VII. I shall begin with confessing, that those who aspire at being
usurpers, can never attain their ends, but by wicked means, because to
the goal of insolence, there is no road through the land of virtue. But
who will say these are subtil politicians? They are the most blind and
mistaken of all, because they pursue a road, that is all over drenched
with blood. Very few have travelled through it, who before they arrived
at the point in view, have not lost their lives in a violent and an
ignominious manner. You hardly see any thing in this whole rout, but
men hanging on gibbets, carcasses extended on scaffolds, limbs torn
off by wild beasts, and the ashes of victims, who have been sacrificed
to the vengeance of the party offended. You may find here or there
one, who, by pursuing this road, has at the end of his career attained
sovereignty. But is the accidental success of one or two lucky people,
a counterbalance to so horrid and bloody a spectacle? Who will be
encouraged to trust himself in a sea, strewed with rocks, and covered
with wrecks and dead bodies, because in the course of many ages, three
or four vessels which have navigated it, have arrived safe at their
desired port? We should add, to the hazard of shipwreck, the toils
and terrors of the navigation; for it is certain, that those who
navigate a sea of danger and horror, before their catastrophe, endure
a tempest within their souls. Those who from private people aspire at
being sovereigns, lead a life of perpetual alarms and anxiety, in order
afterwards to die with ignominy: so that their toil and their danger
remain cemented to their fortune, even after they have accomplished
or succeeded in their undertaking; for all tyrants live in terror,
and rarely or never die in their beds. But how can such as these be
considered even as middling politicians? Policy, in the sense we here
use the word, means the art of negotiating one’s own convenience. But
what convenience can a man find, by travelling through a laborious life
to a violent death? I say, that so far from contemplating such people
as able politicians, we ought to esteem them consummate fools.
VIII. There are however, some among them, who by calling them fools,
you do not say enough of; as they give cause to have themselves
pronounced raving mad men; such, as when they see they are advancing to
a lofty precipice, will attempt to scale the height; people, emulous
of vain exaltations, who that they may shine on high, consent to be
reduced to ashes, and who prefer the shortest life elevated in air,
to a long duration on the humble earth. These take to themselves the
motto of Saavedra, _dum luceam peream_; provided they shine, they are
indifferent about being consumed. Such was the ambitious Agrippina,
who, when the Chaldeans told her her son would obtain the empire, but
that he would take away her life, answered spiritedly, _Occidat dum
imperet_. Provided he reigns, I don’t mind his murdering me. Such
again was Anna Bolen, who, finding herself condemned to death for an
adultress, said proudly, They may do what they will with me, but they
can’t deprive me of having been Queen of England; from whence may
be inferred, that she esteemed it a preferable lot, to have been a
Queen, and die with indignity in the flower of her age, than to enjoy
a long life of honour as a private person. We should look with an eye
of pity on geniuses of this character, not only with respect to their
misfortunes, but to their delusion also; and we should degrade those
from politicians to mad men, who knowing their danger, run headlong
into it.
IX. I will go so far as to acknowledge, that some iniquitous
politicians, have experienced the gale of fortune favourable for
them, even to the day of their deaths. Philip, King of Macedon, and
father of Alexander, was fortunate in almost all his undertakings;
for which he was as much indebted to his craft and deceptions, as to
his arms; and in his conquests, was equally favoured by Mercury and
Mars; and if his injustice to Pausanias, in not caring to punish the
abominable act of turpitude, which Atalus, one of Philip’s captains,
had violently perpetrated on him, had not irritated that generous
youth to such a degree, that he murdered the unjust Prince with his
fists, it might have been said, that none of his wicked deeds had ever
been prejudicial to his fortune. Cornelius Scylla manifested, that
he professed no regard to any religion, by the havock he made among
the Grecian temples, which he accompanied with such piccant terms of
contempt and derision of their deities, as they were well deserving
of; and though he was extremely able in the conduct of war, he was
not less so in political subtilties; which made his enemy Carbon say
of him, that in the person of one man, he found himself engaged with
a lion and a fox, but that he feared the fox more than the lion. His
cruelty exceeded the bounds of barbarity, notwithstanding which, he
was wonderfully successful. He first triumphed over the enemies of the
republic, and afterwards over his personal ones. Nor did his putting
thousands of people to death violently, who while he was dictator were
all executed by his order, excite a sufficient degree of public or
private hatred, to occasion his being treated in the same way; but his
natural death was worse than any violent one; for he died eat up by
lice, in consequence of all his flesh by degrees, being converted to
those vermin.
X. England furnishes us in later times with two wayward, but successful
politicians. The first was Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester[1], the
favourite of Queen Elizabeth, and so great a favourite, as to cause
his entertaining hopes, that she would give him her hand in marriage,
which was the occasion of one of the most wicked acts of his life,
for he murdered his wife to remove the obstacle to his attaining so
high an honour. Fortune always cherished and continued faithful to
him, making him to the day of his death, master of the affections of
that Queen, whom he held in chains, by the sprightliness of his wit,
and his fertile and domestic talents of pleasing, as well as by his
genteel and graceful person; and he had the presumption, when he found
he could not obtain her for his wife, to solicit from her the last
personal favours. The second was Oliver Cromwell, who, under the title
of Protector, was tyrant of England, and principal actor in the death
of Charles the First. An attempt so horrible, from the circumstance of
his own subjects having erected themselves into his Judges, and having
instituted process, and pronounced sentence with all the formalities
which are ordinarily used with respect to common criminals, is such
an example, that the world till then, had never seen the like. The
insult was made greater, by their affecting to elude insulting him,
under the pretence, that they proceeded according to law. The English
nation so far debased themselves by that act, that the person who was
then hangman of London, and who could not be prevailed on, either by
threats or promises to execute the sentence, appeared to be the most
noble spirited man in the kingdom. Cromwell, the author of such an
enormous piece of wickedness, and of many other inferior ones, reigned
afterwards, not only absolute master of Great Britain for the residue
of his life, but, by dint of his incomparable sagacity, came to be the
arbiter of all Europe.
XI. There are these examples, but you will find very few others, of
perverse politicians, who have been always successful. But what shall
we infer from such examples? Shall we esteem those fine politicians who
have pursued the same rout? no, we should rather call them absurd and
insensible ones. It shews great want of judgment, to found hopes and
expectations upon one or two singular events, in preference to what
commonly happens in the ordinary course of things. Because some one has
found a vein of gold by digging the ground, would it not be madness in
me to occupy myself, and spend all my time in opening wells through the
bowels of the earth? for if two or three have found the philosopher’s
stone, (though I much doubt if any one ever did) the number of those
are infinite, who by searching after it, have wasted their substance,
and lost their lives. In these very rare chances, on which imprudent
ambitious people found their expectations, there likewise intervene
other very rare accidents, and that these should all concur to favour
him, is more than any prudent man can expect. Those few successful
people were also assisted with very uncommon natural talents, by dint
of which, if they had directed their steps through the paths of virtue,
they would have gone on smoothly, and would have arrived at happiness
with much greater ease and satisfaction to themselves, than they did
in the vicious course they pursued; and this corresponds with the
observation Titus Livius makes on the elder Cato; _In illo viro tantum
robur corporis, & animi fuit, ut quocumque loco natus esset, fortunam
sibi facturus videretur._