Transcriber’s Note:
Footnotes have been collected at the end of each chapter, and are linked for ease of reference.
Minor errors, attributable to the printer, have been corrected. Please see the transcriber’s [note] at the end of this text for details regarding the handling of any textual issues encountered during its preparation.
The cover had no text, so the basic details of the title page have been added, and, as so enhanced, is placed in the public domain.
Any corrections are indicated using an underline highlight. Placing the cursor over the correction will produce the original text in a small popup.
Any corrections are indicated as hyperlinks, which will navigate the reader to the corresponding entry in the corrections table in the note at the end of the text.
THE
ENGLISH WORKS
OF
THOMAS HOBBES.
LONDON:
C RICHARDS, PRINTER, ST. MARTIN’S LANE.
THE
ENGLISH WORKS
OF
THOMAS HOBBES
OF MALMESBURY;
NOW FIRST COLLECTED AND EDITED
BY
SIR WILLIAM MOLESWORTH, BART.
VOL. II.
LONDON:
JOHN BOHN,
HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN.
MDCCCXLI.
PHILOSOPHICAL RUDIMENTS
CONCERNING
GOVERNMENT AND SOCIETY.
BY
THOMAS HOBBES
OF MALMESBURY.
TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE
WILLIAM EARL OF DEVONSHIRE,
MY MOST HONOURED LORD.
May it please your Lordship,
It was the speech of the Roman people, to whom the name of king had been rendered odious, as well by the tyranny of the Tarquins as by the genius and decretals of that city; it was the speech, I say, of the public, however pronounced from a private mouth, (if yet Cato the censor were no more than such): that all kings are to be reckoned amongst ravenous beasts. But what a beast of prey was the Roman people; whilst with its conquering eagles it erected its proud trophies so far and wide over the world, bringing the Africans, the Asiatics, the Macedonians, and the Achæans, with many other despoiled nations, into a specious bondage, with the pretence of preferring them to be denizens of Rome! So that if Cato’s saying were a wise one, it was every whit as wise, that of Pontius Telesinus; who flying about with open mouth through all the companies of his army in that famous encounter which he had with Sylla, cried out: that Rome herself as well as Sylla, was to be razed; for that there would always be wolves and depredators of their liberty, unless the forest that lodged them were grubbed up by the roots. To speak impartially, both sayings are very true: that man to man is a kind of God; and that man to man is an arrant wolf. The first is true, if we compare citizens amongst themselves; and the second, if we compare cities. In the one, there is some analogy of similitude with the Deity; to wit, justice and charity, the twin sisters of peace. But in the other, good men must defend themselves by taking to them for a sanctuary the two daughters of war, deceit and violence: that is, in plain terms, a mere brutal rapacity. Which although men object to one another as a reproach, by an inbred custom which they have of beholding their own actions in the persons of other men, wherein, as in a mirror, all things on the left side appear to be on the right, and all things on the right side to be as plainly on the left; yet the natural right of preservation, which we all receive from the uncontrolable dictates of necessity, will not admit it to be a vice, though it confess it to be an unhappiness. Now that with Cato himself, a person of so great a renown for wisdom, animosity should so prevail instead of judgment, and partiality instead of reason, that the very same thing which he thought just in his popular state, he should censure as unjust in a monarchical; other men perhaps may have leisure to admire. But I have been long since of this opinion; that there was never yet any more than vulgar prudence, that had the luck of being acceptable to the giddy people; but either it hath not been understood, or else having been so hath been levelled and cried down. The more eminent actions and apothegms, both of the Greeks and Romans, have been indebted for their eulogies not so much to the reason, as to the greatness of them; and very many times to that prosperous usurpation, (with which our histories do so mutually upbraid each other), which as a conquering torrent carries all before it, as well public agents as public actions, in the stream of time. Wisdom, properly so called, is nothing else but this: the perfect knowledge of the truth in all matters whatsoever. Which being derived from the registers and records of things; and that as it were through the conduit of certain definite appellations; cannot possibly be the work of a sudden acuteness, but of a well-balanced reason; which by the compendium of a word, we call philosophy. For by this it is that a way is opened to us, in which we travel from the contemplation of particular things to the inference or result of universal actions. Now look, how many sorts of things there are, which properly fall within the cognizance of human reason; into so many branches does the tree of philosophy divide itself. And from the diversity of the matter about which they are conversant, there hath been given to those branches a diversity of names too. For treating of figures, it is called geometry; of motion, physic; of natural right, morals; put altogether, and they make up philosophy. Just as the British, the Atlantic, and the Indian seas, being diversely christened from the diversity of their shores, do notwithstanding all together make up the ocean. And truly the geometricians have very admirably performed their part. For whatsoever assistance doth accrue to the life of man, whether from the observation of the heavens or from the description of the earth, from the notation of times, or from the remotest experiments of navigation; finally, whatsoever things they are in which this present age doth differ from the rude simpleness of antiquity, we must acknowledge to be a debt