commonwealth (though they do not see it) is already in the nature
of them. There wants nothing else but time, which is slow and
dangerous, or art, which would be more quick and secure, for the
bringing those native arms, wherewithal they are found already,
to resist, they know not how, everything that opposes them, to
such maturity as may fix them upon their own strength and bottom.
But whereas this art is prudence, and that part of prudence
which regards the present work is nothing else but the skill of
raising such superstructures of government as are natural to the
known foundations, they never mind the foundation, but through
certain animosities, wherewith by striving one against another
they are infected, or through freaks, by which, not regarding the
course of things, nor how they conduce to their purpose, they are
given to building in the air, come to be divided and subdivided
into endless parties and factions, both civil and ecclesiastical,
which, briefly to open, I shall first speak of the people in
general, and then of their divisions.
A people, says Machiavel, that is corrupt, is not capable of
a commonwealth. But in showing what a corrupt people is, he has
either involved himself, or me; nor can I otherwise come out of
the labyrinth, than by saying, the balance altering a people, as
to the foregoing government, must of necessity be corrupt; but
corruption in this sense signifies no more than that the
corruption of one government, as in natural bodies, is the
generation of another. Wherefore if the balance alters from
monarchy, the corruption of the people in this case is that which
makes them capable of a commonwealth. But whereas I am not
ignorant that the corruption which he means is in manners, this
also is from the balance. For the balance leading from
monarchical into popular abates the luxury of the nobility, and,
enriching the people, brings the government from a more private
to a more public interest which coming nearer, as has been shown,
|