"To come to experience: Venice, notwithstanding we have found
some flaws in it, is the only commonwealth in the make whereof no
man can find a cause of dissolution; for which reason we behold
her (though she consists of men that are not without sin) at this
day with 1,000 years upon her back, yet for any internal cause,
as young, as fresh, and free from decay, or any appearance of it,
as she was born; but whatever in nature is not sensible of decay
by the course of 1,000 years, is capable of the whole age of
nature; by which calculation, for any check that I am able to
give myself, a commonwealth, rightly ordered, may for any
internal causes be as immortal or long-lived as the world. But if
this be true, those commonwealths that are naturally fallen, must
have derived their ruin from the rise of them. Israel and Athens
died, not natural, but violent deaths, in which manner the world
itself is to die. We are speaking of those causes of dissolution
which are natural to government; and they are but two, either
contradiction or inequality. If a commonwealth be a
contradiction, she must needs destroy herself; and if she be
unequal, it tends to strife, and strife to ruin. By the former of
these fell Lacedaemon, by the latter Rome. Lacedaemon being made
altogether for war, and yet not for increase, her natural
progress became her natural dissolution, and the building of her
own victorious hand too heavy for her foundation, so that she
fell, indeed, by her own weight.
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