Miscellanea.  

I. A Survey of the Constitutions and Interests of the Empire, Sueden, Denmark, Spain, Holland, France, and Flanders; with their Relation to England, in the Year 1671.  
II. An Essay upon the Original and Nature of Government.  
III. An Essay upon the Advancement of Trade in IRELAND.  
IV. Upon the Conjuncture of Affairs in Octob. 1673.  
V. Upon the Excesses of Grief.  
VI An Essay upon the Cure of the GOUT by Moxa.   
By a Person of Honour  
LONDON: Printed by A. M. and R. R. for Edw. Gellibrand, at the Golden-Ball in St. Paul's Churchyard. 1680.   

The AUTHOR's Letter to the Stationer, upon occasion of the following Papers.  
I Have received both your Excuses and Desires about those Papers I left in your Father's hands upon my several journeys into Holland, with a charge That none ever should see them, unless I happened to die before my return: In that case only I gave him leave to Print them, because I found it would be a satisfaction to him, and he thought an advantage. I will examine no further how several of them came to run abroad both in Print and Manuscript, since you justify your self; and I will not accuse your Father, whom I ever esteemed a good man. All I can say of the matter is, That the Two Copies at first dispersed, came from two of your Father's Friends, and that you confess to have Printed ten by order of one of Mine while I was abroad, upon the belief he would not have desired it without my Consent; But that you ought not to have concluded without knowing it from me, as you might easily have done in ten days time.  
You pretend to be sure the Press was broken after tbat number was taken off; which is a thing you cannot answer for, without your Printers leave; nor if it were so, do I make any difference between Ten and a Hundred. This I am sure of, that how few soever were Printed, very many have seen them, and more have heard of them, and so many of my acquaintance pressed me for Copies, that I have been troubled to refuse them, and to be so hardly believed when I assured them I had none.  
Now for what you tell me of the great care and pains you have taken, since I spoke to you last, to discover how they went out, and to call them in, and that you find this last is impossible, and apprehend every day that some or other will Print them without your knowledge or mine, and thereupon ground your desires for my leave to do it; I know not well what to say, having said so much to you already upon this occasion, and think 'tis best troubling myself no longer about a thing that is past remedy: Therefore I am content you should publish them, rather than any other should do it without my leave, and rather than any further mystery should be made of those that are abroad, which has given the occasion of two other Books being laid to my charge, that I have been so far from writing, as never to have seen.  
For the Order and Titles of the several Papers, they must, I doubt, be the same with the Copies already dispersed, since these cannot be recalled. For any general Title, I leave it wholly to you, as well as the time; nor are you to expect from me either any Correction of Press, or trouble of Preface; being resolved, since they first run away without my consent, to own them no longer, and to concern myself in them no more than if they had never been mine. What advantages soever you can propose to yourself by them, I can expect but one (and that will agree very ill with yours) which is, That the publishing of them may possibly suppress them; and that they may be talked of no more when once they grow common; since nothing but the scarcity of them can give them any vogue. If this happens, I shall be at quiet, which is all I ask of them or of you.  
June 12. 1679.   

A SURVEY of the Constitutions and Interests of the Empire, Sweden, Denmark, Spain, Holland, France, and Flanders; with their Relation to England in the Year 1671. And then given to One of His Majesty's Principal Secretaries of State, upon the ending of my Embassy at the Hague.  
THE Decay and Dissolution of Civil, as well as Natural Bodies, proceeding usually from outward Blows and Accidents, as well as inward Distempers or Infirmities; it seems equally necessary for any Government to know and reflect upon the Constitutions, Forces, and Conjunctures among their Neighbouring States, as well as the Factions, Humours, and Interests of their own Subjects; For all Power is but comparative, nor can any Kingdom take a just measure of its safety by its own riches or strength at home, without casting up at the same time what Invasions may be feared, and what Defences expected from Enemies or Allies abroad.  
'Tis certain, That so advantageous a Situation as that of His Majesty's Dominions in these Islands of Great Britain and Ireland, makes any foreign consideration less important to us, than to any other Nation: Because the Numbers and Native courage of our men, with the strength of our Shipping, have for many ages passed (and still for aught we yet know) made us a match for the greatest of our Neighbours at Land; and an over-match for the strongest of them at Sea: Whereas whoever hurts us without our own Arms, must be able to master us in both those Elements. Yet in regard there are the names of several Conquests remaining still upon Record (though all of them the mere effects of our own divisions or invitations); when Trade is grown the design of all Nations in Europe, that are possessed of any Maritime Provinces, as being the only unexhausted Mine, and out of whose Treasures all greatness at Sea naturally arises: When instead of a King of France surrounded and bearded by Dukes of Britain, and Burgundy, as well as our own possessions in Normandy and Guienne; Instead of a Count of Flanders or Holland, who served for no more, than like the smaller weights to make the balance sometimes a little even in the greater scales of the English, French, and Germane Powers; We now behold in France the greatest Land-Forces that perhaps have ever been known under the Command of any Christian Prince; And in the United Provinces, the greatest numbers both of Ships and Mariners that were ever yet heard of under any State in the World; And which have hitherto been only awed by the strength of our Oak, the Art of our Shipwrights, and chiefly by the invincible hearts of our Seamen: When the prospect of these two Powers brings us to consider, that any firm conjunction of them, either by Confederacy or the Submission of Holland, will prove the nearest approach that was ever made to our ruin and servitude: It may perhaps import us in this calm we enjoy, to hearken a little more than we have done of late, to the storms that are now raising abroad; and by the best Perspectives we can find, to discover from what Coast they break, what course they are like to hold, how much we can lie in their danger, and whether the shelter expected from us by our Neighbours, will be only a strain of Generosity and Humanity, or the best provision we can make hereafter for our own safety.  
Those Countries in whose Actions or Interests we have at any time concerned ourselves, have been the Empire, France, Spain, Sweden, Denmark, and the Low-Countries, in the two several bodies usually distinguished by the names of Flanders and Holland. For with Poland we have never gone further, than our good wishes towards their defence against the Turk. Nor with Italy, than the Offices of Ceremony, or Interests of Traffic, unless sometimes some short Negotiation that served the present turn to stop the aspiring growth of either the French or Spanish greatness in those as well as nearer parts.  
THE Foreign Interests of the Empire are the defence of the Eastern parts against the Turk, and the preservation of the Western Circles against the growth of France. The Domestic are the limited constitution of the Imperial Power, and the balance of the several free Princes and States of the Empire among themselves. The two last have raised no dust since the Peace of Munster, which seems chiefly occasioned by the Swedes coming in to be a Member of the Empire, upon the share then yielded to him in Pomerania and Bremen. These give him an immediate entrance into the heart of Germany, where the Native poverty of his own Country makes him considered, as still upon the wing, and ready to stoop at the first Quarry he can meet with upon any divisions in the Empire, so as there seems a general resolution not to furnish him with such occasions. Their defence against the Turk will be provided and pursued by Common Inclinations and Forces, unless those Princes of the Western Circles should at the same time be busied in some nearer danger from France. But if the Grand Vizier be so great a man as he is reputed in Politics as well as Arms, he will never consent by an Invasion of Hungary, to make way for the advance of the French Progress into the Empire, which a Conquest of the Low-Countries would make easy and obvious: And so great accessions (with others that would lie fair and open in the Spanish Provinces upon the Mediterranean) would make France a formidable Power to the Turk himself, and greater than I suppose he desires to see any in Christendom; So that it seems not improbable, that the present Peace between the Emperor and the Turk, may last longer than is generally calculated by the fears or desires of those who are most concerned in it.  
In the preservation of the Western Circles (especially that of Burgundy and the Rhine) against the Progress of the French Greatness; the Dispositions, if not Interests of the several Members of the Empire, seem much more divided. The Emperor himself is firm in resolving it, because he has nothing to fear so much as the Power and Ambition of France, in regard of their Common Pretensions to Spain after the young King's death, and a jealousy of the Empire itself after a further course of success: But he will be faint in any execution of such a Counsel, unless spirited by the unanimous Decrees of a general Diet, from his own dispositions, which are thought rather generous and just than ambitious and enterprizing, from the influence of the Jesuits in that Court, who are observed to grow generally French as they were Spanish in the last age; from the fear of the Turks, who are still like a Cloud that hangs over his head; And from a jealousy of sweden joining absolutely with France, which might share a great part of the Empire between them.  
The Elector of Saxony would fall entirely into the Interests of the Emperor in this point, as a Prince that is a true Germane, loves the liberty of the Empire; Forefees, that if it should fall into the French hands, all the Princes would grow little Companions to what they are, or return to be the several Officers of his Court; as they were in the unlimited greatness of some Ancient Emperors. Besides, his distance from France, though it does not instruct him to think wiser than other Princes, Yet it helps him to speak boldlier what he thinks upon these Conjunctures.  
The Elector of Brandenburg and Langrave of Hesse, and at least two of the Dukes of Lunenburgh, are in their Dispositions and Judgements upon the same Interests; But will be influenced and awed by Sweden, whose ill Talon will be still suspected to Brandenburg, upon the differences in Prussia; and to Lunenburgh upon the late disappointment at Bremen.  
The Electors of Mentz and Triers have the same Inclinations, but lying at the mercy of France, in so near and so imperious a Neighbourhood, They will take no measures wherein they may not see their own safety provided for, as well as that of the Empire; Wherein no Prince has greater reputation of Prudence and Caution, than the Bishop of Mentz.  
The Elector Palatine, either upon remainders of the ancient Leagues with France, or quarrels with the House of Austria, has been thought inclined to the French; But as a wife Prince will be found generally in the true Interests of the Empire as far as the seat of his Country will give him leave, which in a War will be so much exposed.  
The Elector of Bavaria has been esteemed wholly in the French Interests since the Treaty of Munster; But by what ties or motives, has not fallen under my observation, in regard of the distance of his Country, and small Commerce out of the limits of the Empire.  
The Elector of Colen is a person of much natural goodness and candour, but of age and infirmities, and whom Devotion and Chemistry have shared between them, and in a manner removed from the affairs of his State; which have been long and entirely devolved upon the Bishop of Strasburgh; A man busy, and always in motion or intrigue: But for the rest, whether upon future ambition, or present advantages, Esteemed to be perfectly in the French Interests; So as whatever use can be made by France of that Electors Name or Country, may be reckoned upon as wholly at the devotion of that Crown.  
The Duke of Nieuburgh is in his person and mien, rather like an Italian than a Germane; and should be so in his disposition, by playing the Game of an Italian Prince; In declaring no partialities, provoking no enemies, and living more retired than the other Princes of his Country; Having never showed any ambition, but for the Crown of Poland, which design helped to inspire him with great compliance towards all his Neighbours, and other Princes, who were able to do him good or ill offices in that point. But the failing of it, was thought to have something disobliged him from France (upon whose assistance he reckoned) and has sunk him in a debt which he will hardly recover.  
The Bishop of Munster is made only considerable by his situation, which lies the fittest of all others to invade Holland; And by the dispositions of this man, which are unquiet, and Ambitious to raise a name in the World. An old implacable hatred to the Dutch upon their intelligence with his chief Town of Munster; Their Usurpation (as he pretends) of Borkloe, and some other small places in his Country; Their protection of the Countess of Benthem, and the hopes of sharing Overyssel or Friesland, if ever their spoils come to be divided; make him a certain friend to what Prince soever is Enemy to them, and will furnish him with men, or money enough to appear in the head of an Army against them.  
The general Interest that the several Princes of the Empire have with us, is grounded wholly upon the Esteem of His Majesty's Power, and the veneration of his Name, which is so great amongst them, That most of them are resolved in the present Conjuncture of Affairs in Christendom, to understand perfectly His language, before they speak their own.  
THE Government of Sweden is esteemed steady and wise, as their people warlike and numerous. The digestion of their Counsels is made in a Senate consisting of forty Counsellors, who are generally the greatest men of the Kingdom in Office, Estates, or Abilities; and who have most of them been Commanders in the Germane Wars, or are so in the present Militia, which makes their Counsels generally Warlike and Ambitious, though something tempered by the Minority of their King. This has turned them for some years since their last King's death, rather to make advantages by the name and reputation of their Alliances, than by the appearance of their Arms. But if their King grow a Man, and of Martial thoughts, as may be presaged from so great a Father, We may see great actions and revolutions grow again out of this Northern Climate. For the names of Goth, and Vandal, and their famons successes both in Poland and Germany this last age, inspire them with great thoughts; And the bodies and courages of their common men, as well as the Prudence and Conduct of their great Officers, seem to have framed them for great undertake. Besides their Application of late years to trade, has much increased their Shipping and Seamen (which they found to be their weak-side in their last attempts). All these may in time make way for their great design, which is the Dominion of the Baltic Sea by the Conquest of Denmark. This was about the year 59, wrested out of their hands by the Dutch Assistances, and can hardly escape them, if ever that Commonwealth should be broken. And if they arrive once at this point, there will grow a Power in that rough Climate, which both at Land and Sea may equal most others that are now in Christendom; by being Masters of such numbers of strong and valiant men, as well as of all the Naval Stores that furnish the World.  
They have a nearer prospect upon the City of Bremen, by the Addition whereof to the Bishopric already in their possession, They design to lay a great foundation both of Trade and Strength in the nearer parts of Germany.  
Their next Interest seems to be a long knocking War in the Empire or the Low-Countries, which will make them Courted by all, till they think fit to declare; And then will bring them to a share in the Game; And those often go away with the greatest, who bring in least when the Stake begins. The neglects of France since the peace of Munster, and the late courtship of Spain, seem to have left them open for the fairest offer from either of those Crowns: But rather inclined to Spain, which has still the surest fonds of treasure (if they could fall into good method or direction) and to whom they are more necessary than to France, which has out-grown almost all measures with their Neighbours. They have a peek to Holland something in show, but more at heart; As lying cross to their three designs, the Dominion of the Baltic, their Acquisition of Bremen, and a War in the upper or lower Germany. And they are so wise a State as to be found commonly in their Interest; which for these reasons, is either an absolute breaking, or a great weakening of that Commonwealth. Besides, they esteemed themselves at least neglected by them in the late Negotiation of the Triple Alliance, wherein they expected constant Subsidies in the time of peace, from Spain and Holland, to engage them in the defence of all those Provinces against the threatening power of France.  
An old friendship to our Nation, and Alliance, proceeding from a long conjunction of Interests, besides the necessity of keeping well with one of the greatest Maritime Powers, will (as may be conjectured) persuade them to follow His Majesty's measures the closest and furthest of any State in Europe. This gave them the first design of entering into the Triple Alliance; And into the commerce with Spain in the year 68; And their resolution of keeping pace with His Majesty in both those points, as well as the consequences of them; Which they will do, unless the present Scene should wholly change, and open new Counsels and Interests not yet thought of in the world.  
THE Kingdom of Denmark seems less considerable than their Neighbour-Crown, From a fainter Spirit which appears of late in their people, and in their Government itself; as well as a great inequality of number in their Forces both at Sea and Land; For the last change of their Government, from Elective to Hereditary, has made it seem hitherto of less Force, and unfitter for Action abroad. As all great Changes brought about by Force or Address in an old Constitution of Government (rooted in the Hearts and Customs of the people), though they may in time prove an increase of Strength and Greatness (when fallen into Method, and grown easy by Use); Yet for many years they must needs weaken it, by the divisions and distractions of men's minds, and discontents of their humours; And so turn the Counsels upon Designs within, desisting from any without; And advantages upon Enemies, must give way to those upon Subjects: So as the breaking down an old frame of Government, and erecting a new, seems like the cutting down an old Oak (because the fruit decays, and the branches grow thin), and planting a young one in the room. 'Tis true, the Son or Grandson (if it prospers) may enjoy the shade and the mast; But the Planter, besides the pleasure of Imagination, has no other benefit to recompense the pains of Setting and Digging, the care of Watering and Pruning, the fears of every Storm and every Drougth. And 'tis well, If he escapes a blow from the fall of the old Tree, or its Boughs, as they are lopped off.  
The Change in Denmark▪ was the safer by having to deal with a soft easy people, and with Nobles grown to have small power or interest amongst them, and of whom many were gained by the Crown. Besides, that nothing seemed to concern Property in the change of Successive, for Elective. And the example of all Christian Crowns (besides that of Poland) made way for it; And yet it is certain, that Denmark has continued ever since weak and unspirited, bend only upon safety, and enjoying the Revenues of the Sound (which are the chief belonging to that Crown); So as their great Interest is their defence against Sweden, And for the rest a general Peace, by which Traffic increasing they may come in for a share, and see their Customs grow in the Sound and Norway. They reckoned chiefly upon their support from Holland, till seeing them fall into closer measures with Us and Sweden, upon the Triple Alliance; They have tacked some points nearer France, and the rather, because of the unkindness grown in the last Dutch War, between us and them; Yet they have it at heart, that Holland has ever used them insolently, if not scornfully, in the whole course of their Treaties and Alliances, as well as the differences between them about the payments of the Sound, And will be ever ready and resolute in the defence of Hamborough, whenever the Danes shall have strength and heart enough to attaque it, which seems the chief Ambition they have left them abroad.  
THE Crown of Spain was in all Philip the Second time looked upon as both the terror and defence of Christendom; No Monarchy having ever grasped at so great an Empire there, and at the same time pursued an open War against so great a power as the Turks. This greatness was grown up by the Union of the House of Castille and Arragon, of that of Burgundy and the Netherlands, with that of Naples and Sicily; By the accession or conquest of Portugal, By that of the Indies (when their Mines bled fresh, as they did many years after their first opening), By the number of brave Troops and Leaders; which were raised and made by the various and continual Wars of Charles the Fifth; But chiefly by the uninterrupted succession of three great Princes, Ferdinand, Charles, and Philip; Which can never fail of raising a small Kingdom to a great, no more than the contrary of bringing down a great one to a small. But whoever measures the Crown of Spain now, by the Scale of that Age, may fancy a man of Fourscore, by a Picture drawn of him at Thirty; 'Tis like a great old Tree which has lost its Branches and Leaves, Et trunco non frondibus efficit umbram. Though no man knows, whether out of this old Root a Sucker may not spring, that with a little shelter at first, and good seasons, may in time prove a mighty Tree; For there seems still to remain strength and sap in the Root to furnish a fair growth, though not in proportion to the first. These decays have been occasioned by so long a War with Holland (supported by all the Neighbours who envied or feared the greatness of Spain), By the exhausting in a great degree of their Indian Mines; By that of their Natives to furnish the Indian Conquests, and secure all their Provinces both in Italy and Flanders; But most of all by two Successions (which we may at least call) of unactive Princes, And the want of any great Ministry to repair either them, or the Minority of this King, in which they ended. Unless this Crown out-grow its present weakness, by some great Spirit rising up at the head of the Monarchy, who shall digest their Counsels, reform the vast and impertinent profusions of their Treasures, by suppressing all unnecessary Pensions and Expenses, And restore the vigour of their Nation by Martial designs and examples; We may reckon the Interest of Spain to lie wholly in the preservation and defence of Flanders from France, of Sicily from the Turks, and of their Indies from Us. That of Sicily seems more remote, because both Hungary and Poland is a nearer Game for the Turk, And will not so generally alarm or unite the Christian Princes, as the Invasion of Sicily, wherein France as well as Italy is so near concerned. The jealousy of their Indies has been much nearer them since our possession of Jamaica; And aches at heart upon every fit which the desperate Sallies of our Privateers there bring upon them. But they hope to make fair weather in those Seas, by opening to us some advantages of Trade there, And by a Conjunction of Interests in Europe, which they think the greatness of France makes as necessary to us as to them.  
Their quarrel to France by a course of almost continual Wars ever since Charles the Fifth's time, by the late pretensions to Flanders, set on foot by France since the death of their last King, and pursued by the late Invasion (which the Spaniards pretend to have been against all Faith, as well as Right) seems to be grown wholly incurable, Though dissembled by the sense of their own weakness, which makes them rather willing to deceive themselves with a Peace, that they know must fail them, than break out into a War they fear must ruin them, without the assistance of their Neighbours. And this they hope some breach of the Peace at Aix on the French side, or other accidents, may at one time or other engage for them. And though as they stand single, their present Interest is but bare defence, and wearing out their King's Minority without further losses; Yet a greater Interest, and far more at heart, Is a War with France in Conjunction with the Tripple-Alliance, or at least with Us and Holland. For though the Peace holds, Yet while France continues so great Forces and Designs on foot, the preservation of Flanders will cost Spain 200 m. pounds a year, besides the Revenues of the Country. And what is left them in those Provinces remains so locked and interwoven with the last French Conquests, that upon the first breach of a War, It is all endangered; and indeed cannot be any ways secured, but by a strong diversion, which may employ the greatest part of the French Forces in some other places. These regards, and that of being hardly used (as they conceive) by Us and Holland, in the Peace of Aix, which forced them to quit so much of their Country to France, and of their money to Sweden, Have raised up a party in their Council, that would make and secure the best Peace they can with France, by a Session of Flanders to that Crown, in exchange for other Provinces towards Spain, and of some other pretensions. But this will not be carried in a Minority of their King; at least without greater fears of a sudden Invasion from France, and greater despairs of help from us. Because whenever they quit Flanders, they must be content to shut themselves up within their Mountains, and signify nothing more in the Affairs of Europe; Nor could they perhaps long be safe either in Spain or Italy, if they were there to sustain all the Forces of France, without the great diversion they have always made by Flanders; out of which whenever they are Masters of the field, they march in four or five days up into the very Isle of France.  
To compass these two Interests either of defence or a war in Confederacy, they would fain engage Sweden, but will endanger this Aim, by the fear of venturing their money before the Game begins. They reckon themselves sure of Holland as far as their defence, but know, they will never be brought to begin a War with France. And the old rancours between Spaniard and Dutch, are not yet enough worn out of the dispositions of the People or the Governments, to make room for such an absolute turn. Their great hope is in England, where their inclination carries them as well as their interest. Besides, they think our old as well as fresh quarrels with France, and the jealousy of their present growth, will temper us for their turn at one time or other, so that their measures will ever be fair with us; But no more towards preserving their Peace, because they think our Interest as well as our Treaties will be enough to engage us so far without other motives. Though to head a War against France, wherein both Sweden and Holland, would (as they think) follow our paces; There is no advantage which the Crown of Spain could make us in Trade, nor money they could spare from their own necessities (in the share of the quarrel) which they would not willingly furnish us, and trust to the events of a War how uncertain soever.  
