silver Tower–weight, and were equal to about ten shillings of our present money.

  10From the 25th of Edward III, to the beginning of the reign of Elizabeth, during the space of more than two hundred years, six shillings and eight–pence, it appears from several different statutes, had continued to be considered as what is called the moderate and reasonable, that is the ordinary or average price of wheat. The quantity of silver, however, contained in that nominal sum was, during the course of this period, continually diminishing, in consequence of some alterations which were made in the coin. But the increase of the value of silver had, it seems, so far compensated the diminution of the quantity of it contained in the same nominal sum, that the legislature did not think it worth while to attend to this circumstance.

  11Thus in 1436 it was enacted, that wheat might be exported without a licence when the price was so low as six shillings and eight–pence:9 And in 1463 it was enacted, that no wheat should be imported if the price was not above six shillings and eight–pence the quarter.10 The legislature had imagined, that when the price was so low, there could be no inconveniency in exportation, but that when it rose higher, it became prudent to allow of importation. Six shillings and eight–pence, therefore, containing about the same quantity of silver as thirteen shillings and four–pence of our present money (one third part less than the same nominal sum contained in the time of Edward III.), had in those times been considered as what is called the moderate and reasonable price of wheat.

  12In 1554, by the 1st and 2d of Philip and Mary;11 and in 1558, by the 1st of Elizabeth, the exportation of wheat was in the same manner prohibited, whenever the price of the quarter should exceed six shillings and eight–pence,12 which did not then contain two penny worth more silver than the same nominal sum does at present. But it had soon been found that to restrain the exportation of wheat till the price was so very low, was, in reality, to prohibit it altogether. In 1562, therefore, by the 5th of Elizabeth, the exportation of wheat was allowed from certain ports whenever the price of the quarter should not exceed ten shillings,13 containing nearly the same quantity of silver as the like nominal sum does at present. This price had at this time, therefore, been considered as what is called the moderate and reasonable price of wheat. It agrees nearly with the estimation of the Northumberland book in 1512.

  13That in France the average price of grain was, in the same manner, much lower in the end of the fifteenth and beginning of the sixteenth century, than in the two centuries preceding, has been observed both by Mr. Duprè de St. Maur,14 and by the elegant author of the Essay on the police of grain.15 Its price, during the same period, had probably sunk in the same manner through the greater part of Europe.

  14This rise in the value of silver in proportion to that of corn, may either have been owing altogether to the increase of the demand for that metal, in consequence of increasing improvement and cultivation, the supply in the mean time continuing the same as before: Or, the demand continuing the same as before, it may have been owing altogether to the gradual diminution of the supply; the greater part of the mines which were then known in the world, being much exhausted, and consequently the expence of working them much increased: Or it may have been owing partly to the one and partly to the other of those two circumstances. In the end of the fifteenth and beginning of the sixteenth centuries, the greater part of Europe was approaching towards a more settled form of government than it had enjoyed for several ages before. The increase of security would naturally increase industry and improvement; and the demand for the precious metals, as well as for every other luxury and ornament, would naturally increase with the increase of riches. A greater annual produce would require a greater quantity of coin to circulate it; and a greater number of rich people would require a greater quantity of plate and other ornaments of silver. It is natural to suppose too, that the greater part of the mines which then supplied the European market with silver, might be a good deal exhausted, and have become more expensive in the working. They had been wrought many of them from the time of the Romans.

  15It has been the opinion, however, of the greater part of those who have written upon the prices of commodities in antient times, that, from the Conquest, perhaps from the invasion of Julius Caesar till the discovery of the mines of America, the value of silver was continually diminishing.16 This opinion they seem to have been led into, partly by the observations which they had occasion to make upon the prices both of corn and of some other parts of the rude produce of land; and partly by the popular notion, that as the quantity of silver naturally increases in every country with the increase of wealth, so its value diminishes as its quantity increases.

  16In their observations upon the prices of corn, three different circumstances seem frequently to have misled them.

  17First, In antient times almost all rents were paid in kind; in a certain quantity of corn, cattle, poultry, &c. It sometimes happened, however, that the landlord would stipulate^b , that he should be at liberty to demand ^cof the tenant,^c either the annual payment in kind, or a certain sum of money instead of it. The price at which the payment in kind was in this manner exchanged for a certain sum of money, is in Scotland called the conversion price. As the option is always in the landlord to take either the substance or the price, it is necessary for the safety of the tenant, that the conversion price should rather be below than above the average market price. In many places, accordingly, it is not much above one–half of this price. Through the greater part of Scotland this custom still continues with regard to poultry, and in some places with regard to cattle. It might probably have continued to take place too with regard to corn, had not the institution of the publick fiars put an end to it. These are annual valuations, according to the judgment of an assize, of the average price of all the different sorts of grain, and of all the different qualities of each, according to the actual market price in every different county.17 This institution rendered it sufficiently safe for the tenant, and much more convenient for the landlord, to convert, as they call it, the corn rent^d, rather at what should happen to be^d the price of the fiars of each year,^e than at any certain fixed price.18 But the writers who have collected the prices of corn in antient times, seem frequently to have mistaken what is called in Scotland the conversion price for the actual market price.19 Fleetwood acknowledges, upon one occasion, that he had made this mistake. As he wrote his book, however, for a particular purpose, he does not think proper to make this acknowledgment till after transcribing this conversion price fifteen times.20 The price is eight shillings the quarter of wheat. This sum in 1423, the year at which he begins with it, contained the same quantity of silver as sixteen shillings of our present money. But in 1562, the year at which he ends with it, it contained no more than the same nominal sum does at present.

  18Secondly, They have been misled by the slovenly manner in which some antient statutes of assize had been sometimes transcribed by lazy copiers; and sometimes perhaps actually composed by the legislature.

  19The antient statutes of assize seem to have begun always with determining what ought to be the price of bread and ale when the price of wheat and barley were at the lowest, and to have proceeded gradually to determine what it ought to be, according as the prices of those two sorts of grain should gradually rise above this lowest price. But the transcribers of those statutes seem frequently to have thought it sufficient, to copy the regulation as far as the three or four first and lowest prices; saving in this manner their own labour, and judging, I suppose, that this was enough to show what proportion ought to be observed in all higher prices.

  20Thus in the assize of bread and ale, of the 51st of Henry III. the price of bread was regulated according to the different prices of wheat, from one shilling to twenty shillings the quarter, of the money of those times. But in the manuscripts from which all the different editions of the statutes, preceding that of Mr. Ruffhead, were printed, the copiers had never transcribed this regulation beyond the price of twelve shillings.21 Several writers, therefore, being misled by this faulty transcription, very naturally concluded that the middle price, or six shillings the quarter, equal to about eighteen shillings of our present money, was the ordinary or average price of wheat at that time.

  21In the statute of Tumbrel and Pillory, enacted nearly about the same time,22 the price of ale is regulated according to every sixpence rise in the price of barley, from two shillings to four shillings the quarter. That four shillings, however, was not considered as the highest price to which barley might frequently rise in those times, and that these prices were only given as an example of the proportion which ought to be observed in all other prices, whether higher or lower, we may infer from the last words of the statute; “et sic deinceps crescetur vel diminuetur per sex denarios”. The expression is very slovenly, but the meaning is plain enough; “That the price of ale is in this manner to be increased or diminished according to every six–pence rise or fall in the price of barley”. In the composition of this statute the legislature itself seems to have been as negligent as the copiers were in the transcription of the other.23

  22In an antient manuscript of the Regiam Majestatem,24 an old Scotch law book, there is a statute of assize, in which the price of bread is regulated according to all the different prices of wheat, from ten–pence to three shillings the Scotch boll, equal to about half an English quarter. Three shillings Scotch, at the time when this assize is supposed to have been enacted, were equal to about nine shillings sterling of our present money. Mr. Ruddiman seems* to conclude from this, that three shillings was the highest price to which wheat ever rose in those times, and that ten–pence, a shilling, or at most two shillings, were the ordinary prices. Upon consulting the manuscript, however, it appears evidently, that all these prices are only set down as examples of the proportion which ought to be observed between the respective prices of wheat and bread. The last words of the statute are, “reliqua judicabis secundum praescripta habendo respectum ad pretium bladi.” “You shall judge of the remaining cases according to what is above written having a respect to the price of corn.”

  23Thirdly, They seem to have been misled too by the very low price at which wheat was sometimes sold in very antient times; and to have imagined, that as its lowest price was then much lower than in later times, its ordinary price must likewise have been much lower. They might have found, however, that in those antient times, its highest price was fully as much above, as its lowest price was below any thing that had ever been known in later times. Thus in 1270, Fleetwood gives us two prices of the quarter of wheat.25 The one is four pounds sixteen shillings of the money of those times, equal to fourteen pounds eight shillings of that of the present; the other is six pounds eight shillings, equal to nineteen pounds four shillings of our present money. No price can be found in the end of the fifteenth, or beginning of the sixteenth century, which approaches to the extravagance of these. The price of corn, though at all times liable to ^gvariations^g varies most in those turbulent and disorderly societies, in which the interruption of all commerce and communication hinders the plenty of one part of the country from relieving the scarcity of another.26 In the disorderly state of England under the Plantagenets, who governed it from about the middle of the twelfth, till towards the end of the fifteenth century, one district might be in plenty, while another at no great distance, by having its crop destroyed either by some accident of the seasons, or by the incursion of some neighbouring baron, might be suffering all the horrors of a famine; and yet if the lands of some hostile lord were interposed between them, the one might not be able to give the least assistance to the other. Under the vigorous administration of the Tudors, who governed England during the latter part of the fifteenth, and through the whole of the sixteenth century, no baron was powerful enough to dare to disturb the publick security.27

  24The reader will find at the end of this chapter all the prices of wheat which have been collected by Fleetwood from 1202 to 1597, both inclusive, reduced to the money of the present times, and digested according to the order of time, into seven divisions of twelve years each. At the end of each division too, he will find the average price of the twelve years of which it consists. In that long period of time, Fleetwood has been able to collect the prices of no more than eighty years, so that four years are wanting to make out the last twelve years. I have added, therefore, from the accounts of Eton college, the prices of 1598, 1599, 1600, and 1601. It is the only addition which I have made. The reader will see that from the beginning of the thirteenth, till after the middle of the sixteenth century, the average price of each twelve years grows gradually lower and lower; and that towards the end of the sixteenth century it begins to rise again. The prices, indeed, which Fleetwood has been able to collect, seem to have been those chiefly which were remarkable for extraordinary dearness or cheapness; and I do not pretend that any very certain conclusion can be drawn from them. So far, however, as they prove any thing at all, they confirm the account which I have been endeavouring to give. Fleetwood himself, however, seems, with most other writers, to have believed, that during all this period the value of silver, in consequence of its increasing abundance, was continually diminishing. The prices of corn which he himself has collected, certainly do not agree with this opinion. They agree perfectly with that of Mr. Duprè de St. Maur, and with that which I have been endeavouring to explain. Bishop Fleetwood and Mr. Duprè de St. Maur are the two authors who seem to have collected, with the greatest diligence and fidelity, the prices of things in antient times. It is somewhat curious that, though their opinions are so very different, their facts, so far as they relate to the price of corn at least, should coincide so very exactly.28

  25It is not, however, so much from the low price of corn, as from that of some other parts of the rude produce of land, that the most judicious writers have inferred the great value of silver in those very antient times. Corn, it has been said, being a sort of manufacture, was, in those rude ages, much dearer in proportion than the greater part of other commodities; it is meant, I suppose, than the greater part of unmanufactured commodities; such as cattle, poultry, game of all kinds, &c. That in those times of poverty and barbarism these were proportionably much cheaper than corn, is undoubtedly true. But this cheapness was not the effect of the high value of silver, but of the low value of those commodities. It was not ^hbecause^h silver would in such times purchase or represent a greater quantity of labour, but ⁱbecauseⁱ such commodities would purchase or represent a much smaller quantity than in times of more opulence and improvement. Silver must certainly be cheaper in Spanish America than in Europe; in the country where it is produced, than in the country to which it is brought, at the expence of a long carriage both by land and by sea, of a freight and an insurance. One–and–twenty pence halfpenny sterling, however, we are told by Ulloa, was, not many years ago, at Buenos Ayres, the price of an ox chosen from a herd of three or four hundred. Sixteen shillings sterling, we are told by Mr. Byron, was the price of a good horse in the capital of Chili.29 In a country naturally fertile, but of which the far greater part is altogether uncultivated, cattle, poultry, game of all kinds, &c. as they can be acquired with a very small quantity of labour, so they will purchase or command but a very small quantity.30 The low money price for which they may be sold, is no proof that the real value of silver is there very high, but that the real value of those commodities is very low.

  26Labour, it must always be remembered, and not any particular commodity or sett of commodities, is the real measure of the value both of silver and of all other commodities.31

  27 But in countries almost waste, or but thinly inhabited, cattle, poultry, game of all kinds, &c. as they are the spontaneous productions of nature, so she frequently produces them in much greater quantities than the consumption of the inhabitants requires. In such a state of things the supply commonly exceeds the demand. In different states of society, in different stages of improvement, therefore, such commodities will represent, or be equivalent to, very different quantities of labour.

  28In every state of society, in every stage of improvement, corn is the production of human industry. But the average produce of every sort of industry is always suited, more or less exactly, to the average consumption; the average supply to the average demand. In every different stage of improvement, besides, the raising of equal quantities of corn in the same soil and climate, will, at an average, require nearly equal quantities of labour; or what comes to the same thing, the price of nearly equal quantities; the continual increase of the productive powers of labour in an ^jimproving^j state of cultivation, being more or less counter–balanced by the continually increasing price of cattle, the principal instruments of agriculture.32 Upon all these accounts, therefore, we may rest assured, that equal quantities of corn will, in every state of society, in every stage of improvement, more nearly represent, or be equivalent to, equal quantities of labour, than equal quantities of any other part of the rude produce of land. Corn, accordingly, it has already been observed,33 is, in all the different stages of wealth and improvement, a more accurate measure of value than any other commodity or sett of commodities. In all those different stages, therefore, we can judge better of the real value of silver, by comparing it with corn, than by comparing it with any other commodity, or sett of commodities.

  29Corn, besides, or whatever else is the common and favourite vegetable food of the people, constitutes, in every civilised country, the principal part of the subsistence of the labourer. In consequence of the extension of agriculture, the land of every country produces a much greater quantity of vegetable than of animal food, and the labourer every where lives chiefly upon the wholesome food that is cheapest and most abundant. Butcher’s–meat, except in the most thriving countries, or where labour is most highly rewarded, makes but an insignificant part of his subsistence:34 poultry makes a still smaller part of it, and game no part of it. In France, and even in Scotland, where labour is somewhat better rewarded than in France, the labouring poor seldom eat butcher’s–meat, except upon holidays, and other extraordinary occasions. The money price of labour, therefore, depends much more upon the average money price of corn, the subsistence of the labourer, than upon that of butcher’s–meat, or of any other part of the rude produce of land. The real value of gold and silver, therefore, the real quantity of labour which they can purchase or command, depends much more upon the quantity of corn which they can purchase or command, than upon that of butcher’s–meat, or any other part of the rude produce of land.

  30Such slight observations, however, upon the prices either of corn or of other commodities, would not probably have misled so many intelligent authors, had they not been ^kinfluenced, at the same time, by^k the popular notion, that as the quantity of silver naturally increases in every country with the increase of wealth, so its value diminishes as its quantity increases. This notion, however, seems to be altogether groundless.

  31The quantity of the precious metals may increase in any country from two different causes: either, first, from the increased abundance of the mines which supply it; or, secondly, from the increased wealth of the people, from the increased produce of their annual labour. The first of these causes is no doubt necessarily connected with the diminution of the value of the precious metals; but the second is not.

  32When more abundant mines are discovered, a greater quantity of the precious metals is brought to market, and the quantity of the necessaries and conveniencies of life for which they must be exchanged being the same as before, equal quantities of the metals must be exchanged for smaller quantities of commodities. So far, therefore, as the increase of the quantity of the precious metals in any country arises from the increased abundance of the mines, it is necessarily connected with some diminution of their value.35

  33When, on the contrary, the wealth of any country increases, when the annual produce of its labour becomes gradually greater and greater, a greater quantity of coin becomes necessary in order to circulate a greater quantity of commodities; and the people, as they can afford it, as they have more commodities to give for it, will naturally purchase a greater and a greater quantity of plate. The quantity of their coin will increase from necessity; the quantity of their plate from vanity and ostentation, or from the same reason that the quantity of fine statues, pictures, and of every other luxury and curiosity, is likely to increase among them. But as statuaries and painters are not likely to be worse rewarded in times of wealth and prosperity, than in times of poverty and depression, so gold and silver are not likely to be worse paid for.

  34The price of gold and silver, when the accidental discovery of more abundant mines does not keep it down, as it naturally rises with the wealth of every country, so, whatever be the state of the mines, it is at all times naturally higher in a rich than in a poor country. Gold and silver, like all other commodities, naturally seek the market where the best price is given for them, and the best price is commonly given for every thing in the country which can best afford it. Labour, it must be remembered, is the ultimate price which is paid for every thing,36 and in countries where labour is equally well rewarded, the money price of labour will be in proportion to that of the subsistence of the labourer. But gold and silver will naturally exchange for a greater quantity of subsistence in a rich than in a poor country, in a country which abounds with subsistence, than in one which is but indifferently supplied with it. If the two countries are at a great distance, the difference may be very great; because though the metals naturally fly from the worse to the better market, yet it may be difficult to transport them in such quantities as to bring their price nearly to a level in both. If the countries are near, the difference will be smaller, and may sometimes be scarce perceptible; because in this case the transportation will be easy. China is a much richer country than any part of Europe,37 and the difference between the price of subsistence in China and in Europe is very great. Rice in China is much cheaper than wheat is any where in Europe. England is a much richer country than Scotland; but the difference between the money–price of corn in those two countries is much smaller, and is but just perceptible. In proportion to the quantity or measure, Scotch corn generally appears to be a good deal cheaper than English; but in proportion to its quality, it is certainly somewhat dearer. Scotland receives almost every year very large supplies from England, and every commodity must commonly be somewhat dearer in the country to which it is brought than in that from which it comes. English corn, therefore, must be dearer in Scotland than in England, and yet in proportion to its quality, or to the quantity and goodness of the flour or meal which can be made from it, it cannot commonly be sold higher there than the Scotch corn which comes to market in competition with it.38

  35The difference between the money price of labour in China and in Europe, is still greater than that between the money price of subsistence; because the real recompence of labour is higher in Europe, than in China, the greater part of Europe being in an improving state, while China seems to be standing still. The money price of labour is lower in Scotland than in England because the real recompence of labour is much lower; Scotland, though advancing to greater wealth, ^ladvances^l much more slowly than England.39^mThe frequency of emigration from Scotland, and the rarity of it from England, sufficiently prove that the demand for labour is very different in the two countries.^m The proportion between the real recompence of labour in different countries, it must be remembered, is naturally regulated, not by their actual wealth or poverty, but by their advancing, stationary, or declining condition.40

  36Gold and silver, as they are naturally of the greatest value among the richest, so they are naturally of ⁿtheⁿ least value among the poorest nations. Among savages, the poorest of all nations, they are of scarce any value.

  37In great towns corn is always dearer than in remote parts of the country. This, however, is the effect, not of the real cheapness of silver, but of the real dearness of corn. It does not cost less labour to bring silver to the great town than to the remote parts of the country; but it costs a great deal more to bring corn.

  38 In some very rich and commercial countries, such as Holland and the territory of Genoa, corn is dear for the same reason that it is dear in great towns.41 They do not produce enough to maintain their inhabitants. They are rich in the industry and skill of their artificers and manufacturers; in every sort of machinery which can facilitate and abridge labour; in shipping, and in all the other instruments and means of carriage and commerce: but they are poor in corn, which, as it must be brought to them from distant countries, must, by an addition to its price, pay for the carriage from those countries. It does not cost less labour to bring silver to Amsterdam than to Dantzick; but it costs a great deal more to bring corn. The real cost of silver must be nearly the same in both places; but that of corn must be very different. Diminish the real opulence either of Holland or of the territory of Genoa, while the number of their inhabitants ^oremains^o the same: diminish their power of supplying themselves from distant countries; and the price of corn, instead of sinking with that diminution in the quantity of their silver, which must necessarily accompany this declension either as its cause or as its effect, will rise to the price of a famine. When we are in want of necessaries we must part with all superfluities, of which the value, as it rises in times of opulence and prosperity, so it sinks in times of poverty and distress. It is otherwise with necessaries. Their real price, the quantity of labour which they can purchase or command, rises in times of poverty and distress, and sinks in times of opulence and prosperity, which are always times of great abundance; for they could not otherwise be times of opulence and prosperity. Corn is a necessary, silver is only a superfluity.

  39Whatever, therefore, may have been the increase in the quantity of the precious metals, which, during the period between the middle of the fourteenth and that of the sixteenth century, arose from the increase of wealth and improvement, it could have no tendency to diminish their value either in Great Britain, or in any other part of Europe. If those who have collected the prices of things in ancient times, therefore, had, during this period, no reason to infer the diminution of the value of silver, from any observations which they had made upon the prices either of corn or of other commodities, they had still less reason to infer it from any supposed increase of wealth and improvement.

  second period

  1But how various soever may have been the opinions of the learned concerning the progress of the value of silver during ^athis^a first period, they are unanimous concerning it during the second.1

  2From about 1570 to about 1640, during a period of about seventy years, the variation in the proportion between the value of silver and that of corn, held a quite opposite course. Silver sunk in its real value, or would exchange for a smaller quantity of labour than before; and corn rose in its nominal price, and instead of being commonly sold for about two ounces of silver the quarter, or about ten shillings of our present money, came to be sold for six and eight ounces of silver the quarter, or about thirty and forty shillings of our present money.

  3The discovery of the abundant mines of America, seems to have been the sole cause of this diminution in the value of silver in proportion to that of corn.2 It is accounted for accordingly in the same manner by every body; and there never has been any dispute either about the fact, or about the cause of it. The greater part of Europe was, during this period, advancing in industry and improvement, and the demand for silver must consequently have been increasing. But the increase of the supply had, it seems, so far exceeded that of the demand, that the value of that metal sunk considerably. The discovery of the mines of America, it is to be observed, does not seem to have had any very sensible effect upon the prices of things in England till after 1570; though even the mines of Potosi had been discovered more than ^btwenty^b years before.3

  4From 1595 to 1620, both inclusive, the average price of the quarter of nine bushels of the best wheat at Windsor market, appears from the accounts of Eton College, to have been 2l. 1s. 6d. 9/13. From which sum, neglecting the fraction, and deducting a ninth,4 or 4s. 7d. ⅓, the price of the quarter of eight bushels comes out to have been 1l. 16s. 10d.⅔. And from this sum, neglecting likewise the fraction, and deducting a ninth, or 4s. 1d. 1/9, for the difference between the price of the best wheat and that of the middle wheat, the price of the middle wheat comes out to have been about 1l. 12s. 8d. 8/9, or about six ounces and one–third of an ounce of silver.

  5From 1621 to 1636, both inclusive, the average price of the same measure of the best wheat at the same market, appears, from the same accounts, to have been 2l. 10s.; from which making the like deductions as in the foregoing case, the average price of the quarter of eight bushels of middle wheat comes out to have been 1l. 19s. 6d. or about seven ounces and two–thirds of an ounce of silver.

  third period

  1Between 1630 and 1640, or about 1636, the effect of the discovery of the mines of America in reducing the value of silver, appears to have been compleated, and the value of that metal seems never to have sunk lower in proportion to that of corn than it was about that time. It seems to have risen somewhat in the course of the present century, and it had probably begun to do so even some time before the end of the last.

  2From 1637 to 1700, both inclusive, being the sixty–four last years of the last century, the average price of the quarter of nine bushels of the best wheat at Windsor market, appears, from the same accounts, to have been 2l. 11s. 0d. ⅓; which is only 1s. 0d. ⅓ dearer than it had been during the sixteen years before. But in the course of these sixty–four years there happened two events which must have produced a much greater scarcity of corn than what the course of the seasons would otherwise have occasioned, and which, therefore, without supposing any further reduction in the value of silver, will much more than account for this very small enhancement of price.

  3The first of these events was the civil war, which, by discouraging tillage and interrupting commerce, must have raised the price of corn much above what the course of the seasons would otherwise have occasioned. It must have had this effect more or less at all the different markets in the kingdom, but particularly at those in the neighbourhood of London, which require to be supplied from the greatest distance. In 1648, accordingly, the price of the best wheat at Windsor market, appears, from the same accounts, to have been 4l. 5s. and in 1649 to have been 4l. the quarter of nine bushels. The excess of those two years above 2l. 10s. (the average price of the sixteen years preceding 1637) is 3l. 5s.; which divided among the sixty–four last years of the last century, will alone very nearly account for that small enhancement of price which seems to have taken place in them. These, however, though the highest, are by no means the only high prices which seem to have been occasioned by the civil wars.

  4The second event was the bounty upon the exportation of corn, granted in 1688.1 The bounty, it has been thought by many people, by encouraging tillage,2 may, in a long course of years, have occasioned a greater abundance, and consequently a greater cheapness of corn in the home–market, than what would otherwise have taken place there. ^aHow far the bounty could produce this effect at any time,3 I shall examine hereafter;4 I shall only observe at present, that^a between 1688 and 1700, it had ^bnot^b time to produce ^cany such^c effect. During this short period its only effect must have been, by encouraging the exportation of the surplus produce of every year, and thereby hindering the abundance of one year from compensating the scarcity of another, to raise the price in the home–market. The scarcity which prevailed in England from 1693 to 1699, both inclusive, though no doubt principally owing to the badness of the seasons, and, therefore, extending through a considerable part of Europe, must have been somewhat enhanced by the bounty. In 1699, accordingly, the further exportation of corn was prohibited for nine months.5

  5There was a third event which occurred in the course of the same period, and which, though it could not occasion any scarcity of corn, nor, perhaps, any augmentation in the real quantity of silver which was usually paid for it, must necessarily have occasioned some augmentation in the nominal sum. This event was the great ^ddebasement^d of the silver coin, by clipping and wearing. This evil had begun in the reign of Charles II. and had gone on continually increasing till 1695;6 at which time, as we may learn from Mr. Lowndes, the current silver coin was, at an average, near five–and–twenty per cent. below its standard value.7 But the nominal sum which constitutes the market–price of every commodity is necessarily regulated, not so much by the quantity of silver, which, according to the standard, ought to be contained in it, as by that which, it is found by experience, actually is contained in it. This nominal sum, therefore, is necessarily higher when the coin is much ^edebased^e by clipping and wearing, than when near to its standard value.

  6In the course of the present century, the silver coin has not at any time been more below its standard weight than it is at present. But though very much defaced, its value has been kept up by that of the gold coin for which it is exchanged. For though before the late re–coinage,8 the gold coin was a good deal defaced too, it was less so than the silver. In 1695, on the contrary, the value of the silver coin was not kept up by the gold coin; a guinea then commonly exchanging for thirty shillings of the worn and clipt silver.9 Before the late re–coinage of the gold, the price of silver bullion was seldom higher than five shillings and seven–pence an ounce, which is but five–pence above the mint price. But in 1695, the common price of silver bullion was six shillings and five–pence an ounce* , which is fifteen–pence above the mint price. Even before the late recoinage of the gold, therefore, the coin, gold and silver together, when compared with silver bullion, was not supposed to be more than eight per cent. below its standard value. In 1695, on the contrary, it had been supposed to be near five–and–twenty per cent. below that value. But in the beginning of the present century, that is, immediately after the great recoinage in King William’s time, the greater part of the current silver coin must have been still nearer to its standard weight than it is at present. In the course of the present century too there has been no great publick calamity, such as the civil war, which could either discourage tillage, or interrupt the interior commerce of the country. And though the bounty, which has taken place through the greater part of this century, must always raise the price of corn somewhat higher than it otherwise would be in the actual state of tillage; yet as, in the course of this century, the bounty has had full time to produce all the good effects commonly imputed to it, to encourage tillage, and thereby to increase the quantity of corn in the home market, it may^g, upon the principles of a system which I shall explain and examine hereafter,^g10 be supposed to have done something to lower the price of that commodity the one way, as well as to raise it the other. It is by many people supposed to have done more. ^h In the sixty–four ⁱfirstⁱ years of the present century accordingly, the average price of the quarter of nine bushels of the best wheat at Windsor market, appears, by the accounts of Eton College, to have been 2l. 0s. 6d19/32,11 which is about ten shillings and sixpence, or more than five–and–twenty per cent.12 cheaper than it had been during the sixty–four last years of the last century; and about nine shillings and six–pence cheaper than it had been during the sixteen years preceding 1636, when the discovery of the abundant mines of America may be supposed to have produced its full effect; and about one shilling cheaper than it had been in the twenty–six years preceding 1620, before that discovery can well be supposed to have produced its full effect. According to this account, the average price of middle wheat, during these sixty–four first years of the present century, comes out to have been about thirty–two shillings the quarter of eight bushels.

  7The value of silver, therefore, seems to have risen somewhat in proportion to that of corn during the course of the present century, and it had probably begun to do so even some time before the end of the last.

  8In 1687, the price of the quarter of nine bushels of the best wheat at Windsor market was 1l. 5s. 2d. the lowest price at which it had ever been from 1595.

  9In 1688, Mr. Gregory King, a man famous for his knowledge in matters of this kind, estimated the average price of wheat in years of moderate plenty to be to the grower 3s. 6d. the bushel, or eight–and–twenty shillings the quarter.13 The grower’s price I understand to be the same with what is sometimes called the contract price, or the price at which a farmer contracts for a certain number of years to deliver a certain quantity of corn to a dealer. As a contract of this kind saves the farmer the expence and trouble of marketing, the contract price is generally lower than what is supposed to be the average market price. Mr. King had judged eight–and–twenty shillings the quarter to be at that time the ordinary contract price in years of moderate plenty. Before the scarcity occasioned by the late extraordinary course of bad seasons, it was^j, I have been assured,^j the ordinary contract price in all common years.

  10In 1688 was granted the parliamentary bounty upon the exportation of corn.14 The country gentlemen, who then composed a still greater proportion of the legislature than they do at present,15 had felt that the money price of corn was falling. The bounty was an expedient to raise it artificially to the high price at which it had frequently been sold in the times of Charles I. and II. It was to take place, therefore, till wheat was so high as forty–eight shillings the quarter; that is twenty shillings, or 5/7ths dearer than Mr. King had in that very year estimated the grower’s price to be in times of moderate plenty. If his calculations deserve any part of the reputation which they have obtained very universally, eight–and–forty shillings the quarter, was a price which, without some such expedient as the bounty, could not at that time be expected, except in years of extraordinary scarcity. But the government of King William was not then fully settled. It was in no condition to refuse any thing to the country gentlemen, from whom it was at that very time soliciting the first establishment of the annual land–tax.16

  11The value of silver, therefore, in proportion to that of corn, had probably risen somewhat before the end of the last century; and it seems to have continued to do so during the course of the greater part of the present;17 though the necessary operation of the bounty must have hindered that rise from being so sensible as it otherwise would have been in the actual state of tillage.

  12In plentiful years the bounty, by occasioning an extraordinary exportation, necessarily raises the price of corn above what it otherwise would be in those years. To encourage tillage, by keeping up the price of corn even in the most plentiful years, was the avowed end of the institution.

  13In years of great scarcity, indeed, the bounty has generally been suspended. It must, however, have had some effect ^keven^k upon the prices of many of those years. By the extraordinary exportation which it occasions in years of plenty, it must frequently hinder the plenty of one year from compensating the scarcity of another.

  14Both in years of plenty and in years of scarcity, therefore, the bounty raises the price of corn above what it naturally would be in the actual state of tillage. If, during the sixty–four first years of the present century, therefore, the average price has been lower than during the sixty–four last years of the last century, it must, in the same state of tillage, have been much more so, had it not been for this operation of the bounty.18

  15But without the bounty, it may be said, the state of tillage would not have been the same. What may have been the effects of this institution upon the agriculture of the country, I shall endeavour to explain hereafter, when I come to treat particularly of bounties. I shall only observe at present, that this rise in the value of silver, in proportion to that of corn, has not been peculiar to England. It has been observed to have taken place in France during the same period, and nearly in the same proportion too, by three very faithful, diligent, and laborious collectors of the prices of corn, Mr. Duprè de St. Maur, Mr. Messance, and the author of the Essay on the police of grain.19 But in France, till 1764, the exportation of grain was by law prohibited;20 and it is somewhat difficult to suppose, that nearly the same diminution of price which took place in one country, notwithstanding this prohibition, should in another be owing to the extraordinary encouragement given to exportation.

  16It would be more proper, perhaps, to consider this variation in the average money price of corn as the effect rather of some gradual rise in the real value of silver in the European market, than of any fall in the real average value of corn. Corn, it has already been observed,21 is at distant periods of time a more accurate measure of value than either silver, or perhaps any other commodity. When, after the discovery of the abundant mines of America, corn rose to three and four times its former money price, this change was universally ascribed, not to any rise in the real value of corn, but to a fall in the real value of silver. If during the sixty–four first years of the present century, therefore, the average money price of corn has fallen somewhat below what it had been during the greater part of the last century, we should in the same manner impute this change, not to any fall in the real value of corn, but to some rise in the real value of silver in the European market.

  17The high price of corn during these ten or twelve years past, indeed, has occasioned a suspicion that the real value of silver still continues to fall in the European market. This high price of corn, however, seems evidently to have been the effect of the extraordinary unfavourableness of the seasons, and ought therefore to be regarded, not as a permanent, but as a transitory and occasional event. The seasons for these ten or twelve years past have been unfavourable through the greater part of Europe;22 and the disorders of Poland have very much increased the scarcity in all those countries, which, in dear years, used to be supplied from that market.23 So long a course of bad seasons, though not a very common event, is by no means a singular one; and whoever has enquired much into the history of the prices of corn in former times, will be at no loss to recollect several other examples of the same kind. Ten years of extraordinary scarcity, besides, are not more wonderful than ten years of extraordinary plenty. The low price of corn from 1741 to 1750, both inclusive, may very well be set in opposition to its high price during these last eight or ten years. From 1741 to 1750, the average price of the quarter of nine bushels of the best wheat at Windsor market, it appears from the accounts of Eton College, was only 1l. 13s. 9d.⅘, which is nearly 6s. 3d. below the average price of the sixty–four first years of the present century. The average price of the quarter of eight bushels of middle wheat, comes out, according to this account, to have been, during these ten years, only 1l. 6s. 8d.24

  18Between 1741 and 1750, however, the bounty must have hindered the price of corn from falling so low in the home market as it naturally would have done. During these ten years the quantity of all sorts of grain exported, it appears from the custom–house books, amounted to no less than eight millions twenty–nine thousand one hundred and fifty–six quarters one bushel. The bounty paid for this amounted to 1,514,962l. 17s. 4d.½.25 In 1749 accordingly, Mr. Pelham, at that time prime minister, observed to the House of Commons,26 that for the three years preceding, a very extraordinary sum had been paid as bounty for the exportation of corn. He had good reason to make this observation, and in the following year he might have had still better. In that single year the bounty paid amounted to no less than 324,176l. 10s. 6d.*27 It is unnecessary to observe how much this forced exportation must have raised the price of corn above what it otherwise would have been in the home market.

  19At the end of the accounts annexed to this chapter the reader will find the particular account of those ten years separated from the rest. He will find there too the particular account of the preceding ten years, of which the average is likewise below, though not so much below, the general average of the sixty–four first years of the century. The year 1740, however, was a year of extraordinary scarcity. These twenty years preceding 1750, may very well be set in opposition to the twenty preceding 1770. As the former were a good deal below the general average of the century, notwithstanding the intervention of one or two dear years; so the latter have been a good deal above it, notwithstanding the intervention of one or two cheap ones, of 1759, for example.28 If the former have not been as much below the general average, as the latter have been above it, we ought probably to impute it to the bounty. The change has evidently been too sudden to be ascribed to any change in the value of silver, which is always slow and gradual. The suddenness of the effect can be accounted for only by a cause which can operate suddenly, the accidental variation of the seasons.

  20The money price of labour in Great Britain has, indeed, risen during the course of the present century.29 This, however, seems to be the effect, not so much of any diminution in the value of silver in the European market, as of an increase in the demand for labour in Great Britain, arising from the great, and almost universal prosperity of the country. In France, a country not altogether so prosperous, the money price of labour has, since the middle of the last century, been observed to sink gradually with the average money price of corn. Both in the last century and in the present, the day–wages of common labour are there said to have been pretty uniformly about the twentieth part of the average price of the septier of wheat, a measure which contains a little more than four Winchester bushels. In Great Britain the real recompence of labour, it has already been shown,30 the real ^mquantities^m of the necessaries and conveniencies of life which are given to the labourer, has increased considerably during the course of the present century. The rise in its money price seems to have been the effect, not of any diminution of the value of silver in the general market of Europe, but of a rise in the real price of labour in the particular market of Great Britain, owing to the peculiarly happy circumstances of the country.

  21For some time after the first discovery of America, silver would continue to sell at its former, or not much below its former price. The profits of mining would for some time be very great, and much above their natural rate. Those who imported that metal into Europe, however, would soon find that the whole annual importation could not be disposed of at this high price. Silver would gradually exchange for a smaller and a smaller quantity of goods. Its price would sink gradually lower and lower till it fell to its natural price; or to what was just sufficient to pay, according to their natural rates, the wages of the labour, the profits of the stock, and the rent of the land, which must be paid in order to bring it from the mine to the market. In the greater part of the silver mines of Peru, the tax of the king of Spain, amounting to a ⁿtenthⁿ of the gross produce, eats up, it has already been observed,31 the whole rent of the land. This tax was originally a half; it soon afterwards fell to a third,^o then to a fifth, ^pand at last to a tenth,^p at which rate it still continues. In the greater part of the silver mines of Peru this, it seems, is all that remains after replacing the stock of the undertaker of the work, together with its ordinary profits; and it seems to be universally acknowledged that these profits, which were once very high, are now as low as they can well be, consistently with carrying on ^qthe^q works.

  22The tax of the king of Spain was reduced to a fifth ^rpart^r of the registered silver in 1504* , one and–^tforty^t years before ^u1545^u the date of the discovery of the mines of Potosi.32 In the course of ^vninety years^v or before 1636, these mines, the most fertile in all America, had time sufficient to produce their full effect, or to reduce the value of silver in the European market as low as it could well fall, while it continued to pay this tax to the king of Spain. ^wNinety^w years is time sufficient to reduce any commodity, of which there is no monopoly, to its natural price, or to the lowest price at which, while it pays a particular tax, it can continue to be sold for any considerable time together.33

  23The price of silver in the European market might perhaps have fallen still lower, and it might have become necessary either to ^xreduce^x the tax upon it, ^ynot only to one tenth, as in 1736, but to one twentieth,^y in the same manner as that upon gold, or to give up working the greater part of the American mines which are now wrought. The gradual increase of the demand for silver, or the gradual enlargement of the market for the produce of the silver mines of America, is probably the cause which has prevented this from happening, and which has not only kept up the value of silver in the European market, but has perhaps even raised it somewhat higher than it was about the middle of the last century.

  24Since the first discovery of America, the market for the produce of its silver mines has been growing gradually more and more extensive.

  25 First, The market of Europe has become gradually more and more extensive. Since the discovery of America, the greater part of Europe has been much improved. England, Holland, France, and Germany; even Sweden, Denmark, and Russia, have all advanced considerably both in agriculture and in manufactures. Italy seems not to have gone backwards. The fall of Italy preceded the conquest of Peru. Since that time it seems rather to have recovered a little. Spain and Portugal, indeed, are supposed to have gone backwards. Portugal, however, is but a very small part of Europe, and the declension of Spain is not, perhaps, so great as is commonly imagined. In the beginning of the sixteenth century, Spain was a very poor country, even in comparison with France, which has been so much improved since that time. It was the well–known remark of the Emperor Charles V. who had travelled so frequently through both countries, that every thing abounded in France, but that every thing was wanting in Spain. The increasing produce of the agriculture and manufactures of Europe must necessarily have required a gradual increase in the quantity of silver coin to circulate it; and the increasing number of wealthy individuals must have required the like increase in the quantity of their plate and other ornaments of silver.

  26Secondly, America is itself a new market for the produce of its own silver mines; and as its advances in agriculture, industry, and population, are much more rapid than those of the most thriving countries in Europe, its demand must increase much more rapidly. The English colonies are altogether a new market, which, partly for coin and partly for plate, requires a continually augmenting supply of silver through a great continent where there never was any demand before. The greater part too of the Spanish and Portuguese colonies are altogether new markets. New Granada, the Yucatan, Paraguay, and the Brazils were, before discovered by the Europeans, inhabited by savage nations, who had neither arts nor agriculture. A considerable degree of both has now been introduced into all of them. Even Mexico and Peru, though they cannot be considered as altogether new markets, are certainly much more extensive ones than they ever were before. After all the wonderful tales which have been published concerning the splendid state of those countries in antient times, whoever reads, with any degree of sober judgment, the history of their first discovery and conquest, will evidently discern that, in arts, agriculture, and commerce, their inhabitants were much more ignorant than the Tartars of the Ukraine are at present. Even the Peruvians, the more civilized nation of the two, though they made use of gold and silver as ornaments, had no coined money of any kind. Their whole commerce was carried on by barter, and there was accordingly scarce any division of labour among them.34 Those who cultivated the ground were obliged to build their own houses, to make their own houshold furniture, their own clothes, shoes, and instruments of agriculture. The few artificers among them are said to have been all maintained by the sovereign, the nobles, and the priests, and were probably their servants or slaves. All the ancient arts of Mexico and Peru have never furnished one single manufacture to Europe. The Spanish armies, though they scarce ever exceeded five hundred men, and frequently did not amount to half that number, found almost every where great difficulty in procuring subsistence. The famines which they are said to have occasioned almost wherever they went, in countries too which at the same time are represented as very populous and well–cultivated, sufficiently demonstrate that the story of this populousness and high cultivation is in a great measure fabulous. The Spanish colonies are under a government in many respects less favourable to agriculture, improvement and population, than that of the English colonies.35 They seem, however, to be advancing in all these much more rapidly than any country in Europe. In a fertile soil and happy climate, the great abundance and cheapness of land, a circumstance common to all new colonies,36 is, it seems, so great an advantage as to compensate many defects in civil government. Frezier, who visited Peru in 1713, represents Lima as containing between twenty–five and twenty–eight thousand inhabitants.37 Ulloa, who resided in the same country between 1740 and 1746, represents it as containing more than fifty thousand.38 The difference in their accounts of the populousness of several other principal towns in Chili and Peru is nearly the same;39 and as there seems to be no reason to doubt of the good information of either, it marks an increase which is scarce inferior to that of the English colonies. America, therefore, is a new market for the produce of its own silver mines, of which the demand must increase much more rapidly than that of the most thriving country in Europe.

  27Thirdly, The East Indies is another market for the produce of the silver mines of America, and a market which, from the time of the first discovery of those mines, has been continually taking off a greater and a greater quantity of silver. Since that time, the direct trade between America and the East Indies, which is carried on by means of the Acapulco ships,40 has been continually augmenting, and the indirect intercourse by the way of Europe has been augmenting in a still greater proportion. During the sixteenth century, the Portuguese were the only European nation who carried on any regular trade to the East Indies. In the last years of that century the Dutch began to encroach upon this monopoly, and in a few years expelled them from their principal settlements in India. During the greater part of the last century those two nations divided the most considerable part of the East India trade between them; the trade of the Dutch continually augmenting in a still greater proportion than that of the Portuguese declined. The English and French carried on some trade with India in the last century, but it has been greatly augmented in the course of the present. The East India trade of the Swedes and Danes began in the course of the present century. Even the Muscovites now trade regularly with China by a sort of caravans which go over land through Siberia and Tartary to Pekin. The East India trade of all these nations, if we except that of the French, which the last war had well nigh annihilated, has been almost continually augmenting. The increasing consumption of East India goods in Europe is, it seems, so great, as to afford a gradual increase of employment to them all. Tea, for example, was a drug very little used in Europe before the middle of the last century. At present the value of the tea annually imported by the English East India Company, for the use of their own countrymen, amounts to more than a million and a half a year; and even this is not enough; a great deal more being constantly smuggled into the country from the ports of Holland, from Gottenburg in Sweden, and from the coast of France too, as long as the French East India Company was in prosperity. The consumption of the porcelain of China, of the spiceries of the Moluccas, of the piece goods of Bengal, and of innumerable other articles, has increased very nearly in a like proportion. The tonnage accordingly of all the European shipping employed in the East India trade, at any one time during the last century, was not, perhaps, much greater than that of the English East India Company before the late reduction of their shipping.41

  28But in the East Indies, particularly in China and Indostan, the value of the precious metals, when the Europeans first began to trade to those countries, was much higher than in Europe; and it still continues to be so. In rice countries, which generally yield two, sometimes three crops in the year, each of them more plentiful than any common crop of corn, the abundance of food must be much greater than in any corn country of equal extent.42 Such countries are accordingly much more populous. In them too the rich, having a greater super–abundance of food to dispose of beyond what they themselves can consume, have the means of purchasing a much greater quantity of the labour of other people. The retinue of a grandee in China or Indostan accordingly is, by all accounts, much more numerous and splendid than that of the richest subjects in Europe. The same super–abundance of food, of which they have the disposal, enables them to give a greater quantity of it for all those singular and rare productions which nature furnishes but in very small quantities; such as the precious metals and the precious stones, the great objects of the competition of the rich.43 Though the mines, therefore, which supplied the Indian market had been as abundant as those which supplied the European, such commodities would naturally exchange for a greater quantity of food in India than in Europe. But the mines which supplied the Indian market with the precious metals seem to have been a good deal less abundant, and those which supplied it with the precious stones a good deal more so, than the mines which supplied the European. The precious metals, therefore, would naturally exchange ^zin India^z for somewhat a greater quantity of the precious stones, and for a much greater quantity of food ^a than in Europe.44 The money price of diamonds, the greatest of all superfluities, would be somewhat lower, and that of food, the first of all necessaries, a great deal lower in the one country than in the other. But the real price of labour, the real quantity of the necessaries of life which is given to the labourer, it has already been observed,45 is lower both in China and Indostan, the two great markets of India, than it is through the greater part of Europe. The wages of the labourer will there purchase a smaller quantity of food; and as the money price of food is much lower in India than in Europe, the money price of labour is there lower upon a double account; upon account both of the small quantity of food which it will purchase, and of the low price of that food. But in countries of equal art and industry, the money price of the greater part of manufactures will be in proportion to the money price of labour; and in manufacturing art and industry, China and Indostan, though inferior, seem not to be much inferior to any part of Europe. The money price of the greater part of manufactures, therefore, will naturally be much lower in those great empires than it is any–where in Europe. Through the greater part of Europe too the expence of land–carriage increases very much both the real and nominal price of most manufactures. It costs more labour, and therefore more money, to bring first the materials, and afterwards the compleat manufacture to market. In China and Indostan the extent and variety of inland navigations46 save the greater part of this labour, and consequently of this money, and thereby reduce still lower both the real and the nominal price of the greater part of their manufactures. Upon all these accounts, the precious metals are a commodity which it always has been, and still continues to be, extremely advantageous to carry from Europe to India. There is scarce any commodity which brings a better price there; or which, in proportion to the quantity of labour and commodities which it costs in Europe, will purchase or command a greater quantity of labour and commodities in India. It is more advantageous too to carry silver thither than gold; because in China, and the greater part of the other markets of India, the proportion between fine silver and fine gold is but as ten^b, or at most as twelve,^b to one; whereas in Europe it is as fourteen or fifteen to one.47 In China, and the greater part of the other markets of India, ten^c, or at most twelve,^c ounces of silver will purchase an ounce of gold: in Europe it requires from fourteen to fifteen ounces. In the cargoes, therefore, of the greater part of European ships which sail to India, silver has generally been one of the most valuable articles. It is the most valuable article in the Acapulco ships which sail to Manilla. The silver of the new continent seems in this manner to be ^done of the principal commodities^d by which the commerce between the two extremities of the old one is carried on, and it is by means of it^e, in a great measure,^e that those distant parts of the world are connected with one another.

  29In order to supply so very widely extended a market, the quantity of silver annually brought from the mines must not only be sufficient to support that continual increase both of coin and of plate which is required in all thriving countries; but to repair that continual waste and consumption of silver which takes place in all countries where that metal is used.

  30The continual consumption of the precious metals in coin by wearing, and in plate both by wearing and cleaning, is very sensible; and in commodities of which the use is so very widely extended, would alone require a very great annual supply. The consumption of those metals in some particular manufactures, though it may not perhaps be greater upon the whole than this gradual consumption, is, however, much more sensible, as it is much more rapid. In the manufactures of Birmingham alone, the quantity of gold and siver annually employed in gilding and plating, and thereby disqualified from ever afterwards appearing in the shape of those metals, is said to amount to more than fifty thousand pounds sterling. We may from thence form some notion how great must be the annual consumption in all the different parts of the world, either in manufactures of the same kind with those of Birmingham, or in laces, embroideries, gold and silver stuffs, the gilding of books, furniture, &c. A considerable quantity too must be annually lost in transporting those metals from one place to another both by sea and by land. In the greater part of the governments of Asia, besides, the almost universal custom of concealing treasures in the bowels of the earth, of which the knowledge frequently dies with the person who makes the concealment, must occasion the loss of a still greater quantity.

  31The quantity of gold and silver imported at both Cadiz and Lisbon (including not only what comes under register, but what may be supposed to be smuggled) amounts, according to the best accounts, to about six millions sterling a year.

  32According to Mr. Meggens* the annual importation of the precious metals into Spain, at an average of six years; viz. from 1748 to 1753, both inclusive; and into Portugal, at an average of seven years; viz. from 1747 to 1753, both inclusive; amounted in silver to 1,101,107 pounds weight; and in gold to 49,940 pounds weight. The silver, at sixty–two shillings the pound Troy, amounts to 3,413,431l. 10s. sterling. The gold, at forty–four guineas and a half the pound Troy, amounts to 2,333,446l. 14s. sterling.48 Both together amount to 5,746,878l. 4s. sterling. The account of what was imported under register, he assures us is exact. He gives us the detail of the particular places from which the gold and silver were brought, and of the particular quantity of each metal, which, according to the register, each of them afforded. He makes an allowance too for the quantity of each metal which he supposes may have been smuggled. The great experience of this judicious merchant renders his opinion of considerable weight.

  33According to the eloquent and, sometimes, well–informed Author of the Philosophical and Political History of the establishment of the Europeans in the two Indies, the annual importation of registered gold and silver into Spain, at an average of eleven years; viz. from 1754 to 1764, both inclusive; amounted to 13,984,185 ^g⅗^g piastres of ten reals. On account of what may have been smuggled, however, the whole annual importation, he supposes, may have amounted to seventeen millions of piastres; which, at 4s. 6d. the piastre, is equal to 3,825,000 l. sterling. He gives the detail too of the particular places from which the gold and silver were brought, and of the particular quantities of each metal which, according to the register, each of them afforded.49 He informs us too, that if we were to judge of the quantity of gold annually imported from the Brazils into Lisbon by the amount of the tax paid to the king of Portugal, which it seems is one–fifth of the standard metal, we might value it at eighteen millions of cruzadoes, or forty–five millions of French livres, equal to about two millions sterling. On account of what may have been smuggled, however, we may safely, he says, add to this sum an eighth more, or 250,000 l. sterling, so that the whole will amount to 2,250,000 l. sterling. According to this account, therefore, the whole annual importation of the precious metals into both Spain and Portugal, amounts to about 6,075,000 l. sterling.50

  34Several other very well authenticated^h, though manuscript,^h accounts, I have been assured, agree, in making this whole annual importation amount at an average to about six millions sterling, sometimes a little more, sometimes a little less.

  35The annual importation of the precious metals into Cadiz and Lisbon, indeed, is not equal to the whole annual produce of the mines of America. Some part is sent annually by the Acapulco ships to Manilla; some part is employed in the contraband trade which the Spanish colonies carry on with those of other European nations; and some part, no doubt, remains in the country. The mines of America, besides, are by no means the only gold and silver mines in the world. They are, however, by far the most abundant. The produce of all the other mines which are known, is insignificant, it is acknowledged, in comparison with theirs; and the far greater part of their produce, it is likewise acknowledged, is annually imported into Cadiz and Lisbon. But the consumption of Birmingham alone, at the rate of fifty thousand pounds a year, is equal to the hundred–and–twentieth part of this annual importation at the rate of six millions a year. The whole annual consumption of gold and silver, therefore, in all the different countries of the world where those metals are used, may perhaps be nearly equal to the whole annual produce. The remainder may be no more than sufficient to supply the increasing demand of all thriving countries. It may even have fallen so far short of this demand as somewhat to raise the price of those metals in the European market.

  36The quantity of brass and iron annually brought from the mine to the market is out of all proportion greater than that of gold and silver. We do not, however, upon this account, imagine that those coarse metals are likely to multiply beyond the demand, or to become gradually cheaper and cheaper. Why should we imagine that the precious metals are likely to do so? The coarse metals, indeed, though harder, are put to much harder uses, and, as they are of less value, less care is employed in their preservation. The precious metals, however, are not necessarily immortal any more than they, but are liable too to be lost, wasted, and consumed in a great variety of ways.

  37The price of all metals, though liable to slow and gradual variations, varies less from year to year than that of almost any other part of the rude produce of land;51 and the price of the precious metals is even less liable to sudden variations than that of the coarse ones. The durableness of metals is the foundation of this extraordinary steadiness of price. The corn which was brought to market last year, will be all or almost all consumed long before the end of this year. But some part of the iron which was brought from the mine two or three hundred years ago, may be still in use, and perhaps some part of the gold which was brought from it two or three thousand years ago. The different masses of corn which in different years must supply the consumption of the world, will always be nearly in proportion to the respective produce of those different years. But the proportion between the different masses of iron which may be in use in two different years, will be very little affected by any accidental difference in the produce of the iron mines of those two years; and the proportion between the masses of gold will be still less affected by any such difference in the produce of the gold mines. Though the produce of the greater part of metallick mines, therefore, varies, perhaps, still more from year to year than that of the greater part of cornfields, those variations have not the same effect upon the price of the one species of commodities, as upon that of the other.

  Variations in the Proportion between the respective Values of Gold and Silver

  1Before the discovery of the mines of America, the value of fine gold to fine silver was regulated in the different mints of Europe, between the proportions of one to ten and one to twelve; that is, an ounce of fine gold was supposed to be worth from ten to twelve ounces of fine silver. About the middle of the last century it came to be regulated, between the proportions of one to fourteen and one to fifteen; that is, an ounce of fine gold came to be supposed worth between fourteen and fifteen ounces of fine silver. Gold rose in its nominal value, or in the quantity of silver which was given for it. Both metals sunk in their real value, or in the quantity of labour which they could purchase; but silver sunk more than gold. Though both the gold and silver mines of America exceeded in fertility all those which had ever been known before, the fertility of the silver mines had, it seems, been proportionably still greater than that of the gold ones.

  2The great quantities of silver carried annually from Europe to India, have, in some of the English settlements, gradually reduced the value of that metal in proportion to gold. In the mint of Calcutta, an ounce of fine gold is supposed to be worth fifteen ounces of fine silver, in the same manner as in Europe. It is in the mint perhaps rated too high for the value which it bears in the market of Bengal. In China, the proportion of gold to silver still continues as one to ten^a, or one to twelve^a . In Japan, it is said to be as one to eight.

  3The proportion between the quantities of gold and silver annually imported into Europe, according to Mr. Meggens’s account, is as one to twenty–two nearly; that is, for one ounce of gold there are imported a little more than twenty–two ounces of silver. The great quantity of silver sent annually to the East Indies, reduces, he supposes, the quantities of those metals which remain in Europe to the proportion of one to fourteen or fifteen, the proportion of their values. The proportion between their values, he seems to think, must necessarily be the same as that between their quantities, and would therefore be as one to twenty–two, were it not for this greater exportation of silver.1

  4But the ordinary proportion between the respective values of two commodities is not necessarily the same as that between the quantities of them which are commonly in the market. The price of an ox, reckoned at ten guineas, is about threescore times the price of a lamb, reckoned at 3s. 6d. It would be absurd, however, to infer from thence, that there are commonly in the market threescore lambs for one ox: and it would be just as absurd to infer, because an ounce of gold will commonly purchase from fourteen to fifteen ounces of silver, that there are commonly in the market only fourteen or fifteen ounces of silver for one ounce of gold.

  5 The quantity of silver commonly in the market, it is probable, is much greater in proportion to that of gold, than the value of a certain quantity of gold is to that of an equal quantity of silver. The whole quantity of a cheap commodity brought to market, is commonly not only greater, but of greater value, than the whole quantity of a dear one. The whole quantity of bread annually brought to market, is not only greater, but of greater value than the whole quantity of butcher’s–meat; the whole quantity of butcher’s–meat, than the whole quantity of poultry; and the whole quantity of poultry, than the whole quantity of wild fowl. There are so many more purchasers for the cheap than for the dear commodity, that, not only a greater quantity of it, but a greater value can commonly be disposed of. The whole quantity, therefore, of the cheap commodity must commonly be greater in proportion to the whole quantity of the dear one, than the value of a certain quantity of the dear one, is to the value of an equal quantity of the cheap one. When we compare the precious metals with one another, silver is a cheap, and gold a dear commodity. We ought naturally to expect, therefore, that there should always be in the market, not only a greater quantity, but a greater value of silver than of gold. Let any man, who has a little of both, compare his own silver with his gold plate, and he will probably find, that, not only the quantity, but the value of the former greatly exceeds that of the latter. Many people, besides, have a good deal of silver who have no gold plate, which, even with those who have it, is generally confined to watch–cases, snuff–boxes, and such like trinkets, of which the whole amount is seldom of great value. In the British coin, indeed, the value of the gold preponderates greatly, but it is not so in that of all countries. In the coin of some countries the value of the two metals is nearly equal. In the Scotch coin, before the union with England, the gold preponderated very little, though it did somewhat* , as it appears by the accounts of the mint. In the coin of many countries the silver preponderates. In France, the largest sums are commonly paid in that metal, and it is there difficult to get more gold than what^c is necessary to carry about in your pocket. The superior value, however, of the silver plate above that of the gold, which takes place in all countries, will much more than compensate the preponderancy of the gold coin above the silver, which takes place only in some countries.

  6Though, in one sense of the word, silver always has been, and probably always will be, much cheaper than gold; yet in another sense, gold may, perhaps, in the present state of the ^dSpanish^d market, be said to be somewhat cheaper than silver. A commodity may be said to be dear or cheap, not only according to the absolute greatness or smallness of its usual price, but according as that price is more or less above the lowest for which it is possible to bring it to market for any considerable time together. This lowest price is that which barely replaces, with a moderate profit, the stock which must be employed in bringing the commodity thither. It is the price which affords nothing to the landlord, of which rent makes not any component part, but which resolves itself altogether into wages and profit. But, in the present state of the ^eSpanish^e market, gold is certainly somewhat nearer to this lowest price than silver. The tax of the King of Spain upon gold is only one–twentieth part of the standard metal, or five per cent.; whereas his tax upon silver amounts to ^fone–tenth^f part of it, or to ^gten^g per cent. In these taxes too, it has already been observed,2 consists the whole rent of the greater part of the gold and silver mines of Spanish America; and that upon gold is still worse paid than that upon silver. The profits of the undertakers of gold mines too, as they more rarely make a fortune, must, in general, be still more moderate than those of the undertakers of silver mines.3 The price of Spanish gold, therefore, as it affords both less rent and less profit, must, in the ^hSpanish^h market, be somewhat nearer to the lowest price for which it is possible to bring it thither, than the price of Spanish silver. ⁱWhen all expences are computed, the whole quantity of the one metal, it would seem, cannot, in the Spanish market, be disposed of so advantageously as the whole quantity of the other. The tax, indeed, of the King of Portugal upon the gold of the Brazils, is the same with the ancient tax of the King of Spain upon the silver of Mexico and Peru ; or one–fifth part of the standard metal.4 It may, therefore, be uncertain whether to the general market of Europe the whole mass of American gold comes at a price nearer to the lowest for which it is possible to bring it thither, than the whole mass of American silver.ⁱ

  7The price of diamonds and other precious stones may, perhaps, be still nearer to the lowest price at which it is possible to bring them to market, than even the price of gold.

  8^jThough it is not very probable, that any part of a tax, which is not only imposed upon one of the most proper subjects of taxation, a mere luxury and superfluity, but which affords so very important a revenue, as the tax upon silver, will ever be given up as long as it is possible to pay it; yet the same impossibility of paying it, which in 1736 made it necessary to reduce it from one–fifth to one–tenth, may in time make it necessary to reduce it still further; in the same manner as it made it necessary to reduce the tax upon gold to one–twentieth^j5 That the silver mines of Spanish America, like all other mines, become gradually more expensive in the working, on account of the greater depths at which it is necessary to carry on the works, and of the greater expence of drawing out the water and of supplying them with fresh air at those depths, is acknowledged by every body who has enquired into the state of those mines.

  9 These causes, which are equivalent to a growing scarcity of silver (for a commodity may be said to grow scarcer when it becomes more difficult and expensive to collect a certain quantity of it) must, in time, produce one or other of the three following events. The increase of the expence must either, first, be compensated altogether by a proportionable increase in the price of the metal; or, secondly, it must be compensated altogether by a proportionable diminution of the tax upon silver; or, thirdly, it must be compensated partly by the one, and partly by the other of those two expedients. This third event is very possible. As gold rose in its price in proportion to silver, notwithstanding a great diminution of the tax upon gold; so silver might rise in its price in proportion to labour and commodities, notwithstanding an equal diminution of the tax upon silver.

  10^kSuch successive reductions of the tax, however, though they may not prevent altogether, must certainly retard, more or less, the rise of the value of silver in the European market. In consequence of such reductions, many mines may be wrought which could not be wrought before, because they could not afford to pay the old tax; and the quantity of silver annually brought to market must always be somewhat greater, and, therefore, the value of any given quantity somewhat less, than it otherwise would have been. In consequence of the reduction in 1736, the value of silver in the European market, though it may not at this day be lower than before that reduction, is, probably, at least ten per cent. lower than it would have been, had the Court of Spain continued to exact the old tax.^k

  11^lThat, notwithstanding this reduction, the value of silver has, during the course of the present century, begun to rise somewhat in the European market, the facts and arguments which have been alleged above, dispose me to believe, or more properly to suspect and conjecture; for the best opinion which I can form upon this subject scarce, perhaps, deserves the name of belief.^l The rise, indeed, ^msupposing there has been any,^m has hitherto been so very small, that after all that has been said, it may, perhaps, appear to many people uncertain, not only whether this event has actually taken place; but whether the contrary may not have taken place, or whether the value of silver may not still continue to fall in the European market.6

  12ⁿ It must be observed, however, that whatever may be the supposed annual importation of gold and silver, there must be a certain period, at which the annual consumption of those metals will be equal to that annual importation. Their consumption must increase as their mass increases, or rather in a much greater proportion. As their mass increases, their value diminishes. They are more used, and less cared for, and their consumption consequently increases in a greater proportion than their mass. After a certain period, therefore, the annual consumption of those metals must, in this manner become equal to their annual importation, provided that importation is not continually increasing; which, in the present times, is not supposed to be the case.

  13If, when the annual consumption has become equal to the annual importation, the annual importation should gradually diminish, the annual consumption, may, for some time, exceed the annual importation. The mass of those metals may gradually and insensibly diminish, and their value gradually and insensibly rise, till the annual importation becoming again stationary, the annual consumption will gradually and insensibly accommodate itself to what that annual importation can maintain.ⁿ7

  Grounds of the Suspicion that the Value of Silver still continues to decrease

  1The increase of the wealth of Europe, and the popular notion that, as the quantity of the precious metals naturally increases with the increase of wealth, so their value diminishes as their quantity increases, may, ^aperhaps^a dispose many people to believe that their value still continues to fall in the European market; and the still gradually increasing price of many parts of the rude produce of land may^b confirm them still further in this opinion.

  2That that increase ^cin^c the quantity of the precious metals^d , which arises ^ein any country^e from the increase of wealth, has no tendency to diminish their value, I have endeavoured to show already.1 Gold and silver naturally resort to a rich country, for the same reason that all sorts of luxuries and curiosities resort to it; not because they are cheaper there than in poorer countries, but because they are dearer, or because a better price is given for them. It is the superiority of price which attracts them, and as soon as that superiority ceases, they necessarily cease to go thither.

  3If you except corn and such other vegetables as are raised altogether by human industry, that all other sorts of rude produce, cattle, poultry, game of all kinds, the useful fossils and minerals of the earth, &c. naturally grow dearer as the society advances in wealth and improvement, I have endeavoured to show already.2 Though such commodities, therefore, come to exchange for a greater quantity of silver than before, it will not from thence follow that silver has become really cheaper, or will purchase less labour than before, but that such commodities have become really dearer, or will purchase more labour than before. It is not their nominal price only, but their real price which rises in the progress of improvement. The rise of their nominal price is the effect, not of any degradation of the value of silver, but of the rise in their real price.

  Different Effects of the Progress of Improvement upon the real price of three different Sorts of rude Produce

  1These different sorts of rude produce may be divided into three classes. The first comprehends those which it is scarce in the power of human industry to multiply at all. The second, those which it can multiply in proportion to the demand. The third, those in which the efficacy of industry is either limited or uncertain. In the progress of wealth and improvement, the real price of the first may rise to any degree of extravagance, and seems not to be limited by any certain boundary. That of the second, though it may rise greatly, has, however, a certain boundary beyond which it cannot well pass for any considerable time together. That of the third, though its natural tendency is to rise in the progress of improvement, yet in the same degree of improvement it may sometimes happen even to fall, sometimes to continue the same, and sometimes to rise more or less, according as different accidents render the efforts of human industry, in multiplying this sort of rude produce, more or less successful.

  First Sort

  1The first sort of rude produce of which the price rises in the progress of improvement, is that which it is scarce in the power of human industry to multiply at all. It consists in those things which nature produces only in certain quantities, and which being of a very perishable nature, it is impossible to accumulate together the produce of many different seasons. Such are the greater part of rare and singular birds and fishes, many different sorts of game, almost all wild–fowl, all birds of passage in particular, as well as many other things. When wealth and the luxury which accompanies it increase, the demand for these is likely to increase with them, and no effort of human industry may be able to increase the supply much beyond what it was before this increase of the demand. The quantity of such commodities, therefore, remaining the same, or nearly the same, while the competition to purchase them is continually increasing, their price may rise to any degree of extravagance, and seems not to be limited by any certain boundary. If woodcocks should become so fashionable as to sell for twenty guineas a–piece, no effort of human industry could increase the number of those brought to market, much beyond what it is at present. The high price paid by the Romans, in the time of their greatest grandeur, for rare birds and fishes, may in this manner easily be accounted for. These prices were not the effects of the low value of silver in those times, but of the high value of such rarities and curiosities as human industry could not multiply at pleasure. The real value of silver was higher at Rome, for some time before and after the fall of the republick, than it is through the greater part of Europe at present. Three sestertii, equal to about sixpence sterling, was the price which the republick paid for the modius or peck of the tithe wheat of Sicily.1 This price, however, was probably below the average market price, the obligation to deliver their wheat at this rate being considered as a tax upon the Sicilian farmers. When the Romans, therefore, had occasion to order more corn than the tithe of wheat amounted to, they were bound by capitulation to pay for the surplus at the rate of four sestertii, or eight–pence sterling the peck;2 and this had probably been reckoned the moderate and reasonable, that is, the ordinary or average contract price of those times; it is equal to about one–and–twenty shillings the quarter. Eight–and–twenty shillings the quarter was, before the late years of scarcity,3 the ordinary contract price of English wheat, which in quality is inferior to the Sicilian, and generally sells for a lower price in the European market. The value of silver, therefore, in those antient times, must have been to its value in the present, as three to four inversely, that is, three ounces of silver would then have purchased the same quantity of labour and commodities which four ounces will do at present.4 When we read in Pliny, therefore, that Seius*5 bought a white nightingale, as a present for the empress Agrippina, at the price of six thousand sestertii, equal to about fifty pounds of our present money; and that Asinius Celer†6 purchased a surmullet at the price of eight thousand sestertii equal to about sixty–six pounds thirteen shillings and four–pence of our present money; the extravagance of those prices, how much soever it may surprise us, is apt, notwithstanding, to appear to us about one–third less than it really was. Their real price, the quantity of labour and subsistence which was given away for them, was about one–third more than their nominal price is apt to express to us in the present times. Seius gave for the nightingale the command of a quantity of labour and subsistence, equal to what 66l. 13s. 4d. would purchase in the present times; and Asinius Celer gave for the surmullet the command of a quantity equal to what 88l. 17s. 9⅓d. would purchase. What occasioned the extravagance of those high prices was, not so much the abundance of silver, as the abundance of labour and subsistence, of which those Romans had the disposal, beyond what was necessary for their own use. The quantity of silver, of which they had the disposal, was a good deal less than what the command of the same quantity of labour and subsistence would have procured to them in the present times.

  Second Sort

  1The second sort of rude produce of which the price rises in the progress of improvement, is that which human industry can multiply in proportion to the demand. It consists in those useful plants and animals, which, in uncultivated countries, nature produces with such profuse abundance,1 that they are of little or no value, and which, as cultivation advances, are therefore forced to give place to some more profitable produce.2 During a long period in the progress of improvement, the quantity of these is continually diminishing, while at the same time the demand for them is continually increasing. Their real value, therefore, the real quantity of labour which they will purchase or command, gradually rises, till at last it gets so high as to render them as profitable a produce as any thing else which human industry can raise upon the most fertile and best cultivated land. When it has got so high it cannot well go higher. If it did, more land and more industry would soon be employed to increase their quantity.

  2When the price of cattle, for example, rises so high that it is as profitable to cultivate land in order to raise food for them, as in order to raise food for man, it cannot well go higher. If it did, more corn land would soon be turned into pasture. The extension of tillage, by diminishing the quantity of wild pasture, diminishes the quantity of butcher’s–meat which the country naturally produces without labour or cultivation, and by increasing the number of those who have either corn, or, what comes to the same thing, the price of corn, to give in exchange for it, increases the demand. The price of butcher’s meat, therefore, and consequently of cattle, must gradually rise till it gets so high, that it becomes as profitable to employ the most fertile and best cultivated lands in raising food for them as in raising corn.3 But it must always be late in the progress of improvement before tillage can be so far extended as to raise the price of cattle to this height; and till it has got to this height, if the country is advancing at all, their price must be continually rising. There are, perhaps, some parts of Europe in which the price of cattle has not yet got to this height. It had not got to this height in any part of Scotland before the union.4 Had the Scotch cattle been always confined to the market of Scotland, in a country in which the quantity of land, which can be applied to no other purpose but the feeding of cattle, is so great in proportion to what can be applied to other purposes, it is scarce possible, perhaps, that their price could ever have risen so high as to render it profitable to cultivate land for the sake of feeding them. In England, the price of cattle, it has already been observed,5 seems, in the neighbourhood of London, to have got to this height about the beginning of the last century; but it was much later probably before it got to it through the greater part of the remoter counties; in some of which, perhaps, it may scarce yet have got to it. Of all the different substances, however, which compose this second sort of rude produce, cattle is, perhaps, that of which the price, in the progress of improvement, ^afirst rises^a to this height.

  3Till the price of cattle, indeed, has got to this height, it seems scarce possible that the greater part, even of those lands which are capable of the highest cultivation, can be completely cultivated. In all farms too distant from any town to carry manure from it, that is, in the far greater part of those of every extensive country, the quantity of well–cultivated land must be in proportion to the quantity of manure which the farm itself produces; and this again must be in proportion to the stock of cattle which are maintained upon it. The land is manured either by pasturing the cattle upon it, or by feeding them in the stable, and from thence carrying out their dung to it. But unless the price of the cattle be sufficient to pay both the rent and profit of cultivated land, the farmer cannot afford to pasture them upon it; and he can still less afford to feed them in the stable. It is with the produce of improved and cultivated land only, that cattle can be fed in the stable; because to collect the scanty and scattered produce of waste and unimproved lands would require too much labour and be too expensive. If the price of the cattle, therefore, is not sufficient to pay for the produce of improved and cultivated land, when they are allowed to pasture it, that price will be still less sufficient to pay for that produce when it must be collected with a good deal of additional labour, and brought into the stable to them. In these circumstances, therefore, no more cattle can, with profit, be fed in the stable than what are necessary for tillage. But these can never afford manure enough for keeping constantly in good condition, all the lands which they are capable of cultivating. What they afford being insufficient for the whole farm, will naturally be reserved for the lands to which it can be most advantageously or conveniently applied; the most fertile, or those, perhaps, in the neighbourhood of the farm–yard. These, therefore, will be kept constantly in good condition and fit for tillage. The rest will, the greater part of them, be allowed to lie waste, producing scarce any thing but some miserable pasture, just sufficient to keep alive a few straggling, half–starved cattle; the farm, though much understocked in proportion to what would be necessary for its complete cultivation, being very frequently overstocked in proportion to its actual produce. A portion of this waste land, however, after having been pastured in this wretched manner for six or seven years together, may be ploughed up, when it will yield, perhaps, a poor crop or two of bad oats, or of some other coarse grain, and then, being entirely exhausted, it must be rested and pastured again as before and another portion ploughed up to be in the same manner exhausted and rested again in its turn. Such accordingly was the general system of management all over the low country of Scotland before the union. The lands which were kept constantly well manured and in good condition, seldom exceeded a third or a fourth part of the whole farm, and sometimes did not amount to a fifth or a sixth part of it. The rest were never manured, but a certain portion of them was in its turn, notwithstanding, regularly cultivated and exhausted. Under this system of management, it is evident, even that part of the lands of Scotland which is capable of good cultivation, could produce but little in comparison of what it may be capable of producing. But how disadvantageous soever this system may appear, yet before the union the low price of cattle seems to have rendered it almost unavoidable. If, notwithstanding a great rise in their price, it still continues to prevail through a considerable part of the country, it is owing, in many places, no doubt, to ignorance and attachment to old customs, but in most places to the unavoidable obstructions which the natural course of things opposes to the immediate or speedy establishment of a better system: first, to the poverty of the tenants, to their not having yet had time to acquire a stock of cattle sufficient to cultivate their lands more compleatly, the same rise of price which would render it advantageous for them to maintain a greater stock, rendering it more difficult for them to acquire it; and, secondly, to their not having yet had time to put their lands in condition to maintain this greater stock properly, supposing they were capable of acquiring it. The increase of stock and the improvement of land are two events which must go hand in hand, and of which the one can no where much out–run the other. Without some increase of stock, there can be scarce any improvement of land, but there can be no considerable increase of stock but in consequence of a considerable improvement of land; because otherwise the land could not maintain it. These natural obstructions to the establishment of a better system, cannot be removed but by a long course of frugality and industry; and half a century or a century more, perhaps, must pass away before the old system, which is wearing out gradually, can be compleatly abolished through all the different parts of the country. Of all ^bthe^b commercial advantages, however, which Scotland has derived from the union with England, this rise in the price of cattle is, perhaps, the greatest.6 It has not only raised the value of all highland estates, but it has, perhaps, been the principal cause of the improvement of the low country.

