THE RIGHT DIVINE OF KINGS TO GOVERN WRONG.
BOOK III.
------------------------- Nations would do well
T' extort their truncheons from the puny hands
Of HEROES, whose infirm and baby minds
Are gratified with mischief; and who spoil,
Because men suffer it, their TOY -- The
World.1
Tyrants deposed to preserve the Throne--In Europe--In England
before the Conquest--By each other since.--No right line any
where--Difference between Tyrants and Kings--Government instituted
by the People for their own good--Tyrants treat men as cattle to be
slaughtered--God decrees their fall--Ordains Revolutions by the
People.
SEARCH we the long records of ages past,
Look back as far as antient rolls will last;
Beyond what oldest history relates,
While kings had people, people magistrates;
Nations, e'er since there has been king or crown,
Have pull'd down tyrants to preserve the throne.
The laws of nature then, as still they do,
Taught them, their rights and safety to pursue;
That if a king, who should protect, destroys,
10 He forfeits all the sanction he enjoys.
There's not a nation ever own'd a crown,
But if their kings opprest them, pull'd them down;
Concurring Providence has been content,
And always blest the action in th' event.
He that, invested with the robes of power,
Thinks 'tis his right the people to devour,
Will always find some stubborn men remain,
That have so little wit, they won't be slain;
Who always turn again when they're opprest,
20 And basely spoil the gay tyrannic jest;
Tell kings--of Nature, Laws of God and Right,
Take up their arms, and with their tyrants fight.
When passive thousands fall beneath the sword,
And freely die at the imperial word,
A stern, unyielding, self-defending few,
While they resist, will ravel all the clew;
Will all the engines of oppression awe,
And trample pow'r beneath the feet of law.
'Tis always natural for men opprest,
30 Whene'er occasion offers to resist;
They're traitors else to truth and common sense,
And rebels to the laws of Providence;
'Tis not enough to say, they may--they must;
The strong necessity declares it just; 2
'Tis Heav'n's supreme command to man, and they
Are always blest who that command obey.
So France deposed the Merovingian line,
And banish'd Childrick3 lost the right divine;
So Holy League their sacred Henry4 slew,
40 And call'd a counsel to erect a new;
For right divine must still to justice bow,
And people first the right to rule bestow:
So Spain to arbitrary kings inured,
Yet arbitrary Favila5 abjured;
Denmark four kings deposed, and Poland seven,
Swedeland but one-and-twenty, Spain eleven:
Russia, Demetrius banish'd from the throne,6
And Portugal pull'd young Alphonsus down;
Each nation that deserves the name of state,
50 Has set up laws above the magistrate;
Hence, when a self-advancing wretch acquires
A lawless rule, his government expires.
Explore the past, the steps of monarchs tread,
And view the sacred titles of the dead;
Look to the early kings of Britain's isle,
For Jus Divinum in our
native style.
Conquest, or compacts, form the rights of kings,
And both are human, both unsettled things;
Both subject to contingencies of fate,
60 And so the godship of them proves a cheat.
The crowns and thrones the greatest monarchs have,
Were either stolen, or the people gave.
What claim had colonel Cnute,7 or Captain Suene?
What right the roving Saxon, pirate Dane?
Hengist, or Horsa, Woden's blood defied,
And on their sword, not right divine, relied.
The Norman Bastard, how divine his call!
And where's his heav'nly high original?
These naked nations, long a helpless prey,
70 To foreign and domestic tyranny;--
Their infant strength unfit to guard their name--
Was left exposed to ev'ry robber's claim,
An open prey to pirates, and the isle,
To wild invaders, grew an early spoil.
The Romans ravaged long our wealthy coast,
And long our plains fed Caesar's num'rous host.
What birthright raised that rav'nous leader's name?
His sword, and not his fam'ly, formed his claim.
Where'er the Roman eagles spread their wings,
80 They conquer'd nations, and they pull'd down kings;
Caeser in triumph o'er the whole presided,
And right of conquest half the world divided.
For Liberty our sires in arms appear'd,
And in its sacred name with courage warr'd;
Made the invaders buy their conquest dear,
And legions of their bones lie buried here. 8
When these their work of slaughter had fulfill'd,
And seas of British blood bedew'd the field;
Shoals of Barbarian Goths, worse thieves than they,
90 From Caledonian Friths, and frozen Tay,
O'erspread the fruitful, now abandon'd plains,
And led the captured victims in their chains:
The weaken'd natives, helpless and distrest,
Doom'd to be plunder'd, ravish'd, and oppress'd,
Employ new thieves from the rude Northern coast,
To rob them of the little not yet lost.
The work once done, the workmen, to be paid,
Only demand themselves, and all they had!
In dreadful strife their freedom to maintain,
100 They fought with fury, but they fought in vain;
Yet, like Antaeus, every time they fell,
Their veins with rage and indignation swell;
Not for continued losses they despair,
But for still fiercer battle they prepare;
Again their blood the Saxon chariots stains,
And heaps of heroes strew th' ensanguin'd plains;
Thus, though they leave the world, they keep the field,
And thus their lives, but not their freedom yield.
