Equality
consists in the same treatment of similar persons, and no government
can stand which is not founded upon justice. For if the government
be unjust every one in the country unites with the governed in the
desire to have a revolution, and it is an impossibility that the
members of the government can be so numerous as to be stronger than
all their enemies put together. Yet that governors should excel
their subjects is undeniable. How all this is to be effected, and in
what way they will respectively share in the government, the
legislator has to consider. The subject has been already mentioned.
Nature herself has provided the distinction when she made a difference
between old and young within the same species, of whom she fitted
the one to govern and the other to be governed. No one takes offense
at being governed when he is young, nor does he think himself better
than his governors, especially if he will enjoy the same privilege
when he reaches the required age.
We conclude that from one point of view governors and governed are
identical, and from another different. And therefore their education
must be the same and also different. For he who would learn to command
well must, as men say, first of all learn to obey. As I observed in
the first part of this treatise, there is one rule which is for the
sake of the rulers and another rule which is for the sake of the
ruled; the former is a despotic, the latter a free government.
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