  4In all new colonies the great quantity of waste land, which can for many years be applied to no other purpose but the feeding of cattle, soon renders them extremely abundant, and in every thing great cheapness is the necessary consequence of great abundance. Though all the cattle of the European colonies in America were originally carried from Europe, they soon multiplied so much there, and became of so little value, that even horses were allowed to run wild in the woods without any owner thinking it worth while to claim them.7 It must be a long time after the first establishment of such colonies, before it can become profitable to feed cattle upon the produce of cultivated land. The same causes, therefore, the want of manure, and the disproportion between the stock employed in cultivation, and the land which it is destined to cultivate, are likely to introduce there a system of husbandry not unlike that which still continues to take place in so many parts of Scotland. Mr. Kalm, the Swedish traveller, when he gives an account of the husbandry of some of the English colonies in North America, as he found it in 1749, observes, accordingly, that he can with difficulty discover there the character of the English nation, so well skilled in all the different branches of agriculture.8 They make scarce any manure for their corn fields, he says; but when one piece of ground has been exhausted by continual cropping, they clear and cultivate another piece of fresh land; and when that is exhausted, proceed to a third. Their cattle are allowed to wander through the woods and other uncultivated grounds, where they are half–starved; having long ago extirpated almost all the annual grasses by cropping them too early in the spring, before they had time to form their flowers, or to shed their seeds* . The annual grasses were, it seems, the best natural grasses in that part of North America; and when the Europeans first settled there, they used to grow very thick, and to rise three or four feet high. A piece of ground which, when he wrote, could not maintain one cow, would in former times, he was assured, have maintained four, each of which would have given four times the quantity of milk, which that one was capable of giving. The poorness of the pasture had, in his opinion, occasioned the degradation of their cattle, which degenerated sensibly from one generation to another. They were probably not unlike that stunted breed which was common all over Scotland thirty or forty years ago, and which is now so much mended through the greater part of the low country, not so much by a change of the breed, though that expedient has been employed in some places, as by a more plentiful method of feeding them.

  5Though it is late, therefore, in the progress of improvement before cattle can bring such a price as to render it profitable to cultivate land for the sake of feeding them; yet of all the different parts which compose this second sort of rude produce, they are perhaps the first which bring this price; because till they bring it, it seems impossible that improvement can be brought near even to that degree of perfection to which it has arrived in many parts of Europe.

  6As cattle are among the first, so perhaps venison is among the last parts of this sort of rude produce which bring this price. The price of venison in Great Britain; how extravagant soever it may appear, is not near sufficient to compensate the expence of a deer park, as is well known to all those who have had any experience in the feeding of deer. If it was otherwise, the feeding of deer would soon become an article of common farming; in the same manner as the feeding of those small birds called Turdi was among the antient Romans. Varro and Columella assure us that it was a most profitable article.9 The fattening of Ortolans, birds of passage which arrive lean in the country, is said to be so in some parts of France. If venison continues in fashion, and the wealth and luxury of Great Britain increase as they have done for some time past, its price may very probably rise still higher than it is at present.

  7Between that period in the progress of improvement which brings to its height the price of so necessary an article as cattle, and that which brings to it the price of such a superfluity as venison, there is a very long interval, in the course of which many other sorts of rude produce gradually arrive at their highest price, some sooner and some later, according to different circumstances.

  8Thus in every farm the offals of the barn and stables will maintain a certain number of poultry. These, as they are fed with what would otherwise be lost, are a mere save–all; and as they cost the farmer scarce any thing, so he can afford to sell them for very little. Almost all that he gets is pure gain, and their price can scarce be so low as to discourage him from feeding this number. But in countries ill cultivated, and, therefore, but thinly inhabited, the poultry, which are thus raised without expence, are often fully sufficient to supply the whole demand. In this state of things, therefore, they are often as cheap as butcher’s–meat, or any other sort of animal food. But the whole quantity of poultry, which the farm in this manner produces without expence, must always be much smaller than the whole quantity of butcher’s–meat which is reared upon it; and in times of wealth and luxury what is rare, with only nearly equal merit, is always preferred to what is common.10 As wealth and luxury increase, therefore, in consequence of improvement and cultivation, the price of poultry gradually rises above that of butcher’s–meat, till at last it gets so high that it becomes profitable to cultivate land for the sake of feeding them. When it has got to this height, it cannot well go higher. If it did, more land would soon be turned to this purpose. In several provinces of France, the feeding of poultry is considered as a very important article in rural œconomy, and sufficiently profitable to encourage the farmer to raise a considerable quantity of Indian corn and buck–wheat for this purpose. A middling farmer will there sometimes have four hundred fowls in his yard. The feeding of poultry seems scarce yet to be generally considered as a matter of so much importance in England. They are certainly, however, dearer in England than in France, as England receives considerable supplies from France. In the progress of improvement, the period at which every particular sort of animal food is dearest, must naturally be that which immediately precedes the general practice of cultivating land for the sake of raising it. For some time before this practice becomes general, the scarcity must necessarily raise the price. After it has become general, new methods of feeding are commonly fallen upon, which enable the farmer to raise upon the same quantity of ground a much greater quantity of that particular sort of animal food. The plenty not only obliges him to sell cheaper, but in consequence of these improvements he can afford to sell cheaper; for if he could not afford it, the plenty would not be of long continuance. It has been probably in this manner that the introduction of clover, turnips, carrots, cabbages, &c. has contributed to sink the common price of butcher’s–meat in the London market somewhat below what it was about the beginning of the last century.11

  9 The hog, that finds his food among ordure, and greedily devours many things rejected by every other useful animal, is, like poultry, originally kept as a save–all. As long as the number of such animals, which can thus be reared at little or no expence, is fully sufficient to supply the demand, this sort of butcher’s–meat comes to market at a much lower price than any other. But when the demand rises beyond what this quantity can supply, when it becomes necessary to raise food on purpose for feeding and fattening hogs, in the same manner as for feeding and fattening other cattle, the price necessarily rises, and becomes proportionably either higher or lower than that of other butcher’s–meat, according as the nature of the country, and the state of its agriculture, happen to render the feeding of hogs more or less expensive than that of other cattle. In France, according to Mr. Buffon,12 the price of pork is nearly equal to that of beef. In most parts of Great Britain it is at present somewhat higher.

  10The great rise in the price both of hogs and poultry has in Great Britain been frequently imputed to the diminution of the number of cottagers and other small occupiers of land; an event which has in every part of Europe been the immediate fore–runner of improvement and better cultivation, but which at the same time may have contributed to raise the price of those articles, both somewhat sooner and somewhat faster than it would otherwise have risen.13 As the poorest family can often maintain a cat or a dog, without any expence; so the poorest occupiers of land can commonly maintain a few poultry, or a sow and a few pigs, at very little. The little offals of their own table, their whey, skimmed milk, and butter–milk, supply those animals with a part of their food, and they find the rest in the neighbouring fields without doing any sensible damage to any body. By diminishing the number of those small occupiers, therefore, the quantity of this sort of provisions which is thus produced at little or no expence, must certainly have been a good deal diminished, and their price must consequently have been raised both sooner and faster than it would otherwise have risen. Sooner or later, however, in the progress of improvement, it must at any rate have risen to the utmost height to which it is capable of rising; or to the price which pays the labour and expence of cultivating the land which furnishes them with food as well as these are paid upon the greater part of ^dother^d cultivated land.

  11The business of the dairy, like the feeding of hogs and poultry, is originally carried on as a save–all. The cattle necessarily kept upon the farm, produce more milk than either the rearing of their own young, or the consumption of the farmer’s family requires; and they produce most at one particular season. But of all the productions of land, milk is perhaps the most perishable. In the warm season, when it is most abundant, it will scarce keep four–and–twenty hours. The farmer, by making it into fresh butter, stores a small part of it for a week: by making it into salt butter, for a year: and by making it into cheese, he stores a much greater part of it for several years. Part of all these is reserved for the use of his own family. The rest goes to market, in order to find the best price which is to be had, and which can scarce be so low as to discourage him from sending thither whatever is over and above the use of his own family. If it is very low, indeed, he will be likely to manage his dairy in a very slovenly and dirty manner, and will scarce perhaps think it worth while to have a particular room or building on purpose for it, but will suffer the business to be carried on amidst the smoke, filth, and nastiness of his own kitchen; as was the case of almost all the farmers dairies in Scotland thirty or forty years ago, and as is the case of many of them still. The same causes which gradually raise the price of butcher’s–meat, the increase of the demand, and, in consequence of the improvement of the country, the diminution of the quantity which can be fed at little or no expence, raise, in the same manner, that of the produce of the dairy, of which the price naturally connects with that of butcher’s–meat, or with the expence of feeding cattle. The increase of price pays for more labour, care, and cleanliness. The dairy becomes more worthy of the farmer’s attention, and the quality of its produce gradually improves. The price at last gets so high that it becomes worth while to employ some of the most fertile and best cultivated lands in feeding cattle merely for the purpose of the dairy; and when it has got to this height, it cannot well go higher. If it did, more land would soon be turned to this purpose. It seems to have got to this height through the greater part of England, where much good land is commonly employed in this manner. If you except the neighbourhood of a few considerable towns, it seems not yet to have got to this height any where in Scotland, where common farmers seldom employ much good land in raising food for cattle merely for the purpose of the dairy. The price of the produce, though it has risen very considerably within these few years, is probably still too low to admit of it. The inferiority of the quality, indeed, compared with that of the produce of English dairies, is fully equal to that of the price. But this inferiority of quality is, perhaps, rather the effect of this lowness of price than the cause of it. Though the quality was much better, the greater part of what is brought to market could not, I apprehend, in the present circumstances of the country, be disposed of at a much better price; and the present price, it is probable, would not pay the expence of the land and labour necessary for producing a much better quality. Through the greater part of England, notwithstanding the superiority of price, the dairy is not reckoned a more profitable employment of land than the raising of corn, or the fattening of cattle, the two great objects of agriculture. Through the greater part of Scotland, therefore, it cannot yet be ^eeven so^e profitable.

  12 The lands of no country, it is evident, can ever be compleatly cultivated and improved, till once the price of every produce, which human industry is obliged to raise upon them, has got so high as to pay for the expence of compleat improvement and cultivation. In order to do this, the price of each particular produce must be sufficient, first, to pay the rent of good corn land, as it is that which regulates the rent of the greater part of other cultivated land;14 and, secondly, to pay the labour and expence of the farmer as well as they are commonly paid upon good corn–land; or, in other words, to replace with the ordinary profits the stock which he employs about it. This rise in the price of each particular produce, must evidently be previous to the improvement and cultivation of the land which is destined for raising it. Gain is the end of all improvement, and nothing could deserve that name of which loss was to be the necessary consequence. But loss must be the necessary consequence of improving land for the sake of a produce of which the price could never bring back the expence. If the compleat improvement and cultivation of the country be, as it most certainly is, the greatest of all publick advantages, this rise in the price of all those different sorts of rude produce, instead of being considered as a publick calamity, ought to be regarded as the necessary forerunner and attendant of the greatest of all publick advantages.

  13This rise too in the nominal or money–price of all those different sorts of rude produce has been the effect, not of any degradation in the value of silver, but of a rise in their real price. They have become worth, not only a greater quantity of silver, but a greater quantity of labour and subsistence than before. As it costs a greater quantity of labour and subsistence to bring them to market, so when they are brought thither, they represent or are equivalent to a greater quantity.

  Third Sort

  1The third and last sort of rude produce, of which the price naturally rises in the progress of improvement, is that in which the efficacy of human industry, in augmenting the quantity, is either limited or uncertain. Though the real price of this sort of rude produce, therefore, naturally tends to rise in the progress of improvement, yet, according as different accidents happen to render the efforts of human industry more or less successful in augmenting the quantity, it may happen sometimes even to fall, sometimes to continue the same in very different periods of improvement, and sometimes to rise more or less in the same period.

  2There are some sorts of rude produce which nature has rendered a kind of appendages to other sorts; so that the quantity of the one which any country can afford, is necessarily limited by that of the other. The quantity of wool or of raw hides, for example, which any country can afford, is necessarily limited by the number of great and small cattle that are kept in it. The state of its improvement, and the nature of its agriculture, again necessarily determine this number.

  3The same causes, which, in the progress of improvement, gradually raise the price of butcher’s–meat, should have the same effect, it may be thought, upon the prices of wool and raw hides, and raise them too nearly in the same proportion. It probably would be so, if in the rude beginnings of improvement the market for the latter commodities was confined within as narrow bounds as that for the former. But the extent of their respective markets is commonly extremely different.

  4The market for butcher’s–meat is almost every–where confined to the country which produces it. Ireland, and some part of British America indeed, carry on a considerable trade in salt provisions; but they are, I believe, the only countries in the commercial world which do so, or which export to other countries any considerable part of their butcher’s–meat.

  5The market for wool and raw hides, on the contrary, is in the rude beginnings of improvement very seldom confined to the country which produces them. They can easily be transported to distant countries, wool without any preparation, and raw hides with very little: and as they are the materials of many manufactures, the industry of other countries may occasion a demand for them, though that of the country which produces them might not occasion any.

  6In countries ill cultivated, and therefore but thinly inhabited, the price of the wool and the hide bears always a much greater proportion to that of the whole beast, than in countries where, improvement and population being further advanced, there is more demand for butcher’s–meat. Mr. Hume observes, that in the Saxon times, the fleece was estimated at two–fifths of the value of the whole sheep, and that this was much above the proportion of its present estimation.1 In some provinces of Spain, I have been assured, the sheep is frequently killed merely for the sake of the fleece and the tallow. The carcase is often left to rot upon the ground, or to be devoured by beasts and birds of prey. If this sometimes happens even in Spain, it happens almost constantly in Chili, at Buenos Ayres, and in many other parts of Spanish America, where the horned cattle are almost constantly killed merely for the sake of the hide and the tallow.2 This too used to happen almost constantly in Hispaniola, while it was infested by the Buccaneers, and before the settlement, improvement, and populousness of the French plantations (which now extend round the coast of almost the whole western half of the island) had given some value to the cattle of the Spaniards, who still continue to possess, not only the eastern part of the coast, but the whole inland and mountainous part of the country.

  7 Though in the progress of improvement and population, the price of the whole beast necessarily rises, yet the price of the carcase is likely to be much more affected by this rise than that of the wool and the hide. The market for the carcase, being in the rude state of society confined always to the country which produces it, must necessarily be extended in proportion to the improvement and population of that country. But the market for the wool and the hides even of a barbarous country often extending to the whole commercial world, it can very seldom be enlarged in the same proportion. The state of the whole commercial world can seldom be much affected by the improvement of any particular country; and the market for such commodities may remain the same or very nearly the same, after such improvements, as before. It should, however, in the natural course of things rather upon the whole be somewhat extended in consequence of them. If the manufactures, especially, of which those commodities are the materials, should ever come to flourish in the country, the market, though it might not be much enlarged, would at least be brought much nearer to the place of growth than before; and the price of those materials might at least be increased by what had usually been the expence of transporting them to distant countries. Though it might not rise therefore in the same proportion as that of butcher’s–meat, it ought naturally to rise somewhat, and it ought certainly not to fall.

  8 In England, however, notwithstanding the flourishing state of its woollen manufacture, the price of English wool has fallen very considerably since the time of Edward III. There are many authentick records which demonstrate that during the reign of that prince (towards the middle of the fourteenth century, or about 1339) what was reckoned the moderate and reasonable price of the tod or twenty–eight pounds of English wool was not less than ten shillings of the money of those times* ,3 containing, at the rate of twenty–pence the ounce, six ounces of silver Tower–weight, equal to about thirty shillings of our present money. In the present times, one–and–twenty shillings the tod may be reckoned a good price for very good English wool. The money–price of wool, therefore, in the time of Edward III, was to its money–price in the present times as ten to seven. The superiority of its real price was still greater. At the rate of six shillings and eight–pence the quarter, ten shillings was in those antient times the price of twelve bushels of wheat. At the rate of twenty–eight shillings the quarter, one–and–twenty shillings is in the present times the price of six bushels only. The proportion between the real prices of antient and modern times, therefore, is as twelve to six, or as two to one. In those antient times a tod of wool would have purchased twice the quantity of subsistence which it will purchase at present; and consequently twice the quantity of labour, if the real recompence of labour had been the same in both periods.

  9This degradation both in the real and nominal value of wool, could never have happened in consequence of the natural course of things. It has accordingly been the effect of violence and artifice: First, of the absolute prohibition of exporting wool from England;4 Secondly, of the permission of importing it from ^bSpain^b duty free;5 Thirdly, of the prohibition of exporting it from Ireland to any other country but England.6 In consequence of these regulations, the market for English wool, instead of being somewhat extended in consequence of the improvement of England, has been confined to the home market, where the wool of ^cseveral^c other countries is allowed to come into competition with it, and where that of Ireland is forced into competition with it. As the woollen manufactures too of Ireland are fully as much discouraged as is consistent with justice and fair dealing, the Irish can work up but a small part of their own wool at home, and are, therefore, obliged to send a greater proportion of it to Great Britain, the only market they are allowed.7

  10I have not been able to find any such authentick records concerning the price of raw hides in antient times. Wool was commonly paid as a subsidy to the king, and its valuation in that subsidy ascertains, at least in some degree, what was its ordinary price. But this seems not to have been the case with raw hides. Fleetwood, however, from an account in 1425, between the prior of Burcester Oxford and one of his canons, gives us their price, at least as it was stated, upon that particular occasion; viz. five ox hides at twelve shillings; five cow hides at seven shillings and three pence; thirty–six ^dsheep^d skins of two years old at nine shillings; sixteen ^ecalves^e skins at two shillings.8 In 1425, twelve shillings contained about the same quantity of silver as four–and–twenty shillings of our present money. An ox hide, therefore, was in this account valued at the same quantity of silver as 4s. ⅘ths of our present money. Its nominal price was a good deal lower than at present. But at the rate of six shillings and eight–pence the quarter, twelve shillings would in those times have purchased fourteen bushels and four–fifths of a bushel of wheat, which, at three and six–pence the bushel, would in the present times cost 51s. 4d. An ox hide, therefore, would in those times have purchased as much corn as ten shillings and three–pence would purchase at present. Its real value was equal to ten shillings and three–pence of our present money. In those antient times, when the cattle were half starved during the greater part of the winter, we cannot suppose that they were of a very large size. An ox hide which weighs four stone of sixteen pounds averdupois, is not in the present times reckoned a bad one; and in those antient times would probably have been reckoned a very good one. But at half a crown the stone, which at this moment (February, 1773) I understand to be the common price, such a hide would at present cost only ten shillings. Though its nominal price, therefore, is higher in the present than it was in those antient times, its real price, the real quantity of subsistence which it will purchase or command, is rather somewhat lower. The price of cow hides, as stated in the above account, is nearly in the common proportion to that of ox hides. That of sheep skins is a good deal above it. They had probably been sold with the wool. That of calves skins, on the contrary, is greatly below it. In countries where the price of cattle is very low, the calves, which are not intended to be reared in order to keep up the stock, are generally killed very young; as was the case in Scotland twenty or thirty years ago. It saves the milk, which their price would not pay for. Their skins, therefore, are commonly good for little.

  11The price of raw hides is a good deal lower at present than it was a few years ago; owing probably to the taking off the duty upon seal skins, and to the allowing, for a limited time, the importation of raw hides from Ireland and from the plantations duty free, which was done in 1769.9 Take the whole of the present century at an average, their real price has probably been somewhat higher than it was in those antient times. The nature of the commodity renders it not quite so proper for being transported to distant markets as wool. It suffers more by keeping. A salted hide is reckoned inferior to a fresh one, and sells for a lower price. This circumstance must necessarily have some tendency to sink the price of raw hides produced in a country which does not manufacture them, but is obliged to export them; and comparatively to raise that of those produced in a country which does manufacture them. It must have some tendency to sink their price in a barbarous, and to raise it in an improved and manufacturing country. It must have had some tendency therefore to sink it in antient, and to raise it in modern times. Our tanners besides have not been quite so successful as our clothiers, in convincing the wisdom of the nation, that the safety of the commonwealth depends upon the prosperity of their particular manufacture.10 They have accordingly been much less favoured. The exportation of raw hides has, indeed, been prohibited, and declared a nuisance:11 but their importation from foreign countries has been subjected to a duty;12 and though this duty has been taken off from those of Ireland and the plantations (for the limited time of five years only), yet Ireland has not been confined to the market of Great Britain for the sale of its surplus hides, or of those which are not manufactured at home. The hides of common cattle have but within these few years been put among the enumerated commodities which the plantations can send nowhere but to the mother country; neither has the commerce of Ireland been in this case oppressed hitherto, in order to support the manufactures of Great Britain.

  12Whatever regulations tend to sink the price either of wool or of raw hides below what it naturally would be, must, in an improved and cultivated country, have some tendency to raise the price of butcher’s–meat. The price both of the great and small cattle, which are fed on improved and cultivated land, must be sufficient to pay the rent which the landlord, and the profit which the farmer has reason to expect from improved and cultivated land. If it is not, they will soon cease to feed them. Whatever part of this price, therefore, is not paid by the wool and the hide, must be paid by the carcase. The less there is paid for the one, the more must be paid for the other. In what manner this price is to be divided upon the different parts of the beast, is indifferent to the landlords and farmers, provided it is all paid to them. In an improved and cultivated country, therefore, their interest as landlords and farmers cannot be much affected by such regulations, though their interest as consumers may, by the rise in the price of provisions.13 It would be quite otherwise, however, in an unimproved and uncultivated country, where the greater part of the lands could be applied to no other purpose but the feeding of cattle, and where the wool and the hide made the principal part of the value of those cattle. Their interest as landlords and farmers would in this case be very deeply affected by such regulations, and their interest as consumers very little. The fall in the price of the wool and the hide, would not in this case raise the price of the carcase; because the greater part of the lands of the country being applicable to no other purpose but the feeding of cattle, the same number would still continue to be fed. The same quantity of butcher’s–meat would still come to market. The demand for it would be no greater than before. Its price, therefore, would be the same as before. The whole price of cattle would fall, and along with it both the rent and the profit of all those lands of which cattle was the principal produce, that is, of the greater part of the lands of the country. The perpetual prohibition of the exportation of wool, which is commonly, but very falsely, ascribed to Edward III,14 would, in the then circumstances of the country, have been the most destructive regulation which could well have been thought of. It would not only have reduced the actual value of the greater part of the lands of the kingdom, but by reducing the price of the most important species of small cattle, it would have retarded very much its subsequent improvement.

  13The wool of Scotland fell very considerably in its price in consequence of the union with England, by which it was excluded from the great market of Europe, and confined to the narrow one of Great Britain.15 The value of the greater part of the lands in the southern counties of Scotland, which are chiefly a sheep country, would have been very deeply affected by this event, had not the rise in the price of butcher’s–meat fully compensated the fall in the price of wool.

  14As the efficacy of human industry, in increasing the quantity either of wool or of raw hides, is limited, so far as it depends upon the produce of the country where it is exerted; so it is uncertain so far as it depends upon the produce of other countries. It so far depends, not so much upon the quantity which they produce, as upon that which they do not manufacture; and upon the restraints which they may or may not think proper to impose upon the exportation of this sort of rude produce. These circumstances, as they are altogether independent of domestick industry, so they necessarily render the efficacy of its efforts more or less uncertain. In multiplying this sort of rude produce, therefore, the efficacy of human industry is not only limited, but uncertain.

  15In multiplying another very important sort of rude produce, the quantity of fish that is brought to market, it is likewise both limited and uncertain. It is limited by the local situation of the country, by the proximity or distance of its different provinces from the sea, by the number of its lakes and rivers, and by what may be called the fertility or barrenness of those seas, lakes and rivers, as to this sort of rude produce. As population increases, as the annual produce of the land and labour of the country grows greater and greater, there come to be more buyers of fish, and those buyers too have a greater quantity and variety of other goods, or, what is the same thing, the price of a greater quantity and variety of other goods, to buy with. But it will generally be impossible to supply the great and extended market without employing a quantity of labour greater than in proportion to what had been requisite for supplying the narrow and confined one. A market which, from requiring only one thousand, comes to require annually ten thousand ton of fish, can seldom be supplied without employing more than ten times the quantity of labour which had before been sufficient to supply it. The fish must generally be sought for at a greater distance, larger vessels must be employed, and more expensive machinery of every kind made use of. The real price of this commodity, therefore, naturally rises in the progress of improvement. It has accordingly done so, I believe, more or less in every country.

  16Though the success of a particular day’s fishing may be a very uncertain matter, yet, the local situation of the country being supposed, the general efficacy of industry in bringing a certain quantity of fish to market, taking the course of a year, or of several years together, it may perhaps be thought, is certain enough; and it, no doubt, is so. As it depends more, however, upon the local situation of the country, than upon the state of its wealth and industry; as upon this account it may in different countries be the same in very different periods of improvement, and very different in the same period; its connection with the state of improvement is uncertain, and it is of this sort of uncertainty that I am here speaking.

  17In increasing the quantity of the different minerals and metals which are drawn from the bowels of the earth, that of the more precious ones particularly, the efficacy of human industry seems not to be limited, but to be altogether uncertain.

  18The quantity of the precious metals which is to be found in any country is not limited by any thing in its local situation, such as the fertility or barrenness of its own mines. Those metals frequently abound in countries which possess no mines. Their quantity in every particular country seems to depend upon two different circumstances; first, upon its power of purchasing, upon the state of its industry, upon the annual produce of its land and labour, in consequence of which it can afford to employ a greater or a smaller quantity of labour and subsistence in bringing or purchasing such superfluities as gold and silver, either from its own mines or from those of other countries; and, secondly, upon the fertility or barrenness of the mines which may happen at any particular time to supply the commercial world with those metals. The quantity of those metals in the countries most remote from the mines, must be more or less affected by this fertility or barrenness, on account of the easy and cheap transportation of those metals, of their small bulk and great value. Their quantity in China and Indostan must have been more or less affected by the abundance of the mines of America.

  19So far as their quantity in any particular country depends upon the former of those two circumstances (the power of purchasing), their real price, like that of all other luxuries and superfluities, is likely to rise with the wealth and improvement of the country, and to fall with its poverty and depression. Countries which have a great quantity of labour and subsistence to spare, can afford to purchase any particular quantity of those metals at the expence of a greater quantity of labour and subsistence, than countries which have less to spare.

  20So far as their quantity in any particular country depends upon the latter of those two circumstances (the fertility or barrenness of the mines which happen to supply the commercial world) their real price, the real quantity of labour and subsistence which they will purchase or exchange for, will, no doubt, sink more or less in proportion to the fertility, and rise in proportion to the barrenness of those mines.

  21The fertility or barrenness of the mines, however, which may happen at any particular time to supply the commercial world, is a circumstance which, it is evident, may have no sort of connection with the state of industry in a particular country. It seems even to have no very necessary connection with that of the world in general. As arts and commerce, indeed, gradually spread themselves over a greater and a greater part of the earth, the search for new mines, being extended over a wider surface, may have somewhat a better chance for being successful, than when confined within narrower bounds. The discovery of new mines, however, as the old ones come to be gradually exhausted, is a matter of the greatest uncertainty, and such as no human skill or industry can ensure. All indications, it is acknowledged, are doubtful, and the actual discovery and successful working of a new mine can alone ascertain the reality of its value, or even of its existence. In this search there seem to be no certain limits either to the possible success, or to the possible disappointment of human industry. In the course of a century or two, it is possible that new mines may be discovered more fertile than any that have ever yet been known; and it is just equally possible that the most fertile mine then known may be more barren than any that was wrought before the discovery of the mines of America. Whether the one or the other of those two events may happen to take place, is of very little importance to the real wealth and prosperity of the world, to the real value of the annual produce of the land and labour of mankind. Its nominal value, the quantity of gold and silver by which this annual produce could be expressed or represented, would, no doubt, be very different; but its real value, the real quantity of labour which it could purchase or command, would be precisely the same. A shilling might in the one case represent no more labour than a penny does at present; and a penny in the other might represent as much as a shilling does now. But in the one case he who had a shilling in his pocket, would be no richer than he who has a penny at present; and in the other he who had a penny would be just as rich as he who has a shilling now. The cheapness and abundance of gold and silver plate, would be the sole advantage which the world could derive from the one event, and the dearness and scarcity of those trifling superfluities the only inconveniency it could suffer from the other.

  Conclusion of the Digression concerning the Variations in the Value of Silver

  1The greater part of the writers who have collected the money prices of things in antient times, seem to have considered the low money price of corn, and of goods in general, or, in other words, the high value of gold and silver, as a proof, not only of the scarcity of those metals, but of the poverty and barbarism of the country at the time when it took place. This notion is connected with the system of political œconomy which represents national wealth as consisting in the abundance, and national poverty in the scarcity of gold and silver; a system which I shall endeavour to explain and examine at great length in the fourth book of this enquiry. I shall only observe at present, that the high value of the precious metals can be no proof of the poverty or barbarism of any particular country at the time when it took place. It is a proof only of the barrenness of the mines which happened at that time to supply the commercial world. A poor country, as it cannot afford to buy more, so it can as little afford to pay dearer for gold and silver than a rich one; and the value of those metals, therefore, is not likely to be higher in the former than in the latter. In China, a country much richer than any part of Europe,1 the value of the precious metals is much higher than in any part of Europe. As the wealth of Europe, indeed, has increased greatly since the discovery of the mines of America, so the value of gold and silver has gradually diminished. This diminution of their value, however, has not been owing to the increase of the real wealth of Europe, of the annual produce of its land and labour, but to the accidental discovery of more abundant mines than any that were known before. The increase of the quantity of gold and silver in Europe, and the increase of its manufactures and agriculture, are two events which, though they have happened nearly about the same time, yet have arisen from very different causes, and have scarce any natural connection with one another. The one has arisen from a mere accident, in which neither prudence nor policy either had or could have any share: The other from the fall of the feudal system, and from the establishment of a government which afforded to industry, the only encouragement which it requires, some tolerable security that it shall enjoy the fruits of its own labour.2 Poland, where the feudal system still continues to take place, is at this day as beggarly a country as it was before the discovery of America.3 The money price of corn, however, has risen; the real value of the precious metals has fallen in Poland, in the same manner as in other parts of Europe. Their quantity, therefore, must have increased there as in other places, and nearly in the same proportion to the annual produce of its land and labour. This increase of the quantity of those metals, however, has not, it seems, increased that annual produce, has neither improved the manufactures and agriculture of the country, nor mended the circumstances of its inhabitants. Spain and Portugal, the countries which possess the mines, are, after Poland, perhaps, the two most beggarly countries in Europe. The value of the precious metals, however, must be lower in Spain and Portugal than in any other part of Europe; as they come from those countries to all other parts of Europe, loaded, not only with a freight and an insurance, but with the expence of smuggling, their exportation being either prohibited, or subjected to a duty. In proportion to the annual produce of the land and labour, therefore, their quantity must be greater in those countries than in any other part of Europe: Those countries, however, are poorer than the greater part of Europe. Though the feudal system has been abolished in Spain and Portugal, it has not been succeeded by a much better.4

  2As the low value of gold and silver, therefore, is no proof of the wealth and flourishing state of the country where it takes place; so neither is their high value, or the low money price either of goods in general, or of corn in particular, any proof of its poverty and barbarism.5

  3But though the low money price either of goods in general, or of corn in particular, be no proof of the poverty or barbarism of the times, the low money price of some particular sorts of goods, such as cattle, poultry, game of all kinds, ^a&c.^a in proportion to that of corn, is a most decisive one. It clearly demonstrates, first, their great abundance in proportion to that of corn, and consequently the great extent of the land which they occupied in proportion to what was occupied by corn; and, secondly, the low value of this land in proportion to that of corn land, and consequently the uncultivated and unimproved state of the far greater part of the lands of the country. It clearly demonstrates that the stock and population of the country did not bear the same proportion to the extent of its territory, which they commonly do in civilized countries, and that society was at that time, and in that country, but in its infancy. From the high or low money price either of goods in general, or of corn in particular, we can infer only that the mines which at that time happened to supply the commercial world with gold and silver, were fertile or barren, not that the country was rich or poor. But from the high or low money–price of some sorts of goods in proportion to that of others, we can infer with a degree of probability that approaches almost to certainty, that it was rich or poor, that the greater part of its lands were improved or unimproved, and that it was either in a more or less barbarous state, or in a more or less civilized one.

  4Any rise in the money price of goods which proceeded altogether from the degradation of the value of silver, would affect all sorts of goods equally, and raise their price universally a third, or a fourth, or a fifth part higher, according as silver happened to lose a third, or a fourth, or a fifth part of its former value.6 But the rise in the price of provisions, which has been the subject of so much reasoning and conversation, does not affect all sorts of provisions equally. Taking the course of the present century at an average, the price of corn, it is acknowledged, even by those who account for this rise by the degradation of the value of silver, has risen much less than that of some other sorts of provisions. The rise in the price of those other sorts of provisions, therefore, cannot be owing altogether to the degradation of the value of silver. Some other causes must be taken into the account, and those which have been above assigned, will, perhaps, without having recourse to the supposed degradation of the value of silver, sufficiently explain this rise in those particular sorts of provisions of which the price has actually risen in proportion to that of corn.

  5As to the price of corn itself, it has, during the sixty–four first years of the present century, and before the late extraordinary course of bad seasons, been somewhat lower than it was during the sixty–four last years of the preceding century. This fact is attested, not only by the accounts of Windsor market, but by the publick fiars7 of all the different counties of Scotland, and by the accounts of several different markets in France, which have been collected with great diligence and fidelity by Mr. Messance, and by Mr. Dupré de St. Maur.8 The evidence is more compleat than could well have been expected in a matter which is naturally so very difficult to be ascertained.

  6As to the high price of corn during these last ten or twelve years, it can be sufficiently accounted for from the badness of the seasons, without supposing any degradation in the value of silver.

  7The opinion, therefore, that silver is continually sinking in its value, seems not to be founded upon any good observations, either upon the prices of corn, or upon those of other provisions.

  8The same quantity of silver, it may, perhaps, be said, will in the present times, even according to the account which has been here given, purchase a much smaller quantity of several sorts of provisions than it would have done during some part of the last century; and to ascertain whether this change be owing to a rise in the value of those goods, or to a fall in the value of silver, is only to establish a vain and useless distinction, which can be of no sort of service to the man who has only a certain quantity of silver to go to market with, or a certain fixed revenue in money. I certainly do not pretend that the knowledge of this distinction will enable him to buy cheaper. It may not, however, upon that account be altogether useless.

  9It may be of some use to the publick by affording an easy proof of the prosperous condition of the country. If the rise in the price of some sorts of provisions be owing altogether to a fall in the value of silver, it is owing to a circumstance from which nothing can be inferred but the fertility of the American mines. The real wealth of the country, the annual produce of its land and labour, may, notwithstanding this circumstance, be either gradually declining, as in Portugal and Poland; or gradually advancing, as in most other parts of Europe. But if this rise in the price of some sorts of provisions be owing to a rise in the real value of the land which produces them, to its increased fertility; or, in consequence of more extended improvement and good cultivation, to its having been rendered fit for producing corn; it is owing to a circumstance which indicates in the clearest manner the prosperous and advancing state of the country. The land constitutes by far the greatest, the most important, and the most durable part of the wealth of every extensive country. It may surely be of some use, or, at least, it may give some satisfaction to the Publick, to have so decisive a proof of the increasing value of by far the greatest, the most important, and the most durable part of its wealth.

  10It may too be of some use to the Publick in regulating the pecuniary reward of some of its inferior servants. If this rise in the price of some sorts of provisions be owing to a fall in the value of silver, their pecuniary reward, provided it was not too large before, ought certainly to be augmented in proportion to the extent of this fall. If it is not augmented, their real recompence will evidently be so much diminished. But if this rise of price is owing to the increased value, in consequence of the improved fertility of the land which produces such provisions, it becomes a much nicer matter to judge either in what proportion any pecuniary reward ought to be augmented, or whether it ought to be augmented at all. The extension of improvement and cultivation, as it necessarily raises more or less, in proportion to the price of corn, that of every sort of animal food, so it as necessarily lowers that of, I believe, every sort of vegetable food. It raises the price of animal food; because a great part of the land which produces it, being rendered fit for producing corn, must afford to the landlord and farmer the rent and profit of corn–land. It lowers the price of vegetable food; because, by increasing the fertility of the land, it increases its abundance. The improvements of agriculture too introduce many sorts of vegetable food, which, requiring less land and not more labour than corn, come much cheaper to market. Such are potatoes9 and maize, or what is called Indian corn, the two most important improvements which the agriculture of Europe, perhaps, which Europe itself, has received from the great extension of its commerce and navigation. Many sorts of vegetable food, besides, which in the rude state of agriculture are confined to the kitchen–garden, and raised only by the spade, come in its improved state to be introduced into common fields, and to be raised by the plough: such as turnips, carrots, cabbages, &c. If in the progress of improvement, therefore, the real price of one species of food necessarily rises, that of another as necessarily falls, and it becomes a matter of more nicety to judge how far the rise in the one may be compensated by the fall in the other.10 When the real price of butcher’s–meat has once got to its height (which, with regard to every sort, except, perhaps, that of hogs flesh, it seems to have done through a great part of England, more than a century ago), any rise which can afterwards happen in that of any other sort of animal food, cannot much affect the circumstances of the inferior ranks of people. The circumstances of the poor through a great part of England cannot surely be so much distressed by any rise in the price of poultry, fish, wild–fowl, or venison, as they must be relieved by the fall in that of potatoes.

  11In the present season of scarcity the high price of corn no doubt distresses the poor. But in times of moderate plenty, when corn is at its ordinary or average price, the natural rise in the price of any other sort of rude produce cannot much affect them. They suffer more, perhaps, by the artificial rise which has been occasioned by taxes in the price of some manufactured commodities; as of salt, soap, leather, candles, malt, beer, and ale, &c.11

  Effects of the Progress of Improvement upon the real Price of Manufactures

  1It is the natural effect of improvement, however, to diminish gradually the real price of almost all manufactures. That of the manufacturing workmanship diminishes, perhaps, in all of them without exception. In consequence of better machinery, of greater dexterity, and of a more proper division and distribution of work, all of which are the natural effects of improvement, a much smaller quantity of labour becomes requisite for executing any particular piece of work; and though, in consequence of the flourishing circumstances of the society, the real price of labour should rise very considerably, yet the great diminution of the quantity will generally much more than compensate the greatest rise which can happen in the price.1

  2There are, indeed, a few manufactures, in which the necessary rise in the real price of the rude materials will more than compensate all the advantages which improvement can introduce into the execution of the work. In carpenters and joiners work, and in the coarser sort of cabinet work, the necessary rise in the real price of barren timber, in consequence of the improvement of land, will more than compensate all the advantages which can be derived from the best machinery, the greatest dexterity, and the most proper division and distribution of work.

  3 But in all cases in which the real price of the rude materials either does not rise at all, or does not rise very much, that of the manufactured commodity sinks very considerably.

  4This diminution of price has, in the course of the present and preceding century, been most remarkable in those manufactures of which the materials are the coarser metals. A better movement of a watch, than about the middle of the last century could have been bought for twenty pounds, may now perhaps be had for twenty shillings. In the work of cutlers and locksmiths, in all the toys2 which are made of the coarser metals, and in all those goods which are commonly known by the name of Birmingham and Sheffield ware, there has been, during the same period, a very great reduction of price, though not altogether so great as in watch–work. It has, however, been sufficient to astonish the workmen of every other part of Europe, who in many cases acknowledge that they can produce no work of equal goodness for double, or even for triple the price. There are perhaps no manufactures in which the division of labour can be carried further, or in which the machinery employed admits of a greater variety of improvements, than those of which the materials are the coarser metals.

  5In the clothing manufacture there has, during the same period, been no such sensible reduction of price. The price of superfine cloth, I have been assured, on the contrary, has, within these five–and–twenty or thirty years, risen somewhat in proportion to its quality; owing, it was said, to a considerable rise in the price of material, which consists altogether of Spanish wool. That of the Yorkshire cloth, which is made altogether of English wool, is said indeed, during the course of the present century, to have fallen a good deal in proportion to its quality. Quality, however, is so very disputable a matter, that I look upon all ^ainformation^a of this kind as somewhat uncertain. In the clothing manufacture, the division of labour is nearly the same now as it was a century ago, and the machinery employed is not very different. There may, however, have been some small improvements in both, which may have occasioned some reduction of price.3

  6^bBut the reduction^b will appear much more sensible and undeniable, if we compare the price of this manufacture in the present times with what it was in a much remoter period, towards the end of the fifteenth century, when the labour was probably much less subdivided, and the machinery employed much more imperfect than it is at present.

  7In 1487, being the 4th of Henry VII.4 it was enacted, that “whosoever shall sell by retail a broad yard of the finest scarlet grained, or of other grained cloth of the finest making, above sixteen shillings, shall forfeit forty shillings for every yard so sold.” Sixteen shillings, therefore, containing about the same quantity of silver as four–and–twenty shillings of our present money, was, at that time, reckoned not an unreasonable price for a yard of the finest cloth; and as this is a sumptuary law, such cloth, it is probable, had usually been sold somewhat dearer. A guinea may be reckoned the highest price in the present times. Even though the quality of the cloths, therefore, should be supposed equal, and that of the present times is most probably much superior, yet, even upon this supposition, the money price of the finest cloth appears to have been considerably reduced since the end of the fifteenth century. But its real price has been much more reduced. Six shillings and eight–pence was then, and long afterwards, reckoned the average price of a quarter of wheat. Sixteen shillings, therefore, was the price of two quarters and more than three bushels of wheat. Valuing a quarter of wheat in the present times at eight–and–twenty shillings, the real price of a yard of fine cloth must, in those times, have been equal to at least three pounds six shillings and sixpence of our present money. The man who bought it must have parted with the command of a quantity of labour and subsistence equal to what that sum would purchase in the present times.

  8The reduction in the real price of the coarse manufacture, though considerable, has not been so great as in that of the fine.

  9In 1463, being the 3d of Edward IV.5 it was enacted, that “no servant in husbandry, nor common labourer, nor servant to any artificer inhabiting out of a city or burgh, shall use or wear in their cloathing any cloth above two shillings the broad yard.” In the 3d of Edward IV. two shillings contained very nearly the same quantity of silver as four of our present money. But the Yorkshire cloth which is now sold at four shillings the yard, is probably much superior to any that was then made for the wearing of the very poorest order of common servants. Even the money price of their cloathing, therefore, may, in proportion to the quality, be somewhat cheaper in the present than it was in those antient times. The real price is certainly a good deal cheaper. Ten pence was then reckoned what is called the moderate and reasonable price of a bushel of wheat. Two shillings, therefore, was the price of two bushels and near two pecks of wheat, which in the present times, at three shillings and sixpence the bushel, would be worth eight shillings and nine–pence. For a yard of this cloth the poor servant must have parted with the power of purchasing a quantity of subsistence equal to what eight shillings and nine–pence would purchase in the present times. This is a sumptuary law too, restraining the luxury and extravagance of the poor. Their cloathing, therefore, had commonly been much more expensive.

  10The same order of people are, by the same law, prohibited from wearing hose, of which the price should exceed fourteen–pence the pair, equal to about eight–and–twenty pence of our present money. But fourteen–pence was in those times the price of a bushel and near two pecks of wheat; which, in the present times, at three and sixpence the bushel, would cost five shillings and three–pence. We should in the present times consider this as a very high price for a pair of stockings to a servant of the poorest and lowest order. He must, however, in those times have paid what was really equivalent to this price for them.

  11In the time of Edward IV. the art of knitting stockings was probably not known in any part of Europe. Their hose were made of common cloth, which may have been one of the causes of their dearness. The first person that wore stockings in England is said to have been Queen Elizabeth. She received them as a present from the Spanish ambassador.

  12Both in the coarse and in the fine woollen manufacture, the machinery employed was much more imperfect in those antient, than it is in the present times.6 It has since received three very capital improvements, besides, probably, many smaller ones of which it may be difficult to ascertain either the number or the importance. The three capital improvements are; first, The exchange of the rock and spindle for the spinning–wheel, which, with the same quantity of labour, will perform more than double the quantity of work. Secondly, the use of several very ^cvery^c ngenious machines which facilitate and abridge in a still greater proportion the winding of the worsted and woollen yarn, or the proper arrangement of the warp and woof before they are put into the loom; an operation which, previous to the invention of those machines, must have been extremely tedious and troublesome. Thirdly, The employment of the fulling mill for thickening the cloth, instead of treading it in water. Neither wind nor water mills of any kind were known in England so early as the beginning of the sixteenth century, nor, so far as I know, in any other part of Europe north of the Alps.7 They have been introduced into Italy some time before.

  13The consideration of these circumstances may, perhaps, in some measure explain to us why the real price both of the coarse and of the fine manufacture, was so much higher in those antient, than it is in the present times. It cost a greater quantity of labour to bring the goods to market. When they were brought thither, therefore, they must have purchased or exchanged for the price of a greater quantity.

  14The coarse manufacture probably was, in those antient times, carried on in England, in the same manner as it always has been in countries where arts and manufactures are in their infancy. It was probably a household manufacture, in which every different part of the work was occasionally performed by all the different members of almost every private family; but so as to be their work only when they had nothing else to do, and not to be the principal business from which any of them derived the greater part of their subsistence. The work which is performed in this manner, it has already been observed,8 comes always much cheaper to market than that which is the principal or sole fund of the workman’s subsistence. The fine manufacture, on the other hand, was not in those times carried on in England, but in the rich and commercial country of Flanders; and it was probably conducted then, in the same manner as now, by people who derived the whole, or the principal part of their subsistence from it. It was besides a foreign manufacture, and must have paid some duty, the antient custom of tonnage and poundage at least, to the king. This duty, indeed, would not probably be very great. It was not then the policy of Europe to restrain, by high duties, the importation of foreign manufactures, but rather to encourage it, in order that merchants might be enabled to supply, at as easy a rate as possible, the great men with the conveniences and luxuries which they wanted, and which the industry of their own country could not afford them.9

  15The consideration of these circumstances may perhaps in some measure explain to us why, in those antient times, the real price of the coarse manufacture was, in proportion to that of the fine, so much lower than in the present times.

  conclusionof thechapter

  1I shall conclude this very long chapter with observing1 that every improvement in the circumstances of the society tends either directly or indirectly to raise the real rent of land, to increase the real wealth of the landlord, his power of purchasing the labour, or the produce of the labour of other people.

  2The extension of improvement and cultivation tends to raise it directly. The landlord’s share of the produce necessarily increases with the increase of the produce.2

  3That rise in the real price of those parts of the rude produce of land, which is first the effect of extended improvement and cultivation, and afterwards the cause of their being still further extended, the rise in the price of cattle, for example, tends too to raise the rent of land directly, and in a still greater proportion. The real value of the landlord’s share, his real command of the labour of other people, not only rises with the real value of the produce, but the proportion of his share to the whole produce rises with it. That produce, after the rise in its real price, requires no more labour to collect it than before. A smaller proportion of it will, therefore, be sufficient to replace, with the ordinary profit, the stock which employs that labour. A greater proportion of it must, consequently, belong to the landlord.

  4 All those improvements in the productive powers of labour, which tend directly to reduce the real price of manufactures, tend indirectly to raise the real rent of land. The landlord exchanges that part of his rude produce, which is over and above his own consumption, or what comes to the same thing, the price of that part of it, for manufactured produce. Whatever reduces the real price of the latter, raises that of the former. An equal quantity of the former becomes thereby equivalent to a greater quantity of the latter; and the landlord is enabled to purchase a greater quantity of the conveniences, ornaments, or luxuries, which he has occasion for.

  5Every increase in the real wealth of the society, every increase in the quantity of useful labour employed within it, tends indirectly to raise the real rent of land. A certain proportion of this labour naturally goes to the land. A greater number of men and cattle are employed in its cultivation, the produce increases with the increase of the stock which is thus employed in raising it, and the rent increases with the produce.

  6The contrary circumstances, the neglect of cultivation and improvement, the fall in the real price of any part of the rude produce of land, the rise in the real price of manufactures from the decay of manufacturing art and industry, the declension of the real wealth of the society, all tend, on the other hand, to lower the real rent of land, to reduce the real wealth of the landlord, to diminish his power of purchasing either the labour, or the produce of the labour of other people.

  7The whole annual produce of the land and labour of every country, or what comes to the same thing, the whole price of that annual produce, naturally divides itself, it has already been observed,3 into three parts; the rent of land, the wages of labour, and the profits of stock; and constitutes a revenue to three different orders of people; to those who live by rent, to those who live by wages, and to those who live by profit. These are the three great, original and constituent orders of every civilized society, from whose revenue that of every other order is ultimately derived.

  8The interest of the first of those three great orders, it appears from what has been just now said, is strictly and inseparably connected with the general interest of the society. Whatever either promotes or obstructs the one, necessarily promotes or obstructs the other. When the publick deliberates concerning any regulation of commerce or police, the proprietors of land never can mislead it, with a view to promote the interest of their own particular order; at least, if they have any tolerable knowledge of that interest.4 They are, indeed, too often defective in this tolerable knowledge. They are the only one of the three orders whose revenue costs them neither labour nor care, but comes to them, as it were, of its own accord, and independent of any plan or project of their own.5 That indolence, which is the natural effect of the ease and security of their situation, renders them too often, not only ignorant, but incapable of that application of mind which is necessary in order to foresee and understand the consequences of any publick regulation.6

  9The interest of the second order, that of those who live by wages, is as strictly connected with the interest of the society as that of the first. The wages of the labourer, it has already been shewn,7 are never so high as when the demand for labour is continually rising, or when the quantity employed is every year increasing considerably. When this real wealth of the society becomes stationary, his wages are soon reduced to what is barely enough to enable him to bring up a family, or to continue the race of labourers.8 When the society declines, they fall even below this. The order of proprietors may, perhaps, gain more by the prosperity of the society, than that of labourers: but there is no order that suffers so cruelly from its decline. But though the interest of the labourer is strictly connected with that of the society, he is incapable either of comprehending that interest, or of understanding its connection with his own. His condition leaves him no time to receive the necessary information, and his education and habits are commonly such as to render him unfit to judge even though he was fully informed.9 In the publick deliberations, therefore, his voice is little heard and less regarded, except upon some particular occasions, when his clamour is animated, set on, and supported by his employers, not for his, but their own particular purposes.

  10His employers constitute the third order, that of those who live by profit. It is the stock that is employed for the sake of profit, which puts into motion the greater part of the useful labour of every society. The plans and projects of the employers of stock regulate and direct all the most important operations of labour, and profit is the end proposed by all those plans and projects. But the rate of profit does not, like rent and wages, rise with the prosperity, and fall with the declension of the society. On the contrary, it is naturally low in rich, and high in poor countries, and it is always highest in the countries which are going fastest to ruin. The interest of this third order, therefore, has not the same connection with the general interest of the society as that of the other two.10 Merchants and master manufacturers are, in this order, the two classes of people who commonly employ the largest capitals, and who by their wealth draw to themselves the greatest share of the publick consideration. As during their whole lives they are engaged in plans and projects, they have frequently more acuteness of understanding than the greater part of country gentlemen. As their thoughts, however, are commonly exercised rather about the interest of their own particular branch of business, than about that of the society, their judgment, even when given with the greatest candour (which it has not been upon every occasion) is much more to be depended upon with regard to the former of those two objects, than with regard to the latter. Their superiority over the country gentleman is, not so much in their knowledge of the publick interest, as in their having a better knowledge of their own interest than he has of his. It is by this superior knowledge of their own interest that they have frequently imposed upon his generosity, and persuaded him to give up both his own interest and that of the publick, from a very simple but honest conviction, that their interest, and not his, was the interest of the publick.11 The interest of the dealers, however, in any particular branch of trade or manufactures, is always in some respects different from, and even opposite to, that of the publick. To widen the market and to narrow the competition, is always the interest of the dealers. To widen the market may frequently be agreeable enough to the interest of the publick; but to narrow the competition must always be against it, and can serve only to enable the dealers, by raising their profits above what they naturally would be, to levy, for their own benefit, an absurd tax upon the rest of their fellow–citizens. The proposal of any new law or regulation of commerce which comes from this order, ought always to be listened to with great precaution, and ought never to be adopted till after having been long and carefully examined, not only with the most scrupulous, but with the most suspicious attention. It comes from an order of men, whose interest is never exactly the same with that of the publick, who have generally an interest to deceive and even to oppress the publick, and who accordingly have, upon many occasions, both deceived and oppressed it.12

  

  13

  14

  

  15

  16

  17

  

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  

  ^a

  23

  

  ^b

  ^c

  ^d

  ^e

  ^f

  24

  25

  Prices of the Quarter of nine Bushels of the best or highest priced Wheat at Windsor Market, on Lady–Day and Michaelmas, from 1595 to 1764, both inclusive; the Price of each Year being the medium between the highest Prices of those Two Market Days.26

  

  27

  

  BOOK II

  Of the Nature, Accumulation, and Employment of Stock

  Introduction

  1In that rude state of society in which there is no division of labour, in which exchanges are seldom made, and in which every man provides every thing for himself, it is not necessary that any stock should be accumulated or stored up beforehand in order to carry on the business of the society. Every man endeavours to supply by his own industry his own occasional wants as they occur. When he is hungry, he goes to the forest to hunt; when his coat is worn out, he cloaths himself with the skin of the first large animal he kills: and when his hut begins to go to ruin, he repairs it, as well as he can, with the trees and the turf that are nearest it.

  2But when the division of labour has once been thoroughly introduced, the produce of a man’s own labour can supply but a very small part of his occasional wants.1 The far greater part of them are supplied by the produce of other mens labour, which he purchases with the produce, or, what is the same thing, with the price of the produce of his own. But this purchase cannot be made till such time as the produce of his own labour has not only been compleated, but sold. A stock of goods of different kinds, therefore, must be stored up somewhere sufficient to maintain him, and to supply him with the materials and tools of his work till such time, at least, as both these events can be brought about.2 A weaver cannot apply himself entirely to his peculiar business, unless there is beforehand stored up somewhere, either in his own possession or in that of some other person, a stock sufficient to maintain him, and to supply him with the materials and tools of his work, till he has not only compleated, but sold his web. This accumulation must, evidently, be previous to his applying his industry for so long a time to such a peculiar business.

  3As the accumulation of stock must, in the nature of things, be previous to the division of labour, so labour can be more and more subdivided ^ain proportion only^a as stock is previously more and more accumulated. The quantity of materials which the same number of people can work up, increases in a great proportion as labour comes to be more and more subdivided; and as the operations of each workman are gradually reduced to a greater degree of simplicity, a variety of new machines come to be invented for facilitating and abridging those operations. As the division of labour advances, therefore, in order to give constant employment to an equal number of workmen, an equal stock of provisions, and a greater stock of materials and tools than what would have been necessary in a ruder state of things, must be accumulated beforehand. But the number of workmen in every branch of business generally increases with the division of labour in that branch, or rather it is the increase of their number which enables them to class and subdivide themselves in this manner.

  4As the accumulation of stock is previously necessary for carrying on this great improvement in the productive powers of labour, so that accumulation naturally leads to this improvement. The person who employs his stock in maintaining labour, necessarily wishes to employ it in such a manner as to produce as great a quantity of work as possible. He endeavours, therefore, both to make among his workmen the most proper distribution of employment, and to furnish them with the best machines which he can either invent or afford to purchase.3 His abilities in both these respects are generally in proportion to the extent of his stock, or to the number of people whom it can employ. The quantity of industry, therefore, not only increases in every country with the increase of the stock which employs it, but, in consequence of that increase, the same quantity of industry produces a much greater quantity of work.

  5Such are in general the effects of the increase of stock upon industry and its productive powers.

  6In the following book I have endeavoured to explain the nature of stock, the effects of its accumulation into capitals of different kinds, and the effects of the different employments of those capitals. This book is divided into five chapters. In the first chapter, I have endeavoured to show what are the different parts or branches into which the stock, either of an individual, or of a great society, naturally divides itself. In the second, I have endeavoured to explain the nature and operation of money considered as a particular branch of the general stock of the society. The stock which is accumulated into a capital, may either be employed by the person to whom it belongs, or it may be lent to some other person. In the third and fourth chapters, I have endeavoured to examine the manner in which it operates in both these situations. The fifth and last chapter treats of the different effects which the different employments of capital immediately produce upon the quantity both of national industry, and of the annual produce of land and labour.

  CHAPTER I

  Of the Division of Stock

  1When the stock which a man possesses is no more than sufficient to maintain him for a few days or a few weeks, he seldom thinks of deriving any revenue from it. He consumes it as sparingly as he can, and endeavours by his labour to acquire something which may supply its place before it be consumed altogether. His revenue is, in this case, derived from his labour only. This is the state of the greater part of the labouring poor in all countries.

  2But when he possesses stock sufficient to maintain him for months or years, he naturally endeavours to derive a revenue from the greater part of it; reserving only so much for his immediate consumption as may maintain him till this revenue begins to come in. His whole stock, therefore, is distinguished into two parts. That part which, he expects, is to afford him this revenue, is called his capital. The other is that which supplies his immediate consumption; and which consists either, first, in that portion of his whole stock which was originally reserved for this purpose; or, secondly, in his revenue, from whatever source derived, as it gradually comes in; or, thirdly, in such things as had been purchased by either of these in former years, and which are not yet entirely consumed; such as a stock of cloaths, household furniture, and the like. In one, or other, or all of these three articles, consists the stock which men commonly reserve for their own immediate consumption.

  3There are two different ways in which a capital may be employed so as to yield a revenue or profit to its employer.

  4First, it may be employed in raising, manufacturing, or purchasing goods, and selling them again with a profit. The capital employed in this manner yields no revenue or profit to its employer, while it either remains in his possession, or continues in the same shape. The goods of the merchant yield him no revenue or profit till he sells them for money, and the money yields him as little till it is again exchanged for goods. His capital is continually going from him in one shape, and returning to him in another, and it is only by means of such circulation, or successive exchanges, that it can yield him any profit. Such capitals, therefore, may very properly be called circulating capitals.

  5Secondly, it may be employed in the improvement of land, in the purchase of useful machines and instruments of trade, or in suchlike things as yield a revenue or profit without changing masters, or circulating any further. Such capitals, therefore, may very properly be called fixed capitals.

  6Different occupations require very different proportions between the fixed and circulating capitals employed in them.

  7The capital of a merchant, for example, is altogether a circulating capital. He has occasion for no machines or instruments of trade, unless his shop, or warehouse, be considered as such.

  8Some part of the capital of every master artificer or manufacturer must be fixed in the instruments of his trade. This part, however, is very small in some, and very great in others. A master taylor requires no other instruments of trade but a parcel of needles. Those of the master shoemaker are a little, though but a very little, more expensive. Those of the weaver rise a good deal above those of the shoemaker. The far greater part of the capital of all such master artificers, however, is circulated, either in the wages of their workmen, or in the price of their materials, and repaid with a profit by the price of the work.1

  9In other works a much greater fixed capital is required. In a great iron–work, for example, the furnace for melting the ore, the forge, the slitt–mill, are instruments of trade2 which cannot be erected without a very great expence.3 In coal–works and mines of every kind, the machinery necessary both for drawing out the water and for other purposes, is frequently still more expensive.

  10That part of the capital of the farmer which is employed in the instruments of agriculture is a fixed; that which is employed in the wages and maintenance of his labouring servants, is a circulating capital. He makes a profit of the one by keeping it in his own possession, and of the other by parting with it. The price or value of his labouring cattle is a fixed capital in the same manner as that of the instruments of husbandry: Their maintenance is a circulating capital in the same manner as that of the labouring servants. The farmer makes his profit by keeping the labouring cattle, and by parting with their maintenance. Both the price and the maintenance of the cattle which are bought in and fattened, not for labour, but for sale, are a circulating capital. The farmer makes his profit by parting with them. A flock of sheep or a herd of cattle that, in a breeding country, is bought in, neither for labour, nor for sale, but in order to make a profit by their wool, by their milk, and by their increase, is a fixed capital. The profit is made by keeping them. Their maintenance is a circulating capital. The profit is made by parting with it; and it comes back with both its own profit, and the profit upon the whole price of the cattle, in the price of the wool, the milk, and the increase. The whole value of the seed too is properly a fixed capital. Though it goes backwards and forwards between the ground and the granary, it never changes masters, and therefore does not properly circulate. The farmer makes his profit, not by its sale, but by its increase.

  11The general stock of any country or society is the same with that of all its inhabitants or members, and therefore naturally divides itself into the same three portions, each of which has a distinct function or office.

  12The First, is that portion which is reserved for immediate consumption, and of which the characteristick is, that it affords no revenue or profit. It consists in the stock of food, cloaths, household furniture, &c. which have been purchased by their proper consumers, but which are not yet entirely consumed. The whole stock of mere dwelling–houses too subsisting at any one time in the country, make a part of this first portion. The stock that is laid out in a house, if it is to be the dwelling–house of the proprietor, ceases from that moment to serve in the function of a capital, or to afford any revenue to its owner. A dwelling–house, as such, contributes nothing to the revenue of its inhabitant; and though it is, no doubt, extremely useful to him, it is as his cloaths and household furniture are useful to him, which, however, make a part of his expence, and not of his revenue. If it is to be lett to a tenant for rent, as the house itself can produce nothing, the tenant must always pay the rent out of some other revenue which he derives either from labour, or stock, or land.4 Though a house, therefore, may yield a revenue to its proprietor, and thereby serve in the function of a capital to him, it cannot yield any to the publick, nor serve in the function of a capital to it, and the revenue of the whole body of the people can never be in the smallest degree increased by it. Cloaths, and household furniture, in the same manner, sometimes yield a revenue, and thereby serve in the function of a capital to particular persons. In countries where masquerades are common, it is a trade to let out masquerade dresses for a night. Upholsterers frequently lett furniture by the month or by the year. Undertakers lett the furniture of funerals by the day and by the week. Many people lett furnished houses, and get a rent, not only for the use of the house, but for that of the furniture. The revenue, however, which is derived from such things, must always be ultimately drawn from some other source of revenue. Of all parts of the stock, either of an individual, or of a society, reserved for immediate consumption, what is laid out in houses is most slowly consumed.5 A stock of cloaths may last several years: a stock of furniture half a century or a century: but a stock of houses, well built and properly taken care of, may last many centuries. Though the period of their total consumption, however, is more distant, they are still as really a stock reserved for immediate consumption as either cloaths or household furniture.

  13The Second of the three portions into which the general stock of the society divides itself, is the fixed capital; of which the characteristick is, that it affords a revenue or profit without circulating or changing masters. It consists chiefly of the four following articles:

  14First, of all useful machines and instruments of trade which facilitate and abridge labour:

  15Secondly, of all those profitable buildings which are the means of procuring a revenue, not only to their proprietor who letts them for a rent, but to the person who possesses them and pays that rent for them; such as shops, warehouses, workhouses, farmhouses, with all their necessary buildings; stables, granaries, &c. These are very different from mere dwelling houses. They are a sort of instruments of trade, and may be considered in the same light:

  16Thirdly, of the improvements of land, of what has been profitably laid out in clearing, draining, enclosing, manuring, and reducing it into the condition most proper for tillage and culture. An improved farm may very justly be regarded in the same light as those useful machines which facilitate and abridge labour, and by means of which, an equal circulating capital can afford a much greater revenue to its employer. An improved farm is equally advantageous and more durable than any of those machines, frequently requiring no other repairs than the most profitable application of the farmer’s capital employed in cultivating it:

  17Fourthly, of the acquired and useful abilities of all the inhabitants or members of the society. The acquisition of such talents, by the maintenance of the acquirer during his education, study, or apprenticeship, always costs a real expence, which is a capital fixed and realized, as it were, in his person.6 Those talents, as they make a part of his fortune, so do they likewise of that of the society to which he belongs. The improved dexterity of a workman may be considered in the same light as a machine or instrument of trade which facilitates and abridges labour, and which, though it costs a certain expence, repays that expence with a profit.

  18The third and last of the three portions into which the general stock of the society naturally divides itself, is the circulating capital; of which the characteristick is, that it affords a revenue only by circulating or changing masters. It is composed likewise of four parts:

  19First, of the money by means of which all the other three are circulated and distributed to their proper ^a consumers:7

  20Secondly, of the stock of provisions which are in the possession of the butcher, the grazier, the farmer, the corn–merchant, the brewer, &c. and from the sale of which they expect to derive a profit:

  21 Thirdly, of the materials, whether altogether rude, or more or less manufactured, of cloaths, furniture, and building, which are not yet made up into any of those three shapes, but which remain in the hands of the growers, the manufacturers, the mercers and drapers, the timber–merchants, the carpenters and joiners, the brickmakers, &c.

  22Fourthly, and lastly, of the work which is made up and compleated, but which is still in the hands of the merchant ^bor^b manufacturer, and not yet disposed of or distributed to the proper ^c consumers; such as the finished work which we frequently find ready–made in the shops of the smith, the cabinet–maker, the goldsmith, the jeweller, the china–merchant, &c. The circulating capital consists in this manner, of the provisions, materials, and finished work of all kinds that are in the hands of their respective dealers, and of the money that is necessary for circulating and distributing them to those who are finally to use, or to consume them.

  23Of these four parts three, provisions, materials, and finished work, are, either annually, or in a longer or shorter period, regularly withdrawn from it, and placed either in the fixed capital or in the stock reserved for immediate consumption.

  24Every fixed capital is both originally derived from, and requires to be continually supported by a circulating capital. All useful machines and instruments of trade are originally derived from a circulating capital, which furnishes the materials of which they are made, and the maintenance of the workmen who make them. They require too a capital of the same kind to keep them in constant repair.

  25No fixed capital can yield any revenue but by means of a circulating capital. The most useful machines and instruments of trade will produce nothing without the circulating capital which affords the materials they are employed upon, and the maintenance of the workmen who employ them.8 Land, however improved, will yield no revenue without a circulating capital, which maintains the labourers who cultivate and collect its produce.

  26To maintain and augment the stock which may be reserved for immediate consumption, is the sole end and purpose both of the fixed and circulating capitals. It is this stock which feeds, cloaths, and lodges the people. Their riches or poverty depends upon the abundant or sparing supplies which those two capitals can afford to the stock reserved for immediate consumption.

  27So great a part of the circulating capital being continually withdrawn from it, in order to be placed in the other two branches of the general stock of the society; it must in its turn require continual supplies, without which it would soon cease to exist. These supplies are principally drawn from three sources, the produce of land, of mines, and of fisheries. These afford continual supplies of provisions and materials, of which part is afterwards wrought up into finished work, and by which are replaced the provisions, materials, and finished work continually withdrawn from the circulating capital. From mines too is drawn what is necessary for maintaining and augmenting that part of it which consists in money. For though, in the ordinary course of business, this part is not, like the other three, necessarily withdrawn from it, in order to be placed in the other two branches of the general stock of the society, it must, however, like all other things, be wasted and worn out at last, and sometimes too be either lost or sent abroad, and must, therefore, require continual, though, no doubt, much smaller supplies.

  28Land, mines, and fisheries, require all both a fixed and a circulating capital to cultivate them; and their produce replaces with a profit, not only those capitals, but all the others in the society. Thus the farmer annually replaces to the manufacturer the provisions which he had consumed and the materials which he had wrought up the year before; and the manufacturer replaces to the farmer the finished work which he had wasted and worn out in the same time. This is the real exchange that is annually made between those two orders of people,9 though it seldom happens that the rude produce of the one and the manufactured produce of the other, are directly bartered for one another; because it seldom happens that the farmer sells his corn and his cattle, his flax and his wool, to the very same person of whom he chuses to purchase the cloaths, furniture, and instruments of trade which he wants. He sells, therefore, his rude produce for money, with which he can purchase, wherever it is to be had, the manufactured produce he has occasion for. Land even replaces, in part, at least, the capitals with which fisheries and mines are cultivated. It is the produce of land which draws the fish from the waters; and it is the produce of the surface of the earth which extracts the minerals from its bowels.

  29The produce of land, mines, and fisheries, when their natural fertility is equal, is in proportion to the extent and proper application of the capitals employed about them. When the capitals are equal and equally well applied, it is in proportion to their natural fertility.

  30In all countries where there is tolerable security,10 every man of common understanding will endeavour to employ whatever stock he can command in procuring either present enjoyment or future profit. If it is employed in procuring present enjoyment, it is a stock reserved for immediate consumption. If it is employed in procuring future profit, it must procure this profit either by staying with him, or by going from him. In the one case it is a fixed, in the other it is a circulating capital. A man must be perfectly crazy who, where there is tolerable security, does not employ all the stock which he commands, whether it be his own or borrowed of other people, in some one or other of those three ways.11

  31 In those unfortunate countries, indeed, where men are continually afraid of the violence of their superiors, they frequently bury and conceal a great part of their stock, in order to have it always at hand to carry with them to some place of safety, in case of their being threatened with any of those disasters to which they consider themselves as at all times exposed. This is said to be a common practice in Turkey, in Indostan, and, I believe, in most other governments of Asia.12 It seems to have been a common practice among our ancestors during the violence of the feudal government.13 Treasure–trove was in those times considered as no contemptible part of the revenue of the greatest sovereigns in Europe. It consisted in such treasure as was found concealed in the earth, and to which no particular person could prove any right. This was regarded in those times as so important an object, that it was always considered as belonging to the sovereign, and neither to the finder nor to the proprietor of the land, unless the right to it had been conveyed to the latter by an express clause in his charter.14 It was put upon the same footing with gold and silver mines, which, without a special clause in the charter, were never supposed to be comprehended in the general grant of the lands, though mines of lead, copper, tin, and coal were, as things of smaller consequence.

  CHAPTER II

  Of Money considered as a particular Branch of the general Stock of the Society, or of the Expence of maintaining the National Capital

  1It has been shewn in the first Book, that the price of the greater part of commodities resolves itself into three parts, of which one pays the wages of the labour, another the profits of the stock, and a third the rent of the land which had been employed in producing and bringing them to market:1 that there are, indeed, some commodities of which the price is made up of two of those parts only, the wages of labour, and the profits of stock:2 and a very few in which it consists altogether in one, the wages of labour: but that the price of every commodity necessarily resolves itself into some one, or other, or all of these three parts; every part of it which goes neither to rent nor to wages, being necessarily profit to somebody.

  2Since this is the case, it has been observed, with regard to every particular commodity, taken separately; it must be so with regard to all the commodities which compose the whole annual produce of the land and labour of every country, taken complexly. The whole price or exchangeable value of that annual produce, must resolve itself into the same three parts, and be parcelled out among the different inhabitants of the country, either as the wages of their labour, the profits of their stock, or the rent of their land.

  3But though the whole value of the annual produce of the land and labour of every country is thus divided among and constitutes a revenue to its different inhabitants, yet as in the rent of a private estate we distinguish between the gross rent and the neat rent, so may we likewise in the revenue of all the inhabitants of a great country.

  4The gross rent of a private estate comprehends whatever is paid by the farmer; the neat rent, what remains free to the landlord, after deducting the expence of management, of repairs, and all other necessary charges;3 or what, without hurting his estate, he can afford to place in his stock reserved for immediate consumption, or to spend upon his table, equipage, the ornaments of his house and furniture, his private enjoyments and amusements. His real wealth is in proportion, not to his gross, but to his neat rent.

  5The gross revenue of all the inhabitants of a great country, comprehends the whole annual produce of their land and labour; the neat revenue, what remains free to them after deducting the expence of maintaining; first, their fixed; and, secondly, their circulating capital; or what, without encroaching upon their capital, they can place in their stock reserved for immediate consumption, or spend upon their subsistence, conveniencies, and amusements. Their real wealth too is in proportion, not to their gross, but to their neat revenue.

  6The whole expence of maintaining the fixed capital, must evidently be excluded from the neat revenue of the society. Neither the materials necessary for supporting their useful machines and instruments of trade, their profitable buildings, &c. nor the produce of the labour necessary for fashioning those materials into the proper form, can ever make any part of it. The price of that labour may indeed make a part of it; as the workmen so employed may place the whole value of their wages in their stock reserved for immediate consumption. But in other sorts of labour, both the price and the produce go to this stock, the price to that of the workmen, the produce to that of other people, whose subsistence, conveniencies, and amusements, are augmented by the labour of those workmen.

  7The intention of the fixed capital is to increase the productive powers of labour, or to enable the same number of labourers to perform a much greater quantity of work. In a farm where all the necessary buildings, fences, drains, communications, &c. are in the most perfect good order, the same number of labourers and labouring cattle will raise a much greater produce, than in one of equal extent and equally good ground, but not furnished with equal conveniencies. In manufactures the same number of hands, assisted with the best machinery, will work up a much greater quantity of goods than with more imperfect instruments of trade. The expence which is properly laid out upon a fixed capital of any kind, is always repaid with great profit, and increases the annual produce by a much greater value than that of the support which such improvements require.4 This support, however, still requires a certain portion of that produce. A certain quantity of materials, and the labour of a certain number of workmen, both of which might have been immediately employed to augment the food, cloathing and lodging, the subsistence and conveniencies of the society, are thus diverted to another employment, highly advantageous indeed, but still different from this one. It is upon this account that all such improvements in mechanicks, as enable the same number of workmen to perform an equal quantity of work, with cheaper and simpler machinery than had been usual before, are always regarded as advantageous to every society.5 A certain quantity of materials, and the labour of a certain number of workmen, which had before been employed in supporting a more complex and expensive machinery, can afterwards be applied to augment the quantity of work which that or any other machinery is useful only for performing. The undertaker of some great manufactory who employs a thousand a–year in the maintenance of his machinery, if he can reduce this expence to five hundred, will naturally employ the other five hundred in purchasing an additional quantity of materials to be wrought up by an additional number of workmen. The quantity of that work, therefore, which his machinery was useful only for performing, will naturally be augmented, and with it all the advantage and conveniency which the society can derive from that work.

  8The expence of maintaining the fixed capital in a great country, may very properly be compared to that of repairs in a private estate. The expence of repairs may frequently be necessary for supporting the produce of the estate, and consequently both the gross and the neat rent of the landlord. When by a more proper direction, however, it can be diminished without occasioning any diminution of produce, the gross rent remains at least the same as before, and the neat rent is necessarily augmented.

  9But though the whole expence of maintaining the fixed capital is thus necessarily excluded from the neat revenue of the society, it is not the same case with that of maintaining the circulating capital. Of the four parts of which this latter capital is composed, money, provisions, materials, and finished work, the three last, it has already been observed, are regularly withdrawn from it, and placed either in the fixed capital of the society, or in their stock reserved for immediate consumption. Whatever portion of those consumable goods is not employed in maintaining the former, goes all to the latter, and makes a part of the neat revenue of the society. The maintenance of those three parts of the circulating capital, therefore, withdraws no portion of the annual produce from the neat revenue of the society, besides what is necessary for maintaining the fixed capital.

  10 The circulating capital of a society is in this respect different from that of an individual. That of an individual is totally excluded from making any part of his neat revenue, which must consist altogether in his profits. But though the circulating capital of every individual makes a part of that of the society to which he belongs, it is not upon that account totally excluded from making a part likewise of their neat revenue. Though the whole goods in a merchant’s shop must by no means be placed in his own stock reserved for immediate consumption, they may in that of other people, who, from a revenue derived from other funds, may regularly replace their value to him, together with its profits, without occasioning any diminution either of his capital or of theirs.

  11Money, therefore, is the only part of the circulating capital of a society, of which the maintenance can occasion any diminution in their neat revenue.

  12The fixed capital, and that part of the circulating capital which consists in money, so far as they affect the revenue of the society, bear a very great resemblance to one another.

  13First, as those machines and instruments of trade, &c. require a certain expence, first to erect them, and afterwards to support them, both which expences, though they make a part of the gross, are deductions from the neat revenue of the society; so the stock of money which circulates in any country must require a certain expence, first to collect it, and afterwards to support it, both which expences, though they make a part of the gross, are, in the same manner, deductions from the neat revenue of the society. A certain quantity of very valuable materials, gold and silver, and of very curious labour, instead of augmenting the stock reserved for immediate consumption, the subsistence, conveniences, and amusements of individuals, is employed in supporting that great but expensive instrument of commerce, by means of which every individual in the society has his subsistence, conveniencies, and amusements, regularly distributed to him in their proper ^aproportions^a

  14Secondly, as the machines and instruments of trade, &c. which compose the fixed capital either of an individual or of a society, make no part either of the gross or of the neat revenue of either; so money, by means of which the whole revenue of the society is regularly distributed among all its different members, makes itself no part of that revenue. The great wheel of circulation is altogether different from the goods which are circulated by means of it.6 The revenue of the society consists altogether in those goods, and not in the wheel which circulates them. In computing either the gross or the neat revenue of any society, we must always, from their whole annual circulation of money and goods, deduct the whole value of the money, of which not a single farthing can ever make any part of either.

