ake them gentlemen or noblemen, not in
name but in effect; that is, by enriching them with lands, castles, and
treasures, that may gain them power among the rest, and bring in the
rest to dependence upon themselves, to the end that, they maintaining
their ambition by the prince, the prince may maintain his power by
them."

Wherefore, as in this place I agree with Machiavel, that a nobility
or gentry, overbalancing a popular government, is the utter bane and
destruction of it; so I shall show in another, that a nobility or
gentry, in a popular government, not overbalancing it, is the very life
and soul of it.

By what has been said, it should seem that we may lay aside further
disputes of the public sword, or of the right of the militia; which, be
the government what it will, or let it change how it can, is inseparable
from the overbalance in dominion: nor, if otherwise stated by the law
or custom (as in the Commonwealth of Rome, where the people having the
sword, the nobility came to have the overbalance), avails it to
any other end than destruction. For as a building swaying from the
foundation must fall, so it fares with the law swaying from reason, and
the militia from the balance of dominion. And thus much for the balance
of national or domestic empire, which is in dominion.

The balance of foreign or provincial empire is of a contrary nature. A
man may as well say that it is unlawful for him who has made a fair and
honest purchase to have tenants, as for a government that has made a
just progress and enlargement of itself to have provinces. But how a
province may be justly acquired appertains to another place. In this
I am to show no more than how or upon what kind of balance it is to be
held; in order whereto I shall first show upon what kind of balance
it is not to be held. It has been said, that national or independent
empire, of what kind soever, is to be exercised by them that have
the proper balance of dominion in the nation; wherefore provincial or
dependent empire is not to be exercised by them that have the balance of
dominion in the province, because that would bring the government
from provincial and dependent, to national and independent. Absolute
monarchy, as that of the Turks, neither plants its people at home nor
abroad, otherwise than as tenants for life or at will; wherefore its
national and provincial government is all one. But in governments that
admit the citizen or subject to dominion in lan