d courses to keep them off. Their councillors do not
derive their proceedings from any sound root of government that may
contain the demonstration, and assure the success of them, but are
expedient-mongers, givers of themselves to help a lame dog over a stile;
else how comes it to pass that the fame of Cardinal Richelieu has been
like thunder, whereof we hear the noise, but can make no demonstration
of the reason? But to return: if neither the people, nor divines and
lawyers, can be the aristocracy of a nation, there remains only
the nobility; in which style, to avoid further repetition, I shall
understand the gentry also, as the French do by the word noblesse.

"Now to treat of the nobility in such sort as may be less obnoxious to
mistake, it will be convenient, and answerable to the present occasion,
that I divide my discourse into four parts:

"The first, treating of nobility, and the kinds of it;

"The second, of their capacity of the Senate;

"The third, of the divers kinds of senates;

"The fourth, of the Senate, according to the foregoing orders.

"Nobility may be defined divers ways; for it is either ancient riches,
or ancient virtue, or a title conferred by a prince or a commonwealth.

"Nobility of the first kind may be subdivided into two others, such as
hold an overbalance in dominion or property to the whole people, or such
as hold not an overbalance, in the former case, a nobility (such was
the Gothic, of which sufficient has been spoken) is incompatible with
popular government; for to popular government it is essential that power
should be in the people, but the overbalance of a nobility in dominion
draws the power to themselves. Wherefore in this sense it is that
Machiavel is to be understood, where he says, that these are pernicious
in a commonwealth; and of France, Spain, and Italy, that they are
nations which for this cause are the corruption of the world: for
otherwise nobility may, according to his definition (which is, 'that
they are such as live upon their own revenues in plenty, without
engagement either to the tilling of their lands, or other work for their
livelihood '), hold an underbalance to the people; in which case
they are not only safe, but necessary to the natural mixture of a
well-ordered commonwealth.

"For how else can you have a commonwealth that is not altogether
mechanic? or what comparison is there of such commonwealths as are, or
come nearest to mechanic--for example, Ath