Three hundred years of bloody conquest past,
110 Plunder'd at first, and dispossest at last,
The few remains, with freedom still inspir'd,
To Western mountains, to resist retired;
Their dear abandon'd country thence they view,
And thence their thirst of Liberty renew;
Offers of peaceful bondage they defy,
What's peace to man without his liberty? 9
The conquer'd nation--fell a dear bought prey,
And Britain's island, Saxon Lords obey:
The shouting troops their victories proclaim,
120 And load their chiefs with royalty and fame:
The garland of their triumphs was their crown,
Mob set them up, and rabble pull'd them down!
Fighting was all the merit they could bring,
The bloodiest wretch appear'd the bravest King!
Nor did his kingship any longer last,
Than till by some more powerful rogue displaced.
In spoil and blood was fix'd the right divine,
And thus commenced the royal Saxon line:--
That sword that vanquish'd innocence in fight,
130 The sword that crush'd the banish'd Britons' right,
At pleasure subdivides the British crown,
And forms eight soldier kingdoms out of one.
From these we strive to date our royal line,
And these must help us to a right divine;
From actions buried in eternal night,
Priestcraft is brought, to fix the fancied right;
Priestcraft that, always on the strongest side,
Contrives, tho' kings should walk, that priests shall ride.
One master thief his fellows dispossest,
140 And gave, once more, the weeping nation rest;
For Egbert,10 English monarchy began,
By his Almighty sword--the Sacred man!
Yet who was Egbert? Search his ancient breed;
What sacred ancestors did he succeed?
What mighty princes form'd his royal line,
And handed down to him the right divine?
A high-Dutch trooper, sent abroad to fight,
Whose trade was blood, and in his arm his right:
A supernumerary Holsteineer,11
150 For want of room at home, sent out to war;
A mere Swiss 12mercenary, who for bread,
Was born on purpose to be knock'd in head;
A Saxon soldier was his high descent,
Murder his business, plunder his intent;
The poor unvalued, despicable thing,
A thief by nation, and by fate a king!
To-day the monarch glories in his crown,
A soldier thief to-morrow knocks him down,
And calls the fancied right divine his own!
160 In the next age that 'rightful' Lord's forgot,
And rampant treason triumphs on the spot:
Success gives title, makes possession just,
For if the fates obey, the subjects must.
We should be last of all that should pretend,
The long descent of princes to defend;
Since, if hereditary right's the claim,
The English line has forty times been lame;
Of all the nations in the world, there's none
Have less of true succession in their crown.
170 Britannia now, with men of blood opprest,
And all her race of tyrants lately ceased;
Ill fate prevailing, seeks at foreign shores,
And for worse monsters, ignorantly implores.
The right divine was so despised a thing,
The crown went out a begging for a king
Of foreign breed, of unrelated race,
Whore in his scutcheon, tyrant in his face;
Of spurious birth, and intermingled blood,
Who nor our laws nor language understood.
180 William the early summons soon obeys,
Ambition fills his sails, his fleets the seas;
By cruel hopes, and fatal valour sped,
The foreign legions Britain's shores o'erspread:
The sword decides the claim, the land's the prey,
Fated the conquering tyrant to obey.
Harold by usurpation gain'd the crown, 13
And ditto usurpation pull'd him down.
Nothing but patience then could Britain claim,
Oppress'd by suff'ring, suff'ring made her tame:
190 She saw the tyrant William quit the throne,
And hoped for better usage from his son;
But change of tyrants gave her small relief,
She lost the lion, and receiv'd the thief.
Rufus, his father's ill got treasure seized,
The greedy sons of mother-church appeased;
Bought up rebellion with the cash he stole,
Secured the Clergy, and seduced the whole.
So brib'ry first with robbery combined
To ride before, and treason rode behind.
200 Ambition, and the lust of rule prevail'd,
And Robert's right, on Rufus' head entail'd.14
Beau-Clerk next grasp'd his elder brother's crown,
And, by his sword, maintain'd it was his own:
The second 15Henry fights, and fighting treats,
To own the prince's title he defeats
Consents to mean conclusions of the war,
And stoops to be a base usurper's heir;
Accepts the ignominious grant, and shows
His right's as bad as Stephen's that bestows:
210 The royal tricksters thus divide the prey,
And helpless crowds the jugglers' swords obey.16
Then John, 17another branch of Henry's line,
Jumps on the throne, in spite of Right Divine.
Turn we to mighty Edward's deathless name;
Or to his son's, whose conquests were the same;
That mighty hero of right royal race,
His father still alive, usurp'd his place. 18
As Edward on his parent's murder stood,
So Richard's tyrant reign was closed in blood:
220 Deposed and murder'd, Edward's father lies;
Deposed and murder'd--thus the grandson19 dies.
