THE CABINET-COUNCIL: CONTAINING THE CHIEF ARTS OF EMPIRE, AND MYSTERIES OF STATE; DISCABINETED IN POLITICAL AND POLEMICAL APHORISMS, GROUNDED ON AUTHORITY AND EXPERIENCE; AND ILLUSTrated wiTH THE CHOICEST EXAMPLES AND HISTORICAL OBSERVATIONS. PUBLISHED BY JOHN MILTON. Quis Martem tunica tectum adamantina digne scripserit ? TO THE READER. HAVING had the manuscript of this treatise, written by sir Walter Ralegh, many years in my hands, and finding it lately by chance among other books and papers, upon reading thereof I thought it a kind of injury to withhold longer the work of so eminent an author from the public; it being both answerable in style to other works of his already extant, as far as the subject will permit, and given me for a true copy by a learned man at his death, who had collected several such pieces. JOHN MILTON. THE CABINET-COUNCIL: CONTAINING THE CHIEF ARTS OF EMPIRE AND MYSTERIES OF STATE. CHAP. I. The definition and division of public weals and sovereign states, according to their several species or kinds. A COMMONWEALTH is a certain sovereign government of many families, with those things that are common among them. All commonwealths are either monarchies, aristocracies, democracies. A monarchy is that state where the sovereignty resteth in the person of one only prince. An aristocracy is where some small part of the people have in them, as a body corporate, the sovereignty and supreme power of the whole state. A democracy is where all the people have power and authority sovereign. So doth it appear, that the place and person where the sovereignty resteth, doth cause the state to be either a monarchy, an aristocracy, or popular government. CHAP. II. Of sovereign or monarchical government, with its essential marks and specifical differences. SOVEREIGNTY is an absolute and perpetual power in every public state; and he is properly and only a sovereign that acknowledgeth no superior or equal, nor holdeth of any other prince, person, or power, but God and his own sword. The first mark of sovereignty is absolute power and authority to command all subjects in general, and every of them in particular, without consent of any other person or persons, either greater or inferior to himself. The second mark of majesty is authority to make war, and conclude peace, at his pleasure. The third is power to bestow all honours and chief offices at his pleasure. The fourth mark of sovereignty is appellation. The fifth mark and last, is power to pardon all subjects by rigour of law or otherwise, condemned in life, lands, goods, or honours. These powers are not to be imparted to any officer, deputy, or other magistrate, but in the prince's absence, and for some urgent occasion. Monarchies are of three sorts; signioril, royal, tyran nical. The diversity of monarchies doth not proceed from the nature of the state, but the diverse proceedings of those princes that govern; for great difference there may be between the nature of the commonwealth and the government thereof. That prince that giveth the magistracy, honours, and offices, without respect of nobility, riches, or virtue, may be said to govern popularly; and that monarchy may be said to be governed aristocratically, when the monarch imparteth the principal honours and offices to the noble and rich men only. The same difference there is to be found in states aristo cratical and popular; for the one and the other may be both signioril, or tyrannical. A monarch signioril is he who by force of arms and just war is made owner of men's bodies and goods, and governeth them as a master of a family governeth base servants and slaves. A monarch royal is he whose subjects are obedient unto his laws, and the monarch himself obeyeth the laws of God and nature, suffering every subject to enjoy liberty natural, with property in lands and goods, governing as a father governeth his children. A monarch tyrannical is he who without regard to the law of God or nature, commandeth freemen as slaves, and useth their lands and goods as his own. CHAP. III. Of monarchy signioril, exemplified in the Turkish and West Indian empire. ALL people subject to princes are governed as freemen by their prince, and certain other particular lords of lands and liberties, who, not by the prince's commission, but by ancient laws or custom, have inheritance and tenements; or else they are by one prince and his ministers commanded, which ministers have not by law or ordinance any authority or interest of themselves, but being like to the people, (base men and slaves,) they command only by commission in the prince's name; and the authority of those ministers doth cease at the prince's pleasure, so that the people do not acknowledge any superior but the prince, nor owe any service to other mean lords, so as all the people stand without property in lands or goods; for example, the empire of Turkey and the West Indies. The provinces of this monarchy are allotted to sundry magistrates or ministers, and they altered and removed at the prince's pleasure; but it is otherwise in a monarchy royal, because the monarch is there accompanied with many mean lords. And albeit those mean lords are subjects unto the prince, yet have they particular tenants who may not |