The Commonwealth of Oceana [91]
and no more the people were so far from attaining to peace, that they in getting but so much, got but heads for an eternal feud; whereas if they had attained in perfection either to the agrarian, they had introduced the equality and calm of Lacedaemon, or to rotation, and they had introduced that of Venice: and so there could have been no more enmity between the Senate and the people of Rome than there was between those orders in Lacedaemon, or is now in Venice. Wherefore Machiavel seems to me, in attributing the peace of Venice more to her luck than her prudence, of the whole stable to have saddled the wrong horse; for though Rome in her military part could beat it better, beyond all comparison, upon the sounding hoof, Venice for the civil part has plainly had the wings of Pegasus. "The whole question then will come upon this point, whether the people of Rome could have obtained these orders? And first, to say that they could not have obtained them without altering the commonwealth, is no argument; seeing neither could they, without altering the commonwealth, have obtained their tribunes, which nevertheless were obtained. And if a man considers the posture that the people were in when they obtained their tribunes, they might as well, and with as great ease (forasmuch as the reason why the nobility yielded to the tribunes was no other than that there was no remedy) have obtained anything else. And for experience, it was in the like case that the Lacedaemonians did set up their ephors,and the Athenians,after the battle of Plataea, bowed the Senate (so hard a thing it is for a commonwealth that was born crooked to become straight) as much the other way. Nor, if it be objected that this must have ruined the nobility (and in that deprived the commonwealth of the greatness which she acquired by them), is this opinion holding, but confuted by the sequel of the story, showing plainly that the nobility, through the defect of such orders (that is to say, of rotation and the agrarian), came to eat up the people; and battening themselves in luxury, to be, as Sallust speaks of them, 'a most sluggish and lazy nobility, in whom, besides the name, there was no more than in a statue;' and to bring so mighty a commonwealth, and of so huge a glory, to so deplorable an end. Wherefore means might have been found to remove the enmity that was between the Senate and the people of Rome. "My lords, if I have argued well, I have given you the comfort and assurance that, notwithstanding the judgment of Machiavel, your commonwealth is both safe and sound; but if I have not argued well, then take the comfort and assurance which he gives you while he is firm, that a legislator is to lay aside all other examples, and follow that of Rome only, conniving and temporizing with the enmity between the Senate and the people as a necessary step to the Roman greatness. Whence it follows that your commonwealth, at the worst, is that which he has given you his word is the best. "I have held your lordships long, but upon an account of no small importance, which I can now sum up in these few words: where there is a liquorishness in a popular assembly to debate, it proceeds not from the constitution of the people, but of the commonwealth. Now that your commonwealth is of such a constitution as is naturally free from this kind of intemperance, is that which, to make good, I must divide the remainder of my discourse into two parts: "The first, showing the several constitutions of the assemblies of the people in other commonwealths; "The second, comparing our assembly of the people with theirs; and showing how it excludes the inconveniences and embraces the conveniences of them all. "In the beginning of the first part I must take notice, that among the popular errors of our days it is no small one that men imagine the ancient governments of this kind to have consisted for the most part of one city that is, of one town; whereas by what we have learned of my 'lords that owned them, it appears that there was not any considerable one of such a Constitution