Lancastrian Henry from his feeble head,
The bauble wrench'd, and wore it in his stead;
Three of his name by due succession reign,
And York demands the right of line in vain.
Thro' seas of slaughter, for this carnaged crown
Edward, not went, but waded to the throne;20
Three times deposed, three times restored by force,
Priest-ridden Henry's title 21
yields of course.
230 Short lived the right the conquering king enjoy'd,
Treason and crime his new-crown'd race destroy'd;
As if the crimson hand of Power pursued
The very crown, and fated it to blood,
Richard by lust of government allured,
By double murders, next that crown procured;
For silent records trumpet-tongued proclaim
The jails and graves of princes are the same.
At Bosworth field, the crookback was dethroned;
Slain in the fight, and then the victor own'd! 22
240 So men of blood, incited by its taste,
By lust of rule urged on, laid England waste;
Oppression then upon oppression grew,
One royal wretch another overthrew;
They made a football of the People's crown,
And brother-tyrant brother-king pull'd down,
Succeeding robberies revenged the past,
And every age of crime outdid the last.
Look on once more--the tangled line survey,
By which kings claim to bind men to obey.
250 In the right line they say their title lies:
But if its twisted?--then the title dies.
Look at it!--knotted, spliced in every place!
Closely survey the intersected race--
So full of violations, such a brood
Of false successions, spurious births, and blood;
Such perjuries, such frauds, to mount a throne,
That Kings might blush their ancestors to own!
Oh! but Possession SUPERSEDES the Line!
Indeed!--then king, as king, has Right Divine;
260 And, coy Succession fled from majesty,
Makes Usurpation as divine as he;
De Facto is de Jure, and a throne,
To every dog that steals it is his bone!
Hence tyrants--and from these infected springs,
Flows the best title of the Best of Kings!23
Right of Succession, or what other claim
Of right to rule, by whatsoever name
Or title call'd, by whomsoever urged,
Is in the people's right of choosing merged.
270 The right's the People's, and the People's choice
Binds kings in duty to obey their voice;
The Public Will, the ONLY Right Divine,
Sanctions the office, or divides the line;
Topples the crown from off the tyrant's head,
And puts a king to govern in his stead.
Tyrant and king are vastly different things--
We're robb'd by tyrants, but obey'd by kings!
If it be ask'd, how the distinction's known,
Oppression marks him out--the nations groan,
280 The broken laws, the cries of injur'd blood,
Are languages by all men understood!24
Just laws and liberty make patriot kings;
Tyrants and tyranny are self-made things. 25
As government was ever understood
To be a measure for the people's good;
So when perverted to a wrong intent,
It's stark oppression, not a government.
Blest are the days, and wing'd with joy they fly,
When kings protect the people's liberty;
290 When settled peace in stated order reigns,
And, nor the nation, nor the king complains;
If kings may ravish, plunder, and destroy,
Oppress the world, and all its wealth enjoy;
May harass nations, with their breath may kill,
And limit liberty by royal will;
Then was the world for ignorance design'd,
And God gave kings to blast the human mind;
And Kings but general farmers of the land;
And men their stock for slaughter at command;
300 Mere beasts of draught, to crouch and be opprest,
Whom God, the mighty landlord, form'd in jest.
Yet who believes that Heaven in vain creates,
And gives up what it loves to what it hates;
That man's great Maker call'd him into birth,
To be destroy'd by tyrant-fiends on earth;
That nations are but footstools to a throne,
And millions born to be the slaves of one?
Priestcraft! search Scripture, shew me God's decree,
That crime shall rule by his authority.
310 Kingcraft! search Scripture too, and from it prove
Thy right to ravage from the God of Love. 26
No! HE has issued no such foul command,
But dooms down Despots by the People's hand;
Marks tyrants out for fall in every age,
Directs the justice of the people's rage;
And hurling vengeance on all royal crimes,
Ordains the REVOLUTIONS of the times!
------------------------- Nations would do well
T' extort their truncheons from the puny hands
Of HEROES, whose infirm and baby minds
Are gratified with mischief; and who spoil,
Because men suffer it, their TOY -- The
World.1
Tyrants deposed to preserve the Throne--In Europe--In England before the Conquest--By each other since.--No right line any where--Difference between Tyrants and Kings--Government instituted by the People for their own good--Tyrants treat men as cattle to be slaughtered--God decrees their fall--Ordains Revolutions by the People.
SEARCH we the long records of ages past,
Look back as far as antient rolls will last;
Beyond what oldest history relates,
While kings had people, people magistrates;
Nations, e'er since there has been king or crown,
Have pull'd down tyrants to preserve the throne.
The laws of nature then, as still they do,
Taught them, their rights and safety to pursue;
That if a king, who should protect, destroys,
10 He forfeits all the sanction he enjoys.
There's not a nation ever own'd a crown,
But if their kings opprest them, pull'd them down;
Concurring Providence has been content,
And always blest the action in th' event.
