For men are, as we have said, by nature enemies, so that however
they be associated, and bound together by laws, they still retain their
nature. And hence I think it is, that democracies change into
aristocracies, and these at length into monarchies. For I am fully
persuaded that most aristocracies were formerly democracies. For when a
given multitude, in search of fresh territories, has found and
cultivated them, it retains, as a whole, its equal right of dominion,
because no man gives dominion to another spontaneously. But although
every one of them thinks it fair, that he should have the same right
against another that that other has against him, he yet thinks it
unfair, that the foreigners that join them should have equal right in
the dominion with themselves, who sought it by their own toil, and won
it at the price of their own blood. And this not even the foreigners
themselves deny, for, of course, they migrate thither, not to hold
dominion, but for the benefit of their own private business, and are
quite satisfied if they are but allowed the liberty of transacting that
business in safety. But meanwhile the multitude is augmented by the
influx of foreigners, who gradually acquire the national manners, until
at last they are distinguished by no other difference than that of
incapacity to get office; and while their number daily increases, that
of the citizens, on the contrary, is by many causes diminished. For
families often die out, and some persons are disqualified for their
crimes, and a great many are driven by domestic poverty to neglect
affairs of state, and meanwhile the more powerful aim at nothing else,
but to govern alone; and thus the dominion is gradually limited to a
few, and at length by faction to one.
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