Page:The World's Famous Orations Volume 3.pdf/154

 ple. If he might publish unto the world his opinion: that all men are born under a necessity derived from the laws of God and nature, to submit unto an absolute kingly government, which could be restrained by no law or oath; and that he that hath the power, whether he came unto it by creation, election, inheritance, usurpation, or any other way, had the right; and none must oppose his will, but the persons and estates of his subjects must be indispensably subject unto it; I know not why I might not have published my opinion to the contrary, without the breach of any law I have yet known. I might as freely as he have declared publicly my thoughts, and the reasons upon which they were grounded; and I am persuaded to believe that God has left nations unto the liberty of setting up such governments as best please themselves.

The magistrates are set up for the good of nations, not nations for the honor and glory of magistrates; that the right and power of magistrates in every country is that which the laws of that country made it to be; that those laws were to be observed, and the oaths taken by them, having the force of a contract between magistrate and people, could not be violated without danger of dissolving the whole fabric; that usurpation could give no right, and the most dangerous of all enemies unto kings were they, who, raising their power to an exorbitant height, allowed unto usurpers all the rights belonging unto it; that such usurpations being seldom compassed without the slaughter of the reigning person, or fam-