The De Moneta of Nicholas Oresme and English Mint Documents by Charles Johnson

Author:Charles Johnson [Charles Johnson]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-61016-139-8
Publisher: Thomas Nelson and Sons Ltd
Published: 1956-11-06T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER XXV

That a Tyrant cannot he lasting

In this and the following chapter I propose to prove that raising money by such alterations of the coinage is dishonourable to the kingdom and to the damage of all the king’s posterity. You must know, therefore, that the difference between kingdom and tyranny is that a tyrant loves and pursues his own good more than the common advantage of his subjects, and aims at keeping his people in slavery; a king, on the contrary, prefers the public good to his own and loves above all things, after God and his own soul, the good and public freedom of his subjects. And this is the true usefulness and nobility of the princely power, whose lordship is the nobler and the better, as Aristotle says,38 the more it is over freer and better men, and endures the longer for the king’s steadfastness in following that principle. As Cassiodorus says 39: ‘The art of governing is to love the interests of the many.’ For whenever kingship approaches tyranny it is near its end, for by this it becomes ripe for division, change of dynasty or total destruction, especially in a temperate climate, far from a slavish barbarism, where men are habitually, morally and naturally free, not slaves, nor habituated to tyranny; to whom slavery would be unprofitable and unacceptable, and tyranny nothing less than unnatural and therefore short-lived, since as Aristotle says 40: ‘Things contrary to nature most quickly decay.’ So, too, Cicero says 41: ‘That no empire is strong enough to last if it is full of fear.’ And Seneca in his tragedies says 42:

No-one can prolong

Enforced empires: moderate empires last.

Wherefore the Lord by his prophet43 reproached the deposed princes, saying: ‘With force and with cruelty have ye ruled them.’ And the same thing is said elsewhere, for Plutarch says to the emperor Trajan that ‘the state is a body, living as it were by a gift of the gods, actuated by the decision of the highest justice, and governed by the restraint of reason.’ 44 The state or kingdom, then, is like a human body and so Aristotle will have it in Book V of the Politics.45 As, therefore, the body is disordered when the humours flow too freely into one member of it, so that that member is often thus inflamed and overgrown while the others are withered and shrunken and the body’s due proportions are destroyed and its life shortened; so also is a commonwealth or a kingdom when riches are unduly attracted by one part of it. For a commonwealth or kingdom whose princes, as compared with their subjects, increase beyond measure in wealth, power and position, is as it were a monster, like a man whose head is so large and heavy that the rest of his body is too weak to support it. And just as such a man has no pleasure in life and cannot live long; neither can a kingdom survive whose prince draws to himself riches in excess as is done by altering the coinage, as appeared in Chapter XX.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.