recollecting himself, where he says that democracies, when a less
part of their citizens overtop the rest in wealth, degenerate
into oligarchies and principalities; and, which comes nearer to
the present purpose, that the greater part of the nobility of
Tarentum coming accidentally to be ruined, the government of the
few came by consequence to be changed into that of the many.

"These things considered, I cannot see how an agrarian, as to
the fixation or security of a government, can be less than
necessary. And if a cure be necessary, it excuses not the
patient, his disease being otherwise desperate, that it is
dangerous; which was the case of Rome, not so stated by
Machiavel, where he says, that the strife about the agrarian
caused the destruction of that commonwealth. As if when a senator
was not rich (as Crassus held) except he could pay an army, that
commonwealth could expect nothing but ruin whether in strife
about the agrarian, or without it. 'Of late,' says Livy, 'riches
have introduced avarice, and voluptuous pleasures abounding have
through lust and luxury begot a desire of lasting and destroying
all good orders.' if the greatest security of a commonwealth
consists in being provided with the proper antidote against this
poison, her greatest danger, must be from the absence of an
agrarian, which is the whole truth of the Roman example. For the
Laconic, I shall reserve the further explication of it, as my
lord also did, to another place; and first see whether an
agrarian proportioned to a popular government be sufficient to
keep out monarchy. My lord is for the negative, and fortified by
the people of Israel electing a king. To which I say that the
action of the people therein expressed is a full answer to the
objection of that example; for the monarchy neither grew upon