other
men's grounds, who, suffering perpetual violence, come to hate the
author of it; and it is a maxim, that no prince that is hated by his
people can be safe. Arms planted upon dominion extirpate enemies and
make friends; but maintained by a mere tax, have enemies that have
roots, and friends that have none.

To conclude, Oceana, or any other nation of no greater extent, must have
a competent nobility, or is altogether incapable of monarchy; for where
there is equality of estates, there must be equality of power, and where
there is equality of power, there can be no monarchy.

To come then to the generation of the commonwealth. It has been shown
how, through the ways and means used by Panurgus to abase the nobility,
and so to mend that flaw which we have asserted to be incurable in this
kind of constitution, he suffered the balance to fall into the power of
the people, and so broke the government; but the balance being in the
people, the commonwealth (though they do not see it) is already in the
nature of them. There wants nothing else but time, which is slow
and dangerous, or art, which would be more quick and secure, for the
bringing those native arms, wherewithal they are found already, to
resist, they know not how, everything that opposes them, to such
maturity as may fix them upon their own strength and bottom.

But whereas this art is prudence, and that part of prudence which
regards the present work is nothing else but the skill of raising such
superstructures of government as are natural to the known foundations,
they never mind the foundation, but through certain animosities,
wherewith by striving one against another they are infected, or through
freaks, by which, not regarding the course of things, nor how they
conduce to their purpose, they are given to building in the air, come to
be divided and subdivided into endless parties and factions, both civil
and ecclesiastical, which, briefly to open, I shall first speak of the
people in general, and then of their divisions.

A people, says Machiavel, that is corrupt, is not capable of a
commonwealth. But in showing what a corrupt people is, he has either
involved himself, or me; nor can I otherwise come out of the labyrinth,
than by saying, the balance altering a people, as to the foregoing
government, must of necessity be corrupt; but corruption in this sense
signifies no more than that the corruption of one government, as in
natural bodies, is the generat