COMMON SENSE.                          7

preserve a man from being necessitously poor, it generally
makes him too timorous to be wealthy.

But there is another and greater distinction, for which no
truly natural or religious reason can be assigned, and that is,
the distinction of men into KINGS  and SUBJECTS. Male and
female are the distinctions of nature, good and bad the dis-
tinction of heaven; but how a race of men came into the
world so exalted above the rest, and distinguished like some
new species, is worth enquiring into, and whether they are
the means of happiness or of misery to mankind.

In the early ages of the world, according to the scripture
chronology, there were no kings ; the consequence of which
was, there were no wars; it is the pride of kings which
throw mankind into confusion. Holland without a king hath
enjoyed more peace for this last century than any of the mo-
narchical governments in Europe. Antiquity favours the
same remark ; for the quiet and rural lives of the first pa-
triarchs hath a happy something in them, which vanishes
away when we come to the history of Jewish royalty.

Government by kings was first introduced into the world
by the Heathens, from whom the children of Israel copied
the custom. It was the most prosperous invention the Devil
ever set on foot for the promotion of idolatry. The Heathens
paid divine honours to their deceased kings, and the Christian
world hath improved on the plan, by doing the same to their
living ones. How impious is the title of sacred  majesty ap-plied to a worm, who in the midst of his splendour is crumb-ing into dust.

As the exalting one man so greatly above the rest cannot be
justified on the equal rights of nature, so neither can it be de-
fended on the authority of scripture ; for the will of the Al-
mighty, as declared by Gideon and the prophet Samuel, ex-
pressly disapproves of government by kings. All anti-mo-
narchical parts of scripture have been very smoothly glossed
over in monarchical governments, but they undoubtedly merit
the attention of countries which have their governments yet
to form. “Render unto Caesar the things which art Caesar’s”
is the scripture doctrine of courts, yet it is no support of mo-
narchical government, for the Jews at that time were without
a king, and in a state of vassalage to the Romans.

Near three thousand years passed away from the Mosaic ac-
count of the creation, till the Jews under a national delusion

requested