which we owe merely to geometry. If the moral philosophers had as happily discharged their duty, I know not what could have been added by human industry to the completion of that happiness, which is consistent with human life. For were the nature of human actions as distinctly known as the nature of quantity in geometrical figures, the strength of avarice and ambition, which is sustained by the erroneous opinions of the vulgar as touching the nature of right and wrong, would presently faint and languish; and mankind should enjoy such an immortal peace, that unless it were for habitation, on supposition that the earth should grow too narrow for her inhabitants, there would hardly be left any pretence for war. But now on the contrary, that neither the sword nor the pen should be allowed any cessation; that the knowledge of the law of nature should lose its growth, not advancing a whit beyond its ancient stature; that there should still be such siding with the several factions of philosophers, that the very same action should be decried by some, and as much elevated by others; that the very same man should at several times embrace his several opinions, and esteem his own actions far otherwise in himself than he does in others: these, I say, are so many signs, so many manifest arguments, that what hath hitherto been written by moral philosophers, hath not made any progress in the knowledge of the truth; but yet hath took with the world, not so much by giving any light to the understanding as entertainment to the affections, whilst by the successful rhetorications of their speech they have confirmed them in their rashly received opinions. So that this part of philosophy hath suffered the same destiny with the public ways, which lie open to all passengers to traverse up and down: or the same lot with highways and open streets, some for divertisement, and some for business; so that what with the impertinences of some and the altercations of others, those ways have never a seed time, and therefore yield never a harvest. The only reason of which unluckiness should seem to be this; that amongst all the writers of that part of philosophy there is not one that hath used an idoneous principle of tractation. For we may not, as in a circle, begin the handling of a science from what point we please. There is a certain clue of reason, whose beginning is in the dark; but by the benefit of whose conduct, we are led as it were by the hand into the clearest light. So that the principle of tractation is to be taken from that darkness; and then the light to be carried thither for irradiating the doubts. As often therefore as any writer doth either weakly forsake that clue, or wilfully cut it asunder; he describes the footsteps, not of his progress in science, but of his wanderings from it. And from this it was, that when I applied my thoughts to the investigation of natural justice, I was presently advertised from the very word justice, (which signifies a steady will of giving every one his own), that my first enquiry was to be, from whence it proceeded that any man should call anything rather his own, than another man’s. And when I found that this proceeded not from nature, but consent; (for what nature at first laid forth in common, men did afterwards distribute into several impropriations); I was conducted from thence to another inquiry; namely, to what end and upon what impulsives, when all was equally every man’s in common, men did rather think it fitting that every man should have his inclosure. And I found the reason was, that from a community of goods there must needs arise contention, whose enjoyment should be greatest. And from that contention all kind of calamities must unavoidably ensue, which by the instinct of nature every man is taught to shun. Having therefore thus arrived at two maxims of human nature; the one arising from the concupiscible part, which desires to appropriate to itself the use of those things in which all others have a joint interest; the other proceeding from the rational, which teaches every man to fly a contra-natural dissolution, as the greatest mischief that can arrive to nature: which principles being laid down, I seem from them to have demonstrated by a most evident connexion, in this little work of mine, first, the absolute necessity of leagues and contracts, and thence the rudiments both of moral and of civil prudence. That appendage which is added concerning the regiment of God, hath been done with this intent; that the dictates of God Almighty in the law of nature, might not seem repugnant to the written law, revealed to us in his word. I have also been very wary in the whole tenour of my discourse, not to meddle with the civil laws of any particular nation whatsoever: that is to say, I have avoided coming ashore, which those times have so infested both with shelves and tempests. At what expense of time and industry I have been in this scrutiny after truth, I am not ignorant; but to what purpose, I know not. For being partial judges of ourselves, we lay a partial estimate upon our own productions. I therefore offer up this book to your Lordship’s, not favour, but censure first; as having found by many experiments, that it is not the credit of the author, nor the newness of the work, nor yet the ornament of the style, but only the weight of reason, which recommends any opinion to your Lordship’s favour and approbation. If it fortune to please, that is to say, if it be sound, if it be useful, if it be not vulgar; I humbly offer it to your Lordship, as both my glory and my protection. But if in anything I have erred, your Lordship will yet accept it as a testimony of my gratitude; that the means of study, which I enjoyed by your Lordship’s goodness, I have employed to the procurement of your Lordship’s favour. The God of heaven crown your Lordship with length of days, in this earthly station; and in the heavenly Jerusalem with a crown of glory.
