ittle
or no land, as Holland and Genoa, the balance of treasure may be equal
to that of land in the cases mentioned.

But Leviathan, though he seems to skew at antiquity, following his
furious master Carneades, has caught hold of the public sword, to which
he reduces all manner and matter of government; as, where he affirms
this opinion (that any monarch receives his power by covenant; that is
to say, upon conditions) "to proceed from the not understanding this
easy truth, that covenants being but words and breath, have no power to
oblige, contain, constrain, or protect any man, but what they have from
the public sword." But as he said of the law, that without this sword
it is but paper, so he might have thought of this sword, that without a
hand it is but cold iron. The hand which holds this sword is the militia
of a nation; and the militia of a nation is either an army in the field,
or ready for the field upon occasion. But an army is a beast that has a
great belly, and must be fed: wherefore this will come to what pastures
you have, and what pastures you have will come to the balance of
property, without which the public sword is but a name or mere spitfrog.
Wherefore, to set that which Leviathan says of arms and of contracts a
little straighter, he that can graze this beast with the great belly,
as the Turk does his Timariots, may well deride him that imagines he
received his power by covenant, or is obliged to any such toy. It being
in this case only that covenants are but words and breath. But if the
property of the nobility, stocked with their tenants and retainers, be
the pasture of that beast, the ox knows his master's crib; and it is
impossible for a king in such a constitution to reign otherwise than by
covenant; or if he break it, it is words that come to blows.

"But," says he, "when an assembly of men is made sovereign, then no man
imagines any such covenant to have part in the institution." But what
was that by Publicola of appeal to the people, or that whereby the
people had their tribunes? "Fie," says he, "nobody is so dull as to say
that the people of Rome made a covenant with the Romans, to hold the
sovereignty on such or such conditions, which, not performed, the Romans
might depose the Roman people." In which there be several remarkable
things; for he holds the Commonwealth of Rome to have consisted of one
assembly, whereas it consisted of the Senate and the people; that they
were not upon covenant