Christ. It cuts the gordian knot with the sword,
extinguishes all the rights of man, and makes fear the corner-stone of
government. It is the only theory upon which slavery can be justified,
as conformable to the law of nature. This is Sir John Falstaff's law,
when, speaking of Justice Shallow, he says, "If the young dace be a
bait for the old pike, I see no reason in _the law of nature_ why I may
not snap at _him_." Sir Robert Filmer, by a theory far more plausible,
though not more sound, than that of Hobbes, derived the origin of human
government from the Scriptures of the Old Testament, from the grant of
the earth to Adam, and afterwards to Noah.

But the vital error of Filmer was in assuming that the natural
authority of the father over the child was either permanent or
unlimited; and still more that the authority of the husband over the
wife was unlimited. Sir Robert Filmer did not perceive that by the laws
of nature and of God every individual human being is born with rights
which no other individual, or combination of individuals, can take
away; that all exercise of human authority must be under the limitation
of right and wrong; and that all despotic power over human beings is
exercised in _defiance_ of the laws of nature and of God--all, Sir John
Falstaff's law of nature between the young dace and the old pike.

The history of Filmer's work was remarkable. It was composed and
published in the heat of the struggle between King Charles the First
and the Commons of England, which terminated in the overthrow of the
monarchy, and in the death of King Charles upon the scaffold. It was
the theory of government on which _the cause_ of the house of Stuart
was sustained. No man can be surprised that such a cause was swept away
by a moral and political whirlwind; that it carried with it all the
institutions of civil society, so that its march was a wild desolation.
James, by relying on the principles of Filmer's theory, fell back into
the arms of the Church of Rome, and vainly struggled to turn back the
tide of religious reformation, and revive the divine right of kings,
and passive obedience, and non-resistance. The republican spirit had
slumbered on the white cliffs of Albion, and in his sleep, like the
man-mountain in Lilliput, had been pinned down to the earth by the
threads of a spider's web for cords. On the first reaeppearance of
Filmer's book, he awoke, and, like the strong man in Israel, at the
cost of his own l