and Livy, it is the empire of laws, and not of men.
And government (to define it de facto, or according to modern
prudence) is an art whereby some man, or some few men, subject a
city or a nation, and rule it according to his or their private
interest; which, because the laws in such cases are made
according to the interest of a man, or of some few families, may
be said to be the empire of men, and not of laws.
The former kind is that which Machiavel (whose books are
neglected) is the only politician that has gone about to
retrieve; and that Leviathan (who would have his book imposed
upon the universities) goes about to destroy. For "it is," says
he, "another error of Aristotle's politics that in a well-ordered
commonwealth, not men should govern, but the laws. What man that
has his natural senses, though he can neither write nor read,
does not find himself governed by them he fears, and believes can
kill or hurt him when he obeys not? or, who believes that the law
can hurt him, which is but words and paper, without the hands and
swords of men?" I confess that the magistrate upon his bench is
that to the law which a gunner upon his platform is to his
cannon. Nevertheless, I should not dare to argue with a man of
any ingenuity after this manner. A whole army, though they can
neither write nor read, are not afraid of a platform, which they
know is but earth or stone; nor of a cannon, which, without a
hand to give fire to it, is but cold iron; therefore a whole army
is afraid of one man. But of this kind is the ratiocination of
Leviathan, as I shall show in divers places that come in my way,
throughout his whole politics, or worse; as where he says, "of
Aristotle and of Cicero, of the Greeks, and of the Romans, who
lived under popular States, that they derived those rights, not
from the principles of nature, but transcribed them into their
books out of the practice of their own commonwealths, as
grammarians describe the rules of language out of poets." Which
is as if a man should tell famous Harvey that he transcribed his
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