The only thing that can prevent an aristocracy from splitting into hostile parties, pursuing each other with the bitterest animosity, is the existence of a formidable rustic or civic commonalty: for factions are never wanting in it, which, when it is free from anxiety, break out into irreconcilable fury against one another; as we see in the Guelfs and Ghibellines: these, as is expressly stated with regard to Florence, at the outset were merely parties among the houses, and the commonalty had nothing to do with them. If the aristocratical body comprehends a narrow oligarchy with peculiar privileges, whether resulting from prescription or usurpation, these will excite no less vehement murmurs among those who are thrown into the background, than in an opprest commonalty; and the oligarchs will display the same arrogance and ferocity toward the one as toward the other. The Bacchiads looked upon the Dorians at Corinth as their subjects: the members of the secret council at Freyburg excluded the nobless even in our fathers days from posts of honour and of authority: the same point did the major houses at Rome endeavour to carry against the minor. The latter however found support from individuals of the privileged class, moved whether by benevolent feelings or by mortified pride, and from the commonalty; whose liberties were gaining ground so long as the houses, which after their reconciliation strove to keep it under, were at variance, and vying with each other in courting its favour.