He that, invested with the robes of power,
Thinks 'tis his right the people to devour,
Will always find some stubborn men remain,
That have so little wit, they won't be slain;
Who always turn again when they're opprest,
20 And basely spoil the gay tyrannic jest;
Tell kings--of Nature, Laws of God and Right,
Take up their arms, and with their tyrants fight.
When passive thousands fall beneath the sword,
And freely die at the imperial word,
A stern, unyielding, self-defending few,
While they resist, will ravel all the clew;
Will all the engines of oppression awe,
And trample pow'r beneath the feet of law.
'Tis always natural for men opprest,
30 Whene'er occasion offers to resist;
They're traitors else to truth and common sense,
And rebels to the laws of Providence;
'Tis not enough to say, they may--they must;
The strong necessity declares it just; 2
'Tis Heav'n's supreme command to man, and they
Are always blest who that command obey.
So France deposed the Merovingian line,
And banish'd Childrick3 lost the right divine;
So Holy League their sacred Henry4 slew,
40 And call'd a counsel to erect a new;
For right divine must still to justice bow,
And people first the right to rule bestow:
So Spain to arbitrary kings inured,
Yet arbitrary Favila5 abjured;
Denmark four kings deposed, and Poland seven,
Swedeland but one-and-twenty, Spain eleven:
Russia, Demetrius banish'd from the throne,6
And Portugal pull'd young Alphonsus down;
Each nation that deserves the name of state,
50 Has set up laws above the magistrate;
Hence, when a self-advancing wretch acquires
A lawless rule, his government expires.
Explore the past, the steps of monarchs tread,
And view the sacred titles of the dead;
Look to the early kings of Britain's isle,
For Jus Divinum in our
native style.
Conquest, or compacts, form the rights of kings,
And both are human, both unsettled things;
Both subject to contingencies of fate,
60 And so the godship of them proves a cheat.
The crowns and thrones the greatest monarchs have,
Were either stolen, or the people gave.
What claim had colonel Cnute,7 or Captain Suene?
What right the roving Saxon, pirate Dane?
Hengist, or Horsa, Woden's blood defied,
And on their sword, not right divine, relied.
The Norman Bastard, how divine his call!
And where's his heav'nly high original?
These naked nations, long a helpless prey,
70 To foreign and domestic tyranny;--
Their infant strength unfit to guard their name--
Was left exposed to ev'ry robber's claim,
An open prey to pirates, and the isle,
To wild invaders, grew an early spoil.
The Romans ravaged long our wealthy coast,
And long our plains fed Caesar's num'rous host.
What birthright raised that rav'nous leader's name?
His sword, and not his fam'ly, formed his claim.
Where'er the Roman eagles spread their wings,
80 They conquer'd nations, and they pull'd down kings;
Caeser in triumph o'er the whole presided,
And right of conquest half the world divided.
For Liberty our sires in arms appear'd,
And in its sacred name with courage warr'd;
Made the invaders buy their conquest dear,
And legions of their bones lie buried here. 8
When these their work of slaughter had fulfill'd,
And seas of British blood bedew'd the field;
Shoals of Barbarian Goths, worse thieves than they,
90 From Caledonian Friths, and frozen Tay,
O'erspread the fruitful, now abandon'd plains,
And led the captured victims in their chains:
The weaken'd natives, helpless and distrest,
Doom'd to be plunder'd, ravish'd, and oppress'd,
Employ new thieves from the rude Northern coast,
To rob them of the little not yet lost.
The work once done, the workmen, to be paid,
Only demand themselves, and all they had!
In dreadful strife their freedom to maintain,
100 They fought with fury, but they fought in vain;
Yet, like Antaeus, every time they fell,
Their veins with rage and indignation swell;
Not for continued losses they despair,
But for still fiercer battle they prepare;
Again their blood the Saxon chariots stains,
And heaps of heroes strew th' ensanguin'd plains;
Thus, though they leave the world, they keep the field,
And thus their lives, but not their freedom yield.
Three hundred years of bloody conquest past,
110 Plunder'd at first, and dispossest at last,
The few remains, with freedom still inspir'd,
To Western mountains, to resist retired;
Their dear abandon'd country thence they view,
And thence their thirst of Liberty renew;
Offers of peaceful bondage they defy,
What's peace to man without his liberty? 9
The conquer'd nation--fell a dear bought prey,
And Britain's island, Saxon Lords obey:
The shouting troops their victories proclaim,
120 And load their chiefs with royalty and fame:
The garland of their triumphs was their crown,
Mob set them up, and rabble pull'd them down!
Fighting was all the merit they could bring,
The bloodiest wretch appear'd the bravest King!
Nor did his kingship any longer last,
Than till by some more powerful rogue displaced.
In spoil and blood was fix'd the right divine,
And thus commenced the royal Saxon line:--
That sword that vanquish'd innocence in fight,
130 The sword that crush'd the banish'd Britons' right,
At pleasure subdivides the British crown,
And forms eight soldier kingdoms out of one.
