A Brief View and Survey of the Dangerous and Pernicious Errors to Church and State, in Mr. Hobbes's Book, entitled ‘Leviathan’

Abstract

L astly, since he reckons the sending out Colonies, and erecting Plantations, the encouraging all manner of Arts, as Navigation, Agriculture, Fishing, and all manner of Manufactures, to be of the Policy and Office of a Sovereign, it will not be in his power to deny, that his Soveraign is obliged to perform all those promises, and to make good all those concessions and priviledges which he hath made and granted, to those who have bin thereby induc'd to expose their Fortunes and their Industry to those Adventures, as hath bin formerly enlarg'd upon in the case of Merchants and Corporations, and which is directly contrary to his Conclusions and Determinations. And I cannot but here observe the great vigilance and caution, which Mr. Hobbes (who hath an excellent faculty of employing very soft words, for the bringing the most hard and cruel things to pass) uses out of his abstracted love of Justice, towards the regulating and well ordering his poor and strong people, whom he transplants into other Countries for the ease of his own; whom he will by no means suffer to exterminate those they find there, but only to constrain them to inhabit closer together, and not to range a great deal of ground; that is in more significant words, which the tenderness of his nature would not give him leave to utter, to take from them the abundance they possess, and reduce them to such an assignation,° that they may be compell'd, if they will not be perswaded, (pag. (pag. 181.) to court each little plot with art and labor to give them their sustenance in due season.

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