Your Honour’s most humble,
and most devoted Servant,
Thomas Hobbes.
THE AUTHOR’S
PREFACE TO THE READER.
Reader, I promise thee here such things, which ordinarily promised do seem to challenge the greatest attention, (whether thou regard the dignity or profit of the matter treated, or the right method of handling it, or the honest motive and good advice to undertake it, or lastly the moderation of the author,) and I lay them here before thine eyes. In this book thou shalt find briefly described the duties of men: first, as men; then as subjects; lastly, as Christians. Under which duties are contained, not only the elements of the laws of nature and of nations, together with the true original and power of justice; but also the very essence of Christian religion itself, so far forth as the measure of this my purpose could well bear it.
Which kind of doctrine, excepting what relates to Christian religion, the most ancient sages did judge fittest to be delivered to posterity, either curiously adorned with verse, or clouded with allegories, as a most beautiful and hallowed mystery of royal authority; lest by the disputations of private men it might be defiled. Other philosophers in the mean time, to the advantage of mankind, did contemplate the faces and motions of things; others, without disadvantage, their natures and causes. But in after times, Socrates is said to have been the first who truly loved this civil science; although hitherto not thoroughly understood, yet glimmering forth as through a cloud in the government of the commonweal: and that he set so great a value on this, that utterly abandoning and despising all other parts of philosophy, he wholly embraced this, as judging it only worthy the labour of his mind. After him comes Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, and other philosophers, as well Greek as Latin. And now at length all men of all nations, not only philosophers but even the vulgar, have and do still deal with this as a matter of ease, exposed and prostitute to every mother-wit, and to be attained without any great care or study. And, which makes mainly for its dignity, those who suppose themselves to have it, or are in such employment as they ought to have it, do so wonderfully please themselves in its idea, as they easily brook the followers of other arts to be esteemed and styled ingenuous, learned, skilful, and what you will, except prudent: for this name, in regard of civil knowledge, they presume to be due to themselves only. Whether therefore the worth of arts is to be weighed by the worthiness of the persons who entertain them, or by the number of those who have written of them, or by the judgment of the wisest; certainly this must carry it, which so nearly relates to princes, and others engaged in the government of mankind; in whose adulterate species also the most part of men do delight themselves, and in which the most excellent wits of philosophers have been conversant. The benefit of it, when rightly delivered, that is, when derived from true principles by evident connection, we shall then best discern, when we shall but well have considered the mischiefs that have befallen mankind from its counterfeit and babbling form. For in matters wherein we speculate for the exercise of our wits, if any error escape us, it is without hurt; neither is there any loss, but of time only. But in those things which every man ought to meditate for the steerage of his life, it necessarily happens that not only from errors, but even from ignorance itself, there arise offences, contentions, nay, even slaughter itself. Look now, how great a prejudice these are; such and so great is the benefit arising from this doctrine of morality truly declared. How many kings, and those good men too, hath this one error, that a tyrant king might lawfully be put to death, been the slaughter of! How many throats hath this false position cut, that a prince for some causes may by some certain men be deposed! And what bloodshed hath not this erroneous doctrine caused, that kings are not superiors to, but administrators for the multitude! Lastly, how many rebellions hath this opinion been the cause of, which teacheth that the knowledge whether the commands of kings be just or unjust, belongs to private men; and that before they yield obedience, they not only may, but ought to dispute them! Besides, in the moral philosophy now commonly received, there are many things no less dangerous than those, which it matters not now to recite. I suppose those ancients foresaw this, who rather chose to have the science of justice wrapped up in fables, than openly exposed to disputations. For before such questions began to be moved, princes did not sue for, but already exercised the supreme power. They kept their empire entire, not by arguments, but by punishing the wicked and protecting the good. Likewise subjects did not measure what was just by the sayings and judgments of private men, but by the laws of the realm; nor were they kept in peace by disputations, but by power and authority. Yea, they reverenced the supreme power, whether residing in one man or