The liberty of a people consists in being governed by laws which
they have made themselves, under whatsoever form it be of
government; the liberty of a private man in being master of his own
time and actions, as far as may consist with the laws of God and of
his country. Of this latter only we are here to discourse, and to
inquire what estate of life does best suit us in the possession of
it. This liberty of our own actions is such a fundamental privilege
of human nature, that God Himself, notwithstanding all His infinite
power and right over us, permits us to enjoy it, and that, too,
after a forfeiture made by the rebellion of Adam. He takes so much
care for the entire preservation of it to us, that He suffers
neither His providence nor eternal decree to break or infringe it.
Now for our time, the same God, to whom we are but tenants-at-will
for the whole, requires but the seventh part to be paid to Him at as
a small quit-rent, in acknowledgment of His title. It is man only
that has the impudence to demand our whole time, though he neither
gave it, nor can restore it, nor is able to pay any considerable
value for the least part of it. This birthright of mankind above
all other creatures some are forced by hunger to sell, like Esau,
for bread and broth; but the greatest part of men make such a
bargain for the delivery up of themselves, as Thamar did with Judah;
instead of a kid, the necessary provisions for human life, they are
contented to do it for rings and bracelets. The great dealers in
this world may be divided into the ambitious, the covetous, and the
voluptuous; and that all these men sell themselves to be slaves--
though to the vulgar it may seem a Stoical paradox--will appear to
the wise so plain and obvious that they will scarce think it
deserves the labour of argumentation. Let us first consider the
ambitious; and those, both in their progress to greatness, and after
the attaining of it. There is nothing truer than what Sallust says:
"Dominationis in alios servitium suum, mercedem dant": They are
content to pay so great a price as their own servitude to purchase
the domination over others. The first thing they must resolve to
sacrifice is their whole time; they must never stop, nor ever turn
aside whilst they are in the race of glory; no, not like Atalanta
for golden apples; "Neither indeed can a man stop himself, if he
would, when he is in this, career. Fertur equis auriga neque audit
currus habenas.

Pray let us but consider a little what mean, servile things men do
for this imaginary food. We cannot fetch a greater example of it
than from the chief men of that nation which boasted most of
liberty. To what pitiful baseness did the noblest Romans submit
themselves for the obtaining of a praetorship, or the consular
dignity? They put on the habit of suppliants, and ran about, on
foot and in dirt, through all the tribes to beg voices; they
flattered the poorest artisans, and carried a nomenclator with them,
to whisper in their ear every man's name, lest they should mistake
it in their salutations; they shook the hand, and kissed the cheek
of every popular tradesman; they stood all day at every market in
the public places, to show and ingratiate themselves to the rout;
they employed all their friends to solicit for them; they kept open
tables in every street; they distributed wine, and bread, and money,
even to the vilest of the people. En Romanos, rerum Dorninos!
Behold the masters of the world beginning from door to door. This
particular humble way to greatness is now out of fashion, but yet
every ambitious person is still in some sort a Roman candidate. He
must feast and bribe, and attend and flatter, and adore many beasts,
though not the beast with many heads. Catiline, who was so proud
that he could not content himself with a less power than Sylla's,
was yet so humble for the attaining of it, as to make himself the
most contemptible of all servants, to be a public bawd for all the
young gentlemen of Rome whose hot lusts, and courages, and heads, he
thought he might make use of. And since I happen here to propose
Catiline for my instance, though there be thousand of examples for
the same thing, give me leave to transcribe the character which
Cicero gives of this noble slave, because it is a general
description of all ambitious men, and which Machiavel perhaps would
say ought to be the rule of their life and actions. "This man,"
says he, as most of you may well remember, "had many artificial
touches and strokes that looked like the beauty of great virtues;
his intimate conversation was with the worst of men, and yet he
seemed to be an admirer and lover of the best; he was furnished with
all the nets of lust and luxury, and yet wanted not the arms of
labour and industry: neither do I believe that there was ever any
monster in nature, composed out of so many different and disagreeing
parts. Who more acceptable, sometimes, to the most honourable
persons? who more a favourite to the most infamous? who, sometimes,
appeared a braver champion? who, at other times, a bolder enemy to
his country? who more dissolute in his pleasures? who more patient
in his toils? who more rapacious in robbing? who more profuse in
giving? Above all things, this was remarkable and admirable in him.
The arts he had to acquire the good opinion and kindness of all
sorts of men, to retain it with great complaisance, to communicate
all things to them, to watch and serve all the occasions of their
fortune, both with his money and his interest, and his industry, and
if need were, not by sticking at any wickedness whatsoever that
might be useful to them, to bend and turn about his own nature and
laveer with every wind, to live severely with the melancholy,
merrily with the pleasant, gravely with the aged, wantonly with the
young, desperately with the bold, and debauchedly with the
luxurious. With this variety and multiplicity of his nature, as he
had made a collection of friendships with all the most wicked and
reckless of all nations, so, by the artificial simulation of some
virtues, he made a shift to ensnare some honest and eminent persons
into his familiarity; neither could so vast a design as the
destruction of this empire have been undertaken by him, if the
immanity of so many vices had not been covered and disguised by the
appearances of some excellent qualities."

