Now that cannot well be effected, till the causes of these maladies be first removed, which commonly proceed from their own default, or some accidental inconvenience; as to be site in a bad clime, too far north, steril, in a barren place, as the desart of Libya, desarts of Arabia, places void of waters, as those of Lop and Belgian in Asia, or in a bad air, as at Alexandretta, Bantam, Pisa, Durazzo, S. John de Ullua, &c. or in danger of the seas continual inundations, as in many places of the Low-Countreys and elsewhere, or near some bad neighbours, as Hungarians to Turks, Podolians to Tartars, or almost any bordering countries, they live in fear still, and, by reason of hostile incursions, are oftentimes left desolate. So are cities by reason of wars, fires, plagues, inundations, wild beasts, decay of trades, barred havens, the seas violence, as Antwerp may witness of late, Syracuse of old, Brundusium in Italy, Rhye and Dover with us, and many that at this day suspect the seas fury and rage, and labour against it, as the Venetians to their inestimable charge. But the most frequent maladies are such as proceed from themselves, as, first, when religion and God's service is neglected, innovated, or altered— where they do not fear God, obey their prince—where atheism, epicurism, sacrilege, simony, &c. and all such impieties are freely committed--that countrey cannot prosper. When Abraham came to Gerar, and saw a bad land, he said, sure the fear of God was not in that place. Cyprian Echovius, a Spanish chorographer, above all other cities of Spain, commends Borcino, in which there was no beggar, no man poor, &c. but all rich and in good estate: and he gives the reason, because they were more religious than their neighbours. Why was Israel so often spoiled by their enemies, led into captivity, &c. but for their idolatry, neglect of God's word, for sacrilege, even for one Achan's fault? And what shall we expect, that have such multitudes of Achans, church-robbers, simoniacal patrons, &c.? how can they hope to flourish, that neglect divine duties, that live, most part, like Epicures? Other common grievances are generally noxious to a body politick; alteration of laws and customs, breaking privileges, general oppressions, seditions, &c. observed by Aristotle, Bodin, Boterus, Junius, Arniscus, &c. I will only point at some of the chiefest. Impotentia gubernandi, ataxia, con e • Mantua, væ! miseræ nimium vicina Cremonæ. olim Mauritania, &c. Interdum a feris, ut Deliciis Hispaniæ An. 1604. Nemo malus, nemo pauper; optimus quisque atque ditissimus. Pie, sancteque vivebant; summâque cum veneratione et timore, divino cultui, sacrisque rebus, incumbebant. 1. 5. c. 3. Polit. • Boterus polit. lib. 1. c. 1. Cum nempe princeps rerum gerendarum imperitus, segnis, oscitans, suique muneris immemor, aut fatuus est. fusion, ill government, which proceeds from unskilful, slothful, griping, covetous, unjust, rash, or tyrannizing magistrates, when they are fools, ideots, children, proud, wilful, partial, undiscreet, oppressors, giddy heads, tyrants, not able or unfit to manage such offices. Many noble cities and flourishing kingdoms by that means are desolate; the whole body groans under such heads; and all the members must needs be misaffected, as at this day those goodly provinces in Asia Minor, &c. groan under the burthen of a Turkish government; and those vast kingdoms of Muscovia, Russia, bunder a tyrannizing duke. Who ever heard of more civil and rich populous countreys than those of Greece, Asia Minor, abounding with all wealth, multitude of inhabitants, force, power, splendor, and magnificence ? and that miracle of countreys, the Holy Land, that, in so small a compass of ground, could maintain so many towns, cities, produce so many fighting men? Egypt another Paradise, now barbarous and desart, and almost waste, by the despotical government of an imperious Turk, intolerabili servitutis jugo premitur (one saith): not only fire and water, goods or lands, sed ipse spiritus ab insolentissimi victoris pendet nutu; such is their slavery, their lives and souls depend upon his insolent will and command—a tyrant that spoyls all wheresoever he comes; insomuch that an fhistorian complains, if an old inhabitant should now see them, he would not know them; if a traveller, or stranger, it would grieve his heart to behold them—whereas (5 Aristotle notes) novæ exactiones, nova onera imposita, new burdens and exactions. daily come upon them, (like those of which Zosimus, lib. 2.) so grievous, ut viri uxores, patres filias proslituerent, ut exactoribus e quæstu, &c. they must needs be discontent; hinc civitatum gemitus et ploratus, as Tully holds; hence come those complaints and tears of cities, poor; miserable, rebellious, and