spectacle of astonishment to the whole earth. And were it well argued
from one calamity, that we ought not to prevent another? Nor is
Aristotle so good a commonwealths man for deriding the invention of
Phaleas as in recollecting himself, where he says that democracies, when
a less part of their citizens overtop the rest in wealth, degenerate
into oligarchies and principalities; and, which comes nearer to the
present purpose, that the greater part of the nobility of Tarentum
coming accidentally to be ruined, the government of the few came by
consequence to be changed into that of the many.

"These things considered, I cannot see how an agrarian, as to the
fixation or security of a government, can be less than necessary. And
if a cure be necessary, it excuses not the patient, his disease being
otherwise desperate, that it is dangerous; which was the case of Rome,
not so stated by Machiavel, where he says, that the strife about the
agrarian caused the destruction of that commonwealth. As if when a
senator was not rich (as Crassus held) except he could pay an army, that
commonwealth could expect nothing but ruin whether in strife about the
agrarian, or without it. 'Of late,' says Livy, 'riches have introduced
avarice, and voluptuous pleasures abounding have through lust and
luxury begot a desire of lasting and destroying all good orders.' if the
greatest security of a commonwealth consists in being provided with the
proper antidote against this poison, her greatest danger, must be
from the absence of an agrarian, which is the whole truth of the Roman
example. For the Laconic, I shall reserve the further explication of it,
as my lord also did, to another place; and first see whether an agrarian
proportioned to a popular government be sufficient to keep out monarchy.
My lord is for the negative, and fortified by the people of Israel
electing a king. To which I say that the action of the people therein
expressed is a full answer to the objection of that example; for the
monarchy neither grew upon them, nor could; by reason of the agrarian,
possibly have invaded them, if they had not pulled it upon themselves by
the election of a king. Which being an accident, the like whereof is not
to be found in any other people so planted, nor in this till, as it
is manifest, they were given up by God to infatuation (for says he to
Samuel, 'They have not rejected thee, but they have rejected me, that I
should not reign over them,), has some