THE State of Holland in point both of riches, and strength, is the most prodigious growth that has been seen in the world; if we reckon it from their Peace with Spain; before which time, though their Forces were great both at Land and Sea, yet they were kept down by too violent exercise; And that Government could not be said to stand upon its own legs, Leaning always on their Neighbours, who were willing to support them against Spain, and feared nothing from a State so narrow in compass of Land, and so weak in Native Subjects, That the strength of their Armies has ever been made up of foreign Troops. But since that time, What with the benefit of their Situation and Orders of their Government, The Conduct of their Ministers (driving on steady and public Interests), The Art, Industry, and Parsimony of their people; All conspiring to derive almost the Trade of the whole World into their Circle, (while their Neighbours were taken up either in Civil or Foreign Wars) They have grown so considerable in the World, that for many years they have treated upon an equal Foot with all the great Princes of Europe, and concluded no Negotiation without advantage. And in the last War with Us and Munster, were able at the same time to bring above a hundred men of War to Sea, and maintain threescore and ten thousand men at Land. Besides, the Establishment or Conquests of their Companies in the East-Indies, have in a manner erected another subordinate Commonwealth in those parts; Where upon occasion they have armed five and forty men of War, and thirty thousand Land-men by the modestest computations. Yet the frame of this State (as of most great Machine's made for rest and not for motion) is absolutely incapable of making any considerable enlargements or conquests upon their neighbours; Which is evident to all that know their Constitutions: But needs no other argument besides their want of Native Subjects to manage any such attempts; What men they can spare being drawn so wholly into their trade, and their East-Indies; That they cannot so much as furnish a Colony for Surinam, proportioned to the safety and plantation of that place; And no Nation ever made and held a Conquest by Mercenary Arms. So that the wounds and fears they can give their neighbours consists in point of Trade; In injuries or insolences at Sea; In falling with great weight into a balance with other Princes; In protecting their Rebels or Fugitives, And in an arrogant way of treating with other Princes and States, a quality natural to men bred in popular Governments, and derived of late years from the great successes of theirs, under the present Ministry.  
It may be laid (I believe) for a Maxim, That no wise State will ever begin a War unless it be upon designs of Conquests, or necessity of Defence; For all other Wars serve only to exhaust Forces and Treasure, and end in untoward Peace's, patched up out of weakness or weariness of the parties: Therefore the Hollanders, unless invaded either at home or in Flanders (which they esteem now the same case, if it comes from France), can have no interest to offer at a War; But find their greatest in continuing their course of Traffic uninterrupted, and enjoying the advantages which in that point their industry and address will gain them from all their Neighbours. And for these ends they will endeavour to preserve the Peace now in being, And bandy by Leagues and Negotiations against any from whom they shall fear a breach of it.  
They will ever seek to preserve themselves by an Alliance with England against France, and by that of France against England, as they did formerly by both against Spain. And they will fall into all Conjuctures which may serve to balance in some measure the two lesser Crowns of Sweden and Denmark, as well as the greater of France and Spain. But because they believe, that good Arms are as necessary to keep Peace, as to make War; They will always be Great in their preparations of that kind, especially at Sea; By which they may in all cases, advance or secure their Trade, And upon a War with France, make up that way the weakness of their Land-Forces, Which a long rust of Peace, and a swarm of Officers preferred by the Magistrates in favour of their relations, has brought to be very disproportioned in Force to what they are in Number. They esteem themselves secure from Spain and their Germane Neighbours (upon what has been said of the present condition of those Princes). And from Us, not so much upon our late Treaties with them, as upon what they take to be the common Interest, which they think a Nation can never run over, and believe is the opposing any further progress of the French greatness. Their only danger they apprehend, is from France, and that not immediately to themselves, but to Flanders; where any Flame would soon scorch them, and consume them, if not quenched in time. But in regard of the weakness of Spain, The slow motions of the Empire, The different paces among the Princes of it, And the distance of Sweden; They esteem the Peace of Christendom to depend wholly upon His Majesty, as well as the safety of Flanders, in case of a War. For they think France will be dared, and never take wing while they see such a Naval Power as Ours and the Dutch hover about all their Coasts; And so many other Princes ready to fall in, whenever His Majesty declares, united by the same jealousies or dangers. And if they should open a War, they foresee the consumption which France must fall into by the stop of their Wine, Salts, and other Commodities (now in a manner wholly taken off by our two Nations). And the head that may be made against their Forces in the Field itself, by a Body of English Infantry (so much renowned abroad). So as though their first Interest be to continue the Peace, while it may be done with any safety; yet when that fails, their next is, to open a War in favour of Spain, and conjunction with us. And the greatest they have in the world, is to preserve and increase their Alliance with us; Which will make them follow our measures absolutely in all the present Conjunctures.  
THE Crown of France considered in the extent of Country, in the number of People, in the riches of Commodities, in the Revenues of the King, the greatness of the Land-Forces now on foot, and the growth of those at Sea (within these two years passed), the number and bravery of their Officers, the conduct of their Ministers, and chiefly in the Genius of their present King; A Prince of great aspiring thoughts, unwearied application to whatever is in pursuit, severe in the institution and preservation of Order and Discipline; In the main, a Manager of his Treasure, and yet bountiful from his own motions, wherever he intends the marks of Favour, and discerns particular Merit. To this, in the flower of his Age, at the head of all his Armies, and hitherto unfoiled in any of his attempts, either at home or abroad: I say, considered in all these circumstances, France may appear to be designed for greater Achievements and Empires, than have been seen in Christendom since that of Charlemaigne.  
The present Greatness of this Crown, may be chiefly derived from the fortune it has had of two great Ministers (Richelieu and Mazarine) succeeding one another, between two great Kings, Henry the Fourth and this present Prince; so as during the course of one unactive life, and of a long Minority, That Crown gained a great deal of ground both at home and abroad, instead of losing it; Which is the common fate of Kingdoms upon those occasions.  
The latter greatness of this Crown began in the time of Lewis the 11th, by the Spoils of the House of Burgundy, and the Divisions of the Princes, which gave that King the heart of attempting to bring the Government (as he called it) Horse de Page; Being before controlled by their Princes, and restrained by their States; And in point of Revenue, kept within the bounds of the King's Demesnes, and the Subjects voluntary Contributions.  
'Tis not here necessary to observe, by what difficulties and dangers to the Crown, this design of Lewis was pursued by many succeeding Kings, like a great Stone forced up a Hill, and upon every slacking of either strength or care, rolling a great way back, often to the very bottom of the Hill, and sometimes with the destruction of those that forced it on, till the time of Cardinal Richelieu. It was in this great Minister most to be admired, that finding the Regency shaken by the Factions of so many great ones within, and awed by the terror of the Spanish greatness without; He durst resolve to look them both in the face, and begin a War, by the course of which for so many years (being pursued by Mazarine till the year 60), The Crown of France grew to be powerfully armed, The Peasants were accustomed to Payments (which could have seemed necessary only by a War, and which none but a successful one could have helped to digest), and grew heartless as they grew poor. The Princes were sometimes satisfied with Commands of the Army, sometimes mortified and suppressed by the absoluteness or addresses of the Ministry; The most boiling blood of the Nobility and Gentry was let out in so long a War, or wasted with Age and Exercise; At last it ended at the Pireenes in a Peace, and a Match so advantageous to France; As the reputation of them contributed much to the Authority of the young King, who bred up in the Councils, and served by the tried Instruments of the former Ministry, But most of all advantaged by his own personal Qualities, fit to make him obeyed; Grew absolute Master of the Factions of the great men, as well as the purses of his people. In the beginning of his Minority, the two disputes, with the Pope about the outrage of the Corsi, and with the King of Spain about the encounter at London, between the Count D'Estrades and the Baron De Batteville (Ambassadors from those Crowns), both carried so high, and both ended so honourably, and to the very will of France, Were enough to give a young Prince the humour and appetite of trying yet further what there was could oppose him. The Invasion and easy success in Flanders, fed his Glory, and increased the reputation of his Power; Till this career was interrupted by the Peace at first, than the Alliances between Us and Holland, and afterwards the Peace at Aix, and the Triple Alliance (contracted purposely to secure it), since which time the Counsels of that Court have turned wholly from Action to Negotiation; Of which no man can yet see the success, nor judge whether it may not be more prosperous to them than that of their Arms.  
If there were any certain height where the flights of Power and Ambition use to end, one might imagine, that the Interest of France were but to conserve its present Greatness, so feared by its Neighbours, and so glorious in the world: But besides, that the motions and desires of human minds are endless, It may perhaps be necessary for France (from respects within) to have some War or other in pursuit abroad, which may amuse the Nation, and keep them from reflecting upon their condition at home, Hard and uneasy to all but such as are in charge, or in pay from the Court. I do not say miserable (the term usually given it), because no condition is so, but to him that esteems it so; And if a Paisan of France thinks of no more, than his corpse Bread and his Onions, his Canvas Clothes and Wooden Shoes, labours contentedly on Working-days, and dances or plays merrily on holidays; He may, for aught I know, live as well as a Boor of Holland, who is either weary of his very ease, or whose cares of growing still richer and richer, waste his life in toils at Land, or dangers at Sea; and perhaps fool him so far, as to make him enjoy less of all kind in his riches, than t'other in his poverty.  
But to leave strains of Philosophy, which are ill mingled with discourses of Interest: The common people of France are as little considerable in the Government, as the Children; so that the Nobles and the Soldiers may in a manner be esteemed the Nation; Whose Interest and Hopes carry them all to War; And whatever is the general humour and bent of a Nation, ought ever to be much considered by a State, which can hardly miscarry in the pursuit of it. Besides, the Personal Dispositions of the King, Active and Aspiring, And many circumstances in the Government (fitter for persons of that Court, than Strangers to pretend the knowledge of), The continual increase of their Forces in time of peace, and their fresh Invasion of Lorraine, are enough to persuade most men, that the design of this Crown is a War, whenever they can open it with a prospect of succeeding to purpose; For their Counsels are too wise, To venture much upon the hopes of little gains. What the aims of France are in this kind, I will not pretend to judge by common fears, or the Schemes of men too ingeniously politic; Nor perhaps can any one tell any more than a man that leaps into the water in strength and vigour, and with pleasure, can say how far he will swim; Which will be, till he is stopped by currents, or accidents, or grows weary, or has a mind to do something else. One may judge, that if France will begin a War, it would be naturally upon Flanders; unless discouraged by the same Alliances which prevailed with them to end the last; so as the plain present Interest of France, is one way or other to break the confidence or the force of that Triple Alliance, which alone seems to bond their prospect, which way soever they look; And if once laid open, they have the World and their Fortunes before them; which is enough for a Crown that has so much Force, and so much Conduct to manage them. Having little hopes of breaking this on the Dutch side, and knowing the Swede will follow our measures in it, We may be sure of all address, and all the Courtship that can any way be infused; and in short, all sorts of endeavours and applications that can be used, to break it on ours, Which seems to be the present Game of that Crown, and that they will begin no other till they see an end of this.  
FLanders cannot be considered distinct from Spain in the Government, but may in the inclinations of the people, which must ever have a great influence upon it. They are the best Subjects in the World, but may have some reason to be weary of being the Theatre of almost perpetual Wars; and where those two mighty Crowns have fought so many Battles, and seem to have still so many more to fight, If the Neighbour-assistances fall in to balance their powers, now so unequally matched. Therefore the Interest of the Inhabitants of those Spanish Provinces seems to be, either that the present Peace should be kept inviolate by the strength and reputation of the present Alliances; Or else, that a War when it opens should have a sudden issue; Which might be expected, either from the French Conquest, or a Proposition of Exchange. They are naturally averse from the French Government, as they are inclined to the Spanish; but have so little kindness for the Hollanders, or esteem of their Land-Forces, that they hardly either hope or care to be saved by their assistances. So as the reputation of His Majesty's Protection and Alliance, is all that can inspire them with the hopes of a lasting Peace, or the courage to defend themselves by a War.  
FRom the Survey of all these several Interests, and Forces, and Dispositions that compose the present state of all our Neighbours; It may be naturally, and unquestionably concluded, That a continuance of the present measures, The opening of new ones, Or an absolute revolution of all, depends wholly upon those His Majesty shall take or pursue in this great Conjuncture, wherein He seems to be generally allowed for the sole Arbiter of the Affairs of Christendom.  
OUR Interest abroad must lie in one of these points.  
Either to preserve our present Alliances, and thereby the Peace of Christendom as it now stands.  
Or to encourage France to an Invasion of Holland, with assurance of our Neutrality.  
Or else to join with France upon the advantages they can offer us, for the ruin of the Dutch.  
Upon the first is to be considered, Whether with a longer Peace, the Power of France and Holland, with so great Revenues, and such application as is seen in their Governments, will not increase every year out of proportion to what ours will do; The Revenues of France arising originally from the vent of their Native Commodities; and those of Holland growing wholly out of Trade, and that out of Peace.  
Upon the second, Whether France will ever resolve upon the Invasion of Holland; Or Holland upon its own resolute defence, without our share in the War, which would otherwise leave us to enjoy the Trade of the World, and thereby to grow vastly both in Strength and Treasures, whilst both these Powers were breaking one another. Or whether the jealousy of such a design in us, would not induce France and Holland, either before a War, or soon after it begins, To close upon some measures between them to our disadvantage, as We and Holland did after the last War, to the disadvantage of France.  
Upon the last, Whether by the ruin of Holland, we can reap as great advantages as France (though perhaps greater were necessary to make some equality in our Powers). And to gain a fair prospect of this, it must be considered, Whether Holland upon its fall would grow an accession to the French, or to Us; Or live under the Prince of Orange as a Sovereign Prince, with our support or protection. Whether France would be content with either of these last; or to see us grow absolute Masters of the Sea, by the fall or subjection of Holland, any more than by their Conjunction and Alliance. Whether we could be able to defend the Maritime Provinces, either in our own subjection, or in that of the Prince, whilst France remained possessed of all the Outworks of that State (which are their Inland Provinces, their Towns in Brabant and upon the Rhine); Whether we could on the other side hinder the accession of Holland to France, either as Subjects in a Maritime Province (with great Privileges and Immunities for continuance and encouragement of Trade), Or as an inferior and dependant Ally under their protection. Whether in either of these cases, our Government would have credit enough in Holland to invite their Shipping and Traders to come over and settle in England, and so leave those Provinces destitute of both. Whether it be possible to preserve Flanders after the loss of Holland, Or upon the Conquest of those Countries by France, For us to preserve our peace or good intelligence with that King, Or upon a War to defend ourselves, either by our own Forces, or the Alliances of our Neighbours.  
But though these Arguments may deserve the most serious deliberations of Ministers at home; Yet I know they lie out of the compass of my duty, and are improper for the representations of a man, the course of whose Employments and thoughts for so long a time has lain wholly abroad.   

AN ESSAY UPON THE ORIGINAL and NATURE OF GOVERNMENT.  
Written in the Year 1672.  
THE Nature of Man seems to be the same in all times and places, but varied like their statures, complexions, and features: by the force and influence of the several Climates where they are born and bred; which produce in them by a different mixture of the humours and operation of the Air, a different and unequal course of Imaginations and Passions, and consequently of Discourses and Actions.  
These differences incline men to several Customs, Educations, Opinions and Laws; which Form and Govern the several Nations of the World, where they are not interrupted by the violence of some force from without, or some faction within; which like a great blow, or a great disease, may either change or destroy the very frame of a body, though if it lives to recover strength and vigour, it commonly returns in time to its natural constitution or something near it.  
(I speak not of those changes and revolutions of State, or Institutions of Government that are made by the more immediate and evident operation of Divine Will and Providence, being the Themes of Divines, and not of common men; and the Subjects of our Faith, not of our Reason).  
This may be the cause that the same Countries have generally in all times been used to Forms of Government much of a sort: The same Nature ever continuing under the same Climate, and making returns into its old Channel, though sometimes led out of it by persuasions, and sometimes beaten out by force.  
Thus the more Northern, and more Southern Nations (extremes as they say still agreeing) have ever lived under single and Arbitrary Dominions; as all the Regions of Tartary, and Muscovy on the one side: and of afric and India on the other. While those under the more temperate Climates, especially in Europe, have ever been used to more moderate Governments, Running anciently much into Commonwealths, and of latter ages into Principalities bounded by Laws, which differ less in Nature than in Name.  
For though the old distinctions run otherwise, there seem to be but two general kinds of Government in the world. The one exercised according to the Arbitrary commands and will of some single Person. And the other according to certain Orders or Laws introduced by agreement or custom, and not to be changed without the consent of many.  
But under each of these may fall many more particular kinds, than can be reduced to the common heads of Government received in the Schools. For those of the first sort, differ according to the dispositions and humours of Him that Rules, and of them that obey: As Fevers do according to the temper of the persons, and accidents of the seasons. And those of the other sort, differ according to the quality or number of the persons upon whom is devolved the authority of making, or power of executing Laws.  
Nor will any man, that understands the State of Poland, and the United Provinces, be well able to range them under any particular names of Government that have been yet invented.  
The great Scenes of Action, and Subjects of Ancient Story, Greece, Italy, and Sicily, were all divided into small Commonwealths, till swallowed up and made Provinces by that mighty one of Rome, together with Spain, Gaul, and Germany. These were before composed of many small Governments, among which the Cities were generally under Commonwealths, and the Countries under several Princes: Who were Generals in their Wars, but in peace lived without Armies or Guards, or any Instruments of Arbitrary Power: And were only chief of their Councils, and of those Assemblies by whose consultations, and authority, the great affairs and actions among them were resolved and enterprised.  
Through all these Regions some of the smaller States, but chiefly those of the Cities, fell often under Tyrannies: Which spring naturally out of Popular Governments. While the meaner sort of the people oppressed, or ill protected by the richer, and greater, give themselves up to the conduct of some one man in chief credit among them; and submit all to his will and discretion: either running easily from one extreme to another, or contented to see those they hated and feared before, now in equal condition with themselves. Or, because a multitude is incapable of framing Orders, though capable of conserving them: Or that every man comes to find by experience, that confusion and popular tumults have worse effects upon common safety than the rankest Tyranny. For it is easier to please the humour, and either appease or resist the fury of one single man, than of a multitude. And taking each of them in their extremes, the rage of a Tyrant may be like that of fire, which consumes what it reaches but by degrees, and devouring one house after another; whereas the rage of people is like that of the Sea, which once breaking bounds, overflows a Country with that suddenness and violence, as leaves no hopes either of flying or resisting, till with the change of tides or winds it returns of itself.  
The force and variety of accidents is so great, that it will not perhaps bear reasoning, or enquiry how it comes about, that single Arbitrary Dominion seems to have been natural to Asia and afric: and the other sort to Europe. For though Carthage was indeed a Commonwealth in afric, and Macedon a Kingdom in Europe; yet the first was not Native of that Soil (being a Colony of the Tyrians, as there were some other small ones of he Grecians upon the same Coasts) and the Kings of Macedon Governed by Laws, and the consent as well as Councils of the Nobles. Not like the Kings of Persia by humour and will, as appears by the event of their quarrel, while so few Subjects conquered so many Slaves.  
Yet one reason may be that Sicily, Greece, and Italy (which were the Regions of Commonwealths) were planted thick with rich and populous Cities (occasioned by their being so far encompassed with the Sea). And the vein of all rich Cities ever inclines to that kind of Government. Whether it be that where many grow Rich, many grow to power, and are harder to be subjected. Or where men grow to great possessions, they grow more intent upon safety, and therefore desire to be Governed by Laws and Magistrates of their own choice, fearing all Armed and Arbitrary Power: Or that the small compass of Cities makes the ease and convenience of Assemblies and Councils. Or that conversation sharpens men's wits, and makes too many reasoners in matters of Government.  
The contrary of all this happens in Country's thin inhabited, and especially in vast Campania's, such as are extended through Asia, and afric, where there are few Cities, besides what grow by the residence of the Kings or their Governors. The people are poorer, and having little to lose, have little to care for, and are less exposed to the designs of power or violence. The assembling of persons deputed from people at great distances one from another, is trouble to them that are sent, and charge to them that send. And where ambition and avarice have made no entrance, the desire of leisure is much more natural, than of business and care; besides, Men conversing all their lives with the Woods, and the Fields, and the Herds, more than with one another, come to know as little as they desire. Use their Senses a great deal more than their Reasons, examine not the nature or the tenure of Power and Authority; find only they are fit to obey, because they are not fit to Govern. And so come to submit to the will of him they found in Power, as they do the will of Heaven, and consider all changes of conditions that happen to them under good or bad Princes, like good or ill Seasons that happen in the Wether and the Air.  
It may be said further, that in the more intemperate Climates, the spirits either exhaled by heat, or compressed by cold, are rendered faint and sluggish, and by that reason the men grow tamer, and fitter for servitude. That in more temperate Regions the spirits are stronger, and more active, whereby men become bolder in the defence or recovery of their liberties.  
But all Government is a restraint upon liberty; And under all, The Dominion is equally absolute, where it is in the last resort.  
So that when men seem to contend for Liberty, it is indeed but for the change of those that rule, or for the forms of Government they have formerly been used to; and (being grown weary of the present) now begin to regret; though when they enjoyed them, it was not without some pressure and complaint. Nor can it be in the other case; that when vast numbers of men submit their lives and fortunes absolutely to the Will of one, it should be want of heart, but must be force of custom, or opinion, the true ground and foundation of all Government, and that which subjects Power to Authority. For Power arising from Strength, is always in those that are governed, who are many: But Authority arising from opinion, is in those that Govern, who are few.  
This distinction is plain in the forms of the old Roman State, where Laws were made, and resolutions taken, Authoritate Senatus, and Jussu populi. The Senate were Authors of all Counsels in the State; and what was by them consulted and agreed, was proposed to the People: By whom it was enacted, or commanded, because in them was the power to make it be obeyed. But the great opinion which the people had at first of the persons of the Senators, and afterwards of their families (which were called Patricians) gained easy assent to what was thus proposed; the Authority of the persons adding great weight to the reason of the things. And this went so far, that though the choice of all Magistrates was wholly in the people, yet for a long course of years, they chose none but Patricians into the great Offices of State, either Civil or Military. But when the People began to lose the general opinion they had of the Patricians, or at least so far as to believe some among themselves were as able, and fit as these, to advise the State, and lead their Armies: They than pretended to share with the Senate in the Magistracy, and bring in Plebeians to the Offices of chiefest Power and Dignity. And hereupon began those seditions which so long distempered, and at length ruined that State.  
AUthority arises from the opinion of Wisdom, Goodness, and Valour in the persons who possess it.  
Wisdom, As that which makes men judge what are the best ends, and what the best means to attain them; and gives a man advantage among the weak and the ignorant; as sight among the blind, which is that of Counsel and Direction. This gives Authority to Age among the younger, till these begin at certain years to change their opinion of the old, and of themselves. This gives it more absolute to a Pilot at Sea, whom all the passengers suffer to steer them as he pleases.  
Goodness, As that which makes men prefer their Duty and their Promise, before their Passions, or their Interest; and is properly the object of Trust. In our Language, it goes rather by the name of Honesty; though what we call an honest man, the Romans called a good man; and honesty in their Language, as well as in French, rather signifies a composition of those qualities which generally acquire honour and esteem to those who possess them.  