  15It is the ambiguity of language only which can make this proposition appear either doubtful or paradoxical. When properly explained and understood, it is almost self–evident.

  16When we talk of any particular sum of money, we sometimes mean nothing but the metal pieces of which it is composed; and sometimes we include in our meaning some obscure reference to the goods which can be had in exchange for it, or to the power of purchasing which the possession of it conveys. Thus when we say, that the circulating money of England has been computed at eighteen millions, we mean only to express the amount of the metal pieces, which some writers have computed, or rather have supposed to circulate in that country. But when we say that a man is worth fifty or a hundred pounds a–year, we mean commonly to express not only the amount of the metal pieces which are annually paid to him, but the value of the goods which he can annually purchase or consume. We mean commonly to ascertain what is or ought to be his way of living, or the quantity and quality of the necessaries and conveniencies of life in which he can with propriety indulge himself.

  17When, by any particular sum of money, we mean not only to express the amount of the metal pieces of which it is composed, but to include in its signification some obscure reference to the goods which can be had in exchange for them, the wealth or revenue which it in this case denotes, is equal only to one of the two values which are thus intimated somewhat ambiguously by the same word, and to the latter more properly than to the former, to the money’s worth more properly than to the money.

  18 Thus if a guinea be the weekly pension of a particular person, he can in the course of the week purchase with it a certain quantity of subsistence, conveniencies, and amusements. In proportion as this quantity is great or small, so are his real riches, his real weekly revenue. His weekly revenue is certainly not equal both to the guinea, and to what can be purchased with it, but only to one or other of those two equal values; and to the latter more properly than to the former, to the guinea’s worth rather than to the guinea.

  19If the pension of such a person was paid to him, not in gold, but in a weekly bill for a guinea, his revenue surely would not so properly consist in the piece of paper, as in what he could get for it. A guinea may be considered as a bill for a certain quantity of necessaries and conveniencies upon all the tradesmen in the neighbourhood. The revenue of the person to whom it is paid, does not so properly consist in the piece of gold, as in what he can get for it, or in what he can exchange it for. If it could be exchanged for nothing, it would, like a bill upon a bankrupt, be of no more value than the most useless piece of paper.

  20Though the weekly, or yearly revenue of all the different inhabitants of any country, in the same manner, may be, and in reality frequently is paid to them in money, their real riches, however, the real weekly or yearly revenue of all of them taken together, must always be great or small in proportion to the quantity of consumable goods which they can all of them purchase with this money. The whole revenue of all of them taken together is evidently not equal to both the money and the consumable goods; but only to one or other of those two values, and to the latter more properly than to the former.

  21Though we frequently, therefore, express a person’s revenue by the metal pieces which are annually paid to him, it is because the amount of those pieces regulates the extent of his power of purchasing, or the value of the goods which he can annually afford to consume. We still consider his revenue as consisting in this power of purchasing or consuming, and not in the pieces which convey it.7

  22But if this is sufficiently evident even with regard to an individual, it is still more so with regard to a society. The amount of the metal pieces which are annually paid to an individual, is often precisely equal to his revenue, and is upon that account the shortest and best expression of its value. But the amount of the metal pieces which circulate in a society, can never be equal to the revenue of all its members. As the same guinea which pays the weekly pension of one man to–day, may pay that of another tomorrow, and that of a third the day thereafter, the amount of the metal pieces which annually circulate in any country, must always be of much less value than the whole money pensions annually paid with them.8 But the power of purchasing, ^bor^b the goods which can successively be bought with the whole of those money pensions as they are successively paid, must always be precisely of the same value with those pensions; as must likewise be the revenue of the different persons to whom they are paid. That revenue, therefore, cannot consist in those metal pieces, of which the amount is so much inferior to its value, but in the power of purchasing, in the goods which can successively be bought with them as they circulate from hand to hand.

  23Money, therefore, the great wheel of circulation, the great instrument of commerce, like all other instruments of trade,9 though it makes a part and a very valuable part of the capital, makes no part of the revenue of the society to which it belongs;10 and though the metal pieces of which it is composed, in the course of their annual circulation, distribute to every man the revenue which properly belongs to him, they make themselves no part of that revenue.

  24Thirdly, and lastly, the machines and instruments of trade, &c. which compose the fixed capital, bear this further resemblance to that part of the circulating capital which consists in money; that as every saving in the expence of erecting and supporting those machines, which does not diminish the productive powers of labour, is an improvement of the neat revenue of the society; so every saving in the expence of collecting and supporting that part of the circulating capital which consists in money, is an improvement of exactly the same kind.

  25It is sufficiently obvious, and it has partly too been explained already, in what manner every saving in the expence of supporting the fixed capital is an improvement of the neat revenue of the society.11 The whole capital of the undertaker of every work is necessarily divided between his fixed and his circulating capital. While his whole capital remains the same, the smaller the one part, the greater must necessarily be the other. It is the circulating capital which furnishes the materials and wages of labour, and puts industry into motion. Every saving, therefore, in the expence of maintaining the fixed capital, which does not diminish the productive powers of labour, must increase the fund which puts industry into motion, and consequently the annual produce of land and labour, the real revenue of every society.

  26The substitution of paper in the room of gold and silver money, replaces a very expensive instrument of commerce with one much less costly, and sometimes equally convenient.12 Circulation comes to be carried on by a new wheel, which it costs less both to erect and to maintain than the old one.13 But in what manner this operation is performed, and in what manner it tends to increase either the gross or the neat revenue of the society, is not altogether so obvious, and may therefore require some further explication.

  27There are several different sorts of paper money; but the circulating notes of banks and bankers are the species which is best known, and which seems best adapted for this purpose.14

  28When the people of any particular country have such confidence in the fortune, probity, and prudence of a particular banker, as to believe that he is always ready to pay upon demand such of his promissory notes as are likely to be at any time presented to him; those notes come to have the same currency as gold and silver money, from the confidence that such money can at any time be had for them.

  29A particular banker lends among his customers his own promissory notes, to the extent, we shall suppose, of a hundred thousand pounds. As those notes serve all the purposes of money, his debtors pay him the same interest as if he had lent them so much money. This interest is the source of his gain. Though some of those notes are continually coming back upon him for payment, part of them continue to circulate for months and years together. Though he has generally in circulation, therefore, notes to the extent of a hundred thousand pounds, twenty thousand pounds in gold and silver may, frequently be a sufficient provision for answering occasional demands. By this operation, therefore, twenty thousand pounds in gold and silver perform all the functions which a hundred thousand could otherwise have performed. The same exchanges may be made, the same quantity of consumable goods may be circulated and distributed to their proper consumers, by means of his promissory notes, to the value of a hundred thousand pounds, as by an equal value of gold and silver money. Eighty thousand pounds of gold and silver, therefore, can, in this manner, be spared from the circulation of the country; and if different operations of the same kind should, at the same time, be carried on by many different banks and bankers, the whole circulation may thus be conducted with a fifth part only of the gold and silver which would otherwise have been requisite.

  30Let us suppose, for example, that the whole circulating money of some particular country amounted, at a particular time, to one million sterling, that sum being then sufficient for circulating the whole annual produce of their land and labour. Let us suppose too, that some time thereafter, different banks and bankers issued promissory notes, payable to the bearer, to the extent of one million, reserving in their different coffers two hundred thousand pounds for answering occasional demands.15 There would remain, therefore, in circulation, eight hundred thousand pounds in gold and silver, and a million of bank notes, or eighteen hundred thousand pounds of paper and money together. But the annual produce of the land and labour of the country had before required only one million to circulate and distribute it to its proper consumers, and that annual produce cannot be immediately augmented by those operations of banking. One million, therefore, will be sufficient to circulate it after them. The goods to be bought and sold being precisely the same as before, the same quantity of money will be sufficient for buying and selling them. The channel of circulation, if I may be allowed such an expression, will remain precisely the same as before. One million we have supposed sufficient to fill that channel. Whatever, therefore, is poured into it beyond this sum, cannot run in it, but must overflow. One million eight hundred thousand pounds are poured into it. Eight hundred thousand pounds, therefore, must overflow, that sum being over and above what can be employed in the circulation of the country. But though this sum cannot be employed at home, it is too valuable to be allowed to lie idle.16 It will, therefore, be sent abroad, in order to seek that profitable employment which it cannot find at home.17 But the paper cannot go abroad; because at a distance from the banks which issue it, and from the country in which payment of it can be exacted by law, it will not be received in common payments.18 Gold and silver, therefore, to the amount of eight hundred thousand pounds will be sent abroad, and the channel of home circulation will remain filled with a million of paper, instead of the million of those metals which filled it before.19

  31But though so great a quantity of gold and silver is thus sent abroad, we must not imagine it is sent abroad for nothing, or that its proprietors make a present of it to foreign nations. They will exchange it for foreign goods of some kind or another, in order to supply the consumption either of some other foreign country, or of their own.

  32If they employ it in purchasing goods in one foreign country in order to supply the consumption of another, or in what is called the carrying trade, whatever profit they make will be an addition to the neat revenue of their own country. It is like a new fund, created for carrying on a new trade; domestick business being now transacted by paper, and the gold and silver being converted into a fund for this new trade.

  33If they employ it in purchasing foreign goods for home consumption, they may either, first, purchase such goods as are likely to be consumed by idle people who produce nothing, such as foreign wines, foreign silks, &c.; or, secondly, they may purchase an additional stock of materials, tools, and provisions, in order to maintain and employ an additional number of industrious people, who re–produce, with a profit, the value of their annual consumption.

  34So far as it is employed in the first way, it promotes prodigality, increases expence and consumption without increasing production, or establishing any permanent fund for supporting that expence, and is in every respect hurtful to the society.

  35So far as it is employed in the second way, it promotes industry; and though it increases the consumption of the society, it provides a permanent fund for supporting that consumption, the people who consume re–producing, with a profit, the whole value of their annual consumption. The gross revenue of the society, the annual produce of their land and labour, is increased by the whole value which the labour of those workmen adds to the materials upon which they are employed; and their neat revenue by what remains of this value, after deducting what is necessary for supporting the tools and instruments of their trade.

  36That the greater part of the gold and silver which, being forced abroad by those operations of banking, is employed in purchasing foreign goods for home consumption, is and must be employed in purchasing those of this second kind, seems not only probable but almost unavoidable. Though some particular men may sometimes increase their expence very considerably though their revenue does not increase at all, we may be assured that no class or order of men ever does so; because, though the principles of common prudence do not always govern the conduct of every individual, they always influence that of the majority of every class or order. But the revenue of idle people, considered as a class or order, cannot, in the smallest degree, be increased by those operations of banking. Their expence in general, therefore, cannot be much increased by them, though that of a few individuals among them may, and in reality sometimes is. The demand of idle people, therefore, for foreign goods, being the same, or very nearly the same, as before, a very small part of the money, which being forced abroad by those operations of banking, is employed in purchasing foreign goods for home consumption, is likely to be employed in purchasing those for their use. The greater part of it will naturally be destined for the employment of industry, and not for the maintenance of idleness.

  37 When we compute the quantity of industry which the circulating capital of any society can employ, we must always have regard to those parts of it only, which consist in provisions, materials, and finished work: the other, which consists in money, and which serves only to circulate those three, must always be deducted. In order to put industry into motion, three things are requisite; materials to work upon, tools to work with, and the wages or recompence for the sake of which the work is done. Money is neither a material to work upon, nor a tool to work with; and though the wages of the workman are commonly paid to him in money, his real revenue, like that of all other men, consists, not in the money, but in the money’s worth; not in the metal pieces, but in what can be got for them.

  38The quantity of industry which any capital can employ, must, evidently, be equal to the number of workmen whom it can supply with materials, tools, and a maintenance suitable to the nature of the work. Money may be requisite for purchasing the materials and tools of the work, as well as the maintenance of the workmen. But the quantity of industry which the whole capital can employ, is certainly not equal both to the money which purchases, and to the materials, tools, and maintenance, which are purchased with it; but only to one or other of those two values, and to the latter more properly than to the former.

  39 When paper is substituted in the room of gold and silver money, the quantity of the materials, tools, and maintenance, which the whole circulating capital can supply, may be increased by the whole value of gold and silver which used to be employed in purchasing them. The whole value of the great wheel of circulation and distribution, is added to the goods which are circulated and distributed by means of it. The operation, in some measure, resembles that of the undertaker of some great work, who, in consequence of some improvement in mechanicks, takes down his old machinery and adds the difference between its price and that of the new to his circulating capital, to the fund from which he furnishes materials and wages to his workmen.20

  40What is the proportion which the circulating money of any country bears to the whole value of the annual produce circulated by means of it, it is, perhaps, impossible to determine. It has been computed by different authors at a fifth, at a tenth, at a twentieth, and at a thirtieth part of that value.21 But how small soever the proportion which the circulating money may bear to the whole value of the annual produce, as but a part, and frequently but a small part, of that produce, is ever destined for the maintenance of industry, it must always bear a very considerable proportion to that part. When, therefore, by the substitution of paper, the gold and silver necessary for circulation is reduced to, perhaps, a fifth part of the former quantity, if the value of only the greater part of the other four–fifths be added to the funds which are destined for the maintenance of industry, it must make a very considerable addition to the quantity of that industry, and, consequently, to the value of the annual produce of land and labour.22

  41An operation of this kind has, within these five–and–twenty or thirty years, been performed in Scotland, by the erection of new banking companies in almost every considerable town, and even in some country villages. The effects of it have been precisely those above described. The business of the country is almost entirely carried on by means of the paper of those different banking companies, with which purchases and payments of all kinds are commonly made. Silver very seldom appears except in the change of a twenty shillings bank note, and gold still seldomer. But though the conduct of all those different companies has not been unexceptionable,23 and has accordingly required an act of parliament to regulate it;24 the ^ccountry^c notwithstanding, has evidently derived great benefit from their trade. I have heard it asserted, that the trade of the city of Glasgow doubled in about fifteen years after the first erection of the banks there;25 and that the trade of Scotland has more than quadrupled since the first erection of the two publick banks at Edinburgh,26 of which the one, called The Bank of Scotland, was established by act of parliament in 1695;27 the other, called The Royal Bank, by royal charter in 1727.28 Whether the trade, either of Scotland in general, or of the city of Glasgow in particular, has really increased in so great a proportion, during so short a period, I do not pretend to know. If either of them has increased in this proportion, it seems to be an effect too great to be accounted for by the sole operation of this cause. That the trade and industry of Scotland, however, have increased very considerably during this period, and that the banks have contributed a good deal to this increase, cannot be doubted.29

  42The value of the silver money which circulated in Scotland before the union, in 1707, and which, immediately after it, was brought into the bank of Scotland in order to be re–coined, amounted to 411,117l. 10s. 9d. sterling. No account has been got of the gold coin; but it appears from the antient accounts of the mint of Scotland, that the value of the gold annually coined somewhat exceeded that of the silver.* There were a good many people too upon this occasion, who, from a diffidence of repayment, did not bring their silver into the bank of Scotland: and there was, besides, some English coin, which was not called in. The whole value of the gold and silver, therefore, which circulated in Scotland before the union, cannot be estimated at less than a million sterling. It seems to have constituted almost the whole circulation of that country; for though the circulation of the bank of Scotland, which had then no rival, was considerable,30 it seems to have made but a very small part of the whole. In the present times the whole circulation of Scotland cannot be estimated at less than two millions, of which that part which consists in gold and silver, most probably, does not amount to half a million. But though the circulating gold and silver of Scotland have suffered so great a diminution during this period, its real riches and prosperity do not appear to have suffered any. Its agriculture, manufactures, and trade, on the contrary, the annual produce of its land and labour, have evidently been augmented.

  43It is chiefly by discounting bills of exchange, that is, by advancing money upon them before they are due, that the greater part of banks and bankers issue their promissory notes. They deduct always, upon whatever sum they advance, the legal interest till the bill shall become due. The payment of the bill, when it becomes due, replaces to the bank the value of what had been advanced, together with a clear profit of the interest. The banker who advances to the merchant whose bill he discounts, not gold and silver, but his own promissory notes, has the advantage of being able to discount to a greater amount, by the whole value of his promissory notes, which he finds by experience, are commonly in circulation. He is thereby enabled to make his clear gain of interest on so much a larger sum.

  44The commerce of Scotland, which at present is not very great, was still more inconsiderable when the two first banking companies were established; and those companies would have had but little trade, had they confined their business to the discounting of bills of exchange. They invented, therefore, another method of issuing their promissory notes; by granting, what they called, cash accounts,31 that is by giving credit to the extent of a certain sum (two or three thousand pounds, for example), to any individual who could procure two persons of undoubted credit and good landed estate to become surety for him, that whatever money should be advanced to him, within the sum for which the credit had been given, should be repaid upon demand, together with the legal interest. Credits of this kind are, I believe, commonly granted by banks and bankers in all different parts of the world. But the easy terms upon which the Scotch banking companies accept of re–payment are, so far as I know, peculiar to them, and have, perhaps, been the principal cause, both of the great trade of those companies, and of the benefit which the country has received from it.

  45Whoever has a credit of this kind with one of those companies, and borrows a thousand pounds upon it, for example, may repay this sum piecemeal, by twenty and thirty pounds at a time, the company discounting a proportionable part of the interest of the great sum from the day on which each of those small sums is paid in, till the whole be in this manner repaid. All merchants, therefore, and almost all men of business, find it convenient to keep such cash accounts with them, and are thereby interested to promote the trade of those companies, by readily receiving their notes in all payments, and by encouraging all those with whom they have any influence to do the same. The banks, when their customers apply to them for money, generally advance it to them in their own promissory notes. These the merchants pay away to the manufacturers for goods, the manufacturers to the farmers for materials and provisions, the farmers to their landlords for rent, the landlords repay them to the merchants for the conveniencies and luxuries with which they supply them, and the merchants again return them to the banks in order to balance their cash accounts, or to replace what they may have borrowed of them; and thus almost the whole money business of the country is transacted by means of them. Hence, the great trade of those companies.

  46By means of those cash accounts every merchant can, without imprudence, carry on a greater trade than he otherwise could do. If there are two merchants, one in London, and the other in Edinburgh, who employ equal stocks in the same branch of trade, the Edinburgh merchant can, without imprudence, carry on a greater trade, and give employment to a greater number of people than the London merchant. The London merchant must always keep by him a considerable sum of money, either in his own coffers, or in those of his banker, who gives him no interest for it, in order to answer the demands continually coming upon him for payment of the goods which he purchases upon credit. Let the ordinary amount of this sum be supposed five hundred pounds. The value of the goods in his warehouse must always be less by five hundred pounds than it would have been, had he not been obliged to keep such a sum unemployed. Let us suppose that he generally disposes of his whole stock upon hand, or of goods to the value of his whole stock upon hand, once in the year. By being obliged to keep so great a sum unemployed, he must sell in a year five hundred pounds worth less goods than he might otherwise have done. His annual profits must be less by all that he could have made by the sale of five hundred pounds worth more goods; and the number of people employed in preparing his goods for the market, must be less by all those that five hundred pounds more stock could have employed. The merchant in Edinburgh, on the other hand, keeps no money unemployed for answering such occasional demands. When they actually come upon him, he satisfies them from his cash account with the bank, and gradually replaces the sum borrowed with the money or paper which comes in from the occasional sales of his goods. With the same stock, therefore, he can, without imprudence, have at all times in his warehouse a larger quantity of goods than the London merchant; and can thereby both make a greater profit himself, and give constant employment to a greater number of industrious people who prepare those goods for the market. Hence the great benefit which the country has derived from this trade.

  47 The facility of discounting bills of exchange, it may be thought indeed, gives the English merchants a conveniency equivalent to the cash accounts of the Scotch merchants. But the Scotch merchants, it must be remembered, can discount their bills of exchange as easily as the English merchants; and have, besides, the additional conveniency of their cash accounts.

  48The whole paper money of every kind which can easily circulate in any country never can exceed the value of the gold and silver, of which it supplies the place, or which (the commerce being supposed the same) would circulate there, if there was no paper money. If twenty shilling notes, for example, are the lowest paper money current in Scotland, the whole of that currency which can easily circulate there cannot exceed the sum of gold and silver, which would be necessary for transacting the annual exchanges of twenty shillings value and upwards usually transacted within that country. Should the circulating paper at any time exceed that sum, as the excess could neither be sent abroad nor be employed in the circulation of the country, it must immediately return upon the banks to be exchanged for gold and silver. Many people would immediately perceive that they had more of this paper than was necessary for transacting their business at home, and as they could not send it abroad, they would immediately demand payment of it from the banks. When this superfluous paper was converted into gold and silver, they could easily find a use for it by sending it abroad; but they could find none while it remained in the shape of paper. There would immediately, therefore, be a run upon the banks to the whole extent of this superfluous paper, and, if they showed any difficulty or backwardness in payment, to a much greater extent; the alarm, which this would occasion, necessarily increasing the run.

  49Over and above the expences which are common to every branch of trade; such as the expence of house–rent, the wages of servants, clerks, accountants, &c.; the expences peculiar to a bank consist chiefly in two articles: First, in the expence of keeping at all times in its coffers, for answering the occasional demands of the holders of its notes, a large sum of money, of which it loses the interest:32 And, secondly, in the expence of replenishing those coffers as fast as they are emptied by answering such occasional demands.

  50A banking company, which issues more paper than can be employed in the circulation of the country, and of which the excess is continually returning upon them for payment, ought to increase the quantity of gold and silver, which they keep at all times in their coffers, not only in proportion to this excessive increase of their circulation, but in a much greater proportion; their notes returning upon them much faster than in proportion to the excess of their quantity. Such a company, therefore, ought to increase the first article of their expence, not only in proportion to this forced increase of their business, but in a much greater proportion.

  51The coffers of such a company too, though they ought to be filled much fuller, yet must empty themselves much faster than if their business was confined within more reasonable bounds, and must require, not only a more violent, but a more constant and uninterrupted exertion of expence in order to replenish them. The coin too, which is thus continually drawn in such large quantities from their coffers, cannot be employed in the circulation of the country. It comes in place of a paper which is over and above what can be employed in that circulation, and is therefore over and above what can be employed in it too. But as that coin will not be allowed to lie idle, it must, in one shape or another, be sent abroad, in order to find that profitable employment which it cannot find at home;33 and this continual exportation of gold and silver, by enhancing the difficulty, must necessarily enhance still further the expence of the bank, in finding new gold and silver in order to replenish those coffers, which empty themselves so very rapidly. Such a company, therefore, must, in proportion to this forced increase of their business, increase the second article of their expence still more than the first.

  52Let us suppose that all the paper of a particular bank, which the circulation of the country can easily absorb and employ, amounts exactly to forty thousand pounds; and that for answering occasional demands, this bank is obliged to keep at all times in its coffers ten thousand pounds in gold and silver. Should this bank attempt to circulate forty–four thousand pounds, the four thousand pounds which are over and above what the circulation can easily absorb and employ, will return upon it almost as fast as they are issued. For answering occasional demands, therefore, this bank ought to keep at all times in its coffers, not eleven thousand pounds only, but fourteen thousand pounds. It will thus gain nothing by the interest of the four thousand pounds excessive circulation; and it will lose the whole expence of continually collecting four thousand pounds in gold and silver, which will be continually going out of its coffers as fast as they are brought into them.

  53Had every particular banking company always understood and attended to its own particular interest, the circulation never could have been overstocked with paper money. But every particular banking company has not always understood or attended to its own particular interest, and the circulation has frequently been overstocked with paper money.

  54By issuing too great a quantity of paper, of which the excess was continually returning, in order to be exchanged for gold and silver, the bank of England was for many years together obliged to coin gold to the extent of between eight hundred thousand pounds and a million a year; or at an average, about eight hundred and fifty thousand pounds.34 For this great coinage the bank (in consequence of the worn and degraded state into which the gold coin had fallen a few years ago) was frequently obliged to purchase gold bullion at the high price of four pounds an ounce, which it soon after issued in coin at 3l.17s.10½d. an ounce, losing in this manner between two and a half and three per cent. upon the coinage of so very large a sum. Though the bank therefore paid no seignorage, though the government was properly at the expence of the coinage, this liberality of government did not prevent altogether the expence of the bank.35

  55The Scotch banks, in consequence of an excess of the same kind, were all obliged to employ constantly agents at London to collect money for them, at an expence which was seldom below one a half or two per cent. This money was sent down by the waggon, and insured by the carriers at an additional expence of three quarters per cent. or fifteen shillings on the hundred pounds. Those agents were not always able to replenish the coffers of their employers so fast as they were emptied. In this case the resource of the banks was, to draw upon their correspondents in London bills of exchange to the extent of the sum which they wanted. When those correspondents afterwards drew upon them for the payment of this sum, together with the interest and a commission, some of those banks, from the distress into which their excessive circulation had thrown them, had sometimes no other means of satisfying this draught but by drawing a second sett of bills either upon the same, or upon some other correspondents in London; and the same sum, or rather bills for the same sum, would in this manner make sometimes more than two or three journies; the debtor, bank, paying always the interest and commission upon the whole accumulated sum. Even those Scotch banks which never distinguished themselves by their extreme imprudence, were sometimes obliged to employ this ruinous resource.

  56The gold coin which was paid out either by the bank of England, or by the Scotch banks, in exchange for that part of their paper which was over and above what could be employed in the circulation of the country, being likewise over and above what could be employed in that circulation, was sometimes sent abroad in the shape of coin, sometimes melted down and sent abroad in the shape of bullion, and sometimes melted down and sold to the bank of England at the high price of four pounds an ounce. It was the newest, the heaviest, and the best pieces only which were carefully picked out of the whole coin, and either sent abroad or melted down. At home, and while they remained in the shape of coin, those heavy pieces were of no more value than the light: But they were of more value abroad, or when melted down into bullion, at home. The bank of England, notwithstanding their great annual coinage, found to their astonishment, that there was every year the same scarcity of coin as there had been the year before; and that notwithstanding the great quantity of good and new coin which was every year issued from the bank, the state of the coin, instead of growing better and better, became every year worse and worse. Every year they found themselves under the necessity of coining nearly the same quantity of gold as they had coined the year before, and from the continual rise in the price of gold bullion, in consequence of the continual wearing and clipping of the coin, the expence of this great annual coinage became every year greater and greater. The bank of England, it is to be observed, by supplying its own coffers with coin, is indirectly obliged to supply the whole kingdom, into which coin is continually flowing from those coffers in a great variety of ways. Whatever coin therefore was wanted to support this excessive circulation both of Scotch and English paper money, whatever vacuities this excessive circulation occasioned in the necessary coin of the kingdom, the bank of England was obliged to supply them. The Scotch banks, no doubt, paid all of them very dearly for their own imprudence and inattention. But the bank of England paid very dearly, not only for its own imprudence; but for the much greater imprudence of almost all the Scotch banks.36

  57The over–trading of some bold projectors in both parts of the united kingdom, was the original cause of this excessive circulation of paper money.37

  58What a bank can with propriety advance to a merchant or undertaker of any kind, is not, either the whole capital with which he trades, or even any considerable part of that capital; but that part of it only, which he would otherwise be obliged to keep by him unemployed, and in ready money for answering occasional demands. If the paper money which the bank advances never exceeds this value, it can never exceed the value of the gold and silver, which would necessarily circulate in the country if there was no paper money; it can never exceed the quantity which the circulation of the country can easily absorb and employ.

  59When a bank discounts to a merchant a real bill of exchange drawn by a real creditor upon a real debtor, and which, as soon as it becomes due, is really paid by that debtor; it only advances to him a part of the value which he would otherwise be obliged to keep by him unemployed, and in ready money for answering occasional demands. The payment of the bill, when it becomes due, replaces to the bank the value of what it had advanced, together with the interest. The coffers of the bank, so far as its dealings are confined to such customers, resemble a water pond, from which, though a stream is continually running out, yet another is continually running in, fully equal to that which runs out; so that, without any further care or attention, the pond keeps always equally, or very near equally full.38 Little or no expence can ever be necessary for replenishing the coffers of such a bank.

  60 A merchant, without over–trading, may frequently have occasion for a sum of ready money, even when he has no bills to discount. When a bank, besides discounting his bills, advances him likewise upon such occasions, such sums upon his cash account, and accepts of a piece–meal repayment as the money comes in from the occasional sale of his goods, upon the easy terms of the banking companies of Scotland; it dispenses him entirely from the necessity of keeping any part of his stock by him unemployed, and in ready money for answering occasional demands. When such demands actually come upon him, he can answer them sufficiently from his cash account. The bank, however, in dealing with such customers, ought to observe with great attention, whether in the course of some short period (of four, five, six, or eight months, for example) the sum of the repayments which it commonly receives from them, is, or is not, fully equal to that of the advances which it commonly makes to them. If, within the course of such short periods, the sum of the repayments from certain customers is, upon most occasions, fully equal to that of the advances, it may safely continue to deal with such customers. Though the stream which is in this case continually running out from its coffers may be very large, that which is continually running into them must be at least equally large; so that without any further care or attention those coffers are likely to be always equally or very near equally full; and scarce ever to require any extraordinary expence to replenish them. If, on the contrary the sum of the repayments from certain other customers falls commonly very much short of the advances which it makes to them, it cannot with any safety continue to deal with such customers, at least if they continue to deal with it in this manner. The stream which is in this case continually running out from its coffers in necessarily much larger than that which is continually running in; so that, unless they are replenished by some great and continual effort of expence, those coffers must soon be exhausted altogether.

  61The banking companies of Scotland, accordingly, were for a long time very careful to require frequent and regular repayments from all their customers, and did not care to deal with any person, whatever might be his fortune or credit, who did not make, what they called, frequent and regular operations with them. By this attention, besides saving almost entirely the extraordinary expence of replenishing their coffers, they gained two other very considerable advantages.

  62First, by this attention they were enabled to make some tolerable judgment concerning the thriving or declining circumstances of their debtors, without being obliged to look out for any other evidence besides what their own books afforded them; men being for the most part either regular or irregular in their repayments, according as their circumstances are either thriving or declining. A private man who lends out his money to perhaps half a dozen or a dozen of debtors, may, either by himself or his agents, observe and enquire both constantly and carefully into the conduct and situation of each of them. But a banking company, which lends money to perhaps five hundred different people, and of which the attention is continually occupied by objects of a very different kind, can have no regular information concerning the conduct and circumstances of the greater part of its debtors beyond what its own books afford it. In requiring frequent and regular repayments from all their customers, the banking companies of Scotland had probably this advantage in view.

  63Secondly, by this attention they secured themselves from the possibility of issuing more paper money than what the circulation of the country could easily absorb and employ. When they observed, that within moderate periods of time the repayments of a particular customer were upon most occasions fully equal to the advances which they had made to him, they might be assured that the paper money which they had advanced to him, had not at any time exceeded the quantity of gold and silver which he would otherwise have been obliged to keep by him for answering occasional demands; and that, consequently the paper money, which they had circulated by his means, had not at any time exceeded the quantity of gold and silver which would have circulated in the country, had there been no paper money. The frequency, regularity and amount of his repayments would sufficiently demonstrate that the amount of their advances had at no time exceeded that part of his capital which he would otherwise have been obliged to keep by him, unemployed and in ready money for answering occasional demands; that is, for the purpose of keeping the rest of his capital in constant employment. It is this part of his capital only which, within moderate periods of time, is continually returning to every dealer in the shape of money, whether paper or coin, and continually going from him in the same shape. If the advances of the bank had commonly exceeded this part of his capital, the ordinary amount of his repayments could not, within moderate periods of time, have equalled the ordinary amount of its advances. The stream which, by means of his dealings, was continually running into the coffers of the bank, could not have been equal to the stream which, by means of the same dealings, was continually running out. The advances of the bank paper, by exceeding the quantity of gold and silver which, had there been no such advances, he would have been obliged to keep by him for answering occasional demands, might soon come to exceed the whole quantity of gold and silver which (the commerce being supposed the same) would have circulated in the country had there been no paper money; and consequently to exceed the quantity which the circulation of the country could easily absorb and employ; and the excess of this paper money would immediately have returned upon the bank in order to be exchanged for gold and silver. This second advantage, though equally real, was not perhaps so well understood by all the different banking companies of Scotland as the first.

  64When, partly by the conveniency of discounting bills, and partly by that of cash accounts, the creditable traders of any country can be dispensed from the necessity of keeping any part of their stock by them, unemployed and in ready money, for answering occasional demands, they can reasonably expect no ^dfurther^d assistance from banks and bankers, who, when they have gone thus far, cannot, consistently with their own interest and safety, go farther. A bank cannot, consistently with its own interest, advance to a trader the whole or even the greater part of the circulating capital with which he trades; because, though that capital is continually returning to him in the shape of money, and going from him in the same shape, yet the whole of the returns is too distant from the whole of the outgoings, and the sum of his repayments could not equal the sum of its advances within such moderate periods of time as suit the conveniency of a bank. Still less could a bank afford to advance him any considerable part of his fixed capital; of the capital which the undertaker of an iron forge, for example, employs in erecting his forge and smelting–house, his work–houses and warehouses, the dwelling–houses of his workmen, &c.; of the capital which the undertaker of a mine employs in sinking his shafts, in erecting engines for drawing out the water, in making roads and waggon–ways, &c.; of the capital which the person who undertakes to improve land employs in clearing, draining, enclosing, manuring and ploughing waste and uncultivated fields, in building farm–houses, with all their necessary appendages of stables, granaries, &c. The returns of the fixed capital are in almost all cases much slower than those of the circulating capital; and such expences, even when laid out with the greatest prudence and judgment, very seldom return to the undertaker till after a period of many years, a period by far too distant to suit the conveniency of a bank. Traders and other undertakers may, no doubt, with great propriety, carry on a very considerable part of their projects with borrowed money. In justice to their creditors, however, their own capital ought, in this case, to be sufficient to ensure, if I may say so, the capital of those creditors; or to render it extremely improbable that those creditors should incur any loss, even though the success of the project should fall very much short of the expectation of the projectors. Even with this precaution too, the money which is borrowed, and which it is meant should not be repaid till after a period of several years, ought not to be borrowed of a bank, but ought to be borrowed upon bond or mortgage, of such private people as propose to live upon the interest of their money, without taking the trouble themselves to employ the capital; and who are upon that account willing to lend that capital to such people of good credit as are likely to keep it for several years. A bank, indeed, which lends its money without the expence of stampt paper, or of attornies fees for drawing bonds and mortgages, and which accepts of repayment upon the easy terms of the banking companies of Scotland; would, no doubt, be a very convenient creditor to such traders and undertakers. But such traders and undertakers would, surely, be most inconvenient debtors to such a bank.

  65It is now more than five–and–twenty years since the paper money issued by the different banking companies of Scotland was fully equal, or rather was somewhat more than fully equal, to what the circulation of the country could easily absorb and employ.39 Those companies, therefore, had so long ago given all the assistance to the traders and other undertakers of Scotland which it is possible for banks and bankers, consistently with their own interest, to give. They had even done somewhat more. They had overtraded a little, and had brought upon themselves that loss, or at least that diminution of profit, which in this particular business never fails to attend the smallest degree of over–trading. Those traders and other undertakers, having got so much assistance from banks and bankers, wished to get still more. The banks, they seem to have thought, could extend their credits to whatever sum might be wanted, without incurring any other expence besides that of a few reams of paper. They complained of the contracted views and dastardly spirit of the directors of those banks, which did not, they said, extend their credits in proportion to the extension of the trade of the country; meaning, no doubt, by the extension of that trade the extension of their own projects beyond what they could carry on, either with their own capital, or with what they had credit to borrow of private people in the usual way of bond or mortgage. The banks, they seem to have thought, were in honour bound to supply the deficiency, and to provide them with all the capital which they wanted to trade with. The banks, however, were of a different opinion, and upon their refusing to extend their credits, some of those traders had recourse to an expedient which, for a time, served their purpose, though at a much greater expence, yet as effectually as the utmost extension of bank credits could have done. This expedient was no other than the well–known shift of drawing and redrawing; the shift to which unfortunate traders have sometimes recourse when they are upon the brink of bankruptcy. The practice of raising money in this manner had been long known in England, and during the course of the late war, when the high profits of trade afforded a great temptation to overtrading, is said to have been carried on to a very great extent. From England it was brought into Scotland, where, in proportion to the very limited commerce, and to the very moderate capital of the country, it was soon carried on to a much greater extent than it ever had been in England.

  66 The practice of drawing and re–drawing is so well known to all men of business, that it may perhaps be thought unnecessary to give ^eany^e account of it. But as this book may come into the hands of many people who are not men of business, and as the effects of this practice upon the banking trade are not perhaps generally understood even by men of business themselves, I shall endeavour to explain it as distinctly as I can.

  67The customs of merchants, which were established when the barbarous laws of Europe did not enforce the performance of their contracts, and which during the course of the two last centuries have been adopted into the laws of all European nations, have given such extraordinary privileges to bills of exchange, that money is more readily advanced upon them, than upon any other species of obligation; especially when they are made payable within so short a period as two or three months after their date.40 If, when the bill comes due, the acceptor does not pay it as soon as it is presented, he becomes from that moment a bankrupt. The bill is protested, and returns upon the drawer, who, if he does not immediately pay it, becomes likewise a bankrupt. If, before it came to the person who presents it to the acceptor for payment, it had passed through the hands of several other persons, who had successively advanced to one another the contents of it either in money or goods, and who, to express that each of them had in his turn received those contents, had all of them in their order endorsed, that is, written their names upon the back of the bill; each endorser becomes in his turn liable to the owner of the bill for those contents, and, if he fails to pay, he becomes too from that moment a bankrupt. Though the drawer, acceptor, and endorsers of the bill should, all of them, be persons of doubtful credit; yet still the shortness of the date gives some security to the owner of the bill. Though all of them may be very likely to become bankrupts; it is a chance if they all become so in so short a time. The house is crazy, says a weary traveller to himself, and will not stand very long; but it is a chance if it falls to–night, and I will venture, therefore, to sleep in it to–night.

  68The trader A in Edinburgh, we shall suppose, draws a bill upon B in London, payable two months after date. In reality B in London owes nothing to A in Edinburgh; but he agrees to accept of A’s bill, upon condition that before the term of payment he shall redraw upon A in Edinburgh, for the same sum, together with the interest and a commission, another bill, payable likewise two months after date. B accordingly, before the expiration of the first two months, redraws this bill upon A in Edinburgh; who again, before the expiration of the second two months, draws a second bill upon B in London, payable likewise two months after date; and before the expiration of the third two months, B in London redraws upon A in Edinburgh another bill, payable also two months after date. This practice has sometimes gone on, not only for several months, but for several years together, the bill always returning upon A in Edinburgh, with the accumulated interest and commission of all the former bills. The interest was five per cent. in the year, and the commission was never less than one half per cent. on each draught. This commission being repeated more than six times in the year, whatever money A might raise by this expedient must necessarily have cost him something more than eight per cent. in the year, and sometimes a great deal more; when either the price of the commission happened to rise, or when he was obliged to pay compound interest upon the interest and commission of former bills. This practice was called raising money by circulation.

  69In a country where the ordinary profits of stock in the greater part of mercantile projects are supposed to run between six and ten per cent.; it must have been a very fortunate speculation of which the returns could not only repay the enormous expence at which the money was thus borrowed for carrying it on; but afford, besides, a good surplus profit to the projector. Many vast and extensive projects, however, were undertaken, and for several years carried on without any other fund to support them besides what was raised at this enormous expence. The projectors, no doubt, had in their golden dreams the most distinct vision of this great profit. Upon their awaking, however, either at the end of their projects, or when they were no longer able to carry them on, they very seldom, I believe, had the good fortune to find it* .

  70The bills which A in Edinburgh drew upon B in London, he regularly discounted two months before they were due with some bank or banker in Edinburgh; and the bills which B in London re–drew upon A in Edinburgh, he as regularly discounted either with the bank of England, or with some other bankers in London. Whatever was advanced upon such circulating bills, was, in Edinburgh, advanced in the paper of the Scotch banks, and in London, when they were discounted at the bank of England, in the paper of that bank. Though the bills upon which this paper had been advanced, were all of them repaid in their turn as soon as they became due; yet the value which had been really advanced upon the first bill, was never really returned to the banks which advanced it; because, before each bill became due, another bill was always drawn to somewhat a greater amount than the bill which was soon to be paid; and the discounting of this other bill was essentially necessary towards the payment of that which was soon to be due. This payment, therefore, was altogether fictitious. The stream, which, by means of those circulating bills of exchange, had once been made to run out from the coffers of the banks, was never replaced by any stream which really run into them.

  71 The paper which was issued upon those circulating bills of exchange, amounted, upon many occasions, to the whole fund destined for carrying on some vast and extensive project of agriculture, commerce, or manufactures; and not merely to that part of it which, had there been no paper money, the projector would have been obliged to keep by him, unemployed and in ready money for answering occasional demands. The greater part of this paper was, consequently, over and above the value of the gold and silver which would have circulated in the country, had there been no paper money. It was over and above, therefore, what the circulation of the country could easily absorb and employ, and, upon that account, immediately returned upon the banks in order to be exchanged for gold and silver, which they were to find as they could. It was a capital which those projectors had very artfully contrived to draw from those banks, not only without their knowledge or deliberate consent, but for some time, perhaps, without their having the most distant suspicion that they had really advanced it.

  72When two people, who are continually drawing and re–drawing upon one another, discount their bills always with the same banker, he must immediately discover what they are about, and see clearly that they are trading, not with any capital of their own, but with the capital which he advances to them. But this discovery is not altogether so easy when they discount their bills sometimes with one banker, and sometimes with another, and when the same two persons do not constantly draw and re–draw upon one another, but occasionally run the round of a great circle of projectors, who find it for their interest to assist one another in this method of raising money,41 and to render it, upon that account, as difficult as possible to distinguish between a real and a fictitious bill of exchange; between a bill drawn by a real creditor upon a real debtor, and a bill for which there was properly no real creditor but the bank which discounted it; nor any real debtor but the projector who made use of the money. When a banker had even made this discovery, he might sometimes make it too late, and might find that he had already discounted the bills of those projectors to so great an extent, that, by refusing to discount any more, he would necessarily make them all bankrupts, and thus, by ruining them, might perhaps ruin himself. For his own interest and safety, therefore, he might find it necessary, in this very perilous situation, to go on for some time, endeavouring, however, to withdraw gradually, and upon that account making every day greater and greater difficulties about discounting, in order to force those projectors by degrees to have recourse, either to other bankers, or to other methods of raising money; so as that he himself might, as soon as possible, get out of the circle. The difficulties, accordingly, which the bank of England, which the principal bankers in London, and which even the more prudent Scotch banks began, after a certain time, and when all of them had already gone too far, to make about discounting, not only alarmed, but enraged in the highest degree those projectors. Their own distress, of which this prudent and necessary reserve of the banks, was, no doubt, the immediate occasion, they called the distress of the country; and this distress of the country, they said, was altogether owing to the ignorance, pusillanimity, and bad conduct of the banks, which did not give a sufficiently liberal aid to the spirited undertakings of those who exerted themselves in order to beautify, improve, and enrich the country. It was the duty of the banks, they seemed to think, to lend for as long a time, and to as great an extent as they might wish to borrow. The banks, however, by refusing in this manner to give more credit to those, to whom they had already given a great deal too much, took the only method by which it was now possible to save either their own credit, or the publick credit of the country.42

  73In the midst of this clamour and distress, a new bank was established in Scotland43 for the express purpose of relieving the distress of the country. The design was generous; but the execution was imprudent, and the nature and causes of the distress which it meant to relieve, were not, perhaps, well understood. This bank was more liberal than any other had ever been, both in granting cash accounts, and in discounting bills of exchange. With regard to the latter, it seems to have made scarce any distinction between real and circulating bills, but to have discounted all equally. It was the avowed principle of this bank to advance, upon any reasonable security, the whole capital which was to be employed in ^gthose^g improvements of which the returns are the most slow and distant, such as the improvements of land. To promote such improvements was even said to be the chief of the publick spirited purposes for which it was instituted. By its liberality in granting cash accounts, and in discounting bills of exchange, it, no doubt, issued great quantities of its bank–notes. But those bank–notes being, the greater part of them, over and above what the circulation of the country could easily absorb and employ, returned upon it, in order to be exchanged for gold and silver, as fast as they were issued. Its coffers were never well–filled. The capital which had been subscribed to this bank at two different subscriptions, amounted to one hundred and sixty thousand pounds, of which eighty per cent. only was paid up. This sum ought to have been paid in at several different instalments. A great part of the proprietors, when they paid in their first instalment, opened a cash account with the bank; and the directors, thinking themselves obliged to treat their own proprietors with the same liberality with which they treated all other men, allowed many of them to borrow upon this cash account what they paid in upon all their subsequent instalments. Such payments, therefore, only put into one coffer, what had the moment before been taken out of another. But had the coffers of this bank been filled ever so well, its excessive circulation must have emptied them faster than they could have been replenished by any other expedient but the ruinous one of drawing upon London, and when the bill became due, paying it, together with interest and commission, by another draught upon the same place. Its coffers having been filled so very ill, it is said to have been driven to this resource within a very few months after it began to do business. The estates of the proprietors of this bank were worth several millions, and by their subscription to the original bond or contract of the bank, were really pledged for answering all its engagements. By means of the great credit which so great a pledge necessarily gave it, it was, notwithstanding its too liberal conduct, enabled to carry on business for more than two years. When it was obliged to stop, it had in the circulation about two hundred thousand pounds in bank–notes.44 In order to support the circulation of those notes, which were continually returning upon it as fast as they were issued, it had been constantly in the practice of drawing bills of exchange upon London, of which the number and value were continually increasing, and, when it stopt, amounted to upwards of six hundred thousand pounds. This bank, therefore, had, in little more than the course of two years, advanced to different people upwards of eight hundred thousand pounds at five per cent. Upon the two hundred thousand pounds which it circulated in bank–notes, this five per cent. might, perhaps, be considered as clear gain, without any other deduction besides the expence of management. But upon upwards of six hundred thousand pounds, for which it was continually drawing bills of exchange upon London, it was paying, in the way of interest and commission, upwards of eight per cent., and was consequently losing more than three per cent. upon more than three–fourths of all its dealings.

  74The operations of this bank seem to have produced effects quite opposite to those which were intended by the particular persons who planned and directed it. They seem to have intended to support the spirited undertakings, for as such they considered them, which were at that time carrying on in different parts of the country; and at the same time, by drawing the whole banking business to themselves, to supplant all the other Scotch banks; particularly those established at Edinburgh, whose backwardness in discounting bills of exchange had given some offence.45 This bank, no doubt, gave some temporary relief to those projectors, and enabled them to carry on their projects for about two years longer than they could otherwise have done. But it thereby only enabled them to get so much deeper into debt, so that when ruin came, it fell so much the heavier both upon them and upon their creditors. The operations of this bank, therefore, instead of relieving, in reality aggravated in the long–run the distress which those projectors had brought both upon themselves and upon their country. It would have been much better for themselves, their creditors and their country, had the greater part of them been obliged to stop two years sooner than they actually did. The temporary relief, however, which this bank afforded to those projectors, proved a real and permanent relief to the other Scotch banks. All the dealers in circulating bills of exchange, which those other banks had become so backward in discounting, had recourse to this new bank, where they were received with open arms. Those other banks, therefore, were enabled to get very easily out of that fatal circle, from which they could not otherwise have disengaged themselves without incurring a considerable loss, and perhaps too even some degree of discredit.46

  75In the long–run, therefore, the operations of this bank increased the real distress of the country which it meant to relieve; and effectually relieved from a very great distress those rivals whom it meant to supplant.47

  76At the first setting out of this bank, it was the opinion of some people, that how fast soever its coffers might be emptied, it might easily replenish them by raising money upon the securities of those to whom it had advanced its paper. Experience, I believe, soon convinced them that this method of raising money was by much too slow to answer their purpose; and that coffers which originally were so ill filled, and which emptied themselves so very fast, could be replenished by no other expedient but the ruinous one of drawing bills upon London, and when they became due, paying them by other draughts upon the same place with accumulated interest and commission. But though they had been able by this method to raise money as fast as they wanted it; yet, instead of making a profit, they must have suffered a loss by every such operation; so that in the long–run they must have ruined themselves as a mercantile company, though, perhaps, not so soon as by the more expensive practice of drawing and redrawing. They could still have made nothing by the interest of the paper, which, being over and above what the circulation of the country could absorb and employ, returned upon them, in order to be exchanged for gold and silver, as fast as they issued it; and for the payment of which they were themselves continually obliged to borrow money. On the contrary, the whole expence of this borrowing, of employing agents to look out for people who had money to lend, of negociating with those people, and of drawing the proper bond or assignment, must have fallen upon them, and have been so much clear loss upon the balance of their accounts. The project of replenishing their coffers in this manner may be compared to that of a man who had a water–pond from which a stream was continually running out, and into which no stream was continually running, but who proposed to keep it always equally full by employing a number of people to go continually with buckets to a well at some miles distance in order to bring water to replenish it.48

  77 But though this operation had proved, not only practicable, but profitable to the bank as a mercantile company; yet the country could have derived no benefit from it; but, on the contrary, must have suffered a very considerable loss by it. This operation could not augment in the smallest degree the quantity of money to be lent. It could only have erected this bank into a sort of general loan office for the whole country. Those who wanted to borrow, must have applied to this bank, instead of applying to the private persons who had lent it their money. But a bank which lends money, perhaps, to five hundred different people, the greater part of whom its directors can know very little about, is not likely to be more judicious in the choice of its debtors, than a private person who lends out his money among a few people whom he knows, and in whose sober and frugal conduct he thinks he has good reason to confide. The debtors of such a bank, as that whose conduct I have been giving some account of, were likely, the greater part of them, to be chimerical projectors, the drawers and redrawers of circulating bills of exchange, who would employ the money in extravagant undertakings, which, with all the assistance that could be given them, they would probably never be able to compleat, and which, if they should be compleated, would never repay the expence which they had really cost, would never afford a fund capable of maintaining a quantity of labour equal to that which had been employed about them. The sober and frugal debtors of private persons, on the contrary, would be more likely to employ the money borrowed in sober undertakings which were proportioned to their capitals, and which, though they might have less of the grand and the marvellous, would have more of the solid and the profitable, which would repay with a large profit whatever had been laid out upon them, and which would thus afford a fund capable of maintaining a much greater quantity of labour than that which had been employed about them. The success of this operation, therefore, without increasing in the smallest degree the capital of the country, would only have transferred a great part of it from prudent and profitable, to imprudent and unprofitable undertakings.

  78That the industry in Scotland languished for want of money to employ it, was the opinion of the famous Mr. Law.49 By establishing a bank of a particular kind, which he seems to have imagined, might issue paper to the amount of the whole value of all the lands in the country, he proposed to remedy this want of money. The parliament of Scotland, when he first proposed his project, did not think proper to adopt it. It was afterwards adopted, with some variations, by the duke of Orleans, at that time regent of France. The idea of the possibility of multiplying paper money to almost any extent, was the real foundation of what is called the Mississippi scheme,50 the most extravagant project both of banking and stock–jobbing that, perhaps, the world ever saw.51 The different operations of this scheme are explained so fully, so clearly, and with so much order and distinctness, by Mr. Du Verney, in his Examination of the Political Reflections upon Commerce and Finances of Mr. Du Tot,52 that I shall not give any account of them.53 The principles upon which it was founded are explained by Mr. Law himself, in a discourse concerning money and trade, which he published in Scotland when he first proposed his project.54 The splendid, but visionary ideas which are set forth in that and some other works upon the same principles, still continue to make an impression upon many people, and have, perhaps, in part, contributed to that excess of banking, which has of late been complained of both in Scotland and in other places.

  79The bank of England is the greatest bank of circulation in Europe.55 It was incorporated, in pursuance of an act of parliament,56 by a charter under the great seal, dated the 27th ^hof^h July, 1694. It at that time advanced to government the sum of one million two hundred thousand pounds, for an annuity of one hundred thousand pounds; or for 96,000l. a year interest, at the rate of eight per cent., and 4,000l. a year for the expence of management. The credit of new government, established by the Revolution, we may believe, must have been very low, when it was obliged to borrow at so high an interest.57

  80In 1697 the bank was allowed to enlarge its capital stock by an engraftment of 1,001,171l. 10s.58 Its whole capital stock, therefore, amounted at this time to 2,201,171l. 10s.59 This engraftment is said to have been for the support of publick credit. In 1696, tallies had been at forty, and fifty, and sixty per cent. discount, and bank notes at twenty per cent.* .60 During the great recoinage of the silver,61 which was going on at this time, the bank had thought proper to discontinue the payment of its notes, which necessarily occasioned their discredit.

  81In pursuance of the 7th Anne, c. vii.62 the bank advanced and paid into the exchequer, the sum of 400,000l.; making in all the sum of 1,600,000l. which it had advanced upon its original annuity of 96,000l. interest and 4,000l. for expence of management. In 1708,63 therefore, the credit of government was as good as that of private persons, since it could borrow at six per cent. interest, the common legal and market rate of those times. In pursuance of the same act, the bank cancelled exchequer bills to the amount of 1,775,027l. 17s. 10½d. at six per cent. interest, and was at the same time allowed to take in subscriptions for doubling its capital. In 1708, therefore, the capital of the bank amounted to 4,402,343l.; and it had advanced to government the sum of 3,375,027l. 17s. 10½d.64

  82By a call of fifteen per cent. in 1709, there was paid in and made stock 656,204l. 1s. 9d.; and by another of ten per cent. in 1710, 501,448l. 12s. 11d. In consequence of those two calls, therefore, the bank capital amounted to 5,559,995l. 14s. 8d.

  83ⁱIn pursuance of the 3d George I.65 c. 8. the bank delivered up two millions of exchequer bills to be cancelled. It had at this time, therefore, advanced to government 5,375,027l. 17s. 10d.ⁱ In pursuance of the 8th George I. c. 21.66 the bank purchased of the South Sea Company, stock to the amount of 4,000,000l.; and in 1722, in consequence of the subscriptions which it had taken in for enabling it to make this purchase, its capital stock was increased by 3,400,000l. At this time, therefore, the bank had advanced to the publick 9,375,027l. 17s. 10½d.; and its capital stock amounted only to 8,959,995l. 14s. 8d. It was upon this occasion that the sum which the bank had advanced to the publick, and for which it received interest, began first to exceed its capital stock, or the sum for which it paid a dividend to the proprietors of bank stock; or, in other words, that the bank began to have an undivided capital, over and above its divided one. It has continued to have an undivided capital of the same kind ever since. In 1746, the bank had, upon different occasions, advanced to the publick 11,686,800l. and its divided capital had been raised by different calls and subscriptions to 10,780,000l. The state of those two sums has continued to be the same ever since. In pursuance of the 4th of George III. c. 25.67 the bank agreed to pay to government for the renewal of its charter 110,000l. without interest or repayment.68 This sum, therefore, did not increase either of those two other sums.

  84 The dividend of the bank has varied according to the variations in the rate of interest which it has, at different times, received for the money it had advanced to the publick, as well as according to other circumstances. This rate of interest has gradually been reduced from eight to three per cent. For some years past the bank dividend has been at five and a half per cent.69

  85The stability of the bank of England is equal to that of the British government. All that it has advanced to the publick must be lost before its creditors can sustain any loss. No other banking company in England can be established by act of parliament, or can consist of more than six members. It acts, not only as an ordinary bank, but as a great engine of state. It receives and pays the greater part of the annuities which are due to the creditors of the publick, it circulates exchequer bills, and it advances to government the annual amount of the land and malt taxes, which are frequently not paid up till some years thereafter. In those different operations, its duty to the publick may sometimes have obliged it, without any fault of its directors, to overstock the circulation with paper money. It likewise discounts merchants bills, and has, upon several different occasions, supported the credit of the principal houses, not only of England, but of Hamburgh and Holland. Upon one occasion^j, in 1763,^j it is said to have advanced for this purpose, in one week, about 1,600,000l.; a great part of it in bullion. I do not, however, pretend to warrant either the greatness of the sum, or the shortness of the time.70 Upon other occasions, this great company has been reduced to the necessity of paying in sixpences.71

  86It is not by augmenting the capital of the country, but by rendering a greater part of that capital active and productive than would otherwise be so, that the most judicious operations of banking can increase the industry of the country. That part of his capital which a dealer is obliged to keep by him unemployed, and in ready money for answering occasional demands, is so much dead stock, which, so long as it remains in this situation, produces nothing either to him or to his country. The judicious operations of banking enable him to convert this dead stock into active and productive stock; into materials to work upon, into tools to work with, and into provisions and subsistence to work for; into stock which produces something both to ^khimself^k and to his country. The gold and silver money which circulates in any country, and by means of which, the produce of its land and labour is annually circulated and distributed to the proper consumers, is, in the same manner as the ready money of the dealer, all dead stock. It is a very valuable part of the capital of the country, which produces nothing to the country. The judicious operations of banking, by substituting paper in the room of a great part of this gold and silver, enables the country to convert a great part of this dead stock into active and productive stock; into stock which produces something to the country.72 The gold and silver money which circulates in any country may very properly be compared to a highway, while it circulates and carries to market all the grass and corn of the country, produces itself not a single pile of either. The judicious operations of banking, by providing, if I may be allowed so violent a metaphor, a sort of waggon–way through the air;73 enable the country to convert, as it were, a great part of its highways into good pastures and corn fields, and thereby to increase very considerably the annual produce of its land and labour. The commerce and industry of the country, however, it must be acknowledged, though they may be somewhat augmented, cannot be altogether so secure, when they are thus, as it were, suspended upon the Daedalian wings of paper money, as when they travel about upon the solid ground of gold and silver.74 Over and above the accidents to which they are exposed from the unskilfulness of the conductors of this paper money, they are liable to several others, from which no prudence or skill of those conductors can guard them.

  87An unsuccessful war, for example, in which the enemy got possession of the capital, and consequently of that treasure which supported the credit of the paper money, would occasion a much greater confusion in a country where the whole circulation was carried on by paper, than in one where the greater part of it was carried on by gold and silver. The usual instrument of commerce having lost its value, no exchanges could be made but either by barter or upon credit. All taxes having been usually paid in paper money, the prince would not have wherewithal either to pay his troops, or to furnish his magazines; and the state of the country would be much more irretrievable than if the greater part of its circulation had consisted in gold and silver. A prince, anxious to maintain his dominions at all times in the state in which he can most easily defend them, ought, upon this account, to guard, not only against that excessive multiplication of paper money which ruins the very banks which issue it; but even against that multiplication of it, which enables them to fill the greater part of the circulation of the country with it.

  88The circulation of every country may be considered as divided into two different branches; the circulation of the dealers with one another, and the circulation between the dealers and the consumers. Though the same pieces of money, whether paper or metal, may be employed sometimes in the one circulation and sometimes in the other, yet as both are constantly going on at the same time, each requires a certain stock of money of one kind or another, to carry it on. The value of the goods circulated between the different dealers, never can exceed the value of those circulated between the dealers and the consumers; whatever is bought by the dealers, being ultimately destined to be sold to the consumers. The circulation between the dealers, as it is carried on by wholesale, requires generally a pretty large sum for every particular transaction. That between the dealers and the consumers, on the contrary, as it is generally carried on by retail, frequently requires but very small ones, a shilling, or even a halfpenny, being often sufficient. But small sums circulate much faster than large ones. A shilling changes masters more frequently than a guinea, and a halfpenny more frequently than a shilling. Though the annual purchases of all the consumers, therefore, are at least equal in value to those of all the dealers, they can generally be transacted with a much smaller quantity of money; the same pieces, by a more rapid circulation, serving as the instrument of many more purchases of the one kind than of the other.

  89Paper money may be so regulated, as either to confine itself very much to the circulation between the different dealers, or to extend itself likewise to a great part of that between the dealers and the consumers. Where no bank notes are circulated under ten pounds value, as in London,75 paper money confines itself very much to the circulation between the dealers. When a ten pound bank note comes into the hands of a consumer, he is generally obliged to change it at the first shop where he has occasion to purchase five shillings worth of goods, so that it often returns into the hands of a dealer, before the consumer has spent the fortieth part of the money. Where bank notes are issued for so small sums as twenty shillings, as in Scotland, paper money extends itself to a considerable part of the circulation between dealers and consumers. Before the act of parliament,76 which put a stop to the circulation of ten and five shilling notes, it filled a still greater part of that circulation. In the currencies of North America, paper was commonly issued for so small a sum as a shilling, and filled almost the whole of that circulation. In some paper currencies of Yorkshire, it was issued even for so small a sum as a sixpence.

  90Where the issuing of bank notes for such very small sums is allowed and commonly practised, many mean people are both enabled and encouraged to become bankers. A person whose promissory note for five pounds, or even for twenty shillings, would be rejected by every body, will get it to be received without scruple when it is issued for so small a sum as a sixpence. But the frequent bankruptcies to which such beggarly bankers must be liable, may occasion a very considerable inconveniency, and sometimes even a very great calamity to many poor people who had received their notes in payment.

  91It were better, perhaps, that no bank notes were issued in any part of the kingdom for a smaller sum than five pounds. Paper money would then, probably, confine itself, in every part of the kingdom, to the circulation between the different dealers, as much as it does at present in London, where no bank notes are issued under ten pounds value; five pounds being, in most parts of the kingdom, a sum which, though it will purchase, perhaps, little more than half the quantity of goods, is as much considered, and is as seldom spent all at once, as ten pounds are amidst the profuse expence of London.

  92Where paper money, it is to be observed, is pretty much confined to the circulation between dealers and dealers, as at London, there is always plenty of gold and silver. Where it extends itself to a considerable part of the circulation between dealers and consumers, as in Scotland, and still more in North America,77 it banishes gold and silver almost entirely from the country; almost all the ordinary transactions of its interior commerce being thus carried on by paper. The suppression of ten and five shilling bank notes, somewhat relieved the scarcity of gold and silver in Scotland; and the suppression of twenty shilling notes, ^lwould^l probably relieve it still more. Those metals are said to have become more abundant in America, since the suppression of some of their paper currencies. They are said, likewise, to have been more abundant before the institution of those currencies.

  93Though paper money should be pretty much confined to the circulation between dealers and dealers, yet banks and bankers might still be able to give nearly the same assistance to the industry and commerce of the country, as they had done when paper money filled almost the whole circulation. The ready money which a dealer is obliged to keep by him, for answering occasional demands, is destined altogether for the circulation between himself and other dealers, of whom he buys goods. He has no occasion to keep any by him for the circulation between himself and the consumers, who are his customers, and who bring ready money to him, instead of taking any from him. Though no paper money, therefore, was allowed to be issued, but for such sums as would confine it pretty much to the circulation between dealers and dealers; yet, partly by discounting real bills of exchange, and partly by lending upon cash accounts, banks and bankers might still be able to relieve the greater part of those dealers from the necessity of keeping any considerable part of their stock by them, unemployed and in ready money, for answering occasional demands. They might still be able to give the utmost assistance which banks and bankers can, with propriety, give to traders of every kind.

  94To restrain private people, it may be said, from receiving in payment the promissory notes of a banker, for any sum whether great or small, when they themselves are willing to receive them; or, to restrain a banker from issuing such notes, when all his neighbours are willing to accept of them, is a manifest violation of that natural liberty which it is the proper business of law, not to infringe, but to support. Such regulations may, no doubt, be considered as in some respect a violation of natural liberty. But those exertions of the natural liberty of a few individuals, which might endanger the security of the whole society, are, and ought to be, restrained by the laws of all governments; of the most free, as well as of the most despotical. The obligation of building party walls, in order to prevent the communication of fire, is a violation of natural liberty, exactly of the same kind with the regulations of the banking trade which are here proposed.

  95A paper money consisting in bank notes, issued by people of undoubted credit, payable upon demand without any condition, and in fact always readily paid as soon as presented, is, in every respect, equal in value to gold and silver money; since gold and silver money can at any time be had for it. Whatever is either bought or sold for such paper, must necessarily be bought or sold as cheap as it could have been for gold and silver.

  96The increase of paper money, it has been said, by augmenting the quantity, and consequently diminishing the value of the whole currency, necessarily augments the money price of commodities. But as the quantity of gold and silver, which is taken from the currency, is always equal to the quantity of paper which is added to it, paper money does not necessarily increase the quantity of the whole currency. From the beginning of the last century to the present ^mtime^m , provisions never were cheaper in Scotland than in 1759,78 though, from the circulation of ten and five shilling bank notes, there was then more paper money in the country than at present. The proportion between the price of provisions in Scotland and that in England, is the same now as before the great multiplication of banking companies in Scotland. Corn is, upon most occasions, fully as cheap in England as in France; though there is a great deal of paper money in England, and scarce any in France. In 1751 and in 1752, when Mr. Hume published his Political Discourses, and soon after the great multiplication of paper money in Scotland, there was a very sensible rise in the price of provisions, owing, probably, to the badness of the seasons, and not to the multiplication of paper money.79

  97It would be otherwise, indeed, with a paper money consisting in promissory notes, of which the immediate payment depended, in any respect, either upon the good will of those who issued them; or upon a condition which the holder of the notes might not always have it in his power to fulfil; or of which the payment was not exigible till after a certain number of years, and which in the mean time bore no interest. Such a paper money would, no doubt, fall more or less below the value of gold and silver, according as the difficulty or uncertainty of obtaining immediate payment was supposed to be greater or less; or according to the greater or less distance of time at which payment was exigible.

  98Some years ago the different banking companies of Scotland were in the practice of inserting into their bank notes, what they called an Optional Clause,80 by which they promised payment to the bearer, either as soon as the note should be presented, or, in the option of the directors, six months after such presentment, together with the legal interest for the said six months. The directors of some of those banks sometimes took advantage of this optional clause, and sometimes threatened those who demanded gold and silver in exchange for a considerable number of their notes, that they would take advantage of it, unless such demanders would content themselves with a part of what they demanded. The promissory notes of those banking companies constituted at that time the far greater part of the currency of Scotland, which this uncertainty of payment necessarily degraded below the value of gold and silver money. During the continuance of this abuse (which prevailed chiefly in 1762, 1763, and 1764), while the exchange between London and Carlisle was at par, that between London and Dumfries would sometimes be four per cent. against Dumfries, though this town is not thirty miles distant from Carlisle. But at Carlisle, bills were paid in gold and silver; whereas at Dumfries they were paid in Scotch bank notes, and the uncertainty of getting those bank notes exchanged for gold and silver coin had thus degraded them four per cent. below the value of that coin. The same act of parliament81 which suppressed ten and five shilling bank notes, suppressed likewise this optional clause, and thereby restored the exchange between England and Scotland to its natural rate, or to what the course of trade and remittances might happen to make it.

  99In the paper currencies of Yorkshire, the payment of so small a sum as a sixpence sometimes depended upon the condition that the holder of the note should bring the change of a guinea to the person who issued it; a condition, which the holders of such notes might frequently find it very difficult to fulfil, and which must have degraded this currency below the value of gold and silver money. An act of parliament, accordingly, declared all such clauses unlawful, and suppressed, in the same manner as in Scotland, all promissory notes, payable to the bearer, under twenty shillings value.82

  100The paper currencies of North America consisted, not in bank notes payable to the bearer on demand, but in a government paper, of which the payment was not exigible till several years after it was issued: And though the colony governments paid no interest to the holders of this paper, they declared it to be, and in fact rendered it, a legal tender of payment for the full value for which it was issued. But allowing the colony security to be perfectly good, a hundred pounds payable fifteen years hence, for example, in a country where interest is at six per cent. is worth little more than forty pounds ready money. To oblige a creditor, therefore, to accept of this as full payment for a debt of a hundred pounds actually paid down in ready money, was an act of such violent injustice, as has scarce, perhaps, been attempted by the government of any other country which pretended to be free. It bears the evident marks of having originally been, what the honest and downright Doctor Douglas assures us it was, a scheme of fraudulent debtors to cheat their creditors.83 The government of Pensylvania, indeed, pretended, upon their first emission of paper money, in 1722,84 to render their paper of equal value with gold and silver, by enacting penalties against all those who made any difference in the price of their goods when they sold them for a colony paper, and when they sold them for gold and silver; a regulation equally tyrannical, but much less effectual than that which it was meant to support. A positive law may render a shilling a legal tender for a guinea; because it may direct the courts of justice to discharge the debtor who has made that tender. But no positive law can oblige a person who sells goods, and who is at liberty to sell or not to sell, as he pleases, to accept of a shilling as equivalent to a guinea in the price of them. Notwithstanding any regulation of this kind, it appeared by the course of exchange with Great Britain, that a hundred pounds sterling was occasionally considered as equivalent, in some of the colonies, to a hundred and thirty pounds, and in others to so great a sum as eleven hundred pounds currency; this difference in the value arising from the difference in the quantity of paper emitted in the different colonies, and in the distance and probability of the term of its final discharge and redemption.85

  101No law, therefore, could be more equitable than the act of parliament, so unjustly complained of in the colonies, which declared that no paper currency to be emitted there in time coming, should be a legal tender of payment.86

  102Pensylvania was always more moderate in its emissions of paper money than any other of our colonies.87 Its paper currency accordingly is said never to have sunk below the value of the gold and silver which was current in the colony before the first emission of its paper money. Before that emission, the colony had raised the denomination of its coin, and had, by act of assembly, ordered five shillings sterling to pass in the colony for six and three–pence, and afterwards for six and eight–pence. A pound colony currency, therefore, even when that currency was gold and silver, was more than thirty per cent. below the value of a pound sterling, and when that currency was turned into paper, it was seldom much more than thirty per cent. below that value. The pretence for raising the denomination of the coin, was to prevent the exportation of gold and silver, by making equal quantities of those metals pass for greater sums in the colony than they did in the mother country. It was found, however, that the price of all goods from the mother country rose exactly in proportion as they raised the denomination of their coin, so that their gold and silver were exported as fast as ever.

  103The paper of each colony being received in the payment of the provincial taxes, for the full value for which it had been issued, it necessarily derived from this use some additional value, over and above what it would have had, from the real or supposed distance of the term of its final discharge and redemption. This additional value was greater or less, according as the quantity of paper issued was more or less above what could be employed in the payment of the taxes of the particular colony which issued it. It was in all the colonies very much above what could be employed in this manner.

  104A prince, who should enact that a certain proportion of his taxes should be paid in a paper money of a certain kind, might thereby give a certain value to this paper money; even though the term of its final discharge and redemption should depend altogether upon the will of the prince. If the bank which issued this paper was careful to keep the quantity of it always somewhat below what could easily be employed in this manner, the demand for it might be such as to make it even bear a premium, or sell for somewhat more in the market than the quantity of gold or silver currency for which it was issued. Some people account in this manner for what is called the Agio of the bank of Amsterdam, or for the superiority of bank money over current money; though this bank money, as they pretend, cannot be taken out of the bank at the will of the owner.88 The greater part of foreign bills of exchange must be paid in bank money, that is, by a transfer in the books of the bank; and the directors of the bank, they allege, are careful to keep the whole quantity of bank money always below what this use occasions a demand for. It is upon this account, they say, that bank money sells for a premium, or bears an agio of four or five per cent. above the same nominal sum of the gold and silver currency of the country.89 This account of the bank of Amsterdam, however, ⁿit will appear hereafter, is in a great measureⁿ chimerical.90

  105A paper currency which falls below the value of gold and silver coin, does not thereby sink the value of ^othose metals^o , or occasion equal quantities of ^pthem^p to exchange for a smaller quantity of goods of any other kind. The proportion between the value of gold and silver and that of goods of any other kind, depends in all cases, not upon the nature or quantity of any particular paper money, which may be current in any particular country, but upon the richness or poverty of the mines, which happen at any particular time to supply the great market of the commercial world with those metals. It depends upon the proportion between the quantity of labour which is necessary in order to bring a certain quantity of gold and silver to market, and that which is necessary in order to bring thither a certain quantity of any other sort of goods.

  106If bankers are restrained from issuing any circulating bank notes, or notes payable to the bearer, for less than a certain sum; and if they are subjected to the obligation of an immediate and unconditional payment of such bank notes as soon as presented, their trade may, with safety to the publick, be rendered in all other respects perfectly free. The late multiplication of banking companies in both parts of the united kingdom, an event by which many people have been much alarmed, instead of diminishing, increases the security of the publick. It obliges all of them to be more circumspect in their conduct, and, by not extending their currency beyond its due proportion to their cash, to guard themselves against those malicious runs, which the rivalship of so many competitors is always ready to bring upon them. It restrains the circulation of each particular company within a narrower circle, and reduces their circulating notes to a smaller number. By dividing the whole circulation into a greater number of parts, the failure of any one company, an accident which, in the course of things, must sometimes happen, becomes of less consequence to the publick. This free competition too obliges all bankers to be more liberal in their dealings with their customers, lest their rivals should carry them away. In general, if any branch of trade, or any division of labour, be advantageous to the publick, the freer and more general the competition, it will always be the more so.91

  CHAPTER III

  Of the Accumulation of Capital, or of productive and unproductive Labour

  1There is one sort of labour which adds to the value of the subject upon which it is bestowed: There is another which has no such effect. The former, as it produces a value, may be called productive; the latter, unproductive* labour.1 Thus the labour of a manufacturer adds, generally, to the value of the materials which he works upon, that of his own maintenance, and of his master’s profit. The labour of a menial servant, on the contrary, adds to the value of nothing. Though the manufacturer has his wages advanced to him by his master, he, in reality, costs him no expence, the value of those wages being generally restored, together with a profit, in the improved value of the subject upon which his labour is bestowed. But the maintenance of a menial servant never is restored. A man grows rich by employing a multitude of manufacturers: He grows poor, by maintaining a multitude of menial servants. The labour of the latter, however, has its value, and deserves its reward as well as that of the former. But the labour of the manufacturer fixes and realizes itself in some particular subject or vendible commodity, which lasts for some time at least after that labour is past.2 It is, as it were, a certain quantity of labour stocked and stored up to be employed, if necessary, upon some other occasion. That subject, or what is the same thing, the price of that subject, can afterwards, if necessary, put into motion a quantity of labour equal to that which had originally produced it.3 The labour of the menial servant, on the contrary, does not fix or realize itself in any particular subject or vendible commodity. His services generally perish in the very instant of their performance, and seldom leave any trace or value behind them, for which an equal quantity of service could afterwards be procured.4

  2The labour of some of the most respectable orders in the society is, like that of menial servants, unproductive of any value, and does not fix or realize itself in any permanent subject, or vendible commodity, which endures after that labour is past, and for which an equal quantity of labour could afterwards be procured. The sovereign, for example, with all the officers both of justice and war who serve under him, the whole army and navy, are unproductive labourers.5 They are the servants of the publick, and are maintained by a part of the annual produce of the industry of other people.6 Their service, how honourable, how useful,7 or how necessary soever, produces nothing for which an equal quantity of service can afterwards be procured. The protection, security, and defence of the commonwealth, the effect of their labour this year, will not purchase its protection, security, and defence, for the year to come. In the same class must be ranked, some both of the gravest and most important, and some of the most frivolous professions: churchmen, lawyers, physicians, men of letters of all kinds; players, buffoons, musicians, opera–singers, opera–dancers, &c.8 The labour of the meanest of these has a certain value, regulated by the very same principles which regulate that of every other sort of labour;9 and that of the noblest and most useful, produces nothing which could afterwards purchase or procure an equal quantity of labour. Like the declamation of the actor, the harangue of the orator, or the tune of the musician, the work of all of them perishes in the very instant of its production.10

  3 Both productive and unproductive labourers, and those who do not labour at all, are all equally maintained by the annual produce of the land and labour of the country. This produce, how great soever, can never be infinite, but must have certain limits. According, therefore, as a smaller or greater proportion of it is in any one year employed in maintaining unproductive hands, the more in the one case and the less in the other will remain for the productive, and the next year’s produce will be greater or smaller accordingly; the whole annual produce, if we except the spontaneous productions of the earth, being the effect of productive labour.

