66 that of Paul, 2 Cor. " he was a fool," &c. and Rom. ix. he wisheth himself to be anathematized for them. Such is that drunkenness which Ficinus speaks of, when the soul is elevated and ravished with a divine taste of that heavenly nectar, which poets deciphered by the sacrifice of Dionysius, and in this sense with the poet, insanire lubet, as Austin exhorts us, ad ebrietatem se quisque paret, let's all be mad and drunk. But we commonly mistake, and go beyond our commission, we reel to the opposite part, we are not capable of it, 57 and as he said of the Greeks, Vos Græci semper pueri, vos Britanni, Galli, Germani, Itali, &c. you are a company of fools. 56 Proceed now à partibus ad totum, or from the whole to parts, and you shall find no other issue, the parts shall be sufficiently dilated in this following Preface. The whole must needs follow by a sorites or induction. Every multitude is mad, 58 bellua multorum capitum, (a many-headed beast), precipitate and rash without judgment, stultum animal, a roaring rout. 59 Roger Bacon proves it out of Aristotle, Vulgus dividi in oppositum contra sapientes, quod vulgo videtur verum, falsum est; that which the commonalty accounts true, is most part false, they are still opposite to wise men, but all the world is of this humour (vulgus), and thou thyself art de vulgo, one of the commonalty; and he, and he, and so are all the rest; and therefore, as Phocion concludes, to be approved in nought you say or do, mere idiots and asses. Begin then where you will, go backward or forward, choose out of the whole pack, wink and choose, you shall find them all alike, “never a barrel better herring." Copernicus, Atlas his successor, is of opinion, the earth is a planet, moves and shines to others, as the moon doth to us. Digges, Gilbert, Keplerus, Origanus, and others, defend this hypothesis of his in sober sadness, and that the moon is inhabited: if it be so that the earth is a moon, then are we also giddy, vertigenous and lunatic within this sublunary maze. "Through such a train of words if I should run, The day would sooner than the tale be done:" 60 I could produce such arguments till dark night: if you should hear the rest, "Ante diem clauso component vesper Olimpo: " but according to my promise, I will descend to particulars. This melancholy extends itself not to men only, but even to vegetals and sensibles. I speak not of those creatures which are saturnine, melancholy by nature, as lead, and such like minerals, or those plants, rue, cypress, &c. and hellebore itself, of which 6 Agrippa treats, fishes, birds, and beasts, hares, conies, dormice, &c., owls, bats, nightbirds, but that artificial, which is perceived in them all. Remove a plant, it will pine away, which is especially perceived in date trees, as you may read at large in Constantine's husbandry, that antipathy betwixt the vine and the cabbage, vine and oil. Put a bird in a cage, he will die for sullenness, or a beast in a pen, or take his young ones or companions from him, and see what effect it will cause. But who perceives not these common passions of sensible creatures, fear, sorrow, &c. Of all other, dogs are most subject to this malady, insomuch some hold they dream as men do, and through violence of melancholy run mad; I could relate many stories of dogs that have died for grief, and pined away for loss of their masters, but they are common in every 61 author. 62 Kingdoms, provinces, and politic bodies are likewise sensible and subject to this disease, as Boterus in his politics hath proved at large. "As in human bodies (saith he) there be divers alterations proceeding from humours, so be there many diseases in a commonwealth, which do as diversely happen from several distempers," as you may easily percieve by their particular symptoms. For where you shall see the people civil, obedient to God and princes, judicious, peaceable and quiet, rich, fortunate, 63 and flourish, to live in peace, in unity and concord, a country well tilled, many fair built and populous cities, ubi incolæ nitent as old Cato said, the people are neat, polite and terse, ubi bene, beateque vivunt, which our politicians make the 6-1 |losop. 1. 1. c. 25 et 19. ejusd. 1. Lib. 10. cap. 4. chief end of a commonwealth; and which 65 Aristotle Polit. lib. 3, cap. 4, calls Commune bonum, Polybius lib. 6, optabilem et selectum statum, that country is free from melancholy; as it was in Italy in the time of Augustus, now in China, now in many other flourishing kingdoms of Europe. But whereas you shall see many discontents, common grievances, complaints, poverty, barbarism, beggary, plagues, wars, rebellions, seditions, mutinies, contentions, idleness, riot, epicurism, the land lie untilled, waste, full of bogs, fens, deserts, &c., cities decayed, base and poor towns, villages depopulated, the people squalid, ugly, uncivil; that kingdom, that country, must needs be discontent, melancholy, hath a sick body, and had need to be reformed. 