SECT. III.
XIV. Those who have a just idea of the Deity, cannot fall into so gross an error; but we don’t on that account cease to err. It is true, we do not worship conquerors as deities, but we celebrate them as heroes. What is this, but debasing so noble an epithet? True heroes are wrought and fashioned by virtue, and therefore we should reject all those as spurious and ill-made, which are fabricated in the workshops of ambition. A great and a bad man are contradictions in terms. Agesilaus answered wisely, to one who was extolling the greatness of the King of Persia, and at the same time took occasion to insinuate a remark on the smallness of the kingdom of Sparta, compared to the Persian empire. His reply was: He only can be greater than me, who is better than me. He could not have spoke more to the purpose, if he had read the celebrated saying of St. Austin, in the following words: In his, quæ non mole, sed virtute, præstant, idem est majus esse, quod melius esse. With regard to those things, which are estimated, not by the bulk, but by the virtue or excellence of them, that is greatest, which is best.
XV. Let a Theodosius, a Charles the Great, a Godfrey of Bulloign, a George Castriotus, be celebrated as heroes; and, in fine, all those in whom Fortune assisted Valour, and Valour Justice; those, who only drew their swords in the cause of Heaven, or for the good of the public; those, who in wars take to themselves the toil and the danger only, and leave untouched as the property of others, the fruits and acquisitions; those, who are pacific by inclination, and warriors through necessity; finally, all those, who, as an example to posterity, have by their actions, impressed an idea on the minds of men, that they were just, clement, wise, and animated Princes, in whose sceptres justice reigned, and whose swords never wounded their own consciences.
XVI. But discard from the stock of heroes, those crowned Tigers called conquering Princes, and let them be numbered with the delinquents. Throw down their statues, and translate their images, from the Palace to the dens of wild beasts, that the copies at least may be placed among company, and in such a situation, as suited the characters of the originals. I will in this place give a general trait or description of all conquering Princes, which I find delineated in very lively colours, in the words of a Prince on his death-bed, to whom they gave this epithet, which was William the First of England.
XVII. This prince, in that last stage of life, in which a man finding himself on the verge of eternity, begins to see things in their true light; and at the period of time, when the eyes of the soul open, with the same pace with which those of the body proceed to shut; and when the thoughts of his past victories gnawed his conscience, without feeding his ambition. At this crisis, either from motives of repentance, despair, or from a desire to unburthen himself, after reflecting with horror on the sum of his past actions, in the presence of many nobles who surrounded his bed—He made this confession: I have hated the English, I have dishonoured their Nobility, I have mortified and oppressed the people, and have been the cause of the death of infinite numbers, by famine and the sword; and to sum up the whole, I have desolated this fine and illustrious kingdom, by the murder and destruction of thousands and tens of thousands of its inhabitants. In these few lines, are painted, in their true colours, the exploits of that conqueror; and the same tints, would serve to delineate those of most others who have been dignified with that epithet.
XVIII. I had almost said all; for as I observed before, the dropsical thirst of rule and dominion, which is a disease common to all conquerors, inclines them to aggrandise and extend their empire with respect to foreigners; and also, to enlarge and increase their power among their own subjects. The ambition that agitates them, not only makes them pant to beat down the boundaries of the crown, but those of justice also. Not content to govern by law, they aspire at despotism. They look upon equity as an impediment to, and a restriction of their grandeur, and can only find enlargements proportioned to the views of their souls, in tyranny. That kingdom is in an unhappy state, where he who rules and presides over it, has his head filled with this caprice. The misfortune is, that many are poisoned with these notions and dispositions, who are no conquerors, nor entertain the least thoughts of being such, unless it is in the subjugation of their own subjects.
XIX. This is a species of conquest, the most odious, and the most cheap; for it is not acquired by valour, but by craft and cunning; not by the fatigues of the field, but by the cabals of the cabinet. But notwithstanding they conquer their own subjects, and render them more submissive, and by binding liberty with stronger and heavier chains, convert vassalage to slavery; they should remember, that dominion is only hereditary, for so long as it is conducted with justice; but that when it comes to be exercised with violence, it is usurpation. But that is an unhappy harvest, which ambition reaps by such means. How is a Prince benefited, if, by putting the bodies of his subjects under a hard state of servitude, he loses their souls, and alienates their affections? He loses the best part of his subjects, which is their love, and gets in return for it a small portion more of fear; and he estranges from him their hearts, by oppressing their breasts. He deprives himself of the greatest sweet or pleasure of reigning, which consists in seeing his legal commands obeyed with chearfulness and inclination. What delight can the prospect of a government afford, where you contemplate every vassal, as a fierce animal, who supports with indignation the chain that confines him? What security can a Prince have against the invasions of foreign powers, who has made his subjects disaffected to him? Or what security against the intrigues and resentment of his own people, whom, by his absurd conduct, he has made angry, and weaned of their affections for him? The monarchs of the east can best answer these queries, and tell, how by affecting to be so much the arbiters of the lives of their subjects, the subjects frequently have erected themselves into being the arbiters of the lives of their Princes.