Arms planted upon dominion extirpate
enemies and make friends; but maintained by a mere tax, have
enemies that have roots, and friends that have none.
To conclude, Oceana, or any other nation of no greater
extent, must have a competent nobility, or is altogether
incapable of monarchy; for where there is equality of estates,
there must be equality of power, and where there is equality of
power, there can be no monarchy.
To come then to the generation of the commonwealth. It has
been shown how, through the ways and means used by Panurgus to
abase the nobility, and so to mend that flaw which we have
asserted to be incurable in this kind of constitution, he
suffered the balance to fall into the power of the people, and so
broke the government; but the balance being in the people, the
commonwealth (though they do not see it) is already in the nature
of them. There wants nothing else but time, which is slow and
dangerous, or art, which would be more quick and secure, for the
bringing those native arms, wherewithal they are found already,
to resist, they know not how, everything that opposes them, to
such maturity as may fix them upon their own strength and bottom.
But whereas this art is prudence, and that part of prudence
which regards the present work is nothing else but the skill of
raising such superstructures of government as are natural to the
known foundations, they never mind the foundation, but through
certain animosities, wherewith by striving one against another
they are infected, or through freaks, by which, not regarding the
course of things, nor how they conduce to their purpose, they are
given to building in the air, come to be divided and subdivided
into endless parties and factions, both civil and ecclesiastical,
which, briefly to open, I shall first speak of the people in
general, and then of their divisions.
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