Therefore, even if Cyrus, the King of the Persians, was a most righteous and wise monarch, I should still think that the interest of the people (for this is, as I have said before, the same as the Commonwealth) could not be very effectually promoted when all things depended on the beck and nod of one individual.

And though at present the people of Marseilles, our clients, are governed with the greatest justice by elected magistrates of the highest rank, still there is always in this condition of the people a certain appearance of servitude; and when the Athenians, at a certain period, having demolished their Areopagus, conducted all public affairs by the acts and decrees of the democracy alone, their State, as it no longer contained a distinct gradation of ranks, was no longer able to retain its original fair appearance.
XXVIII.

I have reasoned thus on the three forms of government, not looking on them in their disorganized and confused conditions, but in their proper and regular administration.

These three particular forms, however, contained in themselves, from the first, the faults and defects I have mentioned; but they have also other dangerous vices, for there is not one of these three forms of government which has not a precipitous and slippery passage down to some proximate abuse.

For, after thinking of that endurable, or, as you will have it, most amiable king, Cyrus--to name him in preference to any one else--then, to produce a change in our minds, we behold the barbarous Phalaris, that model of tyranny, to which the monarchical authority is easily abused by a facile and natural inclination.