Free Political Propositions

Some, driven solely by base self-interest, ambition, and love of rule, strive to praise the Single-Headed Tyranny monarchy to the inexperienced as the most divine government. Others, though driven by similar insights, praise the rule of the few and most powerful of a people, and this under the pretext that they should be considered the most capable and sensible for the high standing of a commonwealth. But for the people's own true and worthy government, there are found, to my knowledge, only two in the Dutch language who have dared to sustain and propose something openly regarding this. Those who have tried to proceed most accurately and impartially before all others, and indeed with the greatest semblance of reason, are those who strive to elevate the example of Lycurgus the Spartan lawgiver above all others. This consists of his attempt to mix, to balance or equalize, the aforementioned three political states. And whose weight or true value of mixing they strive to justify solely through the long-lastingness of such mixed and blended pretended political states, as, for example, happened in Sparta and Rome. But surely, what worth has six or eight hundred years of continuous, terrible having and struggling to be compared with the always growing and flourishing well-being of a worldly, thriving people?

Nicolas Machiavelli, an unfeigned and open proponent of all base superstition and deceit, and here perhaps a follower of the Greek Polybius, in the first book of his Discourses, in the second chapter, where he counts up the varieties of policies to six, makes this conclusion: Therefore it seems to me that all such manners of policies are neither firm nor lasting. The three good ones, due to the short life of men: the other three due to their own imperfections. Therefore, the excellent lawmakers, knowing these defects of each of the above-mentioned states, having made the body of their city of three members, that is, of Monarchy, Aristocracy, Democracy: so that one should serve as a restraint on the other, and keep them within their limits, and preserve them, so that they did not fall out of the bolts so quickly and run into their ruin. Lycurgus, etc.

Contradictory things, such as water and fire, are not to be mixed, and likewise, ruling and governing contradictory affairs are not to be brought together. And therefore, it must necessarily, at some time, come to pass that one must yield to the other and strike the sail. For if our aforementioned writer could have properly seen and weighed the deficiencies of his three pretended true political states, and to whose little durability he seems to attribute only the short life of men, he could also have seen at the same time that the first two, as there are Monarchy and Aristocracy, stem their deficiencies and lack of durability from their freedom-violating constitution and evil stature. But that the third, being the government of the people, is commonly undermined and finally overwhelmed and suppressed only by evils coming from outside and internal weaknesses, usually by one of the first two, trickily and craftily. Otherwise, the people's...