I see, methinks, the character of an Anti-Paul, who became all
things to all men, that he might destroy all; who only wanted the
assistance of fortune to have been as great as his friend Caesar
was, a little after him. And the ways of Caesar to compass the same
ends--I mean till the civil war, which was but another manner of
setting his country on fire--were not unlike these, though he used
afterward his unjust dominion with more moderation than I think the
other would have done. Sallust, therefore, who was well acquainted
with them both and with many such-like gentlemen of his time, says,
"That it is the nature of ambition" (Ambitio multos mortales falsos
fieri coegit, etc.) "to make men liars and cheaters; to hide the
truth in their breasts, and show, like jugglers, another thing in
their mouths; to cut all friendships and enmities to the measure of
their own interest, and to make a good countenance without the help
of good will." And can there be freedom with this perpetual
constraint? What is it but a kind of rack that forces men to say
what they have no mind to? I have wondered at the extravagant and
barbarous stratagem of Zopirus, and more at the praises which I find
of so deformed an action; who, though he was one of the seven
grandees of Persia, and the son of Megabises, who had freed before
his country from an ignoble servitude, slit his own nose and lips,
cut off his own ears, scourged and wounded his whole body, that he
might, under pretence of having been mangled so inhumanly by Darius,
be received into Babylon (then besieged by the Persians) and get
into the command of it by the recommendation of so cruel a
sufferance, and their hopes of his endeavouring to revenge it. It
is a great pity the Babylonians suspected not his falsehood, that
they might have cut off his hands too, and whipped him back again.
But the design succeeded; he betrayed the city, and was made
governor of it. What brutish master ever punished his offending
slave with so little mercy as ambition did this Zopirus? and yet how
many are there in all nations who imitate him in some degree for a
less reward; who, though they endure not so much corporal pain for a
small preferment, or some honour, as they call it, yet stick not to
commit actions, by which they are more shamefully and more lastingly
stigmatised? But you may say, "Though these be the most ordinary
and open ways to greatness, yet there are narrow, thorny, and
little-trodden paths, too, through which some men find a passage by
virtuous industry." I grant, sometimes they may; but then that
industry must be such as cannot consist with liberty, though it may
with honesty.

Thou art careful, frugal, painful. We commend a servant so, but not
a friend.

Well, then, we must acknowledge the toil and drudgery which we are
forced to endure in this assent, but we are epicures and lords when
once we are gotten up into the high places. This is but a short
apprenticeship, after which we are made free of a royal company. If
we fall in love with any beauteous woman, we must be content that
they should be our mistresses whilst we woo them. As soon as we are
wedded and enjoy, 'tis we shall be the masters.

