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