“But the sufficiency of an aristocracy goes demonstrably upon the hand of the nobility or gentry; for that the politics can be mastered without study, or that the people can have leisure to study, is a vain imagination; and what kind of aristocracy divines and lawyers would make, let their incurable running upon their own narrow bias and their perpetual invectives against Machiavel (though in some places justly reprovable, yet the only politician, and incomparable patron of the people) serve for instruction. I will stand no more to the judgment of lawyers and divines in this work, than to that of so many other tradesmen; but if this model chances to wander abroad, I recommend it to the Roman speculativi (the most complete gentlemen of this age) for their censure; or with my Lord Epimonus his leave, send 300 or 400 copies to your agent at Venice to be presented to the magistrates there; and when they have considered them, to be proposed to the debate of the Senate, the most competent judges under heaven, who, though they have great affairs, will not refuse to return you the oracle of their ballot. The councillors of princes I will not trust; they are but journeymen. The wisdom of these later times in princes’ affairs (says Verulamius) is rather fine deliveries and shiftings of dangers when they be near, than solid and grounded courses to keep them off. Their councillors do not derive their proceedings from any sound root of government that may contain the demonstration, and assure the success of them, but are expedient-mongers, givers of themselves to help a lame dog over a stile; else how comes it to pass that the fame of Cardinal Richelieu has been like thunder, whereof we hear the noise, but can make no demonstration of the reason? But to return: if neither the people, nor divines and lawyers, can be the aristocracy of a nation, there remains only the nobility; in which style, to avoid further repetition, I shall understand the gentry also, as the French do by the word noblesse.
“Now to treat of the nobility in such sort as may be less obnoxious to mistake, it will be convenient, and answerable to the present occasion, that I divide my discourse into four parts:
“The first, treating of nobility, and the kinds of it;
“The second, of their capacity of the Senate;
“The third, of the divers kinds of senates;
“The fourth, of the Senate, according to the foregoing orders.
“Nobility may be defined divers ways; for it is either ancient riches, or ancient virtue, or a title conferred by a prince or a commonwealth.
“Nobility of the first kind may be subdivided into two others, such as hold an overbalance in dominion or property to the whole people, or such as hold not an overbalance, in the former case, a nobility (such was the Gothic, of which sufficient has been spoken) is incompatible with popular government; for to popular government it is essential that power should be in the people, but the overbalance of a nobility in dominion draws the power to themselves. Wherefore in this sense it is that Machiavel is to be understood, where he says, that these are pernicious in a commonwealth; and of France, Spain, and Italy, that they are nations which for this cause are the corruption of the world: for otherwise nobility may, according to his definition (which is, ‘that they are such as live upon their own revenues in plenty, without engagement either to the tilling of their lands, or other work for their livelihood ‘), hold an underbalance to the people; in which case they are not only safe, but necessary to the natural mixture of a well-ordered commonwealth.
“For how else can you have a commonwealth that is not altogether mechanic? or what comparison is there of such commonwealths as are, or come nearest to mechanic—for example, Athens, Switzerland, Holland, to Lacedaemon, Rome, and Venice, plumed with their aristocracies? Your mechanics, till they have first feathered their nests, like the fowls of the air whose whole employment is to seek their food, are so busied in their private concernments that they have neither leisure to study the public, nor are safely to be trusted with it, because a man is not faithfully embarked in this kind of ship, if he has no share in the freight. But if his share be such as gives him leisure by his private advantage to reflect upon that of the public, what other name is there for this sort of men, being a leur aise, but (as Machiavel you see calls them) nobility? Especially when their families come to be such as are noted for their services done to the commonwealth, and so take into their ancient riches ancient virtue, which is the second definition of nobility, but such a one as is scarce possible in nature without the former. ‘For as the baggage,’ says Verulamius, ‘is to an army, so are riches to virtue; they cannot be spared nor left behind, though they be impediments, such as not only hinder the march, but sometimes through the care of them lose or disturb the victory.’ Of this latter sort is the nobility of Oceana; the best of all others because they, having no stamp whence to derive their price, can have it no otherwise than by their intrinsic value. The third definition of nobility, is a title, honor, or distinction from the people, conferred or allowed by the prince or the commonwealth. And this may be two ways, either without any stamp or privilege, as in Oceana; or with such privileges as are inconsiderable, as in Athens after the battle of Plataea, whence the nobility had no right, as such, but to religious offices, or inspection of the public games, to which they were also to be elected by the people; or with privileges, and those considerable ones, as the nobility in Athens before the battle of Plataea, and the patricians in Rome each of which had right, or claimed it, to the Senate and all the magistracies; wherein for some time they only by their stamp were current.
“But to begin higher, and to speak more at large of nobility in their several capacities of the Senate. The phylarchs, or princes of the tribes of Israel, were the most renowned, or, as the Latin, the most noble of the congregation, whereof by hereditary right they had the leading and judging. The patriarchs, or princes of families, according as they declared their pedigrees, had the like right as to their families; but neither in these nor the former was there any hereditary right to the Sanhedrim: though there be little question but the wise men and understanding, and known among their tribes, which the people took or elected into those or other magistracies, and whom Moses made rulers over them, must have been of these, seeing they could not choose but be the most known among the tribes, and were likeliest by the advantages of education to be the most wise and understanding.