As in Machiavelli, the bearing of arms is the essential medium through which the individual asserts both his social power and his participation in politics as a responsible moral being; but the possession of land in nondependent tenure is now the material basis for bearing of arms.
J. G. A. Pocock (2016). “The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition”, p.390, Princeton University Press
