THE liberty of a people consists in being governed by laws which they
have made themselves, under whatsoever form it be of government; the
liberty of a private man in being master of his own time and actions, as
far as may consist with the laws of God and of his country. Of this
latter only we are here to discourse, and to inquire what estate of life
does best suit us in the possession of it. This liberty of our own
actions is such a fundamental privilege of human nature, that God
Himself, notwithstanding all His infinite power and right over us,
permits us to enjoy it, and that, too, after a forfeiture made by the
rebellion of Adam. He takes so much care for the entire preservation of
it to us, that He suffers neither His providence nor eternal decree to
break or infringe it. Now for our time, the same God, to whom we are but
tenants-at-will for the whole, requires but the seventh part to be paid
to Him at as a small quit-rent, in acknowledgment of His title. It is
man only that has the impudence to demand our whole time, though he
neither gave it, nor can restore it, nor is able to pay any considerable
value for the least part of it. This birthright of mankind above all
other creatures some are forced by hunger to sell, like Esau, for bread
and broth; but the greatest part of men make such a bargain for the
delivery up of themselves, as Thamar did with Judah; instead of a kid,
the necessary provisions for human life, they are contented to do it for
rings and bracelets. The great dealers in this world may be divided into
the ambitious, the covetous, and the voluptuous; and that all these men
sell themselves to be slaves—though to the vulgar it may seem a Stoical
paradox—will appear to the wise so plain and obvious that they will
scarce think it deserves the labour of argumentation. Let us first
consider the ambitious; and those, both in their progress to greatness,
and after the attaining of it. There is nothing truer than what Sallust
says: “_Dominationis in alios servitium suum_, _mercedem dant_”: They are
content to pay so great a price as their own servitude to purchase the
domination over others. The first thing they must resolve to sacrifice
is their whole time; they must never stop, nor ever turn aside whilst
they are in the race of glory; no, not like Atalanta for golden apples;
“Neither indeed can a man stop himself, if he would, when he is in this,
career. _Fertur equis auriga neque audit currus habenas_.”
Pray let us but consider a little what mean, servile things men do for
this imaginary food. We cannot fetch a greater example of it than from
the chief men of that nation which boasted most of liberty. To what
pitiful baseness did the noblest Romans submit themselves for the
obtaining of a prætorship, or the consular dignity? They put on the
habit of suppliants, and ran about, on foot and in dirt, through all the
tribes to beg voices; they flattered the poorest artisans, and carried a
nomenclator with them, to whisper in their ear every man’s name, lest
they should mistake it in their salutations; they shook the hand, and
kissed the cheek of every popular tradesman; they stood all day at every
market in the public places, to show and ingratiate themselves to the
rout; they employed all their friends to solicit for them; they kept open
tables in every street; they distributed wine, and bread, and money, even
to the vilest of the people. _En Romanos_, _rerum Dorninos_! Behold the
masters of the world beginning from door to door. This particular humble
way to greatness is now out of fashion, but yet every ambitious person is
still in some sort a Roman candidate. He must feast and bribe, and
attend and flatter, and adore many beasts, though not the beast with many
heads. Catiline, who was so proud that he could not content himself with
a less power than Sylla’s, was yet so humble for the attaining of it, as
to make himself the most contemptible of all servants, to be a public
bawd for all the young gentlemen of Rome whose hot lusts, and courages,
and heads, he thought he might make use of. And since I happen here to
propose Catiline for my instance, though there be thousand of examples
for the same thing, give me leave to transcribe the character which
Cicero gives of this noble slave, because it is a general description of
all ambitious men, and which Machiavel perhaps would say ought to be the
rule of their life and actions. “This man,” says he, as most of you may
well remember, “had many artificial touches and strokes that looked like
the beauty of great virtues; his intimate conversation was with the worst
of men, and yet he seemed to be an admirer and lover of the best; he was
furnished with all the nets of lust and luxury, and yet wanted not the
arms of labour and industry: neither do I believe that there was ever any
monster in nature, composed out of so many different and disagreeing
parts. Who more acceptable, sometimes, to the most honourable persons?
