the royalist must of necessity have been more private.
Wherefore, the whole dispute will come upon matter of conscience, and
this, whether it be urged by the right of kings, the obligation of
former laws, or of the oath of allegiance, is absolved by the balance.
For if the right of kings were as immediately derived from the breath
of God as the life of man, yet this excludes not death and dissolution.
But, that the dissolution of the late monarchy was as natural as the
death of man, has been already shown. Wherefore it remains with the
royalists to discover by what reason or experience it is possible for a
monarchy to stand upon a popular balance; or, the balance being popular,
as well the oath of allegiance, as all other monarchical laws, imply an
impossibility, and are therefore void.
To the commonwealths man I have no more to say, but that if he excludes
any party, he is not truly such, nor shall ever found a commonwealth
upon the natural principle of the same, which is justice. And the
royalist for having not opposed a commonwealth in Oceana, where the
laws were so ambiguous that they might be eternally disputed and never
reconciled, can neither be justly for that cause excluded from his full
and equal share in the government; nor prudently for this reason, that
a commonwealth consisting of a party will be in perpetual labor for her
own destruction: whence it was that the Romans, having conquered the
Albans, incorporated them with equal right into the commonwealth. And
if the royalists be "flesh of your flesh," and nearer of blood than were
the Albans to the Romans, you being also both Christians, the argument
is the stronger. Nevertheless there is no reason that a commonwealth
should any more favor a party remaining in fixed opposition against it,
than Brutus did his own sons. But if it fixes them upon that opposition,
it is its own fault, not theirs; and this is done by excluding them. Men
that have equal possessions and the same security for their estates and
their liberties that you have, have the same cause with you to defend
both; but if you will liberty, though for monarchy; and be trampling,
they fight for you for tyranny, though under the name of a commonwealth:
the nature of orders in a government rightly instituted being void of
all jealousy, because, let the parties which it embraces be what they
will, its orders are such as they neither would resist if they could,
nor could if they would, as has been
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