so far from such a corruption of manners as should render them
incapable of a commonwealth, that of necessity they must thereby
contract such a reformation of manners as will bear no other kind
of government. On the other side, where the balance changes from
popular to oligarchical or monarchical, the public interest, with
the reason and justice included in the sane, becomes more
private; luxury is introduced in the room of temperance, and
servitude in that of freedom, which causes such a corruption of
manners both in the nobility and people, as, by the example of
Rome in the time of the Triumvirs, is more at large discovered by
the author to have been altogether incapable of a commonwealth.

But the balance of Oceana changing quite contrary to that of
Rome, the manners of the people were not thereby corrupted, but,
on the contrary, adapted to a commonwealth. For differences of
opinion in a people not rightly informed of their balance, or a
division into parties (while there is not any common ligament of
power sufficient to reconcile or hold them) is no sufficient
proof of corruption. Nevertheless, seeing this must needs be
matter of scandal and danger, it will not be amiss, in showing
what were the parties, to show what were their errors.

The parties into which this nation was divided, were temporal
or spiritual; and the temporal parties were especially two, the
one royalists, the other republicans, each of which asserted
their different causes, either out of prudence or ignorance, out
of interest or conscience.

For prudence, either that of the ancients is inferior to the
modern, which we have hitherto been setting face to face, that