Hobbes is always reluctant to criticise monarchy. When he first compares the different forms of government in The Elements of Law, he insists that all the inconveniences to which subjects are inevitably exposed are least troublesome under this type of state. He also assures us that ‘all the ancients have preferred monarchy before other governments’, failing even to mention the clear preference for republican rule expressed by Cicero, Livy and other ancient authorities. Returning to the same comparison in De cive, he speaks in yet more forthright terms. He argues, as before, that there are only three possible forms of government, but he now adds the unequivocal declaration that ‘among these types of civitas – the Democratic, the Aristocratic and the Monarchical – the best is Monarchy’. When he later discusses the relative ‘commodities’ of these different constitutions at greater length in Leviathan he specifically argues that monarchy is the one in which we find the most effective counselling, the least inconstancy in decision-making and the greatest likelihood that the public good will be served.

Hobbes feels obliged to admit, however, that there is one weakness in his account of why monarchy should always be preferred. He likes to claim that, as he puts it at the end of Book II of Leviathan, he has succeeded in establishing a ‘Science of Naturall Justice’ in which he has furnished proofs of ‘the Theoremes of Morall doctrine’ that place them beyond dispute. But when he reflects on his preference for monarchy he recognises that, in this instance, he has fallen short of his goal. As he had already acknowledged in the Preface he added to De cive when it was reissued in 1647, ‘I have presented various arguments in chapter 10 to try to persuade people that Monarchy is more advantageous than other types of state’, but ‘I must confess that this is the one doctrine in this book which is not demonstrated but is merely put forward as a matter of probability.’

Faced with this sore point in his argument, Hobbes takes considerable pains to cover it up. He does so in part by calling attention to his lack of proof as little as possible.