‘If you find that you cannot defend your kingdom, without violating justice, without shedding much human blood, without much injury to religion, rather lay it down and retire from it.’
But he was not to retire from the duties of his kingdom merely to save himself from trouble or danger. ‘If you cannot defend the interests of your people without risk to your life, prefer the public good even to your own life.’[587]... The Christian prince should be a true father to his people.[588]
The good of the people was from the Christian point of view to override everything else, even royal prerogatives.
Limited monarchy the best.
‘If princes were perfect in every virtue, a pure and simple monarchy might be desirable; but as this can hardly ever be in actual practice, as human affairs are now, a limited monarchy[589] is preferable, one in which the aristocratic and democratic elements are mixed and united, and so balance one another.’[590] And lest Prince Charles should kick against the pricks, and shrink from the abridgment of his autocratic power, Erasmus tells him that ‘if a prince wish well to the republic, his power will not be restrained, but aided by these means.’[591]
After contrasting the position of the pagan and Christian prince, Erasmus further remarks:—
Consent of the people makes a Prince.
‘He who wields his empire as becomes a Christian, does not part with his right, but he holds it in a different way; both more gloriously and more safely.... Those are not your subjects whom you force to obey you, for it is consent which makes a prince, but those are your true subjects who serve you voluntarily.... The duties between a prince and people are mutual. The people owe you taxes, loyalty, and honour; you in your turn ought to be to the people a good and watchful prince. If you wish to levy taxes on your people as of right, take care that you first perform your part—first in the discharge of your duties pay your taxes to them.’[592]
Taxes should not oppress the poor.
Proceeding from the general to the particular, there is a separate chapter, ‘De Vectigalibus et Exactionibus,’ remarkable for the clear expression of the views which More had advanced in his ‘Utopia,’ and which the Oxford Reformers held in common, with regard to the unchristian way in which the interests of the poor were too often sacrificed and lost sight of in the levying of taxes. The great aim of a prince, he contended, should be to reduce taxation as much as possible. Rather than increase it, it would be better, he wrote, for a prince to reduce his unnecessary expenditure, to dismiss idle ministers, to avoid wars and foreign enterprises, to restrain the rapacity of ministers, and rather to study the right administration of revenues than their augmentation. If it should be really necessary to exact something from the people, then, he maintained, it is the part of a good prince to choose such ways of doing so as should cause as little inconvenience as possible to those of slender means. It may perhaps be expedient to call upon the rich to be frugal; but to reduce the poor to hunger and crime would be both most inhuman and also hardly safe.... It requires care also, he continued, lest the inequality of property should be too great. ‘Not that I would wish to take away any property from any one by force, but that means should be taken to prevent the wealth of the multitude from getting into few hands.’[593]