The best counsel,in those things that concern not other nations,but only the ease and benefit the subjects may enjoy,by laws that look only inward,is to be taken from the general informations and complaints of the people of each province,who are best acquainted with their own wants,and ought therefore,when they demand nothing in derogation of the essential rights of sovereignty,to be diligently taken notice of.For without those essential rights,as I have often before said,the Commonwealth cannot at all subsist.
A commander of an army in chief,if he be not popular,shall not be beloved,nor feared as he ought to be by his army,and consequently cannot perform that office with good success.He must therefore be industrious,valiant,affable,liberal and fortunate,that he may gain an opinion both of sufficiency and of loving his soldiers.This is popularity,and breeds in the soldiers both desire and courage to recommend themselves to his favour;and protects the severity of the general,in punishing,when need is,the mutinous or negligent soldiers.But this love of soldiers,if caution be not given of the commander's fidelity,is a dangerous thing to sovereign power;especially when it is in the hands of an assembly not popular.It belongeth therefore to the safety of the people,both that they be good conductors and faithful subjects,to whom the sovereign commits his armies.
But when the sovereign himself is popular;that is,reverenced and beloved of his people,there is no danger at all from the popularity of a subject.For soldiers are never so generally unjust as to side with their captain,though they love him,against their sovereign,when they love not only his person,but also his cause.And therefore those who by violence have at any time suppressed the power of their lawful sovereign,before they could settle themselves in his place,have been always put to the trouble of contriving their titles to save the people from the shame of receiving them.To have a known right to sovereign power is so popular a quality as he that has it needs no more,for his own part,to turn the hearts of his subjects to him,but that they see him able absolutely to govern his own family:nor,on the part of his enemies,but a disbanding of their armies.For the greatest and most active part of mankind has never hitherto been well contented with the present.
Concerning the offices of one sovereign to another,which are comprehended in that law which is commonly called the law of nations,I need not say anything in this place,because the law of nations and the law of nature is the same thing.And every sovereign hath the same right in procuring the safety of his people,that any particular man can have in procuring the safety of his own body.And the same law that dictateth to men that have no civil government what they ought to do,and what to avoid in regard of one another,dictateth the same to Commonwealths;that is,to the consciences of sovereign princes and sovereign assemblies;there being no court of natural justice,but in the conscience only,where not man,but God reigneth;whose laws,such of them as oblige all mankind,in respect of God,as he is the Author of nature,are natural;and in respect of the same God,as he is King of kings,are laws.But of the kingdom of God,as King of kings,and as King also of a peculiar people,I shall speak in the rest of this discourse.