by allowing them such a share
of honours as, looking to their position, may reasonably content them.
All those others whose sole aim it is to live safely, are well contented
where the prince enacts such laws and ordinances as provide for the
general security, while they establish his own authority; and when he
does this, and the people see that nothing induces him to violate these
laws, they soon begin to live happily and without anxiety. Of this we
have an example in the kingdom of France, which enjoys perfect security
from this cause alone, that its kings are bound to compliance with an
infinity of laws upon which the well-being of the whole people depends.
And he who gave this State its constitution allowed its kings to do as
they pleased as regards arms and money; but provided that as regards
everything else they should not interfere save as the laws might direct.
Those rulers, therefore, who omit to provide sufficiently for the safety
of their government at the outset, must, like the Romans, do so on the
first occasion which offers; and whoever lets the occasion slip, will
repent too late of not having acted as he should. The Romans, however,
being still uncorrupted at the time when they recovered their freedom,
were able, after slaying the sons of Brutus and getting rid of the
Tarquins, to maintain it with all those safeguards and remedies which
we have elsewhere considered. But had they already become corrupted,
no remedy could have been found, either in Rome or out of it, by which
their freedom could have been secured; as I shall show in the following
Chapter.

CHAPTER XVII.--_That a corrupt People obtaining Freedom can hardly
preserve it._

I believe that if her kings had not been expelled, Rome must very soon
have become a weak and inconsiderable State. For seeing to what a pitch
of corruption these kings had come, we may conjecture that if two or
three more like reigns had followed, and the taint spread from the head
to the members, so soon as the latter became infected, cure would have
been hopeless. But from the head being removed while the trunk was still
sound, it was not difficult for the Romans to return to a free and
constitutional government.

It may be assumed, however, as most certain, that a corrupted city
living under a prince can never recover its freedom, even were the
prince and all his line to be exterminated. For in such a city it must
necessarily happen that one prince will be replace