Chapter 1: How Republics Provide for Their Safety

If a republic is small, it is destroyed by a foreign force. If it is large, it destroys itself by an internal vice.

This double inconvenience equally infects democracies and aristocracies, whether they be good or bad. The evil is in the thing itself. There is not one measure that might cure it.

Thus, there is every appearance that men, in the end, would have been obliged to live under the government of a single person if they had not conceived a form of constitution that has all the internal advantages of republican government and the external strength of monarchical government. I am speaking of the federal republic.

This form of government is a convention by which several political bodies agree to become the citizens of a larger state that they intend to form. It is a society of societies, which form a new one by it (and) which may enlarge itself through any new associates that unite with it.

It was these associations that caused the body of Greece to flourish for such a long time. By means of them Romans attacked the universe, and, alone by means of them, the universe defended itself against the Romans. And, when Rome had attained the full measure of its greatness, it was by means of these associations across the Danube and the Rhine, associations that fright caused to be formed, that the barbarians were able to resist Rome.

It is from this that Holland (a), Germany, and the Swiss Leagues are considered in Europe as eternal republics.

In other times associations of towns were more necessary than they are today. A powerless city ran greater risks. Conquest caused it to lose not only the executive and legislative authority, like today, but also all that there is of property among men. (b)

This kind of republic, capable of resisting external force, is able to preserve itself in its largeness without becoming corrupt internally. The form of this society prevents every inconvenience.

He who would wish to usurp could hardly receive equal credit in all the confederated states. If he made himself too powerful in one, it would alarm all the others. If he subjugated a part, that which were yet free could resist him with forces independent of the ones he had usurped and overcome him before he had succeeded in establishing himself.