both debating and resolving, dividing and choosing, and what that
must come to was shown by the example of the girls, and is
apparent by the experience of all times; wherefore the thirty set
up by the Lacedaemonians (when they had conquered Athens) are
called tyrants by all authors, Leviathan only excepted, who will
have them against all the world to have been an aristocracy, but
for what reason I cannot imagine; these also, as void of any
balance, having been void of that which is essential to every
commonwealth, whether aristocratical or popular, except he be
pleased with them, because that, according to the testimony of
Xenophon, they killed more men in eight months than the
Lacedaemonians had done in ten years; "oppressing the people (to
use Sir Walter Raleigh's words) with all base and intolerable
slavery."

The usurped government of the Decemvirs in Rome was of the
same kind. Wherefore in the fear of God let Christian legislators
(setting the pattern given in the Mount on the one side, and
these execrable examples on the other) know the right hand from
the left; and so much the rather, because those things which do
not conduce to the good of the governed are fallacious, if they
appear to be good for the governors. God, in chastising a people,
is accustomed to burn his rod. The empire of these oligarchies
was not so violent as short, nor did they fall upon the people,
but in their own immediate ruin. A council without a balance is
not a commonwealth, but an oligarchy; and every oligarchy, except
it be put to the defence of its wickedness or power against some
outward danger, is factious. Wherefore the errors of the people
being from their governors (which maxim in the politics bearing a
sufficient testimony to itself, is also proved by Machiavel), if