upon private but the public interest, not upon his posterity but
upon his country, may justly endeavor to get the sovereign power
into his own hands, nor shall any man that is master of reason
blame such extraordinary means as in that case will be necessary,
the end proving no other than the constitution of a well-ordered
commonwealth.

The reason of this is demonstrable; for the ordinary means
not failing, the commonwealth has no need of a legislator, but
the ordinary means failing, there is no recourse to be had but to
such as are extraordinary. And, whereas a book or a building has
not been known to attain to its perfection if it has not had a
sole author or architect, a commonwealth, as to the fabric of it,
is of the like nature. And thus it may be made at once; in which
there be great advantages; for a commonwealth made at once, takes
security at the same time it lends money; and trusts not itself
to the faith of men, but launches immediately forth into the
empire of laws, and, being set straight, brings the manners of
its citizens to its rule, whence followed that uprightness which
was in Lacedaemon. But manners that are rooted in men, bow the
tenderness of a commonwealth coming up by twigs to their, bent,
whence followed the obliquity that was in Rome, and those
perpetual repairs by the consuls' axes, and tribunes' hammers,
which could never finish that commonwealth but in destruction.

My lord general being clear in these points, and of the
necessity of some other course than would be thought upon by the
Parliament, appointed a meeting of the army, where he spoke his
sense agreeable to these preliminaries with such success to the
soldiery, that the Parliament was soon after deposed; had he