9. There is nothing more afflicts the mind of man than poverty, or the want of those things which are necessary for the preservation of life and honour. And though there be no man but knows, that riches are gotten with industry, and kept by frugality, yet all the poor commonly lay the blame on the evil government, excusing their own sloth and luxury; as if their private goods forsooth were wasted by public exactions. But men must consider, that they who have no patrimony, must not only labour that they may live, but fight too that they may labour. Every one of the Jews, who in Esdras’ time built the walls of Jerusalem, did the work with one hand, and held the sword in the other. In all government, we must conceive that the hand which holds the sword, is the king or supreme council, which is no less to be sustained and nourished by the subjects’ care and industry, than that wherewith each man procures himself a private fortune; and that customs and tributes are nothing else but their reward who watch in arms for us, that the labours and endeavours of single men may not be molested by the incursion of enemies; and that their complaint, who impute their poverty to public persons, is not more just, than if they should say that they are become in want by paying of their debts. But the most part of men consider nothing of these things. For they suffer the same thing with them who have a disease they call an incubus; which springing from gluttony, it makes men believe they are invaded, oppressed, and stifled with a great weight. Now it is a thing manifest of itself, that they who seem to themselves to be burthened with the whole load of the commonweal, are prone to be seditious; and that they are affected with change, who are distasted at the present state of things.
Ambition disposeth men to sedition:
10. Another noxious disease of the mind is theirs, who having little employment, want honour and dignity. All men naturally strive for honour and preferment; but chiefly they, who are least troubled with caring for necessary things. For these men are invited by their vacancy, sometimes to disputation among themselves concerning the commonweal, sometimes to an easy reading of histories, politics, orations, poems, and other pleasant books; and it happens that hence they think themselves sufficiently furnished both with wit and learning, to administer matters of the greatest consequence. Now because all men are not what they appear to themselves; and if they were, yet all (by reason of the multitude) could not be received to public offices; it is necessary that many must be passed by. These therefore conceiving themselves affronted, can desire nothing more, partly out of envy to those who were preferred before them, partly out of hope to overwhelm them, than ill-success to the public consultations. And therefore it is no marvel, if with greedy appetites they seek for occasions of innovations.
So doth hope of success.
11. The hope of overcoming is also to be numbered among other seditious inclinations. For let there be as many men as you will, infected with opinions repugnant to peace and civil government; let there be as many as there can, never so much wounded and torn with affronts and calumnies by them who are in authority; yet if there be no hope of having the better of them, or it appear not sufficient, there will no sedition follow; every man will dissemble his thoughts, and rather content himself with the present burthen than hazard a heavier weight. There are four things necessarily requisite to this hope. Numbers, instruments, mutual trust, and commanders. To resist public magistrates without a great number, is not sedition, but desperation. By instruments of war, I mean all manner of arms, munition, and other necessary provision: without which number can do nothing. Nor arms neither, without mutual trust. Nor all these, without union under some commander, whom of their own accord they are content to obey; not as being engaged by their submission to his command; (for we have already in this very chapter, supposed these kind of men not to understand being obliged beyond that which seems right and good in their own eyes); but for some opinion they have of his virtue, or military skill, or resemblance of humours. If these four be near at hand to men grieved with the present state, and measuring the justice of their actions by their own judgments; there will be nothing wanting to sedition and confusion of the realm, but one to stir up and quicken them.
Eloquence alone without wisdom is the only faculty needful to raise seditions.
12. Sallust’s character of Cataline, than whom there never was a greater artist in raising seditions, is this: that he had great eloquence, and little wisdom. He separates wisdom from eloquence; attributing this as necessary to a man born for commotions; adjudging that as an instructress of peace and quietness. Now eloquence is twofold. The one is an elegant and clear expression of the conceptions of the mind; and riseth partly from the contemplation of the things themselves, partly from an understanding of words taken in their own proper and definite signification. The other is a commotion of the passions of the mind, such as are hope, fear, anger, pity; and derives from a metaphorical use of words fitted to the passions. That forms a speech from true principles; this from opinions already received, what nature soever they are of. The art of that is logic, of this rhetoric; the end of that is truth, of this victory. Each hath its use; that in deliberations, this in exhortations; for that is never disjoined from wisdom, but this almost ever. But that this kind of powerful eloquence, separated from the true knowledge of things, that is to say, from wisdom, is the true character of them who solicit and stir up the people to innovations, may easily be gathered out of the work itself which they have to do. For they could not poison the people with those absurd opinions contrary to peace and civil society, unless they held them themselves; which sure is an ignorance greater than can well befall any wise man. For he that knows not whence the laws derive their power, which are the rules of just and unjust, honest and dishonest, good and evil; what makes and preserves peace among men, what destroys it; what is his, and what another’s; lastly, what he would have done to himself, that he may do the like to others: is surely to be accounted but meanly wise. But that they can turn their auditors out of fools into madmen; that they can make things to them who are ill-affected, seem worse, to them who are well-affected, seem evil; that they can enlarge their hopes, lessen their dangers beyond reason: this they have from that sort of eloquence, not which explains things as they are, but from that other, which by moving their minds, makes all things to appear to be such as they in their minds, prepared before, had already conceived them.
How the folly of the common people, and the eloquence of ambitious men, concur to the dissolution of a commonweal.
13. Many men, who are themselves very well affected to civil society, do through want of knowledge co-operate to the disposing of subjects’ minds to sedition, whilst they teach young men a doctrine conformable to the said opinions in their schools, and all the people in their pulpits. Now they who desire to bring this disposition into act, place their whole endeavour in this: first, that they may join the ill-affected together into faction and conspiracy; next, that themselves may have the greatest stroke in the faction. They gather them into faction, while they make themselves the relators and interpreters of the counsels and actions of single men, and nominate the persons and places to assemble and deliberate of such things whereby the present government may be reformed, according as it shall seem best to their interests. Now to the end that they themselves may have the chief rule in the faction, the faction must be kept in a faction; that is to say, they must have their secret meetings apart with a few, where they may order what shall afterward be propounded in a general meeting, and by whom, and on what subject, and in what order each of them shall speak, and how they may draw the powerfullest and most popular men of the faction to their side. And thus when they have gotten a faction big enough, in which they may rule by their eloquence, they move it to take upon it the managing of affairs. And thus they sometimes oppress the commonwealth, namely, where there is no other faction to oppose them; but for the most part they rend it, and introduce a civil war. For folly and eloquence concur in the subversion of government, in the same manner (as the fable hath it) as heretofore the daughters of Pelias, king of Thessaly, conspired with Medea against their father. They going to restore the decrepit old man to his youth again, by the counsel of Medea they cut him into pieces, and set him in the fire to boil; in vain expecting when he would live again. So the common people, through their folly, like the daughters of Pelias, desiring to renew the ancient government, being drawn away by the eloquence of ambitious men, as it were by the witchcraft of Medea; divided into faction they consume it rather by those flames, than they reform it.