ancient riches, or ancient virtue, or a title conferred by a
prince or a commonwealth.

"Nobility of the first kind may be subdivided into two
others, such as hold an overbalance in dominion or property to
the whole people, or such as hold not an overbalance. in the
former case, a nobility (such was the Gothic, of which sufficient
has been spoken) is incompatible with popular government; for to
popular government it is essential that power should be in the
people, but the overbalance of a nobility in dominion draws the
power to themselves. Wherefore in this sense it is that Machiavel
is to be understood, where he says, that these are pernicious in
a commonwealth; and of France, Spain, and Italy, that they are
nations which for this cause are the corruption of the world: for
otherwise nobility may, according to his definition (which is,
'that they are such as live upon their own revenues in plenty,
without engagement either to the tilling of their lands, or other
work for their livelihood '), hold an underbalance to the people;
in which case they are not only safe, but necessary to the
natural mixture of a well-ordered commonwealth.

"For how else can you have a commonwealth that is not
altogether mechanic? or what comparison is there of such
commonwealths as are, or come nearest to mechanic -- for example,
Athens, Switzerland, Holland, to Lacedaemon, Rome, and Venice,
plumed with their aristocracies? Your mechanics, till they have
first feathered their nests, like the fowls of the air whose
whole employment is to seek their food, are so busied in their
private concernments that they have neither leisure to study the
public, nor are safely to be trusted with it, because a man is