Whether the guardianship of public freedom is safer in the hands of the commons or of the nobles; and whether those who seek to acquire power or they who seek to maintain it are the greater cause of commotions.
Of the provisions made by wise founders of republics, one of the most necessary is for the creation of a guardianship of liberty; for according as this is placed in good or bad hands, the freedom of the state will be more or less lasting.
And because in every republic we find the two parties of nobles and commons, the question arises, to which of these two this guardianship can most safely be entrusted.
Among the Lacedaemonians of old, as now with the Venetians, it was placed in the hands of the nobles, but with the Romans it was vested in the commons.
We have, therefore, to determine which of these states made the wiser choice.
If we look to reasons, something is to be said on both sides of the question; though were we to look to results, we should have to pronounce in favour of the nobles, inasmuch as the liberty of Sparta and Venice has had a longer life than that of Rome.
As touching reasons, it may be pleaded for the Roman method, that they are most fit to have charge of a thing, who least desire to pervert it to their own ends. And, doubtless, if we examine the aims which the nobles and the commons respectively set before them, we shall find in the former a great desire to dominate, in the latter merely a desire not to be dominated over, and hence a greater attachment to freedom, since they