War itself, which was under the aristocratic republics very cruel and resulted in the destruction of conquered towns and the reduction of the vanquished to the condition of labourers scattered over the country-side and cultivating it on behalf of the victors, was mitigated by the popular republics, which while they deprived the conquered of the rights of heroic society left them in possession of the natural rights of the human race. Empires grew, since a popular republic is much more adapted to conquest than an aristocratic, and a monarchy most of all. But with all this humanisation of customs, the power of wise rule, political virtue, diminished. The ancient patricians enforced a rigid respect for law; and each, possessing a large share of the public utility, set his own minor personal interests below this greater particular interest, guaranteed as it was by the state. Hence all courageously defended and wisely consulted for the good of the state. In a popular state on the other hand since the citizens controlled the state property by dividing it among themselves into as many small portions as there were citizens in the body of the people, and through the causes which produced that form of state, ease, paternal affection, conjugal love and desire of life, men were led to consider the smallest details favourable to their own private interest; that is to regard nothing but the _aequum bonum,_ the only interest of which a multitude is capable. At this point arises spontaneously a new form of government, which has long been preparing and has now become inevitable, namely monarchy. The ordinary political writers make monarchy originate, without any of the numerous and complex causes which are necessary to produce it, at the very outset of human history, "as a frog," says Vico, "is born of a summer shower." Still less did it originate artificially by the royal law which Tribonian believes to have deprived the Roman people of its free and sovereign power and conferred it upon Octavius Augustus. The law which brought monarchy into being was a natural law whose formula of eternal validity is as follows: when in a popular republic every one seeks his private interest only and presses the public forces into its service at risk of destruction to the state, to preserve the latter from ruin a man must arise, as Augustus did at Rome (who as Tacitus says "received under his sovereign power the whole state, worn out with civil wars, taking the title of Princeps": _qui cuncta bellis civilibus fessa nomine principis sub imperium accepit):_ a single man, who by force of arms takes in hand all the affairs of the state and leaves his subjects to look after their own affairs or after any public business he may entrust to them; surrounding himself with a small number of statesmen as a cabinet to discuss public questions or principles of civil equity. Such a monarch is welcomed by nobles and plebeians alike: