ce (if so it be, for Machiavel
observes in that republic, as a cause of it, a great mediocrity of
estates) it is not a point that she is to fear, but might study, seeing
she consists of nothing else but nobility, by which, whatever their
estates suck from the people, especially if it comes equally, is
digested into the better blood of that commonwealth, which is all, or
the greatest, benefit they can have by accumulation. For how unequal
soever you will have them to be in their incomes, they have officers
of the pomp, to bring them equal in expenses, or at least in the
ostentation or show of them. And so unless the advantage of an estate
consists more in the measure than in the use of it, the authority of
Venice does but enforce our agrarian; nor shall a man evade or elude the
prudence of it, by the authority of any other commonwealth.

"For if a commonwealth has been introduced at once, as those of Israel
and Lacedaemon, you are certain to find her underlaid with this as the
main foundation; nor, if she is obliged more to fortune than prudence,
has she raised her head without musing upon this matter, as appears by
that of Athens, which through her defect in this point, says Aristotle,
introduced her ostracism, as most of the democracies of Greece. But,
not to restrain a fundamental of such latitude to any one kind of
government, do we not yet see that if there be a sole landlord of a
vast territory, he is the Turk? that if a few landlords overbalance a
populous country, they have store of servants? that if a people be in an
equal balance, they can have no lords? that no government can otherwise
be erected, than upon some one of these foundations? that no one of
these foundations (each being else apt to change into some other) can
give any security to the government, unless it be fixed? that through
the want of this fixation, potent monarchy and commonwealths have fallen
upon the heads of the people, and accompanied their own sad ruins with
vast effusions of innocent blood? Let the fame, as was the merit of
the ancient nobility of this nation, be equal to or above what has been
already said, or can be spoken, yet have we seen not only their glory
but that of a throne, the most indulgent to and least invasive for so
many ages upon the liberty of a people that the world has known, through
the mere want of fixing her foot by a proportionable agrarian upon
her proper foundation, to have fallen with such horror as has been a