in a council, as a certain visible divinity. Therefore they little used, as in our days, to join themselves with ambitious and hellish spirits, to the utter ruin of their state. For they could not entertain so strange a fancy, as not to desire the preservation of that by which they were preserved. In truth, the simplicity of those times was not yet capable of so learned a piece of folly. Wherefore it was peace and a golden age, which ended not before that, Saturn being expelled, it was taught lawful to take up arms against kings. This, I say, the ancients not only themselves saw, but in one of their fables they seem very aptly to have signified it to us. For they say, that when Ixion was invited by Jupiter to a banquet, he fell in love, and began to court Juno herself. Offering to embrace her, he clasped a cloud; from whence the Centaurs proceeded, by nature half men, half horses, a fierce, a fighting, and unquiet generation. Which changing the names only, is as much as if they should have said, that private men being called to councils of state, desired to prostitute justice, the only sister and wife of the supreme, to their own judgments and apprehensions; but embracing a false and empty shadow instead of it, they have begotten those hermaphrodite opinions of moral philosophers, partly right and comely, partly brutal and wild; the causes of all contentions and bloodsheds. Since therefore such opinions are daily seen to arise, if any man now shall dispel those clouds, and by most firm reasons demonstrate that there are no authentical doctrines concerning right and wrong, good and evil, besides the constituted laws in each realm and government; and that the question whether any future action will prove just or unjust, good or ill, is to be demanded of none but those to whom the supreme hath committed the interpretation of his laws: surely he will not only show us the highway to peace, but will also teach us how to avoid the close, dark, and dangerous by-paths of faction and sedition; than which I know not what can be thought more profitable.
Concerning my method, I thought it not sufficient to use a plain and evident style in what I have to deliver, except I took my beginning from the very matter of civil government, and thence proceeded to its generation and form, and the first beginning of justice. For everything is best understood by its constitutive causes. For as in a watch, or some such small engine, the matter, figure, and motion of the wheels cannot well be known, except it be taken insunder and viewed in parts; so to make a more curious search into the rights of states and duties of subjects, it is necessary, I say, not to take them insunder, but yet that they be so considered as if they were dissolved; that is, that we rightly understand what the quality of human nature is, in what matters it is, in what not, fit to make up a civil government, and how men must be agreed amongst themselves that intend to grow up into a well-grounded state. Having therefore followed this kind of method, in the first place I set down for a principle, by experience known to all men and denied by none, to wit, that the dispositions of men are naturally such, that except they be restrained through fear of some coercive power, every man will distrust and dread each other; and as by natural right he may, so by necessity he will be forced to make use of the strength he hath, toward the preservation of himself. You will object perhaps, that there are some who deny this. Truly so it happens, that very many do deny it. But shall I therefore seem to fight against myself, because I affirm that the same men confess and deny the same thing? In truth I do not; but they do, whose actions disavow what their discourses approve of. We see all countries, though they be at peace with their neighbours, yet guarding their frontiers with armed men, their towns with walls and ports, and keeping constant watches. To what purpose is all this, if there be no fear of the neighbouring power? We see even in well-governed states, where there are laws and punishments appointed for offenders, yet particular men travel not without their sword by their sides for their defences; neither sleep they without shutting not only their doors against their fellow subjects, but also their trunks and coffers for fear of domestics. Can men give a clearer testimony of the distrust they have each of other, and all of all? Now, since they do thus, and even countries as well as men, they publicly profess their mutual fear and diffidence. But in disputing they deny it; that is as much as to say, that out of a desire they have to contradict others, they gainsay themselves. Some object that this principle being admitted, it would needs follow, not only that all men were wicked, (which perhaps though it seem hard, yet we must yield to, since it is so clearly declared by holy writ), but also wicked by nature, which cannot be granted without impiety. But this, that men are evil by nature, follows not from this principle. For though the wicked were fewer than the righteous, yet because we cannot distinguish them, there