From these we strive to date our royal line,
And these must help us to a right divine;
From actions buried in eternal night,
Priestcraft is brought, to fix the fancied right;
Priestcraft that, always on the strongest side,
Contrives, tho' kings should walk, that priests shall ride.
One master thief his fellows dispossest,
140 And gave, once more, the weeping nation rest;
For Egbert,10 English monarchy began,
By his Almighty sword--the Sacred man!
Yet who was Egbert? Search his ancient breed;
What sacred ancestors did he succeed?
What mighty princes form'd his royal line,
And handed down to him the right divine?
A high-Dutch trooper, sent abroad to fight,
Whose trade was blood, and in his arm his right:
A supernumerary Holsteineer,11
150 For want of room at home, sent out to war;
A mere Swiss 12mercenary, who for bread,
Was born on purpose to be knock'd in head;
A Saxon soldier was his high descent,
Murder his business, plunder his intent;
The poor unvalued, despicable thing,
A thief by nation, and by fate a king!
To-day the monarch glories in his crown,
A soldier thief to-morrow knocks him down,
And calls the fancied right divine his own!
160 In the next age that 'rightful' Lord's forgot,
And rampant treason triumphs on the spot:
Success gives title, makes possession just,
For if the fates obey, the subjects must.
We should be last of all that should pretend,
The long descent of princes to defend;
Since, if hereditary right's the claim,
The English line has forty times been lame;
Of all the nations in the world, there's none
Have less of true succession in their crown.
170 Britannia now, with men of blood opprest,
And all her race of tyrants lately ceased;
Ill fate prevailing, seeks at foreign shores,
And for worse monsters, ignorantly implores.
The right divine was so despised a thing,
The crown went out a begging for a king
Of foreign breed, of unrelated race,
Whore in his scutcheon, tyrant in his face;
Of spurious birth, and intermingled blood,
Who nor our laws nor language understood.
180 William the early summons soon obeys,
Ambition fills his sails, his fleets the seas;
By cruel hopes, and fatal valour sped,
The foreign legions Britain's shores o'erspread:
The sword decides the claim, the land's the prey,
Fated the conquering tyrant to obey.
Harold by usurpation gain'd the crown, 13
And ditto usurpation pull'd him down.
Nothing but patience then could Britain claim,
Oppress'd by suff'ring, suff'ring made her tame:
190 She saw the tyrant William quit the throne,
And hoped for better usage from his son;
But change of tyrants gave her small relief,
She lost the lion, and receiv'd the thief.
Rufus, his father's ill got treasure seized,
The greedy sons of mother-church appeased;
Bought up rebellion with the cash he stole,
Secured the Clergy, and seduced the whole.
So brib'ry first with robbery combined
To ride before, and treason rode behind.
200 Ambition, and the lust of rule prevail'd,
And Robert's right, on Rufus' head entail'd.14
Beau-Clerk next grasp'd his elder brother's crown,
And, by his sword, maintain'd it was his own:
The second 15Henry fights, and fighting treats,
To own the prince's title he defeats
Consents to mean conclusions of the war,
And stoops to be a base usurper's heir;
Accepts the ignominious grant, and shows
His right's as bad as Stephen's that bestows:
210 The royal tricksters thus divide the prey,
And helpless crowds the jugglers' swords obey.16
Then John, 17another branch of Henry's line,
Jumps on the throne, in spite of Right Divine.
Turn we to mighty Edward's deathless name;
Or to his son's, whose conquests were the same;
That mighty hero of right royal race,
His father still alive, usurp'd his place. 18
As Edward on his parent's murder stood,
So Richard's tyrant reign was closed in blood:
220 Deposed and murder'd, Edward's father lies;
Deposed and murder'd--thus the grandson19 dies.
Lancastrian Henry from his feeble head,
The bauble wrench'd, and wore it in his stead;
Three of his name by due succession reign,
And York demands the right of line in vain.
Thro' seas of slaughter, for this carnaged crown
Edward, not went, but waded to the throne;20
Three times deposed, three times restored by force,
Priest-ridden Henry's title 21
yields of course.
230 Short lived the right the conquering king enjoy'd,
Treason and crime his new-crown'd race destroy'd;
As if the crimson hand of Power pursued
The very crown, and fated it to blood,
Richard by lust of government allured,
By double murders, next that crown procured;
For silent records trumpet-tongued proclaim
The jails and graves of princes are the same.
At Bosworth field, the crookback was dethroned;
Slain in the fight, and then the victor own'd! 22
240 So men of blood, incited by its taste,
By lust of rule urged on, laid England waste;
Oppression then upon oppression grew,
One royal wretch another overthrew;
They made a football of the People's crown,
And brother-tyrant brother-king pull'd down,
Succeeding robberies revenged the past,
And every age of crime outdid the last.
Look on once more--the tangled line survey,
By which kings claim to bind men to obey.