  4Though the whole annual produce of the land and labour of every country, is, no doubt, ultimately destined for supplying the consumption of its inhabitants, and for procuring a revenue to them; yet when it first comes either from the ground, or from the hands of the productive labourers, it naturally divides itself into two parts. One of them, and frequently the largest, is, in the first place, destined for replacing a capital, or for renewing the provisions, materials, and finished work, which had been withdrawn from a capital; the other for constituting a revenue either to the owner of this capital, as the profit of his stock; or to some other person, as the rent of his land. Thus, of the produce of land, one part replaces the capital of the farmer; the other pays his profit and the rent of the landlord; and thus constitutes a revenue both to the owner of this capital, as the profits of his stock; and to some other person, as the rent of his land. Of the produce of a great manufactory, in the same manner, one part, and that always the largest, replaces the capital of the undertaker of the work; the other pays his profit, and thus constitutes a revenue to the owner of ^athis^a capital.

  5That part of the annual produce of the land and labour of any country which replaces a capital, never is immediately employed to maintain any but productive hands. It pays the wages of productive labour only. That which is immediately destined for constituting a revenue either as profit or as rent, may maintain indifferently either productive or unproductive hands.

  6Whatever part of his stock a man employs as a capital, he always expects ^bis^b to be replaced to him with a profit. He employs it, therefore, in maintaining productive hands only; and after having served in the function of a capital to him, it constitutes a revenue to them. Whenever he employs any part of it in maintaining unproductive hands of any kind, that part is, from that moment, withdrawn from his capital, and placed in his stock reserved for immediate consumption.

  7Unproductive labourers, and those who do not labour at all, are all maintained by revenue; either, first, by that part of the annual produce which is originally destined for constituting a revenue to some particular persons, either as the rent of land or as the profits of stock; or, secondly, by that part which, though originally destined for replacing a capital and for maintaining productive labourers only, yet when it comes into their hands, whatever part of it is over and above their necessary subsistence, may be employed in maintaining indifferently either productive or unproductive hands. Thus, not only the great landlord or the rich merchant, but even the common workman, if his wages are considerable, may maintain a menial servant; or he may sometimes go to a play or a puppet–show, and so contribute his share towards maintaining one set of unproductive labourers; or he may pay some taxes, and thus help to maintain another set, more honourable and useful, indeed, but equally unproductive. No part of the annual produce, however, which had been originally destined to replace a capital, is ever directed towards maintaining unproductive hands, till after it has put into motion its full complement of productive labour, or all that it could put into motion in the way in which it was employed.11 The workman must have earned his wages by work done, before he can employ any part of them in this manner. That part too is generally but a small one. It is his spare revenue only, of which productive labourers have seldom a great deal. They generally have some, however; and in the payment of taxes the greatness of their number may compensate, in some measure, the smallness of their contribution.12 The rent of land and the profits of stock are every where, therefore, the principal sources from which unproductive hands derive their subsistence. These are the two sorts of revenue of which the owners have generally most to spare. They might both maintain indifferently either productive or unproductive hands. They seem, however, to have some predilection for the latter. The expence of a great lord feeds generally more idle than industrious people. The rich merchant, though with his capital he maintains industrious people only, yet by his expence, that is, by the employment of his revenue, he feeds commonly the very same sort as the great lord.13

  8The proportion, therefore, between the productive and unproductive hands, depends very much in every country upon the proportion between that part of the annual produce, which, as soon as it comes either from the ground or from the hands of the productive labourers, is destined for replacing a capital, and that which is destined for constituting a revenue, either as rent, or as profit. This proportion is very different in rich from what it is in poor countries.14

  9Thus, at present, in the opulent countries of Europe, a very large, frequently the largest portion of the produce of the land, is destined for replacing the capital of the rich and independent farmer; the other for paying his profits, and the rent of the landlord. But antiently, during the prevalency of the feudal government, a very small portion of the produce was sufficient to replace the capital employed in cultivation. It consisted commonly in a few wretched cattle, maintained altogether by the spontaneous produce of uncultivated land, and which might, therefore, be considered as a part of that spontaneous produce. It generally too belonged to the landlord, and was by him advanced to the occupiers of the land. All the rest of the produce properly belonged to him too, either as rent for his land, or as profit upon this paultry capital. The occupiers of land were generally bondmen, whose persons and effects were equally his property. Those who were not bondmen were tenants at will, and though the rent which they paid was often nominally little more than a quit–rent, it really amounted to the whole produce of the land. Their lord could at all times command their labour in peace, and their service in war. Though they lived at a distance from his house, they were equally dependent upon him as his retainers who lived in it. But the whole produce of the land undoubtedly belongs to him, who can dispose of the labour and service of all those whom it maintains. In the present state of Europe, the share of the landlord seldom exceeds a third, sometimes not a fourth part of the whole produce of the land. The rent of land, however, in all the improved parts of the country, has been tripled and quadrupled since those antient times; and this third or fourth part of the annual produce is, it seems, three or four times greater than the whole had been before. In the progress of improvement, rent, though it increases in proportion to the extent, diminishes in proportion to the produce of the land.15

  10In the opulent countries of Europe, great capitals are at present employed in trade and manufactures. In the antient state, the little trade that was stirring, and the few homely and coarse manufactures that were carried on, required but very small capitals. These, however, must have yielded very large profits. The rate of interest was no where less than ten per cent. and their profits must have been sufficient to afford this great interest. At present the rate of interest, in the improved parts of Europe, is no where higher than six per cent. and in some of the most improved it is so low as four, three, and two per cent. Though that part of the revenue of the inhabitants which is derived from the profits of stock is always much greater in rich than in poor countries, it is because the stock is much greater: in proportion to the stock the profits are generally much less.

  11That part of the annual produce, therefore, which, as soon as it comes either from the ground, or from the hands of the productive labourers, is destined for replacing a capital, is not only much greater in rich than in poor countries, but bears a much greater proportion to that which is immediately destined for constituting a revenue either as rent or as profit. The funds destined for the maintenance of productive labour, are not only much greater in the former than in the latter, but bear a much greater proportion to those which, though they may be employed to maintain either productive or unproductive hands, have generally a predilection for the latter.

  12The proportion between those different funds necessarily determines in every country the general character of the inhabitants as to industry or idleness. We are more industrious than our forefathers; because in the present times the funds destined for the maintenance of industry, are much greater in proportion to those which are likely to be employed in the maintenance of idleness, than they were two or three centuries ago. Our ancestors were idle for want of a sufficient encouragement to industry. It is better, says the proverb, to play for nothing, than to work for nothing. In mercantile and manufacturing towns, where the inferior ranks of people are chiefly maintained by the employment of capital, they are in general industrious, sober, and thriving; as in many English, and in most Dutch towns. In those towns which are principally supported by the constant or occasional residence of a court, and in which the inferior ranks of people are chiefly maintained by the spending of revenue, they are in general idle, dissolute, and poor; as at Rome, Versailles, Compiegne, and Fontainbleau. If you except Rouen and Bourdeaux, there is little trade or industry in any of the parliament towns of France;16 and the inferior ranks of people, being chiefly maintained by the expence of the members of the courts of justice, and of those who come to plead before them, are in general idle and poor. The great trade of Rouen and Bourdeaux seems to be altogether the effect of their situation.17 Rouen is necessarily the entrepôt of almost all the goods which are brought either from foreign countries, or from the maritime provinces of France, for the consumption of the great city of Paris. Bourdeaux is in the same manner the entrepôt of the wines which grow upon the banks of the Garonne, and of the rivers which run into it, one of the richest wine countries in the world, and which seems to produce the wine fittest for exportation, or best suited to the taste of foreign nations. Such advantageous situations necessarily attract a great capital by the great employment which they afford it; and the employment of this capital is the cause of the industry of those two cities. In the other parliament towns of France, very little more capital seems to be employed than what is necessary for supplying their own consumption; that is, little more than the smallest capital which can be employed in them. The same thing may be said of Paris, Madrid, and Vienna. Of those three cities, Paris is by far the most industrious; but Paris itself is the principal market of all the manufactures established at Paris, and its own consumption is the principal object of all the trade which it carries on. London, Lisbon, and Copenhagen, are, perhaps, the only three cities in Europe, which are both the constant residence of a court, and can at the same time be considered as trading cities, or as cities which trade not only for their own consumption, but for that of other cities and countries. The situation of all the three is extremely advantageous, and naturally fits them to be the entrepôts of a great part of the goods destined for the consumption of distant places. In a city where a great revenue is spent, to employ with advantage a capital for any other purpose than for supplying the consumption of that city, is probably more difficult than in one in which the inferior ranks of people have no other maintenance but what they derive from the employment of such a capital. The idleness of the greater part of the people who are maintained by the expence of revenue, corrupts, it is probable, the industry of those who ought to be maintained by the employment of capital, and renders it less advantageous to employ a capital there than in other places. There was little trade or industry in Edinburgh before the union. When the Scotch parliament was no longer to be assembled in it, when it ceased to be the necessary residence of the principal nobility and gentry of Scotland, it became a city of some trade and industry. It still continues, however, to be the residence of the principal courts of justice in Scotland, of the boards of customs and excise, &c. A considerable revenue, therefore, still continues to be spent in it. In trade and industry it is much inferior to Glasgow, of which the inhabitants are chiefly maintained by the employment of capital. The inhabitants of a large village, it has sometimes been observed, after having made considerable progress in manufactures, have become idle and poor, in consequence of a great lord’s having taken up his residence in their neighbourhood.18

  13The proportion between capital and revenue, therefore, seems every where to regulate the proportion between industry and idleness. Whereever capital predominates, industry prevails: wherever revenue, idleness. Every increase or diminution of capital, therefore, naturally tends to increase or diminish the real quantity of industry, the number of productive hands, and consequently the exchangeable value of the annual produce of the land and labour of the country, the real wealth and revenue of all its inhabitants.

  14Capitals are increased by parsimony, and diminished by prodigality and misconduct.

  15Whatever a person saves from his revenue he adds to his capital, and either employs it himself in maintaining an additional number of productive hands, or enables some other person to do so, by lending it to him for an interest, that is, for a share of the profits.19 As the capital of an individual can be increased only by what he saves from his annual revenue or his annual gains, so the capital of a society, which is the same with that of all the individuals who compose it, can be increased only in the same manner.

  16Parsimony, and not industry, is the immediate cause of the increase of capital. Industry, indeed, provides the subject which parsimony accumulates. But whatever industry might acquire, if parsimony did not save and store up, the capital would never be the greater.20

  17Parsimony, by increasing the fund which is destined for the maintenance of productive hands, tends to increase the number of those hands whose labour adds to the value of the subject upon which it is bestowed. It tends therefore to increase the exchangeable value of the annual produce of the land and labour of the country. It puts into motion an additional quantity of industry, which gives an additional value to the annual produce.

  18What is annually saved is as regularly consumed as what is annually spent, and nearly in the same time too; but it is consumed by a different set of people.21 That portion of his revenue which a rich man annually spends, is in most cases consumed by idle guests, and menial servants, who leave nothing behind them in return for their consumption. That portion which he annually saves, as for the sake of the profit it is immediately employed as a capital, is consumed in the same manner, and nearly in the same time too, but by a different set of people, by labourers, manufacturers, and artificers, who re–produce with a profit the value of their annual consumption. His revenue, we shall suppose, is paid him in money. Had he spent the whole, the food, cloathing, and lodging which the whole could have purchased, would have been distributed among the former set of people. By saving a part of it, as that part is for the sake of the profit immediately employed as a capital either by himself or by some other person, the food, cloathing, and lodging, which may be purchased with it, are necessarily reserved for the latter. The consumption is the same, but the consumers are different.

  19By what a frugal man annually saves, he not only affords maintenance to an additional number of productive hands, for that or the ensuing year, but, like the founder of a publick workhouse, he establishes as it were a perpetual fund for the maintenance of an equal number in all times to come. The perpetual allotment and destination of this fund, indeed, is not always guarded by any positive law, by any trust–right or deed of mortmain. It is always guarded, however, by a very powerful principle, the plain and evident interest of every individual to whom any share of it shall ever belong. No part of it can ever afterwards be employed to maintain any but productive hands, without an evident loss to the person who thus perverts it from its proper destination.22

  20The prodigal perverts it in this manner. By not confining his expence within his income, he encroaches upon his capital. Like him who perverts the revenues of some pious foundation to profane purposes, he pays the wages of idleness with those funds which the frugality of his forefathers had, as it were, consecrated to the maintenance of industry. By diminishing the funds destined for the employment of productive labour, he necessarily diminishes, so far as ^cit^c depends upon him, the quantity of that labour which adds a value to the subject upon which it is bestowed, and, consequently, the value of the annual produce of the land and labour of the whole country, the real wealth and revenue of its inhabitants. If the prodigality of some was not compensated by the frugality of others, the conduct of every prodigal, by feeding the idle with the bread of the industrious, tends not only to beggar himself, but to impoverish his country.

  21Though the expence of the prodigal should be altogether in home–made, and no part of it in foreign commodities, its effect upon the productive funds of the society would still be the same.23 Every year there would still be a certain quantity of food and cloathing, which ought to have maintained productive, employed in maintaining unproductive hands. Every year, therefore, there would still be some diminution in what would otherwise have been the value of the annual produce of the land and labour of the country.

  22This expence, it may be said indeed, not being in foreign goods, and not occasioning any exportation of gold and silver, the same quantity of money would remain in the country as before. But if the quantity of food and cloathing, which were thus consumed by unproductive, had been distributed among productive hands, they would have reproduced, together with a profit, the full value of their consumption. The same quantity of money would in this case equally have remained in the country, and there would besides have been a reproduction of an equal value of consumable goods. There would have been two values instead of one.

  23The same quantity of money, besides, cannot long remain in any country, in which the value of the annual produce diminishes. The sole use of money is to circulate consumable goods.24 By means of it, provisions, materials, and finished work, are bought and sold, and distributed to their proper consumers. The quantity of money, therefore, which can be annually employed in any country must be determined by the value of the consumable goods annually circulated within it. These must consist either in the immediate produce of the land and labour of the country itself, or in something which had been purchased with some part of that produce. Their value, therefore, must diminish as the value of that produce diminishes, and along with it the quantity of money which can be employed in circulating them. But the money which by this annual diminution of produce is annually thrown out of domestick circulation will not be allowed to lie idle. The interest of whoever possesses it, requires that it should be employed. But having no employment at home, it will, in spite of all laws and prohibitions, be sent abroad, and employed in purchasing consumable goods which may be of some use at home.25 Its annual exportation will in this manner continue for some time to add something to the annual consumption of the country beyond the value of its own annual produce. What in the days of its prosperity had been saved from that annual produce, and employed in purchasing gold and silver, will contribute for some little time to support its consumption in adversity. The exportation of gold and silver is, in this case, not the cause, but the effect of its declension, and may even, for some little time, alleviate the misery of that declension.

  24 The quantity of money, on the contrary, must in every country naturally increase as the value of the annual produce increases. The value of the consumable goods annually circulated within the society being greater, will require a greater quantity of money to circulate them. A part of the increased produce, therefore, will naturally be employed in purchasing, wherever it is to be had, the additional quantity of gold and silver necessary for circulating the rest. The increase of those metals will in this case be the effect, not the cause, of the publick prosperity. Gold and silver are purchased every where in the same manner.26 The food, cloathing, and lodging, the revenue and maintenance of all those whose labour or stock is employed in bringing them from the mine to the market, is the price paid for them in Peru as well as in England. The country which has this price to pay, will never be long without the quantity of those metals which it has occasion for; and no country will ever long retain a quantity which it has no occasion for.

  25Whatever, therefore, we may imagine the real wealth and revenue of a country to consist in, whether in the value of the annual produce of its land and labour, as plain reason seems to dictate; or in the quantity of the precious metals which circulate within it, as vulgar prejudices suppose;27 in either view of the matter, every prodigal appears to be a publick enemy, and every frugal man a publick benefactor.

  26 The effects of misconduct are often the same as those of prodigality. Every injudicious and unsuccessful project in agriculture, mines, fisheries, trade, or manufactures, tends in the same manner to diminish the funds destined for the maintenance of productive labour.28 In every such project, though the capital is consumed by productive hands only, yet, as by the injudicious manner in which they are employed, they do not reproduce the full value of their consumption, there must always be some diminution in what would otherwise have been the productive funds of the society.

  27It can seldom happen, indeed, that the circumstances of a great nation can be much affected either by the prodigality or misconduct of individuals; the profusion or imprudence of some being always more than compensated by the frugality and good conduct of others.

  28With regard to profusion, the principle, which prompts to expence, is the passion for present enjoyment; which, though sometimes violent and very difficult to be restrained, is in general only momentary and occasional. But the principle which prompts to save, is the desire of bettering our condition,29 a desire which, though generally calm and dispassionate, comes with us from the womb, and never leaves us till we go into the grave. In the whole interval which separates those two moments, there is scarce perhaps a single ^dinstant^d in which any man is so perfectly and completely satisfied with his situation, as to be without any wish of alteration or improvement, of any kind. An augmentation of fortune is the means by which the greater part of men propose and wish to better their condition.30 It is the means the most vulgar and the most obvious; and the most likely way of augmenting their fortune, is to save and accumulate some part of what they acquire, either regularly and annually, or upon some extraordinary occasions. Though the principle of expence, therefore, prevails in almost all men upon some occasions, and in some men upon almost all occasions, yet in the greater part of men, taking the whole course of their life at an average, the principle of frugality seems not only to predominate, but to predominate very greatly.

  29With regard to misconduct, the number of prudent and successful undertakings is every where much greater than that of injudicious and unsuccessful ones. After all our complaints of the frequency of bankruptcies, the unhappy men who fall into this misfortune make but a very small part of the whole number engaged in trade, and all other sorts of business; not much more perhaps than one in a thousand. Bankruptcy is perhaps the greatest and most humiliating calamity which can befal an innocent man. The greater part of men, therefore, are sufficiently careful to avoid it. Some, indeed, do not avoid it; as some do not avoid the gallows.

  30Great nations are never impoverished by private, though they sometimes are by publick prodigality and misconduct. The whole, or almost the whole publick revenue, is in most countries employed in maintaining unproductive hands. Such are the people who compose a numerous and splendid court, a great ecclesiastical establishment, great fleets and armies, who in time of peace produce nothing, and in time of war acquire nothing which can compensate the expence of maintaining them, even while the war lasts. Such people, as they themselves produce nothing, are all maintained by the produce of other men’s labour. When multiplied, therefore, to an unnecessary number, they may in a particular year consume so great a share of this produce, as not to leave a sufficiency for maintaining the productive labourers, who should reproduce it next year. The next year’s produce, therefore, will be less than that of the foregoing, and if the same disorder should continue, that of the third year will be still less than that of the second. Those unproductive hands, who should be maintained by a part only of the spare revenue of the people, may consume so great a share of their whole revenue, and thereby oblige so great a number to encroach upon their capitals, upon the funds destined for the maintenance of productive labour, that all the frugality and good conduct of individuals may not be able to compensate the waste and degradation of produce occasioned by this violent and forced encroachment.

  31This frugality and good conduct, however, is upon most occasions, it appears from experience, sufficient to compensate, not only the private prodigality and misconduct of individuals, but the publick extravagance of government. The uniform, constant, and uninterrupted effort of every man to better his condition, the principle from which publick and national, as well as private opulence is originally derived, is frequently powerful enough to maintain the natural progress of things toward improvement, in spite both of the extravagance of government, and of the greatest errors of administration.31 Like the unknown principle of animal life, it frequently restores health and vigour to the constitution, in spite, not only of the disease, but of the absurd prescriptions of the doctor.

  32The annual produce of the land and labour of any nation can be increased in its value by no other means, but by increasing either the number of its productive labourers, or the productive powers of those labourers who had before been employed.32 The number of its productive labourers, it is evident, can never be much increased, but in consequence of an increase of capital, or of the funds destined for maintaining them. The productive powers of the same number of labourers cannot be increased, but in consequence either of some addition and improvement to those machines and instruments which facilitate and abridge labour; or of a more proper division and distribution of employment.33 In either case an additional capital is almost always required. It is by means of an additional capital only that the undertaker of any work can either provide his workmen with better machinery, or make a more proper distribution of employment among them. When the work to be done consists of a number of parts, to keep every man constantly employed in one way, requires a much greater capital than where every man is occasionally employed in every different part of the work. When we compare, therefore, the state of a nation at two different periods, and find, that the annual produce of its land and labour is evidently greater at the latter than at the former, that its lands are better cultivated, its manufactures more numerous and more flourishing, and its trade more extensive, we may be assured that its capital must have increased during the interval between those two periods, and that more must have been added to it by the good conduct of some, than had been taken from it either by the private misconduct of others, or by the publick extravagance of government. But we shall find this to have been the case of almost all nations, in all tolerably quiet and peaceable times, even of those who have not enjoyed the most prudent and parsimonious governments. To form a right judgment of it, indeed, we must compare the state of the country at periods somewhat distant from one another. The progress is frequently so gradual, that, at near periods, the improvement is not only not sensible, but from the declension either of certain branches of industry, or of certain districts of the country, things which sometimes happen though the country in general ^ebe^e in great prosperity, there frequently arises a suspicion, that the riches and industry of the whole are decaying.

  33The annual produce of the land and labour of England, for example, is certainly much greater than it was, a little more than a century ago, at the restoration of Charles II. Though at present, few people, I believe, doubt of this, yet during this period, five years have seldom passed away in which some book or pamphlet has not been published, written too with such abilities as to gain some authority with the publick, and pretending to demonstrate that the wealth of the nation was fast declining, that the country was depopulated, agriculture neglected, manufactures decaying, and trade undone. Nor have these publications been all party pamphlets, the wretched offspring of falshood and venality. Many of them have been written by very candid and very intelligent people; who wrote nothing but what they believed, and for no other reason but because they believed it.

  34The annual produce of the land and labour of England again, was certainly much greater at the restoration, than we can suppose it to have been about an hundred years before, at the accession of Elizabeth. At this period too, we have all reason to believe, the country was much more advanced in improvement, than it had been about a century before, towards the close of the dissensions between the houses of York and Lancaster. Even then it was, probably, in a better condition than it had been at the Norman conquest, and at the Norman conquest, than during the confusion of the Saxon Heptarchy. Even at this early period, it was certainly a more improved country than at the invasion of Julius Caesar, when its inhabitants were nearly in the same state with the savages in North America.34

  35In each of those periods, however, there was, not only much private and publick profusion, many expensive and unnecessary wars, great perversion of the annual produce from maintaining productive to maintain unproductive hands; but sometimes, in the confusion of civil discord, such absolute waste and destruction of stock, as might be supposed, not only to retard, as it certainly did, the natural accumulation of riches, but to have left the country, at the end of the period, poorer than at the beginning. Thus, in the happiest and most fortunate period of them all, that which has passed since the restoration, how many disorders and misfortunes have occurred, which, could they have been foreseen, not only the impoverishment, but the total ruin of the country would have been expected from them? The fire and the plague of London, the two Dutch wars, the disorders of the revolution, the war in Ireland, the four expensive French wars of 1688, ^f1702^f , 1742, and 1756, together with the two rebellions of 1715 and 1745. In the course of the four French wars, the nation has contracted more than a hundred and forty–five millions of debt, over and above all the other extraordinary annual expence which they occasioned, so that the whole cannot be computed at less than two hundred millions.35 So great a share of the annual produce of the land and labour of the country, has, since the revolution, been employed upon different occasions, in maintaining an extraordinary number of unproductive hands. But had not those wars given this particular direction to so large a capital, the greater part of it would naturally have been employed in maintaining productive hands, whose labour would have replaced, with a profit, the whole value of their consumption. The value of the annual produce of the land and labour of the country, would have been considerably increased by it every year, and every year’s increase would have augmented still more that of the ^gfollowing^g year. More houses would have been built, more lands would have been improved, and those which had been improved before would have been better cultivated, more manufactures would have been established, and those which had been established before would have been more extended; and to what height the real wealth and revenue of the country might, by this time, have been raised, it is not perhaps very easy even to imagine.36

  6But though the profusion of government must, undoubtedly, have retarded the natural progress of England towards wealth and improvement, it has not been able to stop it. The annual produce of its land and labour is, undoubtedly, much greater at present than it was either at the restoration or at the revolution. The capital, therefore, annually employed in cultivating this land, and in maintaining this labour, must likewise be much greater. In the midst of all the exactions of government, this capital has been silently and gradually accumulated by the private frugality and good conduct of individuals, by their universal, continual, and uninterrupted effort to better their own condition. It is this effort, protected by law and allowed by liberty to exert itself in the manner that is most advantageous, which has maintained the progress of England towards opulence and improvement in almost all former times, and which, it is to be hoped, will do so in all future times.37 England, however, as it has never been blessed with a very parsimonious government, so parsimony has at no time been the characteristical virtue of its inhabitants. It is the highest impertinence and presumption, therefore, in kings and ministers, to pretend to watch over the œconomy of private people, and to restrain their expence either by sumptuary laws, or by prohibiting the importation of foreign luxuries.38 They are themselves always, and without any exception, the greatest spendthrifts in the society. Let them look well after their own expence, and they may safely trust private people with theirs. If their own extravagance does not ruin the state, that of their subjects never will.

  37As frugality increases, and prodigality diminishes the publick capital, so the conduct of those, whose expence just equals their revenue, without either accumulating or encroaching, neither increases nor diminishes it. Some modes of expence, however, seem to contribute more to the growth of publick opulence than others.

  38 The revenue of an individual may be spent, either in things which are consumed immediately, and in which one day’s expence can neither alleviate nor support that of another; or it may be spent in things more durable, which can therefore be accumulated, and in which every day’s expence may, as he chuses, either alleviate or support and heighten the effect of that of the following day.39 A man of fortune, for example, may either spend his revenue in a profuse and sumptuous table, and in maintaining a great number of menial servants, and a multitude of dogs and horses; or contenting himself with a frugal table and few attendants, he may lay out the greater part of it in adorning his house or his country villa, in useful or ornamental buildings, in useful or ornamental furniture, in collecting books, statues, pictures; or in things more frivolous, jewels, baubles, ingenious trinkets of different kinds; or, what is most trifling of all, in amassing a great wardrobe of fine cloaths, like the favourite and minister of a great prince who died a few years ago.40 Were two men of equal fortune to spend their revenue, the one chiefly in the one way, the other in the other, the magnificence of the person whose expence had been chiefly in durable commodities, would be continually increasing, every day’s expence contributing something to support and heighten the effect of that of the following day: that of the other, on the contrary, would be no greater at the end of the period than at the beginning. The former too would, at the end of the period, be the richer man of the two. He would have a stock of goods of some kind or other, which, though it might not be worth all that it cost, would always be worth something. No trace or vestige of the expence of the latter would remain, and the effects of ten or twenty years profusion would be as completely annihilated as if they had never existed.

  39As the one mode of expence is more favourable than the other to the opulence of an individual, so is it likewise to that of a nation. The houses, the furniture, the cloathing of the rich, in a little time, become useful to the inferior and middling ranks of people.41 They are able to purchase them when their superiors grow weary of them, and the general accommodation of the whole people is thus gradually improved, when this mode of expence becomes universal among men of fortune. In countries which have long been rich, you will frequently find the inferior ranks of people in possession both of houses and furniture perfectly good and entire, but of which neither the one could have been built, nor the other have been made for their use. What was formerly a seat of the family of Seymour, is now an inn upon the Bath road. The marriage–bed of James the First of Great Britain, which his Queen brought with her from Denmark, as a present fit for a sovereign to make to a sovereign, was, a few years ago, the ornament of an alehouse at Dunfermline. In some ancient cities, which either have been long stationary, or have gone somewhat to decay, you will sometimes scarce find a single house which could have been built for its present inhabitants. If you go into those houses too, you will frequently find many excellent, though antiquated pieces of furniture, which are still very fit for use, and which could as little have been made for them. Noble palaces, magnificent villas, great collections of books, statues, pictures, and other curiosities, are frequently both an ornament and an honour, not only to the neighbourhood, but to the whole country to which they belong. Versailles is an ornament and a honour to France, Stowe and Wilton to England. Italy continues to command some sort of veneration by the number of monuments of this kind which it possesses, though the wealth which produced them has decayed, and ^hthough^h the genius which planned them seems to be extinguished, perhaps from not having the same employment.

  40The expence too, which is laid out in durable commodities, is favourable, not only to accumulation, but to frugality. If a person should at any time exceed in it, he can easily reform without exposing himself to the censure of the publick.42 To reduce very much the number of his servants, to reform his table from great profusion to great frugality, to lay down his equipage after he has once set it up, are changes which cannot escape the observation of his neighbours, and which are supposed to imply some acknowledgment of preceding bad conduct.43 Few, therefore, of those who have once been so unfortunate as to launch out too far into this sort of expence, have afterwards the courage to reform, till ruin and bankruptcy oblige them. But if a person has, at any time, been at too great an expence in building, in furniture, in books or pictures, no imprudence can be inferred from his changing his conduct. These are things in which further expence is frequently rendered unnecessary by former expence; and when a person stops short, he appears to do so, not because he has exceeded his fortune, but because he has satisfied his fancy.

  41The expence, besides, that is laid out in durable commodities, gives maintenance, commonly, to a greater number of people, than that which is employed in the most profuse hospitality. Of two or three hundred weight of provisions, which may sometimes be served up at a great festival, one–half, perhaps, is thrown to the dunghill, and there is always a great deal wasted and abused. But if the expence of this entertainment had been employed in setting to work, masons, carpenters, upholsterers, mechanicks, ⁱ&c.ⁱ a quantity of provisions, of equal value, would have been distributed among a still greater number of people, who would have bought them in penny–worths and pound weights, and not have lost or thrown away a single ounce of them. In the one way, besides, this expence maintains productive, in the other unproductive hands. In the one way, therefore, it increases, in the other, it does not increase, the exchangeable value of the annual produce of the land and labour of the country.

  42 I would not, however, by all this be understood to mean, that the one species of expence always betokens a more liberal or generous spirit than the other. When a man of fortune spends his revenue chiefly in hospitality, he shares the greater part of it with his friends and companions; but when he employs it in purchasing such durable commodities, he often spends the whole upon his own person, and gives nothing to any body without an equivalent.44 The latter species of expence, therefore, especially when directed towards frivolous objects, the little ornaments of dress and furniture, jewels, trinkets, gewgaws, frequently indicates, not only a trifling, but a base and selfish disposition. All that I mean is, that the one sort of expence, as it always occasions some accumulation of valuable commodities, as it is more favourable to private frugality, and, consequently, to the increase of the publick capital, and as it maintains productive, rather than unproductive hands, conduces more than the other to the growth of publick opulence.

  CHAPTER IV

  Of Stock lent at Interest

  1The stock which is lent at interest is always considered as a capital by the lender. He expects that in due time it is to be restored to him, and that in the mean time the borrower is to pay him a certain annual rent for the use of it. The borrower may use it either as a capital, or as a stock reserved for immediate consumption. If he uses it as a capital, he employs it in the maintenance of productive labourers, who reproduce the value with a profit. He can, in this case, both restore the capital and pay the interest without alienating or encroaching upon any other source of revenue. If he uses it as a stock reserved for immediate consumption, he acts the part of a prodigal, and dissipates in the maintenance of the idle, what was destined for the support of the industrious. He can, in this case, neither restore the capital nor pay the interest, without either alienating or encroaching upon some other source of revenue, such as the property or the rent of land.

  2The stock which is lent at interest is, no doubt, occasionally employed in both these ways, but in the former much more frequently than in the latter. The man who borrows in order to spend will soon be ruined, and he who lends to him will generally have occasion to repent of his folly. To borrow or to lend for such a purpose, therefore, is in all cases, where gross usury is out of the question, contrary to the interest of both parties; and though it no doubt happens sometimes that people do both the one and the other; yet, from the regard that all men have for their own interest, we may be assured, that it cannot happen so very frequently as we are sometimes apt to imagine. Ask any rich man of common prudence, to which of the two sorts of people he has lent the greater part of his stock, to those who, he thinks, will employ it profitably, or to those who will spend it idly, and he will laugh at you for proposing the question. Even among borrowers, therefore, not the people in the world most famous for frugality, the number of the frugal and industrious surpasses considerably that of the prodigal and idle.

  3The only people to whom stock is commonly lent, without their being expected to make any very profitable use of it, are country gentlemen who borrow upon mortgage. Even they scarce ever borrow merely to spend. What they borrow, one may say, is commonly spent before they borrow it. They have generally consumed so great a quantity of goods, advanced to them upon credit by shopkeepers and tradesmen, that they find it necessary to borrow at interest in order to pay the debt. The capital borrowed replaces the capitals of those shopkeepers and tradesmen, which the country gentlemen could not have replaced from the rents of their estates. It is not properly borrowed in order to be spent, but in order to replace a capital which had been spent before.

  4Almost all loans at interest are made in money, either of paper, or of gold and silver. But what the borrower really wants, and what the lender really supplies him with, is, not the money, but the money’s worth, or the goods which it can purchase.1 If he wants it as a stock for immediate consumption, it is those goods only which he can place in that stock. If he wants it as a capital for employing industry, it is from those goods only that the industrious can be furnished with the tools, materials, and maintenance, necessary for carrying on their work. By means of the loan, the lender, as it were, assigns to the borrower his right to a certain portion of the annual produce of the land and labour of the country, to be employed as the borrower pleases.

  5The quantity of stock, therefore, or, as it is commonly expressed, of money which can be lent at interest in any country, is not regulated by the value of the money, whether paper or coin, which serves as the instrument of the different loans made in that country, but by the value of that part of the annual produce which, as soon as it comes either from the ground, or from the hands of the productive labourers, is destined not only for replacing a capital, but such a capital as the owner does not care to be at the trouble of employing himself. As such capitals are commonly lent out and paid back in money, they constitute what is called the monied interest. It is distinct, not only from the landed, but from the trading and manufacturing interests, as in these last the owners themselves employ their own capitals.2 Even in the monied interest, however, the money is, as it were, but the deed of assignment, which conveys from one hand to another those capitals which the owners do not care to employ themselves.3 Those capitals may be greater in almost any proportion, than the amount of the money which serves as the instrument of their conveyance; the same pieces of money successively serving for many different loans, as well as for many different purchases. A, for example, lends to W a thousand pounds, with which W immediately purchases of B a thousand pounds worth of goods. B having no occasion for the money himself, lends the identical pieces to X, with which X immediately purchases of C another thousand pounds worth of goods. C in the same manner, and for the same reason, lends them to Y, who again purchases goods with them of D. In this manner the same pieces, either of coin or of paper, may, in the course of a few days, serve as the instrument of three different loans, and of three different purchases, each of which is, in value, equal to the whole amount of those pieces. What the three monied men A, B, and C, assign to the three borrowers, W, X, Y, is the power of making those purchases. In this power consist both the value and the use of the loans. The stock lent by the three monied men, is equal to the value of the goods which can be purchased with it, and is three times greater than that of the money with which the purchases are made. Those loans, however, may be all perfectly well secured, the goods purchased by the different debtors being so employed, as, in due time, to bring back, with a profit, an equal value either of coin or of paper. And as the same pieces of money can thus serve as the instrument of different loans to three, or, for the same reason, to thirty times their value, so they may likewise successively serve as the instrument of repayment.

  6A capital lent at interest may, in this manner, be considered as an assignment from the lender to the borrower of a certain considerable portion of the annual produce; upon condition that the borrower in return shall, during the continuance of the loan, annually assign to the lender a smaller portion, called the interest; and at the end of it a portion equally considerable with that which had originally been assigned to him, called the repayment. Though money, either coin or paper, serves generally as the deed of assignment both to the smaller, and to the more considerable portion, it is itself altogether different from what is assigned by it.

  7In proportion as that share of the annual produce which, as soon as it comes either from the ground, or from the hands of the productive labourers, is destined for replacing a capital, increases in any country, what is called the monied interest naturally increases with it. The increase of those particular capitals from which the owners wish to derive a revenue, without being at the trouble of employing them themselves, naturally accompanies the general increase of capitals; or, in other words, as stock increases, the quantity of stock to be lent at interest grows gradually greater and greater.

  8As the quantity of stock to be lent at interest increases, the interest, or the price which must be paid for the use of that stock, necessarily diminishes, not only from those general causes which make the market price of things commonly diminish as their quantity increases, but from other causes which are peculiar to this particular case.4 As capitals increase in any country, the profits which can be made by employing them necessarily diminish.5 It becomes gradually more and more difficult to find within the country a profitable method of employing any new capital.6 There arises in consequence a competition between different capitals, the owner of one endeavouring to get possession of that employment which is occupied by another. But upon most occasions he can hope to justle that other out of this employment, by no other means but by dealing upon more reasonable terms. He must not only sell what he deals in somewhat cheaper, but in order to get it to sell, he must sometimes too buy it dearer. The demand for productive labour, by the increase of the funds which are destined for maintaining it, grows every day greater and greater. Labourers easily find employment, but the owners of capitals find it difficult to get labourers to employ. Their competition raises the wages of labour, and sinks the profits of stock.7 But when the profits which can be made by the use of a capital are in this manner diminished, as it were, at both ends, the price which can be paid for the use of it,8 that is, the rate of interest, must necessarily be diminished with them.

  9Mr. Locke, Mr. Law, and Mr. Montesquieu,9 as well as many other writers, seem to have imagined that the increase of the quantity of gold and silver, in consequence of the discovery of the Spanish West Indies, was the real cause of the lowering of the rate of interest through the greater part of Europe.10 Those metals, they say, having become of less value themselves, the use of any particular portion of them necessarily became of less value too, and consequently the price which could be paid for it. This notion, which at first sight seems so plausible, has been so fully exposed by Mr. Hume, that it is, perhaps, unnecessary to say any thing more about it.11 The following very short and plain argument, however, may serve to explain more distinctly the fallacy which seems to have misled those gentlemen.

  10Before the discovery of the Spanish West Indies, ten per cent. seems to have been the common rate of interest through the greater part of Europe. It has since that time in different countries sunk to six, five, four, and three per cent.12 Let us suppose that in every particular country the value of silver has sunk precisely in the same proportion as the rate of interest; and that in those countries, for example, where interest has been reduced from ten to five per cent., the same quantity of silver can now purchase just half the quantity of goods which it could have purchased before. This supposition will not, I believe, be found any where agreeable to the truth, but it is the most favourable to the opinion which we are going to examine; and even upon this supposition it is utterly impossible that the lowering of the value of silver could have the smallest tendency to lower the rate of interest. If a hundred pounds are in those countries now of no more value than fifty pounds were then, ten pounds must now be of no more value than five pounds were then. Whatever were the causes which lowered the value of the capital, the same must necessarily have lowered that of the interest, and exactly in the same proportion. The proportion between the value of the capital and that of the interest, must have remained the same, though the rate had never been altered. By altering the rate, on the contrary, the proportion between those two values is necessarily altered. If a hundred pounds now are worth no more than fifty were then, five pounds now can be worth no more than two pounds ten shillings were then. By reducing the rate of interest, therefore, from ten to five per cent., we give for the use of a capital, which is supposed to be equal to one–half of its former value, an interest which is equal to one–fourth only of the value of the former interest.

  11Any increase in the quantity of silver, while that of the commodities circulated by means of it remained the same, could have no other effect than to diminish the value of that metal. The nominal value of all sorts of goods would be greater, but their real value would be precisely the same as before. They would be exchanged for a greater number of pieces of silver; but the quantity of labour which they could command, the number of people whom they could maintain and employ, would be precisely the same. The capital of the country would be the same, though a greater number of pieces might be requisite for conveying any equal portion of it from one hand to another. The deeds of assignment, like the conveyances of a verbose attorney,13 would be more cumbersome, but the thing assigned would be precisely the same as before, and could produce only the same effects. The funds for maintaining productive labour being the same, the demand for it would be the same. Its price or wages, therefore, though nominally greater, would really be the same. They would be paid in a greater number of pieces of silver; but they would purchase only the same quantity of goods. The profits of stock would be the same both nominally and really. The wages of labour are commonly computed by the quantity of silver which is paid to the labourer. When that is increased, therefore, his wages appear to be increased, though they may sometimes be no greater than before. But the profits of stock are not computed by the number of pieces of silver with which they are paid, but by the proportion which those pieces bear to the whole capital employed. Thus in a particular country five shillings a week are said to be the common wages of labour, and ten per cent. the common profits of stock. But the whole capital of the country being the same as before, the competition between the different capitals of individuals into which it was divided would likewise be the same. They would all trade with the same advantages and disadvantages. The common proportion between capital and profit, therefore, would be the same, and consequently the common interest of money; what can commonly be given for the use of money being necessarily regulated by what can commonly be made by the use of it.

  12Any increase in the quantity of commodities annually circulated within the country, while that of the money which circulated them remained the same, would, on the contrary, produce many other important effects, besides that of raising the value of the money. The capital of the country, though it might nominally be the same, would really be augmented. It might continue to be expressed by the same quantity of money, but it would command a greater quantity of labour. The quantity of productive labour which it could maintain and employ would be increased, and consequently the demand for that labour. Its wages would naturally rise with the demand, and yet might appear to sink. They might be paid with a smaller quantity of money, but that smaller quantity might purchase a greater quantity of goods than a greater had done before. The profits of stock would be diminished both really and in appearance. The whole capital of the country being augmented, the competition between the different capitals of which it was composed, would naturally be augmented along with it. The owners of those particular capitals would be obliged to content themselves with a smaller proportion of the produce of that labour which their respective capitals employed. The interest of money, keeping pace always with the profits of stock, might, in this manner, be greatly diminished, though the value of money, or the quantity of goods which any particular sum could purchase, was greatly augmented.

  13In some countries the interest of money has been prohibited by law. But as something can every where be made by the use of money, something ought every where to be paid for the use of it.14 This regulation, instead of preventing, has been found from experience to increase the evil of usury; the debtor being obliged to pay, not only for the use of the money, but for the risk which his creditor runs by accepting a compensation for that use. He is obliged, if one may say so, to insure his creditor from the penalties of usury.

  14In countries where interest is permitted, the law, in order to prevent the extortion of usury, generally fixes the highest rate which can be taken without incurring a penalty. This rate ought always to be somewhat above the lowest market price, or the price which is commonly paid for the use of money by those who can give the most undoubted security. If this legal rate should be fixed below the lowest market rate, the effects of this fixation must be nearly the same as those of a total prohibition of interest.15 The creditor will not lend his money for less than the use of it is worth, and the debtor must pay him for the risk which he runs by accepting the full value of that use. If it is fixed precisely at the lowest market price, it ruins with honest people, who respect the laws of their country, the credit of all those who cannot give the very best security, and obliges them to have recourse to exorbitant usurers. In a country, such as Great Britain, where money is lent to government at three per cent. and to private people upon good security at four, and four and a half, the present legal rate, five per cent., is, perhaps, as proper as any.

  15The legal rate, it is to be observed, though it ought to be somewhat above, ought not to be much above the lowest market rate.16 If the legal rate of interest in Great Britain, for example, was fixed so high as eight or ten per cent., the greater part of the money which was to be lent, would be lent to prodigals and projectors, who alone would be willing to give this high interest. Sober people,17 who will give for the use of money no more than a part of what they are likely to make by the use of it, would not venture into the competition. A great part of the capital of the country would thus be kept out of the hands which were most likely to make a profitable and advantageous use of it, and thrown into those which were most likely to waste and destroy it. Where the legal rate of interest, on the contrary, is fixed but a very little above the lowest market rate, sober people are universally preferred, as borrowers, to prodigals and projectors.18 The person who lends money gets nearly as much interest from the former as he dares to take from the latter, and his money is much safer in the hands of the one set of people, than in those of the other. A great part of the capital of the country is thus thrown into the hands in which it is most likely to be employed with advantage.19

  16No law can reduce the common rate of interest below the lowest ordinary market rate at the time when that law is made.20 Notwithstanding the edict of 1766, by which the French king attempted to reduce the rate of interest from five to four per cent., money continued to be lent in France at five per cent., the law being evaded in several different ways.21

  17The ordinary market price of land, it is to be observed, depends every where upon the ordinary market rate of interest.22 The person who has a capital from which he wishes to derive a revenue, without taking the trouble to employ it himself, deliberates whether he should buy land with it, or lend it out at interest. The superior security of land, together with some other advantages which almost every where attend upon this species of property, will generally dispose him to content himself with a smaller revenue from land, than what he might have by lending out his money at interest.23 These advantages are sufficient to compensate a certain difference of revenue; but they will compensate a certain difference only; and if the rent of land should fall short of the interest of money by a greater difference, nobody would buy land, which would soon reduce its ordinary price.24 On the contrary, if the advantages should much more than compensate the difference, every body would buy land, which again would soon raise its ordinary price. When interest was at ten per cent., land was commonly sold for ten and twelve years purchase. As interest sunk to six, five, and four per cent., the price of land rose to twenty, five and twenty, and thirty years purchase. The market rate of interest is higher in France than in England; and the common price of land is lower. In England it commonly sells at thirty; in France at twenty years purchase.

  CHAPTER V

  Of the different Employment of Capitals

  1Though all capitals are destined for the maintenance of productive labour only, yet the quantity of that labour, which equal capitals are capable of putting into motion, varies extremely according to the diversity of their employment; as does likewise the value which that employment adds to the annual produce of the land and labour of the country.

  2A capital may be employed in four different ways: either, first, in procuring the rude produce annually required for the use and consumption of the society; or, secondly, in manufacturing and preparing that rude produce for immediate use and consumption; or, thirdly, in transporting either the rude or manufactured produce from the places where they abound to those where they are wanted; or, lastly, in dividing particular portions of either into such small parcels as suit the occasional demands of those who want them. In the first way are employed the capitals of all those who undertake the improvement ^aor^a cultivation of lands, mines, or fisheries; in the second, those of all master manufacturers; in the third, those of all wholesale merchants; and in the fourth, those of all retailers. It is difficult to conceive that a capital should be employed in any way which may not be classed under some one or other of those four.1

  3Each of those four methods of employing a capital is essentially necessary either to the existence or extension of the other three, or to the general conveniency of the society.

  4Unless a capital was employed in furnishing rude produce to a certain degree of abundance, neither manufactures nor trade of any kind could exist.

  5Unless a capital was employed in manufacturing that part of the rude produce which requires a good deal of preparation before it can be fit for use and consumption, it either would never be produced, because there could be no demand for it; or if it was produced spontaneously, it would be of no value in exchange, and could add nothing to the wealth of the society.

  Unless a capital was employed in transporting, either the rude or 6 manufactured produce, from the places where it abounds to those where it is wanted, no more of either could be produced than was necessary for the consumption of the neighbourhood. The capital of the merchant exchanges the surplus produce of one place for that of another, and thus encourages the industry and increases the enjoyments of both.

  Unless a capital was employed in breaking and dividing certain portions 7 either of the rude or manufactured produce, into such small parcels as suit the occasional demands of those who want them, every man would be obliged to purchase a greater quantity of the goods he wanted, than his immediate occasions required. If there was no such trade as a butcher, for example, every man would be obliged to purchase a whole ox or a whole sheep at a time. This would generally be inconvenient to the rich, and much more so to the poor. If a poor workman was obliged to purchase a month’s or six months provisions at a time, a great part of the stock which he employs as a capital in the instruments of his trade, or in the furniture of his shop, and which yields him a revenue, he would be forced to place in that part of his stock which is reserved for immediate consumption, and which yields him no revenue. Nothing can be more convenient for such a person than to be able to purchase his subsistence from day to day, or even from hour to hour as he wants it. He is thereby enabled to employ almost his whole stock as a capital. He is thus enabled to furnish work to a greater value, and the profit, which he makes by it in this way, much more than compensates the additional price which the profit of the retailer imposes upon the goods. The prejudices of some political writers against shopkeepers and tradesmen, are altogether without foundation.2 So far is it from being necessary, either to tax them, or to restrict their numbers, that they can never be multiplied so as to hurt the publick, though they may so as to hurt one another. The quantity of grocery goods, for example, which can be sold in a particular town, is limited by the demand of that town and ^bits^b neighbourhood. The capital, therefore, which can be employed in the grocery trade cannot exceed what is sufficient to purchase that quantity. If this capital is divided between two different grocers, their competition will tend to make both of them sell cheaper, than if it were in the hands of one only; and if it were divided among twenty, their competition would be just so much the greater, and the chance of their combining together, in order to raise the price, just so much the less. Their competition might perhaps ruin some of themselves; but to take care of this is the business of the parties concerned, and it may safely be trusted to their discretion. It can never hurt either the consumer, or the producer; on the contrary, it must tend to make the retailers both sell cheaper and buy dearer, than if the whole trade was monopolized by one or two persons. Some of them, perhaps, may sometimes decoy a weak customer to buy what he has no occasion for. This evil, however, is of too little importance to deserve the publick attention, nor would it necessarily be prevented by restricting their numbers. It is not the multitude of ale–houses, to give the most suspicious example, that occasions a general disposition to drunkenness among the common people; but that disposition arising from other causes necessarily gives employment to a multitude of ale–houses.3

  8The persons whose capitals are employed in any of those four ways are themselves productive labourers. Their labour, when properly directed, fixes and realizes itself in the subject or vendible commodity upon which it is bestowed, and generally adds to its price the value at least of their own maintenance and consumption. The profits of the farmer, of the manufacturer, of the merchant, and retailer, are all drawn from the price of the goods which the two first produce, and the two last buy and sell. Equal capitals, however, employed in each of those four different ways, will ^cimmediately^c put into motion very different quantities of productive labour, and augment too in very different porportions the value of the annual produce of the land and labour of the society to which they belong.4

  9The capital of the retailer replaces, together with its profits, that of the merchant of whom he purchases goods, and thereby enables him to continue his business. The retailer himself is the only productive labourer whom it ^dimmediately^d employs. In his profits, consists the whole value which its employment adds to the annual produce of the land and labour of the society.

  10The capital of the wholesale merchant replaces, together with their profits, the capitals of the farmers and manufacturers of whom he purchases the rude and manufactured produce which he deals in, and thereby enables them to continue their respective trades.5 It is by this service chiefly that he contributes indirectly to support the productive labour of the society, and to increase the value of its annual produce. His capital employs too the sailors and carriers who transport his goods from one place to another, and it augments the price of those goods by the value, not only of his profits, but of their wages. This is all the productive labour which it immediately puts into motion, and all the value which it immediately adds to the annual produce. Its operation in both these respects is a good deal superior to that of the capital of the retailer.

  11Part of the capital of the master manufacturer is employed as a fixed capital in the instruments of his trade, and replaces, together with its profits, that of some other artificer of whom he purchases them. Part of his circulating capital is employed in purchasing materials, and replaces, with their profits, the capitals of the farmers and miners of whom he purchases them. But a great part of it is always, either annually, or in a much shorter period, distributed among the different workmen whom he employs.6 It augments the value of those materials by their wages, and by their masters profits upon the whole stock of wages, materials, and instruments of trade employed in the business. It puts ^eimmediately^e into motion, therefore, a much greater quantity of productive labour, and adds a much greater value to the annual produce of the land and labour of the society, than an equal capital in the hands of any wholesale merchant.

  12No equal capital puts into motion a greater quantity of productive labour than that of the farmer.7 Not only his labouring servants, but his labouring cattle, are productive labourers. In agriculture too nature labours along with man; and though her labour costs no expence, its produce has its value, as well as that of the most expensive workmen. The most important operations of agriculture seem intended, not so much to increase, though they do that too, as to direct the fertility of nature towards the production of the plants most profitable to man. A field overgrown with briars and brambles may frequently produce as great a quantity of vegetables as the best cultivated vineyard or corn field. Planting and tillage frequently regulate more than they animate the active fertility of nature; and after all their labour, a great part of the work always remains to be done by her. The labourers and labouring cattle, therefore, employed in agriculture, not only occasion, like the workmen in manufactures, the reproduction of a value equal to their own consumption, or to the capital which employs them, together with its owners profits; but of a much greater value. Over and above the capital of the farmer and all its profits, they regularly occasion the reproduction of the rent of the landlord. This rent may be considered as the produce of those powers of nature, the use of which the landlord lends to the farmer.8 It is greater or smaller according to the supposed extent of those powers, or in other words, according to the supposed natural or improved fertility of the land. It is the work of nature which remains after deducting or compensating every thing which can be regarded as the work of man. It is seldom less than a fourth, and frequently more than a third of the whole produce.9 No equal quantity of productive labour employed in manufactures can ever occasion so great a reproduction. In them nature does nothing; man does all; and the reproduction must always be in proportion to the strength of the agents that occasion it. The capital employed in agriculture, therefore, not only puts into motion a greater quantity of productive labour than any equal capital employed in manufactures, but in proportion too to the quantity of productive labour which it employs, it adds a much greater value to the annual produce of the land and labour of the country, to the real wealth and revenue of its inhabitants. Of all the ways in which a capital can be employed, it is by far the most advantageous to the society.

  13The capitals employed in the agriculture and in the retail trade of any society, must always reside within that society. Their employment is confined almost to a precise spot, to the farm, and to the shop of the retailer. They must generally too, though there are some exceptions to this, belong to resident members of the society.

  14The capital of a wholesale merchant, on the contrary, seems to have no fixed or necessary residence anywhere, but may wander about from place to place, according as it can either buy cheap or sell dear.10

  15The capital of the manufacturer must no doubt reside where the manufacture is carried on; but where this shall be is not always necessarily determined. It may frequently be at a great distance both from the place where the materials grow, and from that where the complete manufacture is consumed. Lyons is very distant both from the places which afford the materials of its manufactures, and from those which consume them.11 The people of fashion in Sicily are cloathed in silks made in other countries, from the materials which their own produces. Part of the wool of Spain is manufactured in Great Britain, and some part of that cloth is afterwards sent back to Spain.12

  16Whether the merchant whose capital exports the surplus produce of any society be a native or a foreigner, is of very little importance. If he is a foreigner, the number of their productive labourers is necessarily less than if he had been a native by one man only; and the value of their annual produce, by the profits of that one man. The sailors or carriers whom he employs may still belong indifferently either to his country, or to their country, or to some third country, in the same manner as if he had been a native. The capital of a foreigner gives a value to their surplus produce equally with that of a native, by exchanging it for something for which there is a demand at home. It as effectually replaces the capital of the person who produces that surplus, and as effectually enables him to continue his business; the service by which the capital of a wholesale merchant chiefly contributes to support the productive labour, and to augment the value of the annual produce of the society to which he belongs.

  17It is of more consequence that the capital of the manufacturer should reside within the country. It necessarily puts into motion a greater quantity of productive labour, and adds a greater value to the annual produce of the land and labour of the society. It may, however, be very useful to the country, though it should not reside within it. The capitals of the British manufacturers who work up the flax and hemp annually imported from the coasts of the Baltic, are surely very useful to the countries which produce them. Those materials are a part of the surplus produce of those countries which, unless it was annually exchanged for something which is in demand there, would be of no value, and would soon cease to be produced. The merchants who export it, replace the capitals of the people who produce it, and thereby encourage them to continue the production; and the British manufacturers replace the capitals of those merchants.

  18 A particular country, in the same manner as a particular person, may frequently not have capital sufficient both to improve and cultivate all its lands, to manufacture and prepare their whole rude produce for immediate use and consumption, and to transport the surplus part either of the rude or manufactured produce to those distant markets where it can be exchanged for something for which there is a demand at home. The inhabitants of many different parts of Great Britain have not capital sufficient to improve and cultivate all their lands. The wool of the southern counties of Scotland is, a great part of it, after a long land carriage through very bad roads, manufactured in Yorkshire, for want of a capital to manufacture it at home. There are many little manufacturing towns in Great Britain, of which the inhabitants have not capital sufficient to transport the produce of their own industry to those distant markets where there is demand and consumption for it. If there are any merchants among them, they are properly only the agents of wealthier merchants who reside in some of the greater commercial cities.

  19When the capital of any country is not sufficient for all those three purposes, in proportion as a greater share of it is employed in agriculture, the greater will be the quantity of productive labour which it puts into motion within the country; as will likewise be the value which its employment adds to the annual produce of the land and labour of the society. After agriculture, the capital employed in manufactures puts into motion the greatest quantity of productive labour, and adds the greatest value to the annual produce. That which is employed in the trade of exportation, has the least effect of any of the three.

  20The country, indeed, which has not capital sufficient for all those three purposes, has not arrived at that degree of opulence for which it seems naturally destined. To attempt, however, prematurely and with an insufficient capital, to do all the three, is certainly not the shortest way for a society, no more than it would be for an individual, to acquire a sufficient one. The capital of all the individuals of a nation, has its limits in the same manner as that of a single individual, and is capable of executing only certain purposes. The capital of all the individuals of a nation is increased in the same manner as that of a single individual, by their continually accumulating and adding to it whatever they save out of their revenue. It is likely to increase the fastest, therefore, when it is employed in the way that affords the greatest revenue to all the inhabitants of the country, as they will thus be enabled to make the greatest savings. But the revenue of all the inhabitants of the country is necessarily in proportion to the value of the annual produce of their land and labour.

  21It has been the principal cause of the rapid progress of our American colonies towards wealth and greatness, that almost their whole capitals have hitherto been employed in agriculture.13 They have no manufactures, those houshold and coarser manufactures excepted which necessarily accompany the progress of agriculture, and which are the work of the women and children in every private family. The greater part both of the exportation and coasting trade of America, is carried on by the capitals of merchants who reside in Great Britain.14 Even the stores and warehouses from which goods are retailed in some provinces, particularly in Virginia and Maryland, belong many of them to merchants who reside in the mother country, and afford one of the few instances of the retail trade of a society being carried on by the capitals of those who are not resident members of it. Were the Americans, either by combination or by any other sort of violence, to stop the importation of European manufactures,15 and, by thus giving a monopoly to such of their own countrymen as could manufacture the like goods, divert any considerable part of their capital into this employment, they would retard instead of accelerating the further increase in the value of their annual produce, and would obstruct instead of promoting the progress of their country towards real wealth and greatness. This would be still more the case, were they to attempt, in the same manner, to monopolize to themselves their whole exportation trade.

  22The course of human prosperity, indeed, seems scarce ever to have been of so long continuance16 as to enable any great country to acquire capital sufficient for all those three purposes; unless, perhaps, we give credit to the wonderful accounts of the wealth and cultivation of China, of those of antient Egypt, and of the antient state of Indostan.17 Even those three countries, the wealthiest, according to all accounts, that ever were in the world, are chiefly renowned for their superiority in agriculture and manufactures. They do not appear to have been eminent for foreign trade. The antient Egyptians had a superstitious antipathy to the sea;18 a superstition nearly of the same kind prevails among the Indians;19 and the Chinese have never excelled in foreign commerce.20 The greater part of the surplus produce of all those three countries seems to have been always exported by foreigners, who gave in exchange for it something else for which they found a demand there, frequently gold and silver.

  23It is thus that the same capital will in any country put into motion a greater or smaller quantity of productive labour, and add a greater or smaller value to the annual produce of its land and labour, according to the different proportions in which it is employed in agriculture, manufactures, and wholesale trade. The difference too is very great, according to the different sorts of wholesale trade in which any part of it is employed.

  24All wholesale trade, all buying in order to sell again by wholesale, may be reduced to three different sorts. The home trade, the foreign trade of consumption, and the carrying trade. The home trade is employed in purchasing in one part of the same country, and selling in another, the produce of the industry of that country. It comprehends both the inland and the coasting trade. The foreign trade of consumption is employed in purchasing foreign goods for home consumption. The carrying trade is employed in transacting the commerce of foreign countries, or in carrying the surplus produce of one to another.

  25The capital which is employed in purchasing in one part of the country in order to sell in another the produce of the industry of that country, generally replaces by every such operation two distinct capitals that had both been employed in the agriculture or manufactures of that country, and thereby enables them to continue that employment. When it sends out from the residence of the merchant a certain value of commodities, it generally brings back in return at least an equal value of other commodities. When both are the produce of domestick industry, it necessarily replaces by every such operation two distinct capitals, which had both been employed in supporting productive labour, and thereby enables them to continue that support. The capital which sends Scotch manufactures to London and brings back English corn and manufactures to Edinburgh, necessarily replaces, by every such operation, two British capitals which had both been employed in the agriculture or manufactures of Great Britain.

  26The capital employed in purchasing foreign goods for home–consumption, when this purchase is made with the produce of domestick industry, replaces too, by every such operation, two distinct capitals; but one of them only is employed in supporting domestick industry. The capital which sends British goods to Portugal, and brings back Portuguese goods to Great Britain, replaces by every such operation only one British capital. The other is a Portuguese one. Though the returns, therefore, of the foreign trade of consumption should be as quick as those of the home–trade, the capital employed in it will give but one–half the encouragement to the industry or productive labour of the country.

  27But the returns of the foreign trade of consumption are very seldom so quick as those of the home–trade. The returns of the home–trade generally come in before the end of the year, and sometimes three or four times in the year. The returns of the foreign trade of consumption seldom come in before the end of the year, and sometimes not till after two or three years.21 A capital, therefore, employed in the home–trade will sometimes make twelve operations, or be sent out and returned twelve times, before a capital employed in the foreign trade of consumption has made one. If the capitals are equal, therefore, the one will give four and twenty times more encouragement and support to the industry of the country than the other.22

  28The foreign goods for home–consumption may sometimes be purchased, not with the produce of domestick industry, but with some other foreign goods. These last, however, must have been purchased either immediately with the produce of domestick industry, or with something else that had been purchased with it; for the case of war and conquest excepted, foreign goods can never be acquired, but in exchange for something that had been produced at home, either immediately, or after two or more different exchanges. The effects, therefore, of a capital employed in such a round–about foreign trade of consumption, are, in every respect, the same as those of one employed in the most direct trade of the same kind, except that the final returns are likely to be still more distant, as they must depend upon the returns of two or three distinct foreign trades. If the ^fflax and hemp^f of Riga are purchased with the tobacco of Virginia, which had been purchased with British manufactures, the merchant must wait for the returns of two distinct foreign trades before he can employ the same capital in re–purchasing a like quantity of British manufactures. If the tobacco of Virginia had been purchased, not with British manufactures, but with the sugar and rum of Jamaica which had been purchased with those manufactures, he must wait for the returns of three. If those two or three distinct foreign trades should happen to be carried on by two or three distinct merchants, of whom the second buys the goods imported by the first, and the third buys those imported by the second, in order to export them again, each merchant indeed will in this case receive the returns of his own capital more quickly; but the final returns of the whole capital employed in the trade will be just as slow as ever. Whether the whole capital employed in such a round–about trade belong to one merchant or to three, can make no difference with regard to the country, though it may with regard to the particular merchants. Three times a greater capital must in both cases be employed, in order to exchange a certain value of British manufactures for a certain quantity of flax and hemp, than would have been necessary, had the manufactures and the flax and hemp been directly exchanged for one another. The whole capital employed, therefore, in such a round–about foreign trade of consumption, will generally give less encouragement and support to the productive labour of the country, than an equal capital employed in a more direct trade of the same kind.23

  29Whatever be the foreign commodity with which the foreign goods for home–consumption are purchased, it can occasion no essential difference either in the nature of the trade, or in the encouragement and support which it can give to the productive labour of the country from which it is carried on. If they are purchased with the gold of Brazil, for example, or with the silver of Peru, this gold and silver, like the tobacco of Virginia, must have been purchased with something that either was the produce of the industry of the country, or that had been purchased with something else that was so. So far, therefore, as the productive labour of the country is concerned, the foreign trade of consumption which is carried on by means of gold and silver, has all the advantages and all the inconveniencies of any other equally round–about foreign trade of consumption, and will replace just as fast or just as slow the capital which is immediately employed in supporting that productive labour. It seems even to have one advantage over any other equally round–about foreign trade. The transportation of those metals from one place to another, on account of their small bulk and great value, is less expensive than that of almost any other foreign goods of equal value. Their freight is much less, and their insurance not greater^g; and no goods, besides, are less liable to suffer by the carriage ^g24 An equal quantity of foreign goods, therefore, may frequently be purchased with a smaller quantity of the produce of domestick industry, by the intervention of gold and silver, than by that of any other foreign goods. The demand of the country may frequently, in this manner, be supplied more completely and at a smaller expence than in any other. Whether, by the continual exportation of those metals, a trade of this kind is likely to impoverish the country from which it is carried on, in any other way, I shall have occasion to examine at great length hereafter.25

  30That part of the capital of any country which is employed in the carrying trade, is altogether withdrawn from supporting the productive labour of that particular country, to support that of some foreign countries. Though it may replace by every operation two distinct capitals, yet neither of them ^hbelongs^h to that particular country. The capital of the Dutch merchant, which carries the corn of Poland to Portugal, and brings back the fruits and wines of Portugal to Poland, replaces by every such operation two capitals, neither of which had been employed in supporting the productive labour of Holland; but one of them in supporting that of Poland, and the other that of Portugal. The profits only return regularly to Holland, and constitute the whole addition which this trade necessarily makes to the annual produce of the land and labour of that country. When, indeed, the carrying trade of any particular country is carried on with the ships and sailors of that country, that part of the capital employed in it which pays the freight, is distributed among, and puts into motion, a certain number of productive labourers of that country. Almost all nations that have had any considerable share of the carrying trade have, in fact, carried it on in this manner. The trade itself has probably derived its name from it, the people of such countries being the carriers to other countries. It does not, however, seem essential to the nature of the trade that it should be so. A Dutch merchant may, for example, employ his capital in transacting the commerce of Poland and Portugal, by carrying part of the surplus produce of the one to the other, not in Dutch, but in British bottoms. It may be presumed, that he actually does so upon some particular occasions. It is upon this account, however, that the carrying trade has been supposed peculiarly advantageous to such a country as Great Britain, of which the defence and security depend upon the number of its sailors and shipping.26 But the same capital may employ as many sailors and shipping, either in the foreign trade of consumption, or even in the home–trade, when carried on by coasting vessels, as it could in the carrying trade. The number of sailors and shipping which any particular capital can employ, does not depend upon the nature of the trade, but partly upon the bulk of the goods in proportion to their value, and partly upon the distance of the ports between which they are to be carried; chiefly upon the former of those two circumstances. The coal–trade from Newcastle to London, for example, employs more shipping than all the carrying trade of England, though the ports are at no great distance. To force, therefore, by extraordinary encouragements, a larger share of the capital of any country into the carrying trade, than what would naturally go to it, will not always necessarily increase the shipping of that country.

  31The capital, therefore, employed in the home–trade of any country will generally give encouragement and support to a greater quantity of productive labour in that country, and increase the value of its annual produce more than an equal capital employed in the foreign trade of consumption: and the capital employed in this latter trade has in both these respects a still greater advantage over an equal capital employed in the carrying trade. The riches, and so far as power depends upon riches, the power of every country,27 must always be in proportion to the value of its annual produce, the fund from which all taxes must ultimately be paid. But the great object of the political œconomy of every country, is to encrease the riches and power of that country.28 It ought, therefore, to give no preference nor superior encouragement to the foreign trade of consumption above the home–trade, nor to the carrying trade above either of the other two. It ought neither to force nor to allure into either of those two channels, a greater share of the capital of the country than what would naturally flow into them of its own accord.29

  32Each of those different branches of trade, however, is not only advantageous, but necessary and unavoidable, when the course of things, without any constraint or violence, naturally introduces it.

  33When the produce of any particular branch of industry exceeds what the demand of the country requires, the surplus must be sent abroad, and exchanged for something for which there is a demand at home. Without such exportation, a part of the productive labour of the country must cease, and the value of its annual produce diminish. The land and labour of Great Britain produce generally more corn, woollens, and hard ware, than the demand of the home–market requires. The surplus part of them, therefore, must be sent abroad, and exchanged for something for which there is a demand at home.30 It is only by means of such exportation, that this surplus can acquire a value sufficient to compensate the labour and expence of producing it. The neighbourhood of the sea coast, and the banks of all navigable rivers, are advantageous situations for industry, only because they facilitate the exportation and exchange of such surplus produce for something else which is more in demand there.31

  34When the foreign goods which are thus purchased with the surplus produce of domestick industry exceed the demand of the home–market, the surplus part of them must be sent abroad again, and exchanged for something more in demand at home. About ninety–six thousand hogsheads of tobacco are annually purchased in Virginia and Maryland, with a part of the surplus produce of British industry.32 But the demand of Great Britain does not require, perhaps, more than fourteen thousand. If the remaining eighty–two thousand, therefore, could not be sent abroad and exchanged for something more in demand at home, the importation of them must cease immediately, and with it the productive labour of all those inhabitants of Great Britain, who are at present employed in preparing the goods with which these eighty–two thousand hogsheads are annually purchased. Those goods, which are part of the produce of the land and labour of Great Britain, having no market at home, and being deprived of that which they had abroad, must cease to be produced. The most roundabout foreign trade of consumption, therefore, may, upon some occasions, be as necessary for supporting the productive labour of the country, and the value of its annual produce, as the most direct.33

  35When the capital stock of any country is increased to such a degree, that it cannot be all employed in supplying the consumption, and supporting the productive labour of that particular country, the surplus part of it naturally disgorges itself into the carrying trade, and is employed in performing the same offices to other countries.34 The carrying trade is the natural effect and symptom of great national wealth: but it does not seem to be the natural cause of it. Those statesmen who have been disposed to favour it with particular encouragements, seem to have mistaken the effect and symptom for the cause. Holland, in proportion to the extent of the land and the number of its inhabitants, by far the richest country in Europe, has, accordingly, the greatest share of the carrying trade of Europe. England, perhaps the second richest country of Europe, is likewise supposed to have a considerable share of it; though what commonly passes for the carrying trade of England, will frequently, perhaps, be found to be no more than a round–about foreign trade of consumption. Such are, in a great measure, the trades which carry the goods of the East and West Indies, and of America, to different European markets. Those goods are generally purchased either immediately with the produce of British industry, or with something else which had been purchased with that produce, and the final returns of those trades are generally used or consumed in Great Britain. The trade which is carried on in British bottoms between the different ports of the Mediterranean, and some trade of the same kind carried on by British merchants between the different ports of India, make, perhaps, the principal branches of what is properly the carrying trade of Great Britain.

  36The extent of the home–trade and of the capital which can be employed in it, is necessarily limited by the value of the surplus produce of all those distant places within the country which have occasion to exchange their respective productions with one another. That of the foreign trade of consumption, by the value of the surplus produce of the whole country and of what can be purchased with it. That of the carrying trade, by the value of the surplus produce of all the different countries in the world. Its possible extent, therefore, is in a manner infinite in comparison of that of the other two, and is capable of absorbing the greatest capitals.

  37The consideration of his own private profit, is the sole motive which determines the owner of any capital to employ it either in agriculture, in manufactures, or in some particular branch of the wholesale or retail trade. The different quantities of productive labour which it may put into motion, and the different values which it may add to the annual produce of the land and labour of the society, according as it is employed in one or other of those different ways, never enter into his thoughts. In countries, therefore, where agriculture is the most profitable of all employments, and farming and improving the most direct roads to a splendid fortune, the capitals of individuals will naturally be employed in the manner most advantageous to the whole society. The profits of agriculture, however, seem to have no superiority over those of other employments in any part of Europe. Projectors, indeed, in every corner of it, have within these few years amused the public with most magnificent accounts of the profits to be made by the cultivation and improvement of land. Without entering into any particular discussion of their calculations, a very simple observation may satisfy us that the result of them must be false. We see every day the most splendid fortunes that have been acquired in the course of a single life by trade and manufactures, frequently from a very small capital, sometimes from no capital. A single instance of such a fortune acquired by agriculture in the same time, and from such a capital, has not, perhaps, occurred in Europe during the course of the present century. In all the great countries of Europe, however, much good land still remains uncultivated, and the greater part of what is cultivated is far from being improved to the degree of which it is capable. Agriculture, therefore, is almost every where capable of absorbing a much greater capital than has ever yet been employed in it.35 What circumstances in the policy of Europe have given the trades which are carried on in towns so great an advantage over that which is carried on in the country, that private persons frequently find it more for their advantage to employ their capitals in the most distant carrying trades of Asia and America, than in the improvement and cultivation of the most fertile fields in their own neighbourhood, I shall endeavour to explain at full length in the two following books.

  BOOK III

  Of the different Progress of Opulence in different Nations

  CHAPTER I

  Of the natural Progress of Opulence

  1The great commerce of every civilized society, is that carried on between the inhabitants of the town and those of the country.1 It consists in the exchange of rude for manufactured produce, either immediately, or by the intervention of money, or of some sort of paper which represents money. The country supplies the town with the means of subsistence, and the materials of manufacture. The town repays this supply by sending back a part of the manufactured produce to the inhabitants of the country. The town, in which there neither is nor can be any reproduction of substances, may very properly be said to gain its whole wealth and subsistence from the country. We must not, however, upon this account, imagine that the gain of the town is the loss of the country. The gains of both are mutual and reciprocal, and the division of labour is in this, as in all other cases, advantageous to all the different persons employed in the various occupations into which it is subdivided. The inhabitants of the country purchase of the town a greater quantity of manufactured goods, with the produce of a much smaller quantity of their own labour, than they must have employed had they attempted to prepare them themselves. The town affords a market for the surplus produce of the country, or what is over and above the maintenance of the cultivators, and it is there that the inhabitants of the country exchange it for something else which is in demand among them.2 The greater the number and revenue of the inhabitants of the town, the more extensive is the market which it affords to those of the country; and the more extensive that market, it is always the more advantageous to a great number. The corn which grows within a mile of the town, sells there for the same price with that which comes from twenty miles distance. But the price of the latter must generally, not only pay the expence of raising and bringing it to market, but afford too the ordinary profits of agriculture to the farmer.3 The proprietors and cultivators of the country, therefore, which lies in the neighbourhood of the town, over and above the ordinary profits of agriculture, gain, in the price of what they sell, the whole value of the carriage of the like produce that is brought from more distant parts, and they save, besides, the whole value of this carriage in the price of what they buy. Compare the cultivation of the lands in the neighbourhood of any considerable town, with that of those which lie at some distance from it, and you will easily satisfy yourself how much the country is benefited by the commerce of the town. Among all the absurd speculations that have been propagated concerning the balance of trade,4 it has never been pretended that either the country loses by its commerce with the town, or the town by that with the country which maintains it.

  2As subsistence is, in the nature of things, prior to conveniency and luxury, so the industry which procures the former, must necessarily be prior to that which ministers to the latter. The cultivation and improvement of the country, therefore, which affords subsistence, must, necessarily, be prior to the increase of the town, which furnishes only the means of conveniency and luxury. It is the surplus produce of the country only, or what is over and above the maintenance of the cultivators, that constitutes the subsistence of the town, which can therefore increase only with the increase of this surplus produce. The town, indeed, may not always derive its whole subsistence from the country in its neighbourhood, or even from the territory to which it belongs, but from very distant countries; and this, though it forms no exception from the general rule, has occasioned considerable variations in the progress of opulence in different ages and nations.