who more a favourite to the most infamous? who, sometimes, appeared a
braver champion? who, at other times, a bolder enemy to his country? who
more dissolute in his pleasures? who more patient in his toils? who more
rapacious in robbing? who more profuse in giving? Above all things, this
was remarkable and admirable in him. The arts he had to acquire the good
opinion and kindness of all sorts of men, to retain it with great
complaisance, to communicate all things to them, to watch and serve all
the occasions of their fortune, both with his money and his interest, and
his industry, and if need were, not by sticking at any wickedness
whatsoever that might be useful to them, to bend and turn about his own
nature and laveer with every wind, to live severely with the melancholy,
merrily with the pleasant, gravely with the aged, wantonly with the
young, desperately with the bold, and debauchedly with the luxurious.
With this variety and multiplicity of his nature, as he had made a
collection of friendships with all the most wicked and reckless of all
nations, so, by the artificial simulation of some virtues, he made a
shift to ensnare some honest and eminent persons into his familiarity;
neither could so vast a design as the destruction of this empire have
been undertaken by him, if the immanity of so many vices had not been
covered and disguised by the appearances of some excellent qualities.”
I see, methinks, the character of an Anti-Paul, who became all things to
all men, that he might destroy all; who only wanted the assistance of
fortune to have been as great as his friend Cæsar was, a little after
him. And the ways of Cæsar to compass the same ends—I mean till the
civil war, which was but another manner of setting his country on
fire—were not unlike these, though he used afterward his unjust dominion
with more moderation than I think the other would have done. Sallust,
therefore, who was well acquainted with them both and with many such-like
gentlemen of his time, says, “That it is the nature of ambition”
(_Ambitio multos mortales falsos fieri coegit_, _etc._) “to make men
liars and cheaters; to hide the truth in their breasts, and show, like
jugglers, another thing in their mouths; to cut all friendships and
enmities to the measure of their own interest, and to make a good
countenance without the help of good will.” And can there be freedom
with this perpetual constraint? What is it but a kind of rack that
forces men to say what they have no mind to? I have wondered at the
extravagant and barbarous stratagem of Zopirus, and more at the praises
which I find of so deformed an action; who, though he was one of the
seven grandees of Persia, and the son of Megabises, who had freed before
his country from an ignoble servitude, slit his own nose and lips, cut
off his own ears, scourged and wounded his whole body, that he might,
under pretence of having been mangled so inhumanly by Darius, be received
into Babylon (then besieged by the Persians) and get into the command of
it by the recommendation of so cruel a sufferance, and their hopes of his
endeavouring to revenge it. It is a great pity the Babylonians suspected
not his falsehood, that they might have cut off his hands too, and
whipped him back again. But the design succeeded; he betrayed the city,
and was made governor of it. What brutish master ever punished his
offending slave with so little mercy as ambition did this Zopirus? and
yet how many are there in all nations who imitate him in some degree for
a less reward; who, though they endure not so much corporal pain for a
small preferment, or some honour, as they call it, yet stick not to
commit actions, by which they are more shamefully and more lastingly
stigmatised? But you may say, “Though these be the most ordinary and
open ways to greatness, yet there are narrow, thorny, and little-trodden
paths, too, through which some men find a passage by virtuous industry.”
I grant, sometimes they may; but then that industry must be such as
cannot consist with liberty, though it may with honesty.
Thou art careful, frugal, painful. We commend a servant so, but not a
friend.
Well, then, we must acknowledge the toil and drudgery which we are forced
to endure in this assent, but we are epicures and lords when once we are
gotten up into the high places. This is but a short apprenticeship,
after which we are made free of a royal company. If we fall in love with
any beauteous woman, we must be content that they should be our
mistresses whilst we woo them. As soon as we are wedded and enjoy, ’tis
we shall be the masters.
