The duplicity of the system is strikingly revealed by Burnet, who tells of Hobbes, that “he put all the law in the will of the prince or the people; for he writ his book at first in favour of absolute monarchy, but turned it afterwards to gratify the republican party. These were his true principles, though he had disguised them for deceiving unwary readers.” It is certain Hobbes became a suspected person among the royalists. They were startled at the open extravagance of some of his political paradoxes; such as his notion of the necessity of extirpating all the Greek and Latin authors, “by reading of which men from their childhood have gotten a habit of licentious controuling the actions of their sovereigns.”—p. 111. But the doctrines of liberty were not found only among the Greeks and Romans; the Hebrews were stern republicans; and liberty seems to have had a nobler birth in the North among our German ancestors, than perhaps in any other part of the globe. It is certain that the Puritans, who warmed over the Bible more than the classic historians, had their heads full of Pharaoh and his host in the Red Sea; the hanging of the five kings of Joshua; and the fat king of the Moabites, who in his summer-room received a present, and then a dagger, from the left-handed Jewish Jacobin. Hobbes curiously compares “The tyrannophobia, or fear of being strongly governed,” to the hydrophobia. “When a monarchy is once bitten to the quick by those democratical writers, and, by their poison, men seem to be converted into dogs,” his remedy is, “a strong monarch,” or “the exercise of entire sovereignty,” p. 171; and that the authority he would establish should be immutable, he hardily asserts that “the ruling power cannot be punished for mal-administration.” Yet in this elaborate system of despotism are interspersed some strong republican axioms, as The safety of the people is the supreme law,—The public good to be preferred to that of the individual:—and that God made the one for the many, and not the many for the one. The effect the Leviathan produced on the royal party was quite unexpected by the author. His hardy principles were considered as a satire on arbitrary power, and Hobbes himself as a concealed favourer of democracy. This has happened more than once with such vehement advocates. Our philosopher must have been thunderstruck at the insinuation, for he had presented the royal exile, as Clarendon in his “Survey” informs us, with a magnificent copy of “The Leviathan,” written on vellum; this beautiful specimen of calligraphy may still be seen, as we learn from the Gentleman’s Magazine for January, 1813, where the curiosity is fully described. The suspicion of Hobbes’s principles was so strong, that it produced his sudden dismissal from the presence of Charles II. when at Paris. The king, indeed, said he believed Hobbes intended him no hurt; and Hobbes said of the king, “that his majesty understood his writings better than his accusers.” However, happy was Hobbes to escape from France, where the officers were in pursuit of him, amid snowy roads and nipping blasts. The lines in his metrical life open a dismal winter scene for an old man on a stumbling horse:—
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“Frigus erat, nix alta, senex ego, ventus acerbus, Vexat equus sternax, et salebrosa via—” |
A curious spectacle! to observe, under a despotic government, its vehement advocate in flight!
The ambiguity of “The Leviathan” seemed still more striking, when Hobbes came, at length, to place the right of government merely in what he terms “the Seat of Power,”—a wonderful principle of expediency; for this was equally commodious to the republicans and to the royalists. By this principle, the republicans maintained the right of Cromwell, since his authority was established, while it absolved the royalists from their burdensome allegiance; for, according to “The Leviathan,” Charles was the English monarch only when in a condition to force obedience; and, to calm tender consciences, the philosopher further fixed on that precise point of time, “when a subject may obey an unjust conqueror.” After the Restoration, it was subtilely urged by the Hobbists, that this very principle had greatly served the royal cause; for it afforded a plea for the emigrants to return, by compounding for their estates, and joining with those royalists who had remained at home in an open submission to the established government; and thus they were enabled to concert their measures in common, for reinstating the old monarchy. Had the Restoration never taken place, Hobbes would have equally insisted on the soundness of his doctrine; he would have asserted the title of Richard Cromwell to the Protectorate, if Richard had had the means to support it, as zealously as he afterwards did that of Charles II. to the throne, when the king had firmly re-established it. The philosophy of Hobbes, therefore, is not dangerous in any government; its sole aim is to preserve it from intestine divisions; but for this purpose, he was for reducing men to mere machines. With such little respect he treated the species, and with such tenderness the individual!
I will give Hobbes’s own justification, after the Restoration of Charles II., when accused by the great mathematician, Dr. Wallis, a republican under Cromwell, of having written his work in defence of Oliver’s government. Hobbes does not deny that “he placed the right of government wheresoever should be the strength.” Most subtilely he argues, how this very principle “was designed in behalf of the faithful subjects of the king,” after they had done their utmost to defend his rights and person. The government of Cromwell being established, these found themselves without the protection of a government of their own, and therefore might lawfully promise obedience to their victor for the saving of their lives and fortunes; and more, they ought even to protect that authority in war by which they were themselves protected in peace. But this plea, which he so ably urged in favour of the royalists, will not, however, justify those who, like Wallis, voluntarily submitted to Cromwell, because they were always the enemies of the king; so that this submission to Oliver is allowed only to the royalists—a most admirable political paradox! The whole of the argument is managed with infinite dexterity, and is thus unexpectedly turned against his accusers themselves. The principle of “self-preservation” is carried on through the entire system of Hobbes.—Considerations upon the Reputation, Loyalty, &c., of Mr. Hobbes.
The passage in Hobbes to which I allude is in “The Leviathan,” c. 32. He there says, sarcastically, “It is with the mysteries of religion as with wholesome pills for the sick, which, swallowed whole, have the virtue to cure; but, chewed, are for the most part cast up again without effect.” Hobbes is often a wit: he was much pleased with this thought, for he had it in his De Cive; which, in the English translation, bears the title of “Philosophical Rudiments Concerning Government and Society,” 1651. There he calls “the wholesome pills,” “bitter.” He translated the De Cive himself; a circumstance which was not known till the recent appearance of Aubrey’s papers.
Warburton has most acutely distinguished between the intention of Hobbes and that of some of his successors. The bishop does not consider Hobbes as an enemy to religion, not even to the Christian; and even doubts whether he has attacked it in “The Leviathan.” At all events, he has “taken direct contrary measures from those of Bayle, Collins, Tindal, Bolingbroke, and all that school. They maliciously endeavoured to show the Gospel was unreasonable; Hobbes, as reasonable as his admirable wit could represent it: they contended for the most unbounded toleration, Hobbes for the most rigorous conformity.” See the “Alliance between Church and State,” book i. c. v. It is curious to observe the noble disciple of Hobbes, Lord Bolingbroke, a strenuous advocate for his political and moral opinions, enraged at what he calls his “High Church notions.” Trenchard and Gordon, in their Independent Whig, No. 44, that libel on the clergy, accuse them of Atheism and Hobbism; while some divines as earnestly reject Hobbes as an Atheist! Our temperate sage, though angried at that spirit of contradiction which he had raised, must, however, have sometimes smiled both on his advocates and his adversaries!