The form of the state

[25] The form of the state must be preserved unchanged.

And so there must be but one king, a male, and the sovereignty must be indivisible. I have said that the king’s eldest son should succeed his father by right; or else, if the king is without issue, his nearest kinsman.

This is evident not only from Section 13 of the previous Chapter but also because the election of a king by the people should, if possible, be for all time; otherwise it will necessarily come about that the sovereignty of the state will frequently pass into the hands of the people, a drastic and therefore a very dangerous development. Those who maintain that the king, being master of the state and holding it by absolute right, can hand it on to whom he pleases and choose whatever successor he pleases and that therefore the king’s son is heir to the throne by right, are quite mistaken.4l

The king’s will has the force oflaw just as long as he holds the sword of the commonwealth, for the right to rule is determined by power alone. Therefore a king can indeed abdicate, but he cannot hand over his sovereignty to another without the acquiescence of the people or its stronger part. To understand this more clearly, it should be noted that children are heirs to their parents not by natural right but by civil right, for it is only through the power of the commonwealth that one can be the owner of a particular property." Therefore, by that same power or right whereby a man’s will concerning his own property is held to be valid, that same will continues to be valid even after his death as long as the commonwealth endures. And it is for th is reason that everyone in a civil order retains even after death the same right that he held when al ive, because, as we have said, it is not so much by his own power as by the commonwealth’s power, which is a continuing power, that a man can make decisions concerning his property. But with the king the case is quite different, for the king’s will is the civil law itself, and the king is the commonwealth itsel£43 So there is a sense in which, with the death of the king, the common-

wealth dies, and civil order reverts to natural order; and thus sovereignty reverts naturally to the people, which therefore has the right to enact new laws and repeal the 01d 4’ So it is plain that no man succeeds the king by right except the one whom the people wills to be his successor, or, in the case of a theocracy like the ancient commonwealth of the Hebrews, one whom God has chosen through his prophet. We could also deduce this from the fact that the king’s sword or right is in reality the will of the people or of its stronger part; or again from the fact that men, endowed with reason, can never give up their right so completely as to cease to be men and be accounted as sheep. But there is no need to pursue this further. [26] Religious right, or the right to worship God, is something no one can transfer to another. However, we have discussed this at some length in the last two chapters of the Tractatus theologico-politicus, which it is unnecessary to repeat here.

Those are the fundamental laws of a good monarchy.

Their interconnection or conformity with the state will be readily apparent to anyone who will examine them all together with some attention.

The monarchy I here have in mind is one established by a free people, for whom alone these suggestions can be helpful; for a people accustomed to a different form of government will not be able to tear up the traditional foundations of their state, changing its entire structure, without great danger of overthrowing the entire state 4S

[27] Yet perhaps our suggestions will be received with ridicule by those who restrict to the common people the faults that are inherent in all mankind, saying,

“There is no moderation in the mob; they terrorise unless they are frightened;” 6 and, “The common people is either a humble servant or an arrogant master, there is no truth or judgment in it;47 and the like. But all men share in one and the same nature; it is power and culture that mislead us, with the result that when two men do the same thing we often say that it is permissible for the one to do it and not the other, not because of any difference in the thing done, but in the doer 48 Pride is appropriate to rulers. Men are made proud by election to office for a year; so what about nobles who hold their distinction without end? But their arrogance is bedecked by an air of disdain, by magnificence, by lavishness, by a certain blending of vices and a kind of cultivated folly and a refined depravity, so that vices, each of which when taken separately and thus rendered conspicuous is seen as foul and base, appear to the naive and the ignorant as honourable and becoming.

Then again, “There is no moderation in the mob; they terrorise unless they are frightened.” For freedom and slavery do not go well together. Finally, that “there is no truth or judgment in the common people” is not surprising, since the H [So the “eternal election” of the king IS fictitious. Spmo:za’s view here bas more m common with Locke than With Hobbes J

important affairs of state are conducted without their knowledge, and from the little that cannot be concealed they can only make conjecture. For to suspend judgment is not a common virtue. So to seek to conduct all business without the knowledge of the citizens and then to expect them not to misjudge things and to put a bad interpretation on everything, this is the height of folly. For if the common people could practise restra int and suspend judgment on matters insufficiently known , or form correct judgment on the basis of scanty information , it would surely be more fit to rule than to be ruled. However, as we have sa id, all men have the same nature-all grow haughty with rule, terrorise unless they are frightened-and everywhere truth becomes a casualty through hostility or servility,49 especially when despotic power is in the hands of one or a few 50 who in trials pay attention not to justice or truth but to the extent of a person’s wealth.

[28] Mercenary troops are accustomed to military discipline and inured to cold and hunger.

They usually despise the mass of citizens as being their inferiors in the matter of storming cities or fighting pitched battles.

But no one will assert that for this reason a state will be less successful or less durable.

On the contrary, a state is most durable of all if it just has enough power to protect its possessions without coveting what belongs to others and therefore strives by every means to avoid war and to preserve peace.

[29J The policies of this state can hardly be concealed.

