averies.
In fact, from the midst of this unbridled and capricious populace, they
elect some one as a leader in opposition to their afflicted and
expelled nobles: some new chief, forsooth, audacious and impure, often
insolently persecuting those who have deserved well of the State, and
ready to gratify the populace at his neighbor's expense as well as his
own. Then, since the private condition is naturally exposed to fears
and alarms, the people invest him with many powers, and these are
continued in his hands. Such men, like Pisistratus of Athens, will soon
find an excuse for surrounding themselves with body-guards, and they
will conclude by becoming tyrants over the very persons who raised them
to dignity. If such despots perish by the vengeance of the better
citizens, as is generally the case, the constitution is re-established;
but if they fall by the hands of bold insurgents, then the same faction
succeeds them, which is only another species of tyranny. And the same
revolution arises from the fair system of aristocracy when any
corruption has betrayed the nobles from the path of rectitude. Thus the
power is like the ball which is flung from hand to hand: it passes from
kings to tyrants, from tyrants to the aristocracy, from them to
democracy, and from these back again to tyrants and to factions; and
thus the same kind of government is seldom long maintained.

XLV. Since these are the facts of experience, royalty is, in my
opinion, very far preferable to the three other kinds of political
constitutions. But it is itself inferior to that which is composed of
an equal mixture of the three best forms of government, united and
modified by one another. I wish to establish in a commonwealth a royal
and pre-eminent chief. Another portion of power should be deposited in
the hands of the aristocracy, and certain things should be reserved to
the judgment and wish of the multitude. This constitution, in the first
place, possesses that great equality without which men cannot long
maintain their freedom; secondly, it offers a great stability, while
the particular separate and isolated forms easily fall into their
contraries; so that a king is succeeded by a despot, an aristocracy by
a faction, a democracy by a mob and confusion; and all these forms are
frequently sacrificed to new revolutions. In this united and mixed
constitution, however, similar disasters cannot happen without the
greatest vices in public men. For there can be