Page:1888 Cicero's Tusculan Disputations.djvu/418

 three elements, the monarchical, the aristocratical, and the democratic, does not by punishment irritate a fierce and savage mind. * * * [A similar institution prevailed at Carthage], which was sixty-five years more ancient than Rome, since it was founded thirty-nine years before the first Olympiad; and that most ancient law-giver Lycurgus made nearly the same arrangements. Thus the system of regular subordination, and this mixture of the three principal forms of government, appear to me common alike to us and them. But there is a peculiar advantage in our Commonwealth, than which nothing can be more excellent, which I shall endeavor to describe as accurately as possible, because it is of such a character that nothing analogous can be discovered in ancient states; for these political elements which I have noticed were so united in the constitutions of Rome, of Sparta, and of Carthage, that they were not counterbalanced by any modifying power. For in a state in which one man is invested with a perpetual domination, especially of the monarchical character, although there be a senate in it, as there was in Rome under the kings, and in Sparta, by the laws of Lycurgus, or even where the people exercise a sort of jurisdiction, as they used in the days of our monarchy, the title of king must still be pre-eminent; nor can such a state avoid being, and being called, a kingdom. And this kind of government is especially subject to frequent revolutions, because the fault of a single individual is sufficient to precipitate it into the most pernicious disasters.

In itself, however, royalty is not only not a reprehensible form of government, but I do not know whether it is not far preferable to all other simple constitutions, if I approved of any simple constitution whatever. But this preference applies to royalty so long only as it maintains its appropriate character; and this character provides that one individual's perpetual power, and justice, and universal wisdom should regulate the safety, equality, and tranquillity of the whole people. But many privileges must be wanting to communities that live under a king; and, in the first place, liberty, which does not consist in slavery to a just master, but in slavery to no master at all * * *