value: so that the people there, who at this day are so oppressed
that they have nothing at all whereon to live, shall for L1,000,000 paid
to you, receive at least L79,000,000 to their proper use: in which place
I appeal to any man, whether the empire described can be other than the
patronage of the world.

"Now if you add to the propagation of civil liberty (so natural to this
commonwealth that it cannot be omitted) the propagation of the liberty
of conscience, this empire, this patronage of the world, is the kingdom
of Christ: for as the kingdom of God the Father was a commonwealth, so
shall the kingdom of God the Son; 'the people shall be willing in the
day of his power.'

"Having showed you in this and other places some of those inestimable
benefits of this kind of government, together with the natural and
facile emanation of them from their fountain, I come (lest God who
has appeared to you, for he is the God of nature, in the glorious
constellation of these subordinate causes, whereof we have hitherto been
taking the true elevation, should shake off the dust of his feet against
you) to warn you of the dangers which you, not taking the opportunity,
will incur by omission.

"Machiavel, speaking of the defect of Venice, through her want of proper
arms, cries out, 'This cut her wings, and spoiled her mount to heaven.'
If you lay your commonwealth upon any other foundation than the people,
you frustrate yourself of proper arms, and so lose the empire of the
world; nor is this all, but some other nation will have it.

"Columbus offered gold to one of your kings, through whose happy
incredulity another prince has drunk the poison, even to the consumption
of his people; but I do not offer you a nerve of war that is made
of purse-strings, such a one as has drawn the face of the earth into
convulsions, but such as is natural to her health and beauty. Look you
to it, where there is tumbling and tossing upon the bed of sickness, it
must end in death or recovery. Though the people of the world, in the
dregs of the Gothic empire, be yet tumbling and tossing upon the bed of
sickness, they cannot die; nor is there any means of recovery for them
but by ancient prudence, whence of necessity it must come to pass that
this drug be better known, if France, Italy, and Spain were not all
sick, all corrupted together, there would be none of them so; for the
sick would not be able to withstand the sound, nor the sound to preserve
the