66 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 situated in a bad clime, too far north, sterile, in a barren place, as the desert of Lybia, deserts of Arabia, places void of waters, as those of Lop and Belgian in Asia, or in a bad air, as at Alexandretta, Bantam, Pisa, Durrazzo, S. John de Ulloa, &c., or in danger of the sea's continual inundations, as in many places of the Low Countries 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, 67 wild beasts, decay of trades, barred havens, the sea's violence, as Antwerp may witness of late, Syracuse of old, Brundusium in Italy, Rye and Dover with us, and many that at this day suspect the sea's 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 country cannot prosper. When Abraham came to Gerar, and saw a bad land, he said, sure the fear of God was not in that place. 68 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 except 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 ? 70 Other common grievances are generally noxious to a body politic; 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 chiefest. Impotentia gubernandi, ataxia, confusion, ill government, which proceeds from unskilful, slothful, griping, covetous, unjust, rash, or tyrannizing magistrates, when they are fools, idiots, children, proud, wilful, partial, indiscreet, 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 disaffected, 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, "under a tyrannizing duke. Who ever heard of more civil and rich populous countries than those of " Greece, Asia Minor, abounding with all 3 wealth, multitudes of inhabitants, force, power, splendour and magnificence?" and that miracle of countries," 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 desert, and almost waste, by the despotical government of an imperious Turk, intolerabili servitutis 65 Vel publicam utilitatem: salus publica suprema | 5. c. 3. 70 Boterus Polit. lib. 1. c. 1. Cum nempe lex esto. Beata civitas non ubi pauci beati, sed tota princeps rerum gerendarum imperitus, segnis, oscicivitas beata. Plato quarto de republica. Man-tans, suique muneris immemor, aut fatuus est. tua væ miseræ nimium vicina Cremona. 67 Inter-71 Non viget respublica cujus caput infirmatur. Sadum à feris, ut olim Mauritania, &c. 68 Deliciis lisburiensis, c. 22. 72 See Dr. Fletcher's relaHispaniæ anno 1604. Nemo malus, nemo pauper, op- tion, and Alexander Gagninus' history. 73 Abuntimus quisque atque ditissimus. Pie, sancteque vive- dans omni divitiarum affluentia incolarum multitudine bant summaque cum veneratione, et timore divino splendore ac potentia. 74 Not above 200 miles in cultui, sacrisque rebus incumbebant. Polit. 1. length, 60 in breadth, according to Adricomius. jugo premitur (75 one saith) not only fire and water, goods or lands, sed ipse spiritus ub insolentissimi victoris pendet nutu, such is their slavery, their lives and souls depend upon his insolent will and command. A tyrant that spoils all wheresoever he comes, insomuch that an historian 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 "Aristotle notes, Nova 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 filios prostituerent ut exactoribus è questu, &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 79Hippolitus adds; and as a as a judicious countryman 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 physic, whose humours are not yet well settled, and weakened so much by purging, that nothing was left but melancholy." 81 Whereas the princes and potentates are immoderate in lust, hypocrites, epicures, of no religion, but in show: Quid hypocrisi fragilius? what so brittle and unsure? what sooner subverts their estates than wandering and raging lusts, on their subjects' wives, daughters? to say no worse. That they should facem præferre, lead the way to all virtuous 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. Whereas the princes or great men are malicious, envious, factious, ambitious, emulators, they tear a commonwealth asunder, as so many Guelfs and Gibelines 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. 85 $3 Whereas they be like so many horse-leeches, hungry, griping, corrupt, covetous, avaritia mancipia, ravenous as wolves, for as Tully writes: qui præest prodest, et qui pecudibus præest, debet eorum utilitati inservire or such as prefer their private before the public good. For as he said long since, res private publicis semper officere. Or whereas they be illiterate, ignorant, empirics in policy, ubi deest facultas, virtus (Aristot. pol. 5, cap. 8,) et scientia, wise only by inheritance, and in authority by birth-right, favour, 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 always 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 are learned, wise, discreet and sufficient, able to discharge such places, it must needs turn to the confusion of a state." 56 86 87 For as the Princes are, so are the people; Qualis Rex, tulis grex : and which "Antigonus right well said of old, qui Macedoniæ 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, Where subjects' eyes do learn, do read, do look." "Velocius et citius nos Corrumpunt vitiorum exempla domestica, magnis Cum subeant animos auctoribus.". 90 Their examples are soonest followed, vices entertained, if they be profane, irreli R. 75 Romulus Amascus. 76 Sabellicus. Si quis incola vetus, non agnosceret, si quis peregrinus ingemisceret. Polit. 1. 5. c. 6. Crudelitas principum, impunitas scelerum, violatio legum, peculatus pecuniæ publicæ, etc. 78 Epist. 79 De increm. urb. cap. 20. subditi miseri, rebelles, desperati, &c. Darlington. 