Lycurgus, it was immoveable; but, breaking that, could ſtand no longer. This kind of law, fixing the balance in lands, is called Agrarian, and was firſt introduced by God himſelf, who divided the land of Canaan to his people by let.
The public ſword, without a hand to hold it, is but cold iron. The hand which holds this ſword is the militia of a nation; and the militia of a nation is either an army in the field, or ready for the field upon occaſion. But an army is a beaſt that has a great belly, and muſt be fed; wherefore this will come to what paſtures you have, and what paſtures you have will come to the balance of property, without which the public ſword is but a name. He that can graze this beaſt with the great belly, as the Turk does his timariots, may well deride him that imagines he received his power by covenant. But if the property of the nobility, ſtocked with their tenants and retainers, be the paſture of that beaſt, the ox knows his maſter's crib; and it is impoſſible for a king, in ſuch a conſtitution, to reign otherwiſe than by covenant; or, if he breaks it, it is words that come to blows.
Ariſtotle is full of this balance in divers places, eſpecially where he ſays, that immoderate wealth, as where one man, or the few, have greater poſſeſſions than the equality or the frame of the commonwealth will bear, is an occaſion of ſedition, which ends, for the greater part, in monarchy; and that, for this cauſe, the oſtraciſm has been received in divers places, as in Argos and Athens; but that it were better to prevent the growth in the beginning, than, when it has got head, to ſeek the remedy of ſuch an evil.
Machiavel, not perceiving that if a commonwealth be galled by the gentry, it is by their
