t passed between her and her people
into a kind of romance, wholly neglected the nobility. And by these
degrees came the House of Commons to raise that head, which since has
been so high and formidable to their princes that they have looked
pale upon those assemblies. Nor was there anything now wanting to the
destruction of the throne, but that the people, not apt to see their own
strength, should be put to feel it; when a prince, as stiff in disputes
as the nerve of monarchy was grown slack, received that unhappy
encouragement from his clergy which became his utter ruin, while
trusting more to their logic than the rough philosophy of his
Parliament, it came to an irreparable breach; for the house of peers,
which alone had stood in this gap, now sinking down between the King and
the commons, showed that Crassus was dead and the isthmus broken. But
a monarchy, divested of its nobility, has no refuge under heaven but an
army. Wherefore the dissolution of this government caused the war, not
the war the dissolution of this government.

Of the King's success with his arms it is not necessary to give any
further account than that they proved as ineffectual as his nobility;
but without a nobility or an army (as has been shown) there can be no
monarchy. Wherefore what is there in nature that can arise out of these
ashes but a popular government, or a new monarchy to be erected by the
victorious army?

To erect a monarchy, be it never so new, unless like Leviathan you can
hang it, as the country-fellow speaks, by geometry (for what else is it
to say, that every other man must give up his will to the will of
this one man without any other foundation?), it must stand upon old
principles--that is, upon a nobility or an army planted on a due balance
of dominion. Aut viam inveniam aut faciam, was an adage of Caesar, and
there is no standing for a monarchy unless it finds this balance, or
makes it. If it finds it, the work is done to its hand; for, where there
is inequality of estates, there must be inequality of power; and where
there is inequality of power, there can be no commonwealth. To make it,
the sword must extirpate out of dominion all other roots of power, and
plant an army upon that ground. An army may be planted nationally or
provincially. To plant it nationally, it must be in one of the four
ways mentioned, that is, either monarchically in part, as the Roman
beneficiarii; or monarchically, in the whole, as the Turkish Ti