“For Venice, to say that she is quiet because she disarms her subjects, is to forget that Lacedaemon disarmed her helots, and yet could not in their regard be quiet; wherefore if Venice be defended from external causes of commotion, it is first through her situation, in which respect her subjects have no hope (and this indeed may be attributed to her fortune); and, secondly, through her exquisite justice, whence they have no will to invade her. But this can be attributed to no other cause than her prudence, which will appear to be greater, as we look nearer; for the effects that proceed from fortune, if there be any such thing, are like their cause, inconstant. But there never happened to any other commonwealth so undisturbed and constant a tranquillity and peace in herself as are in that of Venice; wherefore this must proceed from some other cause than chance. And we see that as she is of all others the most quiet, so the most equal commonwealth. Her body consists of one order, and her Senate is like a rolling stone, as was said, which never did, nor, while it continues upon that rotation, never shall gather the moss of a divided or ambitious interest, much less such a one as that which grasped the people of Rome in the talons of their own eagles. And if Machiavel, averse from doing this commonwealth right, had considered her orders, as his reader shall easily perceive he never did, he must have been so far from attributing the prudence of them to chance, that he would have touched up his admirable work to that perfection which, as to the civil part, has no pattern in the universal world but this of Venice.