250 In the right line they say their title lies:
But if its twisted?--then the title dies.
Look at it!--knotted, spliced in every place!
Closely survey the intersected race--
So full of violations, such a brood
Of false successions, spurious births, and blood;
Such perjuries, such frauds, to mount a throne,
That Kings might blush their ancestors to own!
Oh! but Possession SUPERSEDES the Line!
Indeed!--then king, as king, has Right Divine;
260 And, coy Succession fled from majesty,
Makes Usurpation as divine as he;
De Facto is de Jure, and a throne,
To every dog that steals it is his bone!
Hence tyrants--and from these infected springs,
Flows the best title of the Best of Kings!23
Right of Succession, or what other claim
Of right to rule, by whatsoever name
Or title call'd, by whomsoever urged,
Is in the people's right of choosing merged.
270 The right's the People's, and the People's choice
Binds kings in duty to obey their voice;
The Public Will, the ONLY Right Divine,
Sanctions the office, or divides the line;
Topples the crown from off the tyrant's head,
And puts a king to govern in his stead.
Tyrant and king are vastly different things--
We're robb'd by tyrants, but obey'd by kings!
If it be ask'd, how the distinction's known,
Oppression marks him out--the nations groan,
280 The broken laws, the cries of injur'd blood,
Are languages by all men understood!24
Just laws and liberty make patriot kings;
Tyrants and tyranny are self-made things. 25
As government was ever understood
To be a measure for the people's good;
So when perverted to a wrong intent,
It's stark oppression, not a government.
Blest are the days, and wing'd with joy they fly,
When kings protect the people's liberty;
290 When settled peace in stated order reigns,
And, nor the nation, nor the king complains;
If kings may ravish, plunder, and destroy,
Oppress the world, and all its wealth enjoy;
May harass nations, with their breath may kill,
And limit liberty by royal will;
Then was the world for ignorance design'd,
And God gave kings to blast the human mind;
And Kings but general farmers of the land;
And men their stock for slaughter at command;
300 Mere beasts of draught, to crouch and be opprest,
Whom God, the mighty landlord, form'd in jest.
Yet who believes that Heaven in vain creates,
And gives up what it loves to what it hates;
That man's great Maker call'd him into birth,
To be destroy'd by tyrant-fiends on earth;
That nations are but footstools to a throne,
And millions born to be the slaves of one?
Priestcraft! search Scripture, shew me God's decree,
That crime shall rule by his authority.
310 Kingcraft! search Scripture too, and from it prove
Thy right to ravage from the God of Love. 26
No! HE has issued no such foul command,
But dooms down Despots by the People's hand;
Marks tyrants out for fall in every age,
Directs the justice of the people's rage;
And hurling vengeance on all royal crimes,
Ordains the REVOLUTIONS of the times!
Notes
All notes are Hone's except when indicated by the editor's initials, [KG].
1. [KG] From
Cowper's The Task, Book 5, "The Winter
Morning Walk." [return]
2. If it
be asked, Who shall be judge? it is plain that God has made Nature
judge. If a king make a law, destructive of human society and the
general good, may it not be resisted and opposed? "No!" exclaim a
junta of holy men, "it is from GOD!" What is
Blasphemy? [return]
3. Childeric I. the son of Merovius, for his
lasciviousness, was banished by the great men, and one Egidius, a
Gaul, set up in his stead. Childeric II. was banished and deposed by
his subjects, and king Pepin reigned in his stead; and so ended the
Merovingian family. [return]
4. The League
deposed Henry III. and declared him a tyrant, a murderer, and
incapable to reign, and held frequent counsels with the pope's
legate and the Spaniards about settling the crown, and several
proposals were made of settling it, sometimes on the infanta of
Spain, at other times on the cardinal of Bourbon, the duke de Main,
and others. [return]
5. Favila, a cruel tyrant,
was deposed by the Castilians, who chose judges to administer the
government, till they appointed another. [return]
6. Besides the banishment of Demetrius, the History of Russia
furnishes a sickening catalogue of the butchery of her despots by
each other. During the debate in the House of Lords on the 19th of
February, 1821, Lord Holland, observing on the Crusade of the Holy
Alliance of Despots against Naples, said, 'That
objections to the freedom of political constitutions came but
ungracefully from the reigning Emperor of Russia,
who ascended a throne reeking with the blood of his own father;
and as this member of that holy league, owed his crown to the
murder of his father, it brought to his recollection, that since
the time of the Czar Peter I. no sovereign had ascended the
throne of Russia without its being stained with the blood of his
immediate predecessor, or some other member of his own
family.' [return]
7. The leaders of
the invading Saxons and Danes were mere thieves and robbers,
pretending to no right but that of the sword. Hengist and Horsa were
Saxon leaders, who after conquering Kent, made themselves kings.
