§. 201. It is a mistake to think this fault is proper only to monarchies.
Other forms of government are liable to it as well as that; for wherever the
power that is put in any hands for the government of the people and the
preservation of their properties is applied to other ends, and made use of to
impoverish, harass, or subdue them to the arbitrary and irregular commands of
those that have it, there it presently becomes tyranny, whether those that thus
use it are one or many. Thus we read of the thirty tyrants at Athens, as well
as one at Syracuse; and the intolerable dominion of the Decemviri at Rome was
nothing better.