  3That order of things which necessity imposes in general, though not in every particular country, is, in every particular country, promoted by the natural inclinations of man. If human institutions had never thwarted those natural inclinations, the towns could no–where have increased beyond what the improvement and cultivation of the territory in which they were situated could support; till such time, at least, as the whole of that territory was compleatly cultivated and improved. Upon equal, or nearly equal profits, most men will chuse to employ their capitals rather in the improvement and cultivation of land, than either in manufactures or in foreign trade. The man who employs his capital in land, has it more under his view and command, and his fortune is much less liable to accidents than that of the trader, who is obliged frequently to commit it, not only to the winds and the waves, but to the more uncertain elements of human folly and injustice, by giving great credits in distant countries to men, with whose character and situation he can seldom be thoroughly acquainted. The capital of the landlord, on the contrary, which is fixed in the improvement of his land, seems to be as well secured as the nature of human affairs can admit of. The beauty of the country besides, the pleasures of a country life, the tranquillity of mind which it promises, and wherever the injustice of human laws does not disturb it, the independency which it really affords, have charms that more or less attract every body; and as to cultivate the ground was the original destination of man, so in every stage of his existence he seems to retain a predilection for this primitive employment.5

  4 Without the assistance of some artificers, indeed, the cultivation of land cannot be carried on, but with great inconveniency and continual interruption. Smiths, carpenters, wheel–wrights, and plough–wrights, masons, and bricklayers, tanners, shoemakers, and taylors, are people, whose service the farmer has frequent occasion for. Such artificers too stand, occasionally, in need of the assistance of one another; and as their residence is not, like that of the farmer, necessarily tied down to a precise spot, they naturally settle in the neighbourhood of one another, and thus form a small town or village. The butcher, the brewer, and the baker, soon join them, together with many other artificers and retailers, necessary or useful for supplying their occasional wants, and who contribute still further to augment the town. The inhabitants of the town and those of the country are mutually the servants of one another. The town is a continual fair or market, to which the inhabitants of the country resort, in order to exchange their rude for manufactured produce. It is this commerce which supplies the inhabitants of the town both with the materials of their work, and the means of their subsistence. The quantity of the finished work which they sell to the inhabitants of the country, necessarily regulates the quantity of the materials and provisions which they buy. Neither their employment nor subsistence, therefore, can augment, but in proportion to the augmentation of the demand from the country for finished work; and this demand can augment only in proportion to the extension of improvement and cultivation. Had human institutions, therefore, never disturbed the natural course of things, the progressive wealth and increase of the towns would, in every political society, be consequential, and in proportion to the improvement and cultivation of the territory or country.

  5In our North American colonies, where uncultivated land is still to be had upon easy terms, no manufactures for distant sale have ever yet been established in any of their towns.6 When an artificer has acquired a little more stock than is necessary for carrying on his own business in supplying the neighbouring country, he does not, in North America, attempt to establish with it a manufacture for more distant sale, but employs it in the purchase and improvement of uncultivated land.7 From artificer he becomes planter, and neither the large wages nor the easy subsistence which that country affords to artificers, can bribe him rather to work for other people than for himself. He feels that an artificer is the servant of his customers, from whom he derives his subsistence;8 but that a planter who cultivates his own land, and derives his necessary subsistence from the labour of his own family, is really a master, and independent of all the world.

  6In countries, on the contrary, where there is either no uncultivated land, or none that can be had upon easy terms, every artificer who has acquired more stock than he can employ in the occasional jobs of the neighbourhood, endeavours to prepare work for more distant sale. The smith erects some sort of iron, the weaver some sort of linen or woollen manufactory. Those different manufactures come, in process of time, to be gradually subdivided, and thereby improved and refined in a great variety of ways, which may easily be conceived, and which it is therefore unnecessary to explain any further.

  7In seeking for employment to a capital, manufactures are, upon equal or nearly equal profits, naturally preferred to foreign commerce, for the same reason that agriculture is naturally preferred to manufactures. As the capital of the landlord or farmer is more secure than that of the manufacturer, so the capital of the manufacturer, being at all times more within his view and command, is more secure than that of the foreign merchant. In every period, indeed, of every society, the surplus part both of the rude and manufactured produce, or that for which there is no demand at home, must be sent abroad in order to be exchanged for something for which there is some demand at home. But whether the capital, which carries this surplus produce abroad, be a foreign or a domestick one, is of very little importance. If the society has not acquired sufficient capital both to cultivate all its lands, and to manufacture in the compleatest manner the whole of ^aits^a rude produce, there is even a considerable advantage that ^bthat rude produce^b should be exported by a foreign capital, in order that the whole stock of the society may be employed in more useful purposes. The wealth of antient Egypt, that of China and Indostan, sufficiently demonstrate that a nation may attain a very high degree of opulence, though the greater part of its exportation trade be carried on by foreigners.9 The progress of our North American and West Indian colonies would have been much less rapid, had no capital but what belonged to themselves been employed in exporting their surplus produce.10

  8According to the natural course of things, therefore, the greater part of the capital of every growing society is, first, directed to agriculture, afterwards to manufactures, and last of all to foreign commerce. This order of things is so very natural, that in every society that had any territory, it has always, I believe, been in some degree observed. Some of their lands must have been cultivated before any considerable towns could be established, and some sort of coarse industry of the manufacturing kind must have been carried on in those towns, before they could well think of employing themselves in foreign commerce.

  9But though this natural order of things must have taken place in some degree in every such society, it has, in all the modern states of Europe, been, in many respects, entirely inverted. The foreign commerce of some of their cities has introduced all their finer manufactures, or such as were fit for distant sale; and manufactures and foreign commerce together, have given birth to the principal improvements of agriculture.11 The manners and customs which the nature of their original government introduced, and which remained after that government was greatly altered, necessarily forced them into this unnatural and retrograde order.

  CHAPTER II

  Of the Discouragement of Agriculture in the antient State of Europe after the Fall of the Roman Empire1

  1When the German and Scythian nations over–ran the western provinces of the Roman empire, the confusions which followed so great a revolution lasted for several centuries.2 The rapine and violence which the barbarians exercised against the antient inhabitants, interrupted the commerce between the towns and the country.3 The towns were deserted, and the country was left uncultivated, and the western provinces of Europe, which had enjoyed a considerable degree of opulence under the Roman empire, sunk into the lowest state of poverty and barbarism. During the continuance of those confusions, the chiefs and principal leaders of those nations, acquired or usurped to themselves the greater part of the lands of those countries. A great part of them was uncultivated; but no part of them, whether cultivated or uncultivated, was left without a proprietor. All of them were engrossed, and the greater part by a few great proprietors.4

  2This original engrossing of uncultivated lands, though a great, might have been but a transitory evil. They might soon have been divided again, and broke into small parcels either by succession or by alienation. The law of primogeniture hindered them from being divided by succession: the introduction of entails prevented their being broke into small parcels by alienation.5

  3When land, like moveables, is considered as the means only of subsistence and enjoyment, the natural law of succession divides it, like them, among all the children of the family; of all of whom the subsistence and enjoyment may be supposed equally dear to the father. This natural law of succession accordingly took place among the Romans, who made no more distinction between elder and younger, between male and female, in the inheritance of lands, than we do in the distribution of moveables.6 But when land was considered as the means, not of subsistence merely, but of power and protection, it was thought better that it should descend undivided to one. In those disorderly times, every great landlord was a sort of petty prince. His tenants were his subjects. He was their judge, and in some respects their legislator in peace, and their leader in war. He made war according to his own discretion, frequently against his neighbours, and sometimes against his sovereign. The security of a landed estate, therefore, the protection which its owner could afford to those who dwelt on it, depended upon its greatness. To divide it was to ruin it, and to expose every part of it to be oppressed and swallowed up by the incursions of its neighbours.7 The law of primogeniture, therefore, came to take place, not immediately, indeed, but in process of time, in the succession of landed estates, for the same reason that it has generally taken place in that of monarchies, though not always at their first institution. That the power, and consequently the security of the monarchy, may not be weakened by division, it must descend entire to one of the children. To which of them so important a preference shall be given, must be determined by some general rule, founded not upon the doubtful distinctions of personal merit, but upon some plain and evident difference which can admit of no dispute. Among the children of the same family, there can be no indisputable difference but that of sex, and that of age. The male sex is universally preferred to the female; and when all other things are equal, the elder everywhere takes place of the younger. Hence the origin of the right of primogeniture, and of what is called lineal succession.8

  4Laws frequently continue in force long after the circumstances, which first gave occasion to them, and which could alone render them reasonable, are no more.9 In the present state of Europe, the proprietor of a single acre of land is as perfectly secure of his possession as the proprietor of a hundred thousand. The right of primogeniture, however, still continues to be respected, and as of all institutions it is the fittest to support the pride of family distinctions, it is still likely to endure for many centuries. In every other respect, nothing can be more contrary to the real interest of a numerous family, than a right which, in order to enrich one, beggars all the rest of the children.

  5Entails are the natural consequences of the law of primogeniture. They were introduced to preserve a certain lineal succession, of which the law of primogeniture first gave the idea, and to hinder any part of the original estate from being carried out of the proposed line either by gift, or devise, or alienation; either by the folly, or by the misfortune of any of its successive owners. They were altogether unknown to the Romans.10 Neither their substitutions nor fideicommisses bear any resemblance to entails, though some French lawyers have thought proper to dress the modern institution in the language and ^agarb^a of those antient ones.

  6When great landed estates were a sort of principalities, entails might not be unreasonable.11 Like what are called the fundamental laws of some monarchies, they might frequently hinder the security of thousands from being endangered by the caprice or extravagance of one man. But in the present state of Europe, when small as well as great estates derive their security from the laws of their country, nothing can be more completely absurd. They are founded upon the most absurd of all suppositions, the supposition that every successive generation of men have not an equal right to the earth, and to all that it possesses; but that the property of the present generation should be restrained and regulated according to the fancy of those who died perhaps five hundred years ago. Entails, however, are still respected through the greater part of Europe, in those countries particularly in which noble birth is a necessary qualification for the enjoyment either of civil or military honours. Entails are thought necessary for maintaining this exclusive privilege of the nobility to the great offices and honours of their country; and that order having usurped one unjust advantage over the rest of their fellow–citizens, lest their poverty should render it ridiculous, it is thought reasonable that they should have another. The common law of England, indeed, is said to abhor perpetuities, and they are accordingly more restricted there than in any other European monarchy; though even England is not altogether without them.12 In Scotland more than one–fifth, perhaps more than one–third part of the whole lands of the country, are at present ^bsupposed to be^b under strict entail.13

  7Great tracts of uncultivated land were, in this manner, not only engrossed by particular families, but the possibility of their being divided again was as much as possible precluded for ever. It seldom happens, however, that a great proprietor is a great improver.14 In the disorderly times which gave birth to those barbarous institutions, the great proprietor was sufficiently employed in defending his own territories, or in extending his jurisdiction and authority over those of his neighbours. He had no leisure to attend to the cultivation and improvement of land. When the establishment of law and order afforded him this leisure, he often wanted the inclination, and almost always the requisite abilities.15 If the expence of his house and person either equalled or exceeded his revenue, as it did very frequently, he had no stock to employ in this manner. If he was an œconomist, he generally found it more profitable to employ his annual savings in new purchases, than in the improvement of his old estate. To improve land with profit, like all other commercial projects, requires an exact attention to small savings and small gains, of which a man born to a great fortune, even though naturally frugal, is very seldom capable. The situation of such a person naturally disposes him to attend rather to ornament which pleases his fancy, than to profit for which he has so little occasion. The elegance of his dress, of his equipage, of his house, and houshold furniture, are objects which from his infancy he has been accustomed to have some anxiety about. The turn of mind which this habit naturally forms, follows him when he comes to think of the improvement of land. He embellishes perhaps four or five hundred acres in the neighbourhood of his house, at ten times the expence which the land is worth after all his improvements; and finds that if he was to improve his whole estate in the same manner, and he has little taste for any other, he would be a bankrupt before he had finished the tenth part of it.16 There still remain in both parts of the united kingdom some great estates which have continued without interruption in the hands of the same family since the times of feudal anarchy.17 Compare the present condition of those estates with the possessions of the small proprietors in their neighbourhood, and you will require no other argument to convince you how unfavourable such extensive property is to improvement.

  8If little improvement was to be expected from such great proprietors, still less was to be hoped for from those who occupied the land under them. In the antient state of Europe, the occupiers of land were all tenants at will.18 They were all or almost all slaves; but their slavery was of a milder kind than that known among the antient Greeks and Romans, or even in our West Indian colonies. They were supposed to belong more directly to the land than to their master. They could, therefore, be sold with it, but not separately. They could marry, provided it was with the consent of their master; and he could not afterwards dissolve the marriage by selling the man and wife to different persons. If he maimed or murdered any of them, he was liable to some penalty, though generally but to a small one. They were not, however, capable of acquiring property.19 Whatever they acquired was acquired to their master, and he could take it from them at pleasure. Whatever cultivation and improvement could be carried on by means of such slaves, was properly carried on by their master. It was at his expence. The seed, the cattle, and the instruments of husbandry were all his. It was for his benefit. Such slaves could acquire nothing but their daily maintenance. It was properly the proprietor himself, therefore, that, in this case, occupied his own lands, and cultivated them by his own bondmen. This species of slavery still subsists in Russia,20 Poland, Hungary, Bohemia, Moravia, and other parts of Germany.21 It is only in the western and southwestern provinces of Europe, that it has gradually been abolished altogether.22

  9But if great improvements are seldom to be expected from great proprietors, they are least of all to be expected when they employ slaves for their workmen. The experience of all ages and nations, I believe, demonstrates that the work done by slaves, though it appears to cost only their maintenance, is in the end the dearest of any.23 A person who can acquire no property, can have no other interest but to eat as much, and to labour as little as possible. Whatever work he does beyond what is sufficient to purchase his own maintenance, can be squeezed out of him by violence only, and not by any interest of his own. In antient Italy, how much the cultivation of corn degenerated, how unprofitable it became to the master when it fell under the management of slaves, is remarked by both Pliny and Columella.24 In the time of Aristotle it had not been much better in antient Greece. Speaking of the ideal republick described in the laws of Plato, to maintain five thousand idle men (the number of warriors supposed necessary for its defence) together with their women and servants, would require, he says, a territory of boundless extent and fertility, like the plains of Babylon.25

  10The pride of man makes him love to domineer, and nothing mortifies him so much as to be obliged to condescend to persuade his inferiors.26 Wherever the law allows it, and the nature of the work can afford it, therefore, he will generally prefer the service of slaves to that of freemen. The planting of sugar and tobacco can afford the expence of slave–cultivation.27 The raising of corn, it seems, in the present times, cannot. In the English colonies, of which the principal produce is corn, the far greater part of the work is done by freemen. The late resolution of the Quakers in Pennsylvania to set at liberty all their negro slaves, may satisfy us that their number cannot be very great. Had they made any considerable part of their property, such a resolution could never have been agreed to.28 In our sugar colonies, on the contrary, the whole work is done by slaves, and in our tobacco colonies a very great part of it. The profits of a sugar–plantation in any of our West Indian colonies are generally much greater than those of any other cultivation that is known either in Europe or America: And the profits of a tobacco plantation, though inferior to those of sugar, are superior to those of corn, as has already been observed.29 Both can afford the expence of slave–cultivation, but sugar can afford it still better than tobacco. The number of negroes accordingly is much greater, in proportion to that of whites, in our sugar than in our tobacco colonies.

  11To the slave cultivators of antient times, gradually succeeded a species of farmers known at present in France by the name of Metayers. They are called in Latin, Coloni Partiarii.30 They have been so long in disuse in England that at present I know no English name for them. The proprietor furnished them with the seed, cattle, and instruments of husbandry, the whole stock, in short, necessary for cultivating the farm. The produce was divided equally between the proprietor and the farmer, after setting aside what was judged necessary for keeping up the stock, which was restored to the proprietor when the farmer either quitted, or was turned out of the farm.31

  12Land occupied by such tenants is properly cultivated at the expence of the proprietor, as much as that occupied by slaves. There is, however, one very essential difference between them. Such tenants, being freemen, are capable of acquiring property, and having a certain proportion of the produce of the land, they have a plain interest that the whole produce should be as great as possible, in order that their own proportion may be so. A slave, on the contrary, who can acquire nothing but his maintenance, consults his own ease by making the land produce as little as possible over and above that maintenance. It is probable that it was partly upon account of this advantage, and partly upon account of the encroachments which the sovereign, always jealous of the great lords, gradually encouraged their villains to make upon their authority, and which seem at last to have been such as rendered this species of servitude altogether inconvenient, that tenure in villanage gradually wore out through the greater part of Europe. The time and manner, however, in which so important a revolution was brought about, is one of the most obscure points in modern history. The church of Rome claims great merit in it; and it is certain that so early as the twelfth century, Alexander III. published a bull for the general emancipation of slaves. It seems, however, to have been rather a pious exhortation, than a law to which exact obedience was required from the faithful.32 Slavery continued to take place almost universally for several centuries afterwards, till it was gradually abolished by the joint operation of the two interests above mentioned, that of the proprietor on the one hand, and that of the sovereign on the other.33 A villain enfranchised, and at the same time allowed to continue in possession of the land, having no stock of his own, could cultivate it only by means of what the landlord advanced to him, and must, therefore, have been what the French call a Metayer.

  13It could never, however, be the interest even of this last species of cultivators to lay out, in the further improvement of the land, any part of the little stock which they might save from their own share of the produce, because the lord, who laid out nothing, was to get one–half of whatever it produced. The tithe, which is but a tenth of the produce, is found to be a very great hindrance to improvement.34 A tax, therefore, which amounted to one half, must have been an effectual bar to it. It might be the interest of a metayer to make the land produce as much as could be brought out of it by means of the stock furnished by the proprietor; but it could never be his interest to mix any part of his own with it. In France, where five parts out of six of the whole kingdom are said to be still occupied by this species of cultivators,35 the proprietors complain that their metayers take every opportunity of employing the masters cattle rather in carriage than in cultivation; because in the one case they get the whole profits to themselves, in the other they share them with their landlord. This species of tenants still subsists in some parts of Scotland. They are called steel–bow tenants.36 Those antient English tenants, who are said by Chief Baron Gilbert37 and Doctor Blackstone38 to have been rather bailiffs of the landlord than farmers properly so called, were probably of the same kind.

  14To this species of tenancy succeeded, though by very slow degrees, farmers properly so called, who cultivated the land with their own stock, paying a rent certain to the landlord.39 When such farmers have a lease for a term of years, they may sometimes find it for their interest to lay out part of their capital in the further improvement of the farm; because they may sometimes expect to recover it, with a large profit, before the expiration of the lease.40 The possession even of such farmers, however, was long extremely precarious, and still is so in many parts of Europe.41 They could before the expiration of their term be legally outed of their lease, by a new purchaser; in England, even by the fictitious action of a common recovery. If they were turned out illegally by the violence of their master, the action by which they obtained redress was extremely imperfect. It did not always re–instate them in the possession of the land, but gave them damages which never amounted to the real loss. Even in England, the country perhaps of Europe where the yeomanry has always been most respected, it was not till about the 14th of Henry the VIIth that the action of ejectment was invented,42 by which the tenant recovers, not damages only but possession, and in which his claim is not necessarily concluded by the uncertain decision of a single assize. This action has been found so effectual a remedy that, in the modern practice, when the landlord has occasion to sue for the possession of the land, he seldom makes use of the actions which properly belong to him as landlord, the writ of right or the writ of entry, but sues in the name of his tenant, by the writ of ejectment. In England, therefore, the security of the tenant is equal to that of the proprietor. In England besides a lease for life of forty shillings a year value is a freehold, and entitles the lessee to vote for a member of parliament; and as a great part of the yeomanry have freeholds of this kind, the whole order becomes respectable to their landlords on account of the political consideration which this gives them.43 There is, I believe, nowhere in Europe, except in England, any instance of the tenant building upon the land of which he had no lease, and trusting that the honour of his landlord would take no advantage of so important an improvement. Those laws and customs so favourable to the yeomanry, have perhaps contributed more to the present grandeur of England than all their boasted regulations of commerce taken together.44

  15The law which secures the longest leases against successors of every kind is, so far as I know, peculiar to Great Britain. It was introduced into Scotland so early as 1449, by a law of James the IId.45 Its beneficial influence, however, has been much obstructed by entails; the heirs of entail being generally restrained from letting leases for any long term of years, frequently for more than one year. A late act of parliament has,46 in this respect, somewhat slackened their fetters, though they are still by much too strait. In Scotland, besides, as no leasehold gives a vote for a member of parliament, the yeomanry are upon this account less respectable to their landlords than in England.47

  16In other parts of Europe, after it was found convenient to secure tenants both against heirs and purchasers, the term of their security was still limited to a very short period; in France, for example, to nine years from the commencement of the lease. It has in that country, indeed, been lately extended to twenty–seven,48 a period still too short to encourage the tenant to make the most important improvements. The proprietors of land were antiently the legislators of every part of Europe. The laws relating to land, therefore, were all calculated for what they supposed the interest of the proprietor. It was for his interest, they had imagined, that no lease granted by any of his predecessors should hinder him from enjoying, during a long term of years, the full value of his land. Avarice and injustice are always short–sighted, and they did not foresee how much this regulation must obstruct improvement, and thereby hurt in the long–run the real interest of the landlord.

  17The farmers too, besides paying the rent, were antiently, it was supposed, bound to perform a great number of services to the landlord, which were seldom either specified in the lease, or regulated by any precise rule, but by the use and wont of the manor or barony. These services, therefore, being almost entirely arbitrary, subjected the tenant to many vexations. In Scotland the abolition of all services, not precisely stipulated in the lease,49 has in the course of a few years very much altered for the better the condition of the yeomanry of that country.

  18The public services to which the yeomanry were bound, were not less arbitrary than the private ones. To make and maintain the high roads,50 a servitude which still subsists,51 I believe, every where, though with different degrees of oppression in different countries, was not the only one. When the king’s troops, when his household or his officers of any kind passed through any part of the country, the yeomanry were bound to provide them with horses, carriages, and provisions, at a price regulated by the purveyor. Great Britain is, I believe, the only monarchy in Europe where the oppression of purveyance has been entirely abolished. It still subsists in France and Germany.

  19The publick taxes to which they were subject were as irregular and oppressive as the services. The antient lords, though extremely unwilling to grant themselves any pecuniary aid to their sovereign, easily allowed him to tallage,52 as they called it, their tenants, and had not knowledge enough to foresee how much this must in the end affect their own revenue.53 The taille, as it still subsists in France, may serve as an example of those antient tallages. It is a tax upon the supposed profits of the farmer, which they estimate by the stock that he has upon the farm. It is his interest, therefore, to appear to have as little as possible, and consequently to employ as little as possible in its cultivation, and none in its improvement. Should any stock happen to accumulate in the hands of a French farmer, the taille is almost equal to a prohibition of its ever being employed upon the land.54 This tax besides is supposed to dishonour whoever is subject to it, and to degrade him below, not only the rank of a gentleman, but that of a burgher, and whoever rents the lands of another becomes subject to it. No gentleman, nor even any burgher ^cwho^c has stock, will submit to this degradation. This tax, therefore, not only hinders the stock which accumulates upon the land from being employed in its improvement, but drives away all other stock from it. The antient tenths and fifteenths,55 so usual in England in former times, seem, so far as they affected the land, to have been taxes of the same nature with the taille.

  20Under all these discouragements, little improvement could be expected from the occupiers of land. That order of people, with all the liberty and security which law can give, must always improve under great disadvantages. The farmer compared with the proprietor, is as a merchant who trades with borrowed money compared with one who trades with his own. The stock of both may improve, but that of the one, with only equal good conduct, must always improve more slowly than that of the other, on account of the large share of the profits which is consumed by the interest of the loan. The lands cultivated by the farmer must, in the same manner, with only equal good conduct, be improved more slowly than those cultivated by the proprietor; on account of the large share of the produce which is consumed in the rent,56 and which, had the farmer been proprietor, he might have employed in the further improvement of the land.57 The station of a farmer besides is, from the nature of things, inferior to that of a proprietor. Through the greater part of Europe the yeomanry are regarded as an inferior rank of people, even to the better sort of tradesmen and mechanicks, and in all parts of Europe to the great merchants and master manufacturers. It can seldom happen, therefore, that a man of any considerable stock should quit the superior, in order to place himself in an inferior station. Even in the present state of Europe, therefore, little stock is likely to go from any other profession to the improvement of land in the way of farming. More does perhaps in Great Britain than in any other country, though even there the great stocks which are, in some places, employed in farming, have generally been acquired by farming, the trade, perhaps, in which of all others stock is commonly acquired most slowly. After small proprietors, however, rich and great farmers are, in every country, the principal improvers. There are more such perhaps in England than in any other European monarchy. In the republican governments of Holland and of Berne in Switzerland, the farmers are said to be not inferior to those of England.58

  21The antient policy of Europe was, over and above all this, unfavourable to the improvement and cultivation of land, whether carried on by the proprietor or by the farmer; first, by the general prohibition of the exportation of corn without a special licence, which seems to have been a very universal regulation;59 and secondly, by the restraints which were laid upon the inland commerce, not only of corn but of almost every other part of the produce of the farm, by the absurd laws against engrossers, regrators, and forestallers, and by the privileges of fairs and markets.60 It has already been observed in what manner the prohibition of the exportation of corn, together with some encouragement given to the importation of foreign corn, obstructed the cultivation of antient Italy, naturally the most fertile country in Europe, and at that time the seat of the greatest empire in the world.61 To what degree such restraints upon the inland commerce of this commodity, joined to the general prohibition of exportation, must have discouraged the cultivation of countries less fertile, and less favourably circumstanced, it is not perhaps very easy to imagine.

  CHAPTER III

  Of the Rise and Progress of Cities and Towns, after the Fall of the Roman Empire

  1The inhabitants of cities and towns were, after the fall of the Roman empire, not more favoured than those of the country. They consisted, indeed, of a very different order of people from the first inhabitants of the antient republicks of Greece and Italy. These last were composed chiefly of the proprietors of lands, among whom the publick territory was originally divided, and who found it convenient to build their houses in the neighbourhood of one another, and to surround them with a wall, for the sake of common defence.1 After the fall of the Roman empire, on the contrary, the proprietors of land seem generally to have lived in fortified castles on their own estates, and in the midst of their own tenants and dependants. The towns were chiefly inhabited by tradesmen and mechanicks, who seem in those days to have been of servile, or very nearly of servile condition. The privileges which we find granted by antient charters to the inhabitants of some of the principal towns in Europe, sufficiently shew what they were before those grants.2 The people to whom it is granted as a privilege, that they might give away their own daughters in marriage without the consent of their lord, that upon their death their own children, and not their lord, should succeed to their goods, and that they might dispose of their own effects by will, must, before those grants, have been either altogether, or very nearly in the same state of villanage with the occupiers of land in the country.

  2They seem, indeed, to have been a very poor, mean sett of people, who used to travel about with their goods from place to place, and from fair to fair, like the hawkers and pedlars of the present times.3 In all the different countries of Europe then, in the same manner as in several of the Tartar governments of Asia at present, taxes used to be levied upon the persons and goods of travellers, when they passed through certain manors, when they went over certain bridges, when they carried about their goods from place to place in a fair, when they erected in it a booth or stall to sell them in. These different taxes were known in England by the names of passage, pontage, lastage, and stallage.4 Sometimes the king, sometimes a great lord, who had, it seems, upon some occasions, authority to do this, would grant to particular traders, to such particularly as lived in their own demesnes, a general exemption from such taxes. Such traders, though in other respects of servile, or very nearly of servile condition, were upon this account called Free–traders.5 They in return usually paid to their protector a sort of annual poll–tax. In those days protection was seldom granted without a valuable consideration, and this tax might, perhaps, be considered as compensation for what their patrons might lose by their exemption from other taxes. At first, both those poll–taxes and those exemptions seem to have been altogether personal, and to have affected only particular individuals, during either their lives, or the pleasure of their protectors. In the very imperfect accounts which have been published from Domesdaybook, of several of the towns of England, mention is frequently made, sometimes of the tax which particular burghers paid, each of them, either to the king, or to some other great lord, for this sort of protection;6 and sometimes of the general amount only of all those taxes* .

  3 But how servile soever may have been originally the condition of the inhabitants of ^bthe^b towns, it appears evidently, that they arrived at liberty and independency much earlier than the occupiers of land in the country. That part of the king’s revenue which arose from such poll–taxes in any particular town, used commonly to be lett in farm, during a term of years for a rent certain, sometimes to the sheriff of the county, and sometimes to other persons. The burghers themselves frequently got credit enough to be admitted to farm the revenues of this sort which arose out of their own town, they becoming jointly and severally answerable for the whole rent* . To lett a farm in this manner was quite agreeable to the usual œconomy of, I believe, the sovereigns of all the different countries of Europe;7 who used frequently to lett whole manors to all the tenants of those manors, they becoming jointly and severally answerable for the whole rent; but in return being allowed to collect it in their own way, and to pay it into the king’s exchequer by the hands of their own bailiff, and being thus altogether freed from the insolence of the king’s officers; a circumstance in those days regarded as of the greatest importance.8

  4At first, the farm of the town was probably lett to the burghers, in the same manner as it had been to other farmers, for a term of years only. In process of time, however, it seems to have become the general practice to grant it to them in fee, that is for ever, reserving a rent certain never afterwards to be augmented. The payment having thus become perpetual, the exemptions, in return for which it was made, naturally became perpetual too. Those exemptions, therefore, ceased to be personal, and could not afterwards be considered as belonging to individuals as individuals, but as burghers of a particular burgh, which, upon this account, was called a Free–burgh, for the same reason that they had been called Free–burghers or Free–traders.9

  5Along with this grant, the important privileges above mentioned, that they might give away their own daughters in marriage, that their children should succeed to them, and that they might dispose of their own effects by will, were generally bestowed upon the burghers of the town to whom it was given. Whether such privileges had before been usually granted along with the freedom of trade, to particular burghers, as individuals, I know not. I reckon it not improbable that they were, though I cannot produce any direct evidence of it. But however this may have been, the principal attributes of villanage and slavery being thus taken away from them, they now, at least, became really free in our present sense of the word Freedom.

  6Nor was this all. They were generally at the same time erected into a commonality or corporation,10 with the privilege of having magistrates and a town–council of their own, of making bye–laws for their own government, of building walls for their own defence, and of reducing all their inhabitants under a sort of military discipline, by obliging them to watch and ward; that is, as antiently understood, to guard and defend those walls against all attacks and surprises by night as well as by day.11 In England they were generally exempted from suit to the hundred and county courts; and all such pleas as should arise among them, the pleas of the crown excepted, were left to the decision of their own magistrates. In other countries much greater and more extensive jurisdictions were frequently granted to them* .

  7It might, probably, be necessary to grant to such towns as were admitted to farm their own revenues, some sort of compulsive jurisdiction to oblige their own citizens to make payment. In those disorderly times it might have been extremely inconvenient to have left them to seek this sort of justice from any other tribunal. But it must seem extraordinary that the sovereigns of all the different countries of Europe, should have exchanged in this manner for a rent certain, never more to be augmented, that branch of their revenue, which was, perhaps, of all others the most likely to be improved by the natural course of things, without–either expence or attention of their own: and that they should, besides, have in this manner voluntarily erected a sort of independent republicks in the heart of their own dominions.12

  8In order to understand this, it must be remembered, that in those days the sovereign of perhaps no country in Europe, was able to protect, through the whole extent of his dominions, the weaker part of his subjects from the oppression of the great lords.13 Those whom the law could not protect, and who were not strong enough to defend themselves, were obliged either to have recourse to the protection of some great lord, and in order to obtain it to become either his slaves or vassals; or to enter into a league of mutual defence for the common protection of one another. The inhabitants of cities and burghs, considered as single individuals, had no power to defend themselves: but by entering into a league of mutual defence with their neighbours, they were capable of making no contemptible resistance. The lords despised the burghers, whom they considered not only as of a different order, but as a parcel of emancipated slaves, almost of a different species from themselves.14 The wealth of the burghers never failed to provoke their envy and indignation, and they plundered them upon every occasion without mercy or remorse. The burghers naturally hated and feared the lords. The king hated and feared them too; but though perhaps he might despise, he had no reason either to hate or fear the burghers.15 Mutual interest, therefore, disposed them to support the king, and the king to support them against the lords. They were the enemies of his enemies, and it was his interest to render them as secure and independent of those enemies as he could. By granting them magistrates of their own, the privilege of making bye–laws for their own government, that of building walls for their own defence, and that of reducing all their inhabitants under a sort of military discipline, he gave them all the means of security and independency of the barons which it was in his power to bestow. Without the establishment of some regular government of this kind, without some authority to compel their inhabitants to act according to some certain plan or system, no voluntary league of mutual defence could either have afforded them any permanent security, or have enabled them to give the king any considerable support. By granting them the farm of their town in fee, he took away from those whom he wished to have for his friends, and, if one may say so, for his allies, all ground of jealousy and suspicion that he was ever afterwards to oppress them, either by raising the farm rent of their town, or by granting it to some other farmer.

  9The princes who lived upon the worst terms with their barons, seem accordingly to have been the most liberal in grants of this kind to their burghs. King John of England,16 for example, appears to have been a most munificent benefactor to his towns* . Philip the First of France lost all authority over his barons. Towards the end of his reign, his son Lewis, known afterwards by the name of Lewis the Fat, consulted, according to Father Daniel,17 with the bishops of the royal demesnes, concerning the most proper means of restraining the violence of the great lords. Their advice consisted of two different proposals. One was to erect a new order of jurisdiction, by establishing magistrates and a town council in every considerable town of his demesnes. The other was to form a new militia, by making the inhabitants of those towns, under the command of their own magistrates, march out upon proper occasions to the assistance of the king. It is from this period, according to the French antiquarians, that we are to date the institution of the magistrates and councils of cities in France.18 It was during the unprosperous reigns of the princes of the house of Suabia that the greater part of the free towns of Germany received the first grants of their privileges, and that the famous Hanseatic19 league first became formidable* .

  10The militia of the cities seems, in those times, not to have been inferior to that of the country, and as they could be more readily assembled upon any sudden occasion, they frequently had the advantage in their disputes with the neighbouring lords. In countries, such as Italy and Switzerland, in which, on account either of their distance from the principal seat of government, of the natural strength of the country itself, or of some other reason, the sovereign came to lose the whole of his authority, the cities generally became independent republicks, and conquered all the nobility in their neighbourhood; obliging them to pull down their castles in the country, and to live, like other peaceable inhabitants, in the city.20 This is the short history of the republick of Berne, as well as of several other cities in Switzerland. If you except Venice, for of that city the history is somewhat different, it is the history of all the considerable Italian republicks, of which so great a number arose and perished, between the end of the twelfth and the beginning of the sixteenth century.

  11In countries such as France or England, where the authority of the sovereign, though frequently very low, never was destroyed altogether, the cities had no opportunity of becoming entirely independent.21 They became, however, so considerable that the sovereign could impose no tax upon them, besides the stated farm–rent of the town, without their own consent. They were, therefore, called upon to send deputies to the general assembly of the states of the kingdom, where they might join with the clergy and the barons in granting, upon urgent occasions, some extraordinary aid to the king. Being generally too more favourable to his power, their deputies seem, sometimes, to have been employed by him as a counterbalance ^gin those assemblies^g to the authority of the great lords^h . Hence the origin of the representation of burghs in the states general of all the great monarchies in Europe.22

  12Order and good government, and along with them the liberty and security of individuals, were, in this manner, established in cities at a time when the occupiers of land in the country were exposed to every sort of violence. But men in this defenceless state naturally content themselves with their necessary subsistence; because to acquire more might only tempt the injustice of their oppressors. On the contrary, when they are secure of enjoying the fruits of their industry, they naturally exert it to better their condition,23 and to acquire not only the necessaries, but the conveniencies and elegancies of life.24 That industry, therefore, which aims at something more than necessary subsistence, was established in cities long before it was commonly practised by the occupiers of land in the country. If in the hands of a poor cultivator, oppressed with the servitude of villanage, some little stock should accumulate, he would naturally conceal it with great care from his master, to whom it would otherwise have belonged, and take the first opportunity of running away to a town. The law was at that time so indulgent to the inhabitants of towns, and so desirous of diminishing the authority of the lords over those of the country, that if he could conceal himself there from the pursuit of his lord for a year, he was free for ever.25 Whatever stock, therefore, accumulated in the hands of the industrious part of the inhabitants of the country, naturally took refuge in cities, as the only sanctuaries in which it could be secure to the person that acquired it.

  13The inhabitants of a city, it is true, must always ultimately derive their subsistence, and the whole materials and means of their industry from the country. But those of a city, situated near either the sea–coast or the banks of a navigable river, are not necessarily confined to derive them from the country in their neighbourhood.26 They have a much wider range, and may draw them from the most remote corners of the world, either in exchange for the manufactured produce of their own industry, or by performing the office of carriers between distant countries, and exchanging the produce of one for that of another.27 A city might in this manner grow up to great wealth and splendor, while not only the country in its neighbourhood, but all those to which it traded, were in poverty and wretchedness.28 Each of those countries, perhaps, taken singly, could afford it but a small part, either of its subsistence, or of its employment; but all of them taken together could afford it both a great subsistence and a great employment. There were, however, within the narrow circle of the commerce of those times, some countries that were opulent and industrious. Such was the Greek empire as long as it subsisted, and that of the Saracens during the reigns of the Abassides. Such too was Egypt till it was conquered by the Turks, some part of the coast of Barbary, and all those provinces of Spain which were under the government of the Moors.29

  14 The cities of Italy seem to have been the first in Europe which were raised by commerce to any considerable degree of opulence. Italy lay in the center of what was at that time the improved and civilized part of the world.30 The cruzades too, though by the great waste of stock and destruction of inhabitants which they occasioned, they must necessarily have retarded the progress of the greater part of Europe, were extremely favourable to that of some Italian cities. The great armies which marched from all parts to the conquest of the Holy Land, gave extraordinary encouragement to the shipping of Venice, Genoa, and Pisa,31 sometimes in transporting them thither, and always in supplying them with provisions. They were the commissaries, if one may say so, of those armies; and the most destructive frenzy that ever befel the European nations, was a source of opulence to those republicks.32

  15The inhabitants of trading cities, by importing the improved manufactures and expensive luxuries of richer countries, afforded some food to the vanity of the great proprietors, who eagerly purchased them with great quantities of the rude produce of their own lands. The commerce of a great part of Europe in those times accordingly, consisted chiefly in the exchange of their own rude, for the manufactured produce of more civilized nations. Thus the wool of England used to be exchanged for the wines of France, and the fine cloths of Flanders, in the same manner as the corn ⁱofⁱ Poland is at this day exchanged for the wines and brandies of France, and for the silks and velvets of France and Italy.

  16A taste for the finer and more improved manufactures, was in this manner introduced by foreign commerce into countries where no such works were carried on. But when this taste became so general as to occasion a considerable demand, the merchants, in order to save the expence of carriage, naturally endeavoured to establish some manufactures of the same kind in their own country. Hence the origin of the first manufactures for distant sale that seem to have been established in the western provinces of Europe, after the fall of the Roman empire.

  17No large country, it must be observed, ever did or could subsist without some sort of manufactures being carried on in it; and when it is said of any such country that it has no manufactures, it must always be understood of the finer and more improved, or of such as are fit for distant sale. In every large country, both the cloathing and houshold furniture of the far greater part of the people, are the produce of their own industry. This is even more universally the case in those poor countries which are commonly said to have no manufactures, than in those rich ones that are said to abound in them. In the latter, you will generally find, both in the cloaths and houshold furniture of the lowest rank of people, a much greater proportion of foreign productions than in the former.

  18 Those manufactures which are fit for distant sale, seem to have been introduced into different countries in two different ways.

  19Sometimes they have been introduced, in the manner above mentioned, by the violent operation, if one may say so, of the stocks of particular merchants and undertakers, who established them in imitation of some foreign manufactures of the same kind. Such manufactures, therefore, are the offspring of foreign commerce, and such seem to have been the antient manufactures of silks, velvets, and brocades^j, which flourished in Lucca during^j the thirteenth century. ^kThey were banished from thence by the tyranny of one of Machiavel’s heroes, Castruccio Castracani. In 1310, nine hundred families were driven out of Lucca , of whom thirty–one retired to Venice, and offered to introduce there the silk manufacture* . Their offer was accepted; many privileges were conferred upon them, and they began the manufacture with three hundred workmen.^k Such too seem to have been the manufactures of fine cloths that antiently flourished in Flanders, and which were introduced into England in the beginning of the reign of Elizabeth; and such are the present silk manufactures of Lyons and Spitalfields.33 Manufactures introduced in this manner are generally employed upon foreign materials, being ^m imitations of foreign manufactures. When the Venetian manufacture ⁿwas first established the materials were all brought from Sicily and the Levant. The more antient manufacture of Lucca was likewise carried on with foreign materials. The cultivation of mulberry trees, and the breeding of silk worms, seem not to have been common in the northern parts of Italy before the sixteenth century. Those arts were not introduced into France till the reign of Charles IX.ⁿ The manufactures of Flanders were carried on chiefly with Spanish and English wool. Spanish wool was the material, not of the first woollen manufacture of England, but of the first that was fit for distant sale.34 More than one half the materials of the Lyons manufacture is at this day foreign silk; when it was first established, the whole or very nearly the whole was so. No part of the materials of the Spital–fields manufacture is ever likely to be the produce of England. The seat of such manufactures, as they are generally introduced by the scheme and project of a few individuals, is sometimes established in a maritime city, and sometimes in an inland town, according as their interest, judgment or caprice happen to determine.

  20At other times manufactures for distant sale grow up naturally, and as it were of their own accord, by the gradual refinement of those houshold and coarser manufactures which must at all times be carried on even in the poorest and rudest countries.35 Such manufactures are generally employed upon the materials which the country produces, and they seem frequently to have been first refined and improved in such inland countries as were, not indeed at a very great, but at a considerable distance from the sea coast, and sometimes even from all water carriage. An inland country naturally fertile and easily cultivated, produces a great surplus of provisions beyond what is necessary for maintaining the cultivators, and on account of the expence of land carriage, and inconveniency of river navigation, it may frequently be difficult to send this surplus abroad. Abundance, therefore, renders provisions cheap, and encourages a great number of workmen to settle in the neighbourhood, who find that their industry can there procure them more of the necessaries and conveniencies of life than in other places.36 They work up the materials of manufacture which the land produces, and exchange their finished work, or what is the same thing the price of it, for more materials and provisions. They give a new value to the surplus part of the rude produce, by saving the expence of carrying it to the water side, or to some distant market; and they furnish the cultivators with something in exchange for it that is either useful or agreeable to them, upon easier terms than they could have obtained it before. The cultivators get a better price for their surplus produce, and can purchase cheaper other conveniencies which they have occasion for. They are thus both encouraged and enabled to increase this surplus produce by a further improvement and better cultivation of the land; and as the fertility of the land had given birth to the manufacture, so the progress of the manufacture re–acts upon the land, and increases still further its fertility. The manufacturers first supply the neighbourhood, and afterwards, as their work improves and refines, more distant markets. For though neither the rude produce, nor even the coarse manufacture, could, without the greatest difficulty, support the expence of a considerable land carriage, the refined and improved manufacture easily may. In a small bulk it frequently contains the price of a great quantity of rude produce. A piece of fine cloth, for example, which weighs only eighty pounds, contains in it, the price, not only of eighty pounds weight of wool, but sometimes of several thousand weight of corn, the maintenance of the different working people, and of their immediate employers. The corn, which could with difficulty have been carried abroad in its own shape, is in this manner virtually exported in that of the complete manufacture, and may easily be sent to the remotest corners of the world.37 In this manner have grown up naturally, and as it were of their own accord, the manufactures of Leeds, Halifax, Sheffield, Birmingham, and Wolverhampton. Such manufactures are the offspring of agriculture.38 In the modern history of Europe, their extension and improvement have generally been posterior to those which were the offspring of foreign commerce.39 England was noted for the manufacture of fine cloths made of Spanish wool, more than a century before any of those which now flourish in the places above mentioned were fit for foreign sale. The extension and improvement of these last could not take place but in consequence of the extension and improvement of agriculture, the last and greatest effect of foreign commerce, and of the manufactures immediately introduced by it, and which I shall now proceed to explain.

  CHAPTER IV

  How the Commerce of the Towns contributed to the Improvement of the Country

  1The increase and riches of commercial and manufacturing towns, contributed to the improvement and cultivation of the countries to which they belonged, in three different ways.

  2First, by affording a great and ready market for the rude produce of the country, they gave encouragement to its cultivation and further improvement. This benefit was not even confined to the countries in which they were situated, but extended more or less to all those with which they had any dealings. To all of them they afforded a market for some part either of their rude or manufactured produce, and consequently gave some encouragement to the industry and improvement of all. Their own country, however, on account of its neighbourhood, necessarily derived the greatest benefit from this market. Its rude produce being charged with less carriage, the traders could pay the growers a better price for it, and yet afford it as cheap to the consumers as that of more distant countries.

  3Secondly, the wealth acquired by the inhabitants of cities was frequently employed in purchasing such lands as were to be sold, of which a great part would frequently be uncultivated.1 Merchants are commonly ambitious of becoming country gentlemen, and when they do, they are generally the best of all improvers.2 A merchant is accustomed to employ his money chiefly in profitable projects; whereas a mere country gentleman is accustomed to employ it chiefly in expence. The one often sees his money go from him and return to him again with a profit: the other, when once he parts with it, very seldom expects to see any more of it. Those different habits naturally affect their temper and disposition in every sort of business. A merchant is commonly a bold; a country gentleman, a timid undertaker. The one is not afraid to lay out at once a large capital upon the improvement of his land, when he has a probable prospect of raising the value of it in proportion to the expence. The other, if he has any capital, which is not always the case, seldom ventures to employ it in this manner. If he improves at all, it is commonly not with a capital, but with what he can save out of his annual revenue. Whoever has had the fortune to live in a mercantile town situated in an unimproved country, must have frequently observed how much more spirited the operations of merchants were in this way, than those of mere country gentlemen. The habits, besides, of order, œconomy and attention, to which mercantile business naturally forms a merchant, render him much fitter to execute, with profit and success, any project of improvement.3

  4Thirdly, and lastly, commerce and manufactures gradually introduced order and good government,4 and with them, the liberty and security of individuals, among the inhabitants of the country, who had before lived almost in a continual state of war with their neighbours, and of servile dependency upon their superiors.5 This, though it has been the least observed, is by far the most important of all their effects. Mr. Hume is the only writer who, so far as I know, has hitherto taken notice of it.6

  5In a country which has neither foreign commerce, nor any of the finer manufactures, a great proprietor, having nothing for which he can exchange the greater part of the produce of his lands which is over and above the maintenance of the cultivators, consumes the whole in rustick hospitality at home.7 If this surplus produce is sufficient to maintain a hundred or a thousand men, he can make use of it in no other way than by maintaining a hundred or a thousand men. He is at all times, therefore, surrounded with a multitude of retainers and dependants, who having no equivalent to give in return for their maintenance, but being fed entirely by his bounty, must obey him, for the same reason that soldiers must obey the prince who pays them. Therefore the extension of commerce and manufactures in Europe, the hospitality of the rich and the great, from the sovereign down to the smallest baron, exceeded every thing which in the present times we can easily form a notion of. Westminster–hall was the dining–room of William Rufus, and might frequently, perhaps, not be too large for his company.8 It was reckoned a piece of magnificence in Thomas Becket, that he strowed the floor of his hall with clean hay or rushes in the season, in order that the knights and squires, who could not get seats, might not spoil their fine cloaths when they sat down on the floor to eat their dinner.9 The great earl of Warwick is said to have entertained every day at his different manors, thirty thousand people; and though the number here may have been exaggerated, it must, however, have been very great to admit of such exaggeration.10 A hospitality nearly of the same kind was exercised not many years ago in many different parts of the highlands of Scotland. It seems to be common in all nations to whom commerce and manufactures are little known. I have seen, says Doctor Pocock,11 an Arabian chief dine in the streets of a town where he had come to sell his cattle, and invite all passengers, even common beggars, to sit down with him and partake of his banquet.12

  6The occupiers of land were in every respect as dependent upon the great proprietor as his retainers.13 Even such of them as were not in a state of villange, were tenants at will, who paid a rent in no respect equivalent to the subsistence which the land afforded them.14 A crown, half a crown, a sheep, a lamb, was some years ago in the highlands of Scotland a common rent for lands which maintained a family. In some places it is so at this day; nor will money at present purchase a greater quantity of commodities there than in other places. In a country where the surplus produce of a large estate must be consumed upon the estate itself, it will frequently be more convenient for the proprietor, that part of it be consumed at a distance from his own house, provided they who consume it are as dependent upon him as either his retainers or his menial servants. He is thereby saved from the embarrassment of either too large a company or too large a family. A tenant at will, who possesses land sufficient to maintain his family for little more than a quit–rent, is as dependent upon the proprietor as any servant or retainer whatever, and must obey him with as little reserve. Such a proprietor, as he feeds his servants and retainers at his own house, so he feeds his tenants at their houses. The subsistence of both is derived from his bounty, and its continuance depends upon his good pleasure.

  7Upon the authority which the great proprietors necessarily had in such a state of things over their tenants and retainers, was founded the power of the antient barons.15 They necessarily became the judges in peace, and the leaders in war, of all who dwelt upon their estates.16 They could maintain order and execute the law within their respective demesnes, because each of them could there turn the whole force of all the inhabitants against the injustice of any one. No other person had sufficient authority to do this. The king in particular had not.17 In those antient times he was little more than the greatest proprietor in his dominions, to whom, for the sake of common defence against their common enemies, the other great proprietors paid certain respects. To have enforced payment of a small debt within the lands of a great proprietor, where all the inhabitants were armed and accustomed to stand by one another, would have cost the king, had he attempted it by his own authority, almost the same effort as to extinguish a civil war.18 He was, therefore, obliged to abandon the administration of justice through the greater part of the country, to those who were capable of administering it; and for the same reason to leave the command of the country militia to those whom that militia would obey.

  8It is a mistake to imagine that those territorial jurisdictions took their origin from the feudal law. Not only the highest jurisdictions both civil and criminal, but the power of levying troops, of coining money, and even that of making bye–laws for the government of their own people, were all rights possessed allodially by the great proprietors of land several centuries before even the name of the feudal law was known in Europe. The authority and jurisdiction of the Saxon lords in England, ^aappear^a to have been as great before the conquest,19 as that of any of the Norman lords after it. But the feudal law is not supposed to have become the common law of England till after the conquest.20 That the most extensive authority and jurisdictions were possessed by the great lords in France allodially, long before the feudal law was introduced into that country, is a matter of fact that admits of no doubt.21 That authority and those jurisdictions all necessarily flowed from the state of property and manners just now described.22 Without remounting to the remote antiquities of either the French or English monarchies, we may find in much later times many proofs that such effects must always flow from such causes. It is not thirty years ago since Mr. Cameron of Lochiel, a gentleman of Lochabar in Scotland, without any legal warrant whatever, not being what was then called a lord of regality, nor even a tenant in chief, but a vassal of the duke of Argyle, and without being so much as a justice of peace, used, notwithstanding, to exercise the highest criminal jurisdiction over his own people. He is said to have done so with great equity, though without any of the formalities of justice; and it is not improbable that the state of that part of the country at that time made it necessary for him to assume this authority in order to maintain the publick peace.23 That gentleman, whose rent never exceeded five hundred pounds a year, carried, in 1745, eight hundred of his own people into the rebellion with him.24

  9 The introduction of the feudal law, so far from extending, may be regarded as an attempt to moderate the authority of the great allodial lords.25 It established a regular subordination, accompanied with a long train of services and duties, from the king down to the smallest proprietor. During the minority of the proprietor, the rent, together with the management of his lands, fell into the hands of his immediate superior, and, consequently, those of all great proprietors into the hands of the king, who was charged with the maintenance and education of the pupil, and who, from his authority as guardian, was supposed to have a right of disposing of him in marriage, provided it was in a manner not unsuitable to his rank.26 But though this institution necessarily tended to strengthen the authority of the king, and to weaken that of the great proprietors, it could not do either sufficiently for establishing order and good government among the inhabitants of the country; because it could not alter sufficiently that state of property and manners from which the disorders arose. The authority of government still continued to be, as before, too weak in the head and too strong in the inferior members, and the excessive strength of the inferior members was the cause of the weakness of the head. After the institution of feudal subordination, the king was as incapable of restraining the violence of the great lords as before. They still continued to make war according to their own discretion, almost continually upon one another, and very frequently upon the king; and the open country still continued to be a scene of violence, rapine, and disorder.27

  10But what all the violence of the feudal institutions could never have effected, the silent and insensible operation of foreign commerce and manufactures gradually brought about.28 These gradually furnished the great proprietors with something for which they could exchange the whole surplus produce of their lands, and which they could consume themselves without sharing it either with tenants or retainers.29 All for ourselves, and nothing for other people, seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind. As soon, therefore, as they could find a method of consuming the whole value of their rents themselves, they had no disposition to share them with any other persons.30 For a pair of diamond buckles perhaps, or for something as frivolous and useless, they exchanged the maintenance, or what is the same thing, the price of the maintenance of a thousand men for a year, and with it the whole weight and authority which it could give them.31 The buckles, however, were to be all their own, and no other human creature was to have any share of them; whereas in the more antient method of expence they must have shared with at least a thousand people. With the judges that were to determine the preference, this difference was perfectly decisive; and thus, for the gratification of the most childish, the meanest and the most sordid of all vanities, they gradually bartered their whole power and authority.32

  11In a country where there is no foreign commerce, nor any of the finer manufactures, a man of ten thousand a year cannot well employ his revenue in any other way than in maintaining, perhaps, a thousand families, who are all of them necessarily at his command.33 In the present state of Europe, a man of ten thousand a year can spend his whole revenue, and he generally does so, without directly maintaining twenty people, or being able to command more than ten footmen not worth the commanding.34 Indirectly, perhaps, he maintains as great or even a greater number of people than he could have done by the antient method of expence. For though the quantity of precious productions for which he exchanges his whole revenue be very small, the number of workmen employed in collecting and preparing it, must necessarily have been very great. Its great price generally arises from the wages of their labour, and the profits of all their immediate employers. By paying that price he indirectly pays all those wages and profits, and thus indirectly contributes to the maintenance of all the workmen and their employers.35 He generally contributes, however, but a very small proportion to that of each, to very few perhaps a tenth, to many not a hundredth, and to some not a thousandth, nor even a ten thousandth part of their whole annual maintenance. Though he contributes, therefore, to the maintenance of them all, they are all more or less independent of him, because generally they can all be maintained without him.36

  12When the great proprietors of land spend their rents in maintaining their tenants and retainers, each of them maintains entirely all his own tenants and all his own retainers. But when they spend them in maintaining tradesmen and artificers, they may, all of them taken together, perhaps, maintain as great, or, on account of the waste which attends rustick hospitality, a greater number of people than before. Each of them, however, taken singly, contributes often but a very small share to the maintenance of any individual of this greater number. Each tradesman or artificer derives his subsistence from the employment, not of one, but of a hundred or a thousand different customers. Though in some measure obliged to them all, therefore, he is not absolutely dependent upon any one of them.

  13The personal expence of the great proprietors having in this manner gradually increased, it was impossible that the number of their retainers should not as gradually diminish, till they were at last dismissed altogether. The same cause gradually led them to dismiss the unnecessary part of their tenants. Farms were enlarged, and the occupiers of land, notwithstanding the complaints of depopulation, reduced to the number necessary for cultivating it, according to the imperfect state of cultivation and improvement in those times. By the removal of the unnecessary mouths, and by exacting from the farmer the full value of the farm, a greater surplus, or what is the same thing, the price of a greater surplus, was obtained for the proprietor, which the merchants and manufacturers soon furnished him with a method of spending upon his own person in the same manner as he had done the rest. The same cause continuing to operate, he was desirous to raise his rents above what his lands, in the actual state of their improvement, could afford. His tenants could agree to this upon one condition only, that they should be secured in their possession, for such a term of years as might give them time to recover with profit whatever they should lay out in the further improvement of the land. The expensive vanity of the landlord made him willing to accept of this condition; and hence the origin of long leases.37

  14Even a tenant at will, who pays the full value of the land, is not altogether dependent upon the landlord. The pecuniary advantages which they receive from one another, are mutual and equal, and such a tenant will expose neither his life nor his fortune in the service of the proprietor. But if he has a lease for a long term of years, he is altogether independent; and his landlord must not expect from him even the most trifling service beyond what is either expressly stipulated in the lease, or imposed upon him by the common and known law of the country.

  15The tenants having in this manner become independent, and the retainers being dismissed, the great proprietors were no longer capable of interrupting the regular execution of justice, or of disturbing the peace of the country. Having sold their birth–right, not like Esau for a mess of pottage in time of hunger and necessity, but in the wantonness of plenty, for trinkets and baubles, fitter to be the play–things of children than the serious pursuits of men, they became as insignificant as any substantial burgher or tradesman in a city. A regular government was established in the country as well as in the city, nobody having sufficient power to disturb its operations in the one, any more than in the other.38

  16It does not, perhaps, relate to the present subject, but I cannot help remarking it, that very old families, such as have possessed some considerable estate from father to son for many successive generations, are very rare in commercial countries. In countries which have little commerce, on the contrary, such as Wales or the highlands of Scotland, they are very common.39 The Arabian histories seem to be all full of genealogies, and there is a history written by a Tartar Khan, which has been translated into several European languages, and which contains scarce any thing else;40 a proof that antient families are very common among those nations. In countries where a rich man can spend his revenue in no other way than by maintaining as many people as it can maintain, he is not apt to run out, and his benevolence it seems is seldom so violent as to attempt to maintain more than he can afford. But where he can spend the greatest revenue upon his own person, he frequently has no bounds to his expence, because he frequently has no bounds to his vanity, or to his affection for his own person. In commercial countries, therefore, riches, in spite of the most violent regulations of law to prevent their dissipation, very seldom remain long in the same family. Among simple nations, on the contrary, they frequently do without any regulations of law; for among nations of shepherds, such as the Tartars and Arabs, the consumable nature of their property necessarily renders all such regulations impossible.

  17A revolution of the greatest importance to the publick happiness, was in this manner brought about by two different orders of people, who had not the least intention to serve the publick. To gratify the most childish vanity was the sole motive of the great proprietors. The merchants and artificers, much less ridiculous, acted merely from a view to their own interest, and in pursuit of their own pedlar principle of turning a penny wherever a penny was to be got. Neither of them had either knowledge or foresight of that great revolution which the folly of the one, and the industry of the other, was gradually bringing about.41

  18It is thus that through the greater part of Europe the commerce and manufactures of cities, instead of being the effect, have been the cause and occasion of the improvement and cultivation of the country.

  19This order, however, being contrary to the natural course of things, is necessarily both slow and uncertain. Compare the slow progress of those European countries of which the wealth depends very much upon their commerce and manufactures, with the rapid advances of our North American colonies, of which the wealth is founded altogether in agriculture.42 Through the greater part of Europe, the number of inhabitants is not supposed to double in less than five hundred years. In several of our North American colonies, it is found to double in twenty or five–and–twenty years.43 In Europe, the law of primogeniture, and perpetuities of different kinds, prevent the division of great estates, and thereby hinder the multiplication of small proprietors.44 A small proprietor, however, who knows every part of his little territory, ^bwho^b views it ^cwith all^c the affection which property, especially small property, naturally inspires, and who upon that account takes pleasure not only in cultivating but in adorning it, is generally of all improvers the most industrious, the most intelligent, and the most successful.45 The same regulations, besides, keep so much land out of the market, that there are always more capitals to buy than there is land to sell, so that what is sold always sells at a monopoly price. The rent never pays the interest of the purchase–money, and is besides burdened with repairs and other occasional charges, to which the interest of money is not liable. To purchase land is every where in Europe a most unprofitable employment of a small capital. For the sake of the superior security, indeed, a man of moderate circumstances, when he retires from business, will sometimes chuse to lay out his little capital in land. A man of profession too, whose revenue is derived from another source, often loves to secure his savings in the same way. But a young man, who, instead of applying to trade or to some profession, should employ a capital of two or three thousand pounds in the purchase and cultivation of a small piece of land, might indeed expect to live very happily, and very independently, but must bid adieu, for ever, to all hope of either great fortune or great illustration, which by a different employment of his stock he might have had the same chance of acquiring with other people. Such a person too, though he cannot aspire at being a proprietor, will often disdain to be a farmer. The small quantity of land, therefore, which is brought to market, and the high price of what is brought ^dthither^d prevents a great number of capitals from being employed in its cultivation and improvement which would otherwise have taken that direction. In North America, on the contrary, fifty or sixty pounds is often found a sufficient stock to begin a plantation with. The purchase and improvement of uncultivated land, is there the most profitable employment of the smallest as well as of the greatest capitals, and the most direct road to all the fortune and illustration which can be acquired in that country. Such land, indeed, is in North America to be had almost for nothing, or at a price much below the value of the natural produce; a thing impossible in Europe, or, indeed, in any country where all lands have long been private property.46 If landed estates, however, were divided equally among all the children, upon the death of any proprietor who left a numerous family, the estate would generally be sold. So much land would come to market, that it could no longer sell at a monopoly price. The free rent of the land would go nearer to pay the interest of the purchase–money, and a small capital might be employed in purchasing land as profitably as in any other way.

  20England, on account of the natural fertility of the soil, of the great extent of ^ethe^e sea–coast in proportion to that of the whole country, and of the many navigable rivers which run through it, and afford the conveniency of water carriage to some of the most inland parts of it, is perhaps as well fitted by nature as any large country in Europe, to be the seat of foreign commerce, of manufactures for distant sale, and of all the improvements which these can occasion. From the beginning of the reign of Elizabeth too, the English legislature has been peculiarly attentive to the interests of commerce and manufactures, and in reality there is no country in Europe, Holland itself not excepted, of which the law is, upon the whole, more favourable to this sort of industry. Commerce and manufactures have accordingly been continually advancing during all this period. The cultivation and improvement of the country has, no doubt, been gradually advancing too: But it seems to have followed slowly, and at a distance, the more rapid progress of commerce and manufactures. The greater part of the country must probably have been cultivated before the reign of Elizabeth; and a very great part of it still remains uncultivated, and the cultivation of the far greater part, much inferior to what it might be. The law of England, however, favours agriculture not only indirectly by the protection of commerce, but by several direct encouragements. Except in times of scarcity, the exportation of corn is not only free, but encouraged by a bounty.47 In times of moderate plenty, the importation of foreign corn is loaded with duties that amount to a prohibition.48 The importation of live cattle, except from Ireland, is prohibited at all times,49 and it is but of late that it was permitted from thence.50 Those who cultivate the land, therefore, have a monopoly against their countrymen for the two greatest and most important articles of land produce, bread and butcher’s meat. These encouragements, though at bottom, perhaps, as I shall endeavour to show hereafter,51 altogether illusory, sufficiently demonstrate at least the good intention of the legislature to favour agriculture. But what is of much more importance than all of them, the yeomanry of England are rendered as secure, as independent, and as respectable as law can make them.52 No country, therefore, in which the right of primogeniture takes place, which pays tithes, and where perpetuities, though contrary to the spirit of the law, are admitted in some cases, can give more encouragement to agriculture than England. Such, however, notwithstanding, is the state of its cultivation. What would it have been, had the law given no direct encouragement to agriculture besides what arises indirectly from the progress of commerce, and had left the yeomanry in the same condition as in most other countries of Europe? It is now more than two hundred years since the beginning of the reign of Elizabeth, a period as long as the course of human prosperity usually endures.53

  21France seems to have had a considerable share of foreign commerce near a century before England was distinguished as a commercial country. The marine of France was considerable, according to the notions of the times, before the expedition of Charles the VIIIth to Naples. The cultivation and improvement of France, however, is, upon the whole, inferior to that of England. The law of the country has never given the same direct encouragement to agriculture.

  22The foreign commerce of Spain and Portugal to the other parts of Europe, though chiefly carried on in foreign ships, is very considerable. That to their colonies is carried on in their own, and is much greater, on account of the great riches and extent of those colonies. But it has never introduced any considerable manufactures for distant sale into either of those countries, and the greater part of both still remains uncultivated. The foreign commerce of Portugal is of older standing than that of any great country in Europe, except Italy.54

  23Italy is the only great country of Europe which seems to have been cultivated and improved in every part, by means of foreign commerce and manufactures for distant sale. Before the invasion of Charles the VIIIth, Italy, according to Guicciardin,55 was cultivated not less in the most mountainous and barren parts of the country, than in the plainest and most fertile. The advantageous situation of the country, and the great number of independent states which at that time subsisted in it, probably contributed not a little to this general cultivation. It is not impossible too, notwithstanding this general expression of one of the most judicious and reserved of modern historians, that Italy was not at that time better cultivated than England is at present.

  24The capital, however, that is acquired to any country by commerce and manufactures, is all a very precarious and uncertain possession, till some part of it has been secured and realized in the cultivation and improvement of its lands. A merchant, it has been said very properly, is not necessarily the citizen of any particular country. It is in a great measure indifferent to him from what place he carries on his trade; and a very trifling disgust will make him remove his capital, and together with it all the industry which it supports, from one country to another. No part of it can be said to belong to any particular country, till it has been spread as it were over the face of that country, either in buildings, or in the lasting improvement of lands.56 No vestige now remains of the great wealth, said to have been possessed by the greater part of the Hans towns, except in the obscure histories of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. It is even uncertain where some of them were situated, or to what towns in Europe the Latin names given to some of them belong. But though the misfortunes of Italy in the end of the fifteenth and beginning of the sixteenth centuries greatly diminished the commerce and manufactures of the cities of Lombardy and Tuscany, those countries still continue to be among the most populous and best cultivated in Europe. The civil wars of Flanders, and the Spanish government which succeeded them, chased away the great commerce of Antwerp, Ghent, and Bruges. But Flanders still continues to be one of the richest, best cultivated, and most populous provinces of Europe. The ordinary revolutions of war and government easily dry up the sources of that wealth which arises from commerce only. That which arises from the more solid improvements of agriculture, is much more durable, and cannot be destroyed but by those more violent convulsions occasioned by the depredations of hostile and barbarous nations continued for a century or two together; such as those that happened for some time before and after the fall of the Roman empire in the western provinces of Europe.

  BOOK IV

  Of Systems of political Oeconomy

  introduction

  1Political œconomy, considered as a branch of the science of a statesman or legislator, proposes two distinct objects; first, to provide a plentiful revenue or subsistence for the people, or more properly to enable them to provide such a revenue or subsistence for themselves; and secondly, to supply the state or commonwealth with a revenue sufficient for the publick services. It proposes to enrich both the people and the sovereign.

  2The different progress of opulence in different ages and nations, has given occasion to two different systems of political œconomy, with regard to enriching the people. The one may be called the system of commerce, the other that of agriculture. I shall endeavour to explain both as fully and distinctly as I can, and shall begin with the system of commerce. It is the modern system, and is best understood in our own country and in our own times.

  CHAPTER I

  Of the Principle of the commercial, or mercantile System1

  1That wealth consists in money, or in gold and silver, is a popular notion which naturally arises from the double function of money, as the instrument of commerce, and as the measure of value.2 In consequence of its being the instrument of commerce, when we have money we can more readily obtain whatever else we have occasion for, than by means of any other commodity. The great affair, we always find, is to get money. When that is obtained, there is no difficulty in making any subsequent purchase. In consequence of its being the measure of value, we estimate that of all other commodities by the quantity of money which they will exchange for. We say of a rich man that he is worth a great deal, and of a poor man that he is worth very little money. A frugal man, or a man eager to be rich, is said to love money; and a careless, a generous, or a profuse man, is said to be indifferent about it. To grow rich is to get money; and wealth and money, in short, are, in common language, considered as in every respect synonymous.3

  2A rich country, in the same manner as a rich man, is supposed to be a country abounding in money; and to heap up gold and silver in any country is supposed to be the readiest way to enrich it. For some time after the discovery of America, the first enquiry of the Spaniards, when they arrived upon any unknown coast, used to be, if there was any gold or silver to be found in the neighbourhood? By the information which they received, they judged whether it was worth while to make a settlement there, or if the country was worth the conquering. Plano Carpino, a monk sent ambassador from the king of France to one of the sons of the famous Gengis Khan, says that the Tartars used frequently to ask him, if there was plenty of sheep and oxen in the kingdom of France?4 Their enquiry had the same object with that of the Spaniards.5 They wanted to know if the country was rich enough to be worth the conquering. Among the Tartars, as among all other nations of shepherds, who are generally ignorant of the use of money, cattle are the instruments of commerce and the measures of value. Wealth, therefore, according to them, consisted in cattle, as according to the Spaniards it consisted in gold and silver. Of the two, the Tartar notion, perhaps, was the nearest to the truth.6

  3Mr. Locke remarks a distinction between money and other moveable goods.7 All other moveable goods, he says, are of so consumable a nature that the wealth which consists in them cannot be much depended on, and a nation which abounds in them one year may, without any exportation, but merely by their own waste and extravagance, be in great want of them the next. Money, on the contrary, is a steady friend, which, though it may travel about from hand to hand, yet if it can be kept from going out of the country, is not very liable to be wasted and consumed. Gold and silver, therefore, are, according to him, the most solid and substantial part of the moveable wealth of a nation, and to multiply those metals ought, he thinks, upon that account, to be the great object of its political œconomy.

  4Others admit that if a nation could be separated from all the world, it would be of no consequence how much, or how little money circulated in it.8 The consumable goods which were circulated by means of this money, would only be exchanged for a greater or a smaller number of pieces; but the real wealth or poverty of the country, they allow, would depend altogether upon the abundance or scarcity of those consumable goods. But it is otherwise, they think, with countries which have connections with sovereign nations, and which are obliged to carry on foreign wars, and to maintain fleets and armies in distant countries. This, they say, cannot be done, but by sending abroad money to pay them with; and a nation cannot send much money abroad, unless it has a good deal at home. Every such nation, therefore, must endeavour in time of peace to accumulate gold and silver, that, when occasion requires, it may have wherewithal to carry on foreign wars.

  5In consequence of these popular notions, all the different nations of Europe have studied, though to little purpose, every possible means of accumulating gold and silver in their respective countries. Spain and Portugal, the proprietors of the principal mines which supply Europe with those metals, have either prohibited their exportation under the severest penalties, or subjected it to a considerable duty.9 The like prohibition seems antiently to have made a part of the policy of most other European nations. It is even to be found, where we should ^aleast of all expect^a to find it, in some old Scotch acts of parliament, which forbid under heavy penalties the carrying gold or silver forth of the kingdom.10 The like policy antiently took place both in France and England.

  6When those countries became commercial, the merchants found this prohibition, upon many occasions, extremely inconvenient. They could frequently buy more advantageously with gold and silver than with any other commodity, the foreign goods which they wanted, either to import into their own, or to carry to some other foreign country. They remonstrated, therefore, against this prohibition as hurtful to trade.11

  7They represented, first, that the exportation of gold and silver in order to purchase foreign goods, did not always diminish the quantity of those metals in the kingdom. That, on the contrary, it might frequently increase ^bthat quantity^b ; because, if the consumption of foreign goods was not thereby increased in the country, those goods might be re–exported to foreign countries, and being there sold for a large profit, might bring back much more treasure than was originally sent out to purchase them.12 Mr. Mun compares this operation of foreign trade to the seed–time and harvest of agriculture. “If we only behold,” says he, “the actions of the husbandman in the seed–time, when he casteth away much good corn into the ground, we shall account him rather a madman than a husbandman. But when we consider his labours in the harvest, which is the end of his endeavours, we shall find the worth and plentiful increase of his actions.”13

  8They represented, secondly, that this prohibition could not hinder the exportation of gold and silver, which, on account of the smallness of their bulk in proportion to their value, could easily be smuggled abroad. That this exportation could only be prevented by a proper attention to, what they called, the balance of trade.14 That when the country exported to a greater value than it imported, a balance became due to it from foreign nations, which was necessarily paid to it in gold and silver, and thereby increased the quantity of those metals in the kingdom. But that when it imported to a greater value than it exported, a contrary balance became due to foreign nations, which was necessarily paid to them in the same manner, and thereby diminished that quantity. That in this case to prohibit the exportation of those metals could not prevent it, but only, by making it more dangerous, render it more expensive. That the exchange was thereby turned more against the country which owed the balance, than it otherwise might have been; the merchant who purchased a bill upon the foreign country being obliged to pay the banker who sold it, not only for the natural risk, trouble and expence of sending the money thither, but for the extraordinary risk arising from the prohibition. But that the more the exchange was against any country, the more the balance of trade became necessarily against it; the money of that country becoming necessarily of so much less value, in comparison with that of the country to which the balance was due. That if the exchange between England and Holland, for example, was five per cent. against England, it would require a hundred and five ounces of silver in England to purchase a bill for a hundred ounces of silver in Holland: that a hundred and five ounces of silver in England, therefore, would be worth only a hundred ounces of silver in Holland, and would purchase only a proportionable quantity of Dutch goods: but that a hundred ounces of silver in Holland, on the contrary, would be worth a hundred and five ounces in England, and would purchase a proportionable quantity of English goods: That the English goods which were sold to Holland would be sold so much cheaper; and the Dutch goods which were sold to England, so much dearer, by the difference of the exchange; that the one would draw so much less Dutch money to England, and the other so much more English money to Holland as this difference amounted to: and that the balance of trade, therefore, would necessarily be so much more against England, and would require a greater balance of gold and silver to be exported to Holland.

  9Those arguments were partly solid and partly sophistical. They were solid so far as they asserted that the exportation of gold and silver in trade might frequently be advantageous to the country. They were solid too in asserting that no prohibition could prevent their exportation, when private people found any advantage in exporting them.15 But they were sophistical in supposing, that either to preserve or to augment the quantity of those metals required more the attention of government, than to preserve or to augment the quantity of any other useful commodities, which the freedom of trade, without any such attention, never fails to supply in the proper quantity. They were sophistical too, perhaps, in asserting that the high price of exchange necessarily increased, what they called, the unfavourable balance of trade, or occasioned the exportation of a greater quantity of gold and silver. That high price, indeed, was extremely disadvantageous to the merchants who had any money to pay in foreign countries. They paid so much dearer for the bills which their bankers granted them upon those countries. But though the risk arising from the prohibition might occasion some extraordinary expence to the bankers, it would not necessarily carry any more money out of the country. This expence would generally be all laid out in the country, in smuggling the money out of it, and could seldom occasion the exportation of a single six–pence beyond the precise sum drawn for. The high price of exchange too would naturally dispose the merchants to endeavour to make their exports nearly balance their imports, in order that they might have this high exchange to pay upon as small a sum as possible. The high price of exchange, ^cbesides, must necessarily have operated as a tax, in raising the price of foreign goods, and thereby diminishing their consumption. It would tend, therefore,^c not to increase, but to diminish, what they called, the unfavourable balance of trade, and consequently the exportation of gold and silver.16

  10Such as they were, however, those arguments convinced the people to whom they were addressed. They were addressed by merchants to parliaments, and to the councils of princes, to nobles and to country gentlemen; by those who were supposed to understand trade, to those who were conscious to themselves that they knew nothing about the matter.17 That foreign trade enriched the country, experience demonstrated to the nobles and country gentlemen, as well as to the merchants; but how, or in what manner, none of them well knew. The merchants knew perfectly in what manner it enriched themselves. It was their business to know it. But to know in what manner it enriched the country, was no part of their business. ^dThis^d subject never came into their consideration, but when they had occasion to apply to their country for some change in the laws relating to foreign trade. It then became necessary to say something about the beneficial effects of foreign trade, and the manner in which those effects were obstructed by the laws as they then stood. To the judges who were to decide the business, it appeared a most satisfactory account of the matter, when they were told that foreign trade brought money into the country, but that the laws in question hindered it from bringing so much as it otherwise would do. Those arguments therefore produced the wished–for effect. The prohibition of exporting gold and silver was in France and England confined to the coin of those respective countries. The exportation of foreign coin and of bullion was made free. In Holland, and in some other places, this liberty was extended even to the coin of the country. The attention of government was turned away from guarding against the exportation of gold and silver, to watch over the balance of trade, as the only cause which could occasion any augmentation or diminution of those metals.18 From one fruitless care it was turned away to another care much more intricate, much more embarrassing, and just equally fruitless. The title of Mun’s book, England’s Treasure in Foreign Trade,19 became a fundamental maxim in the political œconomy, not of England only, but of all other commercial countries. The inland or home trade, the most important of all, the trade in which an equal capital affords the greatest revenue, and creates the greatest employment to the people of the country,20 was considered as subsidiary only to foreign trade. It neither brought money into the country, it was said, nor carried any out of it. The country therefore could never become either richer or poorer by means of it, except so far as its prosperity or decay might indirectly influence the state of foreign trade.

