“For the first: governments, be they of what kind soever, if they be planted too close, are like trees, that impatient in their growth to have it hindered, eat out one another. It was not unknown to these in speculation, or, if you read the story of Agesilaus, in action, that either of them with 30,000 men might have mastered the East; and certainly, if the one had not stood in the other’s light, Alexander had come too late to that end, which was the means (and would be if they were to live again) of ruin, at least to one of them; wherefore with any man that understands the nature of government this is excusable. So it was between Oceana and Marpesia; so it is between France and Spain, though less excusable; and so it ever will be in the like cases. But to come to the second occasion of scandal by them given, which was in the way of their propagation, it is not excusable; for they brought their confederates under bondage, by which means Athens gave occasion of the Peloponnesian War, the wound of which she died stinking, when Lacedaemon, taking the same infection from her carcass, soon followed. “Wherefore, my lords, let these be warnings to you not to make that liberty which God has given you a snare to others in practising this kind of enlargement to yourselves. “The second way of propagation or enlargement used by commonwealths is that of Switzerland and Holland, equal leagues; this, though it be not otherwise mischievous, is useless to the world, and dangerous to themselves: useless to the world, for as the former governments were storks, these are blocks, have no sense of honor, or concern in the sufferings of others. But as the AEtolians, a state of the like fabric, were reproached by Philip of Macedon to prostitute themselves; by letting out their arms to the lusts of others, while they leave their own liberty barren and without legitimate issue; so I do not defame these people; the Switzer for valor has no superior, the Hollander for industry no equal; but themselves in the meantime shall so much the less excuse their governments, seeing that to the Switz it is well enough known that the ensigns of his commonwealth have no other motto than in te converte manus; and that of the Hollander, though he sweats more gold than the Spaniard digs, lets him languish in debt; for she herself lives upon charity. These are dangerous to themselves, precarious governments, such as do not command, but beg their bread from province to province, in coats that being patched up of all colors are in effect of none. That their cantons and provinces are so many arrows, is good; but they are so many bows too, which is naught.