is a necessity of suspecting, heeding, anticipating, subjugating, self-defending, ever incident to the most honest and fairest conditioned. Much less does it follow, that those who are wicked, are so by nature. For though from nature, that is, from their first birth, as they are merely sensible creatures, they have this disposition, that immediately as much as in them lies they desire and do whatsoever is best pleasing to them, and that either through fear they fly from, or through hardness repel those dangers which approach them; yet are they not for this reason to be accounted wicked. For the affections of the mind, which arise only from the lower parts of the soul, are not wicked themselves; but the actions thence proceeding may be so sometimes, as when they are either offensive or against duty. Unless you give children all they ask for, they are peevish and cry, aye, and strike their parents sometimes; and all this they have from nature. Yet are they free from guilt, neither may we properly call them wicked; first, because they cannot hurt; next, because wanting the free use of reason they are exempted from all duty. These when they come to riper years, having acquired power whereby they may do hurt, if they shall continue to do the same things, then truly they both begin to be, and are properly accounted wicked. Insomuch as a wicked man is almost the same thing with a child grown strong and sturdy, or a man of a childish disposition; and malice the same with a defect of reason in that age when nature ought to be better governed through good education and experience. Unless therefore we will say that men are naturally evil, because they receive not their education and use of reason from nature, we must needs acknowledge that men may derive desire, fear, anger, and other passions from nature, and yet not impute the evil effects of those unto nature. The foundation therefore which I have laid, standing firm, I demonstrate, in the first place, that the state of men without civil society, which state we may properly call the state of nature, is nothing else but a mere war of all against all; and in that war all men have equal right unto all things. Next, that all men as soon as they arrive to understanding of this hateful condition, do desire, even nature itself compelling them, to be freed from this misery. But that this cannot be done, except by compact, they all quit that right they have to all things. Furthermore, I declare and confirm what the nature of compact is; how and by what means the right of one might be transferred unto another to make their compacts valid; also what rights, and to whom they must necessarily be granted, for the establishing of peace; I mean, what those dictates of reason are, which may properly be termed the laws of nature. And all these are contained in that part of this book which I entitle Liberty.
These grounds thus laid, I show further what civil government, and the supreme power in it, and the divers kinds of it are; by what means it becomes so; and what rights particular men, who intend to constitute this civil government, must so necessarily transfer from themselves on the supreme power, whether it be one man or an assembly of men, that, except they do so, it will evidently appear to be no civil government, but the rights which all men have to all things, that is, the rights of war will still remain. Next I distinguish the divers kinds of it, to wit, monarchy, aristocracy, democracy; and paternal dominion, and that of masters over their servants. I declare how they are constituted, and I compare their several conveniences and inconveniences, each with other. Furthermore, I unfold what those things are which destroy it, and what his or their duty is, who rule in chief. Last of all, I explicate the natures of law and of sin; and I distinguish law from counsel, from compact, from that which I call right. All which I comprehend under the title of Dominion.
In the last part of it, which is entitled Religion, lest that right, which by strong reason, in the preceding discourse, I had confirmed the sovereign powers to have over their subjects, might seem to be repugnant to the sacred Scriptures; I show, in the first place, how it repugns not the divine right, for as much as God overrules all rulers by nature, that is, by the dictates of natural reason. In the second, forasmuch as God himself had a peculiar dominion over the Jews, by virtue of that ancient covenant of circumcision. In the third, because God doth now rule over us Christians, by virtue of our covenant of baptism. And therefore the authority of rulers in chief, or of civil government, is not at all, we see, contrary to religion.
In the last place, I declare what duties are necessarily required from us, to enter into the kingdom of heaven. And of those I plainly demonstrate, and conclude out of evident testimonies of holy writ according to the interpretation made by all, that the obedience, which I have affirmed to be due from particular Christian subjects unto their Christian princes, cannot possibly in the least sort be repugnant unto Christian religion.