Valour, As it gives awe, and promises protection to those who want either heart or strength to defend themselves. This makes the Authority of Men among Women; and that of a Master-Buck in a numerous herd, though perhaps not strong enough for any two of them; but the impression of single fear holds when they are all together, by the ignorance of Uniting.  
Eloquence, As it passes for a mark of Wisdom; Beauty of Goodness, And Nobility of Valour (which was its original) have likewise ever some effect upon the opinion of the People; but a very great one when they are really joined with the qualities they promise or resemble.  
There is yet another source from which usually springs greater Authority than from all the rest, which is the opinion of Divine Favour, or designation of the persons, or of the races that Govern. This made the Kings among the Heathens ever derive themselves, or their Ancestors from some god; passing thereby for Heroes, that is, persons issued from the mixture of divine and humane race, and of a middle nature between gods and men: others joined the Mitre to the Crown, and thereby the reverence of Divine, to the respect of Civil Power.  
This made the Caliphs' of Persia and Egypt, and the great Emperors of Arabia, derive themselves by several branches from their great Prophet Mahomet: The Yncas in Peru from the Sun: And the Ottoman race to be adored among the Turks, as designed by Heaven for perpetual Empire. And the sacring of the Kings of France (as Loysel says) is the sign of their Sovereign Priesthood, as well as Kingdom; and in the right thereof they are capable of holding all vacant Benefices of the Church.  
Piety, As it is thought a way to the favour of God, and Fortune as it looks like the effect either of that or at least of Prudence and Courage, beget Authority. As likewise splendour of living in great Palaces, with numerous attendance, much observance, and rich habits differing from common men: Both as it seems to be the reward of those Virtues already named, or the effect of Fortune; or as it is a mark of being obeyed by many.  
From all these Authority arises, but is by nothing so much strengthened and confirmed as by custom. For no man easily distrusts the persons, or disputes the things which he and all men that he knows of, have been always bred up to observe, and believe; or if he does, he will hardly hope, or venture to introduce opinions wherein he knows none, or few of his mind, and thinks all others will defend those already received; so as no man, nor party can offer at the change of a Government established, without first gaining new Authority by the steps already traced out; and in some degree debasing the old, by appearance or impressions of contrary qualities in those who before enjoyed it. This induces a general change of opinion, concerning the person or party like to be obeyed, or followed by the greatect or strongest part of the people: according to which the power or weakness of each is to be measured. So as in effect all Government may be esteemed to grow strong or weak, as the general opinion of these qualities in those that Govern, is seen to lessen or increase.  
And Power must be allowed to follow Authority in all Civil Bodies; as in Natural the motions of the body follow those of the mind, great numbers ever acting and pursuing what the few (whom they trust) begin or advise.  
FRom this Principle, and from the discovery of some natural Authority, may perhaps be deduced a truer original of all Governments among men, than from any Contracts: though these be given us by the great Writers concerning Politics and Laws. Some of them lay for their foundation, That men are sociable creatures, and naturally disposed to live in numbers and troops together. Others, That they are naturally creatures of prey, and in a state of war one upon another; so as to avoid confusion in the first case, and violence in the other, they found out the necessity of agreeing upon some Orders and Rules, by which every man gives up his common Right for some particular possession, and his power to hurt and spoil others, for the privilege of not being hurt or spoiled himself. And the agreement upon such Orders, by mutual Contract, with the consent to execute them, by common strength and endeavours, They make to be the rise of all Civil Governments.  
I know not whether they consider what it is that makes some creatures sociable, and others live and range more alone, or in smaller companies; but I suppose those creatures whose natural and necessary food is easy and plentiful, as Grass, or Plants, or Fruits (the common product of the earth) are the sociable creatures, because wherever they go, they usually find what they want, and enough for them all without industry or contention. And those live more alone whose food (and therefore pray) is upon other sensitive creatures, and so not attained without pursuit and violence, and seldom in such quantities at once, as to satisfy the hunger of great numbers together. Yet this does not hold so far, but that Ravens are seen in flocks where a Carrion lies, and Wolves in herds to run down a Deer. Nay they feed quietly together while there is enough for them all: Quarrel only when it begins to fail, and when 'tis ended they scatter to seek out new encounters. Besides, those called sociable, quarrel in hunger and in lust, as well as the others; and the Bull and the Ram appear then as much in fury and war, as the Lion and the Bear. So that if Mankind must be ranged to one of these sorts, I know not well to which it will be: and considering the great differences of customs and dispositions in several men, and even in the same men at several times, I very much doubt they must be divided into several forms. Nor do I know, if men are like sheep, why they need any Government: or if they are like Wolves, how they can suffer it. Nor have I read where the Orders of any State have been agreed on by mutual Contract among great numbers of men, meeting together in that natural state of War; where every man takes himself to have equal right to every thing. But often where such Orders have been invented by the Wisdom, and received by the Authority of some one man, under the name of a Lawgiver; And where this has not happened, the original of Government lies as undiscovered in story, as that of Time. All Nations appearing upon the first Records that are left us, under the Authority of Kings, or Princes, or some other Magistrates.  
Besides, this principle of contract as the original of Government, seems calculated for the account, given by some of the old Poets of the original of man; whom they raise out of the ground by great numbers at a time in perfect Stature and Strength. Whereas if we deduce the several races of mankind in the several parts of the World from generation; we must imagine the first numbers of them who in any place agree upon any civil constitutions, to assemble not as so many single heads, but as so many heads of families, whom they represent, in the framing any Compact or common accord; and consequently as persons, who have already an Authority over such numbers as their families are composed of.  
For if we consider a Man multiplying his Kind by the birth of many Children, and his Cares by providing even necessary food for them, till they are able to do it for themselves (which happens much later to the generations of men, and makes a much longer dependence of children upon Parents, than we can observe among any other creatures) If we consider not only the cares but the industry he is forced to, for the necessary sustenance of his helpless brood, either in gathering the natural fruits, or raising those which are purchased with labour and toil; if he be forced for supply of this stock to catch the tamer creatures, and hunt the wilder, sometimes to exercise his courage in defending his little Family, and fight with the strong and Savage Beasts (that would pray upon him, as he does upon the weak and the mild) if we suppose him disposing with discretion and order, whatever he gets among his Children, according to each of their hunger or need, sometimes laying up for to morrow, what was more than enough for to day: at other times pinching himself rather than suffering any of them should want. And as each of them grows up, and able to share in the common support, teaching him both by lesson and example, what he is now to do as the Son of this family, and what hereafter as the Father of another; instructing them all, what qualities are good, and what are ill for their health and life, or common Society (which will certainly comprehend whatever is generally esteemed virtue or vice among men) cherishing and encouraging dispositions to the good; disfavouring and punishing those to the ill: And lastly, Among the various accidents of Life, lifting up his eyes to Heaven, when the earth affords him no relief; and having recourse to a higher and a greater nature, whenever he finds the frailty of his own: We must needs conclude, that the Children of this Man cannot fail of being bred up with a great opinion of his Wisdom, his Goodness, his Valour, and his Piety. And if they see constant plenty in the Family, they believe well of his fortune too.  
And from all this must naturally arise a great paternal Authority, which disposes his Children (at least till the age when they grow Fathers themselves) to believe what he teaches, to follow what he advises, and obey what he commands.  
Thus the Father, by a natural Right as well as Authority, becomes a Governor in this little State: and if his life be long, and his generations many (as well as those of his Children) He grows the Governor or King of a Nation, and is indeed a Pater patriae, as the best Kings are, and as all should be; and as those which are not, are yet content to be called. Thus the peculiar compellation of the Kings in France, is by the name of Sire, which in their ancient language is nothing else but Father, and denotes the Prince to be the Father of the Nation. For a Nation properly signifies a great number of Families, derived from the same Blood, born in the same Country, and living under the same Government and Civil Constitutions: As Patria does the land of our Father; and so the Dutch by expressions of deerness, instead of our Country, say our Father-land. With such Nations we find in Scripture all the Lands of Judea, and the adjacent Territories, were planted of old. With such the many several Provinces of Greece and Italy, when they began first to appear upon the Records of Ancient Story or Tradition. And with such was the main Land of Gaul inhabited in the time of Caesar; and Germany in that of Tacitus. Such were the many Branches of the old British Nation; the Scepts among the Irish. And such the infinite variety and numbers of Nations in Africa and America upon the first discoveries, distinguished by their several names, and living under their several Kings or Princes, till they came to be swallowed up by greater Empires.  
These seem to have been the natural and original Governments of the World, springing from a tacit deference of many to the Authority of one single Person. Under Him (if the Father of the Family or Nation) the elder of his Children comes to acquire a degree of Authority among the younger by the same means the Father did among them; and to share with him in the consultation and conduct of their common affairs. And this, together with an opinion of Wisdom from experience, may have brought in the Authority of the Elders, so often mentioned among the Jews; and in general of aged men, not only in Sparta and Rome, but all other places in some degree, both civil and barbarous. For the names of Lord, Signior, Seigneur, Senor, in the Italian, French, and Spanish Languages, seem to have at first imported only elder men, who thereby were grown into Authority among the several Governments and Nations, which seated themselves in those Countries upon the fall of the Roman Empire.  
This perhaps brought in Vogue that which is called the Authority of the Ancients in matters of opinion, though by a mistaken sense: for I suppose Authority may be reasonably allowed to the opinions of ancient men in the present age; but I know not why it should be so to those of men in general that lived in ages long since past; nor why one age of the World should be wiser than another; or if it be, why it should not be rather the latter than the former; as having the same advantage of the general experience of the World, that an old man has of the more particular experiments of life.  
THus a Family seems to become a little Kingdom, and a Kingdom to be but a great Family.  
Nor is it unlikely that this Paternal Jurisdiction in its successions, and with the help of accidents, may have branched out into the several heads of Government commonly received in the Schools. For a Family Governed with order, will fall naturally to the several Trades of Husbandry, which are Tillage, Gardening, and Pasturage (the product whereof was the original riches) For the managing of these, and their increase, and the assistance of one man, who perhaps is to feed twenty, it may be a hundred children (since it is not easily told how far Generations may extend, with the Arbitrary choice and numbers of women, practised anciently in most Countries) the use of servants comes to be necessary. These are gained by victory and captives, or by fugitives out of some worse governed Family, where either they cannot or like not to live, and so sell their liberty to be assured of what is necessary to life. Or else by the debased nature of some of the Children who seem born to drudgery, or who are content to increase their pains that they may lessen their cares; and upon such terms become servants to some of their brothers, whom they most esteem or choose soon to live with.  
The Family thus increased, is still under the Father's common, though not equal care; that what is due to the servants by Contract, or what is fit for them to enjoy, may be provided, as well as the portions of the Children: And that whatever they acquire by their industry or ingenuity (beyond what the Masters expect, or exact from them by the conditions of their servitude) should be as much their property, as any divisions of Land or of Stock that are made to the Sons; and the possession as secure, unless forfeited by any demerit or offence against the customs of the Family, which grow with time to be the orders of this little State.  
Now the Father of a Family or Nation, that uses his Servants like Children in point of Justice and Care; and advises with his Children in what concerns the Commonweal, and thereby is willingly followed and obeyed by them all: Is what I suppose the Schools mean by a Monarch. And he that by harshness of nature, wilfulness of humour, intemperance of passions, and arbitrariness of commands, uses his Children like Servants, is what they mean by a Tyrant. And whereas the first thought himself safe in the love and obedience of his Children, the other knowing that he is feared, and hated by them; thinks he cannot be safe among his children, but by putting arms into the hands of such of his Servants as he thinks most at his will; which is the original of Guards. For against a Foreign Enemy, and for defence of evident Interest, all that can bear Arms in a Nation are Soldiers. Their Cause is common safety; their Pay is Honour: And when they have purchased these, they return to their homes, and former conditions of peaceable lives. Such were all the Armies of Greece, and of Rome, in the first Ages of their States. Such were their Gens d' ordonnance in France, and the Trainbands in England: but standing Troops, and in constant pay, are properly Servants armed, who use the Lance and the Sword, as other servants do the Sickle, or the Bill at the command and will of those who entertain them. And therefore Martial Law is of all other the most absolute, and not like the Government of a Father, but a Master.  
And this brings in another sort of Power, distinct from that already described, which follows Authority, and consists in the willing obedience of the people: But this in the command of Soldiers who as Servants are bound to execute the Will and Orders of those that Led them. And as Authority follows the qualities beforementioned; so this Power follows Riches, or the opinion of it; a multitude of Servants being his that is able to maintain them. And these kind of forces come to be used by good Princes only upon necessity of providing for their defence against great and armed neighbours or enemies; But by ill ones as a support of decayed Authority, or as they lose the force of that which is Natural and Paternal, and so grow to set up an Interest of those that Govern, different from that of those that are Governed, which ought ever to be the same.  
Yet this seems a much weaker principle of Government than the other; for the number of Soldiers can never be great in proportion to that of People, no more than the number of those that are idle in a Country, to that of those who live by labour or industry: so as if the people come to unite by any strong passion, or general interest, or under the wise conduct of any Authority well rooted in their minds, They are Masters of Armies. Besides, the humour of the People runs insensibly among the very Soldiers, so as it seems much alike to keep off by Guards, a general infection, or an universal sedition: for the distemper in both kinds is contagious, and seizes upon the defenders themselves. Besides, common pay is a faint principle of Courage and Action, in comparison of Religion, Liberty, Honour, Revenge, or Necessity; which make every Soldier have the quarrel as much at heart as their Leaders, and seem to have spirited all the great Actions, and Revolutions of the World. And lastly, without the force of Authority, this Power of Soldiers grows pernicious to their Master, who becomes their Servant, and is in danger of their mutinies, as much as any Government can be of the seditions of a people.  
If the Father of our Family govern it with Prudence, Goodness, and Success; and his eldest Son appear Heir to the virtues and worth of his Father; He succeeds in the Government by a Natural Right, and by the Strength of an Authority both derived from his Father, and acquired by His own personal qualities: but if either the eldest Son by qualities degenerate and ill, happen to lose all trust and opinion, and thereby (Authority) in the Family, Or else to die before his time, and leave a Child in his room; when the Father comes to fail, than the Children fall into Councils of Election, and either prefer the eldest of the Sons then living, or perhaps one later, and so remoter in birth, according as He may have acquired Authority by those qualities which naturally produce it, and promise the best conduct and protection to the common affairs of the Family.  
Where the Father comes to lose his Authority, many of the elder, or wiser, or braver of the Sons increase in theirs by the same degree: and when both these arrive at a certain height, the Nature of the Government is ready for a change; and upon the Father's death, or general defection of the Family, they succeed in his Authority, whilst the humour of the whole body runs against the succession, or election of any single person, which they are grown weary of by so late an example. And thus comes in what they call an Aristocracy: But Authority contracting itself (as it seems naturally to do till it ends in a point or single Person) this Government falls sometimes into the hands of a few who establish it in their Families: and that is called an Oligarchy. If the Authority come to be lost in either of these forms; while the Children of the Family grow into the manners, and qualities, and perhaps into the condition and poverty of Servants: and while many of the Servants by industry and virtue, arrive at riches and esteem, than the nature of the Government inclines to a Democracy or Popular State, which is nearest confusion, or Anarchy; and often runs into it, unless upheld or directed by the Authority of one, or of some few in the State; though perhaps without Titles or marks of any extraordinary Office or Dignity.  
GOvernments founded upon Contract, may have succeeded those founded upon Authority: But the first of them should rather seem to have been agreed between Princes and Subjects, than between men of equal Rank and Power. For the original of Subjection was, I suppose, when one Nation warring▪ against another (for things necessary to Life, or for Women, or for extent of Land) overcame their enemies: if they only won a Battle, and put their enemies to flight, those they took Prisoners became their Slaves, and continued so in their Generations, unless infranchized by their Masters: But if by great slaughter or frequent victories, they subdued the very courages of their enemies, while great numbers of them remained alive; then the vanquished Nation became subject to the Conquerors by Agreement, and upon certain conditions of safety and protection; and perhaps equal enjoyment of liberties and customs, with the common Natives under the other Government: If by such frequent successes and additions, a Nation extended itself over vast Tracts of Land and numbers of People; it thereby arrived in time at the ancient name of Kingdom, or Modern of Empire.  
After such a victory, the chiefest of the conquering Nations, become Rich and Great upon the divisions of Lands, of Spoils, and of Slaves: By all which they grow into Power, are Lords in their own Lands, and over those that inhabit them, with certain Rights or Jurisdictions, and upon certain homages reserved to the Prince. The custom of employing these great persons in all great Offices, and Councils, grows to pass for a Right; as all Custom does with length and force of time.  
The Prince that Governs according to the conditions of subjection at first agreed upon (of which Use is the Authentic record) and according to the ancient Customs, which are the original Laws (and by which the Right of succession in the Crown, as well as private Inheritance and Common Justice is directed and established) is called a Lawful Sovereign: He that breaks and violates these ancient Constitutions (especially that of Succession) is termed an Usurper.  
A Free Nation is that, which has never been conquered or thereby entered into any conditions of Subjection, as the Romans were, before they were subdued by the Goths and Vandals: and as the Turks seem to be at this time; who having been called from Scythia to assist the Grecian Empire against that of the Saracens, made themselves Masters of both.  
In Country's safer from Foreign Invasions either by Seas or Rivers, by Mountains and Passes, or great Tracts of rough barren and uninhabited Lands, People lived generally in scattered dwellings, or small Villages: But where Invasion is easy and passage open, and bordering Nations are great and valiant; men crowd together and seek their safety from number better united, and from Walls and other Fortifications, the use whereof is to make the few a match for the many, so as they may Fight or Treat on equal terms. And this is the original of Cities; but the greatness and riches of them increase according to the commodiousness of their situation, in fertile Countries, or upon Rivers and Havens; which surpass the greatest fertility of any Soil, in furnishing plenty of all things necessary to Life or Luxury.  
When Families meet together, surround themselves by Walls; fall into Order and Laws (either invented by the wisdom of some one, or some few men; and from the evidence of their public utility received by all; or else introduced by experience and time) and these Cities preserve themselves in the enjoyment of their Possessions, and observance of their Institutions, against all Invasions; and never are forced to submit to the will of any Conqueror, or conditions of any absolute Subjection; They are called free Cities, and of such there were many of old, in Greece and Sicily, deducing their original from some one Founder or Lawgiver: And are many now in Germany subject to no Laws but their own, and those of the Empire, which is an Union of many Sovereign Powers, by whose general consent in their Diets, all its Constitutions are framed and established.  
Commonwealths were nothing more in their original, but free Cities, though sometimes by force of orders, and discipline, or of a numerous and valiant people, they have extended themselves into mighty Dominions: and often by Situation and Trade, grow to vast Riches, and thereby to great Power by force of mercenary Arms. And these seem to be the more artificial, as those of a single Person the more Natural Governments; being forced to supply the want of Authority by wise inventions, orders and institutions.  
For Authority can never be so great in many as in one, because the opinion of those qualities which acquire it, cannot be equal in several persons.  
These Governments seem to be introduced either by the wisdom and moderation of some one Lawgiver, who has Authority enough with the people to be followed and observed in all his orders and advices; and yet prefers that which he esteems public utility, before any interest or greatness of his own (such were Lycurgus in Sparta, and Solon in Athens, and Timoleon in Syracuse); Or else by the confluence of many Families out of some Countries exposed to some fierce or barbarous invasions, into places fortified by Nature, and secure from the fury and misery of such Conquests. Such were Rhodes of old, and several small Islands upon the Coasts of jonia; and such was Venice founded upon the Inundation of the barbarous Nations over Italy: Or lastly, by the suppression and extinction of some Tyranny, which being thrown off by the violent indignation of an oppressed people, makes way for a Popular Government, or at least some form very contrary to that which they lately execrated, and detested: Such were Rome upon the expulsion of the Tarquins; and the United Provinces upon their revolt from Spain: Yet are none of these forms to be raised or upheld without the influence of Authority, acquired by the force or opinion of those virtues abovementioned, which concurred in Brutus among the Romans, and in Prince William of Orange among those of the Netherlands.  
I will not enter into the Arguments or comparisons of the several forms of Government that have been, or are in the World; wherein that cause seems commonly the better, that has the better advocate, or is advantaged by fresher experience and impressions of good or evil from any of the Forms among those that judge: They have all their heights and their falls, their strong and weak sides; are capable of great perfections, and subject to great corruptions: and though the preference seem already decided in what has been said of a single Persons being the original and natural Government; and that it is capable of the greatest Authority (which is the foundation of all ease, safety, and order, in the Governments of the World) yet it may perhaps be the most reasonably concluded, That those forms are best, which have been longest received and authorized in a Nation by custom and use; and into which the humours and manners of the people run with the most general and strongest current.  
Or else, that those are the best Governments, where the best men Govern; and that the difference is not so great in the forms of Magistracy, as in the persons of Magistrates; which may be the sense of what was said of old (taking wise and good men, to be meant by Philosophers) that the best Governments were those, where Kings were Philosophers, or Philosopher's Kings.  
THE safety and firmness of any frame of Government, may be best judged by the rules of Architecture, which teach us that the Pyramid is of all figures the firmest, and least subject to be shaken or overthrown by any concussions, or accidents from the Earth or Air: and it grows still so much the firmer, by how much broader the bottom and sharper the top.  
The ground upon which all Government stands, is the consent of the people, or the greatest or strongest part of them; whether this proceed from reflections upon what is passed by the reverence of an Authority under which they and their Ancestors have for many Ages been born and bred; or from sense of what is present, by the ease, plenty, and safety they enjoy: or from opinions of what is to come, by the fears they have from the present Government, or hopes from another. Now that Government which by any of these, or all these ways takes in the consent of the greatest number of the People, and consequently their desires and resolutions to support it, may justly be said to have the broadest bottom, and to stand upon the largest compass of ground: and if it terminate in the Authority of one single person, it may likewise be said to have the narrowest top, and so to make the figure of the firmest sort of Pyramid.  
On the contrary, a Government which by alienating the affections, losing the opinions, and crossing the interests of the people, leaves out of its compass the greatest part of their consent; may justly be said, in the same degrees it thus loses ground, to narrow its bottom: and if this be done to serve the Ambition, humour the Passion, satisfy the Appetites, or advance the Power and Interests not only of one man, but of two, or more, or many that come to share in the Government: By this means the top may be justly said to grow broader; as the bottom narrower by the other: Now by the same degrees that either of these happen, the stability of the figure is by the same lessened and impaired; so as at certain degrees it begins to grow subject to accidents of wind, and of weather, and at certain others, it is sure to fall of itself, or by the least shake that happens, to the ground.  
By these measures it will appear, that a Monarchy where the Prince governs by the affections, and according to the opinions and interests of his people; or the bulk of them (that is, by many degrees the greatest or strongest part of them) makes of all others the safest and firmest Government: and on the contrary a Popular State which is not founded in the general humours and interests of the people, but only of the persons who share in the Government, or depend upon it, is of all others the most uncertain, unstable, and subject to the most frequent and easy changes.  
