These are
dangerous to themselves, precarious governments, such as do not
command, but beg their bread from province to province, in coats
that being patched up of all colors are in effect of none. That
their cantons and provinces are so many arrows, is good; but they
are so many bows too, which is naught.
"Like to these was the commonwealth of the ancient Tuscans,
hung together like bobbins, without a hand to weave with them;
therefore easily overcome by the Romans, though at that time, for
number, a far less considerable people. If your liberty be not a
root that grows, it will be a branch that withers, which
consideration brings me to the paragon, the Commonwealth of Rome.
"The ways and means whereby the Romans acquired the
patronage, and in that the empire, of the world were different,
according to the different condition of their commonwealth in her
rise and in her growth: in her rise she proceeded rather by
colonies, in her growth by unequal leagues. Colonies without the
bounds of Italy she planted none (such dispersion of the Roman
citizen as to plant him in foreign parts, till the contrary
interest of the emperors brought in that practice, was unlawful),
nor did she ever demolish any city within that compass, or divest
it of liberty; but whereas the most of them were commonwealths,
stirred 'up by emulation of her great felicity to war against
her, if she overcame any, she confiscated some part of their
lands that were the greatest incendiaries, or causes of the
trouble, upon which she planted colonies of her own people,
preserving the rest of their lands and liberties for the natives
or inhabitants.
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