You have seen my method: receive now the reason which moved me to write this. I was studying philosophy for my mind sake, and I had gathered together its first elements in all kinds; and having digested them into three sections by degrees, I thought to have written them, so as in the first I would have treated of body and its general properties; in the second of man and his special faculties and affections; in the third, of civil government and the duties of subjects. Wherefore the first section would have contained the first philosophy, and certain elements of physic; in it we would have considered the reasons of time, place, cause, power, relation, proportion, quantity, figure, and motion. In the second, we would have been conversant about imagination, memory, intellect, ratiocination, appetite, will, good and evil, honest and dishonest, and the like. What this last section handles, I have now already showed you. Whilst I contrive, order, pensively and slowly compose these matters; (for I only do reason, I dispute not); it so happened in the interim, that my country, some few years before the civil wars did rage, was boiling hot with questions concerning the rights of dominion and the obedience due from subjects, the true forerunners of an approaching war; and was the cause which, all those other matters deferred, ripened and plucked from me this third part. Therefore it happens, that what was last in order, is yet come forth first in time. And the rather, because I saw that, grounded on its own principles sufficiently known by experience, it would not stand in need of the former sections. Yet I have not made it out of a desire of praise: although if I had, I might have defended myself with this fair excuse, that very few do things laudably, who are not affected with commendation: but for your sakes, readers, who I persuaded myself, when you should rightly apprehend and thoroughly understand this doctrine I here present you with, would rather choose to brook with patience some inconveniences under government, (because human affairs cannot possibly be without some), than self-opiniatedly disturb the quiet of the public; that, weighing the justice of those things you are about, not by the persuasion and advice of private men, but by the laws of the realm, you will no longer suffer ambitious men through the streams of your blood to wade to their own power; that you will esteem it better to enjoy yourselves in the present state, though perhaps not the best, than by waging war endeavour to procure a reformation for other men in another age, yourselves in the meanwhile either killed or consumed with age. Furthermore, for those who will not acknowledge themselves subject to the civil magistrate, and will be exempt from all public burthens, and yet will live under his jurisdiction, and look for protection from the violence and injuries of others, that you would not look on them as fellow-subjects, but esteem them for enemies and spies; and that ye rashly admit not for God’s word all which, either openly or privately, they shall pretend to be so. I say more plainly, if any preacher, confessor, or casuist, shall but say that this doctrine is agreeable with God’s word, namely, that the chief ruler, nay, any private man may lawfully be put to death without the chief’s command, or that subjects may resist, conspire, or covenant against the supreme power; that ye by no means believe them, but instantly declare their names. He who approves of these reasons, will also like my intentions in writing this book.
Last of all, I have propounded to myself this rule through this whole discourse. First, not to define aught which concerns the justice of single actions, but leave them to be determined by the laws. Next, not to dispute the laws of any government in special, that is, not to point which are the laws of any country, but to declare what the laws of all countries are. Thirdly, not to seem of opinion, that there is a less proportion of obedience due to an aristocracy or democracy than a monarchy. For though I have endeavoured, by arguments in my tenth chapter, to gain a belief in men, that monarchy is the most commodious government; which one thing alone I confess in this whole book not to be demonstrated, but only probably stated; yet every where I expressly say, that in all kind of government whatsoever there ought to be a supreme and equal power. Fourthly, not in anywise to dispute the positions of divines, except those which strip subjects of their obedience, and shake the foundations of civil government. Lastly, lest I might imprudently set forth somewhat of which there would be no need, what I had thus written I would not presently expose to the public. Wherefore I got some few copies privately dispersed among some of my friends; that discrying the opinions of others, if any things appeared erroneous, hard, or obscure, I might correct, soften and explain them.
These things I found most bitterly excepted against. That I had made the civil powers too large; but this by ecclesiastical persons. That I had utterly taken away liberty of conscience; but this by sectaries. That I had set princes above the civil laws; but this by lawyers. Wherefore I was not much moved by these men’s reprehensions, as who in doing this, did but do their own business; except it were to tie those knots somewhat faster.
But for their sakes who have a little been staggered at the principles themselves, to wit, the nature of men, the authority or right of nature, the nature of compacts and contracts, and the original of civil government; because in finding fault they have not so much followed their passions, as their common-sense, I have therefore in some places added some annotations, whereby I presumed I might give some satisfaction to their differing thoughts. Lastly, I have endeavoured to offend none, beside those whose principles these contradict, and whose tender minds are lightly offended by every difference of opinions.
Wherefore, if ye shall meet with some things which have more of sharpness, and less of certainty than they ought to have, since they are not so much spoken for the maintenance of parties as the establishment of peace, and by one whose just grief for the present calamities of his country may very charitably be allowed some liberty; it is his only request to ye, Readers, ye will deign to receive them with an equal mind.