Woden is famed to be the first great leader of the
Goths into Europe, and all their kings affected to be
thought of his predatory blood. [return]
8. The hillocks or barrows still remaining in most parts of England
were the graves of the soldiers. There are four very large ones near
Stevenage in Hertfordshire, close to the road. The plains in
Wiltshire and Dorsetshire are full of these monuments of the
valorous achievements of the Britons in defence of the
liberty. [return]
9. The
Britons fought one hundred and sixty-three pitched battles. They
might well be said to be conquered, for in these prodigious
struggles for their liberty they were nearly all slain. They fought
as long as there were any men to be raised; but the Saxons swarming
continually over from vastly populous countries, the few Britons
that remained, took sanctuary in the western mountains of Wales, and
from the crags and cliffs, poor and distrest as they were, they made
constant inroads and excursions upon the Saxons; the Saxon Annals
are filled with accounts of the renewed warfare. Even the English
histories frequently mention the incursions of the Welsh, till, at
last, united to England, they seem to be incorporated with the
natives of their ancient soil. [return]
10. Egbert came over originally from
France, and was not the successor of any prince of the West Saxon
kingdom, nor of any kingdom. [return]
11. The Saxons that
came over were from Jutland, Holstein, &c. The poor countries
the Saxons lived in, being unable to support the vast numbers of the
people they produced, they sought subsistence and habitations in
fruitful and plentiful lands. [return]
12. A Swiss, alludes
to their being mercenaries. [return]
13. Harold seized upon the crown by force. He had no claim to it, by
blood or inheritance, being the son of Earl Goodwin. [return]
14. They were both usurpers, for the true right of descent was in Edgar
Atheling, of the race of Edmund Ironside. [return]
15. Henry II. was obliged to
compromise the dispute with his competitor Stephen; a prudent
agreement, but in defiance of hereditary
right. [return]
16.
'As at the death of Henry
I. the main line of Normandy ended, so the succession has ever
since proved so brittle, that it never held to the third heir in
a right descent without being put by, or receiving some
alteration by usurpation, or extinction of the male
blood.'
(Churchill's Divi Britannici, p.
207.) [return]
17. King John was the youngest son of
Henry II., who had his eldest line deposed. Henry was the son of a
usurper, and usurper himself, and the murderer of his own brother's
son. [return]
18. Edward III. reigned, his father, Edward II., being a prisoner, and
was afterwards murdered. [return]
19. Richard II. [return]
20. Edward IV. [return]
21. Henry VI. [return]
22. Richard III. was succeeded by Henry VII. who had clearly
no claim to the crown from blood. After him it still devolved with
irregularity, although under the Tudors, the doctrine of hereditary
right was as vaguely maintained as before. Thus, a
Parliament granted to Henry VIII. the power of
regulating the succession by will, and it was by
pretending to exercise a similar power under an alleged will of
Edward VI. that the unprincipled Northumberland sought the
establishment of Lady Jane Grey. Elizabeth, on the same ground, was
importuned to appoint a successor, at intervals, during the last
twenty hears of her reign; and
finally, named the King of Scotland in her last moments. These are
strange incidents for the advocates of Divine Right!
The fact is, this wretched theory was never formally advocated until
the days of James I.; and it may be considered to be one of the
precious fruits of that settled connexion between Church and State,
of which the Despot, Henry VIII., laid the foundation. Yet no Despot
ever supported himself steadily on an English throne; and what is
there to prove, that such men ever can? Look at King Richard II., he
was a finished gentleman, possessed some taste for literature, and
shewed himself as fond of finery as need be; but he waged war with
the common sense of the realm and the rights of the people,--and
finally, by entrusting his power to weak, inefficient, and corrupt
ministers, roused the anger of a distressed and overtaxed community.
MORAL--They were beheaded, and he was
dethroned. [return]
23.
THE BEST OF KINGS (Court slang) the King for the time
being.--Many a king has been the worst
man of his age, but no king was ever the best. In
1683, the very year of Charles the Second's reign, in which Lord
William Russel and Algernon Sydney were murdered under the
forms of law, by packed juries, and the king's
passive obedient judges--when the throne floated in blood, and
the king's manners were notoriously and disgustingly sensual and
dissolute--in that year, J. Shurley, M. A. in his
'Ecclesiastical History Epitomised,' gives Charles the title of
"the best of kings!" calls his life and reign
virtuous! and prays that his days may be
as the days of Heaven!--This loyal author calls
himself, The Christian reader's "BELOVED
Brother in CHRIST!"
Of the same king, Charles II., Horace Walpole (Lord Orford) gives
this character in his Epistle from Florence:--(Dodsley's
Collection, vol. iii. p. 92.)
Fortune, or fair, or frowning, on his soul
Could stamp no virtue, and no vice controul!
Honour or morals, gratitude or truth,
Nor taught his ripen'd age, nor knew his youth!
The care of nations left to whores or chance,
Plund'rer of Britain, pensioner of France;
Free to buffoons, to ministers denied,
He lived an atheist, and a bigot died!