I am willing to stick to this similitude in the case of greatness: we
enter into the bonds of it, like those of matrimony; we are bewitched
with the outward and painted beauty, and take it for better or worse
before we know its true nature and interior inconveniences. “A great
fortune,” says Seneca, “is a great servitude.” But many are of that
opinion which Brutus imputes (I hope untruly) even to that patron of
liberty, his friend Cicero. “We fear,” says he to Atticus, “death, and
banishment, and poverty, a great deal too much. Cicero, I am afraid,
thinks these to be the worst of evils, and if he have but some persons
from whom he can obtain what he has a mind to, and others who will
flatter and worship him, seems to be well enough contented with an
honourable servitude, if anything, indeed, ought to be called honourable
in so base and contumelious a condition.” This was spoken as became the
bravest man who was ever born in the bravest commonwealth. But with us,
generally, no condition passes for servitude that is accompanied with
great riches, with honours, and with the service of many inferiors. This
is but a deception the sight through a false medium; for if a groom serve
a gentleman in his chamber, that gentleman a lord, and that lord a
prince, the groom, the gentleman, and the lord are as much servants one
as the other. The circumstantial difference of the one getting only his
bread and wages, the second a plentiful, and the third a superfluous
estate, is no more intrinsical to this matter than the difference between
a plain, a rich and gaudy livery. I do not say that he who sells his
whole time and his own will for one hundred thousand is not a wiser
merchant than he who does it for one hundred pounds; but I will swear
they are both merchants, and that he is happier than both who can live
contentedly without selling that estate to which he was born. But this
dependence upon superiors is but one chain of the lovers of power,
_Amatorem trecentæ Pirithoum cohibent catenæ_. Let us begin with him by
break of day, for by that time he is besieged by two or three hundred
suitors, and the hall and anti-chambers (all the outworks) possessed by
the enemy; as soon as his chamber opens, they are ready to break into
that, or to corrupt the guards for entrance. This is so essential a part
of greatness, that whosoever is without it looks like a fallen favourite,
like a person disgraced, and condemned to do what he please all the
morning. There are some who, rather than want this, are contented to
have their rooms filled up every day with murmuring and cursing
creditors, and to charge bravely through a body of them to get to their
coach. Now I would fain know which is the worst duty, that of any one
particular person who waits to speak with the great man, or the great
man’s, who waits every day to speak with all the company. _Aliena
negotia centum Per caput et circum saliunt latus_: A hundred businesses
of other men (many unjust and most impertinent) fly continually about his
head and ears, and strike him in the face like dors. Let us contemplate
him a little at another special scene of glory, and that is his table.
Here he seems to be the lord of all Nature. The earth affords him her
best metals for his dishes, her best vegetables and animals for his food;
the air and sea supply him with their choicest birds and fishes; and a
great many men who look like masters attend upon him; and yet, when all
this is done, even all this is but Table d’Hôte. It is crowded with
people for whom he cares not—with many parasites, and some spies, with
the most burdensome sort of guests—the endeavourers to be witty.
But everybody pays him great respect, everybody commends his meat—that
is, his money; everybody admires the exquisite dressing and ordering of
it—that is, his clerk of the kitchen, or his cook; everybody loves his
hospitality—that is, his vanity. But I desire to know why the honest
innkeeper who provides a public table for his profits should be but of a
mean profession, and he who does it for his honour a munificent prince.
You’ll say, because one sells and the other gives. Nay, both sell,
though for different things—the one for plain money, the other for I know
not what jewels, whose value is in custom and in fancy. If, then, his
table be made a snare (as the Scripture speaks) to his liberty, where can
he hope for freedom? there is always and everywhere some restraint upon
him. He is guarded with crowds, and shackled with formalities. The half
hat, the whole hat, the half smile, the whole smile, the nod, the
embrace, the positive parting with a little bow, the comparative at the
middle of the room, the superlative at the door; and if the person be
_Pan huper sebastos_, there’s a _Huper superlative_ ceremony then of
conducting him to the bottom of the stairs, or to the very gate: as if
there were such rules set to these Leviathans as are to the sea,
“Hitherto shalt thou go, and no further.” _Perditur hæc inter misero
Lux_. Thus wretchedly the precious day is lost.
How many impertinent letters and visits must he receive, and sometimes
answer both too as impertinently? He never sets his foot beyond his
threshold, unless, like a funeral, he hath a train to follow him, as if,
like the dead corpse, he could not stir till the bearers were all ready.
