[DiatryDal]

Lycurgus ordered that leather money should be spent in his republic to take away from everyone the desire to come there, to bring merchandise there, or to bring some art there, so the city could never thicken with inhabitants.
Internally, lycurgus' laws regulating citizenship left Sparta with an extremely small and narrow citizen body. Moveover, its oligarchic and monarchial institutions made it hard for civic virtue to flourish on a wide scale. Lycurgus' concern to maintain civic unity blinded him to the advantages that well-ordered "tumults" may have for cities. These three internal defects crippled Spart'as ability to meet the growing demands placed on the city by external wars.

According to Machiavelli, Lycurgus' principal error was to order a constitution designed to maintain an extremely narrow citizen base, so that the "body" of the city could never grow to a greatness comparable to that of the Roman republic. The restrictions he placed on foreign commerce and immigration were supposedt o prevent corruption. But if the end was good, the means were problematic.

For since Lycurgus, founder of the Spartan republic, considered that nothing could dissolve his laws more easily than the mixture of new inhabitants, he did everything so that foreigners shoudl not have to deal there. Besides not admitting them into marriages, into citizenship, and into the other dealings that make men come together, he ordered that leather money should be spent in his republic to take away from everyone the desire to come there, to bring merchandise there, or to bring some art there, so the city could never thicken with inhabitants. And since all our actions imitate nature, ti is neither possible nor natural for a thin trunk to support a thick branch. So a small republic cannot seize cities or kingdoms that are sounder or thicker than it.

The Spartan "stem" - its core citizen body - was so narrowly based that when it began to acquire branches thicker than itself, "it supports it with labor, and every small wind breaks it." Eventually the "trunk alone remained without the branches. This could not happen in Rome," Machiavelli contends, "since its stem was so thick it could easily support any branch whatever." The lesson he draws about lycurgus' laws is that imitators of ancient legislation should prefer the Roman republic's policy in this regard. By encouraging immigration and admitting newcomers to citizenship, Rome continually "Thickened the body" of its citizenry, making the city formidable.



More at source:
http://books.google.com/books?id=-IK...0money&f=false