Book VIII.
Chap.2.rupted. The people will distribute the public money among themselves, and having added the administration of affairs to their indolence, they will be for adding to their poverty the amusements of luxury. But with their indolence and luxury, nothing but the public treasure will be able to satisfy their demands.
We must not be surprised to see their suffrages given for money. It is impossible to give a great deal to the people without squeezing much more out of them: and to compass this, the state must be subverted. The greater the advantages they seem to derive from their liberty, the nearer they draw to the critical moment of losing it. Petty tyrants arise, who have all the vices of a single tyrant. The small remains of liberty soon become unsupportable; a single tyrant starts up, and the people lose all, even the advantages of their corruption.
Democracy hath therefore two excesses to avoid, the spirit of inequality which leads to aristocracy or monarchy; and the spirit of extreme equality, which leads to despotic power, as the latter is compleated by conquest.
True it is that those who corrupted the Greek republics, did not become tyrants. This was because they had a greater passion for eloquence than for the military art. Besides there reigned an implacable hatred in the hearts of the Greeks against those who subverted a republican government; and for this reason anarchy degenerated into annihilation, instead of being changed into tyranny.
But Syracuse, which was situated in the midst of a great number of petty states whose government
