unparalleled example of the people of Israel, when being in
liberty they would needs choose a king. But without an agrarian
law, government, whether monarchical, aristocratical, or popular,
has no long lease.

As for dominion, personal or in money, it may now and then
stir up a Melius or a Manlius, which, if the Commonwealth be not
provided with some kind of dictatorian power, may be dangerous,
though it has been seldom or never successful; because to
property producing empire, it is required that it should have
some certain root or foothold, which, except in land, it cannot
have, being otherwise as it were upon the wing.

Nevertheless, in such cities as subsist mostly by trade, and
have little or no land, as Holland and Genoa, the balance of
treasure may be equal to that of land in the cases mentioned.

But Leviathan, though he seems to skew at antiquity,
following his furious master Carneades, has caught hold of the
public sword, to which he reduces all manner and matter of
government; as, where he affirms this opinion (that any monarch
receives his power by covenant; that is to say, upon conditions)"
to proceed from the not understanding this easy truth, that
covenants being but words and breath, have no power to oblige,
contain, constrain, or protect any man, but what they have from
the public sword." But as he said of the law, that without this
sword it is but paper, so he might have thought of this sword,
that without a hand it is but cold iron. The hand which holds
this sword is the militia of a nation; and the militia of a
nation is either an army in the field, or ready for the field