"Solon having found the Athenians neither locally nor genealogically, but by their different ways of life, divided into four tribes -- that is, into the soldiery, the tradesmen, the husbandmen, and the goatherds -- instituted a new distribution of them, according to the sense or valuation of their estates, into four classes: the first, second, and third consisting of such as were proprietors in land, distinguished by the rate of their freeholds, with that stamp upon them, which ****** them capable of adding honor to their riches, that is to say, of the Senate, and all the magistracies, excluded the fourth, being the body of the people, and far greater in number than the former three, from all other right, as to those capacities, except the election of these, who by this means became an hereditary aristocracy or senatorian order of nobility. This was that course which came afterward to be the destruction of Rome, and had now ruined Athens. The nobility, according to the inevitable nature of such a one, having laid the plot how to divest the people of the result, and so to draw the whole power of the commonwealth to themselves; which in all likelihood they had done, if the people, coming by mere chance to be victorious in the battle of Plataea, and famous for defending Greece against the Persians, had not returned with such courage as irresistibly broke the classes, to which of old they had borne a white tooth, brought the nobility to equal terms, and the Senate with the magistracies to be common to both; the magistracies by suffrage, and the Senate (which was the mischief of it, as I shall show anon in that constitution) by lot only." The Lacedaemonians were in the manner, and for the same cause with the Venetians at this day, no other than a nobility even according to the definition given of nobility by Machiavel; for they neither exercised any trade, nor labored their lands or lots, which was done by their helots: wherefore some nobility may be far from pernicious in a commonwealth by Machiavel's own testimony, who is an admirer of this, though the servants thereof were more in number than the citizens. To these servants I hold the answer of Lycurgus --when he bade him who asked why he did not admit the people to the government of his commonwealth, to go home and admit his servants to the government of his family-to relate: for neither were the Lacedaemonians servants, nor, further, capable of the government, unless, whereas the congregation had the result, be should have given them the debate also; every one of these that attained to sixty years of age, and the major vote of the congregation, being equally capable of the Senate.
"The nobility of Rome, and their capacity of the Senate, Ihave already described by that of Athens before the battle of Plataea, saving only that the Athenian was never eligible into the Senate without the suffrage of the people till the introduction of the lot, but the Roman nobility ever: for the patricians were elected into the Senate by the kings; by the consuls, or the censors, or if a plebeian happened to be conscribed, he and his posterity became patricians. Nor, though the people had many disputes with the nobility, did this ever come in controversy, which, if there had been nothing else, might in my judgment have been enough to overturn that commonwealth.
"The Venetian nobility, but that they are richer, and not military, resemble at all other points the Lacedaemonian, as Ihave already shown. These Machiavel excepts from his rule, by saying that their estates are rather personal than real, or of any great revenue in land, which comes to our account, and shows that a nobility or party of the nobility, not overbalancing in dominion, is not dangerous, but of necessary use in every commonwealth, provided it be rightly ordered; for if it be so ordered as was that of Rome, though they do not overbalance at the beginning, as they did not there, it will not be long ere they do, as is clear both in reason and experience toward the latter end. That the nobility only be capable of the Senate is there only not dangerous, where there be no other citizens, as in this government and that of Lacedaemon.
"The nobility of Holland and Switzerland, though but few, have privileges not only distinct from the people, but so great that in some sovereignties they have a negative voice; an example which I am far from commending, being such as (if those governments were not cantonized, divided, and subdivided into many petty sovereignties that balance one another, and in which the nobility, except they had a prince at the head of them, can never join to make work) would be the most dangerous that ever was, but the Gothic, of which it favors. For in ancient commonwealths you shall never find a nobility to have had a negative but by the poll, which, the people being far more in number, came to nothing; whereas these have it, be they never so few by their stamp or order.
"Ours of Oceana have nothing else but their education and their leisure for the public, furnished by their ease and competent riches: and their intrinsic value, which, according as it comes to hold weight in the judgment or suffrage of the people, is their only way to honor and preferment. Wherefore Iwould have your lordships to look upon your children as such, who, if they come to shake off some part of their baggage, shall make the more quick and glorious march; for it was nothing else but the baggage, sordidly plundered by the nobility of Rome, that lost the victory of the whole world in the midst of her triumph.
"Having followed the nobility thus close, they bring us, according to their natural course and divers kinds, to the divers constitutions of the Senate.
