They who lay the
foundations of a State and furnish it with laws must, as is shown by all who
have treated of civil government, and by examples of which history is full,
assume that 'all men are bad, and will always, when they have free field, give
loose to their evil inclinations[.]
The first example he gives is the arrogance of the Roman
nobles and their efforts to destroy the freedom of the plebs as soon as the
Tarquins, who had kept them in check, were gone.
In Rome, after the
expulsion of the Tarquins, it seemed as though the closest union prevailed
between the senate and the commons, and that the nobles, laying aside their
natural arrogance, had learned so to sympathize with the people as to have
become supportable by all, even of the humblest rank.
This dissimulation
remained undetected, and its causes concealed, while the Tarquins lived; for
the nobles dreading the Tarquins, and fearing that the people, if they used
them ill, might take part against them, treated them with kindness.
But no sooner were the
Tarquins got rid of, and the nobles thus relieved of their fears, when they
began to spit forth against the commons all the venom which before they had
kept in their breasts, offending and insulting them in every way they could;
confirming what I have observed already, that men never behave well unless
compelled, and that whenever they are free to act as they please, and are under
no restraint everything falls at once into confusion and disorder.
Wherefore it has been
said that as poverty and hunger are needed to make men industrious, so laws are
needed to make them good.
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