But everyone will also agree with me that it is far better for the honest policies of a state to be open to its enemies than for the guilty secrets of tyrants to be kept hidden from the citizens.

Those who are able to shroud in secrecy their dealings with affairs of state have the state completely in their hands,52 and their treatment of the citizens in peace is no less hostile than their attitude to the enemy in war.

No one can deny that secrecy is often of service to a state, but no one can ever prove that the same state cannot subsist without it.

But on the other hand, it is quite impossible to entrust absolute control of public affairs to any man while also maintaining one’s freedom, and so it is folly to choose to avoid a small loss at the cost of a grave calamity.

Naturally, it has always been the constant refrain of those who lust after dominion that, for a state, secrecy in the conduct of its affairs is of vital importance and they make other such assertions that, the more they are cloaked with a show of utility, the more they are likely to lead to oppressive slavery.

[30] No state has included in its constitution all the features I have here described.

Yet actual experience proves that this form of monarchy is the best, if we will but consider the reasons for the preservation of any civilised state and for its overthrow. But this is a task I could not here undertake without wearying the reader.

A good example is the state of the Aragonese.

Their singular loyalty to their kings was matched by the steadfastness with which they preserved unbroken the constitution of their kingdom.

As soon as they had rid themselves of the slavish yoke of the Moors they resolved to choose themselves a king. Being unable to agree among themselves as to the conditions for this election, they therefore decided to consult the Pope55 on this matter.

He, who in this affair conducted himself truly as the vicar of Christ, rebuked them because, not taking sufficient warning from the example of the Hebrews, they were so utterly set on seeking a king.

But if they would not change their minds, he advised them to choose a king only after creating institutions that were equitable and suited to the character of the people; in particular, they should bring into being a supreme council, like the Ephors of the Spartans, which would provide a counterbalance to the kings and which would possess the absolute right to decide any disputes that might arise between king and citizens.

Following this advice, they established laws that they considered to be the most equitable of which the supreme interpreter, and consequently the highest judge, should be not the king but a council called “The Seventeen,” whose president is called “The Justice.”

So this Justice and the Seventeen, appointed for life not by vote but by lot, had absolute right to review and annul all judgments passed upon any citizen by other councils, whether political or ecclesiastical, or even by the king himself, so that any citizen had the right to summon the king himself before this tribunal. Furthermore, they at one time even had the right to elect and to depose the king.

But after the passage of many years, their king, Don Pedro, called “The Dagger: by means of canvassing, bribery, promises, and fuvours of every kind, finally secured the revocation of this right.

(As soon as he had ga ined his point in the presence of all, he cut off- or, as I think more likely, wounded-his hand with a dagger,58 declaring that the right of subjects to choose their king was bound to involve the shedding of royal blood.j59 But he succeeded only on this condition, “that they have had, and continue to have, the right to take up arms aga inst any violent action whereby anyone may seek to encroach on their dominion to their hurt, yea, even against the king himself and the prince, his heir, if he thus encroaches (on their dominion).”

By this condition they did not so much abolish as amend the above-mentioned right. For, as we have shown in Sections 5 and 6 of Chapter 4, it is not by civil right but by right of war that a king can be deprived of his power to rule; in other words, it is by violence alone that his subjects may resist his violence. Besides this condition they stipulated others,60 which are irrelevant to our purpose. These usages, drawn up with universal consent, continued inviolate for an incredible space of time, kings and subjects behaving with equal loyalty to one another.

But after Ferdinand, the first of them all to be styled “The Catholic; inherited the kingdom of Castile,6l the Castil ians, becoming envious of this privilege of the Aragonese, never ceased to urge Ferdinand to abolish those rights.

But he, being not yet accustomed to absolute rule, did not venture to take action and replied to his counsellors as follows: “Apart from the fact that he had accepted the kingship of Aragon on terms with which they were acquainted, and had sworn faithfully to observe those terms and that to break one’s faith is the act of a savage, he had come to the conclusion that his kingdom would be stable only as long as the king had no greater measure of security than that enjoyed by his subjects, so that neither would the king outweigh his subjects nor his subjects their king.

For if either party were to become more powerful than the other, the weaker would attempt not only to recover its former equality but to retaliate upon the other through resentment at the injury it had suffered. This would result in the ruin of one or both.” These are indeed wise words, which I could not sufficiently admire had they been uttered by a king accustomed to rule over slaves, not over free men.

So the Aragonese retained their freedom after the time of Ferdinand-though no longer by right but by the favour of their kings, who exceeded them in powerright up to the time of Phil ip II, who oppressed them with more success but with no less cruelty than he oppressed the United Provinces.

Although Philip 3rd is supposed to have restored completely the original position, the Aragonese, of whom the majority were motivated by eagerness to flatter the powerful (for it is folly to kick against the pricks)62 while the remainder were terrorised, have retained nothing but the plausible names and empty forms of freedom.

[31] I conclude that a people can preserve quite a considerable degree of freedom under a king, provided that it ensures that the king’s power is determined only by the people’s power and depends on the people for its maintenance. This has been the one and only guideline I have followed in laying down the foundations of monarchy.