I am willing to stick to this similitude in the case of greatness:
we enter into the bonds of it, like those of matrimony; we are
bewitched with the outward and painted beauty, and take it for
better or worse before we know its true nature and interior
inconveniences. "A great fortune," says Seneca, "is a great
servitude." But many are of that opinion which Brutus imputes (I
hope untruly) even to that patron of liberty, his friend Cicero.
"We fear," says he to Atticus, "death, and banishment, and poverty,
a great deal too much. Cicero, I am afraid, thinks these to be the
worst of evils, and if he have but some persons from whom he can
obtain what he has a mind to, and others who will flatter and
worship him, seems to be well enough contented with an honourable
servitude, if anything, indeed, ought to be called honourable in so
base and contumelious a condition." This was spoken as became the
bravest man who was ever born in the bravest commonwealth. But with
us, generally, no condition passes for servitude that is accompanied
with great riches, with honours, and with the service of many
inferiors. This is but a deception the sight through a false
medium; for if a groom serve a gentleman in his chamber, that
gentleman a lord, and that lord a prince, the groom, the gentleman,
and the lord are as much servants one as the other. The
circumstantial difference of the one getting only his bread and
wages, the second a plentiful, and the third a superfluous estate,
is no more intrinsical to this matter than the difference between a
plain, a rich and gaudy livery. I do not say that he who sells his
whole time and his own will for one hundred thousand is not a wiser
merchant than he who does it for one hundred pounds; but I will
swear they are both merchants, and that he is happier than both who
can live contentedly without selling that estate to which he was
born. But this dependence upon superiors is but one chain of the
lovers of power, Amatorem trecentae Pirithoum cohibent catenae. Let
us begin with him by break of day, for by that time he is besieged
by two or three hundred suitors, and the hall and anti-chambers (all
the outworks) possessed by the enemy; as soon as his chamber opens,
they are ready to break into that, or to corrupt the guards for
entrance. This is so essential a part of greatness, that whosoever
is without it looks like a fallen favourite, like a person
disgraced, and condemned to do what he please all the morning.
There are some who, rather than want this, are contented to have
their rooms filled up every day with murmuring and cursing
creditors, and to charge bravely through a body of them to get to
their coach. Now I would fain know which is the worst duty, that of
any one particular person who waits to speak with the great man, or
the great man's, who waits every day to speak with all the company.
Aliena negotia centum Per caput et circum saliunt latus: A hundred
businesses of other men (many unjust and most impertinent) fly
continually about his head and ears, and strike him in the face like
dors. Let us contemplate him a little at another special scene of
glory, and that is his table. Here he seems to be the lord of all
Nature. The earth affords him her best metals for his dishes, her
best vegetables and animals for his food; the air and sea supply him
with their choicest birds and fishes; and a great many men who look
like masters attend upon him; and yet, when all this is done, even
all this is but Table d'Hote. It is crowded with people for whom he
cares not--with many parasites, and some spies, with the most
burdensome sort of guests--the endeavourers to be witty.

But everybody pays him great respect, everybody commends his meat--
that is, his money; everybody admires the exquisite dressing and
ordering of it--that is, his clerk of the kitchen, or his cook;
everybody loves his hospitality--that is, his vanity. But I desire
to know why the honest innkeeper who provides a public table for his
profits should be but of a mean profession, and he who does it for
his honour a munificent prince. You'll say, because one sells and
the other gives. Nay, both sell, though for different things--the
one for plain money, the other for I know not what jewels, whose
value is in custom and in fancy. If, then, his table be made a
snare (as the Scripture speaks) to his liberty, where can he hope
for freedom? there is always and everywhere some restraint upon him.
He is guarded with crowds, and shackled with formalities. The half
hat, the whole hat, the half smile, the whole smile, the nod, the
embrace, the positive parting with a little bow, the comparative at
the middle of the room, the superlative at the door; and if the
person be Pan huper sebastos, there's a Huper superlative ceremony
then of conducting him to the bottom of the stairs, or to the very
gate: as if there were such rules set to these Leviathans as are to
the sea, "Hitherto shalt thou go, and no further." Perditur haec
inter misero Lux. Thus wretchedly the precious day is lost.

How many impertinent letters and visits must he receive, and
sometimes answer both too as impertinently? He never sets his foot
beyond his threshold, unless, like a funeral, he hath a train to
follow him, as if, like the dead corpse, he could not stir till the
bearers were all ready. "My life," says Horace, speaking to one of
these magnificos, "is a great deal more easy and commodious than
thine, in that I can go into the market and cheapen what I please
without being wondered at; and take my horse and ride as far as
Tarentum without being missed." It is an unpleasant constraint to
be always under the sight and observation and censure of others; as
there may be vanity in it, so, methinks, there should be vexation
too of spirit. And I wonder how princes can endure to have two or
three hundred men stand gazing upon them whilst they are at dinner,
and taking notice of every bit they eat. Nothing seems greater and
more lordly than the multitude of domestic servants, but, even this
too, if weighed seriously, is a piece of servitude; unless you will
be a servant to them, as many men are, the trouble and care of yours
in the government of them all, is much more than that of every one
of them in their observation of you. I take the profession of a
schoolmaster to be one of the most useful, and which ought to be of
the most honourable in a commonwealth, yet certainly all his farces
and tyrannical authority over so many boys takes away his own
libert