For men's
natural abilities are too dull to see through everything at once; but by
consulting, listening, and debating, they grow more acute, and while
they are trying all means, they at last discover those which they want,
which all approve, but no one would have thought of in the first
instance. But if anyone retorts, that the dominion of the Dutch has not
long endured without a count or one to fill his place, let him have this
reply, that the Dutch thought, that to maintain their liberty it was
enough to abandon their count, and to behead the body of their dominion,
but never thought of remoulding it, and left its limbs, just as they had
been first constituted, so that the county of Holland has remained
without a count, like a headless body, and the actual dominion has
lasted on without the name. And so it is no wonder that most of its
subjects have not known, with whom the authority of the dominion lay.
And even had this been otherwise, yet those who actually held dominion
were far too few to govern the multitude and suppress their powerful
adversaries. Whence it has come to pass, that the latter have often been
able to plot against them with impunity, and at last to overthrow them.
And so the sudden overthrow of the said republic [3] has not arisen from
a useless waste of time in debates, but from the misformed state of the
said dominion and the fewness of its rulers.
15. This aristocracy in the hands of several cities is also preferable
to the other, because it is not necessary, as in the first described, to
provide against its whole supreme council being overpowered by a sudden
attack, since (Sec.
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