The first division of them is into such as are single, as
Israel, Athens, Lacedaemon, etc.; and such as are by leagues, as
those of the Achaeans, AEtolians, Lycians, Switz, and Hollanders.
The second (being Machiavel's) is into such as are for
preservation, as Lacedaemon and Venice, and such as are for
increase, as Athens and Rome; in which I can see no more than
that the former takes in no more citizens than are necessary for
defence, and the latter so many as are capable of increase.
The third division (unseen hitherto) is into equal and
Unequal, and this is the main point, especially as to domestic
peace and tranquillity; for to make a commonwealth unequal, is to
divide it into parties, which sets them at perpetual variance,
the one party endeavoring to preserve their eminence and
inequality and the other to attain to equality; whence the people
of Rome derived their perpetual strife with the nobility and
Senate. But in an equal commonwealth there can be no more strife
than there can be overbalance in equal weights; wherefore the
Commonwealth of Venice, being that which of all others is the
most equal in the constitution, is that wherein there never
happened any strife between the Senate and the people.
An equal commonwealth is such a one as is equal both in the
balance or foundation, and in the superstructure; that is to say,
in her agrarian law and in her rotation.
An equal agrarian is a perpetual law, establishing and
preserving the balance of dominion by such a distribution, that
no one man or number of men, within the compass of the few or
aristocracy, can come to overpower the whole people by their
possessions in lands.
As the agrarian answers to the foundation, so does rotation
to the superstructures.
Equal rotation is equal vicissitude in government, or
succession to magistracy conferred for such convenient terms,
enjoying equal vacations, as take in the whole body by parts,
succeeding others, through the free election or suffrage of the
people.
The contrary, whereunto is prolongation of magistracy, which,
|