“My life,” says Horace, speaking to one of these _magnificos_, “is a
great deal more easy and commodious than thine, in that I can go into the
market and cheapen what I please without being wondered at; and take my
horse and ride as far as Tarentum without being missed.” It is an
unpleasant constraint to be always under the sight and observation and
censure of others; as there may be vanity in it, so, methinks, there
should be vexation too of spirit. And I wonder how princes can endure to
have two or three hundred men stand gazing upon them whilst they are at
dinner, and taking notice of every bit they eat. Nothing seems greater
and more lordly than the multitude of domestic servants, but, even this
too, if weighed seriously, is a piece of servitude; unless you will be a
servant to them, as many men are, the trouble and care of yours in the
government of them all, is much more than that of every one of them in
their observation of you. I take the profession of a schoolmaster to be
one of the most useful, and which ought to be of the most honourable in a
commonwealth, yet certainly all his farces and tyrannical authority over
so many boys takes away his own liberty more than theirs.
I do but slightly touch upon all these particulars of the slavery of
greatness; I shake but a few of their outward chains; their anger,
hatred, jealousy, fear, envy, grief, and all the _et cetera_ of their
passions, which are the secret but constant tyrants and torturers of
their life. I omit here, because though they be symptoms most frequent
and violent in this disease, yet they are common too in some degree to
the epidemical disease of life itself. But the ambitious man, though he
be so many ways a slave (_O toties servus_!), yet he bears it bravely and
heroically; he struts and looks big upon the stage, he thinks himself a
real prince in his masking habit, and deceives too all the foolish part
of his spectators. He’s a slave in _Saturnalibus_. The covetous man is
a downright servant, a draught horse without bells or feathers; _ad
metalla damnatus_, a man condemned to work in mines, which is the lowest
and hardest condition of servitude; and, to increase his misery, a worker
there for he knows not whom. He heapeth up riches and knows not who
shall enjoy them; ’tis only that he himself neither shall nor can enjoy
them. He is an indigent needy slave, he will hardly allow himself
clothes and board wages; _Unciatim vix demenso de suo suum defraudans
Genium comparsit niser_. He defrauds not only other men, but his own
genius. He cheats himself for money. But the servile and miserable
condition of this wretch is so apparent, that I leave it, as evident to
every man’s sight, as well as judgment. It seems a more difficult work
to prove that the voluptuous man too is but a servant. What can be more
the life of a freeman, or, as we say ordinarily, of a gentleman, than to
follow nothing but his own pleasures? Why, I’ll tell you who is that
true freeman and that true gentleman; not he who blindly follows all his
pleasures (the very name of follower is servile), but he who rationally
guides them, and is not hindered by outward impediments in the conduct
and enjoyment of them. If I want skill or force to restrain the beast
that I ride upon, though I bought it, and call it my own, yet in the
truth of the matter I am at that time rather his man than he my horse.
The voluptuous men (whom we are fallen upon) may be divided, I think,
into the lustful and luxurious, who are both servants of the belly; the
other whom we spoke of before, the ambitious and the covetous, were κακὰ
θηρία, evil wild beasts; these are Γαστέρες ἀργαί, slow bellies, as our
translation renders it; but the word Ἀργαί (which is a fantastical word
with two directly opposite significations) will bear as well the
translation of quick or diligent bellies, and both interpretations may be
applied to these men. Metrodorus said, “That he had learnt Ἀληθως γαστρὶ
χαρίζεσθαι, to give his belly just thanks for all his pleasures.” This
by the calumniators of Epicurus his philosophy was objected as one of the
most scandalous of all their sayings, which, according to my charitable
understanding, may admit a very virtuous sense, which is, that he thanked
his own belly for that moderation in the customary appetites of it, which
can only give a man liberty and happiness in this world. Let this
suffice at present to be spoken of those great trinmviri of the world;
the covetous man, who is a mean villain, like Lepidus; the ambitious, who
is a brave one, like Octavius; and the voluptuous, who is a loose and
debauched one, like Mark Antony. _Quisnam igitur Liber_? _Sapiens_,
_sibi qui Imperiosus_. Not Oenomaus, who commits himself wholly to a
charioteer that may break his neck, but the man
Who governs his own course with steady hand,
Who does himself with sovereign power command;
Whom neither death nor poverty does fright,
Who stands not awkwardly in his own light
Against the truth: who can, when pleasures knock
Loud at his door, keep firm the bolt and lock.
