The Ancient Regime | Page 7

a peculiar dress, that there should
be a peculiar luxury and variety in the dressing and serving of their
viands, and that they should meet with no denial in the pursuit of their
amours, however lawless. These habits having given rise in the one
case to envy and offence and in the other to an outburst of hatred and
passionate resentment, the kingship changed into a tyranny; the first
steps towards its overthrow were taken by the subjects, and
conspiracies began to be formed. These conspiracies were not the work
of the worst men, but of the noblest, most high-spirited, and most
courageous, because such men are least able to brook the insolence of
princes.
8. The people now having got leaders, would combine with them
against the ruling powers for the reasons I stated above; king-ship and
monarchy would be utterly abolished, and in their place aristocracy
would begin to grow. For the commons, as if bound to pay at once their
debt of gratitude to the abolishers of monarchy, would make them their
leaders and entrust their destinies to them. At first these chiefs gladly
assumed this charge and regarded nothing as of greater importance than
the common interest, administering the private and public affairs of the
people with paternal solicitude. But here again when children inherited
this position of authority from their fathers, having no experience of
misfortune and none at all of civil equality and liberty of speech, and
having been brought up from the cradle amid the evidences of the
power and high position of their fathers, they abandoned themselves
some to greed of gain and unscrupulous money-making, others to
indulgence in wine and the convivial excess which accompanies it, and
others again to the violation of women and the rape of boys; and thus
converting the aristocracy info an oligarchy aroused in the people
feelings similar to those of which I just spoke, and in consequence met
with the same disastrous end as the tyrant.
9. For whenever anyone who has noticed the jealousy and hatred with
which they are regarded by the citizens, has the courage to speak or act

against the chiefs of the state he has the whole mass of the people ready
to back him. Next, when they have either killed or banished the
oligarchs, they no longer venture to set a king over them, as they still
remember with terror the injustice they suffered from the former ones,
nor can they entrust the government with confidence to a select few,
with the evidence before them of their recent error in doing so. Thus
the only hope still surviving unimpaired is in themselves, and to this
they resort, making the state a democracy instead of an oligarchy and
assuming the responsibility for the conduct of affairs. Then as long as
some of those survive who experienced the evils of oligarchical
dominion, they are well pleased with the present form of government,
and set a high value on equality and freedom of speech. But when a
new generation arises and the democracy falls into the hands of the
grandchildren of its founders, they have become so accustomed to
freedom and equality that they no longer value them, and begin to aim
at pre-eminence; and it is chiefly those of ample fortune who fall into
this error. So when they begin to lust for power and cannot attain it
through themselves or their own good qualities, they ruin their estates,
tempting and corrupting the people in every possible way. And hence
when by their foolish thirst for reputation they have created among the
masses an appetite for gifts and the habit of receiving them, democracy
in its turn is abolished and changes into a rule of force and violence.
For the people, having grown accustomed feed at the expense of others
and to depend for their livelihood on the property of others, as soon as
they find a leader who is enterprising but is excluded from the honors
of office by his poverty, institute the rule of violence; and now uniting
their forces massacre, banish, and plunder, until they degenerate again
into perfect savages and find once more a master and monarch.
Such is the cycle of political revolution, the course pointed by nature in
which constitutions change, disappear, and finally return to the point
from which they started. Anyone who clearly perceives this may indeed
in speaking of the future of any state be wrong in his estimate of the
time the process will take, but if his judgment is not tainted by
animosity or jealousy, he will very seldom be mistaken to the stage of
growth or decline it has reached, and as to the form into which it will
change. And especially in the case of the Roman state will