Book VIII.
Chap. 6.the government is in such a situation as to have something to dread, while security shelters under its protection, and uncertainty threatens from abroad.
As a certain kind of confidence forms the glory and stability of monarchies, republics on the contrary must have something to apprehend[1]. A fear of the Persians supported the laws of Greece. Carthage and Rome were alarmed, and strengthened by each other. Strange, that the greater security those states enjoyed, the more, like stagnated waters, they were subject to corruption!
CHAP. VI.
Of the Corruption of the Principle of Monarchy.
AS democracies are destroyed when the people despoil the senate, the magistrates, and judges of their functions; so monarchies are corrupted when the prince insensibly deprives societies or cities of their privileges. In the first case the multitude usurp a despotic power; in the second it is usurped by a single person.
"The deduction of the Dynasties of Tsin and Soiii," says a Chinese author, "was owing to this: the princes instead of confining themselves like their ancestors to a general inspection, the only one worthy of a sovereign, wanted to govern every thing immediately by themselves[2]." The Chinese author gives us here the cause of the corruption of almost all monarchies.
- ↑ Justin attributes the extinction of Athenian virtue to the death of Epamiriondas. Having no further emulation, they spent their revenues in feasts, frequentitu caenam, quam castra visentes. Then it was that the Macedonians emerged out of obscurity, 1. 6.
- ↑ Compilement of works made under the Mings. related by father DuHarde.