That a Monarchy the less it takes in of the People's opinions and interests, and the more it takes in of the passions and interests of particular men (Besides those of the Prince, and contrary to those of the people) the more unstable it grows, and the more endangered by every storm in the Air, or every shake of the earth: and a Commonwealth, the more it takes in of the general humour and bent of the People, and the more it spires up to a head by the Authority of some one Person founded upon the love and esteem of the People; the firmer it stands, and less subject to danger or change by any concussions of earth or of air.  
'Tis true that a Pyramid reversed may stand for a while upon its point, if balanced by admirable skill, and held up by perpetual care, and there be a calm in the Air about it: Nay if the point be very hard and strong, and the soil very yielding and soft; it may pierce into the ground with time, so as to grow the firmer the longer it stands: But this last can never happen if either the top of the figure be weak or soft, or if the soil be hard and rough; and at the best it is subject to be overthrown, if not by its own weight, yet when ever any foreign weight shall chance to fall upon any part of it: and the first must overturn when ever there happens any inequality in the balance, or any negligence in the hands that set it up; and even without either of those when ever there arrives any violence to shake it, either from the winds abroad, or those in the bowels of the earth where it stands.  
I will not pretend from this Scheme to presage, or judge of the future events that may attend any Governments, which is the business of those that are more concerned in them than I am, and write with other design than that alone of discovering or clearing truth: But I think any man may deduce from it the causes of the several revolutions that we find upon record to have happened in the Governments of the World: Except such as have been brought about by the unresistable force and conquests of some Nations over others whom they very much surmounted in Strength, Courage, and Numbers: Yet the brave, long, and almost incredible defences that have still been made by those Governments which were rooted in the general affections, esteem and interests of the Nation; make it seem probable that almost all the Conquests we read of have been made way for, or in some measure facilitated, if not assisted by the weakness of the conquered Government, grown from the disesteem, dissatisfaction, or indifferency of the People: or from those vicious and effeminate constitutions of body and mind among them, which ever grow up in the corrupt Air of a weak or loose, a vicious or a factious State: And such can never be strong in the hearts of the People; nor consequently firm upon that which is the true bottom of all Governments in the World.  
Thus the small Athenian State resisted with success the vast Power and Forces of the Persians in the time of Miltiades and Themistocles; Rome those of the Gauls in the time of Camillus: And the vast Armies collected from afric, Spain, and the greatest part of Italy in the Carthaginian Wars (under the conduct of several great Captains; but chiefly Fabius and Scipio); The little Principality of Epire was Invincible by the whole Power of the Turks in Three several Invasions under their Prince Castriot (commonly called Scanderbag); the Kingdom of Leon and Oviedo by all the Wars of the Moors, or Saracens for many ages: The State of Venice by those of the Turks; The Swissers by the Power of the Emperors; and the Hollanders by that of Spain: Because in all these Wars the People were both united, and spirited by the common Love of their Country, their Liberty, or Religion: Or by the more particular esteem and love of their Princes and Leaders.  
In the Conquests of the Lydians by Cyrus, and the Persians by Alexander; of the great Asian and Egyptian Kings by the Roman State, and of all the Roman Provinces by the several Northern (or as they were usually called barbarous) Nations; of the Spaniards by the Moors; and of our Ancient Britain's by the Saxons: It is easy and obvious to observe that the resistances were rendered faint and weak; either by the soft and effeminate dispositions of the people grown up under the easiness, or examples of Vicious or Luxurious Princes, whom they neither honoured nor willingly obeyed: Or else by the common hatred and disdain of their present servitude, which they were content to change for any other that came in their way: Or lastly, by the distracted factions of a discontented Nation, who agreed in no one common design or dedefence; nor under any Authority grounded upon the general love, or esteem of the People.  
Of Instability and changes of Governments arrived by narrowing their bottoms, which are the consent or concurrence of the people's affections and interests; all stories and ages afford continual examples. From hence proceeded the frequent tumults, seditions, and alterations in the Commonwealths of Athens, and Rome, as often as either by the charms of Orators, or the sway of men grown to unusual Power and Riches; the Governments were engaged in Counsels or Actions contrary to the general interests of the People. Hence the several violent changes that have arrived in the Races, or Persons of the Princes of England, France, or Spain: Nor has the force hereof appeared any where more visible than in France, during the Reign of Henry the Third, and a constant Succession of Minions (as they were then called) where all was conducted by the private passions, humours, and interests of a few persons in sole confidence with the King, contrary to those more public and current of the people; till He came to lose at first all esteem, afterwards obedience, and at last his Life in the troubles given him by the League.  
That Government was in the same manner exposed to the Dominion of succeeding Favourites, during the Regency of the Queen-Mother in the Minority of Lewis the 13th, which occasioned perpetual commotions in that State, and changes of the Ministry, and would certainly have produced those in the Government too; if Richelieu having gained the absolute ascendant in that Court, had not engaged in the designs at first of a War upon the Hugonotts, and after that was ended, upon Spain; In both which he fell in with the current humour and dispositions of the People: which with the prosperous successes of both those enterprises, helped to bear up him and the Government, against all the hatred and continual practices of the great Ones in the Kingdom.  
But the two freshest examples may be drawn from the Revolutions of England in the year Sixty; and of Holland in Seventy two: In the First, The usurped Powers that had either designed no Root, or at least drawn none but only in the affections and interests of those that were engaged with the Government; thought themselves Secure in the Strength of an unfoiled Army of above Sixty thousand men, and in a Revenue proportionable, raised by the awe of their Forces, though with the mock-forms of Legal Supplies by pretended Parliaments: Yet we saw them forced to give way to the bent, and current humour of the People, in favour of their Ancient and Lawful Government; and this mighty Army of a sudden lose their Heart and their Strength, abandon what they had so long called their Cause, and their Interest, and content themselves to be moulded again into the Mass of the People; and by conspiring with the general humour of the Nation, make way for the King's glorious restauration without a drop of blood drawn, in the end of a quarrel the beginning and course whereof had been so fatal to the Kingdom.  
For the other in Holland, the constitution of their Government had continued Twenty years in the hands of their Popular Magistrates, after the exclusion or intermission of the Authority of the House of Orange upon the death of the last Prince, and infancy of this. The chief direction of their affairs had for Eighteen years lain constantly in the hands of their Pensioner the Wit, a Minister of the greatest Authority and Sufficiency, the greatest Application and Industry that was ever known in their State. In the course of his Ministry, He and his Party had reduced not only all the Civil charges of the Government in his Province, but in a manner all the Military Commands in the Army out of the hands of persons affectionate to the House of Orange, into those esteemed sure and fast to the Interests of their more Popular State. And all this had been attended for so long a course of years with the perpetual success of their affairs, by the growth of their Trade, Riches, and Power at home, and the consideration of their Neighbours abroad: Yet the general humour of kindness in the people to their old form of Government under the Princes of Orange, grew up with the Age and Virtues of the young Prince, so as to raise the prospect of some unavoidable revolutions among them for several years before it arrived. And we have seen it grow to that height in this present year, upon the Princes coming to the Two and twentieth of his Age (the time assigned him by their Constitutions for his entering upon the public charges of their Milice) that though it had found them in Peace, it must have occasioned some violent sedition in their State: But meeting with the conjuncture of a Foreign Invasion, It broke out into so furious a rage of the People, and such general tumults through the whole Country, as ended in the Blood of their chief Ministers: In the displacing all that were suspected to be of their party throughout the Government; In the full restitution of the Prince's Authority, to the highest point any of his Ancestors ever enjoyed: But withal, in such a distraction of their Councils, and their Actions, as made way for the easy successes of the French Invasion; for the loss of almost Five of their Provinces in Two months' time, and for the general presages of utter ruin to their State.   

Dublin July 22d, 1673.  
AN ESSAY UPON THE ADVANCEMENT OF TRADE in IRELAND.  
Written to the Earl of Essex, Lord Lieutenant of that Kingdom.  
My LORD,  
I Know not what it was that fell into discourse t'other day, and gave your Excellency the occasion of desiring me to digest into some Method and upon Paper, the means and ways I esteemed most proper for the advancing of Trade in Ireland: This I know very well, that you did it in a manner, and with Expressions too obliging to be refused, and out of a design so public and generous, as ought not to be discouraged. I had therefore much rather obey your Lordship in this point, how ill soever I do it, than excuse myself, though never so well, which were much easier than the other. For I might allege that neither my Birth nor my Breeding has been at all in this Country: That I have passed only one short period of my life here, and the greatest part thereof wholly out of business and public thoughts; That I have since been Ten years absent from it; and am now here upon no other occasion than of a short Visit to some of my Friends: Which are all Circumstances that make me a very improper subject for such a command. But I suppose the vein I have had of running into speculations of this kind upon a greater scene of Trade, and in a Country where I was more a stranger; and the too partial favour your Lordship has expressed to another Discourse of this nature, have cost me this present service; and you have thought fit to punish me for one folly, by engaging me to commit another; like the Confessor, that prescribed a Drunkard the penance of being drunk again. However it is, your Lordship shall be obeyed, and therein I hope to be enough excused; which is all I pretend to upon this occasion.  
Before I enter upon the considerations of Trade which are more general, and may be more lasting in this Kingdom; I will observe to your Lordship some particular Circumstances in the Constitution and Government, which have been hitherto, and may be long the great discouragers of Trade and Riches here; And some others in the present Conjuncture, which are absolutely mortal to it; that so you may not expect to find remedies where indeed there is none; nor suffer men, like busy ignorant Physicians, to apply such as are contrary to the disease, because they cannot find such as are proper for it.  
The true and natural ground of Trade and Riches, is number of People, in proportion to the compass of Ground they inhabit. This makes all things necessary to life dear, and that forces men to industry and parsimony. These Customs which grow first from necessity, come with time to be habitual in a Country. And wherever they are so, that place must grow great in Traffic and Riches, if not disturbed by some accidents or revolutions, as of Wars, of Plagues, or Famines, by which the People come to be either scattered or destroyed.  
People are multiplied in a Country by the temper of the Climate favourable to Generation, to Health, and long-life. Or else by the Circumstances of safety and ease under the Government, the credit whereof invites men over to it, when they cannot be either safe or easy at home. When things are once in motion, Trade begets Trade, as fire does fire, and People go much where much People are already gone. So men run still to a crowd where they see it in the streets, or the fields, though it be only to do as others do, to see or to be entertained.  
The want of Trade in Ireland proceeds from the want of People, and this is not grown from any ill qualities of the Climate or Air, but chiefly from the frequent Revolutions of so many Wars and Rebellions, so great Slaughters and Calamities of Mankind as have at several Intervals of time succeeded the first Conquest of this Kingdom in Henry the Seconds time, until the year 1653; Two very great Plagues followed the two great Wars, those of Queen Elizabeth's Reign, and the last; which helped to drain the current stream of Generation in the Country.  
The discredit which is grown upon the Constitutions or Settlements of this Kingdom, by so frequent and unhappy Revolutions that for many ages have infested it, has been the great discouragement to other Nations to transplant themselves hither, and prevailed further than all the invitations which the cheapness and plenty of the Country has made them. So that had it not been for the numbers of the British, which the necessity of the late Wars at first drew over, and of such who either as Adventurers or Soldiers seated themselves here upon account of the satisfaction made to them in Land, the Country had by the last War and Plague been left in a manner desolate.  
Besides, the subordinancy of the Government changing hands so often, makes an unsteddiness in the pursuit of the public Interests of the Kingdom, gives way to the emulations of the different Factions, and draws the favour or countenance of the Government sometimes to one party or interest, sometimes to another; this makes different motions in men's minds, raising hopes and fears, and opinions of uncertainty in their possessions; and thereby in the peace of the Country.  
This subordinacy in the Government, and emulation of parties, with the want sometimes of Authority in the Governor (by the weakness of his credit and support at Court) occasions the perpetual agencies or journeys into England of all persons that have any considerable pretences in Ireland, and money to pursue them; which end many times in long abodes, and frequent habituating of Families there, though they have no money to support them but what is drawn out of Ireland. Besides, the young Gentlemen go of course for their breeding there, some seek their health, and others their entertainment in a better Climate or Scene; By these means the Country loses the expense of many of the richest persons or families at home, and mighty sums of money must needs go over from hence into England, which the great stock of rich Native Commodities here can make the only amends for.  
These Circumstances so prejudicial to the increase of Trade and Riches in a Country, seem natural or at least have ever been incident to the Government here, and without them the Native fertility of the Soil and Seas in so many rich Commodities improved by multitude of people and industry, with the advantage of so many excellent Havens, and a Situation so commodious for all sorts of foreign Trade, must needs have rendered this Kingdom one of the richest in Europe, and made a mighty increase both of strength and revenue to the Crown of England; whereas it has hitherto been rather esteemed and found to be our weak side, and to have cost us more blood and treasure than 'tis worth.  
Since my late arrival in Ireland, I have found a very unusual, but I doubt very just complaint concerning the scarcity of Money, which occasioned many airy Propositions for the remedy of it, and among the rest that of raising some, or all of the Coins here. This was chiefly grounded upon the experience made as they say about the Duke of Ormonds coming first over hither in 1663., when the Plate-pieces of Eight were raised three pence in the piece, and a mighty plenty of money was observed to grow in Ireland for a year or two after. But this seems to me a very mistaken account, and to have depended wholly upon other circumstances little taken notice of, and not at all upon the raising of the Money to which it is by some great men attributed. For first, there was about that time a general peace and serenity which had newly succeeded a general trouble and cloud throughout all His Majesty's Kingdoms; then after two years' attendance in England upon the settlement of Ireland (there on the forge) by all persons and parties here that were considerably interested in it, the Parliament being called here, and the main settlement of Ireland wound up in England, and put into the Duke of Ormonds' hands to pass here into an Act; all persons came over in a shoal either to attend their own concernments in the main, or more particularly to make their Court to the Lord Lieutenant upon whom His Majesty had at that time in a manner wholly devolved the care and disposition of all affairs in this Kingdom: This made a sudden and mighty stop of that issue of Money which had for two years run perpetually out of Ireland into England, and kept it all at home. Nor is the very expense of the Duke of Ormonds own great Patrimonial estate with that of several other Families that came over at that time, of small consideration in the stock of this Kingdom. Besides, there was a great sum of Money in ready Coin brought over out of England at the same time towards the arrears of the Army: Which are all circumstances that must needs have made a mighty change in the course of ready money here. All the effect that I conceive was made by crying up the pieces of Eight, was to bring in much more of that Species instead of others current here (as indeed all the Money brought from England was of that sort, and complained of in Parliament to be of a worse allay), and to carry away much English Money in exchange for Plate-pieces, by which a Trade was driven very beneficial to the Traders, but of mighty loss to the Kingdom in the intrinsic value of their Money.  
The Circumstances at this time seem to be just the reverse of what they were then; The Nations engaged in a War the most fatal to trade of any that could arise; The settlement of Ireland shaken at the Court, and falling into new disquisitions (whether in truth or in common opinion, is all a case): This draws continual Agencies and Journeys of People concerned into England, to watch the motions of the main wheel there. Besides, the Lieutenants of Ireland since the Duke of Ormond's time, have had little in their disposition here, and only executed the resolutions daily taken at Court in particular as well as general affairs, which has drawn thither the attendance of all private pretenders. The great Estates of this Kingdom have been four or five years constantly spent in England. Money, instead of coming over hither for pay of the Army, has since the War began, been transmitted thither for pay of those Forces that were called from hence. And lastly, This War has had a more particular and mortal influence upon the Trade of this Country, than upon any other of His Majesty's Kingdoms.  
For by the Act against Transportation of cattle into England, the Trade of this Country which run wholly thither before, was turned very much into foreign parts; but by this War the last is stopped, and the other not being opened, there is in a manner no vent for any Commodity but of Wool. This necessity has forced the Kingdom to go on still with their foreign Trade, but that has been with such mighty losses, by the great number of Dutch Privateers plying about the Coasts, and the want of English Frigates to secure them, that the stock of the Kingdom must be extremely diminished. Yet by the continuance of the same expense and luxury in point of living, Money goes over into England to fetch what must supply it, though little Commodities goes either there or abroad to make any considerable balance; By all which it must happen, that with another years' continuance of the War, there will hardly be Money left in this Kingdom to turn the common Markets, or pay any Rents, or leave any circulation further than the receipts of the Customs and Quitrents, and the Pays of the Army, which in both kinds must be the last that fail.  
In such a conjuncture, the crying up of any species of money will but increase the want of it in general; for while there goes not out commodity to balance that which is brought in, and no degree of gains by exportation will make amends for the venture; what should money come in for, unless it be to carry out other money as it did before, and leave the stock that remains equal indeed in denomination, but lower in the intrinsique value than it was before? In short, while this War lasts, and our Seas are ill guarded, all that can be done towards preserving the small remainder of Money in this Kingdom, is, First, to introduce as far as can be, a vein of Parsimony throughout the Country in all things that are not perfectly the native growths and manufactures: Then by severity and steddiness of the Government (as far as will be permitted) to keep up in some credit the present peace and settlement. And lastly, To force men to a degree of industry, by suffering none to hope that they shall be able to live by rapine or fraud. For in some diseases of a Civil as well as a Natural body, all that can be done is to fast and to rest, to watch and to prevent accidents, to trust to methods rather than medicines or remedies: and with patience to expect till the humours being spent, and the Crisis past, way may be made for the natural returns of health and of strength.  
This being premised as peculiar either to the Government in general, or to the present conjuncture; I shall proceed to such Observations as occur concerning the ways of advancing the common and standing Trade of this Kingdom.  
The Trade of a Country arises from the native growths of the Soil, or Seas, the Manufactures, the commodiousness of Ports, and the store of Shipping which belong to it. The improvement therefore of Trade in Ireland, must be considered in the survey of all these Particulars, the defects to which at present they are subject, and the increases they are capable of receiving either from the course of time, the change of customs, or the conduct and application of the Government.  
The native Commodities or common easy Manufactures which make up the Exportation of this Kingdom, and consequently furnish both the stock of foreign Commodities consumed in the Country, and that likewise of current Money, by which all Trade is turned; are Wool, Butter, Beef, cattle, Fish, Iron; and by the improvement of these, either in the quantity, the credit, or the further Manufacture, the Trade of Ireland seems chiefly to be advanced.  
In this Survey one thing must be taken notice of as peculiar to this Country, which is, That as in the nature of its Government, so in the very improvement of its Trade and Riches, it ought to be considered not only in its own proper interest, but likewise in its relation to England, to which it is subordinate, and upon whose weal in the main, that of this Kingdom depends; and therefore a regard must be had of those points wherein the Trade of Ireland comes to interfere with any main branches of the Trade of England, in which cases the encouragement of such Trade ought to be either declined or moderated, and so give way to the interest of Trade in England, upon the health and vigour whereof, the strength, riches and glory of His Majesty's Crowns seem chiefly to depend. But on the other side, some such branches of Trade ought not wholly to be suppressed, but rather so far admitted as may serve the general consumption of this Kingdom, lest by too great an importation of Commodities, though out of England itself, the Money of this Kingdom happen to be drawn away in such a degree as not to leave a stock sufficient for turning the Trade at home; the effect hereof would be general discontents among the People, complaints, or at least ill impressions of the Government, which in a Country composed of three several Nations different to a great degree in Language, Customs and Religion, as well as Interests (both of property and dependences) may prove not only dangerous to this Kingdom, but to England itself. Since a sore in the leg may affect the whole body, and in time grow as difficult a cure as if it were in the head; especially where humours abound.  
The Wool of Ireland seems not to be capable of any increase, nor to suffer under any defect, the Country being generally full stocked with sheep, cleared of Wolves, the Soil little subject to other rots than of hunger; and all the considerable flocks being of English breed, and the staple of Wool generally equal with that of Northampton or Leicestershire, the improvement of this Commodity by Manufactures in this Kingdom would give so great a damp to the Trade of England (of which clothes, Stuffs and Stockings, make so mighty a part) that it seems not fit to be encouraged here, at lest no further than to such a quantity of one or two Summer-stuffs, Irish-freeze, and Cloth from Six shillings to Fourteen, as may supply in some measure the ordinary consumption of the Kingdom. That which seems most necessary in this branch is the careful and severe execution of the Statutes provided to forbid the Exportation of Wool to any other parts but to England, which is the more to be watched and feared, since thereby the present Riches of this Kingdom would be mightily increased, and great advantages might be made by the connivance of Governors; whereas on the other side this would prove a most sensible decay, if not destruction of Manufactures both here and in England itself.  
Yarn is a Commodity very proper to this Country, but made in no great quantities in any parts besides the North, nor any where into Linen to any great degree, or of sorts fit for the better uses at home, or exportion abroad; though of all others this aught most to be encouraged, and was therefore chiefly designed by the Earl of Strafford. The Soil produces Flax kindly and well, and fine too, answerable to the care used in choice of seed and exercise of Husbandry; and much Land is fit for it here, which is not so for Corn. The Manufacture of it in gathering or beating, is of little toil or application, and so the fitter for the Natives of the Country. Besides, no Women are apt to spin it well than the Irish, who labouring little in any kind with their hands, have their fingers more supple and soft than other Women of the poorer condition among us. And this may certainly be advanced and improved into a great Manufacture of Linen, so as to beat down the Trade both of France and Holland, and draw much of the Money which goes from England to those parts upon this occasion into the hands of His Majesty's Subjects of Ireland, without crossing any interest of Trade in England. For besides what has been said of Flax and Spinning, the Soil and Climate are proper for whitening both by the frequency of Brooks, and also of Winds in the Country.  
Much care was spent upon this design in an Act of Parliament past the last Session, and something may have been advanced by it; but the too great rigour imposed upon the sowing of certain quantities of Flax, has caused (and perhaps justly) a general neglect in the execution; and common guilt has made the penalties impracticable; so as the main effect has been spoiled by too much diligence, and the Child killed with kindness. For the Money applied by that Act to the encouragement of making fine Linen, and broad (which I think is twenty pounds every year in each County), though the institution was good, yet it has not reached the end, by encouraging any considerable application that way; so that sometimes one share of that Money is paid to a single pretender at the Sizes, or Sessions; and sometimes a share is saved for want of any pretender at all.  
