CHAPTER XLVI.: men rise from one ambition to another: first, they seek to secure themselves against attack, and then they attack others.

The people of Rome, having recovered their liberty, resumed their original rank in the state, and obtained even more influence than before by means of a number of laws that confirmed their power. It seemed reasonable, therefore, that Rome should now enjoy a period of quiet. But experience proved the contrary, for every day there were new dissensions and disorders. As Titus Livius has most judiciously given the causes that produced these, it seems to me proper to quote his own words, where he says: “The pride of the people or of the nobles always increased as the opposite party was humbled; when the people kept within proper bounds, the young nobles began to insult them, and the Tribunes could do little to prevent it, being themselves outraged. The nobles, on the other hand, although they felt that their young men were too insolent, yet, seeing that the restraints imposed by law could not be observed, preferred that they should be transgressed by their own party rather than by the people. And thus the desire of liberty caused one party to raise themselves in proportion as they oppressed the other. And it is the course of such movements that men, in attempting to avoid fear themselves, give others cause for fear; and the injuries which they ward off from themselves they inflict upon others, as though there were a necessity either to oppress or to be oppressed.” In this we see one of the modes in which republics are brought to ruin, and how men rise from one ambition to another; and we recognize the truth of the sentence which Sallust puts into the mouth of Cæsar, “that all evil examples have their origin in good beginnings.” The ambitious citizens of a republic seek in the first instance (as we have said above) to make themselves

sure against the attacks, not only of individuals, but even of the magistrates. To enable them to do this, they seek to gain friends, either by apparently honest ways, or by assisting men with money, or by defending them against the powerful; and as this seems virtuous, almost everybody is readily deceived by it, and therefore no one opposes it, until the ambitious individual has, without hindrance, grown so powerful that private citzens fear him and the magistrates treat him with consideration. And when he has risen to that point, no one at the beginning having interfered with his greatness, it becomes in the end most dangerous to attempt to put him down, for the reasons I have given above when speaking of the danger of trying to abate an evil that has already attained a considerable growth in a city; so that in the end the matter is reduced to this, that you must endeavor to destroy the evil at the risk of sudden ruin, or, by allowing it to go on, submit to manifest servitude, unless the death of the individual or some other accident intervenes to rid the state of him. For when it has once come to that point that the citizens and the magistrates are afraid to offend him and his adherents, it will afterwards not require much effort on his part to make them render judgments and attack persons according to his will. For this reason republics should make it one of their aims to watch that none of their citizens should be allowed to do harm on pretence of doing good, and that no one should acquire an influence that would injure instead of promoting liberty; of which we shall speak more at length in another place.