All for Love (2 of 34)

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DEDICATION (CONTÂ'D)

An action so much the more great and honourable, because the case
was without the ordinary relief of laws; above the hopes of the
afflicted and beyond the narrowness of the treasury to redress,
had it been managed by a less able hand. It is certainly the
happiest, and most unenvied part of all your fortune, to do good
to many, while you do injury to none; to receive at once the
prayers of the subject, and the praises of the prince; and, by
the care of your conduct, to give him means of exerting the
chiefest (if any be the chiefest) of his royal virtues, his
distributive justice to the deserving, and his bounty and
compassion to the wanting. The disposition of princes towards
their people cannot be better discovered than in the choice
of their ministers; who, like the animal spirits betwixt the
soul and body, participate somewhat of both natures, and make
the communication which is betwixt them. A king, who is just
and moderate in his nature, who rules according to the laws,
whom God has made happy by forming the temper of his soul to the
constitution of his government, and who makes us happy, by
assuming over us no other sovereignty than that wherein our
welfare and liberty consists; a prince, I say, of so excellent
a character, and so suitable to the wishes of all good men, could
not better have conveyed himself into his people's apprehensions,
than in your lordship's person; who so lively express the same
virtues, that you seem not so much a copy, as an emanation of
him. Moderation is doubtless an establishment of greatness; but
there is a steadiness of temper which is likewise requisite in a
minister of state; so equal a mixture of both virtues, that he
may stand like an isthmus betwixt the two encroaching seas of
arbitrary power, and lawless anarchy. The undertaking would be
difficult to any but an extraordinary genius, to stand at the
line, and to divide the limits; to pay what is due to the great
representative of the nation, and neither to enhance, nor to
yield up, the undoubted prerogatives of the crown. These, my
lord, are the proper virtues of a noble Englishman, as indeed
they are properly English virtues; no people in the world being
capable of using them, but we who have the happiness to be born
under so equal, and so well-poised a government;--a government
which has all the advantages of liberty beyond a commonwealth,
and all the marks of kingly sovereignty, without the danger of
a tyranny. Both my nature, as I am an Englishman, and my reason,
as I am a man, have bred in me a loathing to that specious name
of a republic; that mock appearance of a liberty, where all who
have not part in the government, are slaves; and slaves they are
of a viler note, than such as are subjects to an absolute
dominion. For no Christian monarchy is so absolute, but it is
circumscribed with laws; but when the executive power is in the
law-makers, there is no further check upon them; and the people
must suffer without a remedy, because they are oppressed by their
representatives. If I must serve, the number of my masters, who
were born my equals, would but add to the ignominy of my bondage.
The nature of our government, above all others, is exactly suited
both to the situation of our country, and the temper of the
natives; an island being more proper for commerce and for
defence, than for extending its dominions on the Continent; for
what the valour of its inhabitants might gain, by reason of its
remoteness, and the casualties of the seas, it could not so
easily preserve:

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