by the conductors of their armies, receive withal a pleasing idea
of all they have done besides, and imagine their great prosperity
not to have proceeded from the emulation of particular men, but
from the virtue of their popular form of government, not
considering the frequent seditions and civil wars produced by the
imperfection of their polity." Where, first, the blame he lays to
the heathen authors, is in his sense laid to the Scripture; and
whereas he holds them to be young men, or men of no antidote that
are of like opinions, it should seem that Machiavel, the sole
retriever of this ancient prudence, is to his solid reason a
beardless boy that has newly read Livy. And how solid his reason
is, may appear where he grants the great prosperity of ancient
commonwealths, which is to give up the controversy. For such an
effect must have some adequate cause, which to evade he
insinuates that it was nothing else but the emulation of
particular men, as if so great an emulation could have been
generated without as great virtue, so great virtue without the
best education, and best education without the best law, or the
best laws any otherwise than by the excellency of their polity.
But if some of these commonwealths, as being less perfect in
their polity than others, have been more seditious, it is not
more an argument of the infirmity of this or that commonwealth in
particular, than of the excellency of that kind of polity in
general, which if they, that have not altogether reached, have
nevertheless had greater prosperity, what would befall them that
should reach?
In answer to which question let me invite Leviathan, who of
all other governments gives the advantage to monarchy for
perfection, to a better disquisition of it by these three
assertions.
The first, that the perfection of government lies upon such a
libration in the frame of it, that no man or men in or under it
can have the interest, or, having the interest, can have the
power to disturb it with sedition.
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