the commonwealth, which has her due services.
These are the philosophers which Plato would have to be princes, the
princes which Solomon would have to be mounted, and their steeds are
those of authority, not empire; or, if they be buckled to the chariot of
empire, as that of the dictatorian power, like the chariot of the
sun, it is glorious for terms and vacations or intervals. And as a
commonwealth is a government of laws and not of men, so is this the
principality of virtue, and not of man; if that fail or set in one, it
rises in another who is created his immediate successor. And this takes
away that vanity from under the sun, which is an error proceeding more
or less from all other rulers under heaven but an equal commonwealth.

These things considered, it will be convenient in this place to speak a
word to such as go about to insinuate to the nobility or gentry a fear
of the people, or to the people a fear of the nobility or gentry; as if
their interests were destructive to each other. When indeed an army may
as well consist of soldiers without officers, or of officers without
soldiers, as a commonwealth, especially such a one as is capable of
greatness, of a people without a gentry, or of a gentry without a
people. Wherefore this, though not always so intended, as may appear
by Machiavel, who else would be guilty, is a pernicious error. There is
something first in the making of a commonwealth, then in the governing
of it, and last of all in the leading of its armies, which, though there
be great divines, great lawyers, great men in all professions, seems to
be peculiar only to the genius of a gentleman.

For so it is in the universal series of story, that if any man has
founded a commonwealth, he was first a gentleman. Moses had his
education by the daughter of Pharaoh; Theseus and Solon, of noble birth,
were held by the Athenians worthy to be kings; Lycurgus was of the royal
blood; Romulus and Numa princes; Brutus and Publicola patricians;
the Gracchi, that lost their lives for the people of Rome and the
restitution of that commonwealth, were the sons of a father adored with
two triumphs, and of Cornelia the daughter of Scipio, who being demanded
in marriage by King Ptolemy, disdained to become the Queen of Egypt. And
the most renowned Olphaus Megaletor, sole legislator, as you will see
anon, of the Commonwealth of Oceana, was derived from a noble family;
nor will it be any occasion of scruple in this case, that