ion 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, to justice and right reason, the people upon
a like alteration is so far from such a corruption of manners as should
render them incapable of a commonwealth, that of necessity they must
thereby contract such a reformation of manners as will bear no other
kind of government. On the other side, where the balance changes from
popular to oligarchical or monarchical, the public interest, with the
reason and justice included in the sane, becomes more private; luxury is
introduced in the room of temperance, and servitude in that of freedom,
which causes such a corruption of manners both in the nobility and
people, as, by the example of Rome in the time of the Triumvirs, is more
at large discovered by the author to have been altogether incapable of a
commonwealth.

But the balance of Oceana changing quite contrary to that of Rome, the
manners of the people were not thereby corrupted, but, on the contrary,
adapted to a commonwealth. For differences of opinion in a people not
rightly informed of their balance, or a division into parties (while
there is not any common ligament of power sufficient to reconcile or
hold them) is no sufficient proof of corruption. Nevertheless, seeing
this must needs be matter of scandal and danger, it will not be amiss,
in showing what were the parties, to show what were their errors.

The parties into which this nation was divided, were temporal or
spiritual; and the temporal parties were especially two, the one
royalists, the other republicans, each of which asserted their different
causes, either out of prudence or ignorance, out of interest or
conscience.

For prudence, either that of the ancients is inferior to the modern,
which we have hitherto been setting face to face, that anyone may judge,
or that of the royalist must be inferior to that of the commonwealths
man. And for interest, taking the commonwealths man to have really
intended the public, for otherwise he is a hypocrite and the worst of
men, that of