, are subject to any other
corruption than that which derives from their government. Unless a man
will deny the chain of causes, in which he denies God, he must also
acknowledge the chain of effects; wherefore there can be no effect in
nature that is not from the first cause, and those successive links of
the chain without which it could not have been. Now except a man can
show the contrary in a commonwealth, if there be no cause of corruption
in the first make of it, there can never be any such effect. Let no
man's superstition impose profaneness upon this assertion; for as man is
sinful, but yet the universe is perfect, so may the citizen be sinful,
and yet the commonwealth be perfect. And as man, seeing the world is
perfect, can never commit any such sin as shall render it imperfect,
or bring it to a natural dissolution, so the citizen, where the
commonwealth is perfect, can never commit any such crime as will render
it imperfect, or bring it to a natural dissolution.

"To come to experience: Venice, notwithstanding we have found some flaws
in it, is the only commonwealth in the make whereof no man can find
a cause of dissolution; for which reason we behold her (though she
consists of men that are not without sin) at this day with 1,000 years
upon her back, yet for any internal cause, as young, as fresh, and free
from decay, or any appearance of it, as she was born; but whatever in
nature is not sensible of decay by the course of 1,000 years, is capable
of the whole age of nature; by which calculation, for any check that
I am able to give myself, a commonwealth, rightly ordered, may for any
internal causes be as immortal or long-lived as the world. But if
this be true, those commonwealths that are naturally fallen, must have
derived their ruin from the rise of them. Israel and Athens died, not
natural, but violent deaths, in which manner the world itself is to
die. We are speaking of those causes of dissolution which are natural to
government; and they are but two, either contradiction or inequality. If
a commonwealth be a contradiction, she must needs destroy herself; and
if she be unequal, it tends to strife, and strife to ruin. By the former
of these fell Lacedaemon, by the latter Rome. Lacedaemon being made
altogether for war, and yet not for increase, her natural progress
became her natural dissolution, and the building of her own victorious
hand too heavy for her foundation, so that she fell, indeed, by her own