srael--that is, no judge; and in the first of Samuel, where Eli
judged Israel forty years, and Samuel, all his life. In Lacedaemon the
election of the Senate being by suffrage of the people, though for life,
was not altogether so unequal, yet the hereditary right of kings, were
it not for the agrarian, had ruined her.

Athens and Rome were unequal as to their agrarian, that of Athens being
infirm, and this of Rome none at all; for if it were more anciently
carried it was never observed. Whence, by the time of Tiberius Gracchus,
the nobility had almost eaten the people quite out of their lands,
which they held in the occupation of tenants and servants, whereupon the
remedy being too late, and too vehemently applied, that commonwealth was
ruined.

These also were unequal in their rotation, but in a contrary manner.
Athens, in regard that the Senate (chosen at once by lot, not by
suffrage, and changed every year, not in part, but in the whole)
consisted not of the natural aristocracy, nor sitting long enough to
understand or to be perfect in their office, had no sufficient authority
to restrain the people from that perpetual turbulence in the end, which
was their ruin, notwithstanding the efforts of Nicias, who did all a man
could do to help it. But as Athens, by the headiness of the people, so
Rome fell by the ambition of the nobility, through the want of an equal
rotation; which, if the people had got into the Senate, and timely
into the magistracies (whereof the former was always usurped by the
patricians, and the latter for the most part) they had both carried and
held their agrarian, and that had rendered that commonwealth immovable.

But let a commonwealth be equal or unequal, it must consist, as has been
shown by reason and all experience, of the three general orders; that is
to say, of the Senate debating and proposing, of the people resolving,
and of the magistracy executing. Wherefore I can never wonder enough
at Leviathan, who, without any reason or example, will have it that a
commonwealth consists of a single person, or of a single assembly; nor
can I sufficiently pity those "thousand gentlemen, whose minds, which
otherwise would have wavered, he has framed (as is affirmed by himself)
in to a conscientious obedience (for so he is pleased to call it) of
such a government."

But to finish this part of the discourse, which I intend for as
complete an epitome of ancient prudence, and in that of the whole art of