preserve it._
I believe that if her kings had not been expelled, Rome must very soon
have become a weak and inconsiderable State. For seeing to what a pitch
of corruption these kings had come, we may conjecture that if two or
three more like reigns had followed, and the taint spread from the head
to the members, so soon as the latter became infected, cure would have
been hopeless. But from the head being removed while the trunk was
still sound, it was not difficult for the Romans to return to a free
and constitutional government.
It may be assumed, however, as most certain, that a corrupted city
living under a prince can never recover its freedom, even were the
prince and all his line to be exterminated. For in such a city it must
necessarily happen that one prince will be replaced by another, and
that things will never settle down until a new lord be established;
unless, indeed, the combined goodness and valour of some one citizen
should maintain freedom, which, even then, will endure only for his
lifetime; as happened twice in Syracuse, first under the rule of Dion,
and again under that of Timoleon, whose virtues while they lived kept
their city free, but on whose death it fell once more under a tyranny.
But the strongest example that can be given is that of Rome, which on
the expulsion of the Tarquins was able at once to seize on liberty and
to maintain it; yet, on the deaths of Cæsar, Caligula, and Nero, and on
the extinction of the Julian line, was not only unable to establish her
freedom, but did not even venture a step in that direction. Results so
opposite arising in one and the same city can only be accounted for by
this, that in the time of the Tarquins the Roman people were not yet
corrupted, but in these later times had become utterly corrupt. For on
the first occasion, nothing more was needed to prepare and determine
them to shake off their kings, than that they should be bound by oath
to suffer no king ever again to reign in Rome; whereas, afterwards, the
authority and austere virtue of Brutus, backed by all the legions of
the East, could not rouse them to maintain their hold of that freedom,
which he, following in the footsteps of the first Brutus, had won for
them; and this because of the corruption wherewith the people had been
infected by the Marian faction, whereof Cæsar becoming head, was able
so to blind the multitude that it saw not the yoke under which it was
about to lay its neck.
Though this example of Rome be more complete than any other, I desire
to instance likewise, to the same effect, certain peoples well known in
our own days; and I maintain that no change, however grave or violent,
could ever restore freedom to Naples or Milan, because in these States
the entire body of the people has grown corrupted. And so we find that
Milan, although desirous to return to a free form of government, on the
death of Filippo Visconti, had neither the force nor the skill needed
to preserve it.
Most fortunate, therefore, was it for Rome that her kings grew corrupt
soon, so as to be driven out before the taint of their corruption had
reached the vitals of the city. For it was because these were sound
that the endless commotions which took place in Rome, so far from being
hurtful, were, from their object being good, beneficial to the
commonwealth. From which we may draw this inference, that where the
body of the people is still sound, tumults and other like disorders do
little hurt, but that where it has become corrupted, laws, however well
devised, are of no advantage, unless imposed by some one whose
paramount authority causes them to be observed until the community be
once more restored to a sound and healthy condition.
Whether this has ever happened I know not, nor whether it ever can
happen. For we see, as I have said a little way back, that a city which
owing to its pervading corruption has once begun to decline, if it is
to recover at all, must be saved not by the excellence of the people
collectively, but of some one man then living among them, on whose
death it at once relapses into its former plight; as happened with
Thebes, in which the virtue of Epaminondas made it possible while he
lived to preserve the form of a free Government, but which fell again
on his death into its old disorders; the reason being that hardly any
ruler lives so long as to have time to accustom to right methods a city
which has long been accustomed to wrong. Wherefore, unless things be
put on a sound footing by some one ruler who lives to a very advanced
age, or by two virtuous rulers succeeding one another, the city upon
their death at once falls back into ruin; or, if it be preserved, must
be so by incurring great risks, and at the cost of much blood. For the
corruption I speak of, is wholly incompatible with a free government,
because it results from an inequality which pervades the State and can
only be removed by employing unusual and very violent remedies, such as
few are willing or know how to employ, as in another place I shall more
fully explain.