The son of earth with hundred hands The son of earth again in his earth's womb does lie. What blood, confusion, ruin, to obtain In what oblique and humble creeping wise But even his forked tongue strikes dead: But no guards can oppose assaulting fears, No more than doors or close-drawn curtains keep (For, oh, a rebel red-coat 't is) Does here his early hell begin ; He sees his slaves without, his tyrant feels within. Let, gracious God! let never more thine hand A tyrant is a rod and serpent too, And brings worse plagues than Egypt knew. What sores deform'd the ulcerous state! What darkness to be felt has buried us of late! How has it snatch'd our flocks and herds away! What croaking sects and vermin has it sent, What greedy troops, what armed power The land, which every-where they fill! Nor fly they, Lord! away: no, they devour it still. Come the eleventh plague, rather than this should be; Come sink us rather in the sea. Come rather pestilence, and reap us down; Come God's sword rather than our own. Let rather Roman come again, Or Saxon, Norman, or the Dane: In all the bonds we ever bore, We griev'd, we sigh'd, we wept; we never blush'd before. If by our sins the divine justice bę As of good princes' death, so of a tyrant's birth Here, the spirit of verse beginning a little to fail, I stopped: and his highness, smiling, said, "I was glad to see you engaged in the enclosure of metre; for, if you had stayed in the open plain of declaiming against the word tyrant, I must have had patience for half a dozen hours, till you had tired yourself as well as me. But pray, countryman, to avoid this sciomachy, or imaginary combat with words, let me know, Sir, what you mean by the name of tyrant, for I remember that among your ancient authors, not only all kings, but even Jupiter himself (your juvans pater) is so termed; and perhaps, as it was used formerly in a good sense, so we shall find it, upon better consideration, to te still a good thing for the benefit and peace of mankind; at least, it will appear whether your interpretation of it may be justly applied to the person who is now the subject of our discourse." "I call him (said I) a tyrant, who either intrudes himself forcibly into the government of his fellowcitizens without any legal authority over them; or who, having a just title to the government of a people, abuses it to the destruction or tormenting of them. So that all tyrants are at the same time usurpers, either of the whole, or at least of a part, of that power which they assume to themselves; and no less are they to be accounted rebels, since no man can usurp authority over others, but by rebelling againt them who had it before, or at least against those laws which were his superiors: and in all these senses, no history can afford us a more evident example of tyranny, or more out of all possibility of excuse or palliation, than that of the person whom you are pleased to defend; whether we consider his reiterated rebellions against all his superiors, or his usurpation of the supreme power to himself, or his tyranny in the exercise of it: and, if lawful princes have been esteemed tyrants, by not containing themselves within the bounds of those laws which have been left them, as the sphere of their authority, by their forefathers, what shall we say of that man, who, having by right no power at all in this nation, could not content himself with that which had satisfied the most ambitious of our princes? nay, not with those vastly extended limits of sovereignty, which he (disdaining all that had been prescribed and observed before) was pleased (out of great modesty) to set to himself; not abstaining from rebellion and usurpation even against his own laws, as well as those of the nation!" "Hold, friend (said his highness, pulling me by my arm), for I see your zeal is transporting you again; whether the protector were a tyrant in the exorbitant exercise of his power, we shall see anon; it is requisite to examine, first, whether he were so in the usurpation of it. And I say, that not only he, but no man else, ever was, or can be so; and that for these reasons. First, because all power belongs only to God, who is the source and fountain of it, as kings are of all honours in their do minions. Princes are but his viceroys in the little provinces of this world; and to some he gives their places for a few years, to some for their lives, and to others (upon ends or deserts best known to himself, or merely for his undisputable good pleasure) he bestows, as it were, leases upon them, and their posterity, for such a date of time as is prefixed in that patent of their destiny, which is not legible to you men below. Neither is it more unlawful for Oliver to succeed Charles in the kingdom of England, when God so disposes of it, than it had been for him to have succeeded the lord Strafford in the lieutenancy of Ireland, if he had been appointed to it by the king then reigning. Men are in both the cases obliged to obey him whom they see actually invested with the authority, by that sovereign from whom he ought to derive it, without disputing or examining the causes, either of the removal of the one, or the preferment of the other. Secondly, because all power is attained, either by the election and consent of the people (and that takes away your objection of forcible intrusion); or else by a conquest of them (and that gives such a legal authority as you mention to be wanting in the usurpation of a tyrant); so that either this title is right, and then there are no usurpers, or else it is a wrong one, and then there are none else but usurpers, if you examine the original pretences of the princes of the world. Thirdly (which, quitting the dispute in general, is a particular justification of his highness), |