  11A country that has no mines of its own must undoubtedly draw its gold and silver from foreign countries, in the same manner as one that has no vineyards of its own must draw its wines. It does not seem necessary, however, that the attention of government should be more turned towards the one than towards the other object. A country that has wherewithal to buy wine, will always get the wine which it has occasion for; and a country that has wherewithal to buy gold and silver, will never be in want of those metals.21 They are to be bought for a certain price like all other commodities, and as they are the price of all other commodities, so all other commodities are the price of those metals. We trust with perfect security that the freedom of trade, without any attention of government, will always supply us with the wine which we have occasion for: and we may trust with equal security that it will always supply us with all the gold and silver which we can afford to purchase or to employ, either in circulating our commodities, or in other uses.22

  12The quantity of every commodity which human industry can either purchase or produce, naturally regulates itself in every country according to the effectual demand, or according to the demand of those who are willing to pay the whole rent, labour and profits which must be paid in order to prepare and bring it to market. But no commodities regulate themselves more easily or more exactly according to this effectual demand23 than gold and silver; because on account of the small bulk and great value of those metals, no commodities can be more easily transported from one place to another, from the places where they are cheap, to those where they are dear, from the places where they exceed, to those where they fall short of this effectual demand. If there ^ewas^e in England, for example, an effectual demand for an additional quantity of gold; a packet–boat could bring from Lisbon, or from wherever else it was to be had, fifty tuns of gold, which could be coined into more than five millions of guineas.24 But if there ^fwas^f an effectual demand for grain to the same value, to import it would require, at five guineas a tun, a million of tuns of shipping, or a thousand ships of a thousand tuns each. The navy of England would not be sufficient.

  13When the quantity of gold and silver imported into any country exceeds the effectual demand, no vigilance of government can prevent their exportation. All the sanguinary laws of Spain and Portugal are not able to keep their gold and silver at home.25 The continual importations from Peru and Brazil exceed the effectual demand of those countries, and sink the price of those metals there below that in the neighbouring countries.26 If, on the contrary, in any particular country their quantity fell short of the effectual demand, so as to raise their price above that ^gof^g the neighbouring countries, the government would have no occasion to take any pains to import them. If it ^hwas^h even to take pains to prevent their importation, it would not be able to effectuate it. Those metals, when the Spartans had got wherewithal to purchase them, broke through all the barriers which the laws of Lycurgus opposed to their entrance into Lacedemon.27 All the sanguinary laws of the customs are not able to prevent the importation of the teas of the Dutch and Gottenburgh East India companies; because somewhat cheaper than those of the British company. A pound of tea, however, is about a hundred times the bulk of one of the highest prices, sixteen shillings, that is commonly paid for it in silver, and more than two thousand times the bulk of the same price in gold, and consequently just so many times more difficult to smuggle.

  14It is partly owing to the easy transportation of gold and silver from the places where they abound to those where they are wanted, that the price of those metals does not fluctuate continually like that of the greater part of other commodities, which are hindered by their bulk from shifting their situation, when the market happens to be either over or under–stocked with them.28 The price of those metals, indeed, is not altogether exempted from variation, but the changes to which it is liable are generally slow, gradual, and uniform. In Europe, for example, it is supposed, without much foundation, perhaps, that, during the course of the present and preceding century, they have been constantly, but gradually, sinking in their value, on the account of the continual importations from the Spanish West Indies.29 But to make any sudden change in the price of gold and silver, so as to raise or lower at once, sensibly and remarkably, the money price of all other commodities, requires such a revolution in commerce as that occasioned by the discovery of America.

  15If, notwithstanding all this, gold and silver should at any time fall short in a country which has wherewithal to purchase them, there are more expedients for supplying their place, than that of almost any other commodity. If the materials of manufacture are wanted, industry must stop. If provisions are wanted, the people must starve. But if money is wanted, barter will supply its place, though with a good deal of inconveniency. Buying and selling upon credit, and the different dealers compensating their credits with one another, once a month or once a year, will supply it with less inconveniency. A well regulated paper money will supply it, not only without any inconveniency, butⁱ, in some cases, with someⁱ advantages.30 Upon every account, therefore, the attention of government never was so unnecessarily employed, as when directed to watch over the preservation or increase of the quantity of money in any country.

  16No complaint, however, is more common than that of a scarcity of money. Money, like wine, must always be scarce with those who have neither wherewithal to buy it, nor credit to borrow it. Those who have either, will seldom be in want either of the money, or of the wine which they have occasion for. This complaint, however, of the scarcity of money, is not always confined to improvident spendthrifts. It is sometimes general through a whole mercantile town, and the country in its neighbourhood. Overtrading is the common cause of it. Sober men, whose projects have been disproportioned to their capitals, are as likely to have neither wherewithal to buy money, nor credit to borrow it, as prodigals whose expence has been disproportioned to their revenue.31 Before their projects can be brought to bear, their stock is gone, and their credit with it. They run about every where to borrow money, and every body tells them that they have none to lend. Even such general complaints of the scarcity of money do not always prove that the usual number of gold and silver pieces are not circulating in the country, but that many people want those pieces who have nothing to give for them. When the profits of trade happen to be greater than ordinary, overtrading becomes a general error both among great and small dealers. They do not always send more money abroad than usual, but they buy upon credit both at home and abroad, an unusual quantity of goods, which they send to some distant market, in hopes that the returns will come in before the demand for payment. The demand comes before the returns, and they have nothing at hand, with which they can either purchase money, or give solid security for borrowing. It is not any scarcity of gold and silver, but the difficulty which such people find in borrowing, and which their creditors find in getting payment, that occasions the general complaint of the scarcity of money.

  17It would be too ridiculous to go about seriously to prove, that wealth does not consist in money, or in gold and silver; but in what money purchases, and is valuable only for purchasing.32 Money, no doubt, makes always a part of the national capital; but it has already been shown that it generally makes but a small part, and always the most unprofitable part of it.33

  18It is not because wealth consists more essentially in money than in goods, that the merchant finds it generally more easy to buy goods with money, than to buy money with goods; but because money is the known and established instrument of commerce, for which every thing is readily given in exchange, but which is not always with equal readiness to be got in exchange for every thing. The greater part of goods besides are more perishable than money, and he may frequently sustain a much greater loss by keeping them.34 When his goods are upon hand too, he is more liable to such demands for money as he may not be able to answer, than when he has got their price in his coffers. Over and above all this, his profit arises more directly from selling than from buying, and he is upon all these accounts generally much more anxious to exchange his goods for money, than his money for goods. But though a particular merchant, with abundance of goods in his warehouse, may sometimes be ruined by not being able to sell them in time, a nation or country is not liable to the same accident. The whole capital of a merchant frequently consists in perishable goods destined for purchasing money. But it is but a very small part of the annual produce of the land and labour of a country which can ever be destined for purchasing gold and silver from their neighbours. The far greater part is circulated and consumed among themselves; and even of the surplus which is sent abroad, the greater part is generally destined for the purchase of other foreign goods. Though gold and silver, therefore, could not be had in exchange for the goods destined to purchase them, the nation would not be ruined. It might, indeed, suffer some loss and inconveniency, and be forced upon some of those expedients which are necessary for supplying the place of money. The annual produce of its land and labour, however, would be the same, or very nearly the same, as usual, because the same, or very nearly the same consumable capital would be employed in maintaining it. And though goods do not always draw money so readily as money draws goods, in the long–run they draw it more necessarily than even it draws them. Goods can serve many other purposes besides purchasing money, but money can serve no other purpose besides purchasing goods. Money, therefore, necessarily runs after goods, but goods do not always or necessarily run after money. The man who buys, does not always mean to sell again, but frequently to use or to consume; whereas he who sells, always means to buy again. The one may frequently have done the whole, but the other can never have done more than the one–half of his business. It is not for its own sake that men desire money, but for the sake of what they can purchase with it.35

  19Consumable commodities, it is said, are soon destroyed; whereas gold and silver are of a more durable nature, and, were it not for this continual exportation, might be accumulated for ages together, to the incredible augmentation of the real wealth of the country. Nothing, therefore, it is pretended, can be more disadvantageous to any country, than the trade which consists in the exchange of such lasting for such perishable commodities. We do not, however, reckon that trade disadvantageous which consists in the exchange of the hardware of England for the wines of France; and yet hardware is a very durable commodity, and ^jwas^j it not for this continual exportation, might too be accumulated for ages together, to the incredible augmentation of the pots and pans of the country. But it readily occurs that the number of such utensils is in every country necessarily limited by the use which there is for them; that it would be absurd to have more pots and pans than were necessary for cooking the victuals usually consumed there; and that if the quantity of victuals were to increase, the number of pots and pans would readily increase along with it,36 a part of the increased quantity of victuals being employed in purchasing them, or in maintaining an additional number of workmen whose business it was to make them. It should as readily occur that the quantity of gold and silver is in every country limited by the use which there is for those metals; that their use consists in circulating commodities as coin, and in affording a species of houshold furniture as plate; that the quantity of coin in every country is regulated by the value of the commodities which are to be circulated by it: increase that value, and immediately a part of it will be sent abroad to purchase, wherever it is to be had, the additional quantity of coin requisite for circulating them: that the quantity of plate is regulated by the number and wealth of those private families who chuse to indulge themselves in that sort of magnificence: increase the number and wealth of such families, and a part of this increased wealth will most probably be employed in purchasing, wherever it is to be found, an additional quantity of plate: that to attempt to increase the wealth of any country, either by introducing or by detaining in it an unnecessary quantity of gold and silver, is as absurd as it would be to attempt to increase the good cheer of private families, by obliging them to keep an unnecessary number of kitchen utensils. As the expence of purchasing those unnecessary utensils would diminish instead of increasing either the quantity or goodness of the family provisions; so the expence of purchasing an unnecessary quantity of gold and silver must, in every country, as necessarily diminish the wealth which feeds, cloaths, and lodges, which maintains and employs the people. Gold and silver, whether in the shape of coin or of plate, are utensils, it must be remembered, as much as the furniture of the kitchen. Increase the use for them, increase the consumable commodities which are to be circulated, managed, and prepared by means of them, and you will infallibly increase the quantity; but if you attempt, by extraordinary means, to increase the quantity, you will as infallibly diminish the use and even the quantity too, which in those metals can never be greater than what the use requires. Were they ever to be accumulated beyond this quantity, their transportation is so easy, and the loss which attends their lying idle and unemployed so great, that no law could prevent their being immediately sent out of the country.

  20It is not always necessary to accumulate gold and silver, in order to enable a country to carry on foreign wars, and to maintain fleets and armies in distant countries. Fleets and armies are maintained, not with gold and silver, but with consumable goods.37 The nation which, from the annual produce of its domestick industry, from the annual revenue arising out of its lands, labour, and consumable stock, has wherewithal to purchase those consumable goods in distant countries, can maintain foreign wars there.

  21A nation may purchase the pay and provisions of an army in a distant country three different ways; by sending abroad either, first, some part of its accumulated gold and silver; or, secondly, some part of the annual produce of its manufactures; or last of all, some part of its annual rude produce.

  22The gold and silver which can properly be considered as accumulated or stored up in any country, may be distinguished into three parts; first, the circulating money; secondly, the plate of private families; and last of all, the money which may have been collected by many years parsimony, and laid up in the treasury of the prince.

  23It can seldom happen that much can be spared from the circulating money of the country; because in that there can seldom be much redundancy. The value of goods annually bought and sold in any country requires a certain quantity of money to circulate and distribute them to their proper consumers, and can give employment to no more. The channel of circulation necessarily draws to itself a sum sufficient to fill it, and never admits any more. Something, however, is generally withdrawn from this channel in the case of foreign war. By the great number of people who are maintained abroad, fewer are maintained at home. Fewer goods are circulated there, and less money becomes necessary to circulate them. An extraordinary quantity of paper money, of some sort or other too, such as exchequer notes, navy bills, and bank bills in England, is generally issued upon such occasions, and by supplying the place of circulating gold and silver, gives an opportunity of sending a greater quantity of it abroad. All this, however, could afford but a poor resource for maintaining a foreign war, of great expence and several years duration.

  24The melting down the plate of private families, has upon every occasion been found a still more insignificant one. The French, in the beginning of the last war, did not derive so much advantage from this expedient as to compensate the loss of the fashion.

  25The accumulated treasures of the prince have, in former times, afforded a much greater and more lasting resource. In the present times, if you except the king of Prussia, to accumulate treasure seems to be no part of the policy of European princes.38

  26The funds which maintained the foreign wars of the present century, the most expensive perhaps which history records, seem to have had little dependency upon the exportation either of the circulating money, or of the plate of private families, or of the treasure of the prince. The last French war cost Great Britain upwards of ninety millions, including not only the seventy–five millions of new debt that was contracted,39 but the additional two shillings in the pound land tax, and what was annually borrowed of the sinking fund. More than two–thirds of this expence ^kwas^k laid out in distant countries; in Germany, Portugal, America, in the ports of the Mediterranean, in the East and West Indies. The kings of England had no accumulated treasure. We never heard of any extraordinary quantity of plate being melted down. The circulating gold and silver of the country had not been supposed to exceed eighteen millions. Since the late recoinage of the gold, however, it is believed to have been a good deal under–rated.40 Let us suppose, therefore, according to the ^lmost^l exaggerated computation ^mwhich I remember to have either seen or heard of, ^m that, gold and silver together, it amounted to thirty millions.41 Had the war been carried on, by means of our money, the whole of it must, even according to this computation, have been sent out and returned again at least twice, in a period of between six and seven years. Should this be supposed, it would afford the most decisive argument to demonstrate how unnecessary it is for government to watch over the preservation of money, since upon this supposition the whole money of the country must have gone from it and returned to it again, two different times in so short a period, without any body’s knowing any thing of the matter. The channel of circulation, however, never appeared more empty than usual during any part of this period. Few people wanted money who had wherewithal to pay for it. The profits of foreign trade, indeed, were greater than usual during the whole war; but especially towards the end of it. This occasioned, what it always occasions, a general overtrading in all the ports of Great Britain; and this again occasioned the usual complaint of the scarcity of money, which always follows overtrading. Many people wanted it, who had neither wherewithal to buy it, nor credit to borrow it; and because the debtors found it difficult to borrow, the creditors found it difficult to get payment. Gold and silver, however, were generally to be had for their value, by those who had that value to give for them.

  27The enormous expence of the late war, therefore, must have been chiefly defrayed, not by the exportation of gold and silver, but by that of British commodities of some kind or other. When the government, or those who acted under them, contracted with a merchant for a remittance to some foreign country, he would naturally endeavour to pay his foreign correspondent, upon whom he had granted a bill, by sending abroad rather commodities than gold and silver. If the commodities of Great Britain were not in demand in that country, he would endeavour to send them to some other country, in which he could purchase a bill upon that country. The transportation of commodities, when properly suited to the market, is always attended with a considerable profit; whereas that of gold and silver is scarce ever attended with any. When those metals are sent abroad in order to purchase foreign commodities, the merchant’s profit arises, not from the purchase, but from the sale of the returns. But when they are sent abroad merely to pay a debt, he gets no returns, and consequently no profit. He naturally, therefore, exerts his invention to find out a way of paying his foreign debts, rather by the exportation of commodities than by that of gold and silver. The great quantity of British goods exported during the course of the late war, without bringing back any returns, is accordingly remarked by the author of The Present State of the Nation.42

  28Besides the three sorts of gold and silver above mentioned, there is in all great commercial countries a good deal of bullion alternately imported and exported for the purposes of foreign trade. This bullion, as it circulates among different commercial countries in the same manner as the national coin circulates in every particular country, may be considered as the money of the great mercantile republick. The national coin receives its movement and direction from the commodities circulated within the precincts of each particular country: the money of the mercantile republick, from those circulated between different countries. Both are employed in facilitating exchanges, the one between different individuals of the same, the other between those of different nations. Part of this money of the great mercantile republick may have been, and probably was, employed in carrying on the late war. In time of a general war, it is natural to suppose that a movement and direction should be impressed upon it, different from what it usually follows in profound peace; that it should circulate more about the seat of the war, and be more employed in purchasing there, and in the neighbouring countries, the pay and provisions of the different armies. But whatever part of this money of the mercantile republick, Great Britain may have annually employed in this manner, it must have been annually purchased, either with British commodities, or with something else that had been purchased with them; which still ⁿbringsⁿ us back to commodities, to the annual produce of the land and labour of the country, as the ultimate resources which enabled us to carry on the war. It is natural indeed to suppose, that so great an annual expence must have been defrayed from a great annual produce. The expence of 1761, for example, amounted to more than nineteen millions.43 No accumulation could have supported so great an annual profusion. There is no annual produce even of gold and silver which could have supported it. The whole gold and silver annually imported into both Spain and Portugal, according to the best accounts, does not commonly much exceed six millions sterling,44 which, in some years, would scarce have paid four months expence of the late war.

  29The commodities most proper for being transported to distant countries, in order to purchase there, either the pay and provisions of an army, or some part of the money of the mercantile republick to be employed in purchasing them, seem to be the finer and more improved manufactures; such as contain a great value in a small bulk, and can, therefore, be exported to a great distance at little expence. A country whose industry produces a great annual surplus of such manufactures, which are usually exported to foreign countries, may carry on for many years a very expensive foreign war, without either exporting any considerable quantity of gold and silver, or even having any such quantity to export. A considerable part of the annual surplus of its manufactures must, indeed, in this case be exported, without bringing back any returns ^oto the country, though it does to the merchant; the government purchasing of the merchant his bills upon foreign countries, in order to purchase there the pay and provisions of an army^o . Some part of ^pthis surplus^p however, may still continue to bring back a return. The manufacturers, during the war, will have a double demand upon them, and be called upon, first, to work up goods to be sent abroad, for paying the bills drawn upon foreign countries for the pay and provisions of the army; and, secondly, to work up such as are necessary for purchasing the common returns that had usually been consumed in the country. In the midst of the most destructive foreign war, therefore, the greater part of manufactures may frequently flourish greatly; and, on the contrary, they may decline on the return of the peace. They may flourish amidst the ruin of their country, and begin to decay upon the return of its prosperity. The different state of many different branches of the British manufactures during the late war, and for some time after the peace, may serve as an illustration of what has been just now said.

  30No foreign war of great expence or duration could conveniently be carried on by the exportation of the rude produce of the soil. The expence of sending such a quantity of it to a foreign country as might purchase the pay and provisions of an army, would be too great. Few countries too produce much more rude produce than what is sufficient for the subsistence of their own inhabitants. To send abroad any great quantity of it, therefore, would be to send abroad a part of the necessary subsistence of the people. It is otherwise with the exportation of manufactures. The maintenance of the people employed in them is kept at home, and only the surplus part of their work is exported. Mr. Hume frequently takes notice of the inability of the ancient kings of England to carry on, without interruption, any foreign war of long duration.45 The English, in those days, had nothing wherewithal to purchase the pay and provisions of their armies in foreign countries, but either the rude produce of the soil, of which no considerable part could be spared from the home consumption, or a few manufactures of the coarsest kind, of which, as well as of the rude produce, the transportation was too expensive. This inability did not arise from the want of money, but of the finer and more improved manufactures. Buying and selling was transacted by means of money in England then, as well as now. The quantity of circulating money must have borne the same proportion to the number and value of purchases and sales usually transacted at that time, which it does to those transacted at present; or rather it must have borne a greater proportion because there was then no paper, which now occupies a great part of the employment of gold and silver. Among nations to whom commerce and manufactures are little known, the sovereign, upon extraordinary occasions, can seldom draw any considerable aid from his subjects, for reasons which shall be explained hereafter.46 It is in such countries, therefore, that he generally endeavours to accumulate a treasure, as the only resource against such emergencies. Independent of this necessity, he is in such a situation naturally disposed to the parsimony requisite for accumulation. In that simple state, the expence even of a sovereign is not directed by the vanity which delights in the gaudy finery of a court, but is employed in bounty to his tenants, and hospitality to his retainers.47 But bounty and hospitality very seldom lead to extravagance; though vanity almost always does. Every Tartar chief, accordingly, has a treasure.48 The treasures of Mazepa, chief of the Cossacks in the Ukraine, the famous ally of Charles the XIIth, are said to have been very great. The French kings of the Merovingian race had all treasures. When they divided their kingdom among their different children, they divided their treasure too. The Saxon princes, and the first kings after the conquest, seem likewise to have accumulated treasures. The first exploit of every new reign was commonly to seize the treasure of the preceding king, as the most essential measure for securing the succession.49 The sovereigns of improved and commercial countries are not under the same necessity of accumulating treasures, because they can generally draw from their subjects extraordinary aids upon extraordinary occasions. They are likewise less disposed to do so.50 They naturally, perhaps necessarily, follow the mode of the times, and their expence comes to be regulated by the same extravagant vanity which directs that of all the other great proprietors in their dominions.51 The insignificant pageantry of their court becomes every day more brilliant, and the expence of it not only prevents accumulation, but frequently encroaches upon the funds destined for more necessary expences. What Dercyllidas said of the court of Persia, may be applied to that of several European princes, that he saw there much splendor but little strength, and many servants but few soldiers.52

  31The importation of gold and silver is not the principal, much less the sole benefit which a nation derives from its foreign trade. Between whatever places foreign trade is carried on, they all of them derive two distinct benefits from it. It carries out that surplus part of the produce of their land and labour for which there is no demand among them, and brings back in return for it something else for which there is a demand. It gives a value to their superfluities, by exchanging them for something else, which may satisfy a part of their wants, and increase their enjoyments.53 By means of it, the narrowness of the home market does not hinder the division of labour in any particular branch of art or manufacture from being carried to the highest perfection.54 By opening a more extensive market for whatever part of the produce of their labour may exceed the home consumption, it encourages them to improve its productive powers, and to augment its annual produce to the utmost, and thereby ^qto^q increase the real revenue and wealth of the society. These great and important services foreign trade is continually occupied in performing, to all the different countries between which it is carried on.55 They all derive great benefit from it, though that in which the merchant resides generally derives the greatest, as he is generally more employed in supplying the wants, and carrying out the superfluities of his own, than of any other particular country. To import the gold and silver which may be wanted, into the countries which have no mines, is, no doubt, a part of the business of foreign commerce. It is, however, a most insignificant part of it. A country which carried on foreign trade merely upon this account, could scarce have occasion to freight a ship in a century.

  32It is not by the importation of gold and silver, that the discovery of America has enriched Europe. By the abundance of the American mines, those metals have become cheaper.56 A service of plate can now be purchased for about a third part of the corn, or a third part of the labour, which it would have cost in the fifteenth century. With the same annual expence of labour and commodities, Europe can annually purchase about three times the quantity of plate which it could have purchased at that time. But when a commodity comes to be sold for a third part of what had been its usual price, not only those who purchased it before can purchase three times their former quantity, but it is brought down to the level of a much greater number of purchasers; perhaps to more than ten, perhaps to more than twenty times the former number. So that there may be in Europe at present not only more than three times, but more than twenty or thirty times the quantity of plate which would have been in it, even in its present state of improvement, had the discovery of the American mines never been made. So far Europe has, no doubt, gained a real conveniency, though surely a very trifling one. The cheapness of gold and silver renders those metals rather less fit for the purposes of money than they were before. In order to make the same purchases, we must load ourselves with a greater quantity of them, and carry about a shilling in our pocket where a groat would have done before. It is difficult to say which is most trifling, this inconveniency, or the opposite conveniency. Neither the one nor the other could have made any very essential change in the state of Europe. The discovery of America, however, certainly made a most essential one.57 By opening a new and inexhaustible market to all the commodities of Europe, it gave occasion to new divisions of labour and improvements of art, which, in the narrow circle of the antient commerce, could never have taken place for want of a market to take off the greater part of their produce. The productive powers of labour were improved, and its produce increased in all the different countries of Europe, and together with it the real revenue and wealth of the inhabitants. The commodities of Europe were almost all new to America, and many of those of America were new to Europe. A new sett of exchanges, therefore, began to take place which had never been thought of before, and which should naturally have proved as advantageous to the new, as it certainly did to the old continent. The savage injustice of the Europeans rendered an event, which ought to have been beneficial to all, ruinous and destructive to several of those unfortunate countries.58

  33The discovery of a passage to the East Indies, by the Cape of Good Hope, which happened much about the same time, opened, perhaps, a still more extensive range to foreign commerce than even that of America, notwithstanding the greater distance.59 There were but two nations in America, in any respect superior to savages, and these were destroyed almost as soon as discovered. The rest were mere savages. But the empires of China, Indostan, Japan, as well as several others in the East Indies, without having richer mines of gold or silver, were in every other respect much richer, better cultivated, and more advanced in all arts and manufactures than either Mexico or Peru, even though we should credit, what plainly deserves no credit, the exaggerated accounts of the Spanish writers, concerning the antient state of those empires. But rich and civilized nations can always exchange to a much greater value with one another, than with savages and barbarians. Europe, however, has hitherto derived much less advantage from its commerce with the East Indies, than from that with America. The Portuguese monopolized the East India trade to themselves for about a century, and it was only indirectly and through them, that the other nations of Europe could either send out or receive any goods from that country. When the Dutch, in the beginning of the last century, began to encroach upon them, they vested their whole East India commerce in an exclusive company. The English, French, Swedes, and Danes, have all followed their example, so that no great nation in Europe has ever yet had the benefit of a free commerce to the East Indies. No other reason need be assigned why it has never been so advantageous as the trade to America, which, between almost every nation of Europe and its own colonies, is free to all its subjects. The exclusive privileges of those East India companies, their great riches, the great favour and protection which these have procured them from their respective governments, have excited much envy against them. This envy has frequently represented their trade as altogether pernicious, on account of the great quantities of silver, which it every year exports from the countries from which it is carried on. The parties concerned have replied, that their trade, by this continual exportation of silver, might, indeed, tend to impoverish Europe in general, but not the particular country from which it was carried on; because, by the exportation of a part of the returns to other European countries, it annually brought home a much greater quantity of that metal than it carried out. Both the objection and the reply are founded in the popular notion which I have been just now examining. It is, therefore, unnecessary to say any thing further about either. By the annual exportation of silver to the East Indies, plate is probably somewhat dearer in Europe than it otherwise might have been; and coined silver probably purchases a larger quantity both of labour and commodities. The former of these two effects is a a very small loss, the latter a very small advantage; both too insignificant to deserve any part of the publick attention. The trade to the East Indies, by opening a market to the commodities of Europe, or, what comes nearly to the same thing, to the gold and silver which is purchased with those commodities, must necessarily tend to increase the annual production of European commodities, and consequently the real wealth and revenue of Europe. That it has hitherto increased them so little, is probably owing to the restraints which it every where labours under.

  34I thought it necessary, though at the hazard of being tedious, to examine at full length this popular notion that wealth consists in money, or in gold and silver. Money in common language, as I have already observed, frequently signifies wealth;60 and this ambiguity of expression has rendered this popular notion so familiar to us, that even they, who are convinced of its absurdity, are very apt to forget their own principles, and in the course of their reasonings to take it for granted as a certain and undeniable truth. Some of the best English writers upon commerce set out with observing, that the wealth of a country consists, not in its gold and silver only, but in its lands, houses, and consumable goods of all different kinds. In the course of their reasonings, however, the lands, houses, and consumable goods seem to slip out of their memory, and the strain of their argument frequently supposes that all wealth consists in gold and silver, and that to multiply those metals is the great object of national industry and commerce.

  35The two principles being established, however, that wealth consisted in gold and silver, and that those metals could be brought into a country which had no mines only by the balance of trade, or by exporting to a greater value than it imported; it necessarily became the great object of political œconomy to diminish as much as possible the importation of foreign goods for home–consumption, and to increase as much as possible the exportation of the produce of domestick industry. Its two great engines for enriching the country, therefore, were restraints upon importation, and encouragements to exportation.61

  36The restraints upon importation were of two kinds.

  37First, Restraints upon the importation of such foreign goods for home–consumption as could be produced at home, from whatever country they were imported.

  38Secondly, Restraints upon the importation of goods of almost all kinds from those particular countries with which the balance of trade was supposed to be disadvantageous.

  39Those different restraints consisted sometimes in high duties, and sometimes in absolute prohibitions.

  40Exportation was encouraged sometimes by drawbacks, sometimes by bounties, sometimes by advantageous treaties of commerce with foreign states, and sometimes by the establishment of colonies in distant countries.

  41Drawbacks were given upon two different occasions. When the home–manufactures were subject to any duty or excise, either the whole or a part of it was frequently drawn back upon their exportation; and when foreign goods liable to a duty were imported in order to be exported again, either the whole or a part of this duty was sometimes given back upon such exportation.

  42Bounties were given for the encouragement either of some beginning manufactures, or of such sorts of industry of other kinds as were supposed to deserve particular favour.

  43By advantageous treaties of commerce, particular privileges were procured in some foreign state for the goods and merchants of the country, beyond what were granted to those of other countries.

  44 By the establishment of colonies in distant countries, not only particular privileges, but a monopoly was frequently procured for the goods and merchants of the country which established them.

  45The two sorts of restraints upon importation above–mentioned, together with these four encouragements to exportation, constitute the six principal means by which the commercial system proposes to increase the quantity of gold and silver in any country by turning the balance of trade in its favour. I shall consider each of them in a particular chapter, and without taking much further notice of their supposed tendency to bring money into the country, I shall examine chiefly what are likely to be the effects of each of them upon the annual produce of its industry. According as they tend either to increase or diminish the value of this annual produce, they must evidently tend either to increase or diminish the real wealth and revenue of the country.

  CHAPTER II

  Of Restraints upon the Importation^afrom foreign Countries of such Goods^aas can be produced at Home

  1By restraining, either by high duties, or by absolute prohibitions, the importation of such goods from foreign countries as can be produced at home, the monopoly of the home–market is more or less secured to the domestick industry employed in producing them. Thus the prohibition1 of importing either live cattle or salt provisions from foreign countries secures to the graziers of Great Britain the monopoly of the home–market for butchers–meat. The high duties upon the importation of corn, which in times of moderate plenty amount to a prohibition, give a like advantage to the growers of that commodity.2 The prohibiton of the importation of foreign woollens is equally favourable to the woollen manufacturers.3 The silk manufacture, though altogether employed upon foreign materials, has lately obtained the same advantage.4 The linen manufacture has not yet obtained it, but is making great strides towards it.5 Many other sorts of manufacturers have, in the same manner, obtained in Great Britain, either altogether, or very nearly a monopoly against their countrymen. ^bThe variety of goods of which the importation into Great Britain is prohibited, either absolutely, or under certain circumstances, greatly exceeds what can easily be suspected by those who are not well acquainted with the laws of the customs.^b6

  2That this monopoly of the home–market frequently gives great encouragement to that particular species of industry which enjoys it, and frequently turns towards that employment a greater share of both the labour and stock of the society than would otherwise have gone to it, cannot be doubted. But whether it tends either to increase the general industry of the society, or to give it the most advantageous direction, is not, perhaps, altogether so ^cevident^c .7

  3The general industry of the society never can exceed what the capital of the society can employ. As the number of workmen that can be kept in employment by any particular person must bear a certain proportion to his capital, so the number of those that can be continually employed by all the members of a great society, must bear a certain proportion to the whole capital of that society, and never can exceed that proportion. No regulation of commerce can increase the quantity of industry in any society beyond what its capital can maintain. It can only divert a part of it into a direction into which it might not otherwise have gone; and it is by no means certain that this artificial direction is likely to be more advantageous to the society than that into which it would have gone of its own accord.8

  4Every individual is continually exerting himself to find out the most advantageous employment for whatever capital he can command. It is his own advantage, indeed, and not that of the society, which he has in view. But the study of his own advantage naturally, or rather necessarily leads him to prefer that employment which is most advantageous to the society.

  5First, every individual endeavours to employ his capital as near home as he can, and consequently as much as he can in the support of domestick industry; provided always that he can thereby obtain the ordinary, or not a great deal less than the ordinary profits of stock.

  6Thus upon equal or nearly equal profits, every wholesale merchant naturally prefers the home–trade to the foreign trade of consumption, and the foreign trade of consumption to the carrying trade. In the home–trade his capital is never so long out of his sight as it frequently is in the foreign trade of consumption. He can know better the character and situation of the persons whom he trusts, and if he should happen to be deceived, he knows better the laws of the country from which he must seek redress. In the carrying trade, the capital of the merchant is, as it were, divided between two foreign countries, and no part of it is ever necessarily brought home, or placed under his own immediate view and command. The capital which an Amsterdam merchant employs in carrying corn from Konnigsberg to Lisbon, and fruit and wine from Lisbon to Konnigsberg, must generally be the one–half of it at Konnigsberg and the other half at Lisbon. No part of it need ever come to Amsterdam. The natural residence of such a merchant should either be at Konnigsberg or Lisbon, and it can only be some very particular circumstances which can make him prefer the residence of Amsterdam. The uneasiness, however, which he feels at being separated so far from his capital, generally determines him to bring part both of the Konnigsberg goods which he destines for the market of Lisbon, and of the Lisbon goods which he destines for that of Konnigsberg, to Amsterdam: and though this necessarily subjects him to a double charge of loading and unloading, as well as to the payment of some duties and customs, yet for the sake of having some part of his capital always under his own view and command, he willingly submits to this extraordinary charge; and it is in this manner that every country which has any considerable share of the carrying trade, becomes always the emporium, or general market, for the goods of all the different countries whose trade it carries on. The merchant, in order to save a second loading and unloading, endeavours always to sell in the home–market as much of the goods of all those different countries as he can, and thus, so far as he can, to convert his carrying trade into a foreign trade of consumption. A merchant, in the same manner, who is engaged in the foreign trade of consumption, when he collects goods for foreign markets, will always be glad, upon equal or nearly equal profits, to sell as great a part of them at home as he can. He saves himself the risk and trouble of exportation, when, so far as he can, he thus converts his foreign trade of consumption into a home–trade. Home is in this manner the center, if I may say so, round which the capitals of the inhabitants of every country are continually circulating, and towards which they are always tending, though by particular causes they may sometimes be driven off and repelled from it towards more distant employments.9 But a capital employed in the home–trade, it has already been shown,10 necessarily puts into motion a greater quantity of domestic industry, and gives revenue and employment to a greater number of the inhabitants of the country, than an equal capital employed in the foreign trade of consumption: and one employed in the foreign trade of consumption has the same advantage over an equal capital employed in the carrying trade. Upon equal, or only nearly equal profits, therefore, every individual naturally inclines to employ his capital in the manner in which it is likely to afford the greatest support to domestick industry, and to give revenue and employment to the greatest number of ^d people of his own country.

  7Secondly, every individual who employs his capital in the support of domestick industry, necessarily endeavours so to direct that industry, that its produce may be of the greatest possible value.

  8The produce of industry is what it adds to the subject or materials upon which it is employed. In proportion as the value of this produce is great or small, so will likewise be the profits of the employer. But it is only for the sake of profit that any man employs a capital in the support of industry; and he will always, therefore, endeavour to employ it in the support of that industry of which the produce is likely to be of the greatest value, or to exchange for the greatest quantity either of money or of other goods.11

  9But the annual revenue of every society is always precisely equal to the exchangeable value of the whole annual produce of its industry, or rather is precisely the same thing with that exchangeable value.12 As every individual, therefore, endeavours as much as he can both to employ his capital in the support of domestick industry, and so to direct that industry that its produce may be of the greatest value; every individual necessarily labours to render the annual revenue of the society as great as he can.13 He generally, indeed, neither intends to promote the publick interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it. By preferring the support of domestick to that of foreign industry, he intends only his own security; and by directing that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention.14 Nor is it always the worse for the society that it was no part of it. By pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it. I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the publick good. It is an affectation, indeed, not very common among merchants, and very few words need be employed in dissuading them from it.15

  10What is the species of domestick industry which his capital can employ, and of which the produce is likely to be of the greatest value, every individual, it is evident, can, in his local situation, judge much better than any statesman or lawgiver can do for him. The stateman, who should attempt to direct private people in what manner they ought to employ their capitals, would not only load himself with a most unnecessary attention, but assume an authority which could safely be trusted, not only to no single person, but to no council or senate whatever, and which would nowhere be so dangerous as in the hands of a man who had folly and presumption enough to fancy himself fit to exercise it.16

  11To give the monopoly of the home–market to the produce of domestick industry, in any particular art or manufacture, is in some measure to direct private people in what manner they ought to employ their capitals, and must, in almost all cases, be either a useless or a hurtful regulation. If the produce of domestick can be brought there as cheap as that of foreign industry, the regulation is evidently useless. If it cannot, it must generally be hurtful. It is the maxim of every prudent master of a family, never to attempt to make at home what it will cost him more to make than to buy. The taylor does not attempt to make his own shoes, but buys them of the shoemaker. The shoemaker does not attempt to make his own cloaths, but employs a taylor. The farmer attempts to make neither the one nor the other, but employs those different artificers. All of them find it for their interest to employ their whole industry in a way in which they have some advantage over their neighbours, and to purchase with a part of its produce, or what is the same thing, with the price of a part of it, whatever else they have occasion for.17

  12What is prudence in the conduct of every private family, can scarce be folly in that of a great kingdom. If a foreign country can supply us with a commodity cheapter than we ourselves can make it, better buy it of them with some part of the produce of our own industry, employed in a way in which we have some advantage.18 The general industry of the country, being always in proportion to the capital which employs it, will not thereby be diminished, no more than that of the above–mentioned artificers; but only left to find out the way in which it can be employed with the greatest advantage. It is certainly not employed to the greatest advantage, when it is thus directed towards an object which it can buy cheaper than it can make. The value of its annual produce is certainly more or less diminished, when it is thus turned away from producing commodities evidently of more value than the commodity which it is directed to produce. According to the supposition, that commodity could be purchased from foreign countries cheaper than it can be made at home. It could, therefore, have been purchased with a part only of the commodities, or, what is the same thing, with a part only of the price of the commodities, which the industry employed by an equal capital, would have produced at home, had it been left to follow its natural course. The industry of the country, therefore, is thus turned away from a more, to a less advantageous employment, and the exchangeable value of its annual produce, instead of being increased, according to the intention of the lawgiver, must necessarily be diminished by every such regulation.19

  13By means of such regulations, indeed, a particular manufacture may sometimes be acquired sooner than it could have been otherwise, and after a certain time may be made at home as cheap or cheaper than in the foreign country. But through the industry of the society may be thus carried with advantage into a particular channel sooner than it could have been otherwise, it will by no means follow that the sum total, either of its industry, or of its revenue, can ever be augmented by any such regulation. The industry of the society can augment only in proportion as its capital augments, and its capital can augment only in proportion to what can be gradually saved out of its revenue. But the immediate effect of every such regulation is to diminish its revenue, and what diminishes its revenue, is certainly not very likely to augment its capital faster than it would have augmented of its own accord, had both capital and industry been left to find out their natural employments.

  14 Though for want of such regulations the society should never acquire the proposed manufacture, it would not, upon that account, necessarily be the poorer in any one period of its duration. In every period of its duration its whole capital and industry might still have been employed, though upon different objects, in the manner that was most advantageous at the time. In every period its revenue might have been the greatest which its capital could afford, and both capital and revenue might have been ^eaugmented^e with the greatest possible rapidity.

  15The natural advantages which one country has over another in producing particular commodities are sometimes so great, that it is acknowledged by all the world to be in vain to struggle with them.20 By means of glasses, hotbeds, and hotwalls, very good grapes can be raised in Scotland, and very good wine too can be made of them at about thirty times the expence for which at least equally good can be brought from foreign countries. Would it be a reasonable law to prohibit the importation of all foreign wines, merely to encourage the making of claret and burgundy in Scotland? But if there would be a manifest absurdity in turning towards any employment, thirty times more of the capital and industry of the country, than would be necessary to purchase from foreign countries an equal quantity of the commodities wanted, there must be an absurdity, though not altogether so glaring, yet exactly of the same kind, in turning towards any such employment a thirtieth, or even a three hundredth part more of either. Whether the advantages which one country has over another, be natural or acquired, is in this respect of no consequence. As long as the one country has those advantages, and the other wants them, it will always be more advantageous for the latter, rather to buy of the former than to make. It is an acquired advantage only, which one artificer has over his neighbour, who exercises another trade; and yet they both find it more advantageous to buy of one another, than to make what does not belong to their particular trades.21

  16Merchants and manufacturers are the people who derive the greatest advantage from this monopoly of the home market. The prohibition22 of the importation of foreign cattle, and of salt provisions, together with the high duties upon foreign corn, which in times of moderate plenty amount to a prohibition,23 are not near so advantageous to the graziers and farmers of Great Britain, as other regulations of the same kind are to its merchants and manufacturers. Manufactures, those of the finer kind especially, are more easily transported from one country to another than corn or cattle. It is in the fetching and carrying manufactures, accordingly, that foreign trade is chiefly employed.24 In manufactures, a very small advantage will enable foreigners to undersell our own workmen, even in the home market. It will require a very great one to enable them to do so in the rude produce of the soil. If the free importation of foreign manufactures ^fwas^f permitted, several of the home manufactures would probably suffer, and some of them, perhaps, go to ruin altogether, and a considerable part of the stock and industry at present employed in them, would be forced to find out some other employment. But the freest importation of the rude produce of the soil could have no such effect upon the agriculture of the country.

  17If the importation of foreign cattle, for example, ^gwas^g made ever so free, so few could be imported, that the grazing trade of Great Britain could be little affected by it. Live cattle are, perhaps, the only commodity of which the transportation is more expensive by sea than by land.25 By land they carry themselves to market. By sea, not only the cattle, but their food and their water too must be carried at no small expence and inconveniency. The short sea between Ireland and Great Britain, indeed, renders the importation of Irish cattle more easy. But though the free importation of them, which was lately permitted only for a limited time,26 were rendered perpetual, it should have no considerable effect upon the interest of the graziers of Great Britain. Those parts of Great Britain which border upon the Irish sea are all grazing countries. Irish cattle could never be imported for their use, but must be drove through those very extensive countries, at no small expence and inconveniency, before they could arrive at their proper market. Fat cattle could be drove so far. Lean cattle, therefore, only could be imported, and such importation could interfere, not with the interest of the feeding or fattening countries, to which, by reducing the price of lean cattle, it would rather be advantageous, but with that of the breeding countries only. The small number of Irish cattle imported since their importation was permitted, together with the good price at which lean cattle still continue to sell, seem to demonstrate that even the breeding countries of Great Britain are never likely to be much affected by the free importation of Irish cattle. The common people of Ireland, indeed, are said to have sometimes opposed with violence the exportation of their cattle. But if the exporters had found any great advantage in continuing the trade, they could easily, when the law was on their side, have conquered this mobbish opposition.

  18Feeding and fattening countries, besides, must always be highly improved, whereas breeding countries are generally uncultivated. The high price of lean cattle, by augmenting the value of uncultivated land, is like a bounty against improvement. To any country which was highly improved throughout, it would be more advantageous to import its lean cattle than to breed them. The province of Holland, accordingly, is said to follow this maxim at present. The mountains of Scotland, Wales, and Northumberland, indeed, are countries not capable of much improvement, and seem destined by nature to be the breeding countries of Great Britain. The freest importation of foreign cattle could have no other effect than to hinder those breeding countries from taking advantage of the increasing population and improvement of the rest of the kingdom, from raising their price to an exorbitant height, and from laying a real tax upon all the more improved and cultivated parts of the country.27

  19The freest importation of salt provisions, in the same manner, could have as little effect upon the interest of the graziers of Great Britain as that of live cattle. Salt provisions are not only a very bulky commodity, but when compared with fresh meat, they are a commodity both of worse quality, and as they cost more labour and expence, of higher price. They could never, therefore, come into competition with the fresh meat, though they might with the salt provisions of the country. They might be used for victualling ships for distant voyages, and such like uses, but could never make any considerable part of the food of the people. The small quantity of salt provisions imported from Ireland since their importation was rendered free, is an experimental proof that our graziers have nothing to apprehend from it. It does not appear that the price of butcher’s–meat has ever been sensibly affected by it.

  20Even the free importation of foreign corn could very little affect the interest of the farmers of Great Britain. Corn is a much more bulky commodity than butcher’s–meat.28 A pound of wheat at a penny is as dear as a pound of butcher’s–meat at fourpence. The small quantity of foreign corn imported even in times of the greatest scarcity, may satisfy our farmers that they can have nothing to fear from the freest importation. The average quantity imported, one year with another, amounts only, according to the very well informed author of the tracts upon the corn trade,29 to twenty–three thousand seven hundred and twenty–eight quarters of all sorts of grain, and does not exceed the five hundredth and seventy–one part of the annual consumption.30 But as the bounty upon corn occasions a greater exportation in years of plenty, so it must of consequence occasion a greater importation in years of scarcity, than ^hin the actual state of tillage,^h would otherwise take place. By means of it, the plenty of one year does not compensate the scarcity of another,31 and as the average quantity exported is necessarily augmented by it, so must likewise, in the actual state of tillage, the average quantity imported. If there ⁱwasⁱ no bounty, as less corn would be exported, so it is probable that, one year with another, less would be imported than at present. The corn merchants, the fetchers and carriers of corn, between Great Britain and foreign countries, would have much less employment, and might suffer considerably; but the country gentlemen and farmers could suffer very little. It is in the corn merchants accordingly, rather than in the country gentlemen and farmers, that I have observed the greatest anxiety for the renewal and continuation of the bounty.32

  21 Country gentlemen and farmers are, to their great honour, of all people, the least subject to the wretched spirit of monopoly.33 The undertaker of a great manufactory is sometimes alarmed if another work of the same kind is established within twenty miles of him. The Dutch undertaker of the woollen manufacture at Abbeville, stipulated that no work of the same kind should be established within thirty leagues of that city.34 Farmers and country gentlemen, on the contrary, are generally disposed rather to promote than to obstruct the cultivation and improvement of their neighbours farms and estates. They have no secrets, such as those of the greater part of manufacturers, but are generally rather fond of communicating to their neighbours, and of extending as far as possible any new practice which they have found to be advantageous. Pius Questus, says old Cato, stabilissimusque, minimeque invidiosus; minimeque male cogitantes sunt, qui in eo studio occupati sunt.35 Country gentlemen and farmers, dispersed in different parts of the country, cannot so easily combine36 as merchants and manufacturers, who being collected into towns, and accustomed to that exclusive corporation spirit which prevails in them, naturally endeavour to obtain against all their countrymen, the same exclusive privilege which they generally possess against the inhabitants of their respective towns. They accordingly seem to have been the original inventors of those restraints upon the importation of foreign goods, which secure to them the monopoly of the home–market. It was probably in imitation of them, and to put themselves upon a level with those who, they found, were disposed to oppress them, that the country gentlemen and farmers of Great Britain so far forgot the generosity which is natural to their station, as to demand the exclusive privilege of supplying their countrymen with corn and butcher’s–meat.37 They did not perhaps take time to consider, how much less their interest could be affected by the freedom of trade, than that of the people whose example they followed.

  22To prohibit by a perpetual law the importation of foreign corn and cattle, is in reality to enact, that the population and industry of the country shall at no time exceed what the rude produce of its own soil can maintain.

  23There seem, however, to be two cases in which it will generally be advantageous to lay some burden upon foreign, for the encouragement of domestick industry.

  24The first is when some particular sort of industry is necessary for the defence of the country. The defence of Great Britain, for example, depends very much upon the number of its sailors and shipping. The act of navigation,38 therefore, very properly endeavours to give the sailors and shipping of Great Britain the monopoly of the trade of their own country, in some cases, by absolute prohibitions, and in others by heavy burdens upon the shipping of foreign countries. The following are the principal dispositions of this act.

  25 First, all ships, of which the owners, masters, and three–fourths of the mariners are not British subjects, are prohibited, upon pain of forfeiting ship and cargo, from trading to the British settlements and plantations, or from being employed in the coasting trade of Great Britain.

  26Secondly, a great variety of the most bulky articles of importation can be brought into Great Britain only, either in such ships as are above described, or in ships of the country where those goods are produced, and of which the owners, masters, and three–fourths of the mariners, are of that particular country; and when imported even in ships of this latter kind, they are subject to double aliens duty. If imported in ships of any other country, the penalty is forfeiture of ship and ^jgoods^j . When this act was made, the Dutch were, what they still are, the great carriers of Europe, and by this regulation they were entirely excluded from being the carriers to Great Britain, or from importing to us the goods of any other European country.

  27Thirdly, a great variety of the most bulky articles of importation are prohibited39 from being imported, even in British ships, from any country but that in which they are produced; under pain of forfeiting ship and cargo. This regulation too was probably intended against the Dutch. Holland was then, as now, the great emporium for all European goods, and by this regulation, British ships were hindered from loading in Holland the goods of any other European country.

  28Fourthly, salt fish of all kinds, whale–fins, whale–bone, oil, and blubber, not caught by and cured on board British vessels, when imported into Great Britain, are subjected to double aliens duty. The Dutch, as they are still the principal, were then the only fishers in Europe that attempted to supply foreign nations with fish. By this regulation, a very heavy burden was laid upon their supplying Great Britain.

  29When the act of navigation was made, though England and Holland were not actually at war, the most violent animosity subsisted between the two nations. It had begun during the government of the long parliament, which first framed this act,40 and it broke out soon after in the Dutch wars during that of the Protector and of Charles the Second. It is not impossible, therefore, that some of the regulations of this famous act may have proceeded from national animosity.41 They are as wise, however, as if they had all been dictated by the most deliberate wisdom. National animosity at that particular time aimed at the very same object which the most deliberate wisdom would have recommended, the diminution of the naval power of Holland, the only naval power which could endanger the security of England.

  30The act of navigation is not favourable to foreign commerce, or to the growth of that opulence which can arise from it. The interest of a nation in its commercial relations to foreign nations is, like that of a merchant with regard to the different people with whom he deals, to buy as cheap and to sell as dear as possible. But it will be most likely to buy cheap, when by the most perfect freedom of trade it encourages all nations to bring to it the goods which it has occasion to purchase; and, for the same reason, it will be most likely to sell dear, when its markets are thus filled with the greatest number of buyers. The act of navigation, it is true, lays no burden upon foreign ships that come to export the produce of British industry. Even the antient aliens duty, which used to be paid upon all goods exported as well as imported, has, by several subsequent acts, been taken off from the greater part of the articles of exportation.42 But if foreigners, either by prohibitions or high duties, are hindered from coming to sell, they cannot always afford to come to buy; because coming without a cargo, they must lose the freight from their own country to Great Britain. By diminishing the number of sellers, therefore, we necessarily diminish that of buyers, and are thus likely not only to buy foreign goods dearer, but to sell our own cheaper, than if there was a more perfect freedom of trade.43 As defence, however, is of much more importance than opulence, the act of navigation is, perhaps, the wisest of all the commercial regulations of England.44

  31The second case, in which it will generally be advantageous to lay some burden upon foreign for the encouragement of domestick industry, is, when some tax is imposed at home upon the produce of the latter. In this case, it seems reasonable that an equal tax should be imposed upon the like produce of the former. This would not give the monopoly of the home market to domestick industry, nor turn towards a particular employment a greater share of the stock and labour of the country, than what would naturally go to it. It would only hinder any part of what would naturally go to it from being turned away by the tax, into a less natural direction,45 and would leave the competition between foreign and domestick industry, after the tax, as nearly as possible upon the same footing as before it. In Great Britain, when any such tax is laid upon the produce of domestick industry, it is usual at the same time, in order to stop the clamorous complaints of our merchants and manufacturers, that they will be undersold at home, to lay a much heavier duty upon the importation of all foreign goods of the same kind.

  32This second limitation of the freedom of trade according to some people should, upon some occasions, be extended much ^kfurther^k than to the precise foreign commodities which could come into competition with those which had been taxed at home. When the necessaries of life have been taxed in any country, it becomes proper, they pretend, to tax not only the like necessaries of life imported from other countries, but all sorts of foreign goods which can come into competition with any thing that is the produce of domestick industry. Subsistence, they say, becomes necessarily dearer in consequence of such taxes; and the price of labour must always rise with the price of the labourers subsistence.46 Every commodity, therefore, which is the produce of domestick industry, though not immediately taxed itself, becomes dearer in consequence of such taxes, because the labour which produces it becomes so. Such taxes, therefore, are really equivalent, they say, to a tax upon every particular commodity produced at home. In order to put domestick upon the same footing with foreign industry, therefore, it becomes necessary, they think, to lay some duty upon every foreign commodity, equal to this enhancement of the price of the home commodities with which it can come into competition.

  33Whether taxes upon the necessaries of life, such as those in Great Britain upon^l soap, salt, leather, candles, &c. necessarily raise the price of labour, and consequently that of all other commodities, I shall consider hereafter, when I come to treat of taxes.47 Supposing, however, in the mean time, that they have this effect, and they have it undoubtedly, this general enhancement of the price of all commodities, in consequence of that of labour, is a case which differs in the two following respects from that of a particular commodity, of which the price was enhanced by a particular tax immediately imposed upon it.

  34First, it might always be known with great exactness how far the price of such a commodity could be enhanced by such a tax: but how far the general enhancement of the price of labour might affect that of every different commodity, about which labour was employed, could never be known with any tolerable exactness. It would be impossible, therefore, to proportion with any tolerable exactness the tax upon every foreign, to this enhancement of the price of every home commodity.

  35Secondly, taxes upon the necessaries of life have nearly the same effect upon the circumstances of the people as a poor soil and a bad climate. Provisions are thereby rendered dearer in the same manner as if it required extraordinary labour and expence to raise them. As in the natural scarcity arising from soil and climate, it would be absurd to direct the people in what manner they ought to employ their capitals and industry, so ^mis it^m likewise in the artificial scarcity arising from such taxes. To be left to accommodate, as well as they could, their industry to their situation, and to find out those employments in which, notwithstanding their unfavourable circumstances, they might have some advantage either in the home or in the foreign market, is what in both cases would evidently be most for their advantage. To lay a new tax upon them, because they are already overburdened with taxes, and because they already pay too dear for the necessaries of life, to make them likewise pay too dear for the greater part of other commodities, is certainly a most absurd way of making amends.

  36Such taxes, when they have grown up to a certain height, are a curse equal to the barrenness of the earth and the inclemency of the heavens; and yet it is in the richest and most industrious countries that they have been most generally imposed. No other countries could support so great a disorder. As the strongest bodies only can live and enjoy health, under an unwholesome regimen; so the nations only, that in every sort of industry have the greatest natural and acquired advantages, can subsist and prosper under such taxes. Holland is the country in Europe in which they abound most, and which from peculiar circumstances continues to prosper, not by means of them, as has been most absurdly supposed, but in spite of them.48

  37As there are two cases in which it will generally be advantageous to lay some burden upon foreign, for the encouragement of domestick industry; so there are two others in which it may sometimes be a matter of deliberation; in the one, how far it is proper to continue the free importation of certain foreign goods; and in the other, how far, or in what manner it may be proper to restore that free importation after it has been for some time interrupted.

  38The case in which it may sometimes be a matter of deliberation how far it is proper to continue the free importation of certain foreign goods, is, when some foreign nation restrains by high duties or prohibitions the importation of some of our manufactures into their country. Revenge in this case naturally dictates retaliation, and that we should impose the like duties and prohibitions upon the importation of some or all of their manufactures into ours. Nations, accordingly seldom fail to retaliate in this manner. The French have been particularly forward to favour their own manufactures by restraining the importation of such foreign goods as could come into competition with them. In this consisted a great part of the policy of Mr. Colbert,49 who, notwithstanding his great abilities, seems in this case to have been imposed upon by the sophistry of merchants and manufacturers, who are always demanding a monopoly against their countrymen. It is at present the opinion of the most intelligent men in France that his operations of this kind have not been beneficial to his country.50 That minister, by the tarif of 1667, imposed very high duties upon a great number of foreign manufactures. Upon his refusing to moderate them in favour of the Dutch, they in 1671 prohibited the importation of the wines, brandies, and manufactures of France. The war of 1672 seems to have been in part occasioned by this commercial dispute. The peace of Nimeguen put an end to it in 1678, by moderating some of those duties in favour of the Dutch, who in consequence took off their prohibition. It was about the same time that the French and English began mutually to oppress each other’s industry, by the like duties and prohibitions, of which the French, however, seem to have set the first example. The spirit of hostility which has subsisted between the two nations ever since, has hitherto hindered them from being moderated on either side. In 1697 the English prohibited the importation of bonelace, the manufacture of Flanders.51 The government of that country, at that time under the dominion of Spain, prohibited in return the importation of English woollens. In 1700, the prohibition of importing bonelace into England, was taken off upon condition that the importation of English woollens into Flanders should be put on the same footing as before.52

  39There may be good policy in retaliations of this kind, when there is a probability that they will procure the repeal of the high duties or prohibitions complained of. The recovery of a great foreign market will generally more than compensate the transitory inconveniency of paying dearer during a short time for some sorts of goods. To judge whether such retaliations are likely to produce such an effect, does not, perhaps, belong so much to the science of a legislator, whose deliberations ought to be governed by general principles which are always the same, as to the skill of that insidious and crafty animal, vulgarly called a statesman or politician,53 whose councils are directed by the momentary fluctuations of affairs. When there is no probability that any such repeal can be procured, it seems a bad method of compensating the injury done to certain classes of our people, to do another injury ourselvesⁿ, not only to those classes, butⁿ to almost all the other classes of them. When our neighbours prohibit some manufacture of ours, we generally prohibit, not only the same, for that alone would seldom affect them considerably, but some other manufacture of theirs. This may no doubt give encouragement to some particular class of workmen among ourselves, and by excluding some of their rivals, may enable them to raise their price in the home–market. Those workmen, however, who suffered by our neighbours prohibition will not be benefited by ours. On the contrary, they and almost all the other classes of our citizens will thereby be obliged to pay dearer than before for certain goods. Every such law, therefore, imposes a real tax upon the whole country, not in favour of that particular class of workmen who were injured by our neighbours prohibition, but of some other class.

  40The case in which it may sometimes be a matter of deliberation, how far, or in what manner it is proper to restore the free importation of foreign goods, after it has been for some time interrupted, is, when particular manufactures, by means of high duties or prohibitions upon all foreign goods which can come into competition with them, have been so far extended as to employ a great multitude of hands.54 Humanity may in this case require that the freedom of trade should be restored only by slow gradations, and with a good deal of reserve and circumspection. Were those high duties and prohibitions taken away all at once, cheaper foreign goods of the same kind might be poured so fast into the home market, as to deprive all at once many thousands of our people of their ordinary employment and means of subsistence. The disorder which this would occasion might no doubt be very considerable. It would in all probability, however, be much less than is commonly imagined, for the two following reasons:

  41First, all those manufactures, of which any part is commonly exported to other European countries without a bounty, could be very little affected by the freest importation of foreign goods. Such manufactures must be sold as cheap abroad as any other foreign goods of the same quality and kind, and consequently must be sold cheaper at home. They would still, therefore, keep possession of the home market, and though a capricious man of fashion might sometimes prefer foreign wares, merely because they were foreign, to cheaper and better goods of the same kind that were made at home, this folly could, from the nature of things, extend to so few, that it could make no sensible impression upon the general employment of the people. But a great part of all the different branches of our woollen manufacture, of our tanned leather, and of our hardware, are annually exported to other European countries without any bounty, and these are the manufactures which employ the greatest number of hands. The silk, perhaps, is the manufacture which would suffer the most by this freedom of trade, and after it the linen, though the latter much less than the former.

  42Secondly, though a great number of people should, by thus restoring the freedom of trade, be thrown all at once out of their ordinary employment and common method of subsistence, it would by no means follow that they would thereby be deprived either of employment or subsistence. By the reduction of the army and navy at the end of the late war more than a hundred thousand soldiers and seamen, a number equal to what is employed in the greatest manufactures, were all at once thrown out of their ordinary employment; but, though they no doubt suffered some inconveniency, they were not thereby deprived of all employment and subsistence. The greater part of the seamen, it is probable, gradually betook themselves to the merchant–service as they could find occasion, and in the mean time both they and the soldiers were absorbed in the great mass of the people, and employed in a great variety of occupations. Not only no great convulsion, but no sensible disorder arose from so great a change in the situation of more than a hundred thousand men, all accustomed to the use of arms, and many of them to rapine and plunder. The number of vagrants was scarce anywhere sensibly increased by it, even the wages of labour were not reduced by it in any occupation, so far as I have been able to learn, except in that of seamen in the merchant–service.55 But if we compare together the habits of a soldier and of any sort of manufacturer, we shall find that those of the latter do not tend so much to disqualify him from being employed in a new trade, as those of the former from being employed in any. The manufacturer has always been accustomed to look for his subsistence from his labour only: the soldier to expect it from his pay. Application and industry have been familiar to the one; idleness and dissipation to the other. But it is surely much easier to change the direction of industry from one sort of labour to another, than to turn idleness and dissipation to any. To the greater part of manufactures besides, it has already been observed,56 there are other collateral manufactures of so similar a nature, that a workman can easily transfer his industry from one of them to another. The greater part of such workmen too are occasionally employed in country labour. The stock which employed them in a particular manufacture before, will still remain in the country to employ an equal number of people in some other way. The capital of the country remaining the same, the demand for labour will likewise be the same, or very nearly the same, though it may be exerted in different places and for different occupations. Soldiers and seamen, indeed, when discharged from the king’s service, are at liberty to exercise any trade, within any town or place of Great Britain or Ireland.57 Let the same natural liberty of exercising what species of industry they please be restored to all his majesty’s subjects, in the same manner as to soldiers and seamen; that is, break down the exclusive privileges of corporations, and repeal the statute of apprenticeship, both which are real encroachments upon natural liberty, and add to these the repeal of the law of settlements, so that a poor workman, when thrown out of employment either in one trade or in one place, may seek for it in another trade or in another place, without the fear either of a prosecution or of a removal, and neither the publick nor the individuals will suffer much more from the occasional disbanding some particular classes of manufacturers, than from that of soldiers.58 Our manufacturers have no doubt great merit with their country, but they cannot have more than those who defend it with their blood, nor deserve to be treated with more delicacy.

  43To expect, indeed, that the freedom of trade should ever be entirely restored in Great Britain, is as absurd as to expect that an Oceana or Utopia should ever be established in it. Not only the prejudices of the publick, but what is much more unconquerable, the private interests of many individuals, irresistibly oppose it. Were the officers of the army to oppose with the same zeal and unanimity any reduction in the number of forces, with which master manufacturers set themselves against every law that is likely to increase the number of their rivals in the home market; were the former to animate their soldiers, in the same manner as the latter enflame their workmen, to attack with violence and outrage the proposers of any such regulation; to attempt to reduce the army would be as dangerous as it has now become to attempt to diminish in any respect the monopoly which our manufacturers have obtained against us. This monopoly has so much increased the number of some particular tribes of them, that, like an overgrown standing army, they have become formidable to the government, and upon many occasions intimidate the legislature.59 The member of parliament who supports every proposal for strengthening this monopoly, is sure to acquire not only the reputation of understanding trade, but great popularity and influence with an order of men whose numbers and wealth render them of great importance. If he opposes them, on the contrary, and still more if he has authority enough to be able to thwart them, neither the most acknowledged probity, nor the highest rank, nor the greatest publick services can protect him from the most infamous abuse and detraction, from personal insults, nor sometimes from real danger, arising from the insolent outrage of furious and disappointed monopolists.

  44The undertaker of a great manufacture who, by the home markets being suddenly laid open to the competition of foreigners, should be obliged to abandon his trade, would no doubt suffer very considerably. That part of his capital which had usually been employed in purchasing materials and in paying his workmen, might, without much difficulty, perhaps, find another employment. But that part of it which was fixed in workhouses, and in the instruments of trade, could scarce be disposed of without considerable loss. The equitable regard, therefore, to his interest requires that changes of this kind should never be introduced suddenly, but slowly, gradually, and after a very long warning. The legislature, were it possible that its deliberations could be always directed, not by the clamorous importunity of partial interests, but by an extensive view of the general good, ought upon this very account, perhaps, to be particularly careful neither to establish any new monopolies of this kind, nor to extend further those which are already established. Every such regulation introduces some degree of real disorder into the constitution of the state,60 which it will be difficult afterwards to cure without occasioning another disorder.

  45How far it may be proper to impose taxes upon the importation of foreign goods, in order, not to prevent their importation, but to raise a revenue for government, I shall consider hereafter when I come to treat of taxes.61 Taxes imposed with a view to prevent, or even to diminish importation, are evidently as destructive of the revenue of the customs as of the freedom of trade.

  CHAPTER III

  Of the extraordinary Restraints upon the Importation of Goods of almost all Kinds, from those Countries with which the Balance is supposed to be disadvantageous

  ^aapart i

  Of the Unreasonableness of those Restraints even upon the Principles of the Commercial System^a

  1To lay extraordinary restraints upon the importation of goods of almost all kinds, from those particular countries with which the balance of trade is supposed to be disadvantageous, is the second expedient by which the commercial system proposes to increase the quantity of gold and silver. ^bThus in Great Britain Silesia lawns may be imported for home consumption, upon paying certain duties. But French cambricks and lawns are prohibited to be imported , except into the port of London, there to be warehoused for exportation.1 Higher duties are imposed upon the wines of France than upon those of Portugal, or indeed of any other country. By what is called the impost 1692, a duty of five and twenty per cent., of the rate or value, was laid upon all French goods;2 while the goods of other nations were, the greater part of them, subjected to much lighter duties, seldom exceeding five per cent. The wine, brandy, salt and vinegar of France were indeed excepted; these commodities being subjected to other heavy duties, either by other laws, or by particular clauses of the same law. In 1696, a second duty of twenty–five per cent., the first not having been thought a sufficient discouragement, was imposed upon all French goods, except brandy; together with a new duty of five and twenty pounds upon the ton of French wine, and another of fifteen pounds upon the ton of French vinegar.3 French goods have never been omitted in any of those general subsidies, or duties of five per cent., which have been imposed upon all, or the greater part of the goods enumerated in the book of rates. If we count the one third and two third subsidies4 as making a compleat subsidy between them, there have been five of these general subsidies; so that before the commencement of the present war seventy–five per cent. may be considered as the lowest duty, to which the greater part of the goods of the growth, produce, or manufacture of France were liable. But upon the greater part of goods, those duties are equivalent to a prohibition. The French in their turn have, I believe, treated our goods and manufactures just as hardly; though I am not so well acquainted with the particular hardships which they have imposed upon them. Those mutual restraints have put an end to almost all fair commerce between the two nations, and smugglers are now the principal importers, either of British goods into France, or of French goods into Great Britain.^b5 The principles which I have been examining ^cin the foregoing chapter^c took their origin from private interest and the spirit of monopoly; those which I am going to examine ^din this^d , from national prejudice and animosity.6 They are, accordingly, as might well be expected, still more unreasonable. They are so, even upon the principles of the commercial system.7

  2First, though it were certain that in the case of a free trade between France and England, for example, the balance would be in favour of France, it would by no means follow that such a trade would be disadvantageous to England, or that the general balance of its whole trade would thereby be turned more against it. If the wines of France are better and cheaper than those of Portugal, or its linens than those of Germany, it would be more advantageous for Great Britain to purchase both the wine and the foreign linen which it had occasion for of France, than of Portugal and Germany. Though the value of the annual importations from France would thereby be greatly augmented, the value of the whole annual importations would be diminished, in proportion as the French goods of the same quality were cheaper than those of the other two countries. This would be the case, even upon the supposition that the whole French goods imported were to be consumed in Great Britain.

  3But, secondly, a great part of them might be re–exported to other countries, where, being sold with profit, they might bring back a return equal in value, perhaps, to the prime cost of the whole French goods imported. What has frequently been said of the East India trade might possibly be true of the French; that though the greater part of East India goods were bought with gold and silver, the re–exportation of a part of them to other countries, brought back more gold and silver to that which carried on the trade than the prime cost of the whole amounted to.8 One of the most important branches of the Dutch trade, at present, consists in the carriage of French goods to other European countries. ^eSome^e part even of the French wine drank in Great Britain is clandestinely imported from Holland and Zealand. If there was either a free trade between France and England, or if French goods could be imported upon paying only the same duties as those of other European nations, to be drawn back upon exportation, England might have some share of a trade which is found so advantageous to Holland.

  4Thirdly, and lastly, there is no certain criterion by which we can determine on which side what is called the balance between any two countries lies, or which of them exports to the greatest value. National prejudice and animosity, prompted always by the private interest of particular traders, are the principles which generally direct our judgment upon all questions concerning it. There are two criterions, however, which have frequently been appealed to upon such occasions, the custom–house books and the course of exchange. The custom–house books, I think, it is now generally acknowledged, are a very uncertain criterion, on account of the inaccuracy of the valuation at which the greater part of goods are rated in them.9 The course of exchange ^f is, perhaps, almost equally so.

  5When the exchange between two places, such as London and Paris, is at par, it is said to be a sign that the debts due from London to Paris are compensated by those due from Paris to London. On the contrary, when a premium is paid at London for a bill upon Paris, it is said to be a sign that the debts due from London to Paris are not compensated by those due from Paris to London, but that a balance in money must be sent out from the latter place; for the risk, trouble, and expence of exporting which, the premium is both demanded and given. But the ordinary state of debt and credit between those two cities must necessarily be regulated, it is said, by the ordinary course of their dealings with one another. When neither of them imports from the other to a greater amount than it exports to ^gthat other^g , the debts and credits of each may compensate one another. But when one of them imports from the other to a greater value than it exports to ^hthat other^h , the former necessarily becomes indebted to the latter in a greater sum than the latter becomes indebted to it: the debts and credits of each do not compensate one another, and money must be sent out from that place of which the debts over–balance the credits. The ⁱordinaryⁱ course of exchange, therefore, being an indication of the ordinary state of debt and credit between two places, must likewise be an indication of the ordinary course of their exports and imports, as these necessarily regulate that state.

  6But though ^j the ordinary course of exchange ^kshould^k be allowed to be a sufficient indication of the ordinary state of debt and credit between any two places, it would not from thence follow, that the balance of trade was in favour of that place which had the ordinary state of debt and credit in its favour.10 The ordinary state of debt and credit between any two places is not always entirely regulated by the ordinary course of their dealings with one another; but is often influenced by that of the dealings of either with many other places. If it is usual, for example, for the merchants of England to pay for the goods which they buy of Hamburgh, Dantzic, Riga, &c. by bills upon Holland, the ordinary state of debt and credit between England and Holland will not be regulated entirely by the ordinary course of the dealings of those two countries with one another, but will be influenced by that of the dealings of England with those other places.11 England may be obliged to send out every year money to Holland, though its annual exports to that country may exceed very much the annual value of its imports from thence; and though what is called the balance of trade may be very much in favour of England.

  7In the way besides in which the par of exchange has hitherto been computed, the ordinary course of exchange can afford no sufficient indication that the ordinary state of debt and credit is in favour of that country which seems to have, or which is supposed to have, the ordinary course of exchange in its favour: or, in other words, the real exchange may be, and, in fact, often is so very different from the computed one, that from the course of the latter no certain conclusion can, upon many occasions, be drawn concerning that of the former.^j

  8When for a sum of money paid in England, containing, according to the standard of the English mint, a certain number of ounces of pure silver, you receive a bill for a sum of money to be paid in France, containing, according to the standard of the French mint, an equal number of ounces of pure silver, exchange is said to be at par between England and France. When you pay more, you are supposed to give a premium, and exchange is said to be against England, and in favour of France. When you pay less, you are supposed to get a premium, and exchange is said to be against France, and in favour of England.

  9But, first we cannot always judge of the value of the current money of different countries by the ^lstandard^l of their respective mints. In some it is more, in others it is less worn, clipt, and otherwise degenerated from that standard. But the value of the current coin of every country, compared with that of any other country, is in proportion not to the quantity of pure silver which it ought to contain, but to that which it actually does contain. Before the reformation of the silver coin in king William’s time, exchange between England and Holland, computed, in the usual manner, according to the ^mstandard^m of their respective mints, was five and twenty per cent. against England. But the value of the current coin of England, as we learn from Mr. Lowndes, was at that time rather more than five and twenty per cent. below its standard value.12 The real exchange, therefore, may even at that time have been in favour of England, notwithstanding the computed exchange was so much against it; a smaller number of ounces of pure silver, actually paid in England, may have purchased a bill for a greater number of ounces of pure silver to be paid in Holland, and the man who was supposed to give, may in reality have got the premium. The French coin was, before the late reformation of the English gold coin,13 much less worn than the English, and was, perhaps, two or three per cent. nearer its standard. If the computed exchange with France, therefore, was not more than two or three per cent. against England, the real exchange might have been in its favour. Since the reformation of the gold coin, the exchange has been constantly in favour of England, and against France.

  10Secondly, in some countries, the expence of coinage is defrayed by the government; in others, it is defrayed by the private people who carry their bullion to the mint, and the government even derives some revenue from the coinage. In England, it is defrayed by the government, and if you carry a pound weight of standard silver to the mint, you get back sixtytwo shillings, containing a pound weight of the like standard silver. In France, a duty of eight per cent. is deducted for the coinage, which not only defrays the expence of it, but affords a small revenue to the government.14 In England, as the coinage costs nothing, the current coin can never be much more valuable than the quantity of bullion which it actually contains.15 In France, the workmanship as you pay for it, adds to the value, in the same manner as to that of wrought plate. A sum of French money, therefore, containing a certain weight of pure silver, is more valuable than a sum of English money containing an equal weight of pure silver, and must require more bullion, or other commodities to purchase it. Though the current coin of the two countries, therefore, were equally near the standards of their respective mints, a sum of English money could not well purchase a sum of French money, containing an equal number of ounces of pure silver, nor consequently a bill upon France for such a sum. If for such a bill no more additional money was paid than what was sufficient to compensate the expence of the French coinage, the real exchange might be at par between the two countries, their debts and credits might mutually compensate one another, while the computed exchange was considerably in favour of France. If less than this was paid, the real exchange might be in favour of England, while the computed was in favour of France.

  11 Thirdly, and lastly, in some places, as at Amsterdam, Hamburgh, Venice, &c. foreign bills of exchange are paid in what they call bank money; while in others, as at London, Lisbon, Antwerp, Leghorn, &c. they are paid in the common currency of the country. What is called bank money is always of more value than the same nominal sum of common currency. A thousand guilders in the bank of Amsterdam, for example, are of more value than a thousand guilders of Amsterdam currency. The difference between them is called the agio of the bank,16 which, at Amsterdam, is generally about five per cent. Supposing the current money of ⁿtheⁿ two countries equally near to the standard of their respective mints, and that the one pays foreign bills in this common currency, while the other pays them in bank money, it is evident that the computed exchange may be in favour of that which pays in bank money, though the real exchange should be in favour of that which pays in current money; for the same reason that the computed exchange may be in favour of that which pays in better money, or in money nearer to its own standard, though the real exchange should be in favour of that which pays in worse. The computed exchange, before the late reformation of the gold coin, was generally against London with Amsterdam, Hamburgh, Venice, and, I believe, with all other places which pay in what is called bank money. It will by no means follow, however, that the real exchange was against it. Since the reformation of the gold coin, it has been in favour of London even with those places. The computed exchange has generally been in favour of London with Lisbon, Antwerp, Leghorn, and, if you except France, I believe, with most other parts of Europe that pay in common currency; and it is not improbable that the real exchange was so too.

  Digression concerning Banks of Deposit, particularly concerning that of Amsterdam1

  1The currency of a great state, such as France or England, generally consists almost entirely of its own coin. Should this currency, therefore, be at any time worn, clipt, or otherwise degraded below its standard value, the state by a reformation of its coin can effectually re–establish its currency. But the currency of a small state, such as Genoa or Hamburgh, can seldom consist altogether in its own coin, but must be made up, in a great measure, of the coins of all the neighbouring states with which its inhabitants have a continual intercourse. Such a state, therefore, by reforming its coin, will not always be able to reform its currency. If foreign bills of exchange are paid in this currency, the uncertain value of any sum, of what is in its own nature so uncertain, must render the exchange always very much against such a state, its currency being, in all foreign states, necessarily valued even below what it is worth.

