all the rest of the
commonwealths seem to be copies. Certainly if Leviathan (who is surer
of nothing than that a popular commonwealth consists but of one council)
transcribed his doctrine out of this assembly, for him to except against
Aristotle and Cicero for writing out of their own commonwealths was not
so fair play; or if the Parliament transcribed out of him, it had been
an honor better due to Moses. But where one of them should have an
example but from the other, I cannot imagine, there being nothing of
this kind that I can find in story, but the oligarchy of Athens, the
Thirty Tyrants of the same, and the Roman Decemvirs.

For the oligarchy, Thucydides tells us, that it was a Senate or council
of 400, pretending to a balancing council of the people consisting of
5,000, but not producing them; wherein you have the definition of
an oligarchy, which is a single council both debating and resolving,
dividing and choosing, and what that must come to was shown by the
example of the girls, and is apparent by the experience of all times;
wherefore the thirty set up by the Lacedaemonians (when they had
conquered Athens) are called tyrants by all authors, Leviathan only
excepted, who will have them against all the world to have been an
aristocracy, but for what reason I cannot imagine; these also, as void
of any balance, having been void of that which is essential to every
commonwealth, whether aristocratical or popular, except he be pleased
with them, because that, according to the testimony of Xenophon, they
killed more men in eight months than the Lacedaemonians had done in ten
years; "oppressing the people (to use Sir Walter Raleigh's words) with
all base and intolerable slavery."

The usurped government of the Decemvirs in Rome was of the same kind.
Wherefore in the fear of God let Christian legislators (setting the
pattern given in the Mount on the one side, and these execrable examples
on the other) know the right hand from the left; and so much the rather,
because those things which do not conduce to the good of the governed
are fallacious, if they appear to be good for the governors. God, in
chastising a people, is accustomed to burn his rod. The empire of these
oligarchies was not so violent as short, nor did they fall upon the
people, but in their own immediate ruin. A council without a balance is
not a commonwealth, but an oligarchy; and every oligarchy, except it
be put to the defence of its wickedness or powe