This Trade may be advanced by some amendments to the last Act in another Session, whereby the necessity of sowing Flax may be so limited, as to be made easily practicable, and so may be forced by the severity of levying the penalties Enacted. And for the Money allotted in the Counties, no person ought to carry the first, second or third price, without producing two pieces of Linen of each sort (whereas one only now is necessary.) And severe defences may be made against weaving any Linen under a certain breadth, such as may be of better use to the poorest People, and in the coarsest Linen, than the narrow Irish Cloth; and may bear some price abroad when ever more comes to be made than is consumed at home. But after all these or such like provisions, there are but two things which can make any extraordinary advance in this branch of Trade, and those are: First, An increase of People in the Country to such a degree as may make things necessary to life dear, and thereby force general industry from each member of a Family (Women as well as Men), and in as many sorts as they can well turn to, which among others may in time come to run the vein this way. The second is a particular application in the Government. And this must be made either by some Governor upon his own private account, who has a great stock that he is content to turn that way, and is invited by the gains, or else by the honour of bringing to pass a Work of so much public utility both to England and Ireland (which circumstances I suppose concurred both in the Earl of Strafford's design); and when ever they meet again, can have no better copy to follow in all particulars, than that begun at the Naas in his time. Or else by a considerable sum of Money being laid aside either out of His Majesty's present Revenue, or some future Subsidy to be granted for this occasion: And this either to be employed in setting up of some great Linen Manufacture in some certain place, and to be managed by some certain hands both for making all sorts of fine Clothes, and of those for Sails too. The benefit or loss of such a Trade accrueing to the Government, until it comes to take root in the Nation. Or else if this seem too great an undertaking for the humour of our age, than such a sum of money to lie ready in hands appointed by the Government, for taking off at common moderate prices all such pieces of Cloth as shall be brought in by any persons at certain times to the chief Town of each County; and all such pieces of Cloth as are fit for Sails, to be carried into the stores of the Navy. All that are fit for the use of the Army, to be given the Soldiers (as Clothes are) in part of their Pay: And all finer pieces to be sold, and the money still applied to the increase or constant supply of the main stock. The effect hereof would be, That people finding a certain Market for this Commodity, and that of others so uncertain as it is in this Kingdom, would turn so much of their industry this way, as would serve to furnish a great part of that Money, which is most absolutely necessary for payment of Taxes, Rents, or subsistence of Families.  
Hide, Tallow, Butter, Beef, arise all from one sort of cattle, and are subject to the same general defects, and capable of the same common improvements.  
The three first are certain Commodities, and yield the readiest Money of any that are turned in this Kingdom, because they never fail of a price abroad. Beef is a drug, finding no constant vent abroad, and therefore yielding no rate at home: for the consumption of the Kingdom holds no proportion with the product that is usually made of cattle in it; so that in many parts at this time an Ox may be bought in the Countrey-Markets, and the Hide and Tallow sold at the next Trading-Town for near as much as it cost. The defects of these Commodities lie either in the age and feeding of the cattle that are killed, or in the Manufacture and making them up for exportation abroad.  
Until the Transportation of cattle into England was forbidden by the late Act of Parliament, the quickest Trade of ready Money here was driven by the sale of young Bullocks, which for four or five Summer-months of the year were carried over in very great numbers, and this made all the breeders in the Kingdom turn their lands and stocks chiefly to that sort of cattle. Few Cows were bred up for the Dairy, more than served the consumption within; and few Oxen for draught, which was all performed by rascally small Horses; so as the cattle generally sold either for slaughter within, or Exportation abroad, were of two, three, or at best four years old, and those such as had never been either handled or wintered at hand-meat, but bred wholly upon the Mountains in Summer, and upon the withered long grass of the lower lands in the Winter. The effect hereof was very pernicious to this Kingdom in what concerned all these Commodities: The Hides were small, thin and lank: The Tallow much less in quantity, and of quicker consumption. Little Butter was exported abroad, and that discredited by the housewifery of the Irish, in making it up; most of what was sent coming from their hands, who alone kept up the Trade of Dairies, because the breed of their cattle was not fit for the English-Markets. But above all, the Trade of Beef for foreign Exportation▪ was prejudiced and almost sunk, for the flesh being young, and only grass-fed (and that on a sudden by the sweetness of the Summer's pasture, after the cattle being almost starved in the Winter) was thin, light and moist, and not of a substance to endure the salt, or be preserved by it, for long Voyages, or a slow consumption. Besides, either the unskilfulness or carelessness, or Knavery of the Traders, added much to the undervalue and discredit of these Commodities abroad; for the Hides were often made up very dirty, which increased the weight by which that Commodity is sold when it comes in quantities abroad. The Butter would be better on the top and bottom of the Barrels, than in the middle, which would be sometimes filled up, or mingled with Tallow; nay, sometimes with stones. The Beef would be so ill chosen, or so ill cured, as to stink many times before it came so far as Holland, or at least not prove a Commodity that would defray the first charge of the Merchant before it was shipped. Nay, I have known Merchants there, fain to throw away great quantities after having lain long in their hands without any Market at all.  
After the Act in England had wholly stopped the Transportation of cattle, the Trade of this Kingdom was forced to find out a new Channel, a great deal of Land was turned to sheep, because Wool gave ready Money for the English-Markets, and by stealth for those abroad. The breeders of English cattle turned much to Dairy, or else by keeping their cattle to six and seven year old, and wintering them dry, made them fit for the Beef-trade abroad; and some of the Merchants fell into care and exactness in Barrelling them up; and hereby the improvements of this Trade were grown so sensible in the course of a few years, that in the year 1669, some Merchants in Holland assured me, that they had received parcels of Beef out of Ireland which sold current, and very near the English; and of Butter which sold beyond it; and that they had observed it spent as if it came from the richer soil of the two. 'Tis most evident that if the Dutch War had not broken out so soon after the improvements of all these Trades (forced at first by necessity, and growing afterwards habitual by use) would a few years have very much advanced the Trade and Riches of this Kingdom, and made it a great gainer instead of losing by the Act against Transportation of their cattle: But the War gave a sudden damp to this and all other Trade, which is sunk to nothing by the continuance of it.  
However having marked the defects that were even in time of peace, it may not be useless to set down the Remedies, though little practicable while the War lasts. For that great one of kill cattle young, and only grass-fed, I know none so effectual as introducing a general custom of using Oxen for all sorts of draught, which would be perhaps the greatest improvement that could be made in many kinds throughout the Kingdom. By this means the great slaughter would be made of fullgrown, large, and well wintered cattle, which would double the income made by Hide, Tallow and Beef, and raise their credit in all foreign Markets; every man would be forced to provide Winter-fodder for his Teem (whereas common Garrans shift upon grass the year round); and this would force men to the enclosing of Grounds, and improving Bog into Meadows; the race of Garrans would decrease, and so make room for the Country's maintaining the greater number of cattle, which makes a foreign Commodity, though they die by accident or age, whereas the other makes none at all.  
No great or useful thing is to be achieved without difficulties, and therefore what may be raised against this Proposal ought not to discourage the attempting it. First, the Statutes against that barbarous custom of Ploughing by the tail, aught to be renewed, and upon absolute forfeitures instead of penalties; the constant and easy compositions whereof have proved rather an allowing than forbidding it. Now if this were wholly disused, the Harness for Horses being dearer than for Oxen, the Irish would turn their draught to the last, wherever they have hitherto used the Ploughing by the Tail. Next a Standard might be made, under which no Horse should be used for draught; this would not only enlarge the breed of Horses, but make way for the use of Oxen, because they would be cheaper kept than large good Horses, which could not be wintered like Garrans without housing or fodder. And lastly, a Tax might be laid upon every Horse of draught throughout the Kingdom, which besides the main use here intended, would increase the King's Revenue by one of the easiest ways that is any where in use.  
For the miscarriages mentioned in the making up of those several Commodities for foreign Markets, they must likewise be remedied by severe Laws, or else the improvements of the Commodities themselves will not serve to bring them in credit, upon which all Trade turns. First, the Ports out of which such Commodities shall be shipped, may be restrained to a certain number, such as lie most convenient for the vent of the Inland Provinces, and such as either are already or are capable of being made regular Corporations. Whatever of them shall be carried out of any other Port, shall be penal both to the Merchant that delivers, and to the Master that receives them. In the Ports allowed shall be published rules agreed on by the skilfullest Merchants in those Wares, to be observed in the making up of all such as are intended for foreign Transportation, and declaring that what is not found agreeable to those rules shall not be suffered to go out. Two Officers may be appointed to be chosen every three years by the body of the Corporation, whose business shall be to inspect all Barrels of Beef, Tallow, Butter, and all Packs of Hides, and put to them the seal or mark of the Corporation, without which none shall be suffered to go abroad; Nor shall this mark be affixed to any parcels by those Officers, but such as they have viewed and found agreeable to the rules set forth for that purpose. Whereof one ought to be certain, That every Barrel be of the same constant weight, or something over. If this were observed for a small course of time, under any certain marks, the credit of them both as to quality and weight would rise to that degree, that the Barrels or Packs would go off in the Markets they used abroad, upon sight of the mark, like silver-plate upon sight of the Cities mark where 'tis made.  
The great difficulty will lie in the good execution of the Offices; But the interest of such Corporations lying so deep in the credit of their mark, will make emulation among them, every one vying to raise their own as high as they can; and this will make them careful in the choice of men fit for that turn. Besides, the Offices ought to be made beneficial to a good degree by a certain fee upon every seal; and yet the Office to be forfeited upon every miscarriage of the Officer, which shall be judged so by the chief Magistrates of the Town, and thereupon a new Election be made by the body of the Corporation.  
cattle for Exportation, are Sheep, Bullocks, Horses, and of one or other of these kinds the Country seems to be full-stockt, no ground that I hear of being untenanted; the two first seem sufficiently improved in the kinds as well as the number, most of both being of the English breed. And though it were better for the Country if the number of Horses being lessened made room for that of increasing Sheep, and great cattle; yet it seems indifferent which of these two were most turned to, and that will be regulated by the liberty or restraint of carrying live cattle into England. When the passage is open, Land will be turned most to great cattle; when shut, to Sheep, as it is at present, though I am not of opinion it can last, because that Act seems to have been carried on rather by the interest of particular Counties in England, than by that of the whole, which in my opinion must be evidently a loser by it. For first, the freight, of all cattle that were brought over, being in English Vessels, was so much clear gain to England, and this was one with another near a third, or at least a fourth part of the price. Then there coming over young and very cheap to the first Market, made them double the price by one years feeding, which was the greatest improvement to be made of our dry Pasture-land in England. The Trade of Hides, and Tallow, or else of Leather, was mightily advanced in England, which will be beaten down in foreign Markets by Ireland, if they come to kill all their cattle at home. The young Irish cattle served for the common consumption in England, while their own large old fat cattle went into the Barrel for the foreign Trade, in which Irish Beef had in a manner no part, though by the continuance of this restraint it will be forced upon improvement, and come to share with England in the Beef-Trade abroad. Grounds were turned much in England from breeding, either to feeding or Dairy, and this advanced the Trade of English Butter, which will be extremely beaten down when Ireland turns to it too (and in the way of English Housewifery, as it has done a great deal since the restraint upon cattle.) And lastly, whereas Ireland had before very little Trade but with England, and with the Money for their cattle bought all the Commodities there which they wanted: By this restraint they are forced to seek a foreign Market, and where they sell, they will be sure to buy too; and all the foreign Merchandise which they had before from Bristol, Chester, and London, they will have in time from Rouen, Amsterdam, Lisbon and the straits. As for the true causes of the decay of Rents in England, which made the occasion of that Act, they were to be found in the want of People, in the mighty consumption of foreign Commodities among the better sort, and in a higher way of living among all, and not in this Transportation of Irish cattle, which would have been complained of in former times if it had been found a prejudice to England. Besides, the Rents have been far from increasing since; and though that may be by other accidents, yet as to what concerns Ireland, it comes all to one, unless Wool be forbidden as well as cattle; for the less cattle comes over from thence, there comes the more Wool, which goes as far as t'other towards beating down the price of Pasture-lands in England; and yet the Transportaion of Wool cannot be forbidden, since that would force the Irish Wool either by stealth into foreign Markets, or else in Cloth by the advance of that Manufacture; either of which would bring a sudden decay upon the principal branch of the English Trade.  
Horses in Ireland are a drug, but might be improved to a Commodity, not only of greater use at home, but also fit for Exportation into other Countries. The Soil is of a sweet and plentiful grass, which will raise a large breed; and the Hills, especially near the Sea-coast, are hard and rough, and so fit to give them shape and breath, and sound feet. The present defects in them, are breeding without choice of Stallions either in shape or size, and trusting so far to the gentleness of the Climate, as to winter them abroad, without ever handling Colts till they are four year old: This both checks the growth of the common breeds, and gives them an incurable shyness, which is the general vice of Irish Horses, and is hardly ever seen in Flanders, because the hardness of the Winters in those parts forces the breeders there to house and handle their Colts for at least six months every year. In the Studds of persons of quality in Ireland where care is taken, and cost is not spared, we see Horses bred of excellent shape and vigour, and size, so as to reach great prices at home, and encourage strangers to find the Market here; among whom I met with one this Summer that came over on that errand, and bought about twenty Horses to carry over into the French Army, from twenty to threescore pounds' price at the first hand.  
The improvement of Horses here may be made by a standard prescribed to all Stallions, and all Horses that shall be used for draught, the main point being to make the common breed large, for than whether they have shape or no, they have ever some reasonable price both at home and abroad. And besides, being not to be raised without wintering, they will help to force men into improvement of Land by a necessity of fodder. But for encouragement of finer breed, and in the better hands, some other institutions may be invented by which emulation may be raised among the Breeders by a prospect both of particular honour and profit to those who succeed best, and of good ordinary gains and ready vent to such as by aiming at the best though they fail, yet go beyond the common sorts. To this purpose there may be set up both a Horse-Fair, and Races to be held at a certain time every year for the space of a Week; the first in the fairest Green near the City of Dublin, the later in that place designed by your Lordship in the Park for some such purpose. During this Week, the Monday, Wednesday and Friday, may be the Races; the Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday, the Fairs may be held. At each Race may be two Plates given by the King, one of Thirty pounds, and the other of Twenty (besides the fashion) as the Prizes for the first and second Horse; the first Engraven with a Horse Crowned with a Crown; the second with a Coronet, and under it the day of the Month, and the year. Besides these Plates, the Wagers may be as the persons please among themselves, but the Horses must be evidenced by good Testimonies to have been bred in Ireland. For honour, the Lord Lieutenant may ever be present himself, or at least name a Deputy in his room, and two Judges of the field, who shall decide all Controversies, and with sound of Trumpet declare the two Victors. The Masters of these two Horses may be admitted to ride from the Field to the Castle with the Lord Lieutenant, or his Deputy, and to Dine with him that day, and there receive all the honour of the Table. This to be done, what quality soever the persons are of; for the lower that is, the more will be the honour; and perhaps the more the sport: and the encouragement of breeding will by that means extend to all sorts of men.  
For the Fairs, the Lord Lieutenant may likewise be present every day in the height of them, by himself or Deputy, and may with the advice of the two chief Officers of the Army then present, choose out one of the best Horses, and two of the best Geldings that appear in the Fair, not under four, nor above seven years old. For which shall be paid to the owners of them, after sufficient Testimony of their being bred in Ireland, One hundred pounds for the Horse, and fifty pounds a piece for the Geldings. These Sums, as that for the Plates, to issue out of the Revenue of Ireland, and without trouble or fee; and the three Horses to be sent over every year to the King's Stables. Both those that won the Plate, and those which are thus sold, ought immediately to be marked so as they may never return a second time, either to the Race or to the Sale.  
The benefit by such an institution as this, will be very great and various: For besides the encouragement to breed the best Horses, from the honour and gain already mentioned; there will be a sort of public entertainment for one whole week, during which the Lord Lieutenant, the Lord Mayor of the City, and the great Officers both Civil and Military, aught to keep open Tables for all strangers. This will draw a confluence of people from all parts of the Country. Many perhaps from the nearer parts of England may come, not only as to a public kind of solemnity, but as to a great Mart of the best Horses. This will enrich the City by the expense of such a concourse, and the Country by the sale of many Horses into England, and in time (or from thence) into foreign parts. This will make general acquaintances among the Gentry of the Kingdom, and bring the Lord Lieutenant to be more personally known, and more honoured by his appearing in more greatness, and with more solemnity than usual upon these occasions. And all this with expense only of Three hundred and fifty pounds a year to the Crown, for which the King shall have three the best Horses bred that year in Ireland.  
The Fishing of Ireland might prove a Mine under water, as rich as any under ground, if it were improved to those vast advantages it is capable of, and that we see it raised to in other Countries. But this is impossible under so great a want of people, and cheapness of all things necessary to life throughout the Country, which are in all places invincible enemies of industry and improvements. While these continue, I know no way of advancing this Trade to any considerable degree, unless it be the erecting four Companies of Fishery, one in each Province of Ireland, into which every man that enters, shall bring a certain Capital, and receive a proportionable share of the gain or loss, and have a proportional voice in the Election of a Precedent and Council, by whom the whole business in each Province shall be managed. If into each of these Companies the King or Lord Lieutenant would enter for a considerable share at the first, towards building such a number of Boats and Busses as each Company could easily manage, it would be an encouragement both of honour and advantage. Certain Privileges likewise, or Immunities, might be granted from charges of trouble or expense, nay from Taxes, and all unusual payments to the public, in favour of such as brought in a proportion to a certain height into the Stock of the Fishery. Nay, it seems a matter of so great importance to His Majesty's Crowns, both as to the improving the Riches of this Kingdom, and impairing the mighty gains of His Neighbours by this Trade, that perhaps there were no hurt if an Act were made, by which none should be capable of being either chosen into a Parliament, or the Commission of the Peace, who had not manifested his desires of advancing the public good by entering in some certain proportion into the stock and Companies of the Fishery, since the greatness of one, and application of the other, seem the only present means of improving so rich and so important a Trade. It will afterwards be the business of the Companies themselves, or their directors, to fall into the best methods and rules for the curing and barrelling up all their Fish, and to see them so exactly observed, as may bring all those quantities of them that shall be sent abroad, or spent at home, into the highest and most general credit; which with advancing the Seasons all that can be, so as to find the first foreign Markets, will be a way to the greatest and surest gains. In Holland there have been above thirty Placaerts or Acts of State concerning the ouring, salting, and barrelling of Herrings alone, with such severity in the Imposition and execution of Penalties, that the business is now grown to an habitual skill, and care, and honesty, so as hardly any example is seen of failing in that matter, or thereby impairing the general credit of that Commodity among them, or in the foreign Markets they use.  
Iron seems to me the Manufacture that of all others ought the least to be encouraged in Ireland; or if it be, which requires the most restriction to certain places and Rules. For I do not remember to have heard that there is any Oar in Ireland, at least I am sure the greatest part is fetched from England; so that all this Country affords of its own growth towards this Manufacture, is but the Wood, which has met but with too great consumptions already in most parts of this Kingdom, and needs not this to destroy what is left. So that Iron-works ought to be confined to certain places, where either the Woods continue vast, and make the Country savage, or where they are not at all fit for Timber, or likely to grow to it, or where there is no conveyance for Timber to places of vent, so as to quit the cost of the carriage.  
Having run through the Commodities of Ireland, with their defects and improvements, I will only touch the other two Points mentioned at first, as the grounds likewise of Trade in a Country; those are the Commodiousness of Ports, and the store of Shipping; in one of which this Kingdom as much abounds, as it fails in the other. The Haven of Dublin is barred to that degree, as very much to obstruct the Trade of the City; the clearing or opening of it were a great work, and proper either for the City, or the whole Province of Lemster to undertake. But whether it be feasible, or at such charges as will quit cost, I will not judge, especially considering the many good Havens that are scattered upon that whole Eastern Coast of Ireland. Besides this, I know not what to propose upon this head, unless it be the making of two free Ports, one in Kerry, and t'other upon the Northwest Coast, which may thereby grow to be Magazines for the West-Indy Trade, and from thence those Commodities may be dispersed unto all other parts of Europe, after having paid the Customs which they ought to pay in England, where this must be concerted.  
For the last Point, I doubt there is hardly any other Country lying upon the Sea-coast, and not wholly out of the way of Trade, which has so little Shipping of its own as Ireland, and which might be capable of employing more. The reason of this must be in part the scarcity of Timber proper for this built; but more, the want of Merchants, and uncertainty of Trade in the Country. For preventing the further destruction of Timber, a Law may be made, forbidding any man to cut down any Oak that is of a certain height, unless it be of a certain scantling, as twelve inches diameter, or some such measure as usually makes a Tree useful Timber. And further, the severest Penalties ought to be put upon Barking any Tree that is not felled; a custom barbarous and peculiar to this Country, and by which infinite quantities of Timber have been destroyed.  
Most Traders in these parts, at least of Ireland, are but Factors; nor do I hear of any number of Merchants in the Kingdom. The cause of this must be rather an ill opinion of security, than of gain; for those are the two baits which draw Merchants to a place: the last entices the poorer Traders, or the young beginners, or those of passage; but without the first, the substantial and the rich will never settle in a Country. This opinion can be attained only by a course of time, of good conduct, and good government, and thereby of justice, and of peace, which lie out of the compass of this Discourse. But to make some amends for this want at present, encouragement may be given to any Merchants that shall come over and turn a certain stock of their own here, as Naturalisation upon any terms; freedom from Customs the two first years, and from any Offices of trouble or expense the first seven years. I see no hurt if the King should give leave to the Merchants in eight or ten of the chief Trading-Ports of Ireland, to name for each Town one of their number, out of which the Lord Lieutenant should choose two to be of the Privy-Council of Ireland, with a certain Salary from the King to defray their attendance: This would be an honour and encouragement to so worthy a Calling, and would introduce an interest of Trade into the Council, which being now composed wholly of the Nobility or Gentry, the Civil or Military Officers; the Traders seem to be left without Patrons in the Government, and thereby without favour to the particular concernments of a chief member in the Politic body; and upon whose prospering the wealth of the whole Kingdom seems chiefly to depend.  
But this is enough for your Excellency's trouble, and for the discharge of my promise, and too much I doubt for the humour of our age to bring into practice, or so much as to admit into consideration. Your Lordship I know has generous thoughts, and turned to such Speculations as these. But that is not enough towards the raising such buildings as I have drawn you here the lines of, unless the direction of all affairs here were wholly in your hands, or at least the opinion lost of other men's being able to contest with you those points of public utility, which you ought best to know and most to be believed in, while you deserve or discharge so great a trust as the government of this Kingdom. For I think a Prince cannot too much consider whom to choose for such employments; but when he has chosen, cannot trust them too far, or thereby give them too much Authority; no more than end it too soon, whenever he finds it abused. In short, 'tis left only to Princes to mend the world, whose Commands find general obedience; and Examples, imitation. For all other men, they must take it as they find it; and good men enter into commerce with it, rather upon cautions of not being spoiled themselves, than upon hopes of mending the World. At least, this opinion becomes men of my level, amongst whom I have observed all set-quarrels with the Age, and pretences of reforming it by their own models, to end commonly like the pains of a man in a little Boat, who tugs at a Rope that's fast to a Ship, it looks as if he resolved to draw the ship to him, but the truth and his meaning is, to draw himself to the Ship, where he gets in when he can, and does like the rest of the Crew when he is there. When I have such designs, I will begin such contentions; in the mean time the bent of my thoughts shall be rather to mend myself, than the World, which I reckon upon leaving much what I found it. Nor should I have reason in complaining too far of an Age, which does your Lordship so much justice by the honour of so great an Employment, In which as I know no man deserves greater successes than you do, so I am sure no man wishes you greater than I do.   