desperate subjects, as Hippolytus adds: and, as a judicious countrey-man of ours observed not long since in a survey of that great Duchy of Tuscany, the people lived much grieved and discontent, as appeared by their manifold and manifest complainings in that kind; that the state was like a sick body which had lately taken physick, whose humours are not yet well setled, and weakened so much by purging, that nothing was left but melancholy. Abundans Non viget respublica cujus caput infirmatur. Salisburiensis, c. 22. D. Fletchers relation, and Alexander Gagninus history. divitiarum affluentiâ, incolarum mullitudine, spluidore, ac potentiâ. above 200 miles in length, 60 in breadth, according to Adricomius. mulus Amaseus. f Sabellicus. Si quis incola vetus, non quis peregrinus, ingemisceret. g Polit. 1. 5. c. 6. Crudelitas punitas scelerum, violatio legum, peculatus pecuniæ publicæ, &c. De increm. urb. cap. 20. subditi miseri, rebelles, desperati, &c. lington, 1596. conclusio libri. & Sce omni d Not • Ro agnosceret; si principum, im h Epist. * R. Dal Whereas the princes and potentates are immoderate in lust, hypocrites, Epicures, of no religion, but in shew—Quid hypocrisi fragilius? what so brittle and unsure? what sooner subverts their estates, than wandring and raging lusts on their subjects wives, daughters? to say no worse. They that should facem præferre, lead the way to all vertuous actions, are the ringleaders oftentimes of all mischief and dissolute courses; and by that means their countries are plagued, and they themselves often ruined, banished or murdered by conspiracy of their subjects, as Sardanapalus was, Dionysius junior, Heliogabalus, Periander, Pisistratus, Tarquinius, Timocrates, Childericus, Appius Claudius, Andronicus, Galeacius Sforsia, Alexander Medices, &c. a Whereas the princes or great men are malicious, envious, factious, ambitious, emulators, they tear a common-wealth asunder, as so many Guelfes and Gibellines, disturb the quietness of it, and, with mutual murders, let it bleed to death. Our histories are too full of such barbarous inhumanities, and the miseries that issue from them. с b as Whereas they be like so many horse-leeches, hungry, griping, corrupt, covetous, avaritiæ mancipia, ravenous wolves, (for, as Tully writes, qui præest, prodest; et qui pecudibus præest, debet eorum utilitati inservire) or such as prefer their private before the publick good (for, as he said long since, res privatæ publicis semper officere) or whereas they be illiterate, ignorant, empiricks in policy, ubi deest facultas, virtus, (Aristot. pol. 5. cap. 8.) et scientia, wise only by inheritance, and in authority by birth-right, or for their wealth and titles—there must needs be a fault, a great defect, because, as an old philosopher affirms, such men are not alwayes fit—of an infinite number, few alone are senators; and of those few, fewer good; and of that small number of honest, good, and noble men, few that arc learned, wise, discreet, and sufficient, able to discharge such places—it must needs turn to the confusion of a state. h For, as the princes are, so are the people; qualis rex, Boterus 1. 9. c. 4. Polit. Quo fit ut aut rebus d'esperatis exulent, aut conju ratione subditorum crudelissime tandem trucidentur. Mutuis odiis et cædibus exhausti, &c. Lucra ex malis, sceleratisque caussis, d Sallust. For must part, we mistake the name of politicians, accounting such as read Machiavel and Tacitus, great statesmen, that cm dispute of political precepts, supplant and overthrow their adversaries, enrich theinselves, get honour, dis semble. But what is this to the bene esse, or preservation of a commonwealth? Imperium suapte sponte corruit. Apul. Prim. Flor. Ex innumerabilibus, pauci senatores genere nobiles; e consularibus pauci boni; e bonis adhuc pauci eruditi. Non solum vitia concipiunt ipsi principes, sed etiam infundunt in civitatem; plusque exemplo, quam peccato, nocent Cic. 1. de legibus. talis grex: and, which Antigonus right well said of old, qui Macedonice regem erudit, omnes etiam subditos erudit, he that teacheth the king of Macedon, teacheth all his subjects, is a true saying still. For princes are the glass, the school, the book, Corrumpunt vitiorum exempla domestica, magnis their examples are soonest followed, vices entertained: if they be prophane, irreligious, lascivious, riotous, Epicures, factious, covetous, ambitious, illiterate, so will the commons most part be, idle, unthrifts, prone to lust, drunkards, and therefore poor and needy ( πενια στασιν εμποιεί, και κακεργίαν, for poverty begets sedition and villany) upon all occasions ready to mutiny and rebel, discontent, still, complaining, murmuring, grudging, apt to all outrages, thefts, treasons, murders, innovations, in