uses of
commotion in a commonwealth are either external or internal. External
are from enemies, from subjects, or from servants. To dispute then what
was the cause why Rome was infested by the Italian, or by the servile
wars; why the slaves took the capitol; why the Lacedaemonians were near
as frequently troubled with their helots as Rome with all those; or why
Venice, whose situation is not trusted to the faith of men, has as good
or better quarter with them whom she governs, than Rome had with the
Latins; were to dispute upon external causes. The question put by
Machiavel is of internal causes; whether the enmity that Was between the
Senate and the people of Rome might have been removed. And to determine
otherwise of this question than he does, I must lay down other
principles than he has done. To which end I affirm that a commonwealth,
internally considered, is either equal or unequal. A commonwealth that
is internally equal, has no internal cause of commotion, and therefore
can have no such effect but from without. A commonwealth internally
unequal has no internal cause of quiet, and therefore can have no such
effect but by diversion.

"To prove my assertions, I shall at this time make use of no other
than his examples. Lacedaemon was externally unquiet, because she was
externally unequal, that is as to her helots; and she was internally at
rest, because she was equal in herself, both in root and branch; in the
root by her agrarian, and in branch by the Senate, inasmuch as no man
was thereto qualified but by election of the people. Which institution
of Lycurgus is mentioned by Aristotle, where he says that rendering his
citizens emulous (not careless) of that honor, he assigned to the people
the election of the Senate. Wherefore Machiavel in this, as in other
places, having his eye upon the division of patrician and plebeian
families as they were in Rome, has quite mistaken the orders of this
commonwealth, where there was no such thing. Nor did the quiet of it
derive from the power of the kings, who were so far from shielding the
people from the injury of the nobility, of which there was none in
his sense but the Senate, that one declared end of the Senate at the
institution was to shield the people from the kings, who from that time
had but single votes. Neither did it proceed from the straitness of the
Senate, or their keeping the people excluded from the government, that
they were quiet, but from the equality of