All kings have parasites and praise; the Press records
their actions; and Posterity gives their character. [return]
24.
'Tyrants lose all respect for humanity, in
proportion as they are sunk beneath it; taught to believe
themselves of a different species, they really become so; lose
their participation with their kind; and, in mimicking the God,
dwindle into the brute! Blind with prejudices as a mole, stung
with truth as with scorpions, sore all over with wounded pride
like a boil, their minds a heap of morbid proud flesh and
bloated humours, a disease and gangrene in the state, instead of
its life-blood and vital principle--foreign despots claim
mankind as their property. They regard men crawling on the face
of the earth as we do insects that cross our path, and survey
the common drama of human life as a fantoccini exhibition got up
for their amusement. It is the overweening, aggravated,
intolerable sense of strolling pride and ungovernable self-will
that so often drives them mad; as it is their blind fatuity and
insensibility to all beyond themselves, that, transmitted
through successive generation, and confirmed by regal
intermarriages, in time makes them
idiots.'
(Hazlitt's Political Essays, p.
341.) [return]
25.
Though a Despot [can] be transformed into a limited king, he is
in heart and purpose still a despot. He feels
duress; he is not at liberty to oppress at his
pleasure; and he awaits an opportunity to exercise 'the Right
Divine of Kings to govern wrong;' for he holds the doctrine that
"oaths are not to be kept with subjects." In the
reign of Richard II. the Duke of Norfolk apprised the Duke of
Hereford, that the King purposed their destruction:--
Hereford.--God forbid!--He has sworn by ST. EDWARD,
to be a good Lord to me and the others.
Norfolk.--So has he often sworn to me by GOD's BODY:
but I do not trust him the more for THAT!
Every restored despot has become an unblushing and shameless
perjurer; where is there in history an instance to the
contrary?--Once a DESPOT, and always a DESPOT.
ALFRED the Great is the only King in our annals who being guilty
of misgovernment, and seeing its evils had the high courage to
acknowledge his crime by amendment. At the commencement of his
reign he seemed to consider his exalted dignity as an
emancipation from restraint, and to have found leisure, even
amidst his struggles with the Danes, to indulge the impetuosity
of his passions. His immorality and despotism provoked the
censure of the virtuous; he was haughty to his subjects,
neglected the administration of justice, and treated with
contempt the complaints of the indigent and oppressed. In the
eighth year of his reign he was driven from the throne by the
Danes. Narrowly escaping death and enduring many hardships,
adversity brought reflection. According to the piety of the age,
instead of tracing events to their political sources, he
referred them immediately to the providence of God; and
considered his misfortunes as the instrument with which Divine
Justice punished his past enormities. By his prudence and valour
he regained the throne, and drew up a code of laws by which he
ordained the government should be administered. Magistrates
trembled at his stern impartiality and inflexibility. He
executed forty-four judges in one year for their informal and iniquitous proceedings. Hence
their survivors and successors were careful to acquire a
competent degree of knowledge, and their decisions became
accordant to the law. Discovering that the only real foundation
of national happiness is in the enlightenment of the people, he
instructed them himself by his writings, endowed establishments
for the promotion of Education, and became the guardian and
benefactor of his country. [Lingard's
History of England, vol. i. c.
4.] --His virtues were the fruit of early
instruction. When he was a child, his mother, Osburga,
awakened in him a passion for learning and knowledge. Holding in
her hand a Saxon poem, elegantly written and beautifully
illuminated, she offered it as a reward to the first of her
children whose proficiency should enable him to read it to her.
The emulation of Alfred was excited: he ran to his master,
applied to the task with diligence, performed it to the
satisfaction fo the queen, and received the prize of his
industry. His mind thus opened by this excellent woman, she
dropped in the seeds of knowledge; by careful culture they grew
into wisdom, and Alfred is one of the most illustrious
instances of the endless blessing conferred upon man
by EDUCATION.
From the banks of the strong hold of Corfe
Castle, In Dorsetshire, near Wareham, formerly a
station of the Danish barbarians, one of their successors making
good his lodgment in a nameless House denies the justice of
UNIVERSAL EDUCATION, forgetful, perhaps, that the benighted
savages, his predecessors, were finally expelled by Alfred; that
it was the triumph of Knowledge and Liberty over Ignorance and
Selfish power; and the ALFRED, disdaining to use the advantage
which Education gave him over the rest of the people, otherwise
than for their welfare, incessantly laboured to dispense its
benefits to ALL. [return]
26.
'Priestcraft and Kingcraft are partners in the same firm. They trade
together. KINGS and conquerors make laws, parcel out lands, and
erect churches and palaces for the priests and dignitaries of
religion. In return, PRIESTS anoint kings with holy oil, hedge them
round with inviolability, spread over them the mysterious sanctity of
religion, and, with very little ceremony, make over the whole
species as slaves to these Gods upon earth by virtue of DIVINE
RIGHT!'
(Hazlitt's Political Essays p.
303.) [return]