nes, they might as well, and with as great ease (forasmuch
as the reason why the nobility yielded to the tribunes was no other
than that there was no remedy) have obtained anything else. And for
experience, it was in the like case that the Lacedaemonians did set up
their ephors, and the Athenians, after the battle of Plataea, bowed the
Senate (so hard a thing it is for a commonwealth that was born crooked
to become straight) as much the other way. Nor, if it be objected
that this must have ruined the nobility (and in that deprived the
commonwealth of the greatness which she acquired by them), is this
opinion holding, but confuted by the sequel of the story, showing
plainly that the nobility, through the defect of such orders (that is
to say, of rotation and the agrarian), came to eat up the people; and
battening themselves in luxury, to be, as Sallust speaks of them, 'a
most sluggish and lazy nobility, in whom, besides the name, there was no
more than in a statue;' and to bring so mighty a commonwealth, and of so
huge a glory, to so deplorable an end. Wherefore means might have been
found to remove the enmity that was between the Senate and the people of
Rome.

"My lords, if I have argued well, I have given you the comfort and
assurance that, notwithstanding the judgment of Machiavel, your
commonwealth is both safe and sound; but if I have not argued well, then
take the comfort and assurance which he gives you while he is firm, that
a legislator is to lay aside all other examples, and follow that of Rome
only, conniving and temporizing with the enmity between the Senate and
the people as a necessary step to the Roman greatness. Whence it follows
that your commonwealth, at the worst, is that which he has given you his
word is the best.

"I have held your lordships long, but upon an account of no small
importance, which I can now sum up in these few words: where there is a
liquorishness in a popular assembly to debate, it proceeds not from
the constitution of the people, but of the commonwealth. Now that your
commonwealth is of such a constitution as is naturally free from this
kind of intemperance, is that which, to make good, I must divide the
remainder of my discourse into two parts:

"The first, showing the several constitutions of the assemblies of the
people in other commonwealths;

"The second, comparing our assembly of the people with theirs; and
showing how it excludes the inconveniences and embraces the conv