Who can, though honour at his gate should stay
In all her masking clothes, send her away,
And cry, Begone, I have no mind to play.
This I confess is a freeman; but it may be said that many persons are so
shackled by their fortune that they are hindered from enjoyment of that
manumission which they have obtained from virtue. I do both understand,
and in part feel the weight of this objection. All I can answer to it
is, “That we must get as much liberty as we can; we must use our utmost
endeavours, and when all that is done, be contented with the length of
that line which is allowed us.” If you ask me in what condition of life
I think the most allowed, I should pitch upon that sort of people whom
King James was wont to call the happiest of our nation, the men placed in
the country by their fortune above an high constable, and yet beneath the
trouble of a justice of the peace, in a moderate plenty, without any just
argument for the desire of increasing it by the care of many relations,
and with so much knowledge and love of piety and philosophy (that is, of
the study of God’s laws and of his creatures) as may afford him matter
enough never to be idle though without business, and never to be
melancholy though without sin or vanity.
I shall conclude this tedious discourse with a prayer of mine in a copy
of Latin verses, of which I remember no other part, and (_pour faire
bonne bouche_) with some other verses upon the same subject.
_Magne Deus_, _quod ad has vitæ brevis attinet boras_,
_Da mihi_, _da Pancin Libertatemque_, _nec ultrà_
_Sollicitas effundo preces_, _si quid datur ultrà_
_Accipiam gratus_; _si non_, _contentus abibo_.
For the few hours of life allotted me,
Give me, great God, but Bread and Liberty,
I’ll beg no more; if more thou’rt pleased to give,
I’ll thankfully that overplus receive.
If beyond this no more be freely sent,
I’ll thank for this, and go away content.
MARTIAL. LIB. 2.
_Vota tui breviter_, _etc._
WELL then, sir, you shall know how far extend,
The prayers and hopes of your poetic friend.
He does not palaces nor manors crave,
Would be no lord, but less a lord would have.
The ground he holds, if he his own can call,
He quarrels not with Heaven because ’tis small:
Let gay and toilsome greatness others please,
He loves of homely littleness the ease.
Can any man in gilded rooms attend,
And his dear hours in humble visits spend,
When in the fresh and beauteous fields he may
With various healthful pleasures fill the day?
If there be man, ye gods, I ought to hate,
Dependence and attendance be his fate.
Still let him busy be, and in a crowd,
And very much a slave, and very proud:
Thus he, perhaps, powerful and rich may grow;
No matter, O ye gods! that I’ll allow.
But let him peace and freedom never see;
Let him not love this life, who loves not me.
MARTIAL. LIB. 2.
_Vis fieri Liber_, _etc._
WOULD you be free? ’Tis your chief wish, you say,
Come on; I’ll show thee, friend, the certain way.
If to no feasts abroad thou lov’st to go,
Whilst bounteous God does bread at home bestow;
If thou the goodness of thy clothes dost prize
By thine own use, and not by others’ eyes;
If, only safe from weathers, thou canst dwell
In a small house, but a convenient shell;
If thou without a sigh, or golden wish,
Canst look upon thy beechen bowl and dish;
If in thy mind such power and greatness be—
The Persian King’s a slave compared with thee.
MARTIAL. L. 2.
_Quod to nomine_? _etc._
THAT I do you with humble bows no more,
And danger of my naked head, adore;
That I, who lord and master cried erewhile,
Salute you in a new and different style,
By your own name, a scandal to you now;
Think not that I forget myself or you:
By loss of all things by all others sought
This freedom, and the freeman’s hat, is bought.
A lord and master no man wants but he
Who o’er himself has no authority,
Who does for honours and for riches strive,
And follies without which lords cannot live.
If thou from fortune dost no servant crave,
Believe it, thou no master need’st to have.
ODE
UPON LIBERTY.