posed to seditions and troubles. And if this poverty and broken
estate in the better sort, be joined with a want and necessity in the
mean people, the danger is imminent and great. For the rebellions of the
belly are the worst. As for discontentments, they are, in the politic
body, like to humors in the natural, which are apt to gather a
preternatural heat, and to inflame. And let no prince measure the
danger of them by this, whether they be just or unjust: for that were
to imagine people, to be too reasonable; who do often spurn at their
own good: nor yet by this, whether the griefs whereupon they rise, be
in fact great or small: for they are the most dangerous discontentments,
where the fear is greater than the feeling. Dolendi modus, timendi non
item. Besides, in great oppressions, the same things that provoke the
patience, do withal mate the courage; but in fears it is not so. Neither
let any prince, or state, be secure concerning discontentments, because
they have been often, or have been long, and yet no peril hath ensued:
for as it is true, that every vapor or fume doth not turn into a storm;
so it is nevertheless true, that storms, though they blow over divers
times, yet may fall at last; and, as the Spanish proverb noteth well,
The cord breaketh at the last by the weakest pull.

The causes and motives of seditions are, innovation in religion;
taxes; alteration of laws and customs; breaking of privileges; general
oppression; advancement of unworthy persons; strangers; dearths;
disbanded soldiers; factions grown desperate; and what soever, in
offending people, joineth and knitteth them in a common cause.

For the remedies; there may be some general preservatives, whereof
we will speak: as for the just cure, it must answer to the particular
disease; and so be left to counsel, rather than rule.

The first remedy or prevention is to remove, by all means possible, that
material cause of sedition whereof we spake; which is, want and poverty
in the estate. To which purpose serveth the opening, and well-balancing
of trade; the cherishing of manufactures; the banishing of idleness; the
repressing of waste, and excess, by sumptuary laws; the improvement and
husbanding of the soil; the regulating of prices of things vendible; the
moderating of taxes and tributes; and the like. Generally, it is to be
foreseen that the population of a kingdom (especially if it be not
mown down by wars) do not exceed the stock of the kingdom