7. Another inconvenience of monarchy, is the power of altering laws. Concerning which, it is necessary that such a power be, that laws may be altered, according as men’s manners change, or as the conjuncture of all circumstances within and without the commonwealth shall require; the change of law being then inconvenient, when it proceedeth from the change, not of the occasion, but of the minds of him or them, by whose authority the laws are made. Now it is manifest enough of itself, that the mind of one man is not so variable in that point, as are the decrees of an assembly. For not only they have all their natural changes, but the change of any one man may be enough, with eloquence and reputation, or by solicitation and faction, to make that law to-day, which another by the very same means, shall abrogate to-morrow. [Sidenote: Monarchies less subject to dissolution.] 8. Lastly, the greatest inconvenience that can happen to a commonwealth, is the aptitude to dissolve into civil war; and to this are monarchies much less subject, than any other governments. For where the union, or band of a commonwealth, is one man, there is no distraction; whereas in assemblies, those that are of different opinions, and give different counsel, are apt to fall out amongst themselves, and to cross the designs of the commonwealth for one another’s sake: and when they cannot have the honour of making good their own devices, they yet seek the honour to make the counsels of their adversaries prove vain. And in this contention, when the opposite factions happen to be anything equal in strength, they presently fall to war. Wherein necessity teacheth both sides, that an absolute monarch, to wit, a general, is necessary both for their defence against one another, and also for the peace of each faction within itself. But this aptitude to dissolution, is to be understood for an inconvenience in such aristocracies only where the affairs of state are debated in great and numerous assemblies, as they were anciently in Athens, and in Rome; and not in such as do nothing else in great assemblies, but choose magistrates and counsellors, and commit the handling of state affairs to a few; such as is the aristocracy of Venice at this day. For these are no more apt to dissolve from this occasion, than monarchies, the counsel of state being both in the one and the other alike. ------- CHAPTER VI.