om the virtue of their popular
form of government, not considering the frequent seditions and civil
wars produced by the imperfection of their polity." Where, first,
the blame he lays to the heathen authors, is in his sense laid to the
Scripture; and whereas he holds them to be young men, or men of no
antidote that are of like opinions, it should seem that Machiavel,
the sole retriever of this ancient prudence, is to his solid reason a
beardless boy that has newly read Livy. And how solid his reason is, may
appear where he grants the great prosperity of ancient commonwealths,
which is to give up the controversy. For such an effect must have some
adequate cause, which to evade he insinuates that it was nothing else
but the emulation of particular men, as if so great an emulation could
have been generated without as great virtue, so great virtue without
the best education, and best education without the best law, or the best
laws any otherwise than by the excellency of their polity.

But if some of these commonwealths, as being less perfect in their
polity than others, have been more seditious, it is not more an argument
of the infirmity of this or that commonwealth in particular, than of the
excellency of that kind of polity in general, which if they, that have
not altogether reached, have nevertheless had greater prosperity, what
would befall them that should reach?

In answer to which question let me invite Leviathan, who of all other
governments gives the advantage to monarchy for perfection, to a better
disquisition of it by these three assertions.

The first, that the perfection of government lies upon such a libration
in the frame of it, that no man or men in or under it can have the
interest, or, having the interest, can have the power to disturb it with
sedition.

The second, that monarchy, reaching the perfection of the kind, reaches
not to the perfection of government, but must have some dangerous flaw
in it.

The third, that popular government, reaching the perfection of the kind,
reaches the perfection of government, and has no flaw in it.

The first assertion requires no proof.

For the proof of the second, monarchy, as has been shown, is of two
kinds: the one by arms, the other by a nobility and there is no
other kind in art or nature; for if there have 'been anciently some
governments called kingdoms, as one of the Goths in Spain, and another
of the Vandals in Africa, where the King ruled without a