1596. conclusio libri. & Boterus 1. 9. e. 4. Polit. Quo fit ut aut rebus desperatis exulent, aut conjuratione subditorum crudelissime tandem trucidentur. Mutuis odiis et cædibus exhausti, &c. Lucra ex malis, scelerastisque causis. 84 Salust. * For most part we mistake the name of Politicians, accounting such as read Machiavel and Tacitus, great statesmen, that can dispute of political precepts, sup plant and overthrow their adversaries, enrich themselves, get honours, dissemble; but what is this to the bene esse, or preservation of a Commonwealth? Imperium suapte sponte corruit. 67 Apul. Prim. Flor. Ex innumerabilibus, pauci Senatores genere nobiles, è consularibus pauci boni, è bonis adhuc pauci eruditi. 88 Non solum vitia concipiunt ipsi principes, sed etiam infundunt in civitatem, plusque exemplo quam peccato nocent. Cic. 1. de legibus. Epist. ad Zen. Juven. Sat. 4. Paupertas seditionem gignit et maleficium. Arist. Pol. 2. c. 7. So Vicious domestic examples operate more quickly upon us when suggested to our minds by high authorities. gious, 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 (ή πενία στάσιν ἐμποιει καὶ κακουργίαν, 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, Profligate famæ ac vita. It was an old politician's 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 topsy 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. 93 94 95 90 92 98 Where they be generally riotous and contentious, where there be many discords, many laws, many lawsuits, many lawyers and many physicians, it is a manifest sign of a distempered, melancholy state, as Plato long since maintained: for where such kind of men swarm, they will make more work for themselves, and that body politic diseased, which was otherwise sound. A general mischief in these our times, an insensible plague, and never so many of them: "which are now multiplied (saith Mat. Geraldus, a lawyer himself,) as a lawyer himself,) as so many locusts, not the parents, but the plagues of the country, and for the most part a supercilious, bad, covetous, litigious generation of men. Crumenimulga natio, &c. A purse-milking nation, a clamorous company, gowned vultures, qui ex injuria vivent et sanguine civium, thieves and seminaries of discord; worse than any polers by the highway side, auri accipitres, auri exterebronides, pecuniarum hamiola, quadruplatores, curia harpagones, fori tintinabula, monstra hominum, mangones, &c. that take upon them to make peace, but are indeed the very disturbers of our peace, a company of irreligious harpies, scraping, griping catchpoles, (I mean our common hungry pettifoggers, rabulas forenses, love and honour in the meantime all good laws, and worthy lawyers, that are so many "oracles and pilots of a well-governed commonwealth). Without art, without judgment, that do more harm, as Livy said, quam bella externa, fames, morbive, than sickness, wars, hunger, diseases; "and cause a most incredible destruction of a commonwealth," saith Sesellius, a famous civilian sometimes in Paris, as ivy doth by an oak, embrace 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 premulseris, he must be fed still, or else he is as mute as a fish, better open an oyster without a knife. Experto crede (saith 100 Salisburiensis) in manus eorum millies incidi, et Charon immitis qui nulli pepercit unquam, his longè 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 fed 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, 3% 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 peacemakers, et fovere causas humilium, to help them to their right, patrocinantur afflictis, but all is for their own good, ut loculos pleniorom exhauriant, they plead for poor men gratis, but they are but as a stale to catch others. If there be no jar, they can make a jar, out of the law itself find still some quirk or other, to set them at odds, and continue causes so long, lustra aliquot, I know not how many years before the cause is heard, and when 'tis judged and determined by reason of some tricks and errors, it is as fresh to begin, after twice seven years sometimes, as it was at first; and so they prolong 4 2 1 Is 91 Salust. Semper in civitate quibus opes nullæ sunt | Lib. 3. Lib. 1. de rep. Gallorum, incredibilem bonis invident, vetera odere, nova exoptant, odio su- reipub. perniciem afferunt. 100 Polycrat. lib. arum rerum mutari omnia petunt. 92 De legibus. stipe contentus, et hi asses integros sibi multiplicari profligate in repub. disciplinæ est indicium jurisperi- jubent. * Plus accipiunt tacere, quam nos loqui, torum numerus, et medicorum copia. In præf. Totius injustitiæ nulla capitalior, quam eorum qui stud. juris. Multiplicantur nunc in terris ut locustæ cum maxime decipiunt, id agunt, ut boni viri esse vi non patriæ parentes, sed pestes, pessimi homines, ma- deantur. 4 Nam quocunque modo causa procedat, jore ex parta superciliosi, contentiosi, &c. licitum hoc semper agitur, ut loculi impleantur, etsi avaritia latrocinium exercent. Dousa epid. loquieleia nequit satiari. Camden in Norfolk: qui si nihil turba, vultures togati. 