But these delusive prospects soon disappeared. The hope of establishing a republican government became dai ly fainter and fainter ; and with it, those schemes which had been so eloquently detailed, and so fondly contemplated, quickly fell into neglect. The views of Cromwell, which had always been suspected by some, now began to be un derstood by many ; and the vigorous administration by which he confirmed his usurped power, by and by convinc ed the people that they still possessed a monarchy in every thing but the name. The death of the Protector, and the incapacity of his son, Ieplunged the nation in ail the mi series of anarchy. The partizans of the loyal family were not slack to improve the opportunity they so much desired. By their efforts, and the concurrence of a full tide of cir cumstances, the proscribed monarch was received into the bosom of the kingdom, without any limitation of his au thority, and with an ardour of popular affection, propor tionate to the interruption it had suffered, and to the calami ties and confusion to which the nation had been exposed.
It was accordingly during the reign of Charles II. that the public mind seems to have been disposed to admit the exercise of the royal prerogative in as unlimited and dan gerous an extent as had ever been possessed by any former monarch. Still smarting under the desolating consequences of the civil wars, and still remembering the odium with which they had regarded the tyrannical, though energetic, ad ministration of the Protector, it is not surprising if the people began to indulge the opinion, that an uncontrolled prerogative in the crown was necessary to order and good government.
The court does not seem to have been insensible to this favourable state of men's minds for promoting its views. The nation, it was easy to perceive, had now acquired a taste for political speculation, which it would be more practicable to lead in a safe or advantageous course, than altogether to obstruct. And though the reigning monarch had little reason to apprehend any immediate opposition to his power, yet a theory in support of it, would at once gra tify the public mind, and might lessen the chance of future resistance. There was now no demand for plans of govern ment. These had had their day. They had fallen into ne glect with all, and contempt with many. Monarchy, the resumed, uncontrolled monarchy, was the idol ; and nothing was wanting but a systematic detail of the justice and ra tionality of the principles upon which it rested.
About this time, accordingly, several writers appeared, who, either hired immediately by the court, or impelled by general hopes of reward, endeavoured to perform so ac ceptable a service. Among these, the most celebrated was Sir Robert Filmer. His book, entitled Patriarcha, seems to have been by far the most daring and specious attempt to assign a legitimate and rational origin to absolute mon archy. It was daring, not so much because it was an ex
press and avowed endeavour to establish that form of go vernment, in exclusion of every other that had ever been set up in the world, but to establish it upon the basis of a divine appointment ; and it was specious, because the mode of argument, and the style of writing adopted, were such as, in those times, were likely to make considerable impres sion,—the former being chiefly, or altogether, founded in texts of scripture, and the latter made up of expressions sufficiently vague and unmeaning to elude detection, in an age when literature was yet but little diffused, or accurately studied. If not the first to assert the jus divinuin of kings, Filmer seems to have been the first, at least, who ventured to account for its origin, to develope its nature, and to es tablish it, avowedly and expressly, upon the basis of argu ment.
Aware of the futility of that sort of reasoning which, while it founded the legitimacy of the sovereign power itt the general or providential arrangements of the Supreme Being, would at the same time have justified every form of government, and even ever• species of crime, (since these also fall out, or are permitted in the general arrangements of Providence), Filmer had recourse, if not to a more logi cal, at least to a more specious, mode of argument. Texts of scripture, Ile conceived, could be found, in which might be traced the legitimacy of modern kings to the appoint ment of God himself at the creation of the world. If so, his object was accomplished—infidelity in that age not having yet dared to erect his unhallowed standard among the peo ple. Filmer accordingly maintained that God, at the crea tion of Adam, endowed him with the right of fatherhood, (as he termed it), absolute and unlimited ; or, in other words, with a right of arbitrary dominion over all his off spring. Second, That he was endowed in like manner with a right of absolute dominion over Eve : " Thy desire shall be unto thy husband, and he shall rule over thee :" in which text he seriously assures us we have very express ly the original grant of monarchical government. Third, That the whole material globe, with all the brute creation, was his property by right of donation from the same Al mighty Being. And, fourth, That these rights, upon Adam's death, descended to his next heir ; that thence they descended, in direct succession, to the patriarchs ; and from them, in similar succession, to modern kings. These principles he partly asserted, and partly endeavour ed to prove, sometimes by producing garbled passages of scripture, and sometimes by giving to other passages an unlimited, or, as it would seem, a sophisticated meaning.