Written to the Duke of ORMOND in October 1673. upon his Graces desiring me to give Him my Opinion what was to be done in that Conjuncture.  
THERE never was any Conjuncture wherein it was more necessary for His Majesty to fall into a Course of Wise and steady Counsels, nor ever any wherein it was more difficult to advise him. To make reflections upon what is past, is the part of ingenious, but irresolute men, or else of such as intend to value themselves by comparison with others whose corruptions or follies they condemn. But in all matters of Counsel, the good and prudent part is to take things as they are (since the past cannot be recalled) to propose Remedies for the present Evils, and provisions against future events.  
The King finds himself engaged in the second year of a War with the Dutch, and for prosecution thereof in a strict Alliance with France; and now in danger of being entangled in the quarrel broken out upon this occasion between France and the House of Austria: In this state of affairs, it is to be considered whether we can pursue our War with Holland and yet preserve our peace with Spain; whether we are able to maintain the War with both in conjunction with France; and if not, what there is left for His Majesty to do with the best regard to His Honour and Safety.  
For the first we shall soon be out of doubt; but in the mean time 'tis very unlikely that upon the late conjunction between Holland and Spain, the Dutch should have obliged themselves to make no Peace without the inclusion of their Allies; and that Spain should not have yielded to break with Us, in case they could not effect a Peace between Us and Holland; since the Dutch know nothing could farther induce us to it, than the fear of a breach with Spain, and so great a loss of Trade in those Dominions. The Spaniards have but one temptation of their own to quarrel with Us, which is an occasion of recovering Jamaica, for that has ever lain at their hearts, and 'tis to be feared their Conjunction with Holland has not been perfected without early measures between them for the surprise of that Island, unless our care has been as early in providing for its defence. And if we should lose it, I foresee little hurt we could do Spain in their Indies, guarded as they would be, and attended by the Shipping of the Dutch; but His Majesty will, I suppose, soon know from Spain what He is to trust to in this point.  
To judge whether upon a breach with Spain we are able to maintain the War, must be considered; the present state of the King's Treasure, the rise or fall that may happen in his constant Revenue by the Spanish War; the hopes that may be grounded upon supplies from France, the assurance or measure of those expected from the Parliament, the credit of the Exchequer to raise present money wherever any of these fall short, and the humour of the Nation towards carrying on or ending the War.  
For the present state of the Treasury, the King best knows it Himself, or His Officers can best give the account; for the changes that may happen in His Revenue, 'tis evident they must be much for the worse the very first year of a Spanish War. The main branch of it, which is the Customs, must wither away in a very great measure, since all the Trade in a manner left us upon the Dutch War (that has turned to any account) has been that with Spain and into the Straits: The first upon a Spanish War will be wholly lost, the last can neither be secured by our own Convoys, nor by the French Fleets in the Mediterranean, from the Dutch Capers that will fill the Spanish Havens, and from those of Biscay, Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica, Majorca, which in all Wars have been the Nests of Picaroons; so that no way seems left of beginning this War, but as the Dutch began theirs, by leaving off all Trade in the Nation while it lasts: But the case is very different between them and us, for they have still a Trade left from the North, which running upon a sandy Coast from Hamborough, is secured from our Fleets: and they have driven a great Commerce by Collusion with the Swedes, Danes, Hamburgers, Bremeners and Flemish, ever since the War began. Besides, the hearts of their People (which would otherwise have sunk by the loss of Trade) have been kept up by the necessity of their defence, by the last extremities which were threatened them from the War, and by the general opinion of justice in their Cause both from these circumstances, and the manner of Ours and of the French beginning the War.  
This makes the States content to impose and the people to suffer the utmost payments; and besides, in a manner all men of Fortunes among them have a great part of their estates lying in the Cantores of the States or the Provinces, which would all be lost upon the conquest of their Country, so as they will lend to the last for securing so much as is already in danger. And these are circumstances which will not be found in our Dispositions or Constitutions.  
For supplies from France, it must be considered how their money has been drained out of that Kingdom since this War began, by their payments to Us, and to Sweden, to the Bishops of Colen and Munster and some other Princes of Germany; by their Armies in Germany and the new Conquests in Holland; all which returns no more into France, as money did in their former Wars with Spain, that were made chiefly upon their Confines; for then the Pays of their Armies being made only in the Winter-quarters which were in France or its Frontiers, the money fell back again into the circulation of their own Country; yet now their expense must upon a Spanish War be increased by new Armies in Catalonia, and Italy, and new Fleets in the Mediterranean; so that all these circumstances with the general decay of Trade by the War, must in few years' time leave that Kingdom poorer than it has been this age. And where money is not, the King of France himself cannot have it.  
For what supplies may come from the Parliament towards carrying on the War, some few days I suppose will inform us, and no measures can be taken unless by what past in the former Session, which was not very favourable to that design.  
For the Credit of the Exchequer (at least to any measure that may supply the Course or Necessities of a War) I fear it is irrecoverably lost by the last breach with the Bankers; for credit is gained by custom and course of time, and seldom recovers a strain; but if broken, is never well set again. I have heard a great Example given of this (by some of our Merchants) that happened upon the last Kings seizing 200000 l. that was in the Mint about the year 38, which had then the credit of a Bank, and for several years had been the Treasury of all the vast payments transmitted from Spain to Flanders. But after this invasion of it, though the King paid back the money within very few months, yet the Mint has never since recovered its Credit among foreign Merchants.  
If the business of money should happen to go lame upon any or all of these feet, than all that will be left to carry on the War is the humour of the Nation: And that sometimes may go farther than any Treasures, if spirited by Hatred or Revenge, by the love of Religion or Liberty, or the necessity of Defence: But the good will of the Nation to the present War (as it was foreseen by those who gave the Desperate Counsels of beginning it with the Proroguing of the Parliament, and stopping of the Exchequer; so it) has been since but too much experienced by the successes have attended it, which will ever depend upon the humours and opinions of those that serve, as well as the Abilities and Conduct of those that Command; and not to speak of those incurable jealousies which have been so generally raised or infused into the People about the first designs of this War, and so much increased by the Professions or Actions, or at least the general Reputation of those who pass for the chief Authors of it: 'Tis at lest observable, that after so long hostility and Four Battles, yet the Nation does not seem at all to be angry, though that is the first thing should be brought about, if we would have men fight.  
It is, I doubt, little to be hoped, that a breach with Spain should make us any kinder to the War than we were before; since that must grow wholly upon occasion of the French, We having no quarrel there of our own. And our kindness to France will spirit us as little as our hatred to Spain, at least till their fortune's change, and the Balance rise again on the Spanish side, which has risen so long and to such a height on the French; for by the course of Humane Nature there will ever be a degree of hatred mingled with fear, and of kindness with compassion.  
Upon the survey of these provisions and dispositions, it must be concluded necessary for His Majesty either to make a peace, or else to turn the War directly upon such points of Honour, Justice and Safety, as may engage both the Parliament and Nation in the support and prosecution of the War. And to do this, He must at least offer at a Peace, and upon terms into which the humour and spirit of the Nation will run.  
The Conjunction now perfected between Holland and Spain seems the happiest thing that could have arrived to His Majesty's affairs upon this Occasion; for whilst Holland stood alone, in case we had been forced to offer at any measures with them, France might upon the first jealousy have been before Us, and slipping one knot might have tied another in three days time; But now the Interests of the Empire, Spain and Lorraine, are woven together with those of Holland, it will not be a short or easy work to adjust those of France with the Emperor in the matters of Alsatia, with Spain in Flanders, or the Duke of Lorraine in that Duchy; nor is the Conjunction between Holland and their Allies likely to be broken unless by the revolutions of War the Dutch come to apprehend a nearer and greater danger from Spain, in which case they will not fail of returning to their old measures with France.  
The first pace which seems necessary for his Majesty to make, is to fall into Confidence with Spain as far as possibly he can, by assuring them he resolves upon a neutrality in the War between them and France; that if he comes to a peace with Holland, he intends it shall pass by their Mediation; and if that be effected, he will employ his own towards the general Peace of Christendom, and particularly that between France and Spain.  
The next point is to resolve upon the Conditions necessary to a Peace. The best way to this is to seek without passion where the justice lies, and the true interests of his Majesty's Crowns, as it is generally understood by his People, of which the sense of his Parliament is the best Testimony; for their concurrence will give weight to his demands of Peace, or to the support of a War.  
Between Us and Holland the points of Justice must be grounded upon the infraction of Treaties, and so will reach only to the business of the Flag and of Surinam. For the Flag, it has been agreed by three several Treaties in the same form; but the Articles still referring to former use, it remains to discuss and agree particularly what that has been, and to explain the manner and circumstances of observing it. Without this, no peace we can have will seem to be made with intentions to keep it long, while the interpretation of that Article about the Flag is a ground at pleasure for opening a War. And this point can only be gained by a separate Peace between Us and Holland; for if the War should come to end in a general Treaty, like that of Munster; As His Majesty's interest would be less considered in a crowd of so many others, and would hardly be suffered to obstruct a general Peace; so this Right of the Flag in particular, would be at least disfavoured, if not opposed by our Friends as well as our Enemies, that is, by France, Sweden, Denmark, as well as Spain and Holland.  
The business of Surinam is a trifle, and the disputes upon it arose rather from an unkind and jealous humour growing between the Nations, than from any difference or difficulty in adjusting it; so as that is not a thing will lie much in the way, being soon decided by plain Articles upon the surrenrender of the Place.  
There are two points more wherein the honour and interest of the Nation is concerned and ought to be insisted upon, so far at least as to find a temper in them, though they can hardly be said to be points of Justice, because they are not regulated by Treaties. The first is the point of the East-India trade, wherein we desire new agreements between us, upon suspicion of what may happen, rather than complain of any Breach in the old; and though our East-India Company never urged their desires as a just ground for a Quarrel, yet a great deal might have been gained in this point from the Dutch, while they depended upon our Alliance; and I suppose may be still, if we fall into it again.  
The second is an acknowledgement to His Majesty for the leave of fishing upon His Coasts; and though this may not be grounded upon any Treaty, yet if it appear to have been an ancient Right on our side, and custom on theirs, and not determined or extinguished by any Treaty between us; it may with Justice be insisted on, though it will pass harder with the Dutch than any of the rest, who will much easier be induced to buy off the pretence with a great sum of money at one or more payments, than acknowledge it by a constant tribute.  
The last thing His Majesty can demand from Holland is money for the charges of the War. But unless the Justice or Necessity of it were agreed on between us, that will have but a weak ground. And if we expect money, it must be to purchase what is to come, and not to pay for what is past; and it is very probable that if His Majesty should resolve with a peace of Holland to enter into a Mediation between France and Spain upon the evident points of justice between them, and to join against that Crown which refuses the Peace, both Spain and Holland would be content to part with their money upon such an agreement. But the measure and manner must be left to private Treaty, and would depend upon the confidence between us.  
Whatever in any of these points or any other His Majesty should be content to release, aught to be done upon the satisfaction He should declare to have received in the advancement of the Prince of Orange to the charges of his Ancestors. But for His Majesty to insist upon any further advantages to the Prince than are already devolved upon him, would not only raise invincible difficulties in our Treaty with the States, but prejudice the Prince's affairs among them in a very great measure. And the Prince I believe knows their Constitution so well, as to understand it so.  
If upon good terms in these particulars a Peace can be effected with Holland, the honour of this Crown will certainly be provided for, and the interest of it to a higher degree than could have been gained even without the events of the War; since we should be left in Peace to enjoy the Trade of the world, while the House of Austria and Holland would be engaged in a long War with France; and whenever they grow weary, His Majesty would have the glory and advantage of mediating the Peace.  
For the measures to be observed in all this with France, and the preserving His Majesty's Honour on that side; First, the humour of the Parliament as to this War, and the interest of the Nation in the Trade with Spain, aught to be represented to them as difficulties invincible, unless France can furnish the charge which the War will cost beyond what can be spared out of His Majesty's constant Revenue. Then His Majesty may propose to them His design of Neutrality between them and Spain, which I suppose was not a point that entered into any Agreements against Holland; and lastly, He may desire their consent, since he cannot prosecute the War, to make his peace with Holland, upon the assurance of employing afterwards his Mediation between them and Spain, in which the concurrence of His Parliament will make Him able to effect a Peace, as the want of it has made Him unable to pursue the War. If France will not consent either to furnish us with money sufficient to carry on the War, nor to our Neutrality with Spain, nor peace with Holland: it would then be considered whether France in the like case would suffer such a Conjuncture as this to escape them upon any Ties or Treaties between us: or whether indeed any Prince or State would do so. A conjuncture whereby the honour and interest of His Majesty's Crowns may be provided for, the Trade of the Nation raised to a height it has not reached before; the passionate bent and humour of the people pleased, and their jealousies in a great measure allayed, the true balance of Christendom maintained; all the Princes and States of it (besides France alone) satisfied; and in short, by which His Majesty may grow again insensibly into the hearts of his people at home, and into the influence upon all affairs of his Neighbours abroad.  
It is a rude thing which is commonly said, that we may come off from France with as much honour as we came on. But it is a true thing, that he has always the honour of the War that has the advantage of it, and 'tis I doubt, so of a Peace too; and that cannot fail us here, provided we make sure of Spain (in case we apprehend our losing of France), to which their dispositions and interests must certainly concur with ours in all points, unless that of Jamaica make an exception.  
All the difficulty His Majesty can meet with in this pursuit, will be some want of reputation and trust with the Government of Spain and Holland, which have been foiled of late by the breach of our former Alliances, so much (as they think) against our own interests as well as theirs; for all Treaties are grounded upon the common belief, That every State will be ever found in their own Interests, among which their Honour and observance of Faith grows to be one very considerable (Because while the minds of men are generally possessed with a belief of God Almighty's concerning Himself in affairs here below, the opinion of Justice or Injustice in a Quarrel will never fail of having mighty effect upon the successes of a War): therefore our reputation cannot any way be so far recovered with our Neighbours, as by their finding that His Majesty's Counsels return into the true interests of His Kingdoms, which will make the Spaniards believe our Measures may be firm with them upon the same reason which has shaken them with France. Thus much is certain, that whatever means will restore or raise the credit of His Majesty's Government at home, will do it abroad too; for a King of England at the head of his Parliament and People, and in their hearts and interests, can never fail of making what figure he pleases in the world, nor of being safe and easy at home; and may despise all the designs of factious men, who can only make themselves considered by seeming to be in the interest of the Nation, when the Court seems to be out of it. But in running on Counsels contrary to the general humour and spirit of the People, the King indeed may make His Ministers great Subjects, but they can never make Him a Great Prince.   

Shene Jan. 29. 1674.  
TO THE COUNTESS OF ESSEX UPON Her Grief occasioned by the loss of Her only Daughter.  
THE Honour I received by a Letter from your Ladyship, was too great and too sensible not to be acknowledged; but yet I doubted whether that occasion could bear me out in the confidence of giving your Ladyship any further troubles of this kind, without as good an errand as my last. This I have reckoned upon a good while by another visit my Sister and I had designed to my Lord Capell. How we came to have deferred it so long, I think we are neither of us like to tell you at this distance, though we make ourselves believe it could not be helped. Your Ladyship at least has had the advantage of being thereby excused sometime from this trouble, which I could no longer forbear upon the sensible wounds that have so often of late been given your friends here by such desperate expressions in several of your Letters concerning your Humour, your Health, and your Life; in all which if they are your Friends, you must allow them to be extremely concerned. Perhaps none can be at heart more partial than I am to whatever touches your Ladyship, nor more inclined to defend you upon this very occasion, how unjust and unkind soever you are to yourself. But when you go about to throw away your Health, or your Life, so great a remainder of your own Family, and so great hopes of that into which you are entered, and all by a desperate melancholy, upon an accident past remedy, and to which all mortal race is perpetually subject; For God's sake, Madam, give me leave to tell you, that what you do is not at all agreeable either with so good a Christian, or so reasonable, and so great a person as your Ladyship appears to the World in all other lights.  
I know no duty in Religion more generally agreed on, nor more justly required by God Almighty than a perfect submission to His Will in all things; nor do I think any disposition of mind can either please Him more, or become us better, than that of being satisfied with all He gives, and contented with all He takes away. None I am sure can be of more Honour to God, nor of more ease to ourselves; for if we consider him as our Maker, we cannot contend with him; if as our Father, we ought not to distrust him; So that we may be confident, whatever He does is intended for our good, and whatever happens that we interpret otherwise, yet we can get nothing by repining, nor save any thing by resisting.  
But if it were fit for us to reason with God Almighty, and your Ladyship's loss be acknowledged as great as it could have been to any one alive; Yet, I doubt, you would have but ill grace to complain at the rate you have done, or rather as you do; for the first motions of passions how violent soever, may be pardoned; and it is only the course of them which makes them inexcusable. In this world, Madam, there is nothing perfectly good, and whatever is called so, is but either comparatively with other things of its kind, or else with the evil that is mingled in its composition; so he is a good man that is better than men commonly are, or in whom the good qualities are more than the bad; so in the course of life, his condition is esteemed good, which is better than that of most other men, or wherein the good circumstances are more than the ill; By this measure, I doubt Madam, your complaints ought to be turned into acknowledgements, and your Friends would have cause to rejoice rather than condole with you; For the goods or blessings of life are usually esteemed to be, Birth, Health, Beauty, Friends, Children, Honour, Riches. Now when your Ladyship has fairly considered how God Almighty has dealt with you in what He has given you of all these, you may be left to judge yourself how you have dealt with Him in your complaints for what he has taken away. But if you look about you, and consider other lives as well as your own, and what your lot is in comparison with those that have been drawn in the circle of your knowledge; If you think how few are born with Honour, how many dye without Name or Children, how little Beauty we see, how few Friends we hear of, how many Diseases, and how much Poverty there is in the world, you will fall down upon your knees, and instead of repining at one affliction, will admire so many blessings as you have received at the hand of God.  
To put your Ladyship in mind of what you are, and the advantages you have in all these points, would look like a design to flatter you: But this I may say, that we will pity you as much as you please, if you will tell us who they are that you think upon all circumstances you have reason to envy. Now if I had a Master that gave me all I could ask, but thought fit to take one thing from me again, either because I used it ill, or gave myself so much over to it, as to neglect what I owed either to him or the rest of the world; Or perhaps because he would show his power, and put me in mind from whom I held all the rest; would you think I had much reason to complain of hard usage, and never to remember any more what was left me, never to forget what was taken away.  
'Tis true, you have lost a Child, and therein all that could be lost in a Child of that age; but you have kept one Child, and are likely to do so long; you have the assurance of another, and the hopes of many more. You have kept a Husband great in employment, and in fortune, and (which is more) in the esteem of good men. You have kept your Beauty, and your Health, unless you have destroyed them yourself, or discouraged them to stay with you by using them ill. You have Friends that are as kind to you as you can wish, or as you will give them leave to be by your fears of losing you, and being thereby so much the unhappier, the kinder they are to you; But you have Honour and Esteem from all that know you; or if ever it fails in any degree, 'tis only upon that point of your seeming to be fallen out with God and the whole World, and neither to care for yourself, or any thing else after what you have lost.  
You will say perhaps that one thing was all to you, and your fondness of it made you indifferent to every thing else; But this, I doubt, will be so far from justifying you, that it will prove to be your fault as well as your misfortune. God Almighty gave you all the blessings of life, and you set your heart wholly upon one, and despise or undervalue all the rest: Is this His fault or yours? Nay, is it not to be very unthankful to Heaven, as well as very scornful to the rest of the world? Is it not to say, because you have lost one thing God had given you, you thank Him for nothing he has left, and care not what he takes away? Is it not to say, since that one thing is gone out of the world, there is nothing left in it which you think can deserve your kindness or esteem? A friend makes me a feast, and sets all before me that his care or kindness could provide; but I set my heart upon one dish alone, and if that happen to be thrown down, I scorn all the rest; and though he sends for another of the same, yet I rise from the Table in a rage, and say my friend is my enemy, and has done me the greatest wrong in the world; Have I reason, Madam, or good grace in what I do? Or would it become me better to eat of the rest that is before me, and think no more of what had happened and could not be remedied?  
All the Precepts of Christianity agree to teach and command us to moderate our passions, to temper our affections towards all things below; to be thankful for the possession, and patient under the loss whenever He that gave it shall see fit to take away. Your extreme fondness was perhaps as displeasing to God before, as now your extreme affliction, and your loss may have been a punishment for your faults in the manner of enjoying what you had; 'Tis at lest pious to ascribe all the ill that befalls us to our own demerits rather than to injustice in God; and becomes us better to adore all the issues of His Providence in the effects, than inquire into the causes; For submission is the only way of reasoning between a creature and its Maker; and contentment in His Will is the greatest duty we can pretend to, and the best remedy we can apply to all our misfortunes.  
But, Madam, though Religion were no party in your case, and that for so violent and injurious a grief you had nothing to answer to God, but only to the world and yourself; yet I very much doubt how you would be acquitted. We bring into the world with us a poor needy uncertain life, short at the longest, and unquiet at the best; All the imaginations of the witty and the wise have been perpetually busied to find out the ways how to revive it with pleasures, or relieve it with diversions; how to compose it with ease, and settle it with safety; To some of these ends have been employed the institutions of Lawgivers, the reasonings of Philosophers, the inventions of Poets, the pains of labouring, and the extravagances of voluptuous men. All the world is perpetually at work about nothing else, but only that our poor mortal lives should pass the easier and happier for that little time we possess them, or else end the better when we lose them; Upon this occasion Riches came to be coveted, Honours to be esteemed, Friendship and Love to be pursued, and Virtues themselves to be admired in the world. Now, Madam, is it not to bid defiance to all mankind, to condemn their universal opinions and designs, if instead of passing your life as well and easily, you resolve to pass it as ill and as miserably as you can? You grow insensible to the conveniences of Riches, the delights of Honour and Praise, the charms of kindness, or Friendship, nay to the observance or applause of Virtues themselves; For who can you expect in these excesses of passion, will allow you to show either temperance or fortitude, to be either prudent or just? And for your Friends, I suppose, you reckon upon losing their kindness, when you have sufficiently convinced them, they can never hope for any of yours, since you have none left for yourself, or any thing else. You declare upon all occasions, you are incapable of receiving any comfort or pleasure in any thing that is left in this world; and, I assure you Madam, none can ever love you, that can have no hopes ever to please you.  