96 Barc. Argen. Juris sit litium è juris apicibus lites tamen serere callent. consulti domus oraculum civitatis. Tully. $ Lib. 3. time, delay suits till they have enriched themselves, and beggared their clients. And, as Cato inveighed against Isocrates' scholars, we may justly tax our wrangling lawyers, they do consenescere in litibus, are so litigious and busy here on earth, that I think they will plead their client's causes hereafter, some of them in hell. Simlerus complains amongst the Suisseres of the advocates in his time, that when they should make an end, they began controversies, and "protract their causes many years, persuading them their title is good, till their patrimonies be consumed, and that they have spent more in seeking than the thing is worth, or they shall get by the recovery." So that he that goes to law, as the proverb is, holds a wolf by the ears, or as a sheep in a storm runs for shelter to a brier, if he prosecute his cause he is consumed, if he surcease his suit he loseth all; what difference? They had wont heretofore, saith Austin, to end matters, per communes arbitros; and so in Switzerland (we are informed by 10 Simlerus), "they had some common arbitrators or daysmen in every town, that made a friendly composition betwixt man and man, and he much wonders at their honest simplicity, that could keep peace so well, and end such great causes by that means. At "Fez in Africa, they have neither lawyers nor advocates; but if there be any controversies amongst them, both parties plaintiff and defendant come to their Alfakins or chief judge," and at once without any farther appeals or pitiful delays, the cause is heard and ended." Our forefathers, as a worthy chorographer of ours observes, had wont pauculis cruculis aureis, with a few golden crosses, and lines in verse, make all conveyances, assurances. And such was the candour and integrity of succeeding ages, that a deed (as I have oft seen) to convey a whole manor, was implicitè contained in some twenty lines or thereabouts; like that scede or Sytala Laconica, so much renowned of old in all contracts, which Tully so earnestly commends to Atticus, Plutarch in his Lysander, Aristotle polit.: Thucydides, lib. 1, "Diodorus and Suidus approve and magnify, for that laconic brevity in this kind; and well they might, for, according to Tertullian, certa sunt paucis, there is much more certainty in fewer words. And so was it of old throughout: but now many skins of parchment will scarce serve turn; he that buys and sells a house, must have a house full of writings, there be so many circumstances, so many words, such tautological repetitions of all particulars (to avoid cavillation they say); but we find by our woful experience, that to subtle wits it is a cause of much more contention and variance, and scarce any conveyance so accurately penned by one, which another will not find a crack in, or cavil at; if any one word be misplaced, any little error, all is disannulled. That which is a law to-day, is none tomorrow; that which is sound in one man's opinion, is most faulty to another; that in conclusion, here is nothing amongst us but contention and confusion, we bandy one against another. And that which long since 16 Plutarch complained of them in Asia, may be verified in our times. "These men here assembled, come not to sacrifice to their gods, to offer Jupiter their first-fruits, or merriments to Bacchus; but an yearly disease exasperating Asia hath brought them hither, to make an end of their controversies and lawsuits." "Tis multitudo perdentium et pereuntium, a destructive rout that seek one another's ruin. Such most part are our ordinary suitors, termers, clients, new stirs every day, mistakes, errors, cavils, and at this present, as I have heard in some one court, I know not how many thousand causes: no person free, no title almost good, with such bitterness in following, so many slights, procrastinations, delays, forgery, such cost (for infinite sums are inconsiderately spent), violence and malice, I know not by whose fault, lawyers, clients, laws, both or all: but as Paul reprehended the "Corinthians long since, I may more positively infer now: "There is a fault amongst you, and I speak it to your shame, Is there not a 15 wise man amongst you, to judge between his brethren? but that a brother goes to law Plutarch. vit. Cat. causas apud inferos quas in suam fidem receperunt, patrocinio suo tuebuntur. ↑ Lib. 2. de Helvet. repub, non explicandis, sed moliendis controversiis operam dant, ita ut lites in multos annos extrahantur summa cum molestiâ utrisque; partis et dum interea patrimonia exhauriantur. Lupum auribus tenent. Hor. 10 Lib. de Helvet. repub. Judices quocunque pago constituunt qui amica aliqua transactione si fieri possit, lites tollant. Ego majorum nostrorum simplicitatem admiror, qui sic causas gravissimas composuerint, &c. 15 18 11 Clenard. 1. 1. ep. Si quæ controversie utraque pars judicem adit, is semel et simul rem transigit, audit: nec quid sit appellatio, lachrymosæque moræ noscunt. 12 Camden. 13 Lib. 10. epist. ad Atticum, epist. 11. 14 Biblioth. 1. 3. 16 Lib. de Anim. 16 Lib. major morb. corp, an animi. Hi non conveniunt ut diis more majorum sacra faciant, non ut Jovi primitias offerant, aut Baccho commessationes, sed anniversarius morbus exasperans Asiam huc eos coegit, ut contentiones hic peragant. 171 Cor. vi. 5, 6. 18 Stulti quando demum sapietis? Ps. xlix. 8. |