Polybius observes, that of all the mixed governments ever known to him, that of Lycurgus alone was the result of cool reason and long study. The form of the Roman republick, on the contrary, was the production of necessity. For the Romans came at the knowledge of the most proper remedies for all their political evils, not by dint of reasoning, but by the deep felt experience of the many and dangerous calamities, with which they had so long and so often struggled. I do not in the least doubt, but that excellent form of government established by our rude Gothick ancestors, wherever their arms prevailed, arose from the same cause, necessity founded upon experience. Every mixed government therefore, where the three powers are duly balanced, has a _resource_ within itself against all those political evils to which it is liable. By this _resource_, I mean, that joint coercive force, which any two of these powers are able to exercise over the other. But as nothing but necessity can authorize the exercise of this power, so it must be strictly regulated by those principles, on which the government was founded. For if by an undue exercise of this power, any one of the three should be diminished, or annihilated, the balance would be destroyed, and the constitution alter proportionally for the worse. Thus in Denmark, where the monarchy was limited and elective, the people, exasperated by the oppressions of the nobility, who had assumed an almost despotick power, out of a principle of revenge threw their whole weight into the regal scale. Frederick the third, (the then reigning monarch) strengthened by this accession of power and the assistance of the people, compelled the nobility to surrender their power and privileges. In consequence of this fatal step taken by the people, the monarchy, in the year 1660, became absolute and hereditary. Lord Molesworth observes upon this occasion, in his account of Denmark, that the people of Denmark have since felt by sad experience, that the little finger of an absolute prince is heavier than the loins of a hundred nobles.