  2 In order to remedy the inconvenience to which this disadvantageous exchange must have subjected their merchants, such small states, when they began to attend to the interest of trade, have frequently enacted, that foreign bills of exchange of a certain value should be paid, not in common currency, but by an order upon, or by a transfer in the books of a certain bank, established upon the credit, and under the protection of the state; this bank being always obliged to pay, in good and true money, exactly according to the standard of the state. The banks of Venice, Genoa, Amsterdam, Hamburgh, and Nuremberg, seem to have been all originally established with this view,2 though some of them may have afterwards been made subservient to other purposes. The money of such banks being better than the common currency of the country, necessarily bore an agio, which was greater or smaller, according as the currency was supposed to be more or less degraded below the standard of the state. The agio of the bank of Hamburgh, for example, which is said to be commonly about fourteen per cent. is the supposed difference between the good standard money of the state, and the clipt, worn, and diminished currency poured into it from all the neighbouring states.

  3Before 1609 the great quantity of clipt and worn foreign coin, which the extensive trade of Amsterdam brought from all parts of Europe, reduced the value of its currency about nine per cent. below that of good money fresh from the mint. Such money no sooner appeared than it was melted down or carried away, as it always is in such circumstances. The merchants, with plenty of currency, could not always find a sufficient quantity of good money to pay their bills of exchange; and the value of those bills, in spite of several regulations which were made to prevent it, became in a great measure uncertain.

  4In order to remedy these inconveniencies, a bank was established in 1609 under the guarantee of the city. This bank received both foreign coin, and the light and worn coin of the country at its real intrinsic value in the good standard money of the country, deducting only so much as was necessary for defraying the expence of coinage, and the other necessary expence of management. For the value which remained, after this small deduction was made, it gave a credit in its books. This credit was called bank money, which, as it represented money exactly according to the standard of the mint, was always of the same real value, and intrinsically worth more than current money. It was at the same time enacted, that all bills drawn upon or negociated at Amsterdam of the value of six hundred guilders and upwards should be paid in bank money, which at once took away all uncertainty in the value of those bills. Every merchant, in consequence of this regulation, was obliged to keep an account with the bank in order to pay his foreign bills of exchange, which necessarily occasioned a certain demand for bank money.

  5 Bank money, over and above both its intrinsic superiority to currency, and the additional value which this demand necessarily gives it, has likewise some other advantages. It is secure from fire, robbery, and other accidents;3 the city of Amsterdam is bound for it; it can be paid away by a simple transfer, without the trouble of counting, or the risk of transporting it from one place to another. In consequence of those different advantages, it seems from the beginning to have borne an agio, and it is generally believed that all the money originally deposited in the bank was allowed to remain there, nobody caring to demand payment of a debt which he could sell for a premium in the market. By demanding payment of the bank, the owner of a bank credit would lose this premium. As a shilling fresh from the mint will buy no more goods in the market than one of our common worn shillings, so the good and true money which might be brought from the coffers of the bank into those of a private person, being mixed and confounded with the common currency of the country, would be of no more value than that currency, from which it could no longer be readily distinguished. While it remained in the coffers of the bank, its superiority was known and ascertained. When it had come into those of a private person, its superiority could not well be ascertained without more trouble than perhaps the difference was worth. By being brought from the coffers of the bank, besides, it lost all the other advantages of bank money; its security, its easy and safe transferability, its use in paying foreign bills of exchange. Over and above all this, it could not be brought from those coffers, as it will appear by and by, without previously paying for the keeping.

  6Those deposits of coin, ^aor those deposits^a which the bank was bound to restore in coin, constituted the original capital of the bank, or the whole value of what was represented by what is called bank money. At present they are supposed to constitute but a very small part of it. In order to facilitate the trade in bullion, the bank has been for these many years in the practice of giving credit in its books upon deposits of gold and silver bullion. This credit is generally about five per cent. below the mint price of such bullion. The bank grants at the same time what is called a recipice or receipt, intitling the person who makes the deposit, or the bearer, to take out the bullion again at any time within six months, upon re–transfering to the bank a quantity of bank money equal to that for which credit had been given in its books when the deposit was made, and upon paying one–fourth per cent. for the keeping, if the deposit was in silver; and one–half per cent. if it was in gold; but at the same time declaring, that in default of such payment, and upon the expiration of this term, the deposit should belong to the bank at the price at which it had been received, or for which credit had been given in the transfer books. What is thus paid for the keeping of the deposit may be considered as a sort of warehouse rent; and why this warehouse rent should be so much dearer for gold than for silver, several different reasons have been assigned. The fineness of gold, it has been said, is more difficult to be ascertained than that of silver. Frauds are more easily practised, and occasion a greater loss in the more precious metal. Silver, besides, being the standard metal, the state, it has been said, wishes to encourage more the making of deposits of silver than ^bof^b those of gold.

  7Deposits of bullion are most commonly made when the price is somewhat lower than ordinary; and they are taken out again when it happens to rise. In Holland the market price of bullion is generally above the mint price, for the same reason that it was so in England before the late reformation of the gold coin.4 The difference is said to be commonly from about six to sixteen stivers upon the mark, or eight ounces of silver of eleven parts fine, and one part alloy. The bank price, or the credit which the bank gives for deposits of such silver (when made in foreign coin, of which the fineness is well known and ascertained, such as Mexico dollars) is twenty–two guilders the mark; the mint price is about twenty–three guilders, and the market price is from twenty–three guilders six, to twenty–three guilders sixteen stivers, or from two to three per cent. above the mint price.* The proportions between the bank price, the mint price, and the market price of gold bullion, are nearly the same. A person can generally sell his receipt for the difference between the mint price of bullion and the market price. A receipt for bullion is almost always worth something, and it very seldom happens, therefore, that any body suffers his receipt to expire, or allows his bullion to fall to the bank at the price at which it had been received, either by not taking it out before the end of the six months, or by neglecting to pay the one–fourth or one–half per cent. in order to obtain a new receipt for another six months. This, however, though it happens seldom, is said to happen sometimes, and more frequently with regard to gold, than with regard to silver, on account of the higher warehouse–rent which is paid for the keeping of the more precious metal.

  8The person who by making a deposit of bullion obtains both a bank credit and a receipt, pays his bills of exchange as they become due with his bank credit; and either sells or keeps his receipt according as he judges that the price of bullion is likely to rise or to fall. The receipt and the bank credit seldom keep long together, and there is no occasion that they should. The person who has a receipt, and who wants to take out bullion, finds always plenty of bank credits, or bank money to buy at the ordinary price; and the person who has bank money, and wants to take out bullion, finds receipts always in equal abundance.

  9The owners of bank credits, and the holders of receipts, constitute two different sorts of creditors against the bank. The holder of a receipt cannot draw out the bullion for which it is granted, without re–assigning to the bank a sum of bank money equal to the price at which the bullion had been received. If he has no bank money of his own, he must purchase it of those who have it. The owner of bank money cannot draw out bullion without producing to the bank receipts for the quantity which he wants. If he has none of his own, he must buy them of those who have them. The holder of a receipt, when he purchases bank money, purchases the power of taking out a quantity of bullion, of which the mint price is five per cent. above the bank price. The agio of five per cent. therefore, which he commonly pays for it, is paid, not for an imaginary, but for a real value. The owner of bank money, when he purchases a receipt, purchases the power of taking out a quantity of bullion of which the market price is commonly from two to three per cent. above the mint price. The price which he pays for it, therefore, is paid likewise for a real value. The price of the receipt, and the price of the bank money, compound or make up between them the full value or price of the bullion.

  10Upon deposits of the coin current in the country, the bank grants receipts likewise as well as bank credits; but those receipts are frequently of no value, and will bring no price in the market. Upon ducatoons, for example, which in the currency pass for three guilders three stivers each, the bank gives a credit of three guilders only, or five per cent. below their current value. It grants a receipt likewise intitling the bearer to take out the number of ducatoons deposited at any time within six months, upon paying one–fourth per cent. for the keeping. This receipt will frequently bring no price in the market. Three guilders bank money generally sell in the market for three guilders three stivers, the full value of the ducatoons, if they were taken out of the bank; and before they can be taken out, one–fourth per cent. must be paid for the keeping, which would be mere loss to the holder of the receipt. If the agio of the bank, however, should at any time fall to three per cent. such receipts might bring some price in the market, and might sell for one and three–fourths per cent. But the agio of the bank being now generally about five per cent. such receipts are frequently allowed to expire, or as they express it, to fall to the bank. The receipts which are given for deposits of gold ducats fall to it yet more frequently, because a higher warehouse–rent, or one–half per cent. must be paid for the keeping of them before they can be taken out again. The five per cent. which the bank gains, when deposits either of coin or bullion are allowed to fall to it, may be considered as the warehouse–rent for the perpetual keeping of such deposits.

  11The sum of bank money for which the receipts are expired must be very considerable. It must comprehend the whole original capital of the bank, which, it is generally supposed, has been allowed to remain there from the time it was first deposited, nobody caring either to renew his receipt or to take out his deposit, as, for the reasons already assigned, neither the one nor the other could be done without loss. But whatever may be the amount of this sum, the proportion which it bears to the whole mass of bank money is supposed to be very small. The bank of Amsterdam has for these many years past been the great warehouse of Europe for bullion, for which the receipts are very seldom allowed to expire, or, as they express it, to fall to the bank. The far greater part of the bank money, or of the credits upon the books of the bank, is supposed to have been created, for these many years past, by such deposits which the dealers in bullion are continually both making and withdrawing.

  12No demand can be made upon the bank but by means of a recipice or receipt. The smaller mass of bank money, for which the receipts are expired, is mixed and confounded with the much greater mass for which they are still in force; so that, though there may be a considerable sum of bank money, for which there are no receipts, there is no specific sum or portion of it, which may not at any time be demanded by one. The bank cannot be debtor to two persons for the same thing; and the owner of bank money who has no receipt, cannot demand payment of the bank till he buys one. In ordinary and quiet times, he can find no difficulty in getting one to buy at the market price, which generally corresponds with the price at which he can sell the coin or bullion it intitles him to take out of the bank.

  13It might be otherwise during a publick calamity; an invasion, for example, such as that of the French in 1672. The owners of bank money being then all eager to draw it out of the bank, in order to have it in their own keeping, the demand for receipts might raise their price to an exorbitant height. The holders of them might form extravagant expectations, and, instead of two or three per cent. demand half the bank money for which credit had been given upon the deposits that the receipts had respectively been granted for. The enemy, informed of the constitution of the bank, might even buy them up in order to prevent the carrying away of the treasure. In such emergencies, the bank, it is supposed, would break through its ordinary rule of making payment only to the holders of receipts. The holders of receipts, who had no bank money, must have received within two or three per cent. of the value of the deposit for which their respective receipts had been granted. The bank, therefore, it is said, would in this case make no scruple of paying, either with money or bullion, the full value of what the owners of bank money who could get no receipts, were credited for in its books; paying at the same time two or three per cent. to such holders of receipts as had no bank money, that being the whole value which in this state of things could justly be supposed due to them.

  14Even in ordinary and quiet times it is the interest of the holders of receipts to depress the agio, in order either to buy bank money (and consequently the bullion, which their receipts would then enable them to take out of the bank) so much cheaper, or to sell their receipts to those who have bank money, and who want to take out bullion, so much dearer; the price of a receipt being generally equal to the difference between the market price of bank money, and that of the coin or bullion for which the receipt had been granted. It is the interest of the owners of bank money, on the contrary, to raise the agio, in order either to sell their bank money so much dearer, or to buy a receipt so much cheaper. To prevent the stock–jobbing tricks which those opposite interests might sometimes occasion, the bank has of late years come to the resolution to sell at all times bank money for currency, at five per cent. agio, and to buy it in again at four per cent. agio. In consequence of this resolution, the agio can never either rise above five, or sink below four per cent. and the proportion between the market price of bank and that of current money, is kept at all times very near to the proportion between their intrinsick values. Before this resolution was taken, the market price of bank money used sometimes to rise so high as nine per cent. agio, and sometimes to sink so low as par, according as opposite interests happened to influence the market.

  15The bank of Amsterdam professes to lend out no part of what is deposited with it, but, for every guilder for which it gives credit in its books, to keep in its repositories the value of a guilder either in money or bullion. That it keeps in its repositories all the money or bullion for which there are receipts in force, for which it is at all times liable to be called upon, and which, in reality, is continually going from it and returning to it again, cannot well be doubted. But whether it does so likewise with regard to that part of its capital, for which the receipts are long ago expired, for which in ordinary and quiet times it cannot be called upon, and which in reality is very likely to remain with it for ever, or as long as the States of the United Provinces subsist, may perhaps appear more uncertain. At Amsterdam, however, no point of faith is better established than that for every guilder, circulated as bank money, there is a correspondent guilder in gold or silver to be found in the treasure of the bank. The city is guarantee that it should be so. The bank is under the direction of the four reigning burgomasters, who are changed every year. Each new sett of burgomasters visits the treasure, compares it with the books, receives it upon oath, and delivers it over, with the same awful solemnity, to the sett which succeeds^c; and in that sober and religious country oaths are not yet disregarded. A rotation of this kind seems alone a sufficient security against any practices which cannot be avowed. Amidst all the revolutions which faction has ever occasioned in the government of Amsterdam, the prevailing party has at no time accused their predecessors of infidelity in the administration of the bank. No accusation could have affected more deeply the reputation and fortune of the disgraced party, and if such an accusation could have been supported, we may be assured that it would have been brought. In 1672, when the French king was at Utrecht, the bank of Amsterdam paid so readily as left no doubt of the fidelity with which it had observed its engagements. Some of the pieces which were then brought from its repositories appeared to have been scorched with the fire which happened in the town–house soon after the bank was established.5 Those pieces, therefore, must have lain there from that time.6

  16What may be the amount of the treasure in the bank, is a question which has long employed the speculations of the curious. Nothing but conjecture can be offered concerning it. It is generally reckoned that there are about two thousand people who keep accounts with the bank, and allowing them to have, one with another, the value of fifteen hundred pounds sterling lying upon their respective accounts (a very large allowance), the whole quantity of bank money, and consequently of treasure in the bank, will amount to about three millions sterling, or, at eleven guilders the pound sterling, thirty–three millions of guilders; a great sum, and sufficient to carry on a very extensive circulation; but vastly below the extravagant ideas which some people have formed of this treasure.7

  17The city of Amsterdam derives a considerable revenue from the bank. Besides what may be called the warehouse–rent above mentioned, each person, upon first opening an account with the bank, pays a fee of ten guilders; and for every new account three guilders three stivers; for every transfer two stivers; and if the transfer is for less than three hundred guilders, six stivers, in order to discourage the multiplicity of small transactions. The person who neglects to balance his account twice in the year forfeits twenty–five guilders. The person who orders a transfer for more than is upon his account, is obliged to pay three per cent. for the sum over–drawn, and his order is set aside into the bargain. The bank is supposed too to make a considerable profit by the sale of the foreign coin or bullion which sometimes falls to it by the expiring of receipts, and which is always kept till it can be sold with advantage. It makes a profit likewise by selling bank money at five per cent. agio, and buying it in at four. These different emoluments amount to a good deal more than what is necessary for paying the salaries of officers, and defraying the expence of management. What is paid for the keeping of bullion upon receipts, is alone supposed to amount to a neat annual revenue of between one hundred and fifty thousand and two hundred thousand guilders. Public utility, however, and not revenue, was the original object of this institution. Its object was to relieve the merchants from the inconvenience of a disadvantageous exchange. The revenue which has arisen from it was unforeseen, and may be considered as accidental. But it is now time to return from this long digression, into which I have been insensibly led in endeavouring to explain the reasons why the exchange between the countries which pay in what is called bank money, and those which pay in common currency, should generally appear to be in favour of the former, and against the latter. The former pay in a species of money of which the intrinsic value is always the same, and exactly agreeable to the standard of their respective mints; the latter in a species of money of which the intrinsic value is continually varying, and is almost always more or less below that standard.^d

  ^aapart ii

  Of the Unreasonableness of those extraordinary Restraints upon other Principles^a

  1^bIn the foregoing Part of this Chapter I have endeavoured to^b shew, even upon the principles of the commercial system, how unnecessary it is to lay extraordinary restraints upon the importation of goods from those countries with which the balance of trade is supposed to be disadvantageous.

  2Nothing, however, can be more absurd than this whole doctrine of the balance of trade,1 upon which, not only these restraints, but almost all the other regulations of commerce are founded. When two places trade with one another, this doctrine supposes that, if the balance be even, neither of them either loses or gains; but if it leans in any degree to one side, that one of them loses, and the other gains in proportion to its declension from the exact equilibrium. Both suppositions are false. A trade which is forced by means of bounties and monopolies, may be, and commonly is disadvantageous to the country in whose favour it is meant to be established, as I shall endeavour to shew hereafter.2 But that trade which, without force or constraint, is naturally and regularly carried on between any two places, is always advantageous, though not always equally so, to both.

  3By advantage or gain, I understand, not the increase of the quantity of gold and silver, but that of the exchangeable value of the annual produce of the land and labour of the country, or the increase of the annual revenue of its inhabitants.

  4If the balance be even, and if the trade between the two places consist altogether in the exchange of their native commodities, they will, upon most occasions, not only both gain, but they will gain equally, or very near equally; each will in this case afford a market for a part of the surplus produce of the other: each will replace a capital which had been employed in raising ^cand preparing for the market^c3 this part of the surplus produce of the other, and which had been distributed among, and given revenue and maintenance to a certain number of its inhabitants. Some part of the inhabitants of each, therefore, will indirectly derive their revenue and maintenance from the other. As the commodities exchanged too are supposed to be of equal value, so the two capitals employed in the trade will, upon most occasions, be equal, or very nearly equal; and both being employed in raising the native commodities of the two countries, the revenue and maintenance which their distribution will afford to the inhabitants of each will be equal, or very nearly equal. This revenue and maintenance, thus mutually afforded, will be greater or smaller in proportion to the extent of their dealings. If these should annually amount to an hundred thousand pounds, for example, or to a million on each side, each of them ^dwould^d afford an annual revenue, in the one case, of an hundred thousand pounds, in the other, of a million, to the inhabitants of the other.

  5If their trade should be of such a nature that one of them exported to the other nothing but native commodities, while the returns of that other consisted altogether in foreign goods; the balance, in this case, would still be supposed even, commodities being paid for with commodities. They would, in this case too, both gain, but they would not gain equally; and the inhabitants of the country which exported nothing but native commodities would derive the greatest revenue from the trade. If England, for example, should import from France nothing but the native commodities of that country, and, not having such commodities of its own as were in demand there, should annually repay them by sending thither a large quantity of foreign goods, tobacco, we shall suppose, and East India goods; this trade, though it would give some revenue to the inhabitants of both countries, would give more to those of France than to those of England. The whole French capital annually employed in it would annually be distributed among the people of France. But that part of the English capital only which was employed in producing the English commodities with which those foreign goods were purchased, would be annually distributed among the people of England. The greater part of it would replace the capitals which had been employed in Virginia, Indostan, and China, and which had given revenue and maintenance to the inhabitants of those distant countries. If the capitals were equal, or nearly equal, therefore, this employment of the French capital would augment much more the revenue of the people of France, than that of the English capital would the revenue of the people of England. France would in this case carry on a direct foreign trade of consumption with England; whereas England would carry on a round–about trade of the same kind with France. The different effects of a capital employed in the direct, and of one employed in the round–about foreign trade of consumption, have already been fully explained.4

  6There is not, probably, between any two countries, a trade which consists altogether in the exchange either of native commodities on both sides, or of native commodities on one side and of foreign goods on the other. Almost all countries exchange with one another partly native and partly foreign goods. That country, however, in whose cargoes there is the greatest proportion of native, and the least of foreign goods, will always be the principal gainer.

  7^e If it was not with tobacco and East India goods, but with gold and silver, that England paid for the commodities annually imported from France, the balance, in this case, would be supposed uneven, commodities not being paid for with commodities, but with gold and silver. The trade, however, would, in this case, as in the foregoing, give some revenue to the inhabitants of both countries, but more to those of France than to those of England. It would give some revenue to those of England. The capital which had been employed in producing the English goods that purchased this gold and silver, the capital which had been distributed among, and given revenue to certain inhabitants of England, would thereby be replaced, and enabled to continue that employment. The whole capital of England would no more be diminished by this exportation of gold and silver, than by the exportation of an equal value of any other goods. On the contrary, it would, in most cases, be augmented. No goods are sent abroad but those for which the demand is supposed to be greater abroad than at home, and of which the returns consequently, it is expected, will be of more value at home than the commodities exported. If the tobacco which, in England, is worth only a hundred thousand pounds, when sent to France will purchase wine which is, in England, worth a hundred and ten thousand pounds, the exchange will augment the capital of England by ten thousand pounds. If a hundred thousand pounds of English gold, in the same manner, purchase French wine, which, in England, is worth a hundred and ten thousand, this exchange will equally augment the capital of England by ten thousand pounds. As a merchant who has a hundred and ten thousand pounds worth of wine in his cellar, is a richer man than he who has only a hundred thousand pounds worth of tobacco in his warehouse, so is he likewise a richer man than he who has only a hundred thousand pounds worth of gold in his coffers. He can put into motion a greater quantity of industry, and give revenue, maintenance, and employment, to a greater number of people than either of the other two. But the capital of the country is equal to the capitals of all its different inhabitants, and the quantity of industry which can be annually maintained in it, is equal to what all those different capitals can maintain. Both the capital of the country, therefore, and the quantity of industry which can be annually maintained in it, must generally be augmented by this exchange. It would, indeed, be more advantageous for England that it could purchase the wines of France with its own hardware and broad–cloth, than with either the tobacco of Virginia, or the gold and silver of Brazil and Peru. A direct foreign trade of consumption is always more advantageous than a round–about one. But a round–about foreign trade of consumption, which is carried on with gold and silver, does not seem to be less advantageous than any other equally round–about one. Neither is a country which has no mines more likely to be exhausted of gold and silver by this annual exportation of those metals, than one which does not grow tobacco by the like annual exportation of that plant. As a country which has wherewithal to buy tobacco will never be long in want of it, so neither will one be long in want of gold and silver which has wherewithal to purchase those metals.5

  8It is a losing trade, it is said, which a workman carries on with the alehouse; and the trade which a manufacturing nation would naturally carry on with a wine country, may be considered as a trade of the same nature. I answer, that the trade with the alehouse is not necessarily a losing trade. In its own nature it is just as advantageous as any other, though, perhaps, somewhat more liable to be abused.6 The employment of a brewer, and even that of a retailer of fermented liquors, are as necessary divisions of labour as any other. It will generally be more advantageous for a workman to buy of the brewer the quantity he has occasion for, than to ^fbrew^f it himself, and if he is a poor workman, it will generally be more advantageous for him to buy it, by little and little of the retailer, than a large quantity of the brewer. He may no doubt buy too much of either, as he may of any other dealers in his neighbourhood, of the butcher, if he is a glutton, or of the draper, if he affects to be a beau among his companions. It is advantageous to the great body of workmen, notwithstanding, that all these trades should be free, though this freedom may be abused in all of them, and is more likely to be so, perhaps, in some than in others. Though individuals, besides, may sometimes ruin their fortunes by an excessive consumption of fermented liquors, there seems to be no risk that a nation should do so. Though in every country there are many people who spend upon such liquors more than they can afford, there are always many more who spend less. It deserves to be remarked too that, if we consult experience, the cheapness of wine seems to be a cause, not of drunkenness, but of sobriety. The inhabitants of the wine countries are in general the soberest people in Europe; witness the Spaniards, the Italians, and the inhabitants of the southern provinces of France. People are seldom guilty of excess in what is their daily fare. Nobody affects the character of liberality and good fellowship, by being profuse of a liquor which is as cheap as small beer. On the contrary, in the countries which, ^geither from^g excessive heat or cold, produce no grapes, and where wine consequently is dear and a rarity, drunkenness is a common vice, as among the northern nations, and all those who live between the tropics, the negroes, for example, on the coast of Guinea. When a French regiment comes from some of the northern provinces of France, where wine is somewhat dear, to be quartered in the southern, where it is very cheap, the soldiers, I have frequently heard it observed, are at first debauched by the cheapness and novelty of good wine; but after a few months residence, the greater part of them become as sober as the rest of the inhabitants. Were the duties upon foreign wines, and the excises upon malt, beer, and ale, to be taken away all at once, it might, in the same manner, occasion in Great Britain a pretty general and temporary drunkenness among the middling and inferior ranks of people, which would probably be soon followed by a permanent and almost universal sobriety.7 At present drunkenness is by no means the vice of people of fashion, or of those who can easily afford the most expensive liquors. A gentleman drunk with ale, has scarce ever been seen among us.8 The restraints upon the wine trade in Great Britain, besides, do not so much seem calculated to hinder the people from going, if I may say so, to the alehouse, as from going where they can buy the best and cheapest liquor. They favour the wine trade of Portugal, and discourage that of France. The Portuguese, it is said, indeed, are better customers for our manufactures than the French, and should therefore be encouraged in preference to them. As they give us their custom, it is pretended, we should give them ours. The sneaking arts of underling tradesmen are thus erected into political maxims for the conduct of a great empire: for it is the most underling tradesmen only who make it a rule to employ chiefly their own customers. A great trader purchases his goods always where they are cheapest and best, without regard to any little interest of this kind.

  9By such maxims as these, however, nations have been taught that their interest consisted in beggaring all their neighbours. Each nation has been made to look with an invidious eye upon the prosperity of all the nations with which it trades, and to consider their gain as its own loss. Commerce, which ought naturally to be, among nations, as among individuals, a bond of union and friendship, has become the most fertile source of discord and animosity. The capricious ambition of kings and ministers has not, during the present and the preceding century, been more fatal to the repose of Europe, than the impertinent jealousy of merchants and manufacturers. The violence and injustice of the rulers of mankind is an ancient evil, for which, I am afraid, the nature of human affairs can scarce admit of a remedy. But the mean rapacity, the monopolizing spirit of merchants and manufacturers, who neither are, nor ought to be the rulers of mankind, though it cannot perhaps be corrected, may very easily be prevented from disturbing the tranquillity of any body but themselves.

  10That it was the spirit of monopoly which originally both invented and propagated this doctrine, cannot be doubted; and they who first taught it were by no means such fools as they who believed it. In every country it always is and must be the interest of the great body of the people to buy whatever they want of those who sell it cheapest. The proposition is so very manifest, that it seems ridiculous to take any pains to prove it; nor could it ever have been called in question, had not the interested sophistry of merchants and manufacturers confounded the common sense of mankind. Their interest is, in this respect, directly opposite to that of the great body of the people.9 As it is the interest of the freemen of a corporation to hinder the rest of the inhabitants from employing any workmen but themselves, so it is the interest of the merchants and manufacturers of every country to secure to themselves the monopoly of the home market. Hence in Great Britain, and in most other European countries, the extraordinary duties upon almost all goods imported by alien merchants.10 Hence the high duties and prohibitions upon all those foreign manufactures which can come into competition with our own. Hence too the extraordinary restraints upon the importation of almost all sorts of goods from those countries with which the balance of trade is supposed to be disadvantageous; that is, from those against whom national animosity happens to be most violently inflamed.

  11The wealth of a neighbouring nation, however, though dangerous in war and politicks, is certainly advantageous in trade. In a state of hostility it may enable our enemies to maintain fleets and armies superior to our own; but in a state of peace and commerce it must likewise enable them to exchange with us to a greater value, and to afford a better market, either for the immediate produce of our own industry, or for whatever is purchased with that produce. As a rich man is likely to be a better customer to the industrious people in his neighbourhood, than a poor, so is likewise a rich nation. A rich man, indeed, who is himself a manufacturer, is a very dangerous neighbour to all those who deal in the same way. All the rest of the neighbourhood, however, by far the greatest number, profit by the good market which his expence affords them. They even profit by his under–selling the poorer workmen who deal in the same way with him. The manufacturers of a rich nation, in the same manner, may no doubt be very dangerous rivals to those of their neighbours. This very competition, however, is advantageous to the great body of the people, who profit greatly besides by the good market which the great expence of such a nation affords them in every other way. Private people who want to make a fortune, never think of retiring to the remote and poor provinces of the country, but resort either to the capital or to some of the great commercial towns. They know, that, where little wealth circulates, there is little to be got, but that where a great deal is in motion, some share of it may fall to them. The same maxims which would in this manner direct the common sense of one, or ten, or twenty individuals, should regulate the judgment of one, or ten, or twenty millions, and should make a whole nation regard the riches of its neighbours, as a probable cause and occasion for itself to acquire riches. A nation that would enrich itself by foreign trade is certainly most likely to do so when its neighbours are all rich, industrious, and commercial nations. A great nation surrounded on all sides by wandering savages and poor barbarians might, no doubt, acquire riches by the cultivation of its own lands, and by its own interior commerce, but not by foreign trade. It seems to have been in this manner that the antient Egyptians and the modern Chinese acquired their great wealth. The antient Egyptians, it is said, neglected foreign commerce, and the modern Chinese, it is known, hold it in the utmost contempt, and scarce deign to afford it the decent protection of the laws. The modern maxims of foreign commerce, by aiming at the impoverishment of all our neighbours, so far as they are capable of producing their intended effect, tend to render that very commerce insignificant and contemptible.11

  12^h It is in consequence of these maxims that the commerce between France and England has in both countries been subjected to so many discouragements and restraints. If those two countries, however, were to consider their real interest, without either mercantile jealousy or national animosity, the commerce of France might be more advantageous to Great Britain than that of any other country, and for the same reason that of Great Britain to France. France is the nearest neighbour to Great Britain. In the trade between the southern coast of England and the northern and north–western coasts of France, the returns might be expected, in the same manner as in the inland trade, four, five, or six times in the year. The capital, therefore, employed in this trade, could in each of the two countries keep in motion four, five, or six times the quantity of industry, and afford employment and subsistence to four, five, or six times the number of people, which an equal capital could do in the greater part of the other branches of foreign trade. Between the parts of France and Great Britain most remote from one another, the returns might be expected, at least, once in the year, and even this trade would so far be at least equally advantageous as the greater part of the other branches of our foreign European trade. It would be, at least, three times more advantageous, than the boasted trade with our North American colonies, in which the returns were seldom made in less than three years, frequently not in less than four or five years.12 France, besides, is supposed to contain twenty–four millions of inhabitants.13 Our North American colonies were never supposed to contain more than three millions:14 And France is a much richer country than North America; though, on account of the more unequal distribution of riches, there is much more poverty and beggary in the one country, than in the other. France, therefore, could afford a market at least eight times more extensive, and, on account of the superior frequency of the returns, four and twenty times more advantageous, than that which our North American colonies ever afforded. The trade of Great Britain would be just as advantageous to France, and, in proportion to the wealth, population and proximity of the respective countries, would have the same superiority over that which France carries on with her own colonies.15 Such is the very great difference between that trade which the wisdom of both nations has thought proper to discourage, and that which it has favoured the most.

  13But the very same circumstances which would have rendered an open and free commerce between the two countries so advantageous to both, have occasioned the principal obstructions to that commerce. Being neighbours, they are necessarily enemies, and the wealth and power of each becomes, upon that account, more formidable to the other; and what would increase the advantage of national friendship, serves only to inflame the violence of national animosity. They are both rich and industrious nations; and the merchants and manufacturers of each, dread the competition of the skill and activity of those of the other. Mercantile jealousy is excited, and both inflames, and is itself inflamed, by the violence of national animosity: And the traders of both countries have announced, with all the passionate confidence of interested falsehood, the certain ruin of each, in consequence of that unfavourable balance of trade, which, they pretend, would be the infallible effect of an unrestrained commerce with the other.^h

  14There is no commercial country in Europe of which the approaching ruin has not frequently been foretold by the pretended doctors of this system, from an unfavourable balance of trade.16 After all the anxiety, however, which they have excited about this, after all the vain attempts of almost all trading nations to turn that balance in their own favour and against their neighbours, it does not appear that any one nation in Europe has been in any respect impoverished by this cause. Every town and country, on the contrary, in proportion as they have opened their ports to all nations; instead of being ruined by this free trade, as the principles of the commercial system would lead us to expect, have been enriched by it.17 Though there are in Europe, indeed, a few towns which in some respects deserve the name of free ports, there is no country which does so. Holland, perhaps, approaches the nearest to this character of any, though still very remote from it; and Holland, it is acknowledged, not only derives its whole wealth, but a great part of its necessary subsistence, from foreign trade.

  15There is another balance, indeed, which has already been explained, very different from the balance of trade, and which, according as it happens to be either favourable or unfavourable, necessarily occasions the prosperity or decay of every nation. This is the balance of the annual produce and consumption. If the exchangeable value of the annual produce, it has already been observed, exceeds that of the annual consumption, the capital of the society must annually increase in proportion to this excess. The society in this case lives within its revenue, and what is annually saved out of its revenue, is naturally added to its capital, and employed so as to increase still further the annual produce.18 If the exchangeable value of the annual produce, on the contrary, fall short of the annual consumption, the capital of the society must annually decay in proportion to this deficiency. The expence of the society in this case exceeds its revenue, and necessarily encroaches upon its capital. Its capital, therefore, must necessarily decay, and, together with it, the exchangeable value of the annual produce of its industry.

  16This balance of produce and consumption is entirely different from, what is called, the balance of trade. It might take place in a nation which had no foreign trade, but which was entirely separated from all the world. It may take place in the whole globe of the earth, of which the wealth, population, and improvement may be either gradually increasing or gradually decaying.

  17The balance of produce and consumption may be constantly in favour of a nation, though what is called the balance of trade be generally against it. A nation may import to a greater value than it exports for half a century, perhaps, together; the gold and silver which comes into it during all this time may be all immediately sent out of it; its circulating coin may gradually decay, different sorts of paper money being substituted in its place, and even the debts too which it contracts in the principal nations with whom it deals, may be gradually increasing; and yet its real wealth, the exchangeable value of the annual produce of its lands and labour, may, during the same period, have been increasing in a much greater proportion. The state of our North American colonies, and ⁱofⁱ the trade which they carried on with Great Britain, before the commencement of the ^jpresent^j disturbances* , may serve as a proof that this is by no means an impossible supposition.

  CHAPTER IV

  Of Drawbacks

  1Merchants and manufacturers are not contented with the monopoly of the home market, but desire likewise the most extensive foreign sale for their goods. Their country has no jurisdiction in foreign nations, and therefore can seldom procure them any monopoly there. They are generally obliged, therefore, to content themselves with petitioning for certain encouragements to exportation.

  2Of these encouragements what are called Drawbacks seem to be the most reasonable. To allow the merchant to draw back upon exportation, either the whole or a part of whatever excise or inland duty is imposed upon domestick industry, can never occasion the exportation of a greater quantity of goods than what would have been exported had no duty been imposed. Such encouragements do not tend to turn towards any particular employment a greater share of the capital of the country, than what would go to ^athat employment^a of its own accord, but only to hinder the duty from driving away any part of that share to other employments. They tend not to overturn that balance which naturally establishes itself among all the various employments of the society; but to hinder it from being overturned by the duty. They tend not to destroy, but to preserve, what it is in most cases advantageous to preserve, the natural division and distribution of labour in the society.

  3The same thing may be said of the drawbacks upon the re–exportation of foreign goods imported; which in Great Britain generally amount to by much the largest part of the duty upon importation. ^b By the second of the rules, annexed to the act of parliament,1 which imposed, what is now called, the old subsidy, every merchant, whether English or alien, was allowed to draw back half that duty upon exportation; the English merchant, provided the exportation took place within twelve months; the alien, provided it took place within nine months. Wines, currants, and wrought silks were the only goods which did not fall within this rule, having other and more advantageous allowances. The duties imposed by this act of parliament were, at that time, the only duties upon the importation of foreign goods. The term within which this, and all other drawbacks, could be claimed, was afterwards (by 7 Geo. I. chap. 21. sect. 10.) extended to three years.2

  4The duties which have been imposed since the old subsidy, are, the greater part of them, wholly drawn back upon exportation. This general rule, however, is liable to a great number of exceptions, and the doctrine of drawbacks has become a much less simple matter, than it was at their first institution.

  5Upon the exportation of some foreign goods, of which it was expected that the importation would greatly exceed what was necessary for the home consumption, the whole duties are drawn back, without retaining even half the old subsidy. Before the revolt of our North American colonies, we had the monopoly of the tobacco of Maryland and Virginia. We imported about ninety–six thousand hogsheads, and the home consumption was not supposed to exceed fourteen thousand.3 To facilitate the great exportation which was necessary, in order to rid us of the rest, the whole duties were drawn back, provided the exportation took place within three years.

  6We still have, though not altogether, yet very nearly, the monopoly of the sugars of our West Indian Islands. If sugars are exported within a year, therefore, all the duties upon importation are drawn back, and if exported within three years, all the duties, except half the old subsidy, which still continues to be retained upon the exportation of the greater part of goods. Though the importation of sugar exceeds, a good deal, what is necessary for the home consumption, the excess is inconsiderable, in comparison of what it used to be in tobacco.

  7Some goods, the particular objects of the jealousy of our own manufacturers, are prohibited to be imported for home consumption. They may, however, upon paying certain duties, be imported and warehoused for exportation. But upon such exportation, no part of these duties ^care^c drawn back. Our manufacturers are unwilling, it seems, that even this restricted importation should be encouraged, and are afraid lest some part of these goods should be stolen out of the warehouse, and thus come into competition with their own. It is under these regulations only that we can import wrought silks,4 French cambricks and lawns,5 callicoes painted, printed, stained, or dyed, &c.

  8We are unwilling even to be the carriers of French goods, and choose rather to forego a profit to ourselves, than to suffer those, whom we consider as our enemies, to make any profit by our means. Not only half the old subsidy, but the second twenty–five per cent., is retained upon the exportation of all French goods.6

  9By the fourth of the rules annexed to the old subsidy,7 the drawback allowed upon the exportation of all wines amounted to a great deal more than half the duties which were, at that time, paid upon their importation; and it seems, at that time, to have been the object of the legislature to give somewhat more than ordinary encouragement to the carrying trade in wine. Several of the other duties too, which were imposed, either at the same time, or subsequent to the old subsidy; what is called the additional duty, the new subsidy,8 the one–third9 and two–thirds subsidies,10 the impost 1692,11 the coinage on wine,12 were allowed to be wholly drawn back upon exportation.13 All those duties, however, except the additional duty and impost 1692, being paid down in ready money, upon importation, the interest of so large a sum occasioned an expence, which made it unreasonable to expect any profitable carrying trade in this article. Only a part, therefore, of the duty called the impost on wine,14 and no part of the twenty–five pounds the ton upon French wines,15 or of the duties imposed in 1745,16 in 1763,17 and in 1778,18 were allowed to be drawn back upon exportation. The two imposts of five per cent., imposed in 177919 and 1781,20 upon all the former duties of customs, being allowed to be wholly drawn back upon the exportation of all other goods, were likewise allowed to be drawn back upon that of wine. The last duty that has been particularly imposed upon wine, that of 1780,21 is allowed to be wholly drawn back, an indulgence, which, when so many heavy duties are retained, most probably could never occasion the exportation of a single ton of wine. These rules take place with regard to all places of lawful exportation, except the British colonies in America.

  10The 15th Charles II. chap. 7.22 called an act for the encouragement of trade, had given Great Britain the monopoly of supplying the colonies with all the commodities of the growth or manufacture of Europe; and consequently with wines. In a country of so extensive a coast as our North American and West Indian colonies, where our authority was always so very slender, and where the inhabitants were allowed to carry out, in their own ships, their non–enumerated commodities, at first, to all parts of Europe, and afterwards, to all parts of Europe South of Cape Finisterre,23 it is not very probable that this monopoly could ever be much respected; and they probably, at all times, found means of bringing back some cargo from the countries to which they were allowed to carry out one. They seem, however, to have found some difficulty in importing European wines from the places of their growth, and they could not well import them from Great Britain, where they were loaded with many heavy duties, of which a considerable part was not drawn back upon exportation. Madeira wine, not being a European commodity,24 could be imported directly into America and the West Indies, countries which, in all their non–enumerated commodities, enjoyed a free trade to the island of Madeira. These circumstances had probably introduced that general taste for Madeira wine, which our officers found established in all our colonies at the commencement of the war, which began in 1755, and which they brought back with them to the mother country, where that wine had not been much in fashion before. Upon the conclusion of that war, in 1763 (by the 4th Geo. III. Chap. 15. Sect. 12.),25 all the duties, except 3l. 10s. were allowed to be drawn back, upon the exportation to the colonies of all wines, except French wines, to the commerce and consumption of which, national prejudice would allow no sort of encouragement. The period between the granting of this indulgence and the revolt of our North American colonies was probably too short to admit of any considerable change in the customs of those countries.

  11The same act, which, in the drawback upon all wines, except French wines, thus favoured the colonies so much more than other countries; in those, upon the greater part of other commodities, favoured them much less. Upon the exportation of the greater part of commodities to other countries, half the old subsidy was drawn back. But this law enacted, that no part of that duty should be drawn back upon the exportation to the colonies of any commodities, of the growth or manufacture either of Europe or the East Indies, except wines, white callicoes and muslins.^b

  12Drawbacks were, perhaps, originally granted for the encouragement of the carrying trade, which, as the freight of the ships is frequently paid by foreigners in money, was supposed to be peculiarly fitted for bringing gold and silver into the country. But though the carrying trade certainly deserves no peculiar encouragement, though the motive of the institution was, perhaps abundantly foolish, the institution itself seems reasonable enough. Such drawbacks cannot force into this trade a greater share of the capital of the country than what would have gone to it of its own accord, had there been no duties upon importation. They only prevent its being excluded altogether by those duties. The carrying trade, though it deserves no preference, ought not to be precluded, but to be left free like all other trades. It is a necessary resource ^dfor^d those capitals which cannot find employment either in the agriculture or in the manufactures of the country, either in its home trade or in its foreign trade of consumption.26

  13The revenue of the customs, instead of suffering, profits from such drawbacks, by that part of the duty which is retained. If the whole duties had been retained, the foreign goods upon which they are paid, could seldom have been exported, nor consequently imported, for want of a market. The duties, therefore, of which a part is retained, would never have been paid.

  14These reasons seem sufficiently to justify drawbacks, and would justify them, though the whole duties, whether upon the produce of domestick industry, or upon foreign goods, were always drawn back upon exportation. The revenue of excise would in this case, indeed, suffer a little, and that of the customs a good deal more; but the natural balance of industry,27 the natural division and distribution of labour, which is always more or less disturbed by such duties, would be more nearly re–established by such a regulation.

  15These reasons, however, will justify drawbacks only upon exporting goods to those countries which are altogether foreign and independent, not to those in which our merchants and manufacturers enjoy a monopoly. A drawback, for example, upon the exportation of European goods to our American colonies, will not always occasion a greater exportation than what would have taken place without it. By means of the monopoly which our merchants and manufacturers enjoy there, the same quantity might frequently, perhaps, be sent thither, though the whole duties were retained. The drawback, therefore, may frequently be pure loss to the revenue of excise and customs, without altering the state of the trade, or rendering it in any respect more extensive. How far such drawbacks can be justified, as a proper encouragement to the industry of our colonies, or how far it is advantageous to the mother country, that they should be exempted from taxes which are paid by all the rest of their fellow–subjects, will appear hereafter when I come to treat of colonies.28

  16Drawbacks, however, it must always be understood, are useful only in those cases in which the goods for the exportation of which they are given, are really exported to some foreign country; and not clandestinely reimported into our own. That some drawbacks, particularly those upon tobacco, have frequently been abused in this manner, and have given occasion to many frauds equally hurtful both to the revenue and to the fair trader, is well known.

  CHAPTER V

  Of Bounties

  1Bounties upon exportation are, in Great Britain, frequently petitioned for, and sometimes granted to the produce of particular branches of domestick industry.1 By means of them our merchants and manufacturers, it is pretended, will be enabled to sell their goods as cheap, or cheaper than their rivals in the foreign market. A greater quantity, it is said, will thus be exported, and the balance of trade consequently turned more in favour of our own country. We cannot give our workmen a monopoly in the foreign, as we have done in the home market. We cannot force foreigners to buy their goods, as we have done our own countrymen. The next best expedient, it has been thought, therefore, is to pay them for buying. It is in this manner that the mercantile system proposes to enrich the whole country, and to put money into all our pockets by means of the balance of trade.2

  2Bounties, it is allowed, ought to be given to those branches of trade only which cannot be carried on without them. But every branch of trade in which the merchant can sell his goods for a price which replaces to him, with the ordinary profits of stock, the whole capital employed in preparing and sending them to market, can be carried on without a bounty. Every such branch is evidently upon a level with all the other branches of trade which are carried on without bounties, and cannot therefore require one more than they. Those trades only require bounties in which the merchant is obliged to sell his goods for a price which does not replace to him his capital, together with the ordinary profit; or in which he is obliged to sell them for less than it really costs him to send them to market. The bounty is given in order to make up this loss, and to encourage him to continue, or perhaps to begin, a trade of which the expence is supposed to be greater than the returns, of which every operation eats up a part of the capital employed in it, and which is of such a nature, that, if all other trades resembled it, there would soon be no capital left in the country.

  3The trades, it is to be observed, which are carried on by means of bounties, are the only ones which can be carried on between two nations for any considerable time together, in such a manner as that one of them shall always and regularly lose, or sell its goods for less than it really costs to send them to market.3 But if the bounty did not repay to the merchant what he would otherwise lose upon the price of his goods, his own interest would soon oblige him to employ his stock in another way, or to find out a trade in which the price of the goods would replace to him, with the ordinary profit, the capital employed in sending them to market. The effect of bounties, like that of all the other expedients of the mercantile system, can only be to force the trade of a country into a channel much less advantageous than that in which it would naturally run of its own accord.4

  4The ingenious and well–informed author of the tracts upon the corn trade has shown very clearly,5 that since the bounty upon the exportation of corn was first established,6 the price of the corn exported, valued moderately enough, has exceeded that of the corn imported, valued very high, by a much greater sum than the amount of the whole bounties which have been paid during that period. This, he imagines, upon the true principles of the mercantile system, is a clear proof that this forced corn trade is beneficial to the nation; the value of the exportation exceeding that of the importation by a much greater sum than the whole extraordinary expence which the publick has been at in order to get it exported. He does not consider that this extraordinary expence, or the bounty, is the smallest part of the expence which the exportation of corn really costs the society. The capital which the farmer employed in raising it must likewise be taken into the account. Unless the price of the corn when sold in the foreign markets replaces, not only the bounty, but this capital, together with the ordinary profits of stock, the society is a loser by the difference, or the national stock is so much diminished. But the very reason for which it has been thought necessary to grant a bounty, is the supposed insufficiency of the price to do this.

  5 The average price of corn, it has been said, has fallen considerably since the establishment of the bounty.7 That the average price of corn began to fall somewhat towards the end of the last century, and has continued to do so during the course of the sixty–four first years of the present, I have already endeavoured to show. But this event, supposing it to be as real as I believe it to be, must have happened in spite of the bounty, and cannot possibly have happened in consequence of it. ^aIt has happened in France, as well as in England , though in France there was, not only no bounty, but, till 1764, the exportation of corn was subjected to a general prohibition.8 This gradual fall in the average price of grain, it is probable, therefore, is ultimately owing neither to the one regulation nor to the other, but to that gradual and insensible rise in the real value of silver, which, in the first book of this discourse, I have endeavoured to show has taken place in the general market of Europe, during the course of the present century.9 It seems to be altogether impossible that the bounty could ever contribute to lower the price of grain.^a

  6In years of plenty, it has already been observed,10 the bounty, by occasioning an extraordinary exportation, necessarily keeps up the price of corn in the home market above what it would naturally fall to. To do so was the avowed purpose of the institution. In years of scarcity, though the bounty is frequently suspended, yet the great exportation which it occasions in years of plenty, must frequently hinder more or less the plenty of one year from relieving the scarcity of another. Both in years of plenty, and in years of scarcity, therefore, the bounty necessarily tends to raise the money price of corn somewhat higher than it otherwise would be in the home market.

  7That, in the actual state of tillage, the bounty must necessarily have this tendency, will not, I apprehend, be disputed by any reasonable person. But it has been thought by many people that ^bit tends to encourage tillage11 , and that in two different ways; first, by opening a more extensive foreign market to the corn of the farmer, it tends, they imagine, to increase the demand for, and consequently the production of that commodity; and secondly, by securing to him^b a better price than he could otherwise expect in the actual state of tillage, it ^ctends, they suppose, to encourage tillage. This double encouragement must, they imagine, in a long period of years, occasion such an increase in the production of corn, as may lower its price in the home market, much^c more than the bounty can raise it, in the actual state which tillage may, at the end of that period, happen to be in.

  8^d I answer, that whatever extension of the foreign market can be occasioned by the bounty, must, in every particular year, be altogether at the expence of the home market; as every bushel of corn which is exported by means of the bounty, and which would not have been exported without the bounty, would have remained in the home market to increase the consumption, and to lower the price of that commodity. The corn bounty, it is to be observed, as well as every other bounty upon exportation, imposes two different taxes upon the people; first, the tax which they are obliged to contribute, in order to pay the bounty; and secondly, the tax which arises from the advanced price of the commodity in the home–market, and which, as the whole body of the people are purchasers of corn, must, in this particular commodity, be paid by the whole body of the people. In this particular commodity, therefore, this second tax, is by much the heaviest of the two. Let us suppose that, taking one year with another, the bounty of five shillings upon the exportation of the quarter of wheat, raises the price of that commodity in the home–market, only sixpence the bushel, or four shillings the quarter, higher than it ^eotherways^e would have been in the actual state of the crop. Even upon this very moderate supposition, the great body of the people, over and above contributing the tax which pays the bounty of five shillings upon every quarter of wheat exported, must pay another of four shillings upon every quarter which they themselves consume. But, according to the very well informed author of the tracts upon the corn–trade,12 the average proportion of the corn exported to that consumed at home, is not more than that of one to thirty–one.13 For every five shillings, therefore, which they contribute to the payment of the first tax, they must contribute six pounds four shillings to the payment of the second. So very heavy a tax upon the first necessary of life, must either reduce the subsistence14 of the labouring poor, or it must occasion some augmentation in their pecuniary wages, proportionable to that in the pecuniary price of their subsistence. So far as it operates in the one way, it must reduce the ability of the labouring poor to educate and bring up their children, and must, so far, tend to restrain the population of the country. So far as it operates in the other, it must reduce the ability of the employers of the poor, to employ so great a number as they otherwise might do, and must, so far, tend to restrain the industry of the country. The extraordinary exportation of corn, therefore, occasioned by the bounty, not only, in every particular year, diminishes the home, just as much as it extends the foreign market and consumption, but, by restraining the population and industry of the country, its final tendency is to stunt and restrain the gradual extension of the home–market; and thereby, in the long run, rather to diminish, than to augment, the whole market and consumption of corn.

  9This enhancement of the money price of corn, however, it has been thought, by rendering that commodity more profitable to the farmer, must necessarily encourage its production.^d

  10I answer, that this might be the case if the effect of the bounty was to raise the real price of corn, or to enable the farmer, with an equal quantity of it, to maintain a greater number of labourers in the same manner, whether liberal, moderate, or scanty, that other labourers are commonly maintained in his neighbourhood. But neither the bounty, it is evident, nor any other human institution, can have any such effect. It is not the real, but the nominal price of corn^f, which can in any considerable degree be^f affected by the bounty.15^gAnd though the tax which that institution imposes upon the whole body of the people, may be very burdensome to those who pay it, it is of very little advantage to those who receive it.^g

  11The real effect of the bounty is not so much to raise the real value of corn, as to degrade the real value of silver; or to make an equal quantity of it exchange for a smaller quantity, not only of corn, but all other ^hhome–made^h commodities: for the money price of corn regulates that of all other ⁱhome–madeⁱ commodities.

  12It regulates the money price of labour, which must always be such as to enable the labourer to purchase a quantity of corn sufficient to maintain him and his family either in the liberal, moderate, or scanty manner in which the advancing, stationary or declining circumstances of the society oblige his employers to maintain him.16

  13It regulates the money price of all the other parts of the rude produce of land, which, in every period of improvement, must bear a certain proportion to that of corn, though this proportion is different in different periods. It regulates, for example, the money price of grass and hay, of butcher’s meat, of horses, and the maintenance of horses, of land carriage consequently, or of the greater part of the inland commerce of the country.17

  14By regulating the money price of all the other parts of the rude produce of land, it regulates that of the materials of ^jalmost^j all manufactures. By regulating the money price of labour, it regulates that of manufacturing art and industry. And by regulating both, it regulates that of the compleat manufacture. The money price of labour, and of every thing that is the produce either of land or labour, must necessarily either rise or fall in proportion to the money price of corn.

  15Though in consequence of the bounty, therefore, the farmer should be enabled to sell his corn for four shillings the bushel instead of three and sixpence, and to pay his landlord a money rent proportionable to this rise in the money price of his produce; yet if, in consequence of this rise in the price of corn, four shillings will purchase no more ^khome–made^k goods of any other kind than three and sixpence would have done before, neither the circumstances of the farmer, nor those of the landlord, will be ^lmuch^l mended by this change. The farmer will not be able to cultivate ^mmuch^m better: the landlord will not be able to live ⁿmuchⁿ better. ^oIn the purchase of foreign commodities this enhancement in the price of corn may give them some little advantage . In that of home–made commodities it can give them none at all. And almost the whole expence of the farmer, and the far greater part, ^peven of ^p that of the landlord, is in home–made commodities.^o

  16That degradation in the value of silver which is the effect of the fertility of the mines, and which operates equally, or very near equally, through the greater part of the commercial world, is a matter of very little consequence to any particular country. The consequent rise of all money prices, though it does not make those who receive them really richer, does not make them really poorer. A service of plate becomes really cheaper, and every thing else remains precisely of the same real value as before.

  17But that degradation in the value of silver which, being the effect either of the peculiar situation, or of the political institutions of a particular country, takes place only in that country, is a matter of very great consequence, which, far from tending to make any body really richer, tends to make every body really poorer. The rise in the money price of all commodities, which is in this case peculiar to that country, tends to discourage more or less every sort of industry which is carried on within it, and to enable foreign nations, by furnishing almost all sorts of goods for a smaller quantity of silver than its own workmen can afford to do, to undersell them, not only in the foreign, but even in the home market.

  18It is the peculiar situation of Spain and Portugal as proprietors of the mines, to be the distributors of gold and silver to all the other countries of Europe. Those metals ought naturally, therefore, to be somewhat cheaper in Spain and Portugal than in any other part of Europe. The difference, however, should be no more than the amount of the freight and insurance; and, on account of the great value and small bulk of those metals, their freight is no great matter, and their insurance is the same as that of any other goods of equal value. Spain and Portugal, therefore, could suffer very little from their peculiar situation, if they did not aggravate its disadvantages by their political institutions.

  19Spain by taxing, and Portugal by prohibiting the exportation of gold and silver, load that exportation with the expence of smuggling, and raise the value of those metals in other countries so much more above what it is in their own, by the whole amount of this expence.18 When you dam up a stream of water, as soon as the dam is full, as much water must run over the dam–head as if there was no dam at all.19 The prohibition of exportation cannot detain a greater quantity of gold and silver in Spain and Portugal than what they can afford to employ, than what the annual produce of their land and labour will allow them to employ, in coin, plate, gilding, and other ornaments of gold and silver.20 When they have got this quantity the dam is full, and the whole stream which flows in afterwards must run over. The annual exportation of gold and silver from Spain and Portugal accordingly is, by all accounts, notwithstanding these restraints, very near equal to the whole annual importation. As the water, however, must always be deeper behind the dam–head than before it, so the quantity of gold and silver which these restraints detain in Spain and Portugal must, in proportion to the annual produce of their land and labour, be greater ^qthan^q what is to be found in other countries. The higher and stronger the dam–head, the greater must be the difference in the depth of water behind and before it. The higher the tax, the higher the penalties with which the prohibition is guarded, the more vigilant and severe the police which looks after the execution of the law, the greater must be the difference in the proportion of gold and silver to the annual produce of the land and labour of Spain and Portugal, and to that of other countries. It is said accordingly to be very considerable, and that you frequently find there a profusion of plate in houses, where there is nothing else which would, in other countries, be thought suitable or correspondent to this sort of magnificence. The cheapness of gold and silver, or what is the same thing, the dearness of all commodities, which is the necessary effect of this redundancy of the precious metals, discourages both the agriculture and manufactures of Spain and Portugal, and enables foreign nations to supply them with many sorts of rude, and with almost all sorts of manufactured produce, for a smaller quantity of gold and silver than what they themselves can either raise or make them for at home.21 The tax and prohibition operate in two different ways. They not only lower very much the value of the precious metals in Spain and Portugal, but by detaining there a certain quantity of those metals which would otherwise flow over other countries, they keep up their value in those other countries somewhat above what it otherwise would be, and thereby give those countries a double advantage in their commerce with Spain and Portugal. Open the flood–gates, and there will presently be less water above, and more below, the dam–head, and it will soon come to a level in both places. Remove the tax and the prohibition, and as the quantity of gold and silver will diminish considerably in Spain and Portugal, so it will increase somewhat in other countries, and the value of those metals, their proportion to the annual produce of land and labour, will soon come to a level, or very near to a level, in all. The loss which Spain and Portugal could sustain by this exportation of their gold and silver would be altogether nominal and imaginary. The nominal value of their goods, and of the annual produce of their land and labour, would fall, and would be expressed or represented by a smaller quantity of silver than before: but their real value would be the same as before, and would be sufficient to maintain, command, and employ, the same quantity of labour. As the nominal value of their goods would fall, the real value of what remained of their gold and silver would rise, and a smaller quantity of those metals would answer all the same purposes of commerce and circulation which had employed a greater quantity before. The gold and silver which would go abroad would not go abroad for nothing, but would bring back an equal value of goods of some kind or another.22 Those goods too would not be all matters of mere luxury and expence, to be consumed by idle people who produce nothing in return for their consumption. As the real wealth and revenue of idle people would not be augmented by this extraordinary exportation of gold and silver, so neither would their consumption be much augmented by it. Those goods would, probably, the greater part of them, and certainly some part of them, consist in materials, tools, and provisions, for the employment and maintenance of industrious people, who would reproduce, with a profit, the full value of their consumption. A part of the dead stock of the society would thus be turned into active stock, and would put into motion a greater quantity of industry than had been employed before. The annual produce of their land and labour would immediately be augmented a little, and in a few years would, probably, be augmented a great deal; their industry being thus relieved from one of the most oppressive burdens which it at present labours under.

  20The bounty upon the exportation of corn necessarily operates exactly in the same way as this absurd policy of Spain and Portugal. Whatever be the actual state of tillage, it renders our corn somewhat dearer in the home market than it otherwise would be in that state, and somewhat cheaper in the foreign; and as the average money price of corn regulates more or less that of all other commodities, it lowers the value of silver considerably in the one, and tends to raise it a little in the other. It enables foreigners, the Dutch in particular, not only to eat our corn cheaper than they otherwise could do, but sometimes to eat it cheaper than even our own people can do upon the same occasions; as we are assured by an excellent authority, that of Sir Matthew Decker.23 It hinders our own workmen from furnishing their goods for so small a quantity of silver as they otherwise might do; and enables the Dutch to furnish their’s for a smaller. It tends to render our manufactures somewhat dearer in every market, and their’s somewhat cheaper than they otherwise would be, and consequently to give their industry a double advantage over our own.

  21The bounty, as it raises in the home market, not ^rso much ^r the real, ^sas^s the nominal price of our corn, as it augments, not the quantity of labour which a certain quantity of corn can maintain and employ, but only the quantity of silver which it will exchange for, it discourages our manufactures, without rendering ^tany considerable^t service either to our farmers or country gentlemen. It puts, indeed, a little more money into the pockets of both, and it will perhaps be somewhat difficult to persuade the greater part of them that this is not rendering them a very ^uconsiderable^u service. But if this money sinks in its value, in the quantity of labour, provisions, and ^vhome–made^v commodities of all different kinds which it is capable of purchasing, as much as it rises in its quantity, the service will be ^wlittle more than^w nominal and imaginary.

  22There is, perhaps, but one set of men in the whole commonwealth to whom the bounty either was or could be ^xessentially^x serviceable. These were the corn merchants, the exporters and importers of corn. In years of plenty the bounty necessarily occasioned a greater exportation than would otherwise have taken place; and by hindering the plenty of one year from relieving the scarcity of another, it occasioned in years of scarcity a greater importation than would otherwise have been necessary.24 It increased the business of the corn merchant in both; and in years of scarcity, it not only enabled him to import a greater quantity, but to sell it for a better price, and consequently with a greater profit than he could otherwise have made, if the plenty of one year had not been more or less hindered from relieving the scarcity of another. It is in this set of men, accordingly, that I have observed the greatest zeal for the continuance or renewal of the bounty.

  23Our country gentlemen, when they imposed the high duties upon the importation of foreign corn, which in times of moderate plenty amount to a prohibition,25 and when they established the bounty, seem to have imitated the conduct of our manufacturers.26 By the one institution, they secured to themselves the monopoly of the home–market, and by the other they endeavoured to prevent that market from ever being overstocked with their commodity. By both they endeavoured to raise its real value, in the same manner as our manufacturers had, by the like institutions, raised the real value of many different sorts of manufactured goods. They did not perhaps attend to the great and essential difference which nature has established between corn and almost every other sort of goods. When either by the monopoly of the home–market, or by a bounty upon exportation, you enable our woollen or linen manufacturers to sell their goods for somewhat a better price than they otherwise could get for them, you raise, not only the nominal, but the real price of those goods. You render them equivalent to a greater quantity of labour and subsistence, you encrease not only the nominal, but the real profit, the real wealth and revenue of those ^ymanufacturers^y , and you enable them either to live better themselves, or to employ a greater quantity of labour in those particular manufactures. You really encourage those manufactures, and direct towards them a greater quantity of the industry of the country, than what would probably go to them of its own accord.27 But when by the like institutions you raise the nominal or money–price of corn, you do not raise its real value. You do not increase the real wealth, the real revenue either of our farmers or country gentlemen. You do not encourage the growth of corn, because you do not enable them to maintain and employ more labourers in raising it. The nature of things has stamped upon corn a real value which ^zcannot be altered by merely altering its money price^z .28 No bounty upon exportation, no monopoly of the home market, can raise ^athat value^a .29 The freest competition cannot lower it. Through the world in general that value is equal to the quantity of labour which it can maintain, and in every particular place it is equal to the quantity of labour which it can maintain in the way, whether liberal, moderate, or scanty, in which labour is commonly maintained in that place. Woollen or linen cloth are not the regulating commodities by which the real value of all other commodities must be finally measured and determined. Corn is. The real value of every other commodity is finally measured and determined by the proportion which its average money price bears to the average money price of corn. The real value of corn does not vary with those variations in its average money price, which sometimes occur from one century to another. It is the real value of silver which varies with them.

  24Bounties upon the exportation of any home–made commodity are liable, first, to that general objection which may be made to all the different expedients of the mercantile system; the objection of forcing some part of the industry of the country into a channel less advantageous than that in which it would run of its own accord:30 and, secondly, to the particular objection of forcing it, not only into a channel that is less advantageous, but into one that is actually disadvantageous; the trade which cannot be carried on but by means of a bounty being necessarily a losing trade. The bounty upon the exportation of corn is liable to this further objection, that it can in no respect promote the raising of that particular commodity of which it was meant to encourage the production. When our country gentlemen, therefore, demanded the establishment of the bounty, though they acted in imitation of our merchants and manufacturers, they did not act with that compleat comprehension of their own interest which commonly directs the conduct of those two other orders of people.31 They loaded the publick revenue with a very considerable expence;32^bthey imposed a very heavy tax upon the whole body of the people;^b but they did not, in any ^csensible degree,^c increase the real value of their own commodity; and by lowering somewhat the real value of silver, they discouraged, in some degree, the general industry of the country, and, instead of advancing, retarded more or less the improvement of their own lands, which necessarily depends upon the general industry of the country.

  25To encourage the production of any commodity, a bounty upon production, one should imagine, would have a more direct operation, than one upon exportation.33 It ^dwould, besides, impose only one tax upon the people , that which they must contribute in order to pay the bounty.34 Instead of raising, it would tend to lower the price of the commodity in the home market; and thereby, instead of imposing a second tax upon the people, it might, at least, in part, repay them for what they had contributed to the first. Bounties upon production, however, have been very^d rarely granted. The prejudices established by the commercial system have taught us to believe, that national wealth arises more immediately from exportation than from production. It has been more favoured accordingly, as the more immediate means of bringing money into the country. Bounties upon production, it has been said too, have been found by experience more liable to frauds than those upon exportation. How far this is true, I know not. That bounties upon exportation have been abused to many fraudulent purposes, is very well known. But it is not the interest of merchants and manufacturers, the great inventors of all these expedients, that the home market should be overstocked with their goods, an event which a bounty upon production might sometimes occasion. A bounty upon exportation, by enabling them to send abroad the surplus part, and to keep up the price of what remains in the home market, effectually prevents this. Of all the expedients of the mercantile system, accordingly, it is the one of which they are the fondest. I have known the different undertakers of some particular works agree privately among themselves to give a bounty out of their own pockets upon the exportation of a certain proportion of the goods which they dealt in. This expedient succeeded so well, that it more than doubled the price of their goods in the home market, notwithstanding a very considerable increase in the produce. The operation of the bounty upon corn must have been wonderfully different, if it has lowered the money price of that commodity.

  26Something like a bounty upon production, however, has been granted upon some particular occasions. The ^etonnage bounties^e given to the white–herring and whale–fisheries35 may, perhaps, be considered as somewhat of this nature. They tend directly^f, it may be supposed,^f to render the goods cheaper in the home market than they otherwise would be^g . In other respects their effects^h, it must be acknowledged,^h are the same as those of bounties upon exportation. By means of them a part of the capital of the country is employed in bringing goods to market, of which the price does not repay the cost, together with the ordinary profits of stock.

  27ⁱ But though the ^jtonnage^j bounties to those fisheries do not contribute to the opulence of the nation, ^kit^k may perhaps be ^lthought, that they contribute^l to its defence, by augmenting the number of its sailors and shipping.36 This^m, it may be alleged, may sometimes^m be done by means of such bounties at a much smaller expence, than by keeping up a great standing navy, if I may use such an expression,ⁿ in the same ^oway^o as a standing army.

  28^p Notwithstanding these favourable allegations, however, the following considerations dispose me to believe, that in granting at least one of these bounties, the legislature has been very grossly imposed upon.37

  29First, the herring buss bounty seems too large.

  30 From the commencement of the winter fishing 1771 to the end of the winter fishing 1781, the tonnage bounty upon the herring buss fishery has been at thirty shillings the ton. During these eleven years the whole number of barrels caught by the herring buss fishery of Scotland amounted to 378,347. The herrings caught and cured at sea, are called ^qsea sticks^q . In order to render them what are called merchantable herrings, it is necessary to repack them with an additional quantity of salt; and in this case, it is reckoned, that three barrels of ^rsea sticks^r , are usually repacked into two barrels of merchantable herrings. The number of barrels of merchantable herrings, therefore, caught during these eleven years, will amount only, according to this account, to 252,231⅓. During these eleven years the tonnage bounties paid amounted to 155,463l. 11s. or to 8s.2¼d. upon every barrel of ^ssea sticks^s , and to 12s. 3¾d. upon every barrel of merchantable herrings.

  31The salt with which these herrings are cured, is sometimes Scotch, and sometimes foreign salt; both which are delivered free of all excise duty to the fish–curers. The excise duty upon Scotch salt is at present 1s. 6d. that upon foreign salt 10s. the bushel. A barrel of herrings is supposed to require about one bushel and one–fourth of a bushel foreign salt. Two bushels are the supposed average of Scotch salt. If the herrings are entered for exportation, no part of this duty is paid up; if entered for home consumption, whether the herrings were cured with foreign or with Scotch salt, only one shilling the barrel is paid up.38 It was the old Scotch duty upon a bushel of salt, the quantity which, at a low estimation, had been supposed necessary for curing a barrel of herrings. In Scotland, foreign salt is very little used for any other purpose but the curing of fish. But from the 5th April 1771, to the 5th April 1782, the quantity of foreign salt imported amounted to 936,974 bushels, at eighty–four pounds the bushel: the quantity of Scotch salt, delivered from the works to the fish–curers, to no more than 168,226, at fifty–six pounds the bushel only. It would appear, therefore, that it is principally foreign salt that is used in the fisheries. Upon every barrel of herrings exported there is, besides, a bounty of 2s. 8d. and more than two–thirds of the buss caught herrings are exported. Put all these things together and you will find, that, during these eleven years, every barrel of buss caught herrings, cured with Scotch salt when exported, has cost government 17s. 11¾d.; and when entered for home consumption 14s. 3¾d: and that every barrel cured with foreign salt, when exported, has cost government 1l. 7s. 5¾d; and when entered for home consumption 1l. 3s. 9¾d. The price of a barrel of good merchantable herrings runs from seventeen and eighteen to four and five and twenty shillings;39 about a guinea at an average* .

  32Secondly, the bounty to the white herring fishery is a tonnage bounty; and is proportioned to the burden of the ship, not to her diligence or success in the fishery; and it has, I am afraid, been too common for vessels to fit out for the sole purpose of catching, not the fish, but the bounty.40 In the year 1759, when the bounty was at fifty shillings the ton, the whole buss fishery of Scotland brought in only four barrels of sea sticks. In that year each barrel of sea sticks cost government in bounties alone 113l. 15s.; each barrel of merchantable herrings 159l. 7s. 6d.

  33Thirdly, the mode of fishing for which this tonnage bounty in the white herring fishery has been given (by busses or decked vessels from twenty to eighty tons burthen), seems not so well adapted to the situation of Scotland as to that of Holland; from the practice of which country it appears to have been borrowed. Holland lies at a great distance from the seas to which herrings are known principally to resort; and can, therefore, carry on that fishery only in decked vessels, which can carry water and provisions sufficient for a voyage to a distant sea. But the Hebrides or western islands, the islands of Shetland, and the northern and north–western coasts of Scotland, the countries in whose neighbourhood the herring fishery is principally carried on, are every where intersected by arms of the sea which run up a considerable way into the land, and which, in the language of the country, are called sea–lochs. It is to these sea–lochs that the herrings principally resort, during the seasons in which they visit those seas; for the visits of this, and, I am assured, of many other sorts of fish, are not quite regular and constant. A boat fishery, therefore, seems to be the mode of fishing best adapted to the peculiar situation of Scotland; the fishers carrying the herrings on shore, as fast as they are taken, to be either cured or consumed fresh. But the great encouragement, which a bounty of thirty shillings the ton gives to the buss fishery, is necessarily a discouragement to the boat fishery; which, having no such bounty, cannot bring its cured fish to market upon the same terms as the buss fishery.41 The boat–fishery, accordingly, which, before the establishment of the buss bounty, was very considerable, and is said to have employed a number of seamen, not inferior to what the buss fishery employs at present, is now gone almost entirely to decay. Of the former extent, however, of this now ruined and abandoned fishery, I must acknowledge, that I cannot pretend to speak with much precision. As no bounty was paid upon the outfit of the boat–fishery, no account was taken of it by the officers of the customs or salt duties.

  34Fourthly, in many parts of Scotland, during certain seasons of the year, herrings make no inconsiderable part of the food of the common people. A bounty, which tended to lower their price in the home market, might contribute a good deal to the relief of a great number of our fellow–subjects, whose circumstances are by no means affluent. But the herring buss bounty contributes to no such good purpose. It has ruined the boat fishery, which is, by far, the best adapted for the supply of the home market, and the additional bounty of 2s. 8d. the barrel upon exportation, carries the greater part, more than two thirds, of the produce of the buss fishery abroad. Between thirty and forty years ago, before the establishment of the buss bounty, sixteen shillings the barrel, I have been assured, was the common price of white herrings. Between ten and fifteen years ago, before the boat fishery was entirely ruined, the price is said to have run from seventeen to twenty shillings the barrel. For these last five years, it has, at an average, been at twenty–five shillings the barrel. This high price, however, may have been owing to the real scarcity of the herrings upon the coast of Scotland. I must observe too, that the cask or barrel, which is usually sold with the herrings, and of which the price is included in all the foregoing prices, has, since the commencement of the American war, risen to about double its former price, or from about three shillings, to about six shillings. I must likewise observe, that the accounts I have received of the prices of former times, have been by no means quite uniform and consistent; and an old man of great accuracy and experience has assured me, that more than fifty years ago, a guinea was the usual price of a barrel of good merchantable herrings; and this, I imagine, may still be looked upon as the average price. All accounts, however, I think, agree, that the price has not been lowered in the home market, in consequence of the buss bounty.

  35 When the undertakers of fisheries, after such liberal bounties have been bestowed upon them, continue to sell their commodity at the same, or even at a higher price than they were accustomed to do before, it might be expected that their profits should be very great; and it is not improbable that those of some individuals may have been so. In general, however, I have every reason to believe, they have been quite otherwise. The usual effect of such bounties is to encourage rash undertakers to adventure in a business, which they do not understand, and what they lose by their own negligence and ignorance, more than compensates all that they can gain by the utmost liberality of government. In 1750, by the same act, which first gave the bounty of thirty shillings the ton for the encouragement of the white herring fishery, (the 23 Geo. II. chap. 24.) a joint stock company was erected,42 with a capital of five hundred thousand pounds, to which the subscribers (over and above all other encouragements, the tonnage bounty just now mentioned, the exportation bounty of two shillings and eight pence the barrel, the delivery of both British and foreign salt duty free) were, during the space of fourteen years, for every hundred pounds which they subscribed and paid in to the stock of the society, entitled to three pounds a year, to be paid by the receiver–general of the customs in equal half yearly payments. Besides this great company, the residence of whose governor and directors was to be in London, it was declared lawful to erect different fishing–chambers, in all the different out–ports of the kingdom, provided a sum not less than ten thousand pounds was subscribed into the capital of each, to be managed at its own risk, and for its own profit and loss. The same annuity, and the same ^uencouragements^u of all kinds, were given to the trade of those inferior chambers, as to that of the great company. The subscription of the great company was soon filled up, and several different fishing–chambers were erected in the different out–ports of the kingdom. In spite of all these encouragements, almost all those different companies, both great and small, lost either the whole, or the greater part of their capitals; scarce a vestige now remains of any of them, and the white herring fishery is now entirely, or almost entirely, carried on by private adventurers.

  36If any particular manufacture was necessary, indeed, for the defence of the society, it might not always be prudent to depend upon our neighbours for the supply; and if such manufacture could not otherways be supported at home, it might not be unreasonable that all the other branches of industry should be taxed in order to support it. The bounties upon the exportation of British–made sail–cloth,43 and British–made gun–powder,44 may, perhaps, both be vindicated upon this principle.

  37But though it can very seldom be reasonable to tax the industry of the great body of the people, in order to support that of some particular class of manufacturers; yet in the wantonness of great prosperity, when the publick enjoys a greater revenue than it knows well what to do with, to give such bounties to favourite manufactures, may, perhaps, be as natural, as to incur any other idle expence. In publick, as well as in private expences, great wealth may, perhaps, frequently be admitted as an apology for great folly. But there must surely be something more than ordinary absurdity, in continuing such profusion in times of general difficulty and distress.

  38What is called a bounty is sometimes no more than a drawback, and consequently is not liable to the same objections as what is properly a bounty. The bounty, for example, upon refined sugar exported, may be considered as a drawback of the duties upon the brown and muscovado sugars, from which it is made.45 The bounty upon wrought silk exported, a drawback of the duties upon raw and thrown silk imported.46 The bounty upon gunpowder exported, a drawback of the duties upon brimstone and saltpetre imported.47 In the language of the customs those allowances only are called drawbacks, which are given upon goods exported in the same form in which they are imported. When that form has been ^vso^v altered by manufacture of any kind, ^was to come under a new denomination,^w they are called bounties.