debt, shifters, cozeners, outlaws, profligatæ famæ ac vitæ. It was an old politicians aphorism, they that are poor and bad, envy rich, hate good men, abhor the present government, wish for a new, and would have all turned topsie turvy. When Catiline rebelled in Rome, he got a company of such debauched rogues together: they were his familiars and coadjutors; and such have been your rebels, most part, in all ages -Jack Cade, Tom Straw, Kette, and his companions. Where they be generally riotous and contentious, where there be many discords, many laws, many law-suits, many lawyers, and many physicians, it is a manifest sign of a distempered, melancholy state, as c Plato long since maintained: for, where such kind of men swarm, they will make more work for themselves, and that body politick diseased, which was otherwise sound—a general mischief in these our times, an unsensible plague, and never so many of them; which are now multiplyed (saith Mat. Geraldus, da lawyer himself,) as so many locusts, not the parents, but the plagues of the countrey, and, for the most part, a supercilious, bad, covetous, litigious generation of men- crumenimulga natio, &c, a pursemilking nation, a clamorous company, gowned vultures, qui Epist. ad, Zen. Juven. Sat. 4. Paupertas seditionem gignit et maleficium. Arist. pol. 2. c. 7. Sallust. Semper in civitate, quibus opes nullæ sunt, bonis invident; vetera odere; nova exoptant; odio suarum rerum mutari omnia petunt, De legibus. Profligate in repub. discipline est indicium jurisperitorum numerus, et medicorum copia. In præf. stud. juris. Multiplicantur nunc in terris, ut locustæ, non patriæ parentes, sed pestes, pessimi homines, majore ex parte superci. iosi, contentiosi, &c.---licitum latrocinium exercent. Dousa, epid. loquutu kia turba, vultures togati. f Barc. Argen. ex injuria vivunt et sanguine civium, thieves and seminaries of discord, worse than any polers by the high way side, auri accipitres, auri exterebronides, pecuniarum hamiolæ, quadruplatores, curice harpagones, fori tintinnabula, monstra hominum, mangones, &c. that lake upon them to make peace, but are indeed the very disturbers of our peace, a company of irreligious, harpyes, scraping, griping catch-poles (I mean our common hungry petty-foggers, rabulas forenses—love and honour, in the mean time, all good laws, and worthy lawyers, that are so many a oracles and pilots of a well governed common-wealth) without art, without judgement, that do more harm, as bLivy said, quam bella externa, fames, morbive, than sickness, wars, hunger, diseases; and cause a most incredible destruction of a common-wealth, saith c S sellius, a famous civilian sometimes in Paris. As ivy doth by an oke, imbrace it so long, until it hath got the heart out of it, so do they by such places they inhabit: no counsel at all, no justice, no speech to be had, nisi eum præemulseris: he must be fed still, or else he is as mute as a fish; better open an oyster without a knife. Experto crede, (saith Salisburiensis): in manus eorum millies incidi; et Charon immitis, qui nulli pepercit unquam, his longe clementior est—I speak out of experience; I have been a thousand times amongst them; and Charon himself is more gentle than they: he is contented with his single pay; but they multiply still; they are never satisfied: besides they have damnificas linguas, (as he terms it) nisi funibus argenteis vincias: they must be feed to say nothing, and get more to hold their peace, than we can to say our best. They will speak their clients fair, and invite them to their tables: but (as he follows it) of all injustice, there is none so pernicious as that of theirs, which, when they deceive most, will seem to be honest men. They take upon them to be peace-makers, et fovere caussas humilium, to help them to their right; patrocinantur afflictis; but all is for their own good, ut loculos pleniorum exhauriant: they plead for poor men gratis; but they are but as a stale to catch others. If there be no jar, i they can make a jar, out of the law it self find still some quirk or other, to set them at odds, and continue causes so long, (lustra aliquot) I know not how many h < Lib. 1. b Lib. 3. Polycrat. lib. f Plus acci quam eorum, h Nam, quo a Jurisconsulti domus oraculum civitatis. Tully. de rep. Gallorum, Incredibilem reipub. perniciem afferunt. Is stipe contentus; at hi asses integros sibi multiplicari jubent. piunt tacere, quam nos loqui. Totius injustitiæ nulla capitalior, qui, cum maxime decipiunt, id agunt ut boni viri esse videantur. cunque modo caussa procedat, hoc semper agitur, ut loculi impleantur, etsi avaritia nequit satiari. Camden, in Norfolk. Qui, si nihil sit litium, e juris apicibus lites tamen serere callent. |