e other
methods practised by the ancients are in like manner salutary and
useful. And were this once accepted, both princes and commonwealths
would make fewer blunders than they do, would be stronger to resist
sudden attack, and would no longer place their sole hope of safety
in flight; while those who take in hand to provide a State with new
institutions would know better what direction to give them, whether in
the way of extending or merely of preserving; and would see that to
augment the numbers of their citizens, to assume other States as
companions rather than reduce them to subjection, to send out colonies
for the defence of acquired territories, to hold their spoils at the
credit of the common stock, to overcome enemies by inroads and pitched
battles rather than by sieges, to enrich the public purse, keep down
private wealth, and zealously, to maintain all military exercises, are
the true ways to aggrandize a State and to extend its empire. Or if
these methods for adding to their power are not to their mind, let
them remember that acquisitions made in any other way are the ruin of
republics, and so set bounds to their ambition, wisely regulating the
internal government of their country by suitable laws and ordinances,
forbidding extension, and looking only to defence, and taking heed that
their defences are in good order, as do those republics of Germany which
live and for long have lived, in freedom.

And yet, as I have said on another occasion, when speaking of the
difference between the methods suitable for acquiring and those suitable
for maintaining, it is impossible for a republic to remain long in the
peaceful enjoyment of freedom within a restricted frontier. For should
it forbear from molesting others, others are not likely to refrain from
molesting it; whence must grow at once the desire and the necessity to
make acquisitions; or should no enemies be found abroad, they will be
found at home, for this seems to be incidental to all great States. And
if the free States of Germany are, and have long been able to maintain
themselves on their present footing, this arises from certain conditions
peculiar to that country, and to be found nowhere else, without which
these communities could not go on living as they do.

The district of Germany of which I speak was formerly subject to the
Roman Empire, in the same way as France and Spain; but on the decline
of the Empire, and when its very name came to be limited