CHAP. VII.
How it comes to pass that in the changes of State, from liberty to servitude, and from servitude to liberty, some are very innocent, and others very bloody.
SOme people perhaps may wonder how it should come to pass that Governments should be changed from one form to another, sometimes easily, and without blood, and some∣times with great difficulty and slaughter, be the variation as it will, either from liberty to tyranny, or from tyranny to liberty. And this diversity of mutations is so strange, that as History tells us, they happen sometimes with infinite effusion of blood, and at other times without the least injury to any body: as in Rome, when the Government was taken from the Kings, and put into the hands of the Consul••, no body was expulsed, or so much as molested but the Tarquins; but in other alterations it has been otherwise, and the cause of this diversity may (in my judgment) be deduced from the manner in which that State was acquired; if it was obtained by force, it could not be without injury to many people, and then when ever it is destroyed, it will necessarily follow that all those who were injured before, will endeavour to repair and revenge themselves; which is not to be done without great tumult and slaughter. But when a Commonwealth is fix'd gradually, and by universal consent of the people, when it comes to be changed, there is no need of disturbing any body ••lse; for the bare removal of those who are then in authority, will effectually do the business. Of this sort was the revolution at Rome upon the translation of the Govern∣ment from the Kings to the Consuls; and the accident at Florence in the year 1494, when the Medici were expelled without the least prejudice to any body else; for they having been advanced by the general vote of the people, there was no need of doing more than turning them out of the City. Such mutations are not therefore so dangerous; but those others where many have been injured, and as many are to be revenged, have been so dreadfully destructive, that the very History of their consequences is enough to terrifie the Reader; but all Books being full of them, I shall speak no more of them in this place.