Balance of power
idea · 3 works · 3 mentions · 7 anchored passages
balance · balance of power · counterbalanced · counterweight · geographical balance of power · great power · grow strong · guarantee of the safety · no one man shall be all-powerful · the new balance of power
in the texts
Against Aristocrates
The policy that Athens is safest when rival powers check one another.
Even so today, if you do not annul this decree, the kings and their commanders will be immensely discouraged.
You are aware that it is for the advantage of Athens that neither the Thebans nor the Lacedaemonians should be powerful;
And that you may not be quite surprised to hear that decrees made in Athens have so powerful an effect, I will remind you of a piece of history within the knowledge of all of you.
For the People of Megalopolis
The strategic idea that Athens must prevent either Sparta or Thebes from dominating the Greek world.
Now I know, as far as reasoning and conjecture can teach me, and I think that most of you will agree with me, that if the Lacedaemonians take Megalopolis, Messene will be in danger;
Now if the Thebans are finally beaten, as they deserve to be, there will be no undue increase in the power of the Lacedaemonians, because there are their neighbors, the Arcadians, to balance it;
For I cannot regard it as a pledge of our security, that the Lacedaemonians should seize Megalopolis and grow great once more, seeing as I do that even now they have not taken up arms to avenge an injury, but to recover the power that once was theirs;
Construction Construed and Constitutions Vindicated
The proposed division of the states into two rival sectional combinations contending for congressional advantage, which the author argues is the true and dangerous cause of the slavery controversy.
The ends to be effected are, a monopoly of the offices of government, and of the partialities of congress, by the means of this artificial and fanciful geographical balance of power.
The idea of a balance of power between two combinations of states, and not the existence of slavery, gave rise to this unfortunate, and as I shall endeavour to prove, absurd controversy.
But, if a balance of power is attempted to be established by the line of slavery, it will introduce a natural, instead of an unnatural geographical division, and a line between eastern and western states will very soon be substituted for this whimsical species of geography.