Now, the former, depending as
they do on the synchronous conjunction of other events outside the
sphere of scientific estimation, are from their very character
incalculable; but the latter, though assuming many forms, always
result from the over-great preponderance of any single element to
the detriment of the others, the rational law lying at the base of
all varieties of political changes being that stability can result
only from the statical equilibrium produced by the counteraction of
opposing parts, since the more simple a constitution is the more it
is insecure. Plato had pointed out before how the extreme liberty
of a democracy always resulted in despotism, but Polybius analyses
the law and shows the scientific principles on which it rests.
The doctrine of the instability of pure constitutions forms an
important era in the philosophy of history. Its special
applicability to the politics of our own day has been illustrated
in the rise of the great Napoleon, when the French state had lost
those divisions of caste and prejudice, of landed aristocracy and
moneyed interest, institutions in which the vulgar see only
barriers to Liberty but which are indeed the only possible defences
against the coming of that periodic Sirius of politics, the [Greek
text which cannot be reproduced].
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