Among the several inquiries and endeavours after the happiness of life, the sensual men agree in pursuit of every pleasure they can start, without regarding the pains of the chase, the weariness when it ends, or how little the quarry is worth: The busy and ambitious fall into the more lasting pursuits of Power and Riches; The speculative men prefer tranquillity of mind, before the different motions of passion and appetite, or the common successions of desire and satiety, of pleasure and pain; but this may seem too dull a principle for the happiness of life, which is ever in motion; and though passions are perhaps the stings, without which they say no honey is made; yet I think all sorts of men have ever agreed, they ought to be our Servants, and not our Masters; to give us some agitation for entertainment, or exercise, but never to throw our reason out of its seat. Perhaps I would not always sit still, or would be sometimes on horseback; but I would never ride a Horse that galls my flesh, or shakes my bones, or that runs away with me as he pleases, so as I can neither stop at a River or Precipice. Better no passions at all, than have them too violent; or such alone, as instead of heightening our pleasures, afford us nothing but vexation and pain.  
In all such losses as your Ladyships has been, there is something that common nature cannot be denied, there is a great deal that good nature may be allowed; but all excessive and outrageous grief or lamentation for the dead, was accounted among the ancient Christians, to have something of heathenish; and among the Civil Nations of old, to have something of barbarous; and therefore it has been the care of the first to moderate it by their Precepts, and the latter to restrain it by their Laws: The longest time that has been allowed to the forms of Mourning by the custom of any Country, and in any Relation, has been but that of a year; in which space the body is commonly supposed to be mouldered away to earth, and to retain no more figure of what it was; but this has been given only to the loss of Parents, of Husband, or Wife. On the other side, to Children under age, nothing has been allowed; and I suppose with particular reason (the common Ground of all general customs), perhaps because they die in innocence, and without having tasted the miseries of life, so as we are sure they are well when they leave us, and escape much ill would in all appearance have befallen them if they had stayed longer with us. Besides, a Parent may have twenty Children, and so his mourning may run through all the best of his life, if his losses are frequent of that kind; and our kindness to Children so young, is taken to proceed from common opinions, or fond imaginations, not Friendship or Esteem; and to be grounded upon entertainment rather than use in the many offices of life; nor would it pass from any person besides your Ladyship, to say you lost a companion and a friend at Nine year old, though you lost one indeed who gave the fairest hopes that could be of being both in time, and every thing else that was esteembable and good; But yet, that itself God only knows, considering the changes of humour and disposition, which are as great as those of feature and shape the first sixteen years of our lives; considering the chances of time, the infection of company, the snares of the world, and the passions of youth; so that the most excellent and agreeable creature of that tender age, and that seemed born under the happiest Stars, might by the course of years and accidents, come to be the most miserable herself, and more trouble to her Friends by living long, than she could have been by dying young.  
Yet after all, Madam, I think your loss so great, and some measure of your grief so deserved, that would all your passionate complaints, all the anguish of your heart do any thing to retrieve it; Could tears water the lovely plant, so as to make it grow again after once 'tis cut down. Would sighs furnish new breath, or could it draw life and spirits from the wasting of yours; I am sure your Friends would be so far from accusing your passion, that they would encourage it as much, and share it as deep as they could. But alas, the eternal Laws of the Creation extinguish all such hopes, forbid all such designs; Nature gives us many Children and Friends to take them away, but takes none away to give them us again. And this makes the excesses of grief to have been so universally condemned as a thing unnatural, because so much in vain; whereas nature they say does nothing in vain: As a thing so unreasonable, because so contrary to our own designs; for we all design to be well, and at ease, and by grief we make ourselves ill of imaginary wounds, and raise ourselves troubles most properly out of the dust, while our rave and complaints are but like arrows shot up into the air, at no mark, and so to no purpose; but only to fall back upon our heads, and destroy ourselves instead of recovering, or revenging our Friends.  
Perhaps, Madam, you will say this is your design, or if not your desire; but I hope you are not yet so far gone, or so desperately bend; Your Ladyship knows very well your life is not your own, but His that lent it you to manage, and preserve the best you could, and not throw it away, as if it came from some common hand. It belongs in a great measure to your Country, and your Family, and therefore by all humane Laws, as well as divine, self-murder has ever been agreed on as the greatest crime, and is punished here with the utmost shame, which is all that can be inflicted upon the dead. But is the crime much less to kill ourselves by a slow poison, than by a sudden wound? Now if we do it, and know we do it by a long and a continual grief, can we think ourselves innocent? What great difference is there if we break our hearts, or consume them; if we pierce them, or bruise them, since all determines in the same death, as all arises from the same despair? But what if it goes not so far? 'tis not indeed so bad as might be, but that does not excuse it from being very ill: Though I do not kill my neighbour, is it no hurt to wound him, or to spoil him of the conveniencies of life? The greatest crime is for a man to kill himself; is it a small one to wound himself by anguish of heart, by grief, or despair, to ruin his health, to shorten his age, to deprive himself of all the pleasures, or eases, or enjoyments of life?  
Next to the mischiefs we do ourselves, are those we do our Children, and our Friends, as those who deserve best of us, or at least deserve no ill; The Child you carry about you, what has that done that you should endeavour to deprive it of life, almost as soon as you bestow it? or if at the best you suffer it to live to be born, yet by your ill usage of yourself, should so much impair the strength of its body and health, and perhaps the very temper of its mind, by giving it such an infusion of melancholy, as may serve to discolour the objects, and disrelish the accidents it may meet with in the common train of life? But this is one you are not yet acquainted with; what will you say to another you are? Were it a small injury to my Lord Capell to deprive him of a Mother, whose prudence and kindness he may justly expect, the cares of his health and education, the forming of his body, and the cultivating of his mind; the seeds of Honour and Virtue, and thereby the true Principles of a happy life? How has my Lord of Essex deserved that you should go about to lose him a Wife He loves with so much passion, and which is more, with so much reason; so great an honour and support to His Family, so great a hope to His Fortune, and comfort to His Life? Are there so many left of your own great Family, that you should desire in a manner wholly to reduce it, by suffering the greatest and almost last branch of it to wither away before its time? Or is your Country in this age so stored with great persons, that you should envy it those we may justly expect from so noble a race.  
Whilst I had any hopes your tears would ease you, or that your grief would consume itself by liberty and time, your Ladyship knows very well I never once accused it, nor ever increased it like many others by the common formal ways of assuaging it; and this I am sure is the first office of this kind I ever went about to perform otherwise than in the most ordinary forms. I was in hope what was so violent, could not be so long; but when I observed it to grow stronger with age, and increase like a stream the further it run; when I saw it draw out to such unhappy consequences, and threaten no less than your Child, your Health, and your Life; I could no longer forbear this endeavour, nor end it without begging of your Ladyship for God's sake and for your own, for your children's and your Friends, for your Countries and your Families, that you would no longer abandon yourself to so disconsolate a passion, but that you would at length awaken your Piety, give way to your Prudence, or at least rouse up the invincible Spirit of the Piercys, that never yet shrunk at any disaster; that you would sometimes remember the great Honours and Fortunes of your Family, not always the losses, cherish those veins of good humour that are sometimes so natural to you, and sear up those of ill that would make you so unnatural to your Children, and to yourself; But above all, that you would enter upon the cares of your health, and your life, for your Friend's sake at least, if not for your own. For my part, I know nothing could be to me so great an honour and satisfaction, as if your Ladyship would own me to have contributed towards this Cure; but however, none can perhaps more justly pretend to your pardon for the attempt, since there is none, I am sure, that has always had at heart a greater Honour for your Ladyship's Family, nor can have for your Person more devotion and esteem than,  
Madam, Your Ladyship's most Obedient, and most humble Servant,   

Nimmeguen June 18. 1677.  
AN ESSAY Upon the CURE of the GOUT BY MOXA▪  
Written to Monsieur de Zulichem.  
I Never thought it would have befallen me to be the first that should try a new experiment, any more than to be Author of any new invention, being little inclined to practise upon others, and as little that others should practise upon me. The same warmth of head disposes men to both, though one be commonly esteemed an honour, and the other a reproach. I am sorry the first, and the worse of the two is fallen to my share, by which all a man can hope is to avoid censure, and that is much harder than to gain applause; For this may be done by one great or wise action in an age; but to avoid censure, a man must pass his life without saying or doing one ill or foolish thing.  
This might serve the turn, if all men were just; but as they are, I doubt nothing will, and that 'tis the idlest pretention in the world to live without it; The meanest Subjects censuring the actions of the greatest Prince; The silliest Servants of the wisest Master; and young Children of the oldest Parents. Therefore I have not troubled myself to give any account of an experiment I made by your persuasion, to satisfy those who imputed it to folly, rashness, or impatience; but to satisfy you who proposed the thing in kindness to me, and desired the Relation of it in kindness to other men.  
I confess, your engaging me first in this adventure of the Moxa, and desiring the story of it from me, is like giving one the torture, and then ask his confession, which is hard usage to an innocent man, and a friend; Besides, having suffered the first, I took myself to have a right of refusing the other; But I find your Authority with me is too great to be disputed in either; and the pretence of public good is a cheat that will ever pass in the world, though so often abused by ill men, that I wonder the good do not grow ashamed to use it any longer. Let it be as it will, you have what you asked, and cannot but say that I have done, as well as suffered what you had a mind to engage me in. I have told you the story with the more circumstance, because many questioned the Disease, that they might not allow of the Cure; though the certainty of one, and force of the other, has been enough evidenced by two returns since I left you at the Hague, which passed with the same success. The reasonings upon this method, which seem to confirm the experiment, and other Remedies for the Gout here reflected on, are aimed at the same end for which you seemed so much to desire this Relation. The digressions I cannot excuse otherwise, than by the confidence that no man will read them, who has not at least as much leisure as I had when I writ them; and whosoever dislikes, or grows weary of them, may throw them away. For those about temperance, age, or their effects and periods in reference to public business, they could be better addressed to none, than to you, who have past the longest life with the most temperance, and the best health and humour of any man I know; and having run through so much great and public business, have found out the secret so little known, that there is a time to give it over.  
I will pretend but to one piece of merit in this Relation, which is to have writ it for you in English, being the Language I always observed to have most of your kindness among so many others of your acquaintance. If your partiality to that, and to me, and to your own request, will not excuse all the faults of this Paper; I have nothing more to say for it, and so will leave you to judge of it as you please.  
AMong all the Diseases, to which the intemperance of this age disposes it (at least in these Northern Climates), I have observed none to increase so much within the compass of my memory and conversation, as the Gout, nor any I think of worse consequence to mankind; because it falls generally upon persons engaged in public affairs, and great employments, upon whose thoughts and cares (if not their motions and their pains) the common good and service of their Country so much depends. The General Officers of Armies, the Governors of Provinces, the public Ministers in Counsels at home, and Embassies abroad (that have fallen in my way) being generally subject to it in one degree or other. I suppose the reason of this may be, that men seldom come into those Posts till after forty year old, about which time the natural heat beginning to decay, makes way for those distempers they are most inclined to by their Native Constitutions, or by their customs and habits of life. Besides, persons in those Posts are usually born of Families Noble and Rich, and so derive a weakness of constitution from the ease and luxury of their Ancestors, and the delicacy of their own Education; Or if not, yet the plenty of their fortunes from those very employments, and the general custom of living in them at much expense, engages men in the constant use of great Tables, and in frequent excesses of several kinds, which must end in diseases when the vigour of youth is past, and the force of exercise (that served before to spend the humour) is given over for a sedentary and unactive life.  
These I take to be the reasons of such persons being so generally subject to such accidents more than other men; and they are so plain, that they must needs occur to any one that thinks; But the ill consequence of it is not so obvious, though perhaps as evident to men that observe, and may be equally confirmed by Reasons, and Examples. It is that the vigour of the mind decays with that of the body, and not only humour and invention, but even judgement and resolution, change and languish, with ill constitution of body, and of health; And by this means public business comes to suffer by private infirmities, and Kingdoms or States fall into weaknesses and distempers, by the diseases or decays of those persons that manage them.  
Within these fifteen years past, I have known a great Fleet disabled for two Months, and thereby lose great occasions by an indisposition of the Admiral, while he was neither well enough to exercise, nor ill enough to leave the command. I have known two Towns of the greatest consequence lost, contrary to all forms, by the Governors falling ill in the time of the Sieges.  
I have observed the fate of a Campania determine contrary to all appearances, by the caution and conduct of a General, which were attributed by those that knew him to his age and infirmities, rather than his own true qualities, acknowledged otherwise to have been as great as most men of the age. I have seen the Counsels of a noble Country grow bold, or timorous, according to the Fits of his good or ill health that managed them, and the pulse of the Government beat high or low with that of the Governor; and this unequal Conduct make way for great accidents in the world; Nay, I have often reflected upon the Counsels and Fortunes of the greatest Monarchies rising and decaying sensibly with the ages and healths of the Princes and chief Officers that governed them. And I remember one great Minister that confessed to me, when he fell into one of his usual Fits of the Gout, He was no longer able to bend his mind or thoughts to any public business, nor give Audiences beyond two or three of his own Domestics, though it were to save a Kingdom; and that this proceeded not from any violence of pain, but from a general languishing and faintness of Spirits, which made him in those Fits think nothing worth the trouble of one careful or solicitous thought. For the approaches, or lurk of the Gout, the Spleen, or the Scurvy, nay the very fumes of indigestion, may indispose men to thought and to care, as well as diseases of danger and pain.  
Thus accidents of Health grow to be accidents of State, and public constitutions come to depend in a great measure upon those of particular men, which makes it perhaps seem necessary in the choice of persons for great employments (at least such as require constant application and pains) to consider their bodies as well as their minds, and ages and health as well as their abilities.  
When I was younger than I am, and thereby a worse judge of age; I have often said, that what great thing soever a man proposed to do in his life, He should think of achieving it by fifty year old. Now I am approaching that age, I think it much more than I did before; and that no man rides to an end of that Stage without feeling his journey in all parts, whatever distinctions are made between the mind and the body, or between judgement and memory. And though I have known some few, who might perhaps be of use in Council upon great occasions, till after threescore and ten; and have heard that the two late Ministers in Spain. Counts of Castriglio and Pignoranda, were so till fourscore; Yet I will not answer, that the very conduct of public affairs under their Ministry has not always tasted of the lees of their age.  
I observe in this Assembly at Nimmeguen, from so many several parts of Christendom, that so one and twenty Ambassadors, there are but three above fifty years old; which seems an Argument, of my opinion being in a manner general; Nor can I think the period ill calculated, at least for a great General of Armies, or Minister of State, in times, or scenes of great Action, when the care of a State or an Army ought to be as constant as the Chemics fire, to make any great production; and if it goes out for an hour, perhaps the whole operation fails. Now I doubt whether any man after fifty be capable of such constant application of thought, any more than of long and violent labour or exercise, which that certainly is, and of the finest parts. Besides, none that feels sensibly the decays of age, and his life wearing off, can figure to himself those imaginary charms in Riches and Praise, that men are apt to do in the warmth of their blood; and those are the usual Incentives towards the attempt of great dangers, and support of great trouble and pains.  
To confirm this by Examples, I have heard that Cardinal Mazarine, about five and fifty, found it was time to give over. That the present Grand Vizier, who passes for one of the greatest men of that Empire, or this age, began His Ministry about twenty eight; and the greatest I have observed, which was that of Monsieur de Witt, began at three and thirty, and lasted to forty eight, and could not, I believe, have gone on many years longer at that height, even without that fatal end. Among other qualities which entered into the composition of this Minister, the great care he had of his health, and the little of his life, were not, I think, the least considerable; since from the first He derived his great temperance, as well as his great boldness and constancy from the other. And if intemperance be allowed to be the common Mother of Gout, of Dropsy, and of Scurvy, and most other lingering Diseases, which are those that infest the State; I think Temperance deserves the first rank among public Virtues, as well as those of private men, and doubt whether any can pretend to the constant steady exercise of Prudence, Justice, or Fortitude, without it.  
Upon these Grounds, whoever can propose a way of Curing, or preventing the Gout (which entered chiefly into those examples I have mentioned of public affairs suffering by private indispositions) would perhaps do a service to Princes and States, as well as to particular men, which makes me the more willing to tell my Story, and talk out of my Trade, being strongly possessed with a belief, that what I have tried, or thought, or heard upon this subject, may go a great way in preventing the growth of this disease where it is but new, though perhaps longer methods are necessary to deal with it when 'tis old.  
From my Grandfather's death I had reason to apprehend the Stone, and from my Father's life the Gout, who has been for this many years, and still continues much afflicted with it. The first apprehension has been, I confess with me, ever the strongest, and the other hardly in my thoughts, having never deserved it by the usual forms; Nor had I ever, I thank God, the least threat from either of them, till the last year at the Hague, being then in the seven and fortieth of my age; when about the end of February, one night at Supper, I felt a sudden pain in my right foot, which from the first moment it began, increased sensibly, and in an hours time to that degree, that though I said nothing, yet others took notice of it in my face, and said, They were sure I was not well, and would have had me go to bed. I confessed I was in pain, and thought it was with some sprain at Tennis; I pulled off my shoe, and with some ease that gave me, stirred not till the Company broke up, which was about three hours after my pain began. I went away to bed, but it raged so much all night, that I could not sleep a wink. I endured it till about eight next morning, in hopes still of stealing some rest; but then making my complaints, and showing my foot, they found it very red and angry; and to relieve my extremity of pain, began to apply common Poultives to it; and by the frequent change of them I found some ease, and continued this exercise all that day, and a great part of the following night, which I past with very little rest. The morning after, my foot began to swell, and the violence of my pain to assuage, though it left such a soreness, that I could hardly suffer the Clothes of my bed, nor stir my foot but as it was lifted.  
By this time my illness being enquired after about the Town, was concluded to be the Gout; and being no longer feverish, or in any extremity of pain, I was content to see company: Every body that came to visit me, found something to say upon the occasion; some made a jest of it, or a little reproach; others were serious in their mirth, and made me Compliments as upon a happy accident and sign of long life. The Spaniards asked me Albricias for telling me the news, that I might be sure 'twas the Gout; and in short, none of the company was in ill humour but I, who had rather by half have had a Fever, or a worse disease at that time, where the danger might have been greater, but the trouble and the melancholy would I am sure have been less.  
Though I had never feared the Gout, yet I had always scorned it as an effect commonly of intemperance; and hated it, as that I thought made men unfit for any thing after they were once deep engaged in it; Besides, I was pressed in my journey at that time to Nimmeguen by His Majesty's Commands to assist at the Treaty there. Most of the Ambassadors from the several parts of Christendom were upon their way; One of my Colleagues was already upon the place, and I had promised immediately to follow; for by our Commission we were to be two to act in that Mediation; and to help at this pinch, I had always heard that a Fit of the Gout used to have six weeks at the least for its ordinary period. With these comforts about me, and sullenness enough to use no Remedy of a hundred that were told me, Monsieur Zulichem came to see me (among the rest of my Friends) who I think never came into company without saying something that was new, and so he did upon my occasion. For talking of my illness, and approving of my obstinacy against all the common prescriptions; he asked me whether I had never heard the Indian way of Curing the Gout by Moxa? I told him no, and asked him what it was? He said it was a certain kind of Moss that grew in the East-Indies; that their way was, when ever any body fell into a Fit of the Gout, to take a small quantity of it, and form it into a figure, broad at bottom as a twopences, and pointed at top; To set the bottom exactly upon the place where the violence of the pain was fixed, then with a small round perfumed Match (made likewise in the Indies) to give fire to the top of the Moss; which burning down by degrees, came at length to the skin, and burned it till the Moss was consumed to ashes; That many times the first burning would remove the pain; if not, it was to be renewed a second, third and fourth time, till it went away, and till the person found he could set his foot boldly to the ground and walk.  
I desired him to tell me how he had come acquainted with this new Operation; He said by the Relation of several who had seen and tried it in the Indies, but particularly by an ingenious little Book, written of it by a Dutch Minister at Batavia, who being extremely tormented with a Fit of the Gout, an old Indian-woman coming to see him, undertook to Cure him, and did it immediately by this Moxa; and after many experiments of it there, had written this Treatise of it in Dutch for the use of his Countrymen, and sent over a quantity of the Moss and Matches to his Son at Utrecht, to be sold, if any would be persuaded to use them; That though he could not say whether experiment had been made of it here, yet the Book was worth reading; and for his part, He thought He should try it if ever he should fall into that Disease.  
I desired the Book, which He promised to send me next morning; and this discourse of Monsieur Zulichem busied my head all night: I hated the very name of the Gout, and thought it a reproach: and for the good sign, people called it, I could not find that mended an ill thing, nor could I like any sign of living long in weakness, or in pain; I deplored the loss of my legs, and confinement to my Chamber at an age that left me little pleasure but of walking and of air; but the worst circumstance of all, was the sentence passed upon it of being without Cure.  
I had passed Twenty years of my life, and several accidents of danger in my health, without any use of Physicians; and from some experiments of my own, as well as much reading and thought upon that subject, had reasoned myself into an opinion, that the use of them and their methods (unless in some sudden and acute disease) was itself a very great venture, and that their greatest practisers practised least upon themselves, or their friends. I had ever quarrelled with their studying art more than nature, and applying themselves to methods, rather than to remedies; whereas the knowledge of the last is all that nine parts in ten of the world have trusted to in all ages.  
But for the common Remedies of the Gout, I found exceptions to them all; the time of Purging was passed with me, which otherwise I should certainly have tried upon the authority of the great Hypocrates, who says it should be done upon the first motion of the humour in the Gout. For Poultives, I knew they allayed pain; but withal, that they drew down the humours, and suppled the parts, thereby making the passages wider, and apt to receive them in greater quantity; and I had often heard it concluded, that the use of them ended in losing that of ones limbs, by weakening the joint upon every fit. For Plasters that had any effect, I thought it must be by dispersing or repelling the humours, which could not be done without endangering perhaps some other disease of the bowels, the stomach, or the head. Rest and warmth either of clothes or bathe, I doubted would in a degree have the effects of Poultives; and Sweeting was proper for prevention rather than remedy. So that all I could end in with any satisfaction, was patience and abstinence; and though I easily resolved of the last, yet the first was hard to be found in the circumstances of my business, as well as of my health.  
