Page:Montesquieu - The spirit of laws.djvu/214

162 had been changed from oligarchy to tyranny ; Syracuse which had a senate scarce ever mentioned in history, was exposed to such miseries as are the consequences of a more than ordinary corruption. This city continually in a state of licentiousness or oppression, equally labouring under its liberty and servitude, receiving always the one and the other like a tempest, and notwithstanding its external strength constantly determined to a revolution by the least foreign power: This city, I say, had in its bosom an immense multitude of people, whose fate it was to have always this cruel alternative, of either giving themselvcs a tyrant, or of being the tyrant themselves.

S distant as heaven is from earth, so is the true spirit of equality from that of extreme equality. The former does not consist in managing so that every body should command, or that no one should be commanded; but in obeying and commanding our equals. It endeavours not to be without a master, but that its masters should be none but its equals.

In the state of nature indeed, all men are born equal; but they cannot continue in this equality. Rh