reby 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 circulation of the blood, not out of the principles of
nature, but out of the anatomy of this or that body.

To go on therefore with his preliminary discourse, I shall divide it,
according to the two definitions of government relating to Janotti's two
times, in two parts: the first, treating of the principles of government
in general, and according to the ancients; the second, treating of
the late governments of Oceana in particular, and in that of modern
prudence.

Government, according to the ancients, and their learned disciple
Mach