All this made me rave upon Monsieur Zulichem's new operation; and for the way of curing by fire, I found twenty things to give me an opinion of it. I remembered what I had read of the Egyptians of old, who used it in most diseases; and what I had often heard of that practice still continuing among the Moors of afric; so that a slave is seldom taken (as both Spaniards and Portuguese affirm) who has not many scars of the hot iron upon his body, which they use upon most distempers, but especially those of the head, and consequently in Physic as well as in Surgery. In the time of the Yncas reign in Peru, (which I take to have been one of the greatest Constitutions of Absolute Monarchy that has been in the world) no composition was allowed by the Laws to be used in point of Medicine, but only Simples proper to each Disease. Burning was much in use, either by natural or artificial fires; particularly for all ilnesses of teeth, and soreness or swelling of the gums (which they were subject to from their nearness to the Sea) they had an herb which never failed of curing it, and being laid to the gums, burnt away all the flesh that was swelled or corrupted, and made way for new that came again as sound as that of a Child. I remembered to have had myself in my youth, one cruel wound cured by scalding Medicaments, after it was grown so putrified as to have (in the Surgeon's opinion) endangered the bone; and the violent swelling and bruise of another, taken away as soon as I received it, by scalding it with Milk. I remembered the cure of Chilblains when I was a boy (which may be called the children's Gout) by burning at the fire, or else by scalding brine, that has (I suppose) the same effect. I had heard of curing the stings of Adders, and bites of mad Dogs, by immediately burning the part with a hot iron; and of some strange cures of Frenzies, by casual applications of fire to the lower parts; which seems reasonable enough, by the violent revulsion it may make of humours from the head; and agrees with the opinions and practice I mentioned before, of Egypt and Africa. Perhaps blistering in the neck, and hot Pigeons, may be in use among us upon the same grounds; and in our Methods of Surgery, nothing is found of such effect in the case of old Ulcers, as fire, which is certainly the greatest drawer and dryer, and thereby the greatest cleanser that can be found. I knew very well, that in Diseases of cattle, there is nothing more commonly used, nor with greater success; and concluded it was but a tenderness to Mankind that made it less in use amongst us, and which had introduced Corrosives and Caustics to supply the place of it, which are indeed but artificial fires.  
I mention all these reflections, to show that the experiment I resolved to make, was upon thought, and not rashness or impatience (as those called it that would have dissuaded me from it); but the chief reason was, that I liked no other, because I knew they failed every day, and left men in despair of being ever well cured of the Gout.  
Next morning I looked over the Book which Monsieur Zulichem had promised me, written by the Minister at Batavia. I pretended not to judge of the Indian Philosophy, or reasonings upon the cause of the Gout; but yet thought them as probable as those of Physicians here; and liked them so much the better, because it seems their opinion in the point is general among them, as well as their method of curing; whereas the differences among ours are almost as many in both, as there are Physicians that reason upon the causes, or practise upon the cure of that disease. They hold that the cause of the Gout is a malignant vapour that falls upon the joint between the bone and the skin that covers it, which being the most sensible of all parts of the body, causes the violence of the pain. That the swelling is no part of the disease, but only an effect of it, and of a kindness in nature, that to relieve the part affected, calls down humours to damp the malignity of the vapour, and thereby assuage the sharpness of the pain, which seldom fails whenever the part grows very much swelled. That consequently the swellings and returns of the Gout, are chiefly occasioned by the ill methods of curing it at first. That this vapour falling upon joints which have not motion, and thereby heat enough to dispel it, cannot be cured otherwise than by burning, by which it immediately evaporates; and that this is evident by the present ceasing of the pain upon the second, third, or fourth application of the Moxa, which are performed in a few minute's time. And the Author affirms it happens often there, that upon the last burning, an extreme stench comes out of the skin where the fire had opened it.  
Whatever the reasonings were, which yet seemed ingenious enough; the experiments alleged with so much confidence, and to be so generally in those parts, and told by an Author that writ like a plain man, and one whose profession was to tell truth, helped me to resolve upon making the trial. I was confirmed in this resolution by a Germane Physician, Doctor Theodore Coleby, who was then in my Family, a sober and intelligent man, whom I dispatched immediately to Vtrecht, to bring me some of the Moxa, and learn the exact method of using it, from the man that sold it, who was Son to the Minister of Batavia. He returned with all that belonged to this Cure, having performed the whole operation upon his hand by the man's direction. I immediately made the experiment in the manner before related, setting the Moxa just upon the place where the first violence of my pain began, which was the joint of the great toe, and where the greatest anger and soreness still continued, notwithstanding the swelling of my foot, so that I had never yet in five days been able to stir it, but as it was lifted.  
Upon the first burning I found the skin shrink all round the place; and whether the greater pain of the fire had taken away the sense of a smaller or no, I could not tell; but I thought it less than it was: I burned it the second time, and upon it observed the skin about it to shrink, and the swelling to flat yet more than at first. I began to move my toe, which I had not done before; but I found some remainders of pain. I burned it the third time, and observed still the same effects without, but a much greater within; for I stirred the joint several times at ease; and growing bolder, I set my foot to the ground without any pain at all. After this I pursued the method prescribed by the Book, and the Author's Son at Vtrecht, and had a bruised Clove of Garlic laid to the place that was burnt, and covered with a large Plaster of Diapalma, to keep it fixed there; and when this was done, feeling no more pain, and treading still bolder and firmer upon it, I cut a slipper to let in my foot swelled as it was, and walked half a dozen turns about the room without any pain or trouble, and much to the surprise of those that were about me, as well as to my own. For though I had reasoned myself beforehand into an opinion of the thing, yet I could not expect such an effect as I found, which seldom reaches to the degree that is promised by the prescribers of any remedies, whereas this went beyond it, having been applied so late, and the prescription reaching only to the first attaque of the pain, and before the part begins to swell.  
For the pain of the burning itself, the first time it is sharp, so that a man may be allowed to complain; I resolved I would not, but that I would count to a certain number as the best measure how long it lasted. I told sixscore and four, as fast as I could; and when the fire of the Moxa was out, all pain of burning was over. The second time was not near so sharp as the first, and the third a great deal less than the second. The wound was not raw, as I expected, but looked only scorched and black; and I had rather endure the whole trouble of the operation, than half a quarter of an hours pain in the degree I felt it the first whole night.  
After four and twenty hours, I had it opened, and found a great blister drawn by the Garlic, which I used no more, but had the blister cut, which run a good deal of water, but filled again by next night; and this continued for three days, with only a Plaster of Diapalma upon it; after which time the blister dried up, and left a sore about as big as a twopences, which healed and went away in about a week's time longer; but I continued to walk every day, and without the least return of pain, the swelling still growing less, though it were near six weeks before it was wholly gone. I favoured it all this while more than I needed, upon the common opinion that walking too much might draw down the humour, which I have since had reason to conclude a great mistake, and that if I had walked as much as I could from the first day the pain left me, the swelling might have left me too in a much less time.  
The talk of this Cure run about the Hague, and made the conversation in other places, as well as in the visits I received while I kept my Chamber, which was about a fortnight after the burning. Monsieur Zulichem came to me among the rest of the good company of the Town, and much pleased with my success, as well from his own great humanity, and particular kindness to me, as from the part he had in being the first prescriber of my Cure, and from the opinion it gave him of a common good fortune befallen all that felt, or were in danger of the Gout.  
Among others he told it to Monsieur Serinchamps was one, an Envoy of the Duke of Lorrains then in Town; a person very much, and very deservedly esteemed among all the good company in Town, and to whom every body was kind upon the score of his own good humour, or his Master's ill fortunes: He had been long subject to the Gout, and with constant returns of long and violent fits two or three times in a year. He was a man frank and generous, and loved to enjoy health whilst he had it, without making too much reflection upon what was to follow; and so when he was well, denied himself nothing of what he had a mind to eat or drink, which gave him a body full of humours, and made his fits of the Gout as frequent and violent as most I have known; When they came, he bore them as he could, and forgot them as soon as they were passed, till a new remembrance. At this time he lay ill of a cruel fit, which was fallen upon his knee, and with extreme pain; When he heard of my Cure, he sent to me first for the Relation of it, and upon it, for my Moxa, and for Coleby to apply it; He did so, and after his pleasant way roared out, and swore at me all the while it was burning; and asked if I took him for a Sorcerer that I sent to burn him alive. But with all this, the pain went away upon it, and returned no more to the same place; but he was something discouraged by a new pain falling some days after upon his elbow on the other side, which gave him a new fit, though gentler and shorter than they used to be.  
About the same time one of the Maids of my house was grown almost desperate with the Toothache, and want of sleep upon it, and was without remedy. The Book gives the same Cure for certain in that illness, by burning upon the great Vein under the Ear; and the man who sold it at Vtrecht, had assured Coleby he had seen many Cures by it in that kind. We resolved to try, which was done, and the pain immediately taken away, and the Wench perfectly well, without hearing of it any more, at least while she was in my house.  
Thus passed the first experiment, upon which Monsieur Zulichem giving an account of it to some of his Friends at Gresham-Colledg, came to me before I left the Hague, formally to desire me from them, and from himself, that I would give a Relation of it that might be made public, as a thing which might prove in appearance of common utility to so great numbers as were subject to that disease; And told me that some of Gresham-Colledg had already given order for Translating into English the little Batavian Treatise. I commended the care of publishing it among us, and thereby inviting others to an experiment I had reason to approve; but excused myself from any Relation of my own, as having too much business at that time, and at all times caring little to appear in public. I had another reason to decline it, that ever uses to go far with me upon all new inventions or experiments, which is, that the best trial of them is by time, and observing whether they live or no; and that one or two trials can pretend to make no rule, no more than one Swallow a Summer; and so before I told my story to more than my friends, I had a mind to make more trials myself, or see them made by other people as wise as I had been.  
During the confinement of this fit, I fell into some methods, and into much discourse upon the subject of the Gout, that may be perhaps as well worth reflection by such as feel or apprehend it, as what I have told of this Indian Cure. In the first place from the day I kept my Chamber, till I left it, and began to walk abroad, I restrained myself to so regular a diet, as to eat flesh but once a day, and little at a time, without Salt or Vinegar; and to one moderate draught, either of Water or small Ale. I concluded to trust to abstinence and exercise, as I had ever resolved, if I fell into this disease; and if it continued, to confine myself wholly to the Milk-dyet, of which I had met with very many and great examples, and had a great opinion even in long and inveterate Gouts. Besides, this refuge I met with, in my visits and conversation arising upon my illness, many notions or medicines very new to me, and reflections that may be so perhaps to other men. Old Prince Maurice of Nassaw told me, he laughed at the Gout, and he had been several times attaqued, yet it never gave him care nor trouble. That he used but one remedy, which was when ever he felt it, to boil a good quantity of Horse-dung from a Stone-horse of the Hermelinne colour, as he called it in French, which is a native white, with a sort of raw nose, and the same commonly about the eyes. That when this was well boiled in water, he set his leg in a pale-full of it, as hot as he could well endure it, renewing it as it grew cool for above an hour together; That after it, he drew his leg immediately into a warm bed, to continue the perspiration as long as he could, and never failed of being cured. Whether the remedy be good, or the circumstances of colour signify any thing more, than to make more mystery, I know not; but I observed that he ever had a set of such Hermelinne Horses in his Coach, which he told me was on purpose, that he might never want this remedy.  
The Count Kinski, Ambassador from the Emperor, to the Treaty at Nimmeguen, gave me a Receipt of the Salt of Hartshorn, by which a famous Italian-Physician of the Emperors, had performed mighty Cures upon many others as well as Himself, and the last year upon the Count Montecuculi; The use of this, I am apt to esteem both from the quality given it of provoking Sweat extremely, and of taking away all sharpness from whatever you put it in, which must both be of good effect in the Cure of the Gout.  
The Rhyngrave, who was killed last Summer before Mastricht, told me his Father the old Rhyngrave, whom I knew very well, had been long subject to the Gout, and never used other method or remedy, than upon the very first fit he felt, to go out immediately and walk, whatever the weather was, and as long as he was able to stand, and pressing still most upon the foot that threatened him; when he came home, he went to a warm bed, and was rubbed very well, and chiefly upon the place where the pain begun. If it continued or returned next day, he repeated the same course, and was never laid up with it; and before his death recommended this course to his Son, if he should ever fall into that accident.  
A Dutchman, who had been long in the East-Indies, told me, in one part of them where he had lived some time, the general remedy of all that were subject to the Gout, was rubbing with hands; and that whoever had Slaves enough to do that constantly every day, and relieve one another by turns till the motion raised a violent heat about the joints where it was chiefly used, was never troubled much, or laid up by that disease.  
My youngest Brother told me he had a Keeper very subject to it, but that it never laid him up, but he was still walking after his Deer or his Stud while he had the fits upon him, as at other times, and often from morning to night, though in pain all the while; This he gave me as one instance, that poor and toiling men have sometimes the Gout, and that many more may have it, who take no more notice of it than his Keeper did, who yet he confessed used to bring the fits of Gout upon him, by fits of drinking, which no doubt is a receipt that will hardly fail if men grow old in the custom.  
Monsieur Serinchamps told me, a Lorraine Surgeon had undertaken to cure it by a more extraordinary way than any of these, which was by whipping the naked part with a great Rod of Nettles till it grew all over blistered; and that he had once persuaded him to perform this penance in a sharp fit he had, and the pain in his knee so violent, as helped him to endure this remedy. He said it was cruel, that all where he was whipped, grew so angry, and swelled as well as blistered, that he thought it had given him a Fever that night; The next morning the part was all stiff as a boot, and the skin like parchmin; but that keeping it anointed with a certain Oil likewise of Nettles, it past in two days, and the Gout too, without feeling any more pain that Fit.  
All these things put together, with what a great Physician writes of Cures by whipping with Rods, and another with Holly, and by other cruelties of cutting, or burning, made me certainly conclude, that the Gout was a companion that ought to be treated like an enemy, and by no means like a friend, and that grew troublesome chiefly by good usage; and this was confirmed to me, by considering that it haunted usually the easy and the rich, the nice and the lazy, who grow to endure much, because they can endure little; That make much of it as soon as it comes, and yet leave not making much of themselves too; That take care to carry it presently to bed, and keep it safe and warm, and indeed lay up the Gout for two or three months, while they give out, that the Gout lays up them. On t'other side, it hardly approaches the rough and the poor, such as labour for meat, and eat only for hunger; that drink water, either pure, or but discoloured with Malt; that know no use of wine, but for a Cordial, as it is, and perhaps was only intended; Or if such men happen by their native constitutions to fall into the Gout, either they mind it not at all, having no leisure to be sick; or they use it like a Dog, they walk on, or they toil and work as they did before, they keep it wet and cold; or if they are laid up, they are perhaps forced by that to fast more than before; and if it lasts, they grow impatient, and fall to beat it, or whip it, or cut it, or burn it, and all this while perhaps never know the very name of the Gout.  
But to follow my experiment: I passed that Summer here at Nimmeguen, without the least remembrance of what had happened to me in the Spring, till about the end of September, and then began to feel a pain that I knew not what to make of, in the same joint, but of my other foot: I had flattered myself with hopes, that the vapour had been exhaled, as my learned Authors had taught me, and that thereby the business had been ended; This made me neglect my Moxa for two days, the pain not being violent, till at last my foot begun to swell, and I could set it no longer to the ground. Then I fell to my Moxa again, and burned it four times before the pain went clear away, as it did upon the last, and I walked at ease, as I had done the first time, and within six days after above a League without the least return of any pain.  
I continued well till this Spring, when about the end of March feeling again the same pain, and in the same joint, but of the first foot; and finding it grow violent, I immediately burned it, and felt no more after the third time; was never off my legs, nor kept my Chamber a day. Upon both these last experiments, I omitted the application of Garlic, and contented myself with a Plaster only of Diapalma upon the place that was burnt, which crusted and healed in very few days, and without any trouble. I have since continued perfectly well to this present June; and with so much confidence of the Cure, that I have been content to trouble myself some hours with telling the story, which, 'tis possible, may at one time or other be thought worth making public, if I am further confirmed by more time and experiments of my own, or of others. And thereby I may not only satisfy Monsieur Zulichem, but myself too, who should be sorry to omit any good I thought I could do to other men, though never so unknown.  
But this Cure, I suppose, cannot pretend to deal with inveterate Gouts, grown habitual by long and frequent returns, by dispositions of the stomach, to convert even the best nourishment into those humours, and the vessels to receive them. For such constitutions, by all I have discovered, or considered upon this subject, the Remedies (if any) are to be proposed either from a constant course of the Milken-dyet, continued at least for a year together; Or else from some of those methods, commonly used in the Cure of a worse disease (if at least I may be so bold with one that is much in vogue), the usual exceptions to the first, are not only so long a constraint, but the weakness of Spirits whilst it continues, and the danger of Fevers whenever 'tis left off. There may, I believe, be some Care necessary in this last point, upon so great a change; but for the other, I have met with no complaints among those that have used it; and Count Egmont, who has done so, more, I believe, than any other man, has told me He never found himself in so much vigour, as in the midst of that course. I have known so many great examples of this Cure, and heard of its being so familiar in Austria, that I wonder it has gained no more ground in other places, and am apt to conclude from it, that the loss of pain is generally thought to be purchased too dear by the loss of pleasure.  
For the other, I met with a Physician whom I esteemed a man of truth, that told me of several great Cures of the Gout, by a course of Guiacum, and of two Patients of his own that had gone so far as to be fluxed for it, and with success. And indeed there seems nothing so proper, as what pretends to change the whole mass of the blood, or else a long course of violent perspiration. But the mischief is, that the Gout is commonly the disease of aged men, who cannot go through with these strong Remedies, which young men play with upon other occasions; and the reason, I suppose, why these ways are so little practised, is because it happens so seldom that young men have the Gout.  
Let the disease be new or old, and the remedies either of common or foreign growth, there is one Ingredient of absolute necessity in all cases: For whoever thinks of curing the Gout without great Temperance, had better resolve to endure it with patience: And I know not whether some desperate degrees of Abstinence would not have the same effect upon other men, as they had upon Atticus, who weary of his Life as well as his Physicians, by long and cruel pains of a Dropsical Gout, and despairing of any Cure, resolved by degrees to starve himself to death, and went so far, that the Physicians found he had ended his disease instead of his Life; and told him, that to be well, there would need nothing but only resolving to live. His Answer was noble, That since dying was a thing to be done, and he was now so far on his way, he did not think it worth the while to return. This was said and done, and could indeed have been so by none but such a man as Atticus, who was singular in his Life, as well as his Death; and has been ever, I confess, by me as much esteemed in both, as any of those that have made greater figures upon the busy Scenes of their own times, and since in Records of Story and of Fame.  
But perhaps some such Methods might succeed with others upon the designs to live, as they did with him upon those to die; and though such degrees may be too desperate, yet none of Temperance can, I think, be too great for those that pretend the Cure of inveterate Gouts, or indeed of most other Diseases to which Mankind is exposed rather by the viciousness than by the frailty of their natures. Temperance, That Virtue without Pride, and Fortune without Envy, that gives indolence of body, and tranquillity of mind; the best Guardian of youth and support of old age: The Precept of Reason, as well as Religion; and Physician of the Soul as well as the Body; The Tutelar Goddess of Health, and universal medicine of Life, that clears the head, and cleanses the blood, that eases the stomach, and purges the bowels, that strengthens the nerves, enlightens the eyes, and comforts the heart. In a word, that secures and perfects digestion, and thereby avoids the fumes and winds to which we owe the Colic and the Spleen; those crudities and sharp humours that feed the Scurvy and the Gout, and those slimy dregs, out of which the Gravel and Stone are form within us. Diseases by which we often condemn ourselves to greater torments and miseries of life, than have perhaps been yet invented by Anger or Revenge, or inflicted by the greatest Tyrants upon the worst of men.  
I do not allow the pretence of Temperance to all such as are seldom or never drunk, or fall into Surfeits; for men may lose their health without losing their senses; and be intemperate every day, without being drunk perhaps once in their lives: Nay, for aught I know, if a man should pass the month in a Colledg-diet, without excess or variety of Meats or of Drinks, but only the last day give a loose in them both, and so far till it comes to serve him for Physic rather than food, and he utter his stomach as well as his heart; He may as to the considerations of Health, do much better than another that eats every day but as men do generally in England, who pretend to live well in Court or in Town; that is in Plenty and Luxury, with great variety of meats, and a dozen glasses of Wine at a meal, still spurring up appetite when it would lie down of itself; flushed every day, but never drunk; and with the help of dozing three hours after dinner, as sober and wise as they were before.  
But that which I call Temperance, and reckon so necessary in all attempts and methods of curing the Gout, is a regular and simple diet, limited by every man's experience of his own easy digestion, and thereby proportioning as near, as well as can be, the daily repairs to the daily decays of our wasting bodies. Nor can this be determined by measures and weights, or any general Lessian rules; but must vary with the vigour or decays of Age or of Health, and the use or disuse of Air, or of Exercise, with the changes of Appetite; and then by what every man may find or suspect of the present strength or weakness of digestion: And in case of Excesses, I take the Germane Proverbial Cure by a hair of the same beast, to be the worst in the world; and the best to be that which is called the Monk's Diet, to eat till you are sick, and fast till you are well again. In all courses of the Gout, the most effectual point I take to be abstinence from Wine, further than as a Cordial where faintness or want of spirits require it; And the use of water, where the stomach will bear it, as I believe most men's will, and with great advantage of digestion, unless they are spoiled with long and constant use of Wines or other strong drinks. In that case they must be weaned, and the habit changed by degrees, and with time, for fear of falling into Consumptions, instead of recovering Dropsies or Gouts. But the Wines used by those that feel or fear this Disease, or pursue the Cure, should rather be Spanish or Portugal, than either French or Rhenish; and of the French, rather the Provence or Languedoc, than the Bourdeaux or Champagne; and of the Rhenish, the Ringaw and Bleker, of which at lest it may be said that they do not so much harm as the others.  
But I have known so great Cures, and so many, done by obstinate resolutions of drinking no Wine at all, that I put more weight upon that part of Temperance, than any other. And I doubt very much whether the great increase of that Disease in England within these twenty years, may not have been occasioned by the custom of much Wine introduced into our constant and common Tables. For this use may be more pernicious to health, than that of Taverns and Debauches according to the old style, which were but by fits, and upon set or casual encounters. I have sometimes thought that this custom of using Wine for our common drink, may alter in time the very Constitution of our Nation, I mean the native tempers of our bodies and minds, and cause a heat and sharpness in our humours, which is not natural to our Climate. Our having been denied it by nature, is argument enough that it was never intended us for common use; nor do I believe it was so in any other Countries, there being so small a part of the world where it grows; and where it does, the use of it pure being so little practised, and in some places defended by Customs or Laws. So the Turks have not known it, unless of late years; and I have met with many Spaniards that never tasted it pure in their lives; Nor in the time when I was in France, did I observe any I conversed with to drink it unmixed at meals. The true use of Wine, is either as I mentioned, for a Cordial; and I believe there is not a better to such as drink it seldom; Or else what the Mother of Lemuel tells her son, Give strong drink to him that is ready to perish, and wine to those that are heavy of heart; let him drink and forget his poverty, and remember his misery no more. At least it ought to be reserved for the times and occasions of feasts and of joy, and be treated like a Mistress rather than a Wife, without abandoning either our wits to our humours, or our health to our pleasure, or that of one sense to those of all the rest, which I doubt it impairs. This Philosophy I suppose may pass with the youngest and most sensual men, while they pretend to be reasonable; but whenever they have a mind to be otherwise, the best way they can take, is to drink or to sleep, and either of them will serve the turn.  
FINIS.