13. Many men, who are themselves very well affected to civil society, do through want of knowledge co-operate to the disposing of subjects’ minds to _sedition_, whilst they teach young men a doctrine conformable to the said opinions in their schools, and all the people in their pulpits. Now they who desire to bring this disposition into act, place their whole endeavour in this: first, that they may join the ill-affected together into _faction_ and _conspiracy_; next, that themselves may have the greatest stroke in the _faction_. They gather them into _faction_, while they make themselves the relators and interpreters of the counsels and actions of single men, and nominate the persons and places to assemble and deliberate of such things whereby the present government may be reformed, according as it shall seem best to their interests. Now to the end that they themselves may have the chief rule in the _faction_, the _faction_ must be kept in a _faction_; that is to say, they must have their secret meetings apart with a few, where they may order what shall afterward be propounded in a general meeting, and by whom, and on what subject, and in what order each of them shall speak, and how they may draw the powerfullest and most popular men of the _faction_ to their side. And thus when they have gotten a faction big enough, in which they may rule by their eloquence, they move it to take upon it the managing of affairs. And thus they sometimes oppress the commonwealth, namely, where there is no other faction to oppose them; but for the most part they rend it, and introduce a civil war. For _folly_ and _eloquence_ concur in the subversion of government, in the same manner (as the fable hath it) as heretofore the daughters of Pelias, king of Thessaly, conspired with Medea against their father. They going to restore the decrepit old man to his youth again, by the counsel of Medea they cut him into pieces, and set him in the fire to boil; in vain expecting when he would live again. So the common people, through their folly, like the daughters of Pelias, desiring to renew the ancient government, being drawn away by the _eloquence_ of ambitious men, as it were by the witchcraft of Medea; divided into _faction_ they consume it rather by those flames, than they reform it. ------- CHAPTER XIII. CONCERNING THE DUTIES OF THEM WHO BEAR RULE.