SECT. II.
VII. I shall begin with confessing, that those who aspire at being usurpers, can never attain their ends, but by wicked means, because to the goal of insolence, there is no road through the land of virtue. But who will say these are subtil politicians? They are the most blind and mistaken of all, because they pursue a road, that is all over drenched with blood. Very few have travelled through it, who before they arrived at the point in view, have not lost their lives in a violent and an ignominious manner. You hardly see any thing in this whole rout, but men hanging on gibbets, carcasses extended on scaffolds, limbs torn off by wild beasts, and the ashes of victims, who have been sacrificed to the vengeance of the party offended. You may find here or there one, who, by pursuing this road, has at the end of his career attained sovereignty. But is the accidental success of one or two lucky people, a counterbalance to so horrid and bloody a spectacle? Who will be encouraged to trust himself in a sea, strewed with rocks, and covered with wrecks and dead bodies, because in the course of many ages, three or four vessels which have navigated it, have arrived safe at their desired port? We should add, to the hazard of shipwreck, the toils and terrors of the navigation; for it is certain, that those who navigate a sea of danger and horror, before their catastrophe, endure a tempest within their souls. Those who from private people aspire at being sovereigns, lead a life of perpetual alarms and anxiety, in order afterwards to die with ignominy: so that their toil and their danger remain cemented to their fortune, even after they have accomplished or succeeded in their undertaking; for all tyrants live in terror, and rarely or never die in their beds. But how can such as these be considered even as middling politicians? Policy, in the sense we here use the word, means the art of negotiating one’s own convenience. But what convenience can a man find, by travelling through a laborious life to a violent death? I say, that so far from contemplating such people as able politicians, we ought to esteem them consummate fools.
VIII. There are however, some among them, who by calling them fools, you do not say enough of; as they give cause to have themselves pronounced raving mad men; such, as when they see they are advancing to a lofty precipice, will attempt to scale the height; people, emulous of vain exaltations, who that they may shine on high, consent to be reduced to ashes, and who prefer the shortest life elevated in air, to a long duration on the humble earth. These take to themselves the motto of Saavedra, dum luceam peream; provided they shine, they are indifferent about being consumed. Such was the ambitious Agrippina, who, when the Chaldeans told her her son would obtain the empire, but that he would take away her life, answered spiritedly, Occidat dum imperet. Provided he reigns, I don’t mind his murdering me. Such again was Anna Bolen, who, finding herself condemned to death for an adultress, said proudly, They may do what they will with me, but they can’t deprive me of having been Queen of England; from whence may be inferred, that she esteemed it a preferable lot, to have been a Queen, and die with indignity in the flower of her age, than to enjoy a long life of honour as a private person. We should look with an eye of pity on geniuses of this character, not only with respect to their misfortunes, but to their delusion also; and we should degrade those from politicians to mad men, who knowing their danger, run headlong into it.
IX. I will go so far as to acknowledge, that some iniquitous politicians, have experienced the gale of fortune favourable for them, even to the day of their deaths. Philip, King of Macedon, and father of Alexander, was fortunate in almost all his undertakings; for which he was as much indebted to his craft and deceptions, as to his arms; and in his conquests, was equally favoured by Mercury and Mars; and if his injustice to Pausanias, in not caring to punish the abominable act of turpitude, which Atalus, one of Philip’s captains, had violently perpetrated on him, had not irritated that generous youth to such a degree, that he murdered the unjust Prince with his fists, it might have been said, that none of his wicked deeds had ever been prejudicial to his fortune. Cornelius Scylla manifested, that he professed no regard to any religion, by the havock he made among the Grecian temples, which he accompanied with such piccant terms of contempt and derision of their deities, as they were well deserving of; and though he was extremely able in the conduct of war, he was not less so in political subtilties; which made his enemy Carbon say of him, that in the person of one man, he found himself engaged with a lion and a fox, but that he feared the fox more than the lion. His cruelty exceeded the bounds of barbarity, notwithstanding which, he was wonderfully successful. He first triumphed over the enemies of the republic, and afterwards over his personal ones. Nor did his putting thousands of people to death violently, who while he was dictator were all executed by his order, excite a sufficient degree of public or private hatred, to occasion his being treated in the same way; but his natural death was worse than any violent one; for he died eat up by lice, in consequence of all his flesh by degrees, being converted to those vermin.
X. England furnishes us in later times with two wayward, but successful politicians. The first was Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester[1], the favourite of Queen Elizabeth, and so great a favourite, as to cause his entertaining hopes, that she would give him her hand in marriage, which was the occasion of one of the most wicked acts of his life, for he murdered his wife to remove the obstacle to his attaining so high an honour. Fortune always cherished and continued faithful to him, making him to the day of his death, master of the affections of that Queen, whom he held in chains, by the sprightliness of his wit, and his fertile and domestic talents of pleasing, as well as by his genteel and graceful person; and he had the presumption, when he found he could not obtain her for his wife, to solicit from her the last personal favours. The second was Oliver Cromwell, who, under the title of Protector, was tyrant of England, and principal actor in the death of Charles the First. An attempt so horrible, from the circumstance of his own subjects having erected themselves into his Judges, and having instituted process, and pronounced sentence with all the formalities which are ordinarily used with respect to common criminals, is such an example, that the world till then, had never seen the like. The insult was made greater, by their affecting to elude insulting him, under the pretence, that they proceeded according to law. The English nation so far debased themselves by that act, that the person who was then hangman of London, and who could not be prevailed on, either by threats or promises to execute the sentence, appeared to be the most noble spirited man in the kingdom. Cromwell, the author of such an enormous piece of wickedness, and of many other inferior ones, reigned afterwards, not only absolute master of Great Britain for the residue of his life, but, by dint of his incomparable sagacity, came to be the arbiter of all Europe.
XI. There are these examples, but you will find very few others, of perverse politicians, who have been always successful. But what shall we infer from such examples? Shall we esteem those fine politicians who have pursued the same rout? no, we should rather call them absurd and insensible ones. It shews great want of judgment, to found hopes and expectations upon one or two singular events, in preference to what commonly happens in the ordinary course of things. Because some one has found a vein of gold by digging the ground, would it not be madness in me to occupy myself, and spend all my time in opening wells through the bowels of the earth? for if two or three have found the philosopher’s stone, (though I much doubt if any one ever did) the number of those are infinite, who by searching after it, have wasted their substance, and lost their lives. In these very rare chances, on which imprudent ambitious people found their expectations, there likewise intervene other very rare accidents, and that these should all concur to favour him, is more than any prudent man can expect. Those few successful people were also assisted with very uncommon natural talents, by dint of which, if they had directed their steps through the paths of virtue, they would have gone on smoothly, and would have arrived at happiness with much greater ease and satisfaction to themselves, than they did in the vicious course they pursued; and this corresponds with the observation Titus Livius makes on the elder Cato; In illo viro tantum robur corporis, & animi fuit, ut quocumque loco natus esset, fortunam sibi facturus videretur.