  39Premiums given by the publick to artists and manufacturers who excel in their particular occupations, are not liable to the same objections as bounties.48 By encouraging extraordinary dexterity and ingenuity, they serve to keep up the emulation of the workmen actually employed in those respective occupations, and are not considerable enough to turn towards any one of them a greater share of the capital of the country than what would go to it of its own accord. Their tendency is not to overturn the natural balance of employments,49 but to render the work which is done in each as perfect and compleat as possible. The expence of premiums, besides, is very trifling; that of bounties very great. The bounty upon corn alone has sometimes cost the publick in one year, more than three hundred thousand pounds.50

  40Bounties are sometimes called premiums, as drawbacks are sometimes called bounties. But we must in all cases attend to the nature of the thing, without paying any regard to the word.

  Digression concerning the Corn Trade and Corn Laws^a–^a

  1I cannot conclude this chapter concerning bounties, without observing that the praises which have been bestowed upon the law which establishes the bounty upon the exportation of corn, and upon that system of regulations which is connected with it, are altogether unmerited. A particular examination of the nature of the corn trade, and of the principal British laws which relate to it, will sufficiently demonstrate the truth of this assertion. The great importance of this subject must justify the length of the digression.

  2The trade of the corn merchant is composed of four different branches, which, though they may sometimes be all carried on by the same person, are in their own nature four separate and distinct trades. These are, first, the trade of the inland dealer; secondly, that of the merchant importer for home consumption; thirdly, that of the merchant exporter of home produce for foreign consumption; and, fourthly, that of the merchant carrier, or of the importer of corn in order to export it again.

  3I. The interest of the inland dealer, and that of the great body of the people, how opposite soever they may at first sight appear, are, even in years of the greatest scarcity, exactly the same. It is his interest to raise the price of his corn as high as the real scarcity of the season requires, and it can never be his interest to raise it higher. By raising the price he discourages the consumption, and puts every body more or less, but particularly the inferior ranks of people, upon thrift and good management. If, by raising it too high, he discourages the consumption so much that the supply of the season is likely to go beyond the consumption of the season, and to last for some time after the next crop begins to come in, he runs the hazard, not only of losing a considerable part of his corn by natural causes, but of being obliged to sell what remains of it for much less than what he might have had for it several months before. If by not raising the price high enough he discourages the consumption so little, that the supply of the season is likely to fall short of the consumption of the season, he not only loses a part of the profit which he might otherwise have made, but he exposes the people to suffer before the end of the season, instead of the hardships of a dearth, the dreadful horrors of a famine. It is the interest of the people that their daily, weekly, and monthly consumption, should be proportioned as exactly as possible to the supply of the season. The interest of the inland corn dealer is the same. By supplying them, as nearly as he can judge, in this proportion, he is likely to sell all his corn for the highest price, and with the greatest profit; and his knowledge of the state of the crop, and of his daily, weekly, and monthly sales, enable him to judge, with more or less accuracy, how far they really are supplied in this manner. Without intending the interest of the people, he is necessarily led, by a regard to his own interest, to treat them, even in years of scarcity, pretty much in the same manner as the prudent master of a vessel is sometimes obliged to treat his crew. When he foresees that provisions are likely to run short, he puts them upon short allowance. Though from excess of caution he should sometimes do this without any real necessity, yet all the inconveniencies which his crew can thereby suffer are inconsiderable in comparison of the danger, misery, and ruin, to which they might sometimes be exposed by a less provident conduct. Though from excess of avarice, in the same manner, the inland corn merchant should sometimes raise the price of his corn somewhat higher than the scarcity of the season requires, yet all the inconveniencies which the people can suffer from this conduct, which effectually secures them from a famine in the end of the season, are inconsiderable in comparison of what they might have been exposed to by a more liberal way of dealing in the beginning of it. The corn merchant himself is likely to suffer the most by this excess of avarice; not only from the indignation which it generally excites against him, but, though he should escape the effects of this indignation, from the quantity of corn which it necessarily leaves upon his hands in the end of the season, and which, if the next season happens to prove favourable, he must always sell for a much lower price than he might otherwise have had.

  4Were it possible, indeed, for one great company of merchants to possess themselves of the whole crop of an extensive country, it might, perhaps, be their interest to deal with it as the Dutch are said to do with the spiceries of the Molluccas,1 to destroy or throw away a considerable part of it, in order to keep up the price of the rest. But it is scarce possible, even by the violence of law, to establish such an extensive monopoly with regard to corn; and, wherever the law leaves the trade free, it is of all commodities the least liable to be engrossed or monopolized by the force of a few large capitals, which buy up the greater part of it. Not only its value far exceeds what the capitals of a few private men are capable of purchasing, but, supposing they were capable of purchasing it, the manner in which it is produced renders this purchase altogether impracticable. As in every civilized country it is the commodity of which the annual consumption is the greatest, so a greater quantity of industry is annually employed in producing corn than in producing any other commodity. When it first comes from the ground too, it is necessarily divided among a greater number of owners than any other commodity; and these owners can never be collected into one place like a number of independent manufacturers, but are necessarily scattered through all the different corners of the country. These first owners either immediately supply the consumers in their own neighbourhood, or they supply other inland dealers who supply those consumers. The inland dealers in corn, therefore, including both the farmer and the baker, are necessarily more numerous than the dealers in any other commodity, and their dispersed situation renders it altogether impossible for them to enter into any general combination.2 If in a year of scarcity therefore, any of them should find that he had a good deal more corn upon hand than, at the current price, he could hope to dispose of before the end of the season, he would never think of keeping up this price to his own loss, and to the sole benefit of his rivals and competitors, but would immediately lower it, in order to get rid of his corn before the new crop began to come in. The same motives, the same interests, which would thus regulate the conduct of any one dealer, would regulate that of every other, and oblige them all in general to sell their corn at the price which, according to the best of their judgment, was most suitable to the scarcity or plenty of the season.

  5Whoever examines, with attention, the history of the dearths and famines which have afflicted any part of Europe, during either the course of the present or that of the two preceding centuries, of several of which we have pretty exact accounts, will find, I believe, that a dearth never has arisen from any combination among the inland dealers in corn, nor from any other cause but a real scarcity, occasioned sometimes, perhaps, and in some particular places, by the waste of war, but in by far the greatest number of cases, by the fault of the seasons; and that a famine has never arisen from any other cause but the violence of government attempting, by improper means, to remedy the inconveniencies of a dearth.

  6In an extensive corn country, between all the different parts of which there is a free commerce and communication, the scarcity occasioned by the most unfavourable seasons can never be so great as to produce a famine; and the scantiest crop, if managed with frugality and œconomy, will maintain, through the year, the same number of people that are commonly fed in a more affluent manner by one of moderate plenty. The seasons most unfavourable to the crop are those of excessive drought or excessive rain. But, as corn grows equally upon high and low lands, upon grounds that are disposed to be too wet, and upon those that are disposed to be too dry, either the drought or the rain which is hurtful to one part of the country is favourable to another; and though both in the wet and in the dry season the crop is a good deal less than in one more properly tempered, yet in both what is lost in one part of the country is in some measure compensated by what is gained in the other. In rice countries, where the crop not only requires a very moist soil, but where in a certain period of its growing it must be laid under water, the effects of a drought are much more dismal. Even in such countries, however, the drought is, perhaps, scarce ever so universal as necessarily to occasion a famine, if the government would allow a free trade. The drought in Bengal, a few years ago, might probably have occasioned a very great dearth. Some improper regulations, some injudicious restraints imposed by the servants of the East India Company upon the rice trade, contributed, perhaps, to turn that dearth into a famine.3

  7When the government, in order to remedy the inconveniencies of a dearth, orders all the dealers to sell their corn at what it supposes a reasonable price, it either hinders them from bringing it to market, which may sometimes produce a famine even in the beginning of the season; or if they bring it thither, it enables the people, and thereby encourages them to consume it so fast, as must necessarily produce a famine before the end of the season. The unlimited, unrestrained freedom of the corn trade, as it is the only effectual preventative of the miseries of a famine, so it is the best palliative of the inconveniencies of a dearth; for the inconveniencies of a real scarcity cannot be remedied; they can only be palliated. No trade deserves more the full protection of the law, and no trade requires it so much; because no trade is so much exposed to popular odium.

  8In years of scarcity the inferior ranks of people impute their distress to the avarice of the corn merchant, who becomes the object of their hatred and indignation. Instead of making profit upon such occasions, therefore, he is often in danger of being utterly ruined, and of having his magazines plundered and destroyed by their violence. It is in years of scarcity, however, when prices are high, that the corn merchant expects to make his principal profit. He is generally in contract with some farmers to furnish him for a certain number of years with a certain quantity of corn at a certain price. This contract price is settled according to what is supposed to be the moderate and reasonable, that is, the ordinary or average price, which, before the late years of scarcity, was commonly about eight–and–twenty–shillings for the quarter of wheat, and for that of other grain in proportion. In years of scarcity, therefore, the corn merchant buys a great part of his corn for the ordinary price, and sells it for a much higher. That this extraordinary profit, however, is no more than sufficient to put his trade upon a fair level with other trades, and to compensate the many losses which he sustains upon other occasions, both from the perishable nature of the commodity itself, and from the frequent and unforeseen fluctuations of its price, seems evident enough, from this single circumstance, that great fortunes are as seldom made in this as in any other trade. The popular odium, however, which attends it in years of scarcity, the only years in which it can be very profitable, renders people of character and fortune averse to enter into it.4 It is abandoned to an inferior set of dealers; and millers, bakers, mealmen, and meal factors, together with a number of wretched hucksters, are almost the only middle people that, in the home market, come between the grower and the consumer.

  9The ancient policy of Europe, instead of discountenancing this popular odium against a trade so beneficial to the publick, seems, on the contrary, to have authorised and encouraged it.

  10By the 5th and 6th of Edward VI. cap. 14.5 it was enacted, That whoever should buy any corn or grain with intent to sell it again, should be reputed an unlawful engrosser, and should, for the first fault, suffer two months imprisonment, and forfeit the value of the corn; for the second, suffer six months imprisonment, and forfeit double the value; and for the third, be set in the pillory, suffer imprisonment during the king’s pleasure, and forfeit all his goods and chattels.6 The ancient policy of most other parts of Europe was no better than that of England.

  11Our ancestors seem to have imagined that the people would buy their corn cheaper of the farmer than of the corn merchant, who, they were afraid, would require, over and above the price which he paid to the farmer, an exorbitant profit to himself. They endeavoured, therefore, to annihilate his trade altogether. They even endeavoured to hinder as much as possible any middle man of any kind from coming in between the grower and the consumer; and this was the meaning of the many restraints which they imposed upon the trade of those whom they called kidders or carriers of corn, a trade which nobody was allowed to exercise without a licence ascertaining his qualifications as a man of probity and fair dealing. The authority of three justices of the peace was, by the statute of Edward VI. necessary, in order to grant this licence.7 But even this restraint was afterwards thought insufficient, and by a statute of Elizabeth, the privilege of granting it was confined to the quarter–sessions.8

  12The antient policy of Europe endeavoured in this manner to regulate agriculture, the great trade of the country, by maxims quite different from those which it established with regard to manufactures, the great trade of the towns. By leaving the farmer no other customers but either the ^bconsumers^b or ^ctheir^c immediate factors, the kidders and carriers of corn, it endeavoured to force him to exercise the trade, not only of a farmer, but of a corn merchant or corn retailer. On the contrary, it in many cases prohibited the manufacturer from exercising the trade of a shop–keeper, or from selling his own goods by retail. It meant by the one law to promote the general interest of the country, or to render corn cheap, without, perhaps, its being well understood how this was to be done. By the other it meant to promote that of a particular order of men, the shopkeepers, who would be so much undersold by the manufacturer, it was supposed, that their trade would be ruined if he was allowed to retail at all.

  13The manufacturer, however, though he had been allowed to keep a shop, and to sell his own goods by retail, could not have undersold the common shopkeeper. Whatever part of his capital he might have placed in his shop, he must have withdrawn it from his manufacture. In order to carry on his business on a level with that of other people, as he must have had the profit of a manufacturer on the one part, so he must have had that of a shopkeeper upon the other. Let us suppose, for example, that in the particular town where he lived, ten per cent. was the ordinary profit both of manufacturing and shopkeeping stock; he must in this case have charged upon every piece of his own goods which he sold in his shop, a profit of twenty per cent. When he carried them from his workhouse to his shop, he must have valued them at the price for which he could have sold them to a dealer or shopkeeper, who would have bought them by wholesale. If he valued them lower, he lost a part of the profit of his manufacturing capital. When again he sold them from his shop, unless he got the same price at which a shopkeeper would have sold them, he lost a part of the profit of his shopkeeping capital. Though he might appear, therefore, to make a double profit upon the same piece of goods, yet as these goods made successively a part of two distinct capitals, he made but a single profit upon the whole capital employed about them; and if he made less than this profit, he was a loser, or did not employ his whole capital with the same advantage as the greater part of his neighbours.

  14What the manufacturer was prohibited to do, the farmer was in some measure enjoined to do; to divide his capital between two different employments; to keep one part of it in his granaries and stack yard, for supplying the occasional demands of the market; and to employ the other in the cultivation of his land. But as he could not afford to employ the latter for less than the ordinary profits of farming stock, so he could as little afford to employ the former for less than the ordinary profits of mercantile stock. Whether the stock which really carried on the business of the corn merchant belonged to the person who was called a farmer, or to the person who was called a corn merchant, an equal profit was in both cases requisite, in order to indemnify its owner for employing it in this manner; in order to put his business upon a level with other trades, and in order to hinder him from having an interest to change it as soon as possible for some other. The farmer, therefore, who was thus forced to exercise the trade of a corn merchant, could not afford to sell his corn cheaper than any other corn merchant would have been obliged to do in the case of a free competition.

  15The dealer who can employ his whole stock in one single branch of business, has an advantage of the same kind with the workman who can employ his whole labour in one single operation.9 As the latter acquires a dexterity which enables him, with the same two hands, to perform a much greater quantity of work; so the former acquires so easy and ready a method of transacting his business, of buying and disposing of his goods, that with the same capital he can transact a much greater quantity of business. As the one can commonly afford his work a good deal cheaper, so the other can commonly afford his goods somewhat cheaper than if his stock and attention were both employed about a greater variety of objects. The greater part of manufacturers could not afford to retail their own goods so cheap as a vigilant and active shop–keeper, whose sole business it was to buy them by wholesale, and to retail them again. The greater part of farmers could still less afford to retail their own corn, ^dor^d to supply the inhabitants of a town, at perhaps four or five miles distance from the greater part of them, so cheap as a vigilant and active corn merchant, whose sole business it was to purchase corn by wholesale, to collect it into a great magazine, and to retail it again.

  16The law which prohibited the manufacturer from exercising the trade of a shopkeeper, endeavoured to force this division in the employment of stock to go on faster than it might otherwise have done. The law which obliged the farmer to exercise the trade of a corn merchant, endeavoured to hinder it from going on so fast. Both laws were evident violations of natural liberty, and therefore unjust; and they were both too as impolitick as they were unjust. It is the interest of every society, that things of this kind should never either be forced or obstructed. The man who employs either his labour or his stock in a greater variety of ways than his situation renders necessary, can never hurt his neighbour by underselling him. He may hurt himself, and he generally does so. Jack of all trades will never be rich, says the proverb. But the law ought always to trust people with the care of their own interest, as in their local situations they must generally be able to judge better of it than the legislator can do.10 The law, however, which obliged the farmer to exercise the trade of a corn merchant, was by far the most pernicious of the two.

  17It obstructed, not only that division in the employment of stock which is so advantageous to every society, but it obstructed likewise the improvement and cultivation of the land. By obliging the farmer to carry on two trades instead of one, it forced him to divide his capital into two parts, of which one only could be employed in cultivation. But if he had been at liberty to sell his whole crop to a corn merchant as fast as he could thresh it out, his whole capital might have returned immediately to the land, and have been employed in buying more cattle, and hiring more servants, in order to improve and cultivate it better. But by being obliged to sell his corn by retail, he was obliged to keep a great part of his capital in his granaries and stack yard through the year, and could not, therefore, cultivate so well as with the same capital he might otherwise have done. This law, therefore, necessarily obstructed the improvement of the land, and, instead of tending to render corn cheaper, must have tended to render it scarcer, and therefore dearer, than it would otherwise have been.

  18After the business of the farmer, that of the corn merchant is in reality the trade which, if properly protected and encouraged, would contribute the most to the raising of corn. It would support the trade of the farmer in the same manner as the trade of the wholesale dealer supports that of the manufacturer.

  19The wholesale dealer, by affording a ready market to the manufacturer, by taking his goods off his hand as fast as he can make them, and by sometimes even advancing their price to him before he has made them, enables him to keep his whole capital, and sometimes even more than his whole capital, constantly employed in manufacturing, and consequently to manufacture a much greater quantity of goods than if he was obliged to dispose of them himself to the immediate consumers, or even to the retailers. As the capital of the wholesale merchant too is generally sufficient to replace that of many manufacturers, this intercourse between him and them interests the owner of a large capital to support the owners of a great number of small ones, and to assist them in those losses and misfortunes which might otherwise prove ruinous to them.

  20An intercourse of the same kind universally established between the farmers and the corn merchants, would be attended with effects equally beneficial to the farmer. They would be enabled to keep their whole capitals, and even more than their whole capitals, constantly employed in cultivation. In case of any of those accidents, to which no trade is more liable than theirs, they would find in their ordinary customer, the wealthy corn merchant, a person who had both an interest to support them, and the ability to do it, and they would not, as at present, be entirely dependent upon the forbearance of their landlord, or the mercy of his steward. Were it possible, as perhaps it is not, to establish this intercourse universally, and all at once, were it possible to turn all at once the whole farming stock of the kingdom to its proper business, the cultivation of land, withdrawing it from every other employment into which any part of it may be at present diverted,11 and were it possible, in order to support and assist upon occasion the operations of this great stock, to provide all at once another stock almost equally great, it is not perhaps very easy to imagine how great, how extensive, and how sudden would be the improvement which this change of circumstances would alone produce upon the whole face of the country.

  21The statute of Edward VI.,12 therefore, by prohibiting as much as possible any middle man from coming in between the grower and the consumer, endeavoured to annihilate a trade, of which the free exercise is not only the best palliative of the inconveniencies of a dearth, but the best preventative of that calamity: after the trade of the farmer, no trade contributing so much to the growing of corn as that of the corn merchant.

  22The rigour of this law was afterwards softened by several subsequent statutes, which successively permitted the engrossing of corn when the price of wheat should not exceed twenty, twenty–four, thirty–two, and forty shillings the quarter. At last, by the 15th of Charles II. c. 7. the engrossing or buying of corn in order to sell it again, as long as the price of wheat did not exceed forty–eight shillings the quarter, and that of other grain in proportion, was declared lawful to all persons not being forestallers, that is, not selling again in the same market within three months.13 All the freedom which the trade of the inland corn dealer has ever yet enjoyed, was bestowed upon it by this statute.14 The statute of the twelfth of the present king, which repeals almost all the other ancient laws against engrossers and forestallers, does not repeal the restrictions of this particular statute, which therefore still continue in force.15

  23This statute, however, authorises in some measure two very absurd popular prejudices.

  24First, it supposes that when the price of wheat has risen so high as forty–eight shillings the quarter, and that of other grain in proportion, corn is likely to be so engrossed as to hurt the people. But from what has been already said, it seems evident enough that corn can at no price be so engrossed by the inland dealers as to hurt the people: and forty–eight shillings the quarter besides, though it may be considered as a very high price, yet in years of scarcity it is a price which frequently takes place immediately after harvest, when scarce any part of the new crop can be sold off, and when it is impossible even for ignorance to suppose that any part of it can be so engrossed as to hurt the people.

  25Secondly, it supposes that there is a certain price at which corn is likely to be forestalled, that is, bought up in order to be sold again soon after in the same market, so as to hurt the people. But if a merchant ever buys up corn, either going to a particular market or in a particular market, in order to sell it again soon after in the same market, it must be because he judges that the market cannot be so liberally supplied through the whole season as upon that particular occasion, and that the price, therefore, must soon rise. If he judges wrong in this, and if the price does not rise, he not only loses the whole profit of the stock which he employs in this manner, but a part of the stock itself, by the expence and loss which necessarily ^eattend^e the storing and keeping of corn. He hurts himself, therefore, much more essentially than he can hurt even the particular people whom he may hinder from supplying themselves upon that particular market day, because they may afterwards supply themselves just as cheap upon any other market day. If he judges right, instead of hurting the great body of the people, he renders them a most important service. By making them feel the inconveniencies of a dearth somewhat earlier than they otherwise might do, he prevents their feeling them afterwards so severely as they certainly would do, if the cheapness of price encouraged them to consume faster than suited the real scarcity of the season. When the scarcity is real, the best thing that can be done for the people is to divide the inconveniencies of it as equally as possible through all the different months, and weeks, and days of the year. The interest of the corn merchant makes him study to do this as exactly as he can; and as no other person can have either the same interest, or the same knowledge, or the same abilities to do it so exactly as he, this most important operation of commerce ought to be trusted entirely to him; or, in other words, the corn trade, so far at least as concerns the supply of the home–market, ought to be left perfectly free.

  26 The popular fear of engrossing and forestalling may be compared to the popular terrors and suspicions of witchcraft.16 The unfortunate wretches accused of this latter crime were not more innocent of the misfortunes imputed to them, than those who have been accused of the former. The law which put an end to all prosecutions against witchcraft, which put it out of any man’s power to gratify his own malice by accusing his neighbour of that imaginary crime, seems effectually to have put an end to those fears and suspicions, by taking away the great cause which encouraged and supported them. The law which should restore entire freedom to the inland trade of corn, would probably prove as effectual to put an end to the popular fears of engrossing and forestalling.

  27The 15th of Charles II. c. 7. however, with all its imperfections, has perhaps contributed more both to the plentiful supply of the home market, and to the increase of tillage, than any other law in the statute book. It is from this law that the inland corn trade has derived all the liberty and protection which it has ever yet enjoyed; and both the supply of the home market, and the interest of tillage, are much more effectually promoted by the inland, than either by the importation or exportation trade.

  28The proportion of the average quantity of all sorts of grain imported into Great Britain to that of all sorts of grain consumed, it has been computed by the author of the tracts upon the corn trade, does not exceed that of one to five hundred and seventy.17 For supplying the home market, therefore, the importance of the inland trade must be to that of the importation trade as five hundred and seventy to one.

  29The average quantity of all sorts of grain exported from Great Britain does not, according to the same author, exceed the one–and–thirtieth part of the annual produce.18 For the encouragement of tillage, therefore, by providing a market for the home produce, the importance of the inland trade must be to that of the exportation trade as thirty to one.

  30I have no great faith in political arithmetick, and I mean not to warrant the exactness of either of these computations19 . I mention them only in order to show of how much less consequence, in the opinion of the most judicious and experienced persons, the foreign trade of corn is than the home trade. The great cheapness of corn in the years immediately preceding the establishment of the bounty, may perhaps, with reason, be ascribed in some measure to the operation of this statute of Charles II., which had been enacted about five–and–twenty years before, and which had therefore full time to produce its effect.

  31A very few words will sufficiently explain all that I have to say concerning the other three branches of the corn trade.

  32II. The trade of the merchant importer of foreign corn for home consumption, evidently contributes to the immediate supply of the home market, and must so far be immediately beneficial to the great body of the people. It tends, indeed, to lower somewhat the average money price of corn, but not to diminish its real value, or the quantity of labour which it is capable of maintaining. If importation was at all times free, our farmers and country gentlemen would, probably, one year with another, get less money for their corn than they do at present, when importation is at most times in effect prohibited; but the money which they got would be of more value, would buy more goods of all other kinds, and would employ more labour. Their real wealth, their real revenue, therefore, would be the same as at present, though it might be expressed by a smaller quantity of silver; and they would neither be disabled nor discouraged from cultivating corn as much as they do at present. On the contrary, as the rise in the real value of silver, in consequence of lowering the money price of corn, lowers somewhat the money price of all other commodities, it gives the industry of the country, where it takes place, some advantage in all foreign markets, and thereby tends to encourage and increase that industry. But the extent of the home market for corn must be in proportion to the general industry of the country where it grows, or to the number of those who produce something else, and therefore have something else, or what comes to the same thing, the price of something else, to give in exchange for corn. But in every country the home market, as it is the nearest and most convenient, so is it likewise the greatest and most important market for corn. That rise in the real value of silver, therefore, which is the effect of lowering the average money price of corn, tends to enlarge the greatest and most important market for corn, and thereby to encourage, instead of discouraging, its growth.

  33By the 22d of Charles II. c. 13. the importation of wheat, whenever the price in the home market did not exceed fifty–three shillings and four pence the quarter, was subjected to a duty of sixteen shillings the quarter; and to a duty of eight shillings whenever the price did not exceed four pounds.20 The former of these two prices has, for more than a century past, taken place only in times of very great scarcity; and the latter has, so far as I know, not taken place at all. Yet, till wheat had risen above this latter price, it was by this statute subjected to a very high duty; and, till it had risen above the former, to a duty which amounted to a prohibition. The importation of other sorts of grain was restrained ^fat rates, and^f by duties^g, in proportion to the value of the grain, almost equally^g high* . ⁱSubsequent laws still further increased those duties.ⁱ

  34The distress which, in years of scarcity, the strict execution of ^jthose laws^j might have brought upon the people, would probably have been very great. But, upon such occasions, its execution was generally suspended by temporary statutes, which permitted, for a limited time, the importation of foreign corn.21 The necessity of these temporary statutes sufficiently demonstrates the impropriety of this general one.

  35These restraints upon importation, though prior to the establishment of the bounty, were dictated by the same spirit, by the same principles, which afterwards enacted that regulation. How hurtful soever in themselves, these or some other restraints upon importation became necessary in consequence of that regulation. If, when wheat was either below forty–eight shillings the quarter, or not much above it, foreign corn could have been imported either duty free, or upon paying only a small duty, it might have been exported again, with the benefit of the bounty, to the great loss of the publick revenue, and to the entire perversion of the institution, of which the object was to extend the market for the home growth, not that for the growth of foreign countries.

  36III. The trade of the merchant exporter of corn for foreign consumption, certainly does not contribute directly to the plentiful supply of the home market. It does so, however, indirectly. From whatever source this supply may be usually drawn, whether from home growth or from foreign importation, unless more corn is either usually grown, or usually imported into the country, than what is usually consumed in it, the supply of the home market can never be very plentiful. But, unless the surplus can, in all ordinary cases, be exported, the growers will be careful never to grow more, and the importers never to import more, than what the bare consumption of the home market requires. That market will very seldom be overstocked; but it will generally be understocked, the people, whose business it is to supply it, being generally afraid lest their goods should be left upon their hands. The prohibition of exportation limits the improvement and cultivation of the country to what the supply of its own inhabitants requires. The freedom of exportation enables it to extend ^k cultivation for the supply of foreign nations.

  37By the 12th of Charles II. c. 4.22 the exportation of corn was permitted whenever the price of wheat did not exceed forty shillings the quarter, and that of other grain in proportion. By the 15th of the same prince,23 this liberty was extended till the price of wheat exceeded forty–eight shillings the quarter; and by the 22d,24 to all higher prices. A poundage, indeed, was to be paid to the king upon such exportation. But all grain was rated so low in the book of rates, that this poundage amounted only upon wheat to a shilling, upon oats to four–pence, and upon all other grain to six–pence the quarter. By the 1st of William and Mary,25 the act which established the bounty, this small duty was virtually taken off whenever the price of wheat did not exceed forty–eight shillings the quarter; and by the 11th and 12th of William III. c. 20. it was expressly taken off at all higher prices.26

  38The trade of the merchant exporter was, in this manner, not only encouraged by a bounty, but rendered much more free than that of the inland dealer. By the last of these statutes, corn could be engrossed at any price for exportation; but it could not be engrossed for inland sale, except when the price did not exceed forty–eight shillings the quarter.27 The interest of the inland dealer, however, it has already been shown, can never be opposite to that of the great body of the people. That of the merchant exporter may, and in fact sometimes is. If, while his own country labours under a dearth, a neighbouring country should be afflicted with a famine, it might be his interest to carry corn to the latter country in such quantities as might very much aggravate the calamities of the dearth. The plentiful supply of the home market was not the direct object of those statutes;28 but, under the pretence of encouraging agriculture, to raise the money price of corn as high as possible, and thereby to occasion, as much as possible, a constant dearth in the home market. By the discouragement of importation, the supply of that market, even in times of great scarcity, was confined to the home growth; and by the encouragement of exportation, when the price was so high as forty–eight shillings the quarter, that market was not, even in times of considerable scarcity, allowed to enjoy the whole of that growth. The temporary laws, prohibiting for a limited time the exportation of corn, and taking off for a limited time the duties upon its importation, expedients to which Great Britain has been obliged so frequently to have recourse,29 sufficiently demonstrate the impropriety of her general system. Had that system been good, she would not so frequently have been reduced to the necessity of departing from it.

  39Were all nations to follow the liberal system of free exportation and free importation, the different states into which a great continent was divided would so far resemble the different provinces of a great empire. As among the different provinces of a great empire the freedom of the inland trade appears, both from reason and experience, not only the best palliative of a dearth, but the most effectual preventative of a famine; so would the freedom of the exportation and importation trade be among the different states into which a great continent was divided. The larger the continent, the easier the communication through all the different parts of it, both by land and by water, the less would any one particular part of it ever be exposed to either of these calamities, the scarcity of any one country being more likely to be relieved by the plenty of some other. But very few countries have entirely adopted this liberal system. The freedom of the corn trade is almost every where more or less restrained, and, in many countries, is confined by such absurd regulations, as frequently aggravate the unavoidable misfortune of a dearth, into the dreadful calamity of a famine. The demand of such countries for corn may frequently become so great and so urgent, that a small state in their neighbourhood, which happened at the same time to be labouring under some degree of dearth, could not venture to supply them without exposing itself to the like dreadful calamity. The very bad policy of one country may thus render it in some measure dangerous and imprudent to establish what would otherwise be the best policy in another. The unlimited freedom of exportation, however, would be much less dangerous in great states, in which the growth being much greater, the supply could seldom be much affected by any quantity of corn that was likely to be exported. In a Swiss canton, or in some of the little states of Italy, it may, perhaps, sometimes be necessary to restrain the exportation of corn. In such great countries as France or England it scarce ever can. To hinder, besides, the farmer from sending his goods at all times to the best market, is evidently to sacrifice the ordinary laws of justice to an idea of publick utility, to a sort of reasons of state; an act of legislative authority which ought to be exercised only, which can be pardoned only in cases of the most urgent necessity. The price at which the exportation of corn is prohibited, if it is ever to be prohibited, ought always to be a very high price.

  40 The laws concerning corn may every where be compared to the laws concerning religion. The people feel themselves so much interested in what relates either to their subsistence in this life, or to their happiness in a life to come, that government must yield to their prejudices, and, in order to preserve the publick tranquillity, establish that system which they approve of. It is upon this account, perhaps, that we so seldom find a reasonable system established with regard to either of those two capital objects.30

  41IV. The trade of the merchant carrier, or of the importer of foreign corn in order to export it again, contributes to the plentiful supply of the home market. It is not indeed the direct purpose of his trade to sell his corn there. But he will generally be willing to do so, and even for a good deal less money than he might expect in a foreign market; because he saves in this manner the expence of loading and unloading, of freight and insurance. The inhabitants of the country which, by means of the carrying trade, becomes the magazine and storehouse for the supply of other countries, can very seldom be in want themselves. Though the carrying trade ^lmight^l thus contribute to reduce the average money price of corn in the home market, it would not thereby lower its real value. It would only raise somewhat the real value of silver.

  42The carrying trade was in effect prohibited in Great Britain, upon all ordinary occasions, by the high duties upon the importation of foreign corn^m, of the greater part of which there was no drawback^m ; and upon extraordinary occasions, when a scarcity made it necessary to suspend those duties by temporary statutes, exportation was always prohibited. By this system of laws, therefore, the carrying trade was in effect prohibited upon all occasions.

  43That system of laws, therefore, which is connected with the establishment of the bounty, seems to deserve no part of the praise which has been bestowed upon it. The improvement and prosperity of Great Britain, which has been so often ascribed to those laws, may very easily be accounted for by other causes. That security which the laws in Great Britain give to every man that he shall enjoy the fruits of his own labour, is alone sufficient to make any country flourish, notwithstanding these and twenty other absurd regulations of commerce; and this security was perfected by the revolution, much about the same time that the bounty was established.31 The natural effort of every individual to better his own condition,32 when suffered to exert itself with freedom and security, is so powerful a principle, that it is alone, and without any assistance, not only capable of carrying on the society to wealth and prosperity, but of surmounting a hundred impertinent obstructions with which the folly of human laws too often incumbers its operations; though the effect of these obstructions is always more or less either to encroach upon its freedom, or to diminish its security. In Great Britain industry is perfectly secure; and though it is far from being perfectly free, it is as free or freer than in any other part of Europe.

  44Though the period of the greatest prosperity and improvement of Great Britain, has been posterior to that system of laws which is connected with the bounty, we must not upon that account impute it to those laws. It has been posterior likewise to the national debt. But the national debt has most assuredly not been the cause of it.33

  45Though the system of laws which is connected with the bounty, has exactly the same tendency with the police of Spain and Portugal; to lower somewhat the value of the precious metals in the country where it takes place; yet Great Britain is certainly one of the richest countries in Europe, while Spain and Portugal are perhaps among the most beggarly. This difference of situation, however, may easily be accounted for from two different causes. First, the tax in Spain, the prohibition in Portugal of exporting gold and silver,34 and the vigilant police which watches over the execution of those laws, must, in two very poor countries, which between them import annually upwards of six millions sterling,35 operate, not only more directly, but much more forcibly in reducing the value of those metals there, than the corn laws can do in Great Britain. And, secondly, this bad policy is not in those countries counter–balanced by the general liberty and security of the people. Industry is there neither free nor secure, and the civil and ecclesiastical governments of both Spain and Portugal, are such as would alone be sufficient to perpetuate their present state of poverty, even though their regulations of commerce were as wise as the greater part of them are absurd and foolish.

  46The 13th of the present king, c. 43.36 seems to have established a new system with regard to the corn laws, in many respects better than the ancient one, but in one ⁿor two respectsⁿ perhaps not quite so good.

  47By this statute the high duties upon importation for home consumption are taken off ^oso^o soon as the price of ^pmiddling wheat rises to^p forty–eight shillings the quarter; ^qthat of middling rye, pease or beans, to thirty–two shillings; that of barley to twenty–four shillings; and that of oats to sixteen shillings;^q and instead of them a small duty is imposed of only six–pence upon the quarter of wheat, and upon that of other grain in proportion. ^rWith regard to all these different sorts of grain, but particularly with regard to wheat, the home market is thus opened to foreign supplies at prices considerably lower than^r before.

  48By the same statute the old bounty of five shillings upon the ^sexportation^s of wheat ceases ^tso soon as the price rises to forty–four shillings the quarter, instead of forty–eight, the price at which it ceased before; that of two shillings and six–pence upon the exportation of barley ceases so soon as the price rises to twenty–two shillings, instead of twenty–four, the price at which it ceased before; that of two shillings and sixpence upon the exportation of oatmeal ceases so soon as the price rises to fourteen shillings, instead of fifteen, the price at which it ceased before. The bounty upon rye is reduced from three shillings and sixpence to three shillings, and it ceases so soon as the price rises to twenty–eight shillings, instead of thirty–two, the price at which it ceased before.^t If bounties are as improper as I have endeavoured to prove them to be, the sooner they cease, and the lower they are, so much the better.

  49The same statute permits, at ^uthe lowest^u prices, the importation of corn, in order to be exported again, duty free, provided it is in the mean time lodged in ^va warehouse under the joint locks of the king and the importer^v . This liberty, indeed, extends to no more than twenty–five of the different ports of Great Britain. They are, however, the principal ones, and there may not, perhaps, be warehouses proper for this purpose in the greater part of the others.^w

  50So far this law seems evidently an improvement upon the antient system.

  51^xBut by the same law a bounty of two shillings the quarter is given for the exportation of oats whenever the price does not exceed fourteen shillings. No bounty had ever been given before for the exportation of this grain, no more than for that of peas or beans.^x

  52^yBy the same law too, the exportation of wheat is prohibited so soon as the price rises to fortyfour shillings the quarter; that of rye so soon as it rises to twenty–eight shillings; that of barley so soon as it rises to twenty–two shillings; and that of oats so soon as they rise to fourteen shillings. Those several prices seem all of them a good deal too low, and there seems to be an impropriety, besides, in prohibiting exportation altogether at those precise prices^y at which that bounty, which was given in order to force it, is withdrawn. The bounty ought certainly either to have been withdrawn at a much lower price, or exportation ought to have been allowed at a much higher.

  53So far, therefore, this law seems to be inferior to the antient system. ^zWith all its imperfections, however, we may perhaps say of it what was said of the laws of Solon, that, though not the best in itself, it is the best which the interests, prejudices, and temper of the times would admit of. It may perhaps in due time prepare the way for a better.^z37

  [1 ]History of Economic Analysis (London, 1954), 182.

  [2 ]For comment, see R. L. Meek ‘Smith, Turgot and the Four Stages Theory’ in History of Political Economy, iii (1971), and his introduction to Turgot on Progress, Sociology, and Economics (Cambridge, 1973).

  [3 ]LJ (B) 149, ed. Cannan 107. The socio–economic analysis appears chiefly in Books III and V of the WN.

  [4 ]John Millar, The Origin of the Distinction of Ranks (1771), ed. W. C. Lehmann and included in his John Millar of Glasgow (Cambridge, 1960), 292.

  [5 ]It is a remarkable fact that Smith’s systematic course of instruction on economic subjects closely follows the order used by his old teacher, Francis Hutcheson, in his System of Moral Philosophy (published posthumously in 1755). For Hutcheson, like Smith, begins with an account of the division of labour (II.iv) and having explained the sources of increase in ‘skill and dexterity’ proceeded to emphasize the interdependence of men which results from it. Having next examined the importance for exchange of the right to the property of one’s own labour (II.vi) he then considered the determinants of value, using in the course of this discussion a distinction between demand and supply price and defining the latter in terms of labour cost (II.xii). The argument then proceeds to the discussion of money as a means of exchange and the analytical work is completed with an account of ‘the principal contracts of a social life’ such as interest and insurance (II.xiii). While Smith’s own lectures were undoubtedly more complete, with the economic section developed as a single whole, the parallel is nonetheless worthy of note. For comment, see W. R. Scott, Francis Hutcheson (London, 1900).

  [6 ]Hume had also drawn attention to the problems of trade regulation and shown a clear grasp of the interdependence of economic phenomena. There is certainly sufficient evidence to give some force to Dugald Stewart’s claim that ‘The Political Discourses of Mr. Hume were evidently of greater use to Mr. Smith, than any other book that had appeared prior to his Lectures’ (Stewart, IV.24).
  
  On the other hand, it would be wrong to imply that Smith may have taken an analytical structure established by Hutcheson and grafted on to it policy views, derived from Hume, regarding the freedom of trade (views which Hutcheson did not always share). To qualify this position we have Smith’s famous manifesto, dated 1755 and quoted by Dugald Stewart from a document, now lost, wherein Smith claimed some degree of originality with a good deal of ‘honest and indignant warmth’ apparently in respect of his main thesis of economic liberty. In this paper, which was read before one of Glasgow’s literary societies, Smith rejected the common view that man could be regarded as the subject of a kind of political mechanics, and stated his belief that economic prosperity only required ‘peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable administration of justice’. Such beliefs, he asserted, ‘had all of them been the subject of lectures which I read at Edinburgh the winter before I left it, and I can adduce innumerable witnesses, both from that place and from this, who will ascertain them sufficiently to be mine.’ (Stewart, IV.25.)
  
  The possible links between Hutcheson, Hume, and Smith are explored in W. L. Taylor, Frances Hutcheson and David Hume as Precursors of Adam Smith (Duke, North Carolina, 1965). See also E. Rotwein’s valuable introduction in David Hume: Writings on Economics (London, 1955).

  [7 ]With regard to the separation of returns into wages, profits, and rent Dugald Stewart has stated that ‘It appears from a manuscript of Mr. Smith’s, now in my possession, that the foregoing analysis or division was suggested to him by Mr. Oswald of Dunnikier’ (Works, ix (1856), 6). It is also stated in Works x (1858) that Oswald was ‘well known to have possessed as a Political and man of business, a taste for the more general and philosophical discussions of Political Economy. He lived in habits of great intimacy with Lord Kames and Mr. Hume, and was one of Mr. Smith’s earliest and most confidential friends.’ Memoir Note A

  [8 ]Smith’s initial stay in Paris as tutor to the Duke of Buccleuch, was for a period of only ten days, so that his real contact with the French thinkers came during the second visit (December 1765 to October 1766). By this time the School was well established: the Tableau Economique had been perfected in the late 1750s, and was followed in 1763 by the appearance of the Philosophie Rurale, the first text–book of the School and a joint production of Quesnay and Mirabeau.
  
  Smith knew both men, while in addition his own commentary on the School (WN IV.ix) shows a close knowledge of its main doctrines. It is also known from the contents of Smith’s library that he had a remarkably complete collection of the main literature, including copies of the Journal de l’Agriculture and a range of the Epemèrides du Citoyen which includes the first two (out of three) parts of Turgot’s Reflections on the Formation and Distribution of Riches—a work which Turgot completed in 1766 when Smith was resident in Paris. See H. Mizuta, Adam Smith’s Library (Cambridge, 1967).
  
  In fact Turgot begins his account of the formation and distribution of riches in a way with which Smith would have immediately sympathized: with a discussion of the division of labour, exchange, and money, using this introductory section to confirm the importance of a prior accumulation of stock. The real advance, however, came from another source, and is the consequence of Turgot’s reformulation of the basic Quesnay model in such a way as to permit him to employ a distinction between entrepreneurs and wage labour in both the agrarian and manufacturing sectors. This distinction led on to another in the sense that Turgot was able to offer a clear distinction between factors of production (land, labour, capital) and to point the way towards a theory of returns which included recognition of the point that profit could be regarded as a reward for the risks involved in combining the factors of production. At the same time, Turgot introduced a number of distinctions between the different employments of capital of a kind which is very close to that later used by Smith, before going on to show that the returns in different employments were necessarily interdependent and affected by the problems of ‘net advantage’. While the account offered in the WN IV.ix of the agricultural system owes a good deal to Quesnay’s work, it may not be unimportant to notice that the version which Smith expounded includes an allowance for wages, profit, and rent, distinctions which were not present in Quesnay’s original model.
  
  The most exhaustive modern commentary on the physiocrats as a school is R. L. Meek’s The Economics of Physiocracy (London, 1962). This book includes translations of the main works: see also Quesnay’s Tableau Economique, ed. M. Kuczynski and R. L. Meek (London, 1972). The possible links between Turgot and Smith are explored by P. D. Groenewegen in ‘Turgot and Adam Smith’, Scottish Journal of Political Economy, xvi (1969).

  [9 ]The most comprehensive modern account of the content of Smith’s work is by Samuel Hollander, The Economics of Adam Smith (Toronto, 1973).

  [10 ]In the WN, the division of labour was also associated with technical change, arising from: improvements made by workmen as a consequence of their experience; inventions introduced by the makers of machines, (once that has become a separate trade) and, finally, inventions introduced by philosophers ‘whose trade it is, not to do any thing, but to observe every thing’ (I.i.9). Of these, Smith considered that the first was likely to be affected adversely by the consequences of the division of labour once it had attained a certain level of development. See below, 39–40.

  [11 ]See R. L. Meek and A. S. Skinner, ‘The Development of Adam Smith’s Ideas on the Division of Labour’, Economic Journal, lxxxiii (1973).

  [12 ]For a particularly helpful comment on Smith’s treatment of value from this point of view, see M. Blaug, Economic Theory in Retrospect (London, 1964), 48–52.

  [13 ]There are perhaps four features of Smith’s treatment of price which may be of particular interest to the modern reader:
  
  1. While Smith succeeds in defining an equilibrium condition he was obviously more interested in the nature of the processes by virtue of which it was attained. Natural price thus emerged as the ‘central price, to which the prices of all commodities are continually gravitating’, whatever be the obstacles which prevent its actual attainment (I.vii.15).
  
  2. Smith gives a good deal of attention to what might be called ‘natural’ impediments; i.e. impediments associated with the nature of the economy (as distinct from ‘artificial’ obstacles which might be introduced by government action) in referring to such points as the instability of agricultural output (I.vii.17), the importance of singularity of soil or situation, spatial problems and secrets in manufacture.
  
  3. Smith’s account may be seen to suggest that before the whole system can be in equilibrium each commodity must be sold at its natural price and each factor paid in each employment at its ‘natural’ rate. Any movement from this position can then be shown to involve inter–related responses in the factor and commodity markets as a result of which the trend towards equilibrium is sustained. Looked at from this point of view, Smith’s argument has a dynamic aspect at least in the sense that he handles the consequences of a given change (say in demand) as a continuously unfolding process.
  
  4. The discussion of price is linked to the analysis of the economy as a system in Book II by throwing some light on the allocation of a given stock of resources amongst alternative uses. At the same time, the analysis of Book II with its suggestion of a continuous cycle of the purchase, consumption, and replacement of goods adds a further dimension to the use of time in I.vii. For an interesting modern example of a problem of this kind see W. J. Baumol, Economic Dynamics (2nd ed. New York, 1959), 6–7, where a time axis is added to those dealing with price and quantity.

  [14 ]While in general Smith seems to have considered that job mobility would be comparatively easy, it is evident that such movement might be difficult in cases where there is a considerable capital invested in learning—thus setting up distortions in the system (which could take time to resolve themselves) even in cases where there was perfect liberty. Smith also drew attention to the problems of status and geographical mobility. Citing as evidence the considerable differentials between London, Edinburgh, and their environs, in respect even of employments of a similar kind, he concluded that ‘man is of all sorts of luggage the most difficult to be transported’ (I.viii.31).

  [15 ]It may be useful to give a ‘conjectural’ picture of the ‘circular flow’, by drawing some of the elements of Smith’s argument together.
  
  Smith’s theory of price has already established that since each commodity taken singly must comprehend payments for rent, wages, and profits, this must be true of all taken complexly (II.ii.2 and see above, p. 25 n. 13). He therefore suggests a relationship between aggregate output and income where the latter must be distributed between the three major forms of return. Taking the year as the time period within which the working of the system is to be examined, factors can be treated as stocks (as in the theory of price) whose ordinary or natural rates (i.e. natural within the framework of the year) are determined by current levels of demand and supply (a theme developed in the theory of distribution). This income can be used for the purchase of consumption goods, including services (thus generating a secondary source of income available for expenditure in the current period) or in the form of a fixed or circulating capital. If we examine the system from the standpoint of the beginning of the period in question, each group will have an accumulated stock of goods intended for consumption, together with a certain fixed capital representing acquired skills and useful abilities. The proprietors in addition possess a capital which is fixed in the land while the entrepreneurs engaged in manufacture, agriculture, or trade, own a fixed capital embodied in their machines, implements, etc. In addition, we can assume at the beginning of the period, that the undertakers and merchants have a stock of finished goods (consumption and investment goods) which are available for sale in the current period, together with raw materials and work in process—all of which make up a part of the circulating capital of society. Assume also the undertakers have a certain net income available for use in the current period.
  
  If the farmers transmit rent payments to the proprietors to secure the use of a productive resource, this gives the latter group an income with which they can make the necessary purchases of consumption and investment goods. The undertakers in both the main sectors may then transmit to wage–labour the content of the wages fund, thus generating an income which can be used to make purchases of consumption goods from each sector. Similarly, the undertakers will make purchases from each other, thus generating a series of flows of money and goods within and between the sectors—with the whole pattern carried on by the wholesale and retail trades. As a result of the complex of transactions, the content of the circulating capital of society (as represented, in part, by the stock of all goods available for sale) is withdrawn from the market and either added to the social stock of consumption goods, or fixed capital, or used to replace items which reached the end of their life during the present period, or used up within that period. On the other hand, these goods are replaced by current productive activity, so that the model taken as a whole admirably succeeds in its aim of elucidating the interconnections which exist between the parts of the machine. It is worth noting perhaps, here as in the theory of price, that the emphasis is on the processes involved, rather than on the formulation of equilibrium conditions. Indeed it would have been very difficult for Smith to formulate the conditions which would have to be met before the following period could open under identical conditions to those which obtained at the beginning of the period examined, (as for example Quesnay had done) if only because of the explicit allowance made for goods which have different life–spans and for stocks of goods which have different age structures.

  [16 ]See D. N. Winch, Classical Political Economy and the Colonies (London, 1965), chapter 2.

  [17 ]A Letter from Governor Pownall to Adam Smith, L.L.D. F.R.S. (London, 1776), 23: cf. Winch, op. cit., 8–9.

  [18 ]It is interesting to observe that the solitary example of the ‘invisible hand’ which occurs in the WN does so in the context of the thesis concerning the natural progress of opulence. It is remarked in IV.ii.9 that:
  
  As every individual, therefore, endeavours as much as he can both to employ his capital in the support of domestick industry, and so to direct that industry that its produce may be of the greatest value; every individual necessarily labours to render the annual revenue of the society as great as he can. He generally, indeed, neither intends to promote the publick interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it. By preferring the support of domestick to that of foreign industry, he intends only his own security; and by directing that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention.

  [19 ]Smith’s concern with sectional economic pressures is to be found throughout the WN; in the discussion of the regulation of wages, for example (I.x.c.61) and in his ascription of undue influence on colonial policy to mercantile groups (IV.vii.b.49). He referred frequently to the ‘clamourous importunity of partial interests’ and in speaking of the growth of monopoly pointed out that government policy ‘has so much increased the number of some particular tribes of them, that, like an overgrown standing army, they have become formidable to the government, and upon many occasions intimidate the legislature.’ (IV.ii.43.) The point helps to explain Smith’s recurring theme that legislative proposals emanating from members of this class ‘ought never to be adopted till after having been long and carefully examined, not only with the most scrupulous, but with the most suspicious attention’ (I.xi.p.10).

  [20 ]Letter 151 addressed to Smith, dated 3 April 1776.

  [21 ]Letter 153, 8 April 1776.

  [22 ]Letter 152, April 1776.

  [23 ]Letter 187, 26 November 1777.

  [24 ]Letter 150, 1 April 1776.

  [25 ]J. Y. T. Greig (ed.), The Letters of David Hume (Oxford, 1932), ii.314.

  [26 ]Letter from William Strahan to David Hume, dated 12 April 1776 (Hume MSS. Royal Society of Edinburgh).

  [27 ]Letter 154, 18 April 1776.

  [28 ]Letter 179.

  [29 ]Smith’s friends recognized this aspect but were faintly worried by it. Hugh Blair felt that some parts of the book, notably the discussion on the American colonies, might well be left out because they made the book ‘like a publication for the present moment’ (Letter 151), and Hume was aware that it had the attraction of offering ‘curious facts’ (Letter 150). Whatever the estimates of Blair or Hume of the practical aspect of the WN, it was a side which attracted a wider readership. A perceptive reviewer in an otherwise uninformative and brief notice in the Scots Magazine (xxxviii (1776) 205–6) assessed the twin attractions more equally and more fairly:
  
  Few writers . . . have united a proper attention to facts with a regular and scientific investigation of principles . . . [Smith] has taken an extensive and connected view of the several subjects in which the wealth of nations is concerned; and from an happy union of fact and theory had deduced a system, which, we apprehend, is on the whole more satisfactory, and rests on better grounds, than any which had before been offered to the public. Hume, Blair, the reviewer in the Scots Magazine, each in his own and different way, recognized both the intellectual attraction of a comprehensive and systematic analysis and the additional attraction of a valid interpretation of contemporary events and problems.

  [30 ]T. S. Ashton, Economic Fluctuations in England, 1700–1800 (Oxford, 1959), 173.

  [31 ]Steuart’s general position is perhaps adequately summarized in the statement that ‘In treating every question of political œconomy, I constantly suppose a statesman at the head of government, systematically conducting every part of it, so as to prevent the vicissitudes of manners, and innovations, by their natural and immediate effects or consequences, from hurting any interest within the commonwealth.’ (An Inquiry into the Principles of Political Oeconomy: Being an Essay on the Science of Domestic Policy in Free Nations (London, 1767) i. 120, ed. Skinner (Edinburgh 1966), i.122). Most of the contemporary reviews of Steuart’s work commented on this aspect of it, in a way which throws an interesting light on the kind of reception Smith could expect. The Critical Review, xxiii (1767), commented for example: ‘We have no idea of a statesman having any connection with the affair, and we believe that the superiority which England has at present over all the world, in point of commerce, is owing to her excluding statesmen from the executive part of all commercial concerns.’ (412.)

  [32 ]M. Palyi, ‘The Introduction of Adam Smith on the Continent’ in J. M. Clark et al., Adam Smith, 1776–1926 (1928, reprinted New York, 1966), 196.

  [33 ]Even in the art of war, where the contribution of the ‘state of the mechanical as well as of some other arts’ is recognized in general, and the invention of fire–arms in particular (V.i.a.43), the division of labour is still the key to success: ‘it is necessary that [the art of war] should become the sole or principal occupation of a particular class of citizens, and the division of labour is as necessary for the improvement of this, as of every other art.’ (V.i.a.14).

  [34 ]F. Hutcheson, An Inquiry concerning Moral Good and Evil in An Inquiry into the Original of our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue (London, 4th ed., 1738), 207.

  [35 ]H. T. Buckle, History of Civilization in England (London, 1857–61). Reprinted as On Scotland and the Scotch Intellect, ed. H. J. Hanham (Chicago, 1970), 285.

  [1 ]Altogether the survey has extended to forty–nine copies in seven institutions: British Library, editions 1–5 and separate issue 2A; Bodleian Library, 1, 3, 4, 6; University of Glasgow 1(3 copies), 2, 2A, 4(3), 5(2); National Library of Australia, 1, 2, 2A(bound in 2), 3 (2), 4, 6(2); New York Public Library, 1(5), 2, 2A(bound in 1), 3, 4, 6; Princeton University 1(3), 2A; University of Texas at Austin, 1(2), 2–6. Duplicate copies in each library were compared against each other and the unique register of press figures for every volume checked against every other comparable volume. The figures, as cited in subsequent notes, occasionally show some displacements or other disorders in press–work, but in no copy, as later inspection confirms, is there any textual variation within the edition.

  [2 ]Issue date, for immediate reference listed first, is taken throughout from the London Chronicle, a journal which also carries preliminary advts. certifying the date: for first edition in the number 5–7 March 1776; for the third, 6–9 November 1784; for the fourth, 26–28 October 1786. The original preliminary notice wrongly gives the first–edition price as £2.2.0, a figure corrected on the date of publication. Rae (324), also cites the correct price but then curiously inflates the cost for the second to £2.2.0, though it still remains, as for the first, £1.16.0.
  
  The printing ledgers maintained by William Strahan to 1785, and by his son Andrew thereafter, do not indicate any work for the first edition but thenceforth cite the data given, for editions 2–5, in British Library Add. MS. 48815 (ff. 9, 66, 85, 113) and for edition 6 in Add. MS. 48811 (f. 3).

  [3 ]In several copies of volume ii there is no press figure p. 351 and, in all, p. 469 is figured either 6 or 8. Apparently (as noted in the Times Literary Supplement, 20 July 1940, 356) a few copies also exist with cancel titles having imprint extended to include W. Creech at Edinburgh.

  [4 ]As early as 1755 Smith refers to his Edinburgh lectures as ‘written in the hand of a clerk who left my service six years ago’ (Stewart IV.26) and his difficulty in writing a compact script doubtless led him to employ other clerks, one of whom, Alexander Gillies, has been identified as the amanuensis for WN. W. R. Scott, Adam Smith as Student and Professor, (Glasgow, 1937), 359–60.

  [5 ]In several copies no figure appears, in volume i, at pp. 124, 386, 389, or 390 and none in ii at p. 24. Additionally in ii the figures for Texas copy gathering 4A (pp. 545–52) reveal this to be a stray sheet held over from the printing of the first edition.

  [6 ]See Letter 222 addressed to Cadell dated 7 December 1782, and Cadell’s answer, Letter 223, 12 December 1782.

  [7 ]Volume ii page 422 is figured either 3 or 6.

  [8 ]This may not have been by Smith (Cannan, xvi), but quite probably was done under his direction either by amanuensis Gillies or by someone else familiar with Scottish banking practices. In the New York Public Library copy index gathering 2K, as the figures indicate, has been greatly disordered in the original imposition.

  [9 ]Letter 227 addressed to William Strahan, dated 22 May 1783, and Letter 237, 10 June 1784.

  [10 ]In several copies no figure appears, in volume ii, at pp. 431 and 490.

  [11 ]Cannan, xvii. It may also be noted that, beginning with this edition, Strahan does not charge for any author’s corrections.

  [12 ]In a few copies, volume iii, no figure appears at pp. 137, 260 and, in all, p. 408 is figured 7 or 10.

  [13 ]Cannan, xvii.

  [14 ]Again in a few copies of volume iii, no figure appears at p. 32 and, in all, p. 287 is figured 7 or 9, p. 315 figured 6 or 7. Additionally in volume ii, gathering 2D, there are three figures, a circumstance which (when two is the maximum) is most extraordinary.

  [15 ]The fourth, revised edition of Samuel Richardson’s Sir Charles Grandison (1762), it will be recalled, began to appear seven months after his death, and yet another edition, differently revised, was issued as late as 1810. See R. C. Pierson’s commentary in Studies in Bibliography, xxi (1968), 163–89.

  [16 ]To accomplish this numbering in an orderly manner some few adjustments have been made (all with due notice) in Smith’s own keys to the arrangement of his sections and subsections.

  [a]to the third edition.4–6

  [b–b]the 4–6

  [c–c]om. 4–6

  [1 ]The new material to be included in edition 3 is described by Smith in Letter 227 addressed to William Strahan, dated 22 May 1783 and in Letter 222, addressed to Thomas Cadell, dated 7 December 1782.

  [a–a]Hop 4

  [1 ]Steuart’s account of the Bank of Amsterdam can hardly be described as unintelligible (Principles of Political Oeconomy (London, 1767) IV.2, xxxvii–xxxix).

  [a–a]2–6

  [b]in it 1

  [c–c]and 1

  [d–d]2–6

  [e–e]is 1

  [f–f]treated of in 1

  [g–g]the society 1

  [a–a]improvements 1

  [1 ]The first considered exposition of the term division of labour by a modern writer was probably by Sir William Petty: ‘Those who have the command of the Sea Trade, may Work at easier Freight with more profit, than others at greater: for as Cloth must be cheaper made, when one Cards, another Spins, another Weaves, another Draws, another Dresses, another Presses and Packs; than when all the Operations above–mentioned, were clumsily performed by the same hand; so those who command the Trade of Shipping, can build long slight Ships for carrying Masts, Fir–Timber, Boards, Balks, etc.’ (Political Arithmetick (London, 1690), 19, in C. H. Hull, The Economic Writings of Sir William Petty (Cambridge, 1899), i. 260). ‘For in so vast a City Manufactures will beget one another, and each Manufacture will be divided into as many parts as possible, whereby the work of each Artisan will be simple and easie: As for Example. In the making of a Watch, If one Man shall make the Wheels, another the Spring, another shall Engrave the Dial–plate, and another shall make the Cases, then the Watch will be better and cheaper, than if the whole Work be put upon any one Man.’ (Another Essay in Political Arithmetick, concerning the Growth of the City of London (London, 1683), 36–7, in C. H. Hull, ii.473.)
  
  Later use was by Mandeville and Harris: ‘There are many Sets of Hands in the Nation, that, not wanting proper Materials, would be able in less than half a Year to produce, fit out, and navigate a First–Rate [Man of War]: yet it is certain, that this Task would be impracticable, if it was not divided and subdivided into a great Variety of different Labours; and it is as certain, that none of these Labours require any other, than working Men of ordinary Capacities.’ (B. Mandeville, The Fable of the Bees, pt. ii.149, ed. F. B. Kaye (Oxford, 1924), ii.142.) ‘No number of Men, when once they enjoy Quiet, and no Man needs to fear his Neighbour, will be long without learning to divide and subdivide their Labour.’ (Ibid., pt. ii.335, ed. Kaye ii.284.) ‘The advantages accruing to mankind from their betaking themselves severally to different occupations, are very great and obvious: For thereby, each becoming expert and skilful in his own particular art; they are enabled to furnish one another with the products of their respective labours, performed in a much better manner, and with much less toil, than any one of them could do of himself.’ (J. Harris, An Essay upon Money and Coins. (London, 1757), i. 16.)
  
  The advantages of the division of labour are also emphasized by Turgot in sections III and IV of his Reflections on the Formation and Distribution of Riches (1766). The translation used is by R. L. Meek and included in his Turgot on Progress, Sociology and Economics (Cambridge, 1973).

  [b–b]in them 1

  [2 ]Cf. ED 2.4: ‘to give a very frivolous instance, if all the parts of a pin were to be made by one man, if the same person was to dig the metall out of the mine, seperate it from the ore, forge it, split it into small rods, then spin these rods into wire, and last of all make that wire into pins, a man perhaps could with his utmost industry scarce make a pin in a year.’ Smith added that even where the wire alone was furnished an unskilled man could probably make only about 20 pins a day. Similar examples occur in LJ (A) vi.29–30 and LJ (B) 213–14, ed. Cannan 163. It is remarked in LJ (A) vi.50 that the wire used in pin manufacture generally came from Sweden.

  [3 ]Eighteen operations are described in the Encyclopédie (1755), v.804–7. See also Chambers’ Cyclopaedia (4th ed. 1741), s.v. Pin.

  [4 ]A very similar passage occurs in ED 2.4 which also concludes that where the processes of manufacture are divided among 18 persons, each should in effect be capable of producing 2,000 pins in a day. These figures are also cited in LJ (A) vi.30 and 51 and LJ (B) 214, ed. Cannan 163. In referring to the disadvantages of the division of labour in LJ (B) 329, ed. Cannan 255, the lecturer mentions the example of a person engaged on the 17th part of a pin or the 80th part of a button. See below, V.i.f.50.

  [5 ]See below, I.x.b.52.

  [6 ]The same point is made at IV.ix.35. The limitation imposed on the division of labour in agriculture is stated to require greater knowledge on the part of the workman at I.x.c.24. At the same time, agriculture was regarded by Smith as the most productive form of investment, II.v.12.

  [7 ]LJ (A) vi.30–1 comments that: ‘Agriculture however does not admit of this separation of employment in the same degree as the manufactures of wool or lint or iron work. The same man must often be the plougher of the land, sower, harrower, reaper and thresher of the corn (tho’ here there may be some distinctions.)’ Similar points are made in LJ (B) 214, ed. Cannan 164.

  [8 ]The two preceding sentences follow the text of ED 2.5 very closely.

  [c–c]the 1

  [d–d]lands 1

  [e–e]lands 1

  [f–f]2–6

  [g–g]2–6

  [h–h]2–6

  [9 ]ED 2.5 ends with the statement that: ‘The corn of France is fully as good and in the provinces where it grows rather cheaper than that of England, at least during ordinary seasons. But the toys of England, their watches, their cutlery ware, their locks & hinges of doors, their buckles and buttons are in accuracy, solidity, and perfection of work out of all comparison superior to those of France, and cheaper too in the same degree of goodness.’ A précis of this argument appears in LJ (A) vi.31–2, and LJ (B) 214, ed. Cannan 164; and see below, I.xi.o.4, where Smith states that manufactures which use the coarser metals have probably the greatest scope for the division of labour.
  
  ED 2.6 and 7 are omitted from the WN. In these passages Smith elaborated on the advantages of the division of labour in pin making and added that these advantages were such as to suggest that any rich country which faced a loss of markets in international trade to a poor one ‘must have been guilty of some great error in its police.’ There is no corresponding passage in LJ (B), but a similar argument occurs in LJ (A) vi.34.

  [i–i]in 6

  [j–j]2–6

  [k]in consequence of the division of labour, 1

  [10 ]This paragraph is evidently based on ED 2.8. Similar points appear in LJ (A) vi.38; LJ (B) 215–16, ed. Cannan 166. The advantages are also cited in the Encyclopédie (1755), i.713–17.

  [11 ]This whole paragraph follows ED 2.9, save that the boy is there said to have been 19 years old. A similar argument occurs in LJ (A) vi.38, where a nailsmith of 15 is said to be capable of producing 3,000–4,000 nails in a day. See also LJ (B) 216, ed. Cannan 166:
  
  A country smith not accustomed to make nails will work very hard for 3 or 400 a day, and these too very bad. But a boy used to it will easily make 2000 and these incomparably better; yet the improvement of dexterity in this very complex manufacture can never be equal to that in others. A nail–maker changes postures, blows the bellows, changes tools etca. and therefore the quantity produced cannot be so great as in manufactures of pins and buttons, where the work is reduced to simple operations. (The manufacture of nails was common in central and east Scotland. In the village of Pathhead and Gallatown near Kirkcaldy a number of nailers worked domestically, using iron supplied by merchants from Dysart. The growth of the iron industry in central Scotland provided local supplies later.)

  [12 ]Cf. ED 2.10: ‘A man of great spirit and activity, when he is hard pushed upon some particular occasion, will pass with the greatest rapidity from one sort of work to another through a great variety of businesses. Even a man of spirit and activity, however, must be hard pushed before he can do this.’

  [13 ]Smith often juxtaposes the terms ‘naturally’ and ‘necessarily’. See, for example, I.viii.57, III.i.3, IV.i.30, IV.ii.4, 6, IV.vii.c.80, V.i.b.12, V.i.f.24, V.i.g.23.

  [14 ]The preceding two sentences follow the concluding passages of ED 2.10 very closely. Similar arguments appear in LJ (A) vi.39–40 and LJ (B) 216–17, ed. Cannan 166–7.

  [15 ]Smith cites three major improvements apart from the fire engines mentioned below, in I.xi.o.12, and see also II.ii.7. The ‘condensing engine’ and ‘what is founded upon it, the wind gun’ are cited as ‘ingenious and expensive machines’ in External Senses, 16. Cf. ED 2.11: ‘By means of the plough two men, with the assistance of three horses, will cultivate more ground than twenty could do with the spade. A miller and his servant, with a wind or water mill, will at their ease, grind more corn than eight men could do, with the severest labour, by hand mills.’ A similar example occurs in LJ (B) 217, ed. Cannan 167, save that it is said that the miller and his servant ‘will do more with the water miln than a dozen men with the hand miln, tho’ it too be a machine’. LJ (B) does not mention the windmill and it is also interesting to note that the example provided at LJ (A) vi.40 is exactly the same as that provided in ED. It is stated at I.xi.o.12 that neither wind nor water mills were known in England at the beginning of the sixteenth century.
  
  Cf. Montesquieu, Esprit des Lois, trans. Thomas Nugent, ed. F. Neumann (New York, 1959), XXIII.xv.3, where it is stated that machines are not always useful, for example, in cases where their effect is to reduce employment. He added that ‘if water–mills were not everywhere established, I should not have believed them so useful as is pretended’. In commenting on this remark Sir James Steuart confirmed that the advantages of using machines were ‘so palpable that I need not insist upon them’, especially in the current situation of Europe. He did, however, agree that the introduction of machines could cause problems of employment in the very short run, and that they might have adverse consequences in an economy incapable of further growth. See especially the Principles of Political Oeconomy (London, 1767), I.xix.

  [l]therefore, 1

  [m–m]2–6

  [16 ]Exactly these views are expressed in ED 2.11 and LJ (B) 217, ed. Cannan 167. The brief statement in LJ (A) vi.41 reads that ‘When one is employed constantly on one thing his mind will naturally be employed in devising the most proper means of improving it.’

  [n–n]employed 1

  [17 ]It is stated at IV.ix.47 that invention of this kind is generally the work of freemen. On the other hand Smith argues at V.i.f.50 that the mental faculties of the workers are likely to be damaged by the division of labour, thus affecting the flow of invention from this source.

  [o–o]common 1

  [18 ]Cf. LJ (A) vi.54: ‘if we go into the workhouse of any manufacturer in the new works at Sheffield, Manchester, or Birmingham, or even some towns in Scotland, and enquire concerning the machines, they will tell you that such or such an one was invented by some common workman.’ See also Astronomy, II.11: ‘When we enter the work–houses of the most common artizans; such as dyers, brewers, distillers; we observe a number of appearances, which present themselves in an order that seems to us very strange and wonderful.’

  [19 ]In the Fourth Dialogue, Cleo refers to ‘those Engines that raise Water by the Help of Fire; the Steam you know, is that which forces it up.’ Mandeville, The Fable of the Bees, pt. ii.181–2, ed. Kaye ii.167. Fire engine was the name for the earliest steam engines. The story that follows seems untrue. See T. K. Derry and T. I. Williams, A Short History of Technology (Oxford, 1960), 316–19.

  [20 ]In general, Smith concluded that machines would tend to become simpler as the result of improvement; a point made in Astronomy, IV.19 and First Formation of Languages, 41. He also commented in LRBL i.v.34, ed. Lothian 11, that ‘machines are at first vastly complex but gradually the different parts are more connected and supplied by one another.’ In ED 2.11 Smith ascribes the invention of the Drill Plow to the farmer while claiming that some ‘miserable slave’ probably produced the original hand–mill (cf. below, IV.ix.47). On the other hand, some improvements were ascribed to those who made the instruments involved, as distinct from using them, and to the ‘successive discoveries of time and experience, and of the ingenuity of different artists’. This subject is briefly mentioned in LJ (B) 217–18, ed. Cannan 167. LJ (A) vi.42–3 provides a more elaborate illustration of the kind found in ED, while stating that the inventions of the mill and plough are so old that history gives no account of them (54).

  [21 ]The ‘fabrication of the instruments of trade’ is described as a specialized function at IV.viii.1.

  [22 ]Cf. ED. 2.11. Smith here suggests that it was probably a philosopher who first thought of harnessing both wind and water, especially the former, for the purposes of milling. Smith added that while the application of powers already known was not beyond the ability of the ingenious artist, innovation amounting to ‘the application of new powers, which are altogether unknown’ is the contribution of the philosopher (i.e. scientist):
  
  When an artist makes any such discovery he showes himself to be not a meer artist but a real philosopher, whatever may be his nominal profession. It was a real philosopher only who could invent the fire–engine, and first form the idea of producing so great an effect by a power in nature which had never before been thought of. Many inferior artists, employed in the fabric of this wonderful machine, may afterwards discover more happy methods of applying that power than those first made use of by its illustrious inventer. In a note to the passage just cited W. R. Scott suggested that Smith was probably referring to James Watt. Similar points regarding the role of the philosopher are made in LJ (A) vi.42–3, and more briefly in LJ (B) 218, ed. Cannan 167–8.
  
  Mandeville (The Fable of the Bees, pt. ii.152, ed. Kaye ii.144) was more sceptical with regard to the rôle of the philosopher: ‘They are very seldom the same Sort of People, those that invent Arts, and Improvements in them, and those that enquire into the Reason of Things: this latter is most commonly practis’d by such, as are idle and indolent, that are fond of Retirement, hate Business, and take delight in Speculation: whereas none succeed oftener in the first, than active, stirring, and laborious Men, such as will put their Hand to the Plough, try Experiments, and give all their Attention to what they are about.’

  [23 ]The last two paragraphs are considered in ED 2.11, but in a form which suggests that this section of the WN was considerably redrafted, although the preceding three sentences correspond very closely to the concluding sentences of ED 2.11. In the ED Smith provides examples drawn from the separate trades of ‘mechanical, chemical, astronomical, physical, metaphysical, moral, political, commercial, and critical philosophers’. LJ (A) vi.43 includes a shorter list, but mentions ‘ethical’ and ‘theological’ philosophers.

  [24 ]This sentence corresponds to the opening sentence of ED 2.6 save that Smith there refers to an ‘immense multiplication’ and ‘all civilised societies’. He also alluded to ‘the great inequalities of property’ in the modern state. See below, p. 24 n. 29.

  [25 ]Related arguments occur in LJ (A) vi.16–17; LJ (B) 211–12, ed. Cannan 161–3. The example of the ‘coarse blue woolen coat’ is cited in ED 2.1, LJ (A) vi.21 and LJ (B) 211, ed. Cannan 161. Cf. Mandeville (The Fable of the Bees, pt. i.182–3, ed. Kaye i.169–70): ‘A Man would be laugh’d at, that should discover Luxury in the plain Dress of a poor Creature that walks along in a thick Parish Gown and a coarse Shirt underneath it; and yet what a number of People, how many different Trades, and what a variety of Skill and Tools must be employed to have the most ordinary Yorkshire Cloth? What depth of Thought and Ingenuity, what Toil and Labour, and what length of Time must it have cost, before Man could learn from a Seed to raise and prepare so useful a Product as Linen.’ Cf. ibid., part i.411, ed. Kaye i.356: ‘What a Bustle is there to be made in several Parts of the World, before a fine Scarlet or crimson Cloth can be produced, what Multiplicity of Trades and Artificers must be employ’dl’

  [26 ]ED 2.1 refers to the variety of labour needed to ‘produce that very simple machine, the sheers of the clipper’.

  [27 ]‘’tis obvious that for the support of human life, to allay the painful cravings of the appetites, and to afford any of those agreeable external enjoyments which our nature is capable of, a great many external things are requisite; such as food, cloathing, habitations, many utensils, and various furniture, which cannot be obtained without a great deal of art and labour, and the friendly aids of our fellows.’ (Francis Hutcheson, A System of Moral Philosophy (London, 1755), i.287). John Locke (Essay on Civil Government (3rd ed. 1698), Works (London, 1823), v.363) also noted that: ‘Twoud be a strange catalogue of things, that industry provided and made use of, about every loaf of bread, before it came to our use, if we could trace them; iron, wood, leather, bark timber, stone, bricks, coals, lime, cloth, dyeing, drugs, pitch, tar, masts, ropes, and all the materials made use of in the ship, that brought any of the commodities used by any of the workmen, to any part of the work: all which it would be almost impossible, at least too long, to reckon up. See also Thomas Mun, England’s Treasure by Forraigne Trade (London, 1664), iii.12.

  [28 ]Cf. Mandeville (The Fable of the Bees, pt. i.181, ed. Kaye i.169): ‘If we trace the most flourishing Nations in their Origin, we shall find that in the remote Beginnings of every Society, the richest and most considerable Men among them were a great while destitute of a great many Comforts of Life that are now enjoy’d by the meanest and most humble Wretches.’

  [29 ]The phrase ‘absolute master’ occurs in ED 2.1 in contrasting the luxury of the common day–labourer in England with that of ‘many an Indian prince, the absolute master of the lives and liberties of a thousand naked savages’. The same paragraph also contains a contrast with the ‘chief of a savage nation in North America’. LJ (A) vi.21, 23 repeats the former example. Cf. LJ (B) 212, ed. Cannan 162. It is also remarked at 287, ed. Cannan 223, that one explanation of the contrast is to be found in the fact that ‘An Indian has not so much as a pick–ax, a spade, nor a shovel, or any thing else but his own labour.’
  
  There is a considerable difference in the order in which the argument of ED and this part of the WN develops. For example, ED opens chapter 2 with an analysis which is very similar to that set out in the last two paragraphs of this chapter. It is then argued that while it cannot be difficult to explain the contrast between the poor savage and the modern rich (i.e. by reference to the division of labour), yet ‘how it comes about that the labourer and the peasant should likewise be better provided is not perhaps so easily understood’. Smith further illustrates the difficulty by reference to the ‘oppressive inequality’ of the modern state; a theme which is developed at considerable length (mainly in 2.2,3) before the paradox is resolved by reference to arguments similar to those developed in the first nine paragraphs of this chapter. In LJ (A) and (B) the argument follows a similar order to that found in ED, save that the discussion opens in each case with an account of the ‘